SO ready to go

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The biggest problem with being only a few days (less than two now!) out from a vacation is that I’ve totally checked out of everything not vacation-related.  I’m trying to care about work (failing miserably) and trying to concentrate on implicit differentiation (it doesn’t look familiar at all), but all I want to do is make a list of stuff to pack, things to pick up, errands to run, phone calls to make.

In other news, you know the world is ending on Saturday, right?  Check out How Harold Camping actually calculated the May 21 end date in the Opinions section of the Washington Post.  I particularly liked when she subtracted 8! because it threw off the calculation.  And the graphic at the end.

In keeping with the theme, the CDC wants you to be prepared for the zombie apocalypse, and a Washington Post blogger discussed it with The Bloggess!  (Because she’s an expert on zombies, as we all know.)

See my last post.

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Still applies.  I’m trying to juggle work, math, and exercise, but I’m not doing a very good job right now.  Time to read, time to play on the internet, time to write – doesn’t exist.  Once I’m caught up with calculus, I think I can work out a routine.  I need to get there faster.

The rain is rolling in

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We’ve had a stretch of beautiful weather this week.  It had to end sometime, and sometime started today.  Today was all gray and ominous, and it’s supposed to rain for most of the weekend.  Rain is good, but sunshine makes me happier.

The dogs need a walk before I head to the gym tonight, so I’m heading out the door.  We’ve been going on a lot more walks lately.  My theory is that the more I can wear them out on a leash, the less likely they’ll be to get all hyper in the yard and dig holes to get to the rabbits (the EVIL rabbits) mocking them from the other side of the fence.

A rabbit ate my tree

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Bunnies are bad news.  You think they’re all cute and cuddly and not a menace, but really, they’re out to get you.  And your baby trees.  You know that cute little crabapple tree John and I planted a couple of weeks ago?  It had little baby leaves and everything, and now it’s GONE.

I used to think rabbits looked like this:

All cute and innocent and nose-wriggly – but look a little closer….

If there are train tracks between you and this bunny, RUN!

…EVIL!  So clearly evil.  Turns out they’ve looked like this all along.  This explains the disappearance of the sunflowers John tried to plant for me a couple of years ago and my poor munched-on black-eyed susans.  It explains the death of our cute little baby crabapple tree, and it finally explains why Roxy goes airborne and tries to tear my arm out of its socket every time she spots a rabbit on our walks.  She’s always known they were evil and just couldn’t tell me.  Those rabbits aren’t just hungry – they’re out to get us.  Monty Python was on to something.  (Like that’s news.)

Spring fever

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I’d call it senioritis, but I don’t qualify as a senior under any definition of the word.  Spring fever is accurate enough.  I want to be outside.  I want to be active.  I want to be doing almost ANYthing that isn’t work.  It’s just as well my sad little cubicle doesn’t have a direct view of a window.

I finally finished The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest the other day.  I downloaded it from Audible.com and listened to it while in the gym or walking the dogs using the Audible app on my phone.  It took me forEVER to finish it, but I really enjoyed it.  I decided to give up on Heyday.  I was 130 pages in and I didn’t care.  Nothing had happened (except something that totally grossed me out) and I didn’t care about the characters and why should I spend my precious free time reading a book I’m not over the moon about?  I’ll have way less free time coming up soon, so I might as well enjoy what I’ve got.

My vacation should have started yesterday

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I’m SO ready to go.  I need sun (or warm shade within easy reach of sun), muggy warmth, sand, water, a nice breeze…  My family is an added bonus.

I realized the other day, though, that I registered for three online courses this summer through NOVA, and they all start this coming Monday.  Two of them are compressed 8-week courses, so my one week of vacation is probably (definitely) going to have a lot of homework in it.  This would be less of a problem if I remembered any calculus.  And there’s my goal for this week.  Think I can spend my time this week only on calculus and work?  Sure I can…

Mom just assured me that the beach house has internet, so I won’t have to spend my vacation in a Starbucks.

Little baby trees bear a remarkable resemblance to sticks

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A few months ago, I made a donation to the Arbor Day Foundation, and they mailed me trees.  Trees by mail.  Trees by mail that fit in my mailbox.  Seriously tiny trees.  Sticks.  I’m going completely on faith that the twigs I pulled out of what looks like the plastic sleeve your newspaper gets delivered in when it’s raining will grow into trees.  We planted kindling in the ground.

It has leaves! It lives! I think it's a crabapple. And it's only four inches tall.

If you look carefully, you can see a stick inside that cage. That one might grow up to be a golden raintree, whatever that is.

Roxy likes to eat sticks, so I put fences around the 8 trees we planted in the backyard to try to keep her away. It's mostly working.

