Socializing

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.

It’s a mitzvah

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.

Clearly, the world is ending

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.

Update: 5.9, not 5.8

If you were a dog

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.

Let’s be shallow for a while. Try it. It’s fun.

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.

Either mean it when you shake my hand or don’t shake my hand at all.

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.

Google disconnect

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.

In search of a great idea

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.

Ann Taylor needs to get her act together

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.

This turned into free association. Let me apologize in advance. I’m sorry.

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.

Though the roads are perpendicular

Why so many title pages?  This book has THREE.

First

Second

Third

They’re all in a row, one after the other, and that’s not even counting the page before the FIRST title page that basically works like the back of the dust jacket, with the title and author AGAIN (and a short bio).  I don’t understand.  Why so many?  Does Random House think I’m going to forget what book I just picked up? Every one and a half seconds?

I don’t get it.  But I do think Random House is a cool name for a company.  Maybe I’ll call my bookstore Random Books.  Or Random Reads.  Random Readers.  Random Shop.  Maybe just Random.  Maybe not.

Wanna see the worst haircut I’ve ever gotten?  I hated it.  It was the summer after my freshman year in college.  I was going for a pixie cut, something really short, something I’d never done before (and have never tried since), but that Mom and Mindy do really well.  If they can do it, I can, right?  Maybe I wasn’t clear enough with the stylist.  She gave me something that looked kinda like Julia Roberts as Tinkerbell in Hook.  With a mullet.

With a mullet. And not so many layers, I think. I don't remember. I've blocked it out.

It was awful.  I got home, cried, and went somewhere else the next day to try to get it fixed.  Which wasn’t really possible.  So I hated my hair that whole summer.  I recently came across a picture of me from later that summer, and while I still don’t think it’s a good haircut, I don’t think it was quite as bad as it seemed at the time.

It’s not something I’d do again, though.

And to bribe you into saying nice things about this old picture of me (or at least non-commital not-mean things), here’s Mr. Toad.

Linktastic – just a little

Maybe only linking to two things doesn’t count as linktastic, but they’re totally worth it.

Link #1: Today’s XKCD comic.  I’m a little twitchy now.

Link #2: By way of nn.c (and yesterday’s post, no less – I’m a little late), here’s a video both amazing and adorable.  It’s making me wish for a really good video camera so I can do the same thing with Riley racing at full speed around the yard.

Yeah, yeah, it’s less a link and more an embedded video, but I think you’ll forgive me.

#)(*$%^&*%#!

I would choose to use a mouse over a touchpad any day of the week.  If I’m sitting at a desk or a table or a coffee table or any flat surface.  If my laptop is actually in my lap, a mouse is more of a hindrance.  I mention this because I’m sitting at my little desk between the dining room and the kitchen, and I reached over with my right hand to move the mouse.  The mouse that isn’t there.  But my hand made the mouse shape and tensed to hold it under my palm.  Weird feeling to tense for a mouse and miss.  It’s very much like going upstairs while carrying something that’s blocking your view so you can’t tell when you’ve reached the top and your foot looks for the next step only to find nothing but air so you stumble a little as your foot misses and hits the floor.  It’s like that.

Two spaces or one?

Like he often does, John Scalzi pointed me to an article about the number of spaces between sentences, a subject about which he’s apparently pretty passionate.

I’ve never put much thought into how many spaces I put between sentences. I mean, I always used two, but it never occurred to me to wonder why. I certainly had no idea people felt so strongly about it (although that shouldn’t surprise me – people get worked up about everything else, so why not sentence spacing?), and I don’t really see a difference aesthetically. I’m willing to convert to one space (I imagine it’ll become second nature eventually, but right now it’s slowing me down), if only because it’s logical.

