Inane Chatter

I FINALLY finished The Player of Games, the second Culture novel.  I’m not sure how much the order matters, actually, since the first two have very little to do with each other, but I’m going to keep reading them in the order they were published.  This one was WAY better, way more interesting throughout, then the first one (so if you’re considering continuing, Erik, this one was worth it).

John and I have finally decided to put our Kindle to a real test.  (He has downloaded a couple of free books, but I don’t know if he finished any of them.  I haven’t played with it at all.)  We keep hearing good things (or good enough things) about Stephen King’s latest book, and since we don’t have any overwhelming desire to own a hard copy of it, we’re going to buy the e-book.  And then possibly fight over who gets to read it first.  I might lose that fight, though.  I just started reading Faithful Place (Tana French – SO good), and I really like it, so I might not be available to start a new book for a little bit.  Life is hard.

Also hard – fighting off this cold or allergies or whatever the hell it is.  It’s annoying.  And I’ve discovered that, aside from the miseries of actually being allergic to, like, everything that has pollen or dust or mold, it’s super annoying when I can’t tell if I have an actual cold (in which case I’d stay inside and be miserable by myself so I don’t contaminate others) or if I’m just reacting to the ridiculous weather.  I mean, really, 60 degrees in January?  That’s crazy.  So if it’s just allergies (and I suspect it is since, aside from congestion and stuffiness and other uncomfortable things in my head, I feel fine – if only I could live without my head for a few days), I can tough it out and continue doing normal social things.  So I’m off to the gym.  If it turns out this is an actual cold, the gym will kill me and I’ll collapse into bed.  Good plan.

Is there any way I can talk about how I don’t have anything to say and make it interesting?  I don’t think so.  So…

Car trouble.  Not the big kind.  The annoying kind.  I drove my car last Friday.  Then I left it in the driveway over the weekend, and the temperature dropped Monday night.  Tuesday morning, I went out to start the car.  Nothing.  Not even engine sputters or clicking.  Completely dead battery.  John jumped the car, we checked for the culprit and found nothing (no lights were on, no doors were ajar, the radio was off) and I drove to work (about 20 minutes).  That afternoon, around 2:15, I tried to start the car again.  (I needed to get home so I could give Roxy her medicine around 2:30.  More on that later.)  Nothing.  Completely dead battery.  I got the woman who was parked next to me to help me jump the car again.  I crawled all over the damn thing once it was running, looking for any doors not shut all the way or lights on that shouldn’t be – still nothing.  I drove home, taking the long way.  John did a ton of googling.  Turns out this car often has battery drain problems.  Something is draining power even when everything is off.  The problem is that everyone’s solution is different.  And we don’t have one yet.  For now, we have a workaround (it helped that I was going to Baltimore today and didn’t need a car).  Last night, after I got home, John unplugged this power connector thing that’s inside the dash on the far left (facing the driver’s side door).  This morning, he plugged it back in and the car started right up.  He drove it to work today, unplugged it again, and was able to start the car to get home.  So something in the group of…things that the power connector controls is what’s draining the battery.  The next step is to figure out which thing it is so we can fix it.  Or replace it.  Or…something.  Now that I know I can start the car, it’s not an emergency.  It’s just super annoying.  And it turns out that this is why my power locks don’t work half the time.  There’s not enough power left in the car to trip the locks, and I have to actual open the door with the KEY.  How barbaric.

I have no segue for this next thing.  I was going to go with “You know what else is barbaric?”, but it doesn’t make any sense.  So I’m skipping the segue.  Sue me.  Also, I keep trying to spell segue “seque”.  I’m not sure that’s a word in any language.  What do I know?  Maybe it is.  Maybe it’s what a sequin becomes when it grows up.

My point is that I want to talk about Roxy now, but I can’t get there from power locks that don’t work.

I don’t even have a whole lot to say about Roxy, except that she’s doing okay.  She had a seizure this morning, and she’s still having them every week to week and a half, but she’s recovered pretty quickly from her last few.  The biggest headache has been the change in medication.  We added a new one (the third) that we had to give her three times a day, 8 hours apart.  That is HARD.  No matter how we schedule it, we either end up having to give her a pill in the middle of the night or be home in the middle of the afternoon (2-ish – like yesterday), which is difficult when we have to be at work.  And it’s so new (and so different from her regular medication schedule – twice a day, 12 hours apart) that even I’m working from home, I can’t remember to give her the pill on time, so we either end up giving it to her really late and skipping the next one or we skip the one I forgot and give her the late one.  Thankfully, the drug company just started making an extended release version.  We picked it up yesterday and started this morning.  Twice a day, 12 hours apart.  That we can do.

And here’s a video of my adorable puppy.

Roxy doesn’t want to play my games from Susannah Brewer on Vimeo.

