Two Scoops

Better Customer Service

2011-04-01T22:06:00.006-05:00

The Invisible Husband had to go to the post office today to pick up an Express Mail package. He had to go himself because he lost the little package retrieval slip the mail carrier left on the doorstep (but that's another story) and he couldn't send me instead.

He told me that the man at the counter was really, really unpleasant. Told him they wouldn't be able to locate the package without a receipt, that he needed to get out of the way so other customers could get to the service window, etc. IH lost his temper and asked for a supervisor who found his package in less time than it took the first guy to argue with him about how impossible it would be to find it. Yay, happy ending.

This is the post office branch where the POB I maintain for freelancing is located, so I'm there a lot. I asked IH to describe the counterman, since I know most of them. He did and I told him I was surprised, since I always got great care from this particular federal employee. Then the light dawned.

I said something to explain the difference in customer service and the below image (but much better illustrated, like a Far Side cartoon) popped into my head and I just had to put pencil to paper.

The man of the house is our resident artist and the GirlChild is his able apprentice, but they had a dungeon to run (WoW) so mama had to do for herself...

My wife says she gets better service when she puts a big pair of hooters on the counter...

Book Nerds List

2010-11-20T09:33:00.003-06:00

(aka more shameless pulling of memes from friends' FB pages because I refuse to ADD any information to what FB already knows about me. But I'll put it here, lol...)

==================================
Book Nerds List:

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

Instructions: Copy this into your ~~NOTES~~ blog post. Bold those books you've read in their entirety. Italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read only an excerpt.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma -Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Inferno - Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

==============

Hmmm.... I guess I'm just weird. I've read 32 of these. And, shameful admission, of the ones I have not read, most are books I don't plan to read.

Te be fair, I read (for the first time) The Time Traveler's Wife for a book club (and loved it!) . Rebecca (meh) and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night (blech!), too.

Oh, and I counted audio, too. Cuz if I'd read a paper copy of that Albom crap, The Five People You Meet in Heaven I'd have tossed it about 5 pages in, but it made okay background noise for my morning commute. Ditto Moby Dick, which was not awful, but all that (grossly inaccurate) whale talk in written form would've driven me mad...

Music Mania

2010-11-18T20:17:00.004-06:00

I avoid facebook as much as I can, but, sometimes, late at night, when no one is tweeting and it's not my turn in Words with Friends and I've already played the daily Qrank quiz... Well, then I'll load up ye olde FB app on my phone and see what people had to say...

Last week my friend Lisa had a meme that looked like fun, so here goes:

Expose your terrible musical taste!

by Lisa on Thursday, 11 November 2010 at 08:25

I'm playing along with the latest meme... here are the rules:

Turn on your MP3 player or music player on your computer.

Go to SHUFFLE songs mode.

Write down the first 15 songs that come up--song title and artist--NO editing/cheating, please. Just because you might skip the song when it comes up or be embarrassed for people to know you have it in your collection, you still have to list it.

Choose a lot of people to be tagged. It is generally considered to be in good taste to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I'm betting that your musical selection is entertaining, or at least amusing. ( I don't tag people on memes any more)

Without further ado...

"Little Girls" - Oingo Boingo -- This song was a lot better when I was teenager wanting to date guys in their 20s. As the mom of a little girl now, well, I still like the song, but find the lyrics a bit perturbing...

"Love You Out Loud" - Meat Loaf -- one of my faves!

"Another One Bites the Dust" - Queen

"Copywrite (Do It All Damn Night)" - Strata G -- Everyone panned this goofy ad-rap album written by a copywriter, but the lyrics make me laugh.

"But It's Better If You Do" - Panic at the Disco

"These Boots Are Made for Walkin' " - Nancy Sinatra

"Found Out About You" - Gin Blossoms

"Lucky Ball and Chain" - They Might be Giants

"Welcome to the Jungle" - Guns 'N Roses

"Walk Like an Egyptian" - The Bangles

"Only the Young" - Journey

"Why Isn't That Enough" - Meat Loaf

"Love is Not Real / Next Time You Stab Me in the Back" - Meat Loaf

"Don't Stop Believing" - Journey

"I Got You" - Train

In my defense, my phone was still loaded with my pre-Meat Loaf concert selections when I did this last week...

And I <3 Meat Loaf.

The Journey? Well, I love Journey, too, even if it does make me old.

Tuesday Tirade: Walk much?

2010-11-16T10:16:00.006-06:00

*sigh*

I live in Central Texas. Where the climate is, though it pains me to admit it since I really hate the heat, pretty easy to live with year-round.

