Tomorrow I will pay for being lazy

I didn't start out intending to be lazy. I had planned to work. I had imagined getting a lot of work done. The week before I had done a lot of work and put things aside to give away to people, and I had imagined two more weeks that would be about the same, though I was coming to the point where I'm running out of things that I really want to get rid of and still having too much stuff.

Okay, so I had imagined having two weeks to myself (later the trip was extended to three weeks), and I usually get more work done when I have the place to myself, and I pictured a lot of the stuff either being more organized or just somehow magically going away.

And then the maintenance guys were supposed to come and fix the wall that first Monday, and I did a lot of work trying to move stuff around so that they would have room to work. And while the stove and the cabinet were moved, I thought that I should scrub the floor, cause floors under appliances and cabinets get really dirty, and unless you feel like doing the work of moving these things on a regular basis to clean you have to take the opportunities when they occur. So I did some work that Sunday evening and a lot of work that Monday morning, and then the guys didn't even show up until Tuesday.

And I did no work that Monday. Having moved everything, including the microwave, I couldn't even cook, so I ended up going out to eat twice. When they did not show by five on Monday I moved things around a bit so that I could get the microwave, which I put on top of the washing machine. I still couldn't cook anything proper, but at least I could reheat things that were already cooked.

Later I would move the microwave and put a fan on the washing machine for the repair guys. The repairs that should have taken about four hours were stretched to four days. I kept moving the fan and the microwave back and forth from the washing machine. On Thursday it was all done, and I have done no work to speak of, other than washing a few dishes and moving the fan and the microwave. I know that I could have found some work to do, but I couldn't cook and I couldn't do laundry, and with the way things were moved around I couldn't do anything about the dining area. I finally just decided to relax and be lazy. I found something to watch on TV and started to enjoy it a bit.

By Thursday I was starting to not feel so good. Friday I was just a little bit sick, so I decided to keep being lazy for a bit. Saturday I had social things to do and decided there was not much point in doing any work Saturday morning that didn't have to be done just right then (like cooking something for the social thing). Being lazy continued.

Sunday, I was recovering from the social thing, cause I stayed out late and didn't get enough sleep. More time being lazy.

Monday, I had no excuse. I just enjoyed being in bed doing nothing.

Tuesday morning I had to watch just a few more DVDs before I got up to run some errands. The errands were near the dollar theater, so I watched a movie.

Wednesday, I bought the wrong thing, and had to go back to the store. While I'm in the area, I might as well watch another movie.

Yesterday I found something else that I needed to take back to the store, but three days in a row of this just seemed a really dumb thing to do. I stayed home. I didn't get a lot of work done, but some. Mainly I just didn't want to drive back to the same place, especially since today I want to watch two more movies that I've been waiting to come to the dollar theater. I can take stuff back to the store then.

So now it is Friday, and I've done very little with the two weeks. My husband has decided to come home for a day, so that he can do laundry and cut the grass, and then I can go back with him on Sunday.

And I haven't done any of my laundry, or packed, or even washed dishes in a bit. And I'm not planning to skip anything that I'd planned to do today (watch movies, go to the store, go to my brother's place, etc...), so that leaves a lot of work for me to do tomorrow.

But it was so nice to stay in bed and watch TV.

More stuff

After already having complained about the cleaning not going well, I'll tell you about the last couple of days, and you'll see one of the reasons why I have so much stuff.

We like going to Goodwills, other thrift stores, estate sales, and garage sales. This is not something that I did at all growing up, unless the garage sale just happened to be on my street. I did not go to Goodwill or anything like that. Mostly, the idea of buying someone else's used stuff totally baffled me. If someone else didn't want it anymore, why would I want it?

On the other hand, for my husband's family, going to Goodwill and estate sales was like a full-time thing. One of my in-laws got really good and finding "the good stuff" and is now an antique dealer. After we were married for about a year, my husband talked me into doing this side business of going to sales and buying stuff to sell at flea markets, on the condition that if I didn't want to do it after a few months we would stop. It wasn't so bad as I had imagined, I did give it a chance, but after a while (at least six months) I decided that I'd had enough of spending most of our weekends at the flea market, most of our other free time at thrift stores, and most of our house being filled up with junk (junk that wasn't even "our junk" that we intended to keep), and that we were making some money but most of the time not that much, and if we really needed the money we should do something more traditional like me going back to work or him asking for more hours. He said that he didn't remember telling me that we would stop whenever I wanted to, and that he wasn't going to stop, and he just made me feel bad if I didn't keep helping him with it. So we continued to do this thing that I didn't want to do anymore for another eight years, and mostly stopped because we had to move into an apartment and didn't have the room for all kinds of junk. At that point he decided that focusing on used books would be a good idea, as you could get a lot of books in a box compared to say, a lot of dishes, and the books probably wouldn't chip and such. So the apartment started to fill up with books (mostly book that weren't even "our books" that we intended to keep), and eventually this lead to him selling books on amazon and a few other odd items on eBay, and he had to rent a storage unit to put all of the stuff in, as it really was a small apartment and we didn't have the room. This mostly ended about four years ago (and not because he really thought it was a good idea to stop or because he was being nice to me, just he got distracted with other things and the business just sort of stopped after that). But there's still the odd thing around the house that he means to sell, and we still go to these thrift shops and such to look for things that we want.

After all this time buying things to try to make me feel better, I've decided that most of it doesn't make me feel better, and that I shouldn't buy so much. But even as I am saying that, even after the disappointing week of trying to get rid of junk and mostly not succeeding, in the last two days we have managed to go to at least three thrift shops while we were out running errands.

I have tried to be more particular about what I buy. I bought a skirt that I am going to make something out of. I bought two large containers that I am going to store leftover cement in. I bought four skeins of yarn. It seems like I bought something else, but I can't remember what. And my husband found for me most of an AeroGarden.

Okay, at some point I really wanted one of these, but I can't see paying a hundred dollars or more for one. So we found part of one in the lamp section, but it didn't have any light bulbs in it. I'm thinking that it's going to cost another twenty dollars or so to get the light bulbs to see if it works. And the bowl or whatever is missing, and at the time that didn't seem important, but now I'm not sure.

So, anyway, if you stop going to thrift stores and such, you don't find part of an AeroGarden for five bucks. And it's fun finding an AeroGarden for five bucks.

A trip to the library to find The Road

If you have been reading a while you know that I used to read a lot of books, but now, not so much. Most of the time, I don't have the attention span required to enjoy reading books, and my eyesight isn't so good either. So I don't read that many books now.

Which isn't to say that I don't go to the library a lot. Most weeks we go at least twice, as there are several libraries to choose from, and we are nearly always near one. He still reads plenty of books, and he gets audio books for long trips. And I get the occasional book to read, and a few books that I don't read so much as flip through and look at the pictures (cookbooks, how-to books, etc...), and once in a great while I look at a magazine.

And I get a lot of DVDs. I check out tons of DVDs. I very rarely go to a video store unless I am really wanting to see a particular movie. The newly discovered Redbox has only been used about five times. But I tend to get a minimum of three DVDs per week at the library.

So while I am often at the library, I don't use the library catalog as much as I used to. Which is a good thing, since I don't like the newer programs as much.

