Month: August 2010

Big thunderstorms

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It was pouring rain for a while here.  Still raining now, just not as hard.  Is the world ending?  We’ve had a lot of extreme weather lately (crazy snowstorms, severe thunderstorms, power outages nearby, flash floods, record-breaking heat), and that pattern has been worse other places.  There’s been major flooding everywhere, it seems.  Maybe The Day After Tomorrow is happening, just a little slower than in the movie.

Or maybe not.  It’s entirely possible that this is fairly typical summer weather that I just happen to be old enough to pay attention to and think is unusual and that the freak snowstorms were just that.  Freakish.  Likely, even.  (That it’s typical, not that it’s freakish – wait.  Not that the snowstorms were likely…Did I just contradict myself?  Ignore the badly worded thought, please.)

Am I really talking about the weather?

Forgive me

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It’s been kind of a hectic evening, and I haven’t had the time or the head space or the whatever to sit down and write, so this is going to be short and not all that great (way to entice the readers, Zannah).  Other than about 45 minutes while I was eating dinner, I’ve been on the phone nonstop since I left work at 6pm tonight.  All good things and all good conversations, but now it’s time for me to have a cookie and some milk and go to bed.

I don’t like Emilio Estevez

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We watched Pretty People With Problems (that’s St Elmo’s Fire for those of you who haven’t seen most of VH1’s I Love the 80s shows) over the last couple of nights, and I found it really hard to like any of the characters.  Emilio Estevez bugged me more than anyone else, but Demi Moore ran a close second.  I’d like to take Andrew McCarthy home, though.  Sad puppy dog eyes.

Maybe it’s just as well I never lived alone

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This is going to be one of those posts.  Those posts.  You know, the ones that don’t really have a point or any cohesive thread and are mostly about me banging away at the keyboard, listing every thought in my head.  For the hell of it.  Maybe because today was a normal and unremarkable day.  What am I supposed to do with that?  Besides enjoy the lack of drama.  Which I did.  And do.

It’s so quiet.  It’s rehearsal night, but the band is practicing somewhere that’s not in my basement.  The only sound I hear is from the refrigerator.  And my typing.  The dogs are outside, the TV is muted – I thought it was off, but then I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and freaked out a little ’cause I thought someone was in the house with me, and then I realized that the someone I saw had a ton of makeup on and kinda looked like a member of Kiss, and hey, wait a minute…  Right.  It’s quiet.

I’m going to take advantage of all this quiet and read.  READ.  I’m reading now.  Stop looking!  I can’t read when you’re looking at me.

There aren’t enough hours in the day

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It’s hard to prioritize sometimes.

A somewhat blurry picture of the stage at Wolf Trap, right before we got in trouble for taking pictures.

Last night, John wanted a pretzel.  They don’t allow food or drinks in the pavilion (only on the lawn, which is where we wanted to be, but I waited too long to buy tickets, and we were forced to sit in actual SEATS with backs and arms and everything), so he didn’t have time to finish his giant pretzel.  That’s where my purse came into play.  It’s my summer purse, and I’ve hardly used it, so it was basically empty.  Unusual for me.  Wallet, phone, keys – that’s it.  Plenty of room for a half of a giant salt-covered pretzel.  I’m a criminal.  I run red lights and I smuggle food into theaters.  And when I got up this morning, I had to turn my purse inside out and upside down to get all the salt out.  For the record, he appreciates me.

Bugs Bunny rules!

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I love Bugs Bunny.  Always have, always will.  We went to Wolf Trap tonight to see Bugs Bunny at the Symphony, this concert series that’s been going on for 20 years and has live orchestras playing the classical music to Bugs Bunny (and other Looney Tunes) cartoons.  It was SO much fun.

I’d probably have more to say about it (and might tomorrow), and I’m very very happy we went (Bugs Bunny alone and classical music (particularly live) alone make me very happy – combined I got a little teary at times), but it’s late and I’m fending off the dogs (they’re a little crazy – past their bedtime) and somewhat distracted.

Today was a good day.

Troubleshooting

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Mom has laptop troubles.  Mom eventually has troubles with each laptop she gets, but this one is weird.  She was connected to the internet this morning, and when she came back, she wasn’t. John and I spent a couple of hours over the course of the evening on the phone with Dad, trying everything we could think of. We don’t have Vista running on any of the 5 dozen computers here (I may be exaggerating), so that made it a little harder, and we eventually (it didn’t take that long) resorted to Google. And that reminded me of this www.xkcd.com comic:

This isn’t exactly how it goes when our parents call us for technical help, but it’s close, and it makes me laugh every time.  Anyway, we weren’t able to get her connected again, but we’re pretty certain we could have if we were local.  I say we, but at this point in the process, it would really be John.  Funny flowcharts aside, we like being the go-to tech experts in the family.

I can get lost on Etsy

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I think I share that problem with many many many many other people.  There’s so much cool stuff!  I mean, check out these earrings.  How cool is that?  Geeky, yes, but there’s a whole category called Geekery, and I’m very tempted by those earrings.  They might be a little too long for me – that’s the only reason I’m hesitating.  And these owl magnets…I’ve been looking for magnets for my desk at work, and these are adorable.

