Live action Beauty and the Beast: meh. I don’t see the point of a shot-for-shot remake at any time, and the singing is better in the cartoon. I mean, it’s fine, but if you want to watch Beauty and the Beast, just watch the 1991 cartoon.
Today is our anniversary, but what I want to talk about is e-book prices on Amazon and what I deserve just for being me. I mean, obviously, I deserve all good things, right? That should go without saying, but my sense of entitlement extends to sales on Amazon. I’m inordinately annoyed when I sort my book list by price and find that none of the books on it have gone on sale in the last 12 hours. It’s like Amazon doesn’t WANT me to buy books. Jeez! This is the same sense of entitlement that led to me bitching when Amazon took away my ability to sort my list by price, except worse because how ridiculous is it for me to expect MY books to be on sale? Plenty of other books go on sale every day – it’s not Amazon’s fault I don’t want to read those.
So yeah. That’s today.
Things I should do now that I’m home:
Things I’m going to do because it took us 6 and a half hours to get home instead of 5 because I-95 SUCKS:
Okay, I might clean up the mess by the back door. There’s a towel RIGHT THERE. I can manage that, as long as I’m waiting for food.
I let Graham touch my laptop for a bit this evening, and he found every neat shortcut there is. No kidding, this 15-month-old taught me the shortcut to turn on airplane mode, the shortcut for zooming in and out, and how to make the desktop show me all my open windows using a pinching motion on the screen.
He’s a natural.
A correction is needed. I have slandered the good name of the family. (Maybe it’s libel, but slander sounds better. Hush.) Yesterday, I said “hardly anyone else enjoys Merry Axemas or the Brian Setzer Christmas albums as much as we do”. I was wrong, and while I have already apologized profusely in person, I feel the need to make a public statement to remove any doubt that this family thoroughly enjoys the Brian Setzer Christmas albums.
I am sorry. I was wrong. And Brian Setzer rocks, although that was never in question.
If you want to hear the concert and you have SiriusXM, it’ll be on the Holly channel (channel 70) Christmas Eve at 3pm ET and at midnight ET (going into Christmas Day). It’ll also be on the Outlaw Country channel (channel 60) tonight at 10pm ET, on Christmas Eve at noon ET, and on Christmas Day at 10am ET and 6pm ET. It’s 90 minutes long, and it’s wonderful.
John and I have made the long (sometimes longer) drive to his family for Christmas for many many many years. We take the opportunity to listen to our favorite Christmas albums, since hardly anyone else enjoys Merry Axemas or the Brian Setzer Christmas albums as much as we do. Things usually work out pretty well elsewhere on the radio, too. Our favorite songs come on, one year we happened to catch a broadcast of The Christmas Carol, and other stuff like that.
This year wins. We had a five-hour drive in front of us, SiriusXM tuned to a news station, and we were not five minutes out of the house when we heard an ad for The Brian Setzer Orchestra Christmas concert, recorded live earlier this week, playing on some other channel at 8pm eastern. It was just after 5pm. Having seen his Christmas concert twice now, we weren’t going to miss that. I set an alarm.
Guys, it was SO GOOD. The sound was perfect – it felt like we were there, and the show was fantastic. We had such a good time listening to it. It made our drive. We showed up with big stupid grins on our faces instead of walking in the house all beat down from hours in the car. It’s almost four hours later (this family stays up late), and I still feel the effects. We’re going to track down that recording somehow. I need it.
Mom and Dad got us the sunrise alarm clock thing that wakes you up by simulating the sunrise next to your head, a thing I have wanted to try for YEARS.
Trial: Day 1
We tried it the first morning we got home, but that wasn’t really a good test. We set the alarm late enough that the room was getting bright anyway. Didn’t get the full effect.
Trial: Day 2
The NEXT morning, we set the alarm for 6am like usual, and it works! We woke up gently, the room was lighter, and since it was only 5:59, I turned off the alarm before what is described as “gentle beeping” could begin. But then, we were so comfortable and happy that we didn’t get up. Went back to sleep for an hour, woke up too late for the gym, so we shut the light off and slept for another hour. It was a lovely morning, but maybe the gentle beeping is necessary to get us out of bed.