The first program we used was just like the card catalog. You selected author, subject, or title, and then typed in something, and you were taken to what you had typed, or the closest thing to it. If you typed in Asimov, you were taken to lists of books written by people named Asimov, and you would scroll down a bit til you found Isaac, and then you would scroll down more to find the particular title you wanted. If you did not spell Asimov correctly or otherwise made a typing error, you would be taken to the nearest thing that the computer could find, and then maybe you would notice your error and correct it. If you still couldn't find what you were looking for, maybe you would have to get help from a librarian.

So that was the old program, which was very useful to people already used to the old card catalog, if you could type. It was fast. It wasn't very pretty, as it was yellow letters on a black screen. No pictures. But you could see about twenty-five titles per screen before you had to scroll down.

Then the bigger libraries got some new programs, which I found to be a bit of a headache.

These programs showed pictures of the books. But, in return for that added feature, you could only see about three titles at a time instead of twenty-five. And it took time to load all of those pictures. When they first got the new program, they didn't yet have the new computers, and it seemed to take a long time to find anything. They soon got new faster computers and all was well.

Except that if you misspelled or otherwise incorrectly typed Asimov, it didn't take you to the nearest thing. You just get a message that says no entry found. Since it is inconceivable that there are no books in the library by Isaac Asimov, you must have made a mistake. Try again. But when you are not looking for Isaac Asimov, when you are looking for a lesser known author with maybe only one or two books, then maybe you have misspelled something, or maybe the library just doesn't have any of the books you want. There is no way to know.

You have to go and bug the librarian.

Now that we have computers, we can list things under more than author, subject, and title. We can also add things like series. You can look up a list of all the Star Trek titles the library has.

The computer can now search through everything in the library with something called general keyword, which would have just been impossible with the paper card catalog. Like, if someone recommended a book to you, but you didn't write down the name, and you think that it had the word roses in it. Under general keyword, you can type in roses, and then you will get a list of everything the library has that roses in the title, and if you are patient enough, you might find your book.

Okay, so yesterday we went to the main branch of our little library. Our little library has three branches now, though one of the branches is so small that I have only been there once. And I don't use the catalog much anymore, unless I am looking for a particular title, cause I already know where the DVDs are and where the cookbooks are and so forth. I just walk around and see if anything gets my attention.

Recently, we had seen the movie The Road. The Road is a pretty depressing movie, which makes you want to go out and see a nice happy movie, like The Book of Eli. But someone had said that the book was better, and that it had a more uplifting ending, and I should read it. And I like to read books after I have seen the movie, and I like post apocalyptic stuff, so I thought that I would check out The Road, only I forgot who wrote it.

Okay, so I go to the computer and type in The Road. Only the thing seems to be stuck on general keyword search. In alphabetical order it listed six hundred and something entries with the word road. The Road, which probably would have been the first entry in a title search, was on page 35 of the general keyword search.

But I do eventually find it, and I find out the name of the author is Cormac McCarthy, which is what I need to go and look for the book on the shelf. And I see that the library has two copies, and that one is checked out and that one is checked in.

Also, it is on the adult fiction shelf instead of the science fiction shelf, but we won't get into that.

Anyway, I go and look, and I can't find it on the shelf.

Time to bug the librarian.

Maybe the second copy is in paperback or something, and I will have to look somewhere else. Or maybe it is on display. Or maybe it is still in shelving.

So the librarian tells me that their copy is checked out, but I say that I thought there were two copies and that the other one was checked in. She says that the other copy is at a different branch. But then she tells me to wait, that she'll look for one in the large print section.

For some reason, it hadn't occurred to me to look for things in the large print section. I guess that I hadn't even noticed that this particular library had a large print section. The bigger libraries have one, but rarely got anything from there. I left those books for the old people who needed them.

The librarian said that the large print edition was checked in and pointed me in the right direction. I found the book.

I read the book yesterday. I can read the book without taking off my glasses and putting my nose an inch away from the paper. I might have to start reading again on a regular basis.

The Road the book is not much different from the movie. You still don't know for sure what the catastrophe was, though you can still assume that it was a nuclear war or a big meteor. As for the supposed uplifting ending, it is the same except that the woman talks about God in the next to last paragraph.

I have been lazy

I guess that is nothing new. But I can't seem to get much done, and I get even less done when my husband is around, which is pretty much all of the time now.

The people who run the company my husband works for are about to do something that most of us think is pretty stupid. I won't get into it much here, because it deserves its own post, but let's just say that they are going to change things in such a way that either they will have to have to fire half of the sales people or hire a bunch of other people so that everybody can work in pairs instead of how they work now. If they fire half of the salespeople (the half that never make any money anyway) that would be good for my husband. But they rarely fire anyone, they just make things annoying so that people will want to quit. So that probably means that they will hire a bunch of extra people, and as it is they don't have enough work for the employees that they already have.

So this is bad.

I will have jury duty next month, and I have to schedule a few things so that they don't interfere if I get picked to be on a jury. Not that I expect to get picked, cause I never have been picked before, but I think that I should try to be ready just in case. I should set deadlines for myself, so that I have a lot of stuff done by the middle of next month. It would be nice if I didn't have anything major to do in April. I keep talking about all that I need to do, but I never get started with it. Something always comes up.

In the few moments that I did feel like I could get something done, I started painting that scrap lumber I bought recently. I have a few pieces left to do, but I'll probably finish with that today. Other than that I managed to finish the pilot's Christmas gift attempt number three, which looks nothing like the other two, but he made a suggestion for something he would like and that gave me an idea for something else. So hopefully I will show it to him on Saturday and see if it meets with his approval.

And while I was briefly doing useful stuff, I thought that I would go through a couple of boxes of stuff, thinking that I would take three or four things out of the box and want to get rid of the rest of it. And it turned out to be the other way around, with my getting rid of three or four things and then putting the box back where it was.

There is this theory that if you put something in a box and don't use it for a year that you don't need or want it and that you should get rid of it. Except that I can't seem to get that to work for me. For one thing, seasonal stuff goes in boxes that don't get opened except for once a year, and if you are busy during that season the boxes don't get opened that year at all. But that doesn't mean that the stuff in the box is unwanted, just that you didn't feel up to the whole seasonal decorating thing that year. The decorations will still be good for next year. I can't see any reason for getting rid of the decorations, unless maybe a person has suffered a crippling injury and will never be able to put up the decorations in the future, or maybe if the person becomes Mr. Scrooge and doesn't like holidays anymore. So I have just stacks and stacks of those boxes, and I have no intention of getting rid of them.

Same with the craft stuff. Just cause I didn't do ceramics this year is no reason to get rid of the stuff. Soon I'll be old and I'll join the senior center and do ceramics there.

Okay, the senior center is still years away. Just not as many years away as before. Anyway, the craft stuff stays.

It is the other boxes of odd things that bother me. I would think that stuff should be gotten rid of if I haven't used it in a year. Except that it turns out the main reason I didn't use it all year is that I forgot where I put it. Now that I've found it, getting rid of it doesn't seem like such a good idea.

Like I found one of those cookie sheets that I misplaced. Not that it was in this box, but still, I found a cookie sheet. Maybe I will get back to the whole cookie making thing soon.

Anyway, so I went through this box of stuff, thinking that I was going to get rid of most of a box of stuff, and I just ended up with a slightly lighter box of stuff. And then I also went through a box of paperback books, thinking that I would want to get rid of most of them since I don't read much anymore, but of course the box contained those few books that I would actually want to re-read if my eyes felt better. In fact, I've pulled out a few to re-read anyway. So I still have most of a box of books, though I did find that I had two copies of a certain book, and I have decided that I probably won't re-read the Joy Adamson stuff, and I don't think I will be re-reading this Blake 7 book. Watching Blake 7 is one thing, but taking the time to read it is something else entirely. And how many years has it been since I've given any thought to Blake 7 anyway?