In other news, Candy completed a triathlon yesterday.  (She’s completely insane.  Awesomely insane.)  She swam 1.2 miles, biked 56 miles, and ran 13.1 miles yesterday, in under six hours (which is better than average because, of course, she’s better than average.  WAY better.).  Does this news inflame every competitive instinct I have?  If she can do it, I can do it?

Not really, no.  She’s wonderful (and batshit crazy, clearly), and I will leave the Ironman (which I’m sure is next on her to-do list) to her.

Happy Derby Day!

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Once again (due to lack of planning this year), I am not hosting my (almost) annual Derby party. Sad panda, I know. We do have plans to watch it (of course), and I’ll probably pick a horse at the last minute, like I usually do. Right now I’m waffling between Pants on Fire (love the name) and Twice the Appeal (because the jockey is Calvin Borel, who’s won three of the last four Kentucky Derbys).  (Should that be Derbies?  Eh, that looks weirder.)

Post time is 6:24 EDT and you can watch it on NBC.  Fastest two minutes in sports!  All you need is a Derby hat.  (Go to Google Images and look for Kentucky Derby hats.  They’re so cool!)

Gotta go!

It's a sunflower! I love it.

I’m so very confused

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What is this sign telling me to do?

Should I wait?  Should I walk?  Break into song?  (Either “Stop! In the Name of Love” or “Walk Like a Man” would be acceptable here.  Maybe “These Boots Are Made for Walkin'”.)  Should I look both ways and dash across the street if no cars are coming?

How are the citizens of New Orleans not in a state of constant bewilderment?  Stop!  I mean, go!  I mean, gah!  Get over here and don’t forget my drink!  Ah.  The sign has been drinking.  I knew the truth would come out.  It is right across the street from the casino.  It’s broke AND drunk.

Seriously, though, is it broken?  Or is it supposed to do that because of the Street Car Signal sign next to it?  Is it telling the street car to stop so pedestrians can cross the street?  Seems likely, but how is the pedestrian supposed to know that?  And what does it look like when pedestrians have to stop but the street car can go?  And isn’t streetcar one word?

My head is spinning.  Like a record, baby, right round, round, round.

That sign reminds me of this sign (had to comb through The Daily What to find it again).

What I don’t want to be when I grow up

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Nine professions I’m not well-suited for:

1. Construction worker
Pros – Working outside, lots of exercise
Cons – It’s hard work!  Also, I get sunburned easily.  And I don’t want skin cancer.  And pollution.  All that machinery puts out a LOT of exhaust, and I’d rather not breathe that in all day long.

2. Police officer
Pros – I’d get to keep people safe and chase down bad guys
Cons – I’d have to chase down bad guys, and I wouldn’t be safe.  I don’t particularly want a job that puts me in harm’s way.

3. Baker
Pros – The smell of freshly baked bread every day.
Cons – Trying not to eat that freshly baked bread EVERY DAY.  I’d gain weight like crazy.

4. Butcher
Pros – I like meat.
Cons – I don’t particularly want to wield the cleaver that dismembers Lucy the Lamb and Carl the Cow.  I like my food better when it doesn’t look like the animal it came from.  Becoming a butcher could turn me into a vegetarian.

5. Candlestick maker
Pros – Power outages would not be a problem.
Cons – From what I understand, it’s hot, sticky, smelly work.  So’s being a butcher, I imagine.  Hot, sticky, and smelly are three of my least favorite sensations, especially when they’re combined.

6. CIA agent
Pros – It’s very cool.  (I’m thinking of the Mission: Impossible type, of course.)  All that weapons training and fighting stuff, defensive driving and jumping out of helicopters – very cool.
Cons – DANGEROUS.  And probably pretty boring most of the time.  Because life is not actually a movie.  I don’t want to have to lie about my job to everyone I know.

7. Doctor
Pros – Money.  Helping people.  Saving lives.  Probably not boring.
Cons – I’m a little squeamish, so anything involving bodily fluids is most likely not for me.  And if someone breaks a leg or an arm and the bone is sticking out – I might faint.  LONG hours.

8. Tooth Fairy
Pros – I’d get to wear a tutu and wings (I can fly!) and hell – I’d be a fairy!  That’s pretty cool.  And I’d have so much money I’d be constantly giving it away.
Cons – I’m not a night person.  Working all night, every night does not sound like a good time to me.  Also, I’m crazy clumsy (constantly bruising my knees and elbows), so sneaking around kids’ rooms and reaching under their pillows without waking them up is probably impossible for me.  I’m not qualified.  And what would I do with all those teeth?

9. Lion Tamer
Pros – It’s the circus!  And oh, the baby lions I’d get to train…so cute.
Cons – Adult lions.  Christian the Lion aside, I doubt adult lions would really want to perform in front of huge crowds.  I don’t want to get eaten by my “trained” lions.

In search of a great idea

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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.

Movies I wasn’t crazy about

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In case you were wondering, The Runaways?  Not a good movie.  It had no point.  And The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was just strange.  But Brad Pitt is NICE to look at (when he’s his own age, of course).