Trial: Day 3
We set the alarm for 6 again and actually got up! The gradual light really is nice, but “gentle beeping” my Aunt Sally*. It’s not the all-out horrible alarm sound they always play on TV, but it’s not gentle, either. The answer is yes, when it’s really that dark and cold outside of bed, the beeping is necessary no matter how nice the simulated sunrise. It’s a shock, but it’s less of one.
Verdict after three days: I like the new alarm clock.
*Apologies to someone’s Aunt Sally.
You know Nielsen? The company that’s been doing TV ratings since the invention of TV? They sent us money. In the mail. I opened the envelope out of curiosity. I would normally have just thrown it away, but we don’t even have cable – why on earth would Nielsen be contacting us? Of course, it turns out they aren’t. It’s addressed to “Providence Area Household”, which is technically us, but I feel like they don’t care about MY opinion. And unexpectedly, two crisp dollar bills were looking at me from inside that envelope. It’s an advance for the survey they’d like us to take. Return the survey and they’ll send us an additional $5 in cash! !! !!! There’s something weird about that. Who mails cash?
Oooh, maybe I should fill out the survey and get the $5 just to have cash. I hate going to the ATM. So much so that I’m not sure I’ve been to one since we moved to Providence. I don’t know where the nearest one is. I don’t have anything against carrying cash (except that it makes my wallet bulky), but getting it is a pain. Solution: put an ATM in my backyard. Then I’ll have cash, and I won’t need Nielsen and their dollar bills.
Hey, guys. I love you lots, and I’d love to catch up, but I’m at 88% on the latest Expanse novel, and I can’t put it down. If I don’t keep reading, all sorts of awful things might happen to my people in there – it’s up to me to make sure they’re safe! It’s a wonder I got through the workday.
It feels weird to blog when half of my readers are in the same house as me. If I had something interesting to say sometime over the last three days, I probably already said it to them. Seems silly to repeat myself.
Seems silly to repeat myself.
Seems silly to repeat myself.
Eh, not so much silly as dumb. Experiment over.
Bird and Bird (see Figure A), who have been with us for three years now, have been shy about revealing their true names.
Figure A
I can’t blame them – they’ve basically been itinerant their whole lives. Why trust the people who can’t be bothered to stay in one place? Now that Bird and Bird (see Figure B) have joined them, though, they’re thawing a bit, and the four of them have let us in on the secret. (Also, they gave permission for me to let YOU in.)
Meet Maria, Steve, Natasha, and Bucky, formerly Bird, Bird, Bird, and Bird.
They’re happy to meet you.
I LOVE the books I just finished. It’s a set of two by Seanan McGuire (who I enjoy more with every book). Premise: fairy tales exist in the real world, anyone can suddenly be turned into one, and there’s a secret government agency trying to prevent these incursions because they cause trouble and kill people. Fairy tales are grim, guys.
HOW GREAT IS THAT?
The first book (Indexing) was written as a serial, which is very occasionally annoying in novel form because some things get explained (lightly, but still) in more than one chapter, but it’s easy to overlook. I don’t think the second one (Indexing: Reflections) was written that way.
I want more. More characters, more fairy tales, more ways fairy tales can mess with the world, more ways fairy tales can be twisted to fit into the modern world. MOAR!
I guess I was paying more attention to the forecast in Kentucky than I was to our forecast because I had no idea it was supposed to snow last night and this morning. We only got about an inch, but it was coming down when we woke up and that was enough to convince us to skip the gym. (It shouldn’t be that easy to convince us to skip the gym.) I had a moment of welcome-back-to-the-east-coast panic (everyone from Texas to Maine got snow last week – it’s not just New England), but then I remembered that this is the year (or maybe next year – we’ll see) that I get real, honest-to-goodness cold weather stuff.