Saturday, I will try to find good homes for these six paperbacks, otherwise they can go in another box that will eventually end up going to Half-Price Books. The rest of the books went back in the box.

But it isn't really the stuff in boxes that bothers me, it is all this other stuff. I have boxes of stuff, and I have books and art on the shelves, and then there is all this other stuff. If it doesn't go on the shelves and it isn't a book and it doesn't go in a seasonal box and it doesn't go in a craft box, where is it supposed to go?

The snow is melting.

I think the official snowfall for the area was 12.5 inches, with the previous record for the area being 12.1 inches in 1964. I don't think that there was actually that much snow in my yard, but there was a lot.

The snow in my yard is already starting to melt, while most of my neighbors still have a solid blanket of white outside. We think that is has something to do with our having green plants (weeds), while most everyone else has dormant grass. We have seen a few other places with green grass next to otherwise solid white areas. And there is a snowman at the corner, and another one on the next street over. The snowmen are a bit odd looking. Obviously none of us know how to make one.

My husband seems quite obsessed with the fallen tree branch in our front yard. Someone helped him mostly pull it out of the street when we first found it. That was not to his liking, and he has twice moved it a bit more by himself. He keeps wanting to go to the office to get someone to cut it up or haul it away. I wanted to stay in, and I think that they were busy doing other things anyway. Yesterday he wanted to go to the office again. Yesterday was Saturday, and there's no one in the office on Saturday. It can wait til Monday. In fact, now that it is out of the street, it can wait indefinitely. What is the big deal about a tree branch? Other people around here have to deal with having no power, or leaking roofs, or broken windows, or damage to their cars. Leave the branch alone. Either the maintenance people will come and deal with it next week, or it can just stay there for a while. It isn't even touching the house. It isn't a problem.

Well, he worked on Tuesday as scheduled, had Wednesday off because as usual there isn't enough work to go around, had Thursday's job cancelled because of the snow, had Friday's job cancelled because of the snow, ended up working at a different place on Friday cause someone else got stuck in the snow, got to come home early on Friday cause even though that particular job wasn't cancelled on Friday most of the customers decided to cancel anyway, and then he didn't go to work on Saturday cause even though the roads were now mostly okay to drive on the job had already been cancelled. This week should be almost back to normal, and he is scheduled to work four days.

I am still wondering if they will postpone that scheduled power outage yet again. I will do a lot of cooking on Monday, just in case it is still on. I have heard that most of the stuff in the freezer will be okay, but I'll have to throw out a lot of stuff from the fridge. Of course, it is about time to clean out the fridge anyway.

I have received a jury summons. Contrary to popular belief, I do not have the answer to getting out of jury duty. Not that I'm going to try this time, I think that it is one of those that pays forty dollars a day, and I might as well get it over with next month. I'm a little concerned with the instructions I received. It says something about no electronic devices. That doesn't mean cell phones, does it? Surely they don't expect us to find our way to the courthouse and such without our cell phones.

Saturday we went out to lunch at Cheddars. After all the giggling we did when we were on the road and heard about people waiting hours to get into the place cause it was new, we actually like the one here, though it does not take hours to get in. Having been mostly stuck in the house for days, we decided just to go where we wanted to go instead of looking for coupons and such. We will call it an early Valentine's Day dinner.

I bought some more scrap lumber. So now I have quite a stack of it, though it looks like it will be a while before I can paint it and otherwise do anything with it.

Sunday we went out again. My whole front yard is now melted except for a couple of snowballs. Other people still have a lot of snow or not. And there are a lot of places that only have snow where someone tried to make a snowman or an igloo or something. Big mounds of snow here and there on an otherwise melted yard or field.

After having the nice lunch on Saturday, Sunday evening we just went to Whataburger for some buy one buy one free deal available only to people who had nothing better to do than go to Whataburger for dinner on Valentine's Day. After that we went to the grocery store, and then mostly couldn't remember what we were going to buy since we were trying not to buy anything that needed to be put in the fridge. Then we got a couple of DVDs from Redbox and went home.

Okay, not very exciting. It was just good to get out for a bit.

I got some odd questions the other day

They were from my brother. Apparently, he doesn't know anything about libraries.

This is odd, because when we were kids, we were in the library all the time. We like to read. Mostly, we still like to read, but I'm not doing that so much anymore because of my eyes.

Even people who don't particularly like to read generally become acquainted with libraries when they go to college. College libraries are different, with their odd number systems and such, but even when they don't use the Dewey decimal system I would think that they are primarily the same. You look up a book by name or author or subject, you get the number of the book (or the general area if it is fiction), and then you go and find the book (or the CD, or the DVD, or whatever). Then you check out the book or whatever, and they tell you to bring it back in two weeks (or three days, or three weeks, or whatever). And if you don't finish with it in that time, you bring in back and have it renewed, or at least you ask for that, but if someone else is waiting on the book you have to turn it in.

Apparently my brother has purchased so many books since college that he hasn't bothered to get his own library card. So fifteen years later, he doesn't know any of this stuff. So he's asking does the book have to be brought back on the due date, or is it already late by then? Can you renew books? How much does it cost to get a library card?

How much does it cost to get a library card?

Well, the thing about the public library is that it is for the public. It is usually free to the public, after you prove that you are part of the public that the library is for. So, to use the Dallas public library, you would show your driver's license and maybe bring some bills and such to prove that you live in Dallas, and then you get a library card for free. And if you don't live in Dallas, you get a library card in Fort Worth or Arlington or Irving or wherever you do live. And then if you want an extra library card where you don't live, like maybe a card for a library near where you work, then you might have to pay for that. But right now if you live in Texas you can probably just get the library card for where you live and then get a TexShare card from them, and then you take that card and you can use other libraries in Texas for free.

I'm trying to think of other libraries that you might have to pay for, but except for school libraries (which are "free" to the students and might charge for non-students), all the libraries I can think of are public libraries.

Maybe Blockbuster counts as a library?

Anyway, I always think that it is odd when a grownup doesn't already have a library card (unless he is new in town), much less totally doesn't have a clue about them. And this was all from someone who actually likes to read. Weird.

Did somebody move to Frisco?

I used to write this thing called Freaky Fridays. It was a blog post on Friday explaining how all the visitors to my blog came to be there. Like some of them had Googled Freaky Sluts, or Giant Penis, or Rudy's BBQ, or Middle of Nowhere Kansas. A lot of people come here wanting to know how to get out of jury duty, or why poor people don't know how to spend money.

That sort of thing used to really interest me, and I wrote a funny post about it about every other week. But I really just don't have the energy anymore. So I think it has been a while since I wrote one of those posts. And sometimes several weeks go by that I don't look at the blog tracker at all.

Last week I had a look at it again, and I noticed that someone from Frisco was reading. Not reading and looking for anything in particular, just someone looking for this blog in particular. So I thought that it must be my old buddy the Absurdist. She hasn't blogged in a very long time, and I'm afraid that I've stopped checking her blog. So went over to have a look, expecting to see a new post, but no. It was the same as the last time I had looked.

