Inane Chatter

1. While I finish cleaning the house in preparation for Mom and Dad’s visit, I want to listen to music.  Do I want to sing and dance and have a good ol’ time?  Or do I want to listen to classical music and calm my crazy crazy brain?
2. What are we having for dinner tonight?  We have NO food in the house.
3. There wasn’t enough wine left in the bottle for a whole glass, so I poured the rest of it into a small tumbler.  Does that make me a wino?  (At least I’m not drinking it straight out of the bottle.)
4. Why don’t people burst into song and choreographed dancing on a regular basis?

I like how the internet is like magic on TV.  Anyone can find out anything in one quick search.  And don’t get me started on the police and the FBI.  All of their databases are connected, all the time, and the TV character doing the search has the right access to pull information from any legal database in the world.  Wouldn’t it be nice if it really worked that way?

Have a pretty picture.

I want to go to there. But only in daylight. That cave would creep me out at night.

Every time I see a great house on the water somewhere, I think how great it would be to live there.  But then I remember two things about me and water:

1. If it’s still, it will have mosquitoes and I will be eaten alive.
2. If it’s running, I will have to pee ALL the time.

So maybe I shouldn’t go live in a house on the water.

• John caught Riley drinking my coffee this morning.  Later, he (Riley, not John) knocked the trash can down the basement steps and possibly ate some of the coffee grounds that spilled out.  Is my dog a caffeine junkie?  How did this happen?  How did I not notice?  It would certainly explain the high-strung behavior…

• John made a pot roast (roast beef?  Is there a difference?  I don’t really care – delicious either way) for dinner tonight.  The house smells fantastic – like red wine and onions.  Warm red wine and onions.

• I got a 96% on my fourth homework assignment in my data modeling class.  I was debating whether or not to argue with the professor because I think (and John agrees) that she’s wrong about that one answer.  I decided not to.  I got a 96%.  Arguing for a 100% isn’t necessary.  I’m letting it go.

• I’m drinking white wine instead of red even though we’re having pot roast (or roast beef) for dinner tonight.  Ask me if I care.  (Hint: I don’t.)

Today I ran errands (ALL the errands!).  Tomorrow I have to clean.  And see our friends.  And drink champagne.  And eat lots of food.  So much food.  I don’t think there’s any food left at Wegmans.  (I’ll tell you a secret: I bought it all.)

53tey

The previous paragraph is what I typed when I grabbed my laptop to keep it from falling off of the chair.  Secret of the universe?  Key to unlocking time?  Too simple.  Maybe it’s the code to get to next year.  Way to wait until the last minute to reveal it, universe.

A crossword clue I liked the other day: Tango quorum.  Maybe because I like the word quorum.  And quagmire.  And quackery.  Quell.  Quench.  Quibble.  Quest.  But I have never understood why the uppercase cursive Q looks like a big floppy 2.  Whose decision was that?

I finished reading Orson Scott Card’s Hidden Empire yesterday.  There are times when knowing more about an author makes reading their books more enjoyable.  There are times when knowing more about an author makes no difference whatsoever to how you feel about their books.  And there are times you wish you could unlearn things about an author because you were SO much happier reading those books before you knew what you know now.  Orson Scott Card falls into the third category for me.  In high school, when Randy badgered me into reading Ender’s Game (I have no idea why I needed badgering, but thank you for doing it), I didn’t know anything about him (OSC, not Randy).  I LOVED Ender’s Game.  I still really like it, and I like all the sequels.  I’ve read just about every novel OSC has written, and with the exception of the Homecoming series and maybe one or two others, I really liked them.  Later, I found out OSC was Mormon.  Not a big deal – an author’s religion is completely irrelevant to me.  Knowing that, though, made me notice that it comes through in his Alvin Maker series, but those books are still fantasy (alternate history with magic), and I like them.  His religion, his feelings about religion, come up sometimes, in some books, but they don’t get in the way of suspension of belief.  Usually.  Yes, one of Ender’s parents is Mormon and the other is Catholic and that’s why they want more than their allowed number of children and yes, the government in the book is painted as evil for hating religion (and other things).  It’s still part of the story, and when I first read it (the first few times I read it, probably), I didn’t see that plot point as anything other than a plot point.  I can still NOT view it as something planted by the author for a reason because it serves the story.  It helps that the vast majority of his books take place in the past or in the far future.