I can’t have the coat I WANT because it sold out in less than 30 minutes the day it came out.
John wants this one.
Columbia made 1,980 of each of these (plus a Han Solo parka we don’t like as much), and even though they were $400 each, they were GONE. The website said they were totally sold out online, but stores had a limited number, so I called three different stores. I only got through to one place (in Minneapolis). The guy said they had one XS Leia and one 2XL Luke left, but “I’m looking at a customer who has them both in her hands right now.” It was 10:20 in the morning. The store opened at 10.
John and I are holding out hope that they’ll make more of them someday. Until then, I’ll just have to be cold in my totally not awesome normal coat.
You know what doesn’t come out of felt? Coffee. Especially sugary coffee. And you know what doesn’t smell appealing? Felt drenched in sugary coffee, even after it has dried. But you know what’s better? New felt that doesn’t smell like anything.
You know what’s a weird word? Felt.
(I dumped coffee on my felt laptop case. I ordered a new one. It came today. I’m happy again.)
You know what else is a weird word? Knap. Also, belvedere.
Beeeeelllllllll-ve-deeeeeeeerrrreeee.
That is the sound of my brain shutting down. ‘Night!
Working from home gives me freedoms I haven’t really appreciated before. No one can see me when I’m on the phone, so I have the freedom to roll my eyes when certain annoying people go on and on unnecessarily about something. I have the freedom to drop my head into my hands. I have the freedom to shout at my computer when certain emails come in or to walk away or to pace during phone calls or even make tea during meetings. I can get actual WORK done during meetings that don’t require my full attention without appearing rude or self-important.
My self-control during the two days I was in the office, after a year and 9 months of freedom, was, if I may say so myself, impressive.
And I am SO GLAD to be home.
I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Unipiper. I mean, we hadn’t until we moved to Oregon, so I don’t know why you would have. In case this is your first introduction, he’s a guy in Portland who plays bagpipes while riding his unicycle. The Unipiper. He has a website.
He also made this video. Cracks me up every time I watch it. Thank you, Will, for sending it to John!
Congratulations are in order! We are the proud owners of a microwave for the first time in nearly two years. Nearly three, if you’d like to be pedantic about it. The last time we had a microwave at our disposal was in the Annapolis apartment. The Oregon house didn’t come with one, and after a few months without it, it became a matter of principle to get by without buying one. But now, a year and nine months later, we have abandoned principle. We have a microwave and the first thing we did with it was reheat tea. Anticlimactic. The second thing we did with it was soften butter because I had a lot of baking to do and I forgot to leave the butter out, and softening butter in a saucepan is really more like melting butter which is not the same thing!
I don’t think we’ve used it for anything else. It’s been a week.
We’re not used to having it.
Back home, thoroughly exhausted, and there’s a fancy party in Newport tonight. We’re going with John’s parents, and I’m afraid I might not have the eyelid strength needed to keep both eyes open past 8pm. Maybe one at a time, but not both together. If anyone there takes pictures, I’ll be the one in the background winking.
I certainly didn’t need it, but coming to the office these last two days has confirmed that we made the right decision when we left to work remotely. I hardly got anything done yesterday. It was nice to see everyone, but I’ve had the same conversation 75 times, and people who did and said annoying things still do and say those annoying things. The pies and cookies were a hit (I made two sweet potato pies and dozens of cookies), so I can go home confident that I have renewed whatever good will I may have needed, but that wasn’t something I was particularly worried about, either.
Anyway, boo office stuff and yay working from home.
Here’s a thing I do not regret: getting rid of cable all those years ago. I’m sitting in a hotel room, having worked late at the office (gag), eaten too much takeout Indian too late in the evening, and I turned on the TV. This hotel has DirectTV, and there are a ton of channels, and is anyone going to be surprised when I say that there is nothing on? I should hope not.
I eventually settled on an episode of Friends, which is half over by now. It’s the one where Rachel gets closure. Except, you know, not. Except, actually, maybe yeah. Anyway.
Why did I turn on the TV?