Still, the next day this person from Frisco had stopped by several times. So I thought that it must be her, even if she wasn't posting stuff on her own blog anymore. I thought that I would mention her at the beginning of a post. Something like, "Hello reader from Frisco. If you are my old buddy the Absurdist, stop by and say hello. If you are not my friend the Absurdist, but a new reader from Frisco, maybe you could stop by and say hello anyway."

But I didn't write anything like that for a while. I was busy with the new business thing and not blogging everyday anyway.

And then I was looking at the blog tracker thing one day, and I noticed that the reader from Frisco had been there a lot that day. And then next to that, when there was often an empty space instead of a Google search, there was this bit about publishing a post. But the only person allowed to publish a post on my blog is me.

I'm the reader from Frisco?

So I had a closer look at the thing, and there is no mention of a reader from where I actually live, which cannot be, since I usually check my blog several times a day.

So apparently, the blog tracker thinks that I have moved to Frisco.

I have not moved to Frisco. In fact, I do not think that I have ever been to Frisco, and I cannot even remember driving through Frisco to get to someplace else. I am nowhere near Frisco. Okay, I am somewhat near Frisco, but I am much nearer to Arlington and Dallas and Irving and even Fort Worth, while Frisco is way on the other side of Grapevine.

I haven't even been to Grapevine in a long time.

So in case someone was looking at the blog tracker thing and noticed this before I did, let me say that I did not move to Frisco.

Weird.

601th post: Go check out this other blog

Okay, you apparently missed the big 600th post. So go back and read that. Then go and check out David's blog at twentydays.wordpress.com. David would like two thousand readers.

So all four of you (five if you count David), please go over and look at David's blog. It won't take you that long. In fact, it will probably take less time to read his entire blog than it does to read one of my usual posts.

Great. Now David is well on his way to getting two thousand readers.

Okay, now back to business as usual.

I'm an American, not a scientist

Okay, it would have been better if I could have thought of something that sounded more like--I'm a doctor, not a brick-layer. But I'm not a doctor or a brick-layer, so this will have to do.

Anyway, as I did not do all the cool stuff on the 4th, and in fact I forgot to even go in the backyard to see if the fireworks were visible, I wasn't doing much that I don't normally do. I went to my brother's place where we had some hotdogs and hamburgers, and we ended up talking about dumb stuff for a couple of hours, and then we went home.

And then it was the usual stuff that I do around here, watching TV and playing around on the computer, minus stuff like trying to get any work done.

And I read a couple of the news stories that pop up when I go to read my email. And while I was doing that, I was invited to take a few quizzes.

So I thought that I would see how I'd do taking the citizenship test. Only, it wasn't really the citizenship test, cause the real test is longer and doesn't help you out with multiple choice answers, but those are easier to do for the purpose of taking these little quizzes on the computer.

After that I got some questions on recent news stories concerning space and science. Before I took either quiz I expected to do better with the science quiz than the American citizenship stuff. After all, the American citizenship stuff would have been stuff that I might have studied to take tests back in college twenty years ago, and not stuff that I was really that interested in other than to pass those tests. On the other hand, science stuff in the news tends to get my attention.

On the citizenship test I scored 85%. Welcome to America. You know more about the place than most people who live here.

I get the openings of the different documents backwards. And I got the number of amendments wrong. And I didn't know which one was the chief justice of the supreme court.

But I knew all that other stuff. Or, at least, I thought I knew all that other stuff or I made a good guess.

As for the science quiz, I got a flat zero.

It was all really recent stuff that I either hadn't heard about or couldn't remember. I couldn't remember the name of the recent Mars probe. Other questions didn't seem to be about science at all. One question concerned finding a nude picture of the Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa was painted by a scientist, but other than that I don't think that the picture itself has anything to do with science.

Still, it was a bit odd. And I guess that some of my college studies stuck with me more than I thought they had.

Watching TV

It is starting to bother me that I am not getting anything useful done. Working in the garden is out of the question. Some days I just do not feel well enough to do anything, but the days I feel good I still don't do much.

Yesterday, the bashed finger felt much better. It is hardly noticeable now, and tomorrow I expect it to feel completely normal again. Yesterday was hot and we didn't go anywhere or do anything, except for us watching TV and him doing stuff on the computer. It is very annoying to know that a whole day (or several days) has gone by and nothing has gotten done (unless you are on vacation or something and had planned on getting nothing done). I washed out enough dishes to do breakfast and lunch, made breakfast (cold cereal), made lunch (pasta, with what little veggies I was able to get out of the garden), and watered the plants. That was it. The rest of the day I watched TV. My husband had a similar day, he made pizza for dinner and washed off a screen from one of the air conditioners, and the rest of the day was spent on the computer or watching TV.

It's a rare day that we don't even run errands or visit the library and literally just lie around and watch TV, but I think we have had a few and are going to have more. So I am having a bit of a rant about the TV, mostly about the annoying digital switchover.

So it has been a couple of weeks since the digital switchover nonsense, and I am mostlygetting used to it, but I'm still having some problems with it.

Even before the switchover, there were some problems. Like the VCR doesn't rewind properly. If you hit the play and rewind buttons and the same time, that's fine, but it will take a really long time to rewind the whole tape. If you just want to rewind the tape, and you just hit rewind and not play, it tends to the think about it for a moment, and then the power on the VCR goes off. And then when you turn the power back on the VCR ejects the tape.

I noticed that would happen once in a while, but over the the last few months it went from happening once in a while to happening all the damn time.

The VCR is one of those tape and DVD combo things, so if I get rid of it I won't be able to watch DVDs either. It was a Christmas gift from two or three years ago. I don't think I should need another one so soon.

But it still seemed to play and record and all of that just fine. So just the rewind didn't work, and it seems to me that they used to sell something that would rewind tapes. That never quite made sense to me why anyone would need such a thing, unless maybe someone owned a video store. So I never bought one of these gadgets, but I knew that they used to make them. So I thought if I could find one that would solve my problem.

So I didn't find one, but there are just stacks and stacks of old VCRs at Goodwill and such, so we bought one of those for less than ten dollars. We didn't attach it to a TV, we just plugged it in, and now we use that to rewind the tapes.

Right about the time that we figured out to do that, the fast forward feature doesn't work either.

So we can either fast forward and play, which takes a long time, or we can put the tape in the other machine. But while there is often a need to rewind a whole tape, there isn't much need to fast forward a whole tape. And it is hard to tell how much a tape has fast forwarded on a machine that isn't hooked up to the TV, so we usually have to go with the slower play and fast forward feature.

Anyway, I think all new stuff is now deliberately designed to be crap.

Okay, so we'd about dealt with that when the digital switch happened. Which meant that we had to go and get a second box to use the VCR, and then after we got it hooked up we found out that you couldn't program the thing to record on different channels. You just have to always leave the VCR on channel four, and then it will record whatever the box is set for. And there's no programing the box to switch to a different channel.

So that all sucks, but we haven't really needed to do that yet. So it won't really suck until we go on a trip, or until the fall when we get lots of new TV to watch and record. Right now there just isn't enough new TV for it to be a problem yet.

And of course with my husband out of work, we usually don't need to record anything anyway.

But Sunday there was both Impact and Merlin. So we watched Merlin and recorded Impact.

We then noticed something odd that we hadn't noticed before. When we are watching just the TV and using just the box hooked up to the TV instead of the box hooked up to the VCR, channel 21 was on channel 8, and channel 27 was on 11. But channel 11 was not on channel 27, and channel 8 was not on channel 21. Channel 21 and channel 27 both had the "no signal" message.