Don't get me wrong. I hate the heat and, if I'm honest, after living here for the last 27 years I get a bit uncomfortable when things drop below 50, too. But it's all livable.

I don't live somewhere with torrential rains, ice storms (except for the occasional freak one), heavy (or even any) snowfall. Nor do I live somewhere so arid and hot (have you ever been to Death Valley, California? I have. It's pretty much hell on Earth. Literally.) that breathing the air hurts.

So, I ask you: WHY in the hell do perfectly healthy people have someone drop them off at the door to a store?

They are not aged, infirm, or toting a small child--the only three reasons I can think of for this sort of incredibly indolent behavior, given our climate.

So far as I can tell they are just bone lazy. And inconsiderate. The drivers invariably stop in the center of the driving lane, thereby blocking progress through the lot for those of us who know how our legs work. I am *ahem* significantly overweight and my fat butt can walk through the parking to and from my car.

If they had a large load of groceries it would still be aggravating, but slightly understandable. I've had the husband pull up to the store a couple of times when the weather was really nasty and I had a lot of groceries to load in the car.

My issue is with the people who are dropped off at the entrance while the driver goes to hunt for a parking place. Is it really going to make that much of a difference in their day if they take another five minutes to get inside the store? Are they going to drop dead of exhaustion after the 200-foot walk?

WHAT is wrong with these people?!

Photo courtesy of stringberd via Flickr.com

Yes, I had to go shopping this weekend, grocery and other retail outlets and my path was blocked by people doing this every where I went. Literally. *grumble*

Tuesday Tirade: A Shoe In...

