Inane Chatter

The weekend is upon us, and I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.  Sure, we have work to do (seeding the lawn is on the agenda for tomorrow), but it’s a THREE-DAY WEEKEND.  Three whole days.  Once I stopped working today, I was even inspired to clean up a bit.  I may have been watching Cinderella (and singing along) while washing dishes and cleaning the countertops, but you weren’t there so you’ll never know for sure.

I started reading the next book club book (Before I Go to Sleep) last night – it’s fascinating.  The next meeting is a week from today.  I’ll have this one finished before the weekend is over.

Today was better than yesterday.  And the new yoga instructor is very different, but I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.  We had a very restful, very peaceful class.

Hey, I found out I’m a genius today.  Or at least very perceptive.  In a very narrow field.  Do you remember way back when I read Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill?  No?  Well, you must not be keeping up with my What I’ve Been Reading page. Here’s what I said when I read it:

This is a scary book, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to finish it. Okay, it was scary right at the beginning, and that first night, I decided not to read it in bed. After that, though, it didn’t scare me. That’s not to say it wasn’t good. It was. But I wasn’t too scared to read it. It reminded me of Stephen King sometimes, and I can’t tell if that’s good or bad.

I finished 11/22/63 today (recent Stephen King novel), and when I got to the afterword and read, “My son, the novelist Joe Hill,” I did a triumphant little I’m-so-smart dance.  Really.  Because I have a very high opinion of myself.

This week has been horrible.  I’m badly in need of peace and quiet and serenity, so my fingers are crossed that the new yoga instructor is wonderful.  Tonight’s the first class.

I have found myself completely unable to tell what day of the week it is.  At least I’m not alone.  I told Mom today I would check on something Tuesday, thinking today was Saturday, even though I went to work today and complained about it  being Monday several times.  Probably.  That’s something I’ve been known to do.  I’m sure I did it today.  Unless it was last Monday…  Mom thought it was Tuesday all day.  I talked to Jess yesterday, and she was convinced (or at least hoped) it was Saturday.  It’s probably just wishful thinking, like my dream last night that I was eating brownies and cake with whipped cream and strawberries.  (Oh how I want that.)  Let’s continue to assume it’s wishful thinking and not the deterioration of my brain.

John and I did some yardwork yesterday (mowing, weeding, clipping back the creeping vines, etc.) – it’s a good thing we did it yesterday morning, too, since the rest of the weekend was rainy – and we noticed a wee visitor in the yard.  Say hello to Mr. Toad.

At least, we think he’s a toad.  Pretty sure he’s a toad.  John nearly hit him with the lawn mower, and even then the little dude didn’t move.  He was hanging out under a tree.  He eventually hopped over to the mulch near the fence.  Riley barely noticed he was there.  Can’t blame him for that, really.  In the mulch and the dead leaves, Mr. Toad was nearly invisible.

When we finally finished up and went inside, he was snuggled up underneath the leaves right there by the fencepost, showing no signs of heading out.  I’m not sure where he would have gone.  Don’t toads need moisture, like near a pond or a swamp?  I wouldn’t have thought our backyard was his ideal habitat.  I know Google and Wikipedia could help me out here, but toads creep me out a little and I don’t really want to know that toads are happiest when they’re living under my bed or something.  I only like them when they go on wild rides and sing.  Speaking of Disney, did you know Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride in Fantasyland was replaced by a Winnie the Pooh ride?  Looks like it still exists in Disneyland, but not Disney World.  Sad.

Lunch today with John: frozen yogurt at a local Sweet Frog.  Delicious, low(ish) in calories, not at all nutritious.  Perfect for a Friday.  Of course, then we noticed the sign near the register that says that F.R.O.G stands for Fully Rely On God.  Really?  It’s frozen yogurt, for crying out loud.  So maybe Zinga! (which has no religious affiliations or views) will remain our favorite local frozen yogurt spot.  (John has threatened to stop talking to me if I call it froyo one more time.  Froyo is right up there with vacay in his list of annoying words.  I don’t really disagree, except when it comes to veggies.  I refuse to give up veggies.)

Noticed yesterday on Reddit:

On my way home today I saw a little boy run out of his house, open up his blue and red Spiderman umbrella, and then skip and jump down the sidewalk.  It was a beautiful sunny day.  Since an umbrella was clearly not needed, I can only assume he was trying to fly Mary Poppins-style.

My wonderful Wednesday nights at the gym are no longer.  My yoga class has been canceled (for lack of an instructor – all that drama drove her away), and my strength class instructor won’t be teaching at all anymore.  Tonight was the first strength class with the new instructor.  She’s not new to the gym, just new to Wednesday nights, and I don’t think I like her style of teaching.  (It’s not just because it’s different.)  The other instructors play music, and they use it to drive the exercises.  If we’re doing bicep curls, 2 counts up, 2 counts down, those counts are to the beat of the music.  They’ve chosen their songs for specific exercises, and it’s lots of fun.  This instructor plays music, but it’s irrelevant to the class.  She counts the exercises, but she doesn’t count evenly, and she ignores the beat of the music.  !  I can’t handle it.  Why would someone do that?  She subbed for one of the classes I was taking sometime last year, and I noticed it (and hated it) then.  She hasn’t changed.