That wasn't how it was a couple of weeks ago before we got the second box for the VCR. So I don't know what happened. Maybe you have to reset the things after every storm or every time the power goes out or something. Anyway, we don't know what the deal is.

But the box on the VCR seemed to work fine, and we recorded Impact okay, which we were able to watch after we rewound the tape in the other machine.

Most of this week I have been watching Ark II, Space Academy, and Jason of Star Command on DVD. In theory, I am doing this to make sure that the DVDs all work before sending them on to my friend in the great white north. But really, I just haven't seen this stuff in a very long time.

I think that Ark II is the best of them, but I loved everyone in Space Academy. I think by the time they made Jason of Star Command I wouldn't have watched it, except that James Doohan was on some of them.

I didn't like a lot of stuff that they did in TV shows made for kids. I didn't like silly stuff. I didn't like that sometimes characters did stuff just to be funny, when it didn't really make much sense for the character to do that.

Now that I am older, I guess I still don't like that sort of thing that much. But at least I am aware of the tradition of the comic relief character. I have a little more respect for the actors having to do this sort of thing. Or, at least, maybe I have a little more sympathy for them and don't call them names.

During the eighties there was this series called Evening Shade. I did not watch the show, but it seems like it was on. Maybe my parents watched it. Anyway, sometimes it was on, and I wasn't paying much attention to it.

My mom made a point of watching it one day. She said that one of the minor characters looked like someone she went to school with. The boy's name was Charlie. The actor's name was Charles, but he had a different last name. But after a while she was pretty sure that it was the same guy.

I looked on the Internet. The actor was born in Texas, though not in Dallas county. But he did grow up in Texas with a different last name. So this probably was the guy that my mom knew in school.

And this same actor was a character that I did not like in Jason of Star Command. He was supposed to be smart, but he was always doing something dumb or getting his hair caught in something.

So I wonder why my mom told us that she went to school with this guy from Evening Shade, but she didn't tell us that she went to school with the goofball from Jason of Star Command. Does having wild hair and funny eyebrows keep your fellow classmates from recognizing you, even though they recognize an even older version of you later?

My last complaint about the TV is what happened yesterday after a couple of celebrities died. I am sorry that these people died, but this sort of thing happens. People die. But you don't need to hear about it for hours and hours on four networks. These people were not past Presidents of the United States, they were just entertainers. We did not need to see old stuff about them for three hours on prime time television.

I suppose it wouldn't have mattered much, seeing as most of the shows were reruns. But they also managed to show old interviews of Farrah Fawcett in place of the one new show of the evening, Listener. (Okay, Listener isn't really a new show, it's just a Canadian show, but it is new to me, and I wanted to watch it.) So that made me mad. Not as mad as I get when football games prevent Cold Case from being shown on it's regular scheduled time, but very similar to that.

One last thing is that there is going to be something new on FOX tonight called Virtuality. Even when there is something new on TV that I might want to watch, I'm likely to miss it, because I wasn't watching enough TV (other than tapes and DVDs) to see a commercial for it. Anyway, tonight there will be this movie that I haven't seen, and it's probably going to be some really awful thing that was made for the Sci Fi channel, but I'm probably going to watch it anyway.

I guess God just doesn't want me to go to Greek restaurants

A couple of months ago, my husband and someone he works with were talking about something to do with their new business venture. And they had something that they were going to do in May that was in a city on the other side of Dallas. And then they were saying that when they finished they should go and have this nice lunch at this Mediterranean place that the other guy liked. And then I was invited to go with them. There was no reason that I should go to this thing, they just thought that I would like to go to lunch with them afterwards. We could either go to this place that the other guy liked, or if the wait was too long, we could go to this little Greek restaurant near a place that my husband had worked recently.

So I sort of agreed, depending on what day it was. And they told me that it was on a certain Sunday. Great, unless I had to do something with my friends to get ready for the Star Trek movie, I would like to go to lunch with them.

The Saturday before this was supposed to happen, the guy calls back and says that he got the dates mixed up, and the date for all of this was the next Sunday.

The next Sunday was Mother's Day. So of course I could not go with them. Besides the fact that it was Mother's Day and I would be going to eat lunch with my mother, I had all this stuff to do that weekend for the Star Trek movie.

So that was the first time I didn't go to the Greek restaurant.

A few weeks later, my husband and this guy were talking, and again they had something to do, and they discussed a day and such. And again my husband said that I should go with him, that it probably wouldn't that long, and again this should put them on the other side of Dallas near this Greek restaurant that my husband liked. So again I agreed to go.

So on the day that they are supposed to meet, the guy calls and he has to do something in Irving, and could my husband meet him there instead?

So that was the second trip to the Greek restaurant cancelled.

The other guy had to go out of town for about three weeks for his regular job. While he was gone, my husband has been working on their little business plan without him. And he had to deliver a package and pick up a check, and again it was at the place near this little Greek restaurant that my husband liked. My husband has had the week off from his regular job, and he could have delivered this package whenever, except that the people getting the package didn't return his calls. I think maybe they were waiting for the other guy to call them, until they figured out that he was gone for three weeks. So they finally call back and to say that someone would be available to receive the package and write out a check at three on Sunday.

So my husband and I plan a late lunch at this little Greek restaurant, and we leave at about one.

And we get to the restaurant, and they have closed for the day to do a little painting and such.

So that was the third planned trip to the restaurant, and we drove all that way and ended up eating at the Mexican restaurant next door.

I give up.

We don't need no stinking badges

But sometimes, we like them anyway.

I've been eating a lot of Kellogg's cereal this week. After receiving some information from my friend of the great white north, I decided that I had to have this little plastic freebie toy that resembles a Starfleet Command badge. After looking online I found out there was other free Star Trek stuff from Kellogg's.

Okay, so now about a week later, I am the proud owner of four command badges, two engineering badges, eight assorted tokens, a box of Cheez-its, a box of Eggo Waffles, three packages of Keebler Fudge Shoppe Grasshoppers, and nine boxes of sugary kid cereal.

Okay, the Grasshoppers are going to go pretty quickly, but nine boxes of kid cereal is probably more than I have eaten of the stuff in the last three years. But the box says it will keep until March of 2010, so I can probably eat it before then.

And the good news is that if we all really get into a panic about the Swine Flu and stay in our homes, I won't starve to death. Even if the power goes out for a while, I'll be okay, cause I've got all this cereal that doesn't even need to be cooked. And I don't even think that sugary kid cereal needs milk. You can just munch on it straight from the box. So I'm all set.

Now I just have to decide how much more of this stuff do I really need to buy?

I addition to some of the cereal having free badges, others have mail-in offers for T-shirts and flash drives and plates. You have to either send money or collect tokens to get those. I just need to find out if they are interchangeable. I probably don't really need a flash drive or a plate, but I think I'd really like a T-shirt. If all of the tokens count the same, I only need one more. If not, I have one towards a plate and about a third of the way towards a T-shirt and about the same on the flash drive.

Maybe I'll post more about this later.

Okay, enough about cereal.

Next week is the premiere of the new Star Trek movie. And while we have long been told that the opening day is May 8th, some of us will be going to see it on the 7th. And a few of us will either be seeing it on the 6th, or else we will be going to some other Star Trek related event in costume. After going back and forth on whether or not I should bother with making a new costume, I have decided that I should go ahead and do that. So that means I will be rather busy for a bit.