A few years ago, I found OSC’s website.  He writes a weekly column called “Uncle Orson Reviews Everything”, and for a long time, I enjoyed reading it.  At least, I enjoyed reading it when he was reviewing books and movies and restaurants and random products.  I like his writing style, and I’ve found that I like (and often love) books that he recommends.  Sometimes, he discusses politics and world events.  I can’t read him when he discusses politics and world events.  I see red.  He’s a Democrat who hates Democrats.  He thinks global warming is the left’s religion.  He – no, that’s not my point.  My point is that I know this about him now.  And I can still dismiss it when he’s writing science fiction or fantasy that takes place in the future or the past or in nothing resembling real life.  But Hidden Empire (and Empire, which came out a few years ago) takes place in the immediate future.  I don’t remember having as much a problem with Empire, but with Hidden Empire, I couldn’t go two pages without being hit over the head with his worldview.  Right, people who believe global warming is a problem secretly want a third of the world’s population to die.  Sure, only Christians would volunteer to help the sick and dying.  The action was good.  The preaching was not.  I was disappointed.  End of review.

I started to quote bits of OSC’s latest reviews as examples of what makes me want to tear my hair out, but reading those articles is making me crazy, so I’ll just link to a couple.  You can read them if you want to.  Then breathe deeply.  He gets into politics in this one from 9/15/11 and there’s a section on Herman Cain in this one from 11/3/11.

You know that feeling when you’ve promised someone you’ll do something and then the time comes and you REALLY REALLY REALLY don’t want to do it?  But you still have to?  I hate that feeling.  And I don’t want to do it.  But I will.

I did, and it was fine.

You know what I love?  Three-day weekends.  I LOVE three-day weekends.  Even when they’re full of stuff to do (calculus quiz) and errands to run (too many to count), that extra day gives me SO much time.  I don’t feel rushed.  I love that.  All weekends should be three days long.

You know what else is fun?  Updating your Amazon wish list.  It’s like following all those links and getting lost in Wikipedia, except you’re finding stuff you want to buy.

And you know what ELSE?  A cooking brisket is one of the best smells in the world.  And there’s only about half an hour left before we can eat.  I’m not sure John is going to last that long.

Dear Internet,

I need a nap.  Every day I need a nap.  Every day I have to get up at five, definitely, but every day would be nice.  Would you mind changing the work culture in this country to make that acceptable?  Not all of us can work for Google or Pixar or Rockstar Games (where I hear they encourage, or at least allow, such things).  If you, Internet, are not the right, um, entity to whom this request should be addressed, would you please tell me who I should ask?  Santa, perhaps?  The Tooth Fairy might be interested in labor laws, but I don’t know how much influence she really wields.

Thank you,

Zannah

I have what seems to be a bottomless, self-refilling (Is that a thing?  What was the adjective that described the wallet in The Black Cauldron The Book of Three?  And can I just say that calling a bottomless thing that provides endless amounts of food a “wallet” confused the hell out of me when I was whatever age I was when I read that?  So much so that it stuck with me.  Where was I?) never-ending can of shaving cream.  I’m not even kidding, you guys.  (I can’t type that with a straight face.)  No, really, it’s super-light, has been for weeks, feels totally empty when I shake it, but there’s always enough shaving cream for my legs.  It’s amazing.  I should take it on the road.