I registered for three classes today (two at a time – I certainly can’t handle three at a time).  I hope I won’t regret this.  Starting next Monday, I’m taking Statistics II (lasts the full semester) and Data Modeling and Design (just an 8-week course).  Once that 8-week course is over, I’ll start an 8-week SQL course.  I’m assuming (based on how Stat I went) that these classes won’t be as difficult as the calculus classes, so maybe juggling them and work won’t be so bad.

Who am I kidding?  Even if the classes are easy, the juggling will be hard.  I am an idiot.

Happy New Year!  It’s a brand new year, not too cold (I’m convinced we’re going to be paying for this in February), sunny and shiny and fresh, and I have the cliché-est of all resolution clichés: I want to lose weight.  Eat right.  Be healthy.  Find the exercise routine I lost a couple of months ago.  I’m reluctant to even call it a resolution.  It’s a thing that is always true and that I’m always making some effort to do.  How much of an effort is what varies.  Let’s just say I’ll start paying attention again.  Making better choices.  I also think I want to be a database administrator.  Maybe.  I’m still trying to find out what it would take.

Something almost unheard of happened last night.  Or didn’t happen, actually.  I didn’t knock over any champagne glasses.  !  You’re shocked, I can tell.  No one knocked anything over, as far as I know.  Jess had a close call, but she saved it with her catlike reflexes.  A little champagne dripped here and there while it was being poured, but that doesn’t count.

John and I have done very little today, and it has been wonderful.  The best thing about right now, right this very second, is that there’s no work tomorrow.

The best thing about last night is that there were too many good things to pick one.  I LOVE having our friends at the house, New Year’s Eve or any eve.  Thanks for coming, guys!  Man, we should have taken pictures.

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.)

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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.

You want to know how to make my blood boil?  Close a help desk ticket of mine without resolving it.  I don’t care what company it is, what the service is that you’re supposed to be providing me, or how big or small the issue I reported was.  If you haven’t resolved it or are still waiting to get some information from me, DON’T CLOSE THE TICKET.  Morons.

Have some pretty to end your day.  These are our anniversary flowers.

11 years ago, we made everyone fly to Kentucky in the snow (I think there was snow – I could be wrong) to watch us get married and then get hammered.  (Sounds like we were the only ones who got hammered.  Far from it, my friends.)

Happy anniversary to us!

This is my new favorite version of “Baby It’s Cold Outside”.

For the first time in living memory, we’ve gone to bed before midnight TWO NIGHTS IN A ROW while staying with John’s family.  Tonight, we all have hours and hours in which to dream of sugar plum fairies (or David Tennant – whatever floats your boat).  Molly is a college student who has to be dragged from her bed in the morning now, not the five-year-old who woke me up with hilariously frantic whispers at 6am that first Christmas morning.  Aging.  It’s a wonderful thing.  To a point.

It’s not cold enough.  I should be happy about that (I hate being cold), but it’s hard to feel Christmas-y (or Hanukkah-y – yes, I’ve been lighting candles this year.  Please pick your jaw up off the floor.  That’s not sanitary.) when you barely need a coat to go outside.  I’ll get over it.  Just as soon as we hit the road.  Which can’t be soon enough for me.  What I’m really looking forward to is the time off.  I need a long, long break.  Or maybe…yeah, we don’t talk about that on the internet.

I also didn’t mean to publish that yet.  The Publish button looked a lot like the Save Draft button just then.  Whoops.  (For those of you coming late to the party, first of all, shame on you.  Get it together and be on time.  Secondly, it’s kind of obvious what just happened, so this explanation is unnecessary.)

I regret my choice of post title now.  Not just because it’s dumb, although that should be enough.  No, I regret it because that song is stuck in my head now.  I like it fine, but I’ve been having this problem all day, and I can’t settle on a song I’d be happy to have looping through my brain all day.  I woke up this morning to the theme from The Price is Right (thanks to the episode of How I Met Your Mother we watched last night), but I started to tell John about it and immediately switched to “You Were On My Mind” by We Five.  (John, you were right.  It’s We Five.)  Maybe I can get that one back.  I’ve always liked that song. Wish me luck!

I don’t have a fear of crowds.  I don’t have a fear of speaking or performing in front of people.  Right now, though, I can’t seem to make myself go back to my gym classes.  I haven’t been in about four weeks (I’ve been to the gym plenty, thank you very much, but only to work out on my own), and even though I really like those classes and I really like the people who take them and teach them, I don’t want to see them.  I’m hiding.  My plan for this afternoon was to stop working around four, go get my nails done, and get back to the gym in time for Muscle Blast and then yoga.  Four came along, and I found myself procrastinating.  Why would I do that?  Why would I waste time when I could be at the nail salon?  The later it got, the less likely it became that I’d have time to get my nails done in time to make it to class.  And then I started trying to decide which I would rather do if I only have time for one.  And then I realized that it’s the Wednesday before Christmas and I haven’t wrapped any presents yet.  If I don’t do some (or all) of it tonight, I’ll only have tomorrow evening to get it done, and really, where are  my priorities?  The gym will still be there tomorrow morning (for weights) and tomorrow lunchtime (for cardio) (same for Friday), and if I have time, I can still get my nails done.  And if I don’t have time, who cares?  They can wait.  Or I can – brace yourselves – do them myself.