So you might not hear much from me until about a week from Tuesday.

I have costumes to work on, which need to be done before Wednesday night. And then I will be at theater on Thursday and Friday, and if I'm not totally worn out by then I will also be at the theater on Saturday and Sunday. And then of course there will be the normal stuff going on here Monday, so that's a lot of stuff going on until Tuesday.

Okay, so don't get offended if I don't want to chat and I don't post much and I don't much answer your long emails. Not that you can't still send me long emails, just that it will be a while before I'll get around to answering them.

So that's about it for now.

Live long, and be happy.

What kind of chair is this?

So I was looking at the little bit of my garden that seems to be doing okay, except that two of my herbs have died. And that's weird cause one of them lived outside with another plant in a pot all winter, but then I put it into the ground and give it more space, and it dies. The other one didn't look so good when I bought it, so that wasn't much of a surprise when it died.

So I was thinking that I should go and buy another plant to replace the dead one, but I never remember to get it when I'll already out doing stuff. Today I had planned to work on a costume (after I watched Fringe), but then my mom called. Now, this is the most pleasant conversation I have had with my mother in a very long time, but I guess that I still just don't want to talk to her that much. She said that she didn't want me to be mad at her about something, and that we can talk about plans, but I'm just not ready to do that after what she said the last time. So we didn't talk about it, and we spent a couple of hours talking, mostly about nothing.

Okay, I mostly listened to her talk about nothing.

So then it is like five o'clock, and I don't think I'm going to get any work done on that costume, so I might as well go and get that plant. I just needed to get something done, and that was the shortest thing on my list.

So I am at a nearby plant place that is small and independent. They don't have the best selection, and they don't have the best prices, but I will say that they are nice and mark each individual plant instead of just saying that this tray is this plant, and then you end up with a totally different plant because somebody moved them around.

So I am at the plant place, just to get this one herb plant, and I guess it doesn't matter that I can get less expensive plants somewhere else if I'm only going to buy one then it doesn't make that much difference. But I look around some, just in case there is something else that I need, and I find a pepper plant that I do not have. So that's two plants. So that's two plants that together cost me almost four dollars, but that's okay, cause it isn't worth the trouble of driving somewhere else to save a dollar or so.

And then when I am looking around at the other plants, I see this wooden chair, and it is a little wooden chair more the size for a child than for an adult. And there is a hole cut into the seat of the chair, and there's a planter stuck in the chair.

Well, maybe that looks really cute when there's actually a plant growing in it, but my first thought was that it looked a whole lot like a potty chair.

I would not like a wooden potty chair. I might get splinters.

Anyway, so I paid for my two plants, and on the way out I saw a little table that also had a hole and a planter stuck in it. So maybe a couple of chairs with planters around a table with a planter might not look so bad, especially once the plants are actually growing in them. But just one chair off by itself just makes me think....

That just looks like a potty chair.

Monday Morons: Please do not block the shopping carts

A few days back I went to Home Depot and while I was there I bought some of the scrap lumber to do garden stuff with. I had such great luck with that the first day that the next day I went to a different Home Depot to buy some more. It was raining a little bit that day, so I had my head down a little bit to keep my glasses from getting too wet.

So I looked for the thing where you put the shopping carts when you get done with them. I'm not sure what they are called, but I think it is called a shopping cart corral. At Home Depot, the shopping cart corrals are rather large, because in addition to putting regular shopping carts in them you also park larger carts there if you were actually buying lots of building supplies.

Anyway, so I looked for one of these shopping cart corrals just to get a regular shopping cart before I went in the store. And I saw where one was that had shopping a few shopping carts in it, and then I tilted my head down again and walked toward it. And there were only the really large carts on the one side, which I didn't think I needed, but there were regular shopping carts on the other side. So I was going to get one, but then I couldn't because someone had parked their car halfway inside the corral, so that you couldn't get the shopping carts out.

I mean, I realize that they had someone paint the parking lot before they put in the corrals, and that technically the place was stripped as a parking space, but do they really not have enough sense to know not to park in the corral? Can they not handle walking an extra twenty feet or so to park in regular parking space?

What is wrong with people?

Okay, I have a few other things that are not really about morons, I was just wondering about them.

This first thing would fit better in a Freaky Friday, but I haven't done one of those for a while, and I would rather not do one this week either. For the last few days I have been getting hits from China. I see China on the tracker, but I don't see any search words or referrers or anything like that. Just like forty people from China stopped by for no apparent reason. And I haven't written anything particularly interesting these last few days, and I haven't written anything about China, so I totally don't get it.

The other thing was an odd bit of clothing that I noticed about a week ago.

There are these dollar stores around, and they have been around for many years, but in the past few years I haven't gone to those as often as I have the newer stores that are part of large chains like Dollar Tree and Only 99 Cents Store. But I still went to the independent stores once in a while, cause they sometimes have something I want that the other stores don't. Like there is this store near my house that tends to have a lot of stuff like nails and clamps and other tools.

Recently, this particular store decided to drastically change the store. So they moved all of the dollar store stuff to one half of the store, and some of that stuff stayed a dollar and some of it got marked up a little bit. The other half of the store is now thrift store stuff, mostly used clothing. And then there in the middle of the store is some new clothing, mostly cheap bras.

So I am looking at the new clothing, and they have these cheap girdles, and I notice that they are a bit odd looking. And for a moment I thought that maybe they were made for men. I don't know if there are girdles especially made for cross-dressers, but maybe there are, and maybe the items weren't selling well and they ended up in this thrift store. But, no. Closer inspection of the item revealed that the odd looking part of the garment was a pocket.

Okay, I don't think that I have ever seen a girdle with a pocket before.

Are these made for hookers or what?

Maybe I'm just out of the loop. Maybe this is the new thing. Or maybe everybody out there is wearing girdles with pockets, and I'm just the last to know.

So, should I get a girdle with a pocket?

Some thoughts, most of which are not about gardening

After getting about three or four hours sleep and then spending another three or four hours trying to get back to sleep, I finally give up and come in here to finish yesterday's post.


This morning I am craving sweet sticky rice. This is really odd because a.) I have only had sweet sticky rice once, and b.) I don't remember being especially fond of the stuff.


I have had it with my husband a.) not doing what I want, and b.) actually having the nerve to tell me what I do and do not want.


Saturday we went to the drugstore and returned with a twenty dollar bag of assorted pain meds and a tube of muscle rub. Why is it that many of the products especially marketed for body aches are in powdered form? They do not seem to contain significantly different ingredients than the pills marketed for headaches. In any case, I do seem to be mostly well now, though that is temporary, as I will feel bad again soon after the weather will permit serious gardening.


About three weeks ago I was trying to watch what I was eating and watch what I was spending, and I was feeling better, and I may have lost a few pounds. And then that all went out the window. My husband wanted me to go have lunch with some of his co-workers, and we've pretty much been eating out since then. So we have been eating out a lot, often at buffets and places where I eat too much or something that is not good for me, and I haven't been eating my yogurt or much in the way of vegetables. I'm not saying that I'm sick, just that I don't really feel that great either.

The computer just ate a very long email I wrote. I'm wondering if I should rewrite it. I'm wondering if I even can rewrite it.

I really liked blogging for a while, but now sometimes I only do it cause I have to sit here for a few hours in the morning and try to be quiet. I hate trying to be quiet. I would much rather go back to bed and watch reruns of Star Trek. Sometimes when I do that I actually go back to sleep. Not going to go back to sleep by sitting here blogging.