John and I have lived in this house for almost six years.  We know the people in three houses around us by name, and of those three, we only know the last names of the people immediately next door.  We say hi on the sidewalk, help them shovel snow, and occasionally chat with the kids.  Six years.  Pathetic and anti-social, that’s us.  In our defense, everyone in this neighborhood has kids (except us, of course), so they all know each other from school and play groups and the bus stop.  Paper-thin, I know.  We haven’t made an effort, and honestly, we haven’t minded all that much.  I’ve met a few more people who live nearby since I joined the gym six months ago, but that hasn’t lead to real relationships.  Until now, possibly.  Maybe.  Friday afternoon, a woman I know from the gym called to invite me to play bunco with her club that night.  They need 12 people, and two of their regulars couldn’t make it.  “Is it a problem that I don’t know what bunco is?”  “Not in the least.  Bring $10.”  Yeah, that doesn’t sound shady at all. Come play a game you’ve barely heard of.  We’ll take your money.  She said it’s easy and mindless, and the club is really just an excuse to for the members to eat, drink, chat, and maybe win a few dollars.  I went.  She wasn’t lying – all you have to do is count, and the rest of pure chance.  I can do that.  And with only $10 at stake, it’s no big deal if I lose.  Which I did not do.  There are twelve rounds (six winners in each round), and I won the most rounds, so I took home $40.  Not a bad way to be introduced to a game.  I’m certain it’ll never happen again.  (This is how it starts.)  I played, I met 10 new people, it was enjoyable enough, and John and I were invited to a block party the next day.  That was a bit more awkward than bunco night, but shortly after we sat down at a picnic table with our food, a couple came over, said “Oh, good – faces we recognize!”, and sat down.  They’re the neighbors across the street and over one house, the ones with the very friendly cat and five kids (mostly grown, all living at home).  Now we know their first names (but not their last name – what is wrong with us?).  Had a good time chatting with them for over an hour.  So, yay.  Neighbors.

There was a spider in my car today.  It was crawling across the roof (upside down, on the inside of the sunroof), and I know this because I was watching it when I should have been watching the road.  Spiders are not allowed in my car!  Maybe I need to put up a sign.  Maybe our new neighbor friends are exterminators.  Except they’re not.  Every single person we met was either a teacher or a government contractor.  Not that those are bad things to be, but they don’t help me much when I’m trying to keep a crazed and bloodthirsty spider at bay while making a left turn.  Inconsiderate of them, to say the least.

Once again, the impetus behind my semi-quasi-half-assed (but still!) massive cleaning effort today is not the desire to live an uncluttered, streak-free, dog hair-free life.  Oh, no, I can live quite happily with clutter piled high and nose tracks on the windows, as evidenced by the state of the house.  I do have some pride though, and I refuse to allow someone – anyone (other than John) – to see the house like this.  Unless they helped put it that way.  And unless they’re in John’s band.  I don’t go to great lengths to clean up when the band comes over to rehearse.  Although maybe I should.  ANYway, I’m cleaning because we’re expecting a visitor this weekend.  Not just a visitor – a refugee fleeing the hurricane.  A refugee with cats!  Because cats shouldn’t have to fend for themselves in the middle of a hurricane.  Instead, they’ll have to fend for themselves in a house with dogs.  Honestly, I’m not sure which they’d prefer.  We’ll manage just fine.  Although based on the weather right now, it seems totally ridiculous to be planning for a hurricane.  It’s sunny, a little muggy, bright blue sky, fluffy white clouds that are not in the least bit intimidating…

Oh, speaking of intimidating, I passed a car yesterday (a dinky, dented, old Honda or something – not impressive (not that there’s anything wrong with Hondas – I’m just painting a picture)) with the license plate DOMN8U.  Really?  In that car?  Napoleon complex much?  It’s so aggressive and hateful.  Maybe I’m reading too much into it.

Update: My house will not be a haven for hurricane refugees after all.  But hey – it’s clean!  So I can enjoy that.  And I’ll see my refugee friend in a couple of weeks.  All is well.

Earthquake in Virginia.  5.8 according to USGS.  I find myself wanting to yell “We’re not in California, you know!” at the earth’s crust.  Does a 5.8 cause much damage?  I have no feel for these things.  I’ll have to google that.  Speaking of feeling things, the earthquake felt just like being on a ship at sea.  Except I was sitting behind a desk staring at the shocked look on my boss’s face, wondering if I should go stand in the doorway.  I didn’t.  My survival instinct may need some help.  Twitter is abuzz.  (You thought I was going to say it was all atwitter, didn’t you?)  Kinda fun to watch.  At least my internet connection survived.  No cell phones, though.

Update: 5.9, not 5.8

Re-Update: Back to 5.8.  I wonder how that works.