I’ve got cold feet

Not in the last-minute nerves sense.  In the I-should-be-wearing-slippers sense.  The Wales Tales (I called it a saga earlier, but Mom pointed out that saga is Icelandic, not Welsh.  Not that it matters.  But this is better.) will continue tomorrow.  I needed a break.  I also needed to visit all my blog friends and catch up on what I missed.  I was almost two weeks behind!  That’s like 10 years in internet time.  Of course, an hour and a half in one evening is not long enough to completely catch up, but I’ve made a start.  Now I’m going to take my chilly toes to bed.

Chilly toes, chilly toes

Why so cold?  Nobody knows.

If they could stretch, they might touch your nose.

Chilly toes.

What tune am I singing that to?  Guess right and I’ll send you a book.  What book?  It’s a surprise.

I am cranky

I’m not allowed to blow my nose.  Ridiculous?  Yes.  Am I following that rule?  Yes, because the oral surgeon convinced me that if I blow my nose before the hole in my gums has healed, my head might explode.  Or something.  But being forced to sniffle for a week is seriously irritating.  And I keep forgetting.  I’ve found myself on the brink of blowing my nose at least four times, and I’ve actually done it three times.  Followed by “SHIT!  I’m not supposed to do that!”

On top of that, work is getting on my nerves (look at your own damn calendar) ,and it’s COLD outside.

And no, Jell-O, frown is NOT a four-letter word.  Now leave me the hell alone.  (That was directed to Jell-O, whose pudding and gelatin products I’m thoroughly tired of, of course.  Not you.  I didn’t realize that was possible.  Of whose pudding and gelatin products I am thoroughly tired.  And up with which I will not put.  Anymore.  Likewise.  Never mind the furthermore, the plea is self defense.)

Snow on your cushions

I would like to write something that doesn’t involve complaining.  Or whining.  I don’t remember how.  That sounds like whining.  Don’t read that.

Today was my first day back on my feet, and I think I handled it okay.  I felt like I got punched in the mouth (which is kinda what happened – fact, not complaint), but that didn’t keep me from doing my work.  I could use an early bedtime, though.  The band is rehearsing, but tonight they’re more of a jazz trio than a rock band, so it’s more soothing than usual.  Soothing-er.  I should trademark that.  Soothingers – the blankets/pacifiers/musical mobiles that put your baby to sleep.

Speaking of babies, I CANNOT leave this hole in my head alone.  I know I’m not supposed to poke and prod, but my tongue keeps finding its way over there and the next thing I know, I’m trying to count the stitches.  But I can’t count with my tongue, so I have no idea.  More than one, less than 10.  I read somewhere (long time ago) that human beings can’t take in more than four things (it might have been three) at a glance.  Once there are more than four (or three) of something in a pile, you classify it as many and you have to actually count to see how many there are.  I’m pretty sure I read that and I’m not making it up, but I’m totally guessing at the details.  And it may not be true (or it may have been discredited).

I just did a quick search and didn’t come up with anything conclusive.  Couple of forum discussions, but nothing helpful.

The big bad wolf is trying to blow down my house.  Made of siding.  I’m in trouble.

What’s bouncing around my brain today?

Made up facts I just made up:

  • Human beings think 30,000 thoughts every hour.
  • Cats think 60,000 thoughts every hour.
  • Dogs think 75 thoughts an hour.
  • Statistics are accurate 37% of the time.
  • I could eat my weight in pepperoni and pineapple pizza.  And chicken tikka masala.

I wonder if Riley or Roxy would try to defend me if I were attacked.

Why does it have to be so cold?  And windy?  One of those I can handle, but both?  Not fair.

I am in need of bookshelves.  And books.  Bookshelves first.

I should re-read the Harry Potter books before the last movie.  And watch all of the movies.

Oh my god, my brain is boring.  Why do you people keep coming back?  Don’t misunderstand me – I’m thrilled that you do.  And a little puzzled by the spike in visits I had over the weekend, all related to searches for Road Runner.  Who knew that guy was so popular?

You know who needs more work?  John Hannah.

What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?