Still wanting that rice dessert.

Yesterday was a nice day, but I hardly got anything done. It will probably rain again on Thursday and Friday.

I hate fire ants. I'm not too fond of other ants either.

I do not like getting old and not being able to sleep all night. By contrast I did not mind so much being a teenager who couldn't fall asleep at a reasonable time, because that just meant I got more reading done.

500th post--Why one should not kill bad guys with your favorite Bat'leth

I should have posted this sooner. I meant to, but I didn't. I apoligize.

Okay, time has gotten away from me and I wasn't paying attention to the count, and here it is time for the 500th post.

Actually, it was time for the 500th post last week, but I forgot, and I wrote something completely silly. I cannot have that be my 500th post, so I will delete it once I finish this, and it will be as though it never really happened, like several episodes of Star Trek Voyager and the season of Dallas before Bobby steps out of the shower.

I realize that some of you have heard this from me before, but due to recent events I've decided to write it all down again, as I cannot remember how much was said before or whom it was said to. And I think that there would be similar reasons why one should not attempt to rob a 7-Eleven with a Bat'leth either.

(And, yes, I do know that the weapon in the recent news story turned out not to be a Bat'leth, but I thought it was still relevant anyway.)

Reasons not to murder whomever needs killing with a Bat'leth (or Ren Faire sword, or Jackal, or other collectible blade, or one-of-a-kind handmade weapon):

First of all, you never want to go after someone with something fancy like a Bat'leth. You want to choose the most mundane weapon that you are comfortable using. Common weapons include scissors, steak knives, letter openers, ice picks, and gardening tools. If it is known that you have some motive for killing the victim, and that the victim was killed with a Bat'leth, and that you have a Bat'leth, then you very quickly become the main suspect. But if the victim was killed with scissors, and just about everyone has scissors, then you may become lost among a number of other suspects.

Ideally, the murder weapon will be something that belongs to the victim, and it will not point to anyone. Or else the weapon will be something that belongs to another suspect and will at least not point to you.

Second, you will want to clean and dispose of the murder weapon. And you don't want to part with your Bat'leth, do you? You probably really like your Bat'leth, or you wouldn't have one in the first place. Most of the time a Bat'leth will cost more than scissors and scissors are easier to replace. In addition to whatever problem caused you to want the victim to die in the first place, don't let this final act cost you something that you value.

Third, a Bat'leth is a bit difficult to carry about in an inconspicuous manner. A Bat'leth will not fit inside of your purse or briefcase or book bag, while scissors and steak knives will. People will see you carrying your Bat'leth and wonder if you're about to kill someone with it. People who see you with your normal book bag, which may contain scissors, will not wonder about much of anything.

So that is about it. I think that my earlier bit was a little longer, but these were the main points. I just happened to have worked all this out one day, long before the guy started robbing convenience stores.

Now that I have written it down again, it seems to me that there might be a few reasons that you would want to kill someone with your Bat'leth.

Everyone who knows you knows that you are a nerd, and that you don't even take your action figures out of their packages, because it ruins their value as collectibles. If you can't stand the thought of ruining a toy, it is even less likely that you would want to risk damaging your Bat'leth by actually fighting someone with it. Actually killing someone with it would be even worse, as that would mean you would have to get blood on it and possibly get blood on the hand grips. Blood stains, and if you killed someone with your Bat'leth you might never get it clean again. So everyone would know that you would never deliberately kill someone with your Bat'leth. People would think that it had to be an accident, or something done in self-defense, or else you didn't really do it at all and someone did this with your weapon to try to frame you.

Or perhaps everyone already knows that you want to kill a certain person, and there is absolutely no way of that person ending up dead without everyone knowing that you are somehow responsible. You decide that your only option is to go ahead and do it yourself, but you're thinking ahead and planning an insanity defense. And of course you would have to be insane to kill someone with your beloved collectible Bat'leth. You can go ahead and skip all attempts at stealth and subterfuge and just kill the guy in front of everyone. Maybe to be on the safe side you should say something about believing the victim was a shape-shifting alien invader. That would explain why you disliked this person in the first place.

So I think that's about it now. If you don't want to get caught, don't use your Bat'leth. If you're sure that you would get caught anyway, use the Bat'leth and say it was an accident or self-defense, or else claim temporary insanity.

I'm as talented as Bob and Doug, right?

On the first day of Christmas my buddies gave to me: a Vir.

On the second day of Christmas my buddies gave to me: two paperbacks and a Vir.

On the third day of Christmas my buddies gave to me: three gold pins, two paperbacks and a Vir.

On the fourth day of Christmas my buddies gave to me: four cool T-shirts, three gold pins, two paperbacks and a Vir
in a tree.

On the fifth day of Christmas my buddies gave to me:
five Hogwarts scarves,
four cool T-shirts, three gold pins, two paperbacks, and a Vir in a tree.

On the sixth day of Christmas my buddies gave to me: six pointy knives,
five Hogwarts scarves,
four cool T-shirts, three gold pins, two paperbacks, and a Vir in a tree.

On the seventh day of Christmas my buddies gave to me: seven expensive tools, six pointy knives,
five Hogwarts scarves,
four cool T-shirts, three gold pins, two paperbacks, and a Vir in a tree.

On the eighth day of Christmas my buddies gave to me: eight Egyptian gods, seven expensive tools, six pointy knives,
five Hogwarts scarves,
four cool T-shirts, three gold pins, two paperbacks, and a Vir in a tree.

On the ninth day of Christmas my buddies gave to me: nine scenes of Clooney naked, eight Egyptian gods, seven expensive tools, six pointy knives,
five Hogwarts scarves,
four cool T-shirts, three gold pins, two paperbacks, and a Vir in a tree.

On the tenth day of Christmas my buddies gave to me: ten free dinners, nine scenes of Clooney naked, eight Egyptian gods, seven expensive tools, six pointy knives,
five Hogwarts scarves,
four cool T-shirts, three gold pins, two paperbacks, and a Vir in a tree.

On the eleventh day of Christmas my buddies gave to me: eleven cards with lights, ten free dinners, nine scenes of Clooney naked, eight Egyptian gods, seven expensive tools, six pointy knives,
five Hogwarts scarves,
four cool T-shirts, three gold pins, two paperbacks, and a Vir in a tree.

On the twelfth day of Christmas my buddies gave to me: twelve flying dragons, eleven cards with lights, ten free dinners, nine scenes of Clooney naked, eight Egyptian gods, seven expensive tools, six pointy knives,
five Hogwarts scarves,
four cool T-shirts, three gold pins, two paperbacks, and a Vir in a tree.

A catch up post

I don't think that I've blogged about what is going on much since Black Friday, except for that short trip that I took to the boring place.

I've now finished ceramics class. Unfortunately, I do not think that I will be taking the next class, unless I win the lottery or find a good job or something before the next class starts at the end of January. Probably just not going to happen. But I need to do other stuff, like clean and sort through the junk and get a job, and while I told myself that I wouldn't let the class become that important this time around, at the end of it I spent way too much time in the lab and started putting off things that were more important or time sensitive. So no ceramics for a bit, maybe for good.