I know.  My life is SO hard.

I spent all day today with my personal tachometer pegged at, like, 8000 rpm (or whatever is really high).  What do I know?  I drive an automatic.  Red-lined is what I mean.  And that includes my commute home, when you’d think I could take some time to breathe, and when I was actually sitting in a car going 30 miles per hour (at most).  It wasn’t until I sat down to eat that I slowed down.  It wasn’t a bad day, just long and very busy.  I didn’t even realize I’d been racing all day until I walked into the house.  Now I’m home and fed and I’m going to have maybe a third of a cookie and some milk (it’s a really big cookie) and then go to bed and start all over again tomorrow.

For me, tomorrow means more of the same, but Emily and Corey have just embarked on brand new…things.  I’m not sure what word to use there.  “Brand new chapters” sounds ridiculous, and “brand new lives” sounds too momentous.  I mean, their happenings ARE momentous, but it’s not like they’re changing everything…okay, fine.  It’s a VERY big deal.  And it does change a LOT.  I mean, Emily just moved to a new apartment in a new city and started a new job today (and apparently her first day went well).  And today was Corey’s first day of law school, for heaven’s sake, which seems to have scared him to death.  He may bury himself so deep into his books that I won’t be able to talk to him for three years.  So maybe “brand new lives” isn’t such an overstatement.  (Also, I’m not sure why Corey starting law school required a “for heaven’s sake”, but it seemed appropriate.  I think it’s really cool, and even though law school has never appealed to me all that much, going back to school full time sounds lovely.)

Oh, cookie cookie cookie starts with c.

We all have too many accounts and too many passwords.  This is not a new problem, I know, but it’s been steadily getting worse since the early days of mainstream internet access.  Back in 1996, I only had my AOL account and password to remember.  Now I have more accounts than I can easily list. I can usually figure my password out for a particular account, but it sometimes takes me a couple of tries, and there have been any number of times I’ve had to use the Forgot Password? link or (gasp) had to actually call tech support for help.  I know you’re not supposed to keep a list or file of your passwords, and so far, I never have, but I think I’ve gotten to the point where I really need to.  Chalk it up to an aging (WordPress seems to think it should be spelled ageing.  I think that’s crazy.) memory or an overabundance of accounts – it doesn’t matter to me.  But how should I do it?

1. Create a text file that holds all that information and keep it on a thumb drive I carry with me at all times.
2. Same as above, but keep it hidden safe at home somewhere.  Safer than #1, but not at all useful if I need to log in to something away from home, which happens ALL the time.
3. Save that file in Google Docs (or Dropbox or something similar) and password protect it.  Is that really secure?
4. Use one of those password manager applications, like the one that creates crazy (but secure) passwords for each of your accounts, then saves them for you in a password-protected file/app/website/thing you can access anywhere.  Assuming the password you use to get into that application is one you can remember, it seems like a huge pain in the ass to have to access that application just to log in to every place we need to log in nowadays.

#4 there seems to place more of an emphasis on making sure all those individual passwords I already can’t remember are actually secure, which is nice, but not really what I was after when I started thinking about my problem.  What other options do I have?  Are any of those good ideas?

Roxy is gazing at me sleepily (and adorably) from a square of sunlight on the floor in the other room.  That sentence reminds me of an exercise we had to do in Language Arts class in middle school.  I think we had to write a poem describing…something…using a ton of prepositions.  My friend Nicola’s was the best.  It went something like this:

To the house
In the front door
Up the stairs
Down the hallway
Through the door
On the toilet
…relief!

Something like that.  We thought it was awesome that she wrote a poem about peeing and got an A.  Mine might have been (hypothetical) directions to my (imaginary, totally made up on the spot) secret place.  Kind of an over the river and through the woods kind of thing.  (I was not the most original child.)

I bought the Garmin Forerunner 210 over the weekend (from my friendly local running store) and finally used it this morning.

It’s awesome.  I got the heart rate monitor, too, so I strapped myself in (watch strap, heart rate monitor strap – any more straps and I wouldn’t need clothes), synced everything up (found my heart, found my satellite), and took off.  I had a great run, but the coolest part about my new watch is that when I uploaded the details to the website (Garmin Connect), I got a whole bunch of neat graphs.

The top one shows how my pace varied over time, and I can tell that the downward spike is at the point where I had to wait a few seconds to cross a street.  The watch calculates all the easy stuff (average heart rate, average pace, stuff like that), but it’s also tracking elevation and calculating calories burned, and the website displays the details per lap (I set it so one lap equals one mile), and it’s just so COOL.

Unfortunately, I don’t make the rules.  We’ve had some major drama at the gym over the last week, and the end result is that I have lost my yoga instructor.  And my Wednesday night yoga class.  Sucks.  Stupid drama.