Finally, a diagnosis.  Turns out I have wootmania, also known as woot sickness, occasionally called refreshitosis.  It’s terribly contagious.  Once a day is okay, but today is the second day of a Woot-Off and I can’t stop refreshing the damn page.  Help!

If you were a dog, would you want to be an outside dog or an inside dog?  A big dog or a little dog?  A dog with responsibilities or a pet without a care in the world?  I’m watching our two sleep the day away, and I’m just a teensy bit jealous.  Only a teensy bit.  I think they’re sleeping because they’re bored.  I’m not entertaining them.  (I’m working.  Clearly.)  I’m not sure I’d want to be a dog if it meant (as it must) giving up reading.  And talking.  Somebody asked me the other day if all this working from home is isolating.  I don’t feel particularly isolated.  I’m not talking as much as I would if I were in the office, but I don’t think I’m making up for it when John gets home.  (John may disagree.)  I don’t feel starved for human contact.  I talk to the dogs (although not as much as you might think), and I spend plenty of time emailing and calling work people for work stuff.  In fact, I think I spend too much time on that and not enough time on what I wanted to get done in the quiet of home.  Hey, if I turn into a dog, I won’t have to work. Unless I’m a working dog.  But working dogs always seem to enjoy their jobs, so maybe that would be okay.

In a perfect world – and by a perfect world, I mean my perfect world, of course – I would be an inch or two taller (5’6″ is so boring), 25 to 30 pounds lighter, I would live in one of the places showcased by Desire to Inspire, and my wardrobe would be chosen by someone with great taste and plenty of money (’cause they’d be buying it for me – it’d be okay, since this is my perfect world, if that money were my own).  That would be the best part.  Someone else to do my clothes shopping, someone to put my outfits together.  Comfortable, good-looking, classic, good quality.  The clothes, too.    Tom and Lorenzo could live next door so they could send me right back inside when my personal shopper/wardrobe consultant failed and/or my lack of fashion sense reared its ugly head.  And I’d have a personal chef, preferably one who is capable of making deliciously wonderful meals that look like they have too many calories (lots of cheese, cream sauces, chocolate, etc) but really hardly have any.  A magic chef.

I wouldn’t need to be a princess if I had all of that.  I may have just admitted that I still wish I could be a princess.  (I still wear pink and purple, too.  Quite often.  Not usually at the same time.  At least I recognize my need for wardrobe help.)  The Princess Diaries speaks to me, partly because, really, how cool would it be if you woke up one morning and found out you’re a princess?  And partly because DUDE.  Julie Andrews is your grandmother.  We would sing ALL the time.

I can think of plenty of other things that would make my world perfect, both shallow and not, but the real world is beckoning and I kinda have to pay attention to it.  Damn reality.

My oral surgeon has a terrible handshake.  Totally limp, only held on to my fingers (and just barely)…very off-putting.  He’s the one who reached out to shake hands with me when I left after this morning’s follow-up, not the other way around.  If he didn’t want to, why make the effort?  I wouldn’t have noticed.  Anyway, I was thinking about it and I’ve heard things (possibly only on TV, which makes them suspect) that lead me to believe surgeons are very careful about their hands.  If they hurt their hands (broke a bone, sprained a wrist, etc), they wouldn’t be able to surgerize, so that makes some sense.  And if that’s the case, I get why a handshake could be somewhat scary.  There are plenty of brawny, macho, out-to-prove-some-kind-of-irrelevant-and-stupid-point people out there who think a handshake is an opportunity to squeeze your hand so hard your bones scrape together.  But if that’s your fear, if your livelihood depends on NOT letting someone else hurt your hand, even accidentally, why would you shake hands with your patients?  I think it’s socially acceptable not to.  Especially if the alternative is a limp handshake.  Wave or something.  Nod your head and say goodbye.  I hereby give you permission to NOT shake my hand.  It’s creepy.

First, I had no idea a lunar eclipse was going on right at this moment.  (You can’t see it from the US, unfortunately.)  I went to Google, saw the Doodle, and clicked on it to get the links.

Gotta love the Doodle

Apparently, there’s a lunar eclipse happening.  It might be over now.  But one link in particular jumped out at me.