At school there is that leaf vase that I really wasn't supposed to do and two bowls waiting to be glazed. Everything else that I did this semester came home with me a couple of days ago. Except for the two bowls, all the work I did for throwing class fit into this one box. On the one hand I don't think that it's not a bad looking lot for my first try at the wheel, and on the other hand everything is small and I didn't get a lot done. They look okay, but unfortunately my favorite piece was broken. It still looks pretty good, even with some of it broken off. I'm trying to think of something to add to it and make it a mixed media piece. Anyway, I think that I could figure out how to do some interesting stuff, if I had the time and money to take another course, which unfortunately I don't.

Maybe after I get a job I'll see about buying a used wheel.

About a week ago, we three girls went to the mall. Only because of the baby, we're now no longer three, and the baby isn't even a girl. So that was my first time to go shopping with the baby, and I was told that we probably wouldn't be out long because he would probably start fusing and they would have to go home. Only he didn't fuss. He likes shopping. And he likes having company over. And he likes going out to dinner.

People who are not even six months old should not care about going shopping or having company over, and they certainly should not care about going out to dinner when they can't even eat anything.

Maybe the kiddo is just weird. Anyway, he did not get all fussy, and so it was not a short day like I expected. Not that I didn't enjoy myself, but I got really tired. I wasn't expecting to stay out most of the day like that. If I'm not planning to be gone all day and into the evening, I don't like to be gone more than a few hours, and I'd really rather be home before six.

So I thought that we would go to the mall for a few hours, and then the baby would have had enough and he and his mom would go home. And then maybe just the two of us would go to lunch and talk, and then we would head home too. But, no. After a couple of hours, the baby had a bottle, and then he was good to go again. A couple of hours after that, I was ready to leave, but I hadn't taken my car, so I really couldn't. And then we had lunch and ended up staying until five. At five I was really ready to go home, and was relieved that we were leaving. Only we all weren't leaving, just the baby and his mom. My companion (and ride home) still had a few more things to get. I didn't get home til almost eight.

The day after that, some of us had dinner at the pilot's house. I've been to the pilot's house a couple of times before, and the last time I caught a cold or something. So when I started sneezing and such this time, they've decided that I'm allergic to their cat. They have a really big friendly cat. I love the cat. But I don't see how I could be allergic to their cat if I'm not allergic to my brother's cat and I've never noticed a problem with anyone else's cat. I've lived with cats for years, and there was never any problem. But, Saturday night I had the sniffles and such really bad, but it mostly went away by Sunday, so maybe they are right.

Sunday afternoon we left for the boring place, which I've already blogged about. So that just leaves the knitting and all that I'm trying to get caught up with before the party next Saturday.

Yesterday there is a dinner that I was invited to, but I didn't go. Someone else in the group apologized for not going either, because she had this party to go to. I know other people going to this same party, so I made some comment about that. Not cause I really wanted to go to this party, but just because it's been weeks or maybe months since I've made a smart-a** remark about anything on the list. Sometimes smart-a** remarks just don't translate on the computer, so now there are people sort of explaining why I didn't get an invite. I know perfectly well why I didn't get an invite, and I also knew who to go to if I had wanted one. I just didn't. I haven't the time or money to do the stuff I've already committed to, so adding another party to that is out of the question.

So I'm now debating should I just leave it alone or make another smart-a** remark?

Yesterday we got caught up with Stargate and Sanctuary, and we watched The Day The Earth Stood Still. Contrary to a local reviewer, this was not the worst sci-fi film ever made. It just isn't going to be everyone's favorite movie. And I think that it would have been more fun for me if I hadn't seen a lot more previews of it about a week ago. There were not a lot of surprises in the film after that.

Back to knitting and the rest of my life.

I wake up now and am totally confused and don't even know what day it is. It was feeling like Monday. I usually spend a lot of time with my husband on Sundays after he's been at work and possibly out of town Saturday and before that. So I spent a lot of time with my husband yesterday afternoon, after he had come home from working middle of nowhere Oklahoma on Monday. But since yesterday felt more like Sunday, this morning felt like Monday.

I'm pretty sure that it isn't Monday. Let's see, yesterday was election day, which is on the Tuesday after the first Monday of November. So if yesterday was Tuesday, then today must be Wednesday, regardless of what it feels like. And Wednesday is trash day, so I must remember to deal with that before I go running off anywhere to look for Halloween clearance stuff.

My mom will not be happy today. Most of my friends will be happy, since they have spent the last eight years or so complaining about or making fun of Dubya. They might have a party.

We are, in fact, having a bit of a party Sunday, but it isn't supposed to be about that. I'd forgotten about it until yesterday. Now I have to decide if I want to go, since it is a long drive and I don't like long drives anyway, and I have limited gas for at least the next week or two, and I should probably bring something if I go to this party, etc.... Decisions, decisions....

I mostly cleaned a room Monday and Tuesday. This is the last room with carpet, and while it doesn't look too bad at the moment, I hate that I did all that work, but I feel that the room isn't really clean because of the carpet. I think that I will probably have it removed at some point, but I can't deal with it right now. The mice are still a problem. I've found many dead mice while moving bookcases around and such, so I would think that they are finally all gone. But now I think that they are not all gone, and I think maybe some have moved in behind the bookcases that I moved just two weeks ago.

I hate getting rid of the carpet that still looks good, but I have heard that having no carpet is healthier anyway. Less dust, less stuff that might cause allergies stuck in the carpet, maybe less chance of mold. Certainly there would be less cleanup time if the house flooded again.

Maybe I wouldn't be so sick all of the time if there was less dust. Of course, I also have a zillion books, and books cause dust, so if I'm really worried about dust I should get rid of some more books.

Found some books that I had misplaced. I'm not getting rid of those books.

Time to go. Must go shopping now.

Stuff I found while cleaning

The best thing that I found a few weeks ago was "my book." But that was a few weeks ago, and I brought it in here, and I've already misplaced it somewhere. But I'm pretty sure that it is here someplace, and about a month ago I had thought that there were no surviving copies of the thing. So that's good that there is one left, and it is good that it is probably somewhere in this room where I can find it later.

This week I found some other stuff. I found a short story that I thought was gone. I think that it's pretty good. I read it and I'm thinking, I used to be good at this, why did I let all this other stuff happen that caused me to stop writing this stuff? It's dated. I don't think that anyone would want it now, but it's good.

Also, I found a rejection letter from Omni magazine. I think that I must have sent them this story, but then I think that I must have written this about 1993 or so, and that seems a bit late for sending things to Omni magazine. So maybe I sent something else to Omni, but I can't think of what. I don't remember finishing anything else that would have been appropriate for them.

I found a bumper sticker for Star Trek 5. This is really funny that I have a bumper sticker for Star Trek 5. I don't like Star Trek 5 that much. Most of us don't. That is probably most fan's least favorite Star Trek movie, though some would pick 1 or 7 or 9 or even 10. But it's universally agreed that Star Trek 5 is just not anyone's favorite movie.

I found a teaser and two acts of a script I started writing for Deep Space Nine. I'd forgotten about it. I remember having a good idea for a story, but I'd forgotten that I'd actually gotten as far as starting to write a script, much less that I wrote half of it before putting it away. I wonder what did make me put it away?

We have just finished eating the last of the candy I stocked up on after Halloween last year. Now I've found a bit that must have been from the year before last. I think it will just have to go in the trash.

I've found stuff from conventions I went to in 1994. 1994 was a good year. Nigel Bennett threatened to bite me.

I've found several dead mice. Two of them recent.

And I've just found out that my toaster no longer works. I guess that they aren't supposed to work forever, but it was a surprise anyway.