Last thing: the color of Cate Blanchett’s hair in that movie is what I was aiming for (and missed by so so much) when I dyed mine three summers ago.  If I were to ever try again, I’d go for that.  Maybe a tiny bit darker.

Let’s pretend I wasn’t browsing for diamond earrings online today

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The inside of my head is not a particularly interesting place to be right now.  I have no funny stories, no frustrating  little incidents to relate.  Just songs stuck in my head.  Today it’s Pink’s “Raise Your Glass”.  If it must be Pink, I’d rather get stuck with “So What”.  I like that one more.

Aside from that, my brain is shouting something about how bored it is and how much it wants to be anywhere but here (work).  I hear the occasional “Work SUX!”, too.  (My brain doesn’t always like to spell words correctly.  It’s being kind of a brat just now.)  It doesn’t seem to know what exactly it would rather be doing, though.  Mostly, I’m having a hard time concentrating and it’s NOT because I’m having a wonderful daydream about those houses in Vancouver I linked to the other day and how nice it would be if we were crazy wealthy and had all the time in the world to devote to doing all the things we actually enjoy doing.  Really, it’s not because of that daydream.  That just occurred to me.  I wish my day had been spent in that daydream.  Unfortunately, there is nothing coherent happening in my head (beyond this post, and that’s debatable).

Actually, this is helping.  My to-do list is crystallizing.  Can I leave now?  I’ve got stuff to do!

Take a breath

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Every day for the last….large number of days has been nonstop.  No time to think, no time to breathe, from getting up in the morning, through the work day (especially through the work day), and then home to exercise, to make dinner, to run errands…  There’s some time during and after dinner, actually, but I can’t say I’ve felt particularly relaxed.  I’ll try to be more conscious of that time tonight and see how it goes.  We’ve been avoiding turning on the AC for a few days in favor of leaving the windows open all the time, but it’s been pretty warm (in the 80s) and at night, it takes a LONG time to drop to the 60s, where it’s actually comfortable.  Add to that the oh-so-cheerful birds that start singing around 5am, and you get not enough sleep for the last few days.  (The birds don’t wake me up, but John does when he gets up to close the windows.  Waking up to birds singing makes me feel like a Disney princess.  John doesn’t have the same response.)

Anyway, I feel a little frazzled, but it’ll pass.  Until the next thing.  I want to be serene.  Unflappable.  Unperturbable.  (And imperturbable.  Both, please.  🙂  )  Zen.  Might get boring, though.

Frequently? Or a person who has lost his parents?

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Corrupt orphans screwed with my computer last night.  For reals.  They were obviously upset with Michigan State Senator Bruce Caswell, who recently proposed that money set aside for clothes for Michigan’s foster children should only be spent at thrift stores like Salvation Army and Goodwill.  (Story here, courtesy of (and with commentary by) Nancy Nall.)

I’m not kidding about the corrupt orphans, though.  I tried to boot up my computer this morning, and it got stuck.  I called my handy live-in IT guy to fix it.  He helped those poor orphans out.  Very competent, that guy.  I think I’ll keep him around.

You should be so proud of me.  I just got back from a long walk with dogs and started dinner.  Dinner will only take ten minutes,  but I’m hungry NOW and I want to munch.  To graze.  To eat food high in calories and not good for me.  Like those candy-coated chocolate eggs that are my favorite Easter candy ever.  Or chips.  (Not as exciting, but STILL.  Chips.)  I resisted the urge and reached instead for – wait for it (this is where you should be proud of me) – baby carrots.

I’ll wait for the cheers and applause to die down.

Thank you.

Yes, instead of pounding down delightfully tasty treats with no nutritional value, I’m chomping on crunchy orange CUTE little carrots, chock full of vitamins and other healthy things.  They only occasionally remind me of toddler fingers.  Or my own thumbs.  Not at all disturbing.

My doctor wants me to get fat

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There are days when the internet is no fun.  Sure, I can still keep myself occupied (for hours, if necessary), but sometimes I find hilarious and interesting and share-able things, and sometimes I don’t.  It’s probably me, not the internet.  Maybe I’m not in the mood.  I need new fun websites to explore.

My oral surgeon told me I had to lay off the exercise for a week to ten days after my tooth thing.  I did that.  Today is ten days later, and I went back for a follow-up.  Know what he said today when I asked if I could go back to normal exercise?  “Stay off the stairmaster for another two weeks.”  What a strange thing to say.  Was he kidding?  So I asked.  “Are you kidding?”  “No.  You bounce too much on that thing, it’s part of the motion.  The bone around your implant needs to harden, and if you bounce, it could move around.”  Well, crap.  “So no running?”  “Nope.”  “How about light jogging?”  “Wear soft shoes.”  Again, what?  So now I’m paranoid about bouncing.