Let’s look at that a little closer.

The moon is going to turn black and explode?!?  When?  Today?  HOLY SHIT!  (I may be exaggerating my reaction.)  I clicked the link and was sent to the Wikipedia article.  It doesn’t mention the moon exploding even once.

Where did that blurb come from?  How did it get there?  Is anyone going to investigate this irresponsible misuse of Google?  The Internet has run amok!

Update: Google is fixed.  Please return to your regular programming.

Update again:  Apparently, it was a Wikipedia prank from earlier today.  Wikipedia fixed it, but it was still in Google’s cache for a while.

John and I met a guy this weekend who quit his job to work on his big idea.  It sounds so cool and so scary and we’re totally jealous.  If only we had a big idea.  Help?  As we all know, I have no ideas.  There are days I can barely put words on paper.  (Or on the screen.  Imagine how long it would take me to post if I wrote drafts in a notebook first.)

This inability to come up with an idea is making me think about the similarity to writer’s block, which seems to be causing writer’s block, and can I just say I don’t want to have writer’s block?  Maybe I’ll write about writer’s block.  Maybe I’ll just keep typing writer’s block.  Writer’s block.

Writer’s block could be a toy.  Like little wooden blocks with letters on them, except instead of just one letter per side, they have whole keyboards on each side, and you can press the letters to make words that would appear where?  On top of the block?  I think I’ve just described a computer in the shape of a cube, and I’ll shut up now ’cause that’s kind of dumb.

Have bananas been ripening weirdly for anyone else?

Yesterday, I went to the mall.  (Cue the screechy violins.)  I had an Ann Taylor LOFT gift card (my mother who loves me sent it for my birthday), and they were having a 30% off everything sale, and I found an outfit.  Went to the counter, asked about my gift card, and found I can’t use it in the store.  It’s an e-gift card, and I can only use it while e-shopping.  Not a big deal – I wrote down exactly what I planned to buy and continued my shopping (Target, Home Depot, other stores in the mall to find shoes for this new outfit I couldn’t buy, etc).  When I got home, I hopped online, found the website (30% and free shipping on the website!), put the skirt in my shopping cart, found the top, and that’s where I got stuck.  Turns out the top isn’t available online.  In stores only.  Really?  REALLY?  SO irritating.  I ordered the skirt anyway.  Today, I went back to the store.  I was in and out of the mall in less than 10 minutes, maybe less than five.

But just because my return trip was relatively painless doesn’t excuse Ann Taylor’s behavior.  Why would any retailer NOT sell everything online?  Yes, I know malls are endangered, and yes, they got me to visit their physical location TWICE in two days, but they also made me a tad less likely to order from them again.  A tad.  A teeny tad.  That was a good sale.  And free shipping.  Who am I kidding?  I’m still irritated, though.

I heard something a little (a lot) ridiculous that made my mall visit more palatable.  On my way out, I went through the shoe department in Nordstrom and listened to the pianist by the escalators.  I heard the opening chords of something familiar, but I couldn’t place it for a minute.  Then he got to the chorus and all of a sudden I recognized it.  Why would anyone bother to arrange a piano-only version of Justin Bieber’s “Baby”?

Why do I still ask these questions?  A quick search on YouTube found lots of piano versions of it.

I need a vacation.  A home vacation.  The kind where you stay home for a week and get things done.  It’s not necessarily relaxing, but it’s good for your peace of mind because all those little home projects that have been driving you crazy while undone can finally get done. But I don’t want to use up precious vacation days.  I don’t see a solution.  Nope, no possible solution.  None at all.  Sorry, can’t be done.  I’ll just have to live with it.  All or nothing.  Now or never.  Looks like the end of the line.  No light at the end of the tunnel.  Carpal tunnel.  Carpe diem.  Seize the carp!  I don’t want a fish pond in my backyard.  I’d be inviting all the mosquitoes to move in, get drunk, and have lots of mosquito babies.  Running water would be better.  I could totally live with a babbling brook.  As long as I couldn’t hear it from my bedroom at night.  You know you have to pee in the middle of the night when your dreams involve frantic searches for toilets.

I need a vacation from my brain.