After a somewhat stressful day, I had a long drive home (in a good way – it was calming, not frustrating), and I was already to relax for the evening until I moved to get out of the car.  That’s when I realized I must have stepped in gum in the garage downtown, because my left shoe was practically glued to the rubber floor mat.  Gross gross gross ew EW.

I slipped my shoe off and left it on the front porch, went inside, and googled how to get rid of gum.  No time to waste!  It has been a LONG time since I had to figure that out.  WD-40 worked like a charm on my floor mat (Let it sit for a minute or two, then use a paper towel to wipe it away.  Repeat as needed.  I only had to do it twice.), but I’m still waiting to see how my shoe remedy will work.  I wrapped it in a plastic bag, pressing the plastic into the gum, and put it in the freezer.  Supposedly, the gum will come off with the plastic bag.  We’ll see.

To add insult to injury, while I was outside cleaning my floor mat, I got three (THREE!) mosquito bites.  Because mosquitoes are the devil.

Update: The plastic bag thing didn’t work at all.  Stupid gum.

The only thing I can say for sure about the person who owns this car is that she (possibly he, but I’m going with she because someone has to make a decision here, and I really hate using they) loves to knit.  Or crochet.  Or whatever it is you do with yarn.  Or maybe she’s just really into wool.  And/or sheep.  Maybe it’s goat wool.  Does yarn have to be made out of wool?  I assume not – I’m sure there’s such a thing as synthetic yarn.  What I’m really interested in knowing, though, is if she’s a pirate or a zombie.

She might wander around the area squinting her eyes and asking strangers, “Ahoy matey, do you know where I can find the new yarrrrrn store?  Me parrot’s in dire need of a new sweater vest.”  Or else she shuffles down the block after the poor scared little lamb, with a blank stare and her jaw hanging open, mumbling “Yarrrrrnnnn…”  Poor scared little lamb.  I’ll protect you.

Next time I see, I’m going to ask.  I’m going to hop right out of my car, knock on her window, hope the light is still red, and ask her which end of the zombie/pirate spectrum she prefers.  Of course, she doesn’t have to choose.  Maybe she’s into zombie pirates. Or pirate zombies.  (How do you tell the difference?)  Or ninjas.  Maybe that’s the sound a pirate makes when he’s killed by a ninja.  Or maybe she just likes yarn, and when she says yarn, she says it the way Homer does when he thinks about donuts.

I’m out of ideas, so let’s hope I see her again soon.

Courtesy of The Daily What:

I had my first facial ever today.  And a massage.  It was a very nice afternoon.  John got me a Massage Envy gift certificate for those services for my birthday (WAY back in February).  I don’t know why it took me so long to use it.  It was wonderful.  I am seriously considering making this a regular thing. (I like being pampered.)

I had a really annoying song stuck in my head earlier today, and a friend of mine at work asked me which one.  It was “I Love You Like a Love Song” by I don’t know who, and I told him that the part where she goes “beep beep beep beep beep beep” wouldn’t get out of my brain.  I got corrected immediately.  He said it’s by Selena Gomez, and she’s actually saying “repeat repeat repeat” there.  We had a minor battle over who was more embarrassed: me for not knowing the words or him for knowing them AND being able to name the teenybopper who sings them.  I let him win that one (he’s around my age).

Roxy just came over to say hello and would I please give her the crumbs from my sandwich.  At least she said please.  She also told me that I have no unifying theme today, so I should quit now.  Smart dog.

I did the dumbest thing ever today.  I routinely forget my leftovers in the downtown office fridge, but this time really hurts.  I took a coworker out to lunch (annual appraisal) at Chef Geoff’s today.  It’s a little nicer than a typical lunch out, but SO worth it.  They do interesting and delicious things.  I had the tarragon cured salmon sandwich – salmon, egg salad, capers, boursin cheese, some arugula.  It was incredible.  And it was huge.  I didn’t even finish half of it, but I most certainly had the rest boxed up to take with me.  Got it back to the office, got it in the fridge, got my coworker to help me remember to bring it home.  I saw her as I was getting ready to leave a few hours later, and I remembered.  I had a plan: go to the bathroom, pick up my sandwich, go home.  Instead, I went to the bathroom and then I went home.  I had to walk right by the kitchen door, so it shouldn’t have been a problem.  I should have said it out loud.  I remembered as I was crossing the Potomac into Virginia.  TOO LATE!  I was sad.  Still am.  I’m not going back downtown until next week (WAY too late), so I called my coworker and asked her to find it a good home.

Sad panda is sad.

We went to Disney’s Animal Kingdom the morning of our last day and went on the Kilimanjaro Safaris Expedition.  It was really cool, but they kept talking about the animals and their habitats as if they were actually in Africa, and I wanted to know more about how they worked right there in Florida.  It was a little distracting.  Of course, that was not the point of the safari.

For Tokenblogger.

When my toast came out of the toaster this morning, it was clear that we’d been blessed by a visit from Mickey Mouse.  Made my morning.

Keeping the magic alive.

John (with Emily’s help) bought this for me on our last day.