Etsy is on my mind more than usual today because two of my favorite bloggers, Bridget and Spokeit, have Etsy shops for their photographs.  I only found out about Bridget’s today, and so we have today’s post.

Bridget’s Etsy shop

Spokeit’s Etsy shop

Go, browse, buy (or at least admire and send them nice notes).  Send Etsy some love.  🙂

Do It A Capella

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We were listening to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and that reminded me of Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s version (with some other a capella group (turns out it was The Mint Juleps) on Spike Lee’s Do It A Capella (a PBS special from 1990), so I had to go download the album.  I used to have the CD, but I haven’t seen it in years.  And the special itself (maybe an hour?) isn’t available on DVD, so YouTube will have to suffice.  I LOVE this album.  Here’s a clip of The Persuasions doing “Looking For An Echo”.

This one is more doo wop than some of the others, but you can watch the whole show on YouTube, track by track, if you’re so inclined.  I was.

Here’s the version of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” that started this trip down memory lane for me:

Ambient Noise Problem

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That should be the name of a band.  Two things (not at all related to band names):

  1. New phone!  New phone!  Send me to the head of the class, I’ve got the newest phone out there!  (For the next day or so.  That could be out of date already…)
  2. I’m expecting a ticket in the mail.

Let’s address these in order, shall we?

  1. (I’m into organizing my thoughts right now.  Kind of.  We’ll see how it goes.)  Anyway, 1. After our phones crapped out on us again this weekend (they don’t even make it through one 20-minute conversation anymore, and when the beeping starts (low battery indicator), the phone dies before we can lunge for a charger.  (We had the same phone.)  Say goodbye to the old cell phone, the phone that was pretty much just a phone (It had a camera, but the camera sucked.  It had an mp3 player, but after a while, we stopped using it.), the phone that made us think we don’t need our cell phones to be more than just phones because we’ve got laptops, right?  And mp3 players.  And other stuff.  And we’re dinosaurs.  So say goodbye to the cute little antiquated flip phone that couldn’t anymore.

    His had a blue faceplate. 'Cause we're cute like that.

    And say hello to tomorrow!  (Okay, maybe it’s an hour ago.  2pm?  Come on, it’s still the new thing, right?)

    Once again, we have the same phone. So we immediately chose different backgrounds so we can tell them apart.

    Hello, Evo 4G! I picked them up late last night, and I’ve hardly had time to play yet. The way this evening is going, I’m not going to have much time again, and it’ll have to wait until after work tomorrow. How can I possibly concentrate on work when I have this cool new toy?

  2. This ticket.  Not the good kind, where you get to see a band or a show, oh no.  The bad kind.  And it’s so totally John’s fault.  I had to go to DC this afternoon for work, and there’s this left turn that has a really quick green arrow.  In the afternoons, it only lets two to three cars through at a time.  John always gives me a hard time about stopping for yellow lights, so I did the mildly aggressive thing and followed the second car into the intersection.  Naturally, the light turned red while I was in the middle of the intersection.  All of a sudden, I was blinded by the flashes of two traffic cameras.  Cameras I hadn’t seen before I made the turn.  Cameras I didn’t see until they flashed and took a picture of me running a red light on a left turn.  Cameras that I would swear weren’t there just last week when I made that turn.  That’s neither here nor there, I know.  But now I’m anxious.  I got caught doing something I know is wrong.  To make matters worse, I have to WAIT before I can take care of the fine or whatever.  How long will I have to wallow in my wrongdoing before I get the ticket in the mail?  When can I be put out of my misery?  What if the picture didn’t get my license plate and they never send it?  Will I have to deal with this anxiety forever?

Did I got a little too far there?  Am I being too melodramatic for you?

The essentials

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I didn’t go to the grocery store this weekend, so I stopped by Giant on the way home today to pick up the essentials: milk, cereal, dog treats, and Entenmann’s mini chocolate chip cookies.  What?  I bought dog treats and people treats.  Very important.

I wouldn’t say I’m bored, exactly…

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I’m between books again.  I picked up Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi, but it’s a retelling of The Last Colony from the teenager’s point of view, and I’m not really in the mood for that.  On the other hand, it’s a quick read (and enjoyable), so I’ll probably finish it now, rather than put it back down.  But that doesn’t solve the real problem.  What’s next?  What am I in the mood for?  And I don’t mean just for my next book.  This has been kind of an aimless afternoon.  We called a few Sprint stores to find out if any of them had the EVO (EVO or Evo?) in stock.  None of them do.  We’re thisclose to ordering them.  I’m not really sure what’s holding us up right now.  I read out on the deck with the dogs for a little bit, but since I’m feeling all wishy-washy about my book, I got distracted easily.  I came in and watched an episode of Dead Like Me (yay Roku!), and then John asked me to play around on the electronic drumset a little, so I did that…  John is installing upgrades on his studio computer, and I’d like to curl up on the couch next to him with a book, and here I am.  Back to the book issue.  I might be able to settle down if I had my next book all planned out.  The books I really want to read, or at least the ones on my mind right now (the next Jim Butcher, the next Sherwood Smith, the next Jasper Fforde), I don’t have.

I’m making this harder than it has to be.  The solution?  A mystery.  And I’m going with a Dorothy Sayers mystery because I haven’t read any of hers yet.