So the anxiety I was feeling about going to the gym morphed into anxiety about my to do list, and I’ve sent it all away by deciding to wrap presents and watch TV and drink wine until John gets home (from another office Christmas party).  I win!

I started a post today on my work laptop when I didn’t have internet access.  To get it, I’d have to turn on my work laptop, wait the half-hour for it to boot, and then wait another five minutes for Word to open.  Not worth it.  It wasn’t that great anyway.  Something about getting up early and being sleepy.  It wasn’t done, but still.  It can wait.  But I really did get up early and I really am sleepy.

For the Doctor Who fans (who are up to date), here’s a neat timeline (from here via The Daily What).  I’m being careful not to look at the very bottom.  Still not caught up.

The shopping for presents, it is done.  Except for one small thing, but it’s easy to get.  We spent SIX HOURS at the mall yesterday.  It was insane, but everyone seemed to be on their best behavior.  We didn’t witness any tantrums or pepper-spray attacks, although the staff at the restaurant we had dinner in dropped five plates, broke a glass, and spilled some wine right next to our table.  (Those were three separate events, not one big disaster.  All in the space of an hour.  Not their best night, I think.)

All that’s left is the wrapping.

You know how it feels when you find something unexpected?  Something good.  Like last year’s $10 in your winter coat pocket.  (That one in particular hasn’t happened to me, but you know what I mean.)  It doesn’t have to be big.  It just has to be nice.  A couple of weeks ago I was writing test scripts for work, and I needed a fake name to fill in a particular field.  I picked a fairly innocuous name, familiar to me and many of you, but not to most people.  I moved on.  Today, I was helping out on that project again, setting up the test data and tweaking some of the scripts.  I got to that field and asked the guy who took it over from me what name to use (having completely forgotten what I’d chosen weeks ago).  He told me, and I laughed, thrilled with myself for setting it up that way so I could have a private little geeky giggle.  Yay me!  The name?  Harriet Jones.  (No room in the application for a title, sadly.)

It went a long way towards making my 4:15 wake-up call (to get to Baltimore today) bearable.  Not all the way bearable, but closer.

It’s amazing how much better I feel, how much looser, more relaxed, now that my exam is over.  I didn’t know how much it was weighing on me until I was done.  (It went well, for the most part.  I think.  (Does a comma go in that sentence?  I can’t decide.))  I was telling Mom earlier that I think most of the stress comes from trying to balance school and work.  I don’t feel like I have enough time to devote to school because of work, and I don’t want it to take up all my free time because, you know, free time is necessary, but I can’t really relax in my free time because I know I have schoolwork to do.  I know – life is hard, and I’m only taking one class.  Boo hoo.  Now shut up.  I’m saying I personally don’t handle it very well.  But now, now that the test is over, now that all that’s left is work (which slows down during the holidays because everyone takes time off) and present shopping, I can maybe enjoy these here holidays.  Take some deep breaths.  Look at the pretty lights.  My neighbor at the bottom of the street has these icicle lights that actually look they’re dripping.  But she might think it’s weird if I go stand on her sidewalk and stare…

In between memorizing steps for how to solve different types and systems of equations and doing practice problems, I browsed my usual sites.  Just a little.  When I needed a break.  Since I still have some stuff to do, I’m going to bombard you with links.  Good ones, I promise.

From Catalog Living, this caption cracked me up.

From reddit, a letter from the Kentucky Commissioner of Education to a superintendent explaining why, yes, KY schools will continue to teach evolution as part of the biology curriculum.  Go Kentucky!

From a Nathan Fillion tweet, don’t get my hopes up about Firefly, man.  It’s not nice.  But could it come back?  Could it really?

Last, the funniest thing I read all day was from Corey’s blog.  The 2nd Harry Potter movie has been renamed permanently.

It’s a poem, but it might as well be a tongue-twister.  Check out this link and then tell me how many words you can’t pronounce (or aren’t sure of).  Five for me (all words I’ve only seen in print, never said out loud).

Why am I putting off studying for my DE final?  I’m sort of studying now (I’m listening/sometimes watching (because the professor is long-winded and inclined to digress) to a recording of the most recent e-meeting.), and I’m definitely absorbing information, but I’m not in the mood.  Not a good sign when you consider that I have to take this final this week.

I have no words of my own stuck in my head.  Only songs.  Songs from commercials, songs from musicals, Christmas songs – all kinds of songs, but nothing to write about.  Unless you want song lyrics.  I’ve got plenty of those.  Rhythm, too.  Who could ask for anything more?

I’m sorry.  I’ll go now.

(I said often frequently only once.)