2010-10-19T09:16:00.005-05:00

~~~Justin: this is NOT for you. Seriously, I'm discussing lower limb issues, you don't want to read. If you decide to, well, I tried to warn you.~~~

Jay has lymphedema. She was born with it, which is known as Milroy's Disease for the curious or bored. I don't talk about it much because it just is what it is and I have a separate blog devoted to the topic at lymphbaby, that I update even less frequently than this one, but I'm peeved, so here goes.

WHY is it so hard to find ~anything~ in this country that is outside the accepted norm of sizes? A few statistics to help my case:

The incidence of lymphedema in the United States is estimated at 2.5 million, yet more than 100 million people are affected worldwide. (Source)
If you have developed lymphoedema, you are not alone; it is estimated that well over 100,000 men, women and children in the UK are living with the condition. (Source)
Geographically speaking, the US is 40 times the size of the UK. (Source)
The US has 25 times as many lymphedema sufferers as the UK (per data above).

Jay's LE (the accepted abbreviation for lymphedema, which you'll see a LOT because I get tired of typing the word and after 9 yrs blogger.com still tells me I'm spelling it wrong!) is in her feet and toes. To top it off the poor kid has ~my~ feet underneath it all (wide foot, short toes and tiny nails).

In her case the swelling on the top of her foot begins just at the base of her toes and goes to the front of her ankle as well as to the sides and, less severely, to the bottoms of her feet and toes.

I say this because while shopping for 2-3x wide shoes is hard enough in this country, wide is not her only issue. Until I started ordering from a site in the UK a couple of years ago she never owned a pair of properly fitting shoes. In order to get something that would cover the height of the top of her foot (the dorsum---I had to learn all this stuff so I can sound erudite when I explain it to each new specialist) we've had to buy shoes that were 1-2x wide and anywhere from 1/2 to 2 1/2 sizes too big/long so she wouldn't have to go barefoot, since, well, you can't go to school barefoot...

What about custom/prescription footwear?

I tried. When she was about 18 months old I asked her pediatrician (who is, btw, ~awesome~) if we could get a scrip for custom shoes, like they do for kids who need specialized orthopedic shoes. She was uncomfortable writing the Rx since it's a bit wide of her field and recommended we seek a pediatric orthopedist. So I did.

It's been 7+ years and I am STILL angry about that day. I found a specialist, I waited months to get her in, I paid the ridiculous specialist co-pay (2x the norm) and we saw the doctor. A doctor who couldn't seem to wrap his brain around the fact that I wanted like a scrip for custom shoes. I needed the prescription because (a) I don't know who to call for custom shoes and (b) custom footwear is waaaay outside our budget.

He was fascinated by her feet. He'd never seen anything like it. We were there three hours and he brought every doctor in the practice, every nurse, and even a couple of pharma and orthopedic supplier reps who were making calls into the exam room to see her feet.

Then refused to write the scrip because, and this is a quote, "I don't see how I can help you. I'm an orthopedist."

============
Fast forward through 4-5 years of over-sized poor fitting shoes that were still a trial to find. Someone on one of the LE listservs I'm a member of sent me a godsend of a URL: www.cosyfeet.com. Go check it out. You can shop for shoes by size (UK shoe sizing being one of many thing on my long list of things I've had to learn since she was diagnosed at about 6 weeks old), by style, by medical condition you need to accommodate.

And I've bought at least one pair of shoes for her from them every year since then.

Then the economy tanked. Last pair I ordered was in January of this year, when the pound was still pretty weak, too. It's not, now, and I discovered Sunday that while I can order her shoes, I'm going to have to budget for it a bit more since the dollar is weak to the pound just now.

Great. I couldn't justify spending 2+ weeks of daycare on a single pair of shoes without at least trying to find a resource in the U.S. Which pretty much ate the rest of my Sunday afternoon and early evening.

Here are some of the things I (fruitlessly) Googled:

lymphedema shoes U.S.
extra extra wide shoes
specialty shoes for medical conditions
lymphedema shoes

Found lots of sites. Lots of expensive shoes. And while they had wide sizes (less in anything remotely feminine vs. guy shoes and even less when you add an, "extra," or two in front of the word,"wide") none of them had anything addressing shoe height, hence the search for shoes for medical conditions.

Still nada, but ran into a few crappy shoe sites that didn't even let me search by size. What is the point of finding a perfect pair of shoes only to discover it is not made in the size I need---unlike clothing, one cannot diet to get a smaller shoe size (for the most part).

Okay, I will grant you that of the estimated 2.5 million LE sufferers in the US, over half of them are cancer patients, predominantly breast cancer survivors. Meaning their ARMS are affected, not their feet. But, even at 1/3 of 2.5 million that's still a captive audience of 833,333 people in desperate need of a product to fill their need. 8x the total number of people in the UK who have LE. And ~no one~ can step up.

I wish to heaven I had the skills to be a shoe designer. I'd make a fortune (and do it without charging one!).

Tuesday Tirade: You Gave Her a WHAT?!

2010-05-25T15:15:00.006-05:00

Parents (NOT grandparents, just 'rents!) you'll feel me.

Childless people, you NEED to pay attention.

Today we are discussing inappropriate gifts for children. Specifically LIVE gifts. Seriously folks, unless the little darlings' parent told you, "Go buy my kid a puppy/kitty/bunny/baby chick/pony," DO NOT DO IT.

Yes, pony. No finger pointing, but someone in our extended family wanted to buy J a horse. A HORSE. Horses are cheap. To buy. It's the care, feeding, and boarding that will convince you the horse has a better life than you do since his monthly roof rent is almost as much as yours. I pointed this out, kindly but vehemently, to the well-meaning relative and that was it.

I would love to be able to own a horse for my horse-crazy girl to enjoy, but it's just not in my budget. I'm struggling now to figure out how to pay for horse camp for the summer as it is...

Not all such bullets have been dodged, unfortunately.

One Easter weekend we went to visit my father and his wife. They were out at the barn where they kept their horses, sheep, and other random urban livestock--they live in Houston--and my dad was mowing the lot/pasture with a riding mower with the heavy duty pull behind mower attachment.

He mowed over a rabbit warren (thankfully BEFORE we got there!) With babies. Cute babies, babies old enough to eat real food. Only one survived the mower, though. TES (that would be The Evil Stepmother) rescued the baby bunny and took it in the barn.

We arrived, let the girlchild uno--this was in the late 90's--pet all the critters, have her pic taken with the horses, etc. I went out to talk to my dad. When I cam back to the barn my girl was proudly holding a cat carrier containing (guess!) and telling us all about her own personal Easter bunny.

She gave my kid a baby rabbit.

Ummm... No.

Guess who had to call the urban animal rescue when we got back to Austin to determine what to feed it, how to care for it, etc.? Yea, NOT the person who gave her the stupid (but yes, cute, fluffy, soft, and scared out of its little tiny mind) bunny that's for sure. Fortunately our bunny was determined to be old enough to be self-sufficient and we picked a favorite park where we like to play that had a lot of wooded trails and plenty of cover and set it free.

Buy me a margarita sometime and I'll tell you the story of how it "mysteriously" (quoting the 3yo here) got out of it's carrier on the way to the park...

My friend, Crystal recently became grandmother to a tarantula in a not dissimilar way, though I suspect her hubs may have colluded on that one since he had big nasty hairy spiders as a kid...

Do not, not, not, not, not give live gifts to other people's kids. Ever. PLEASE.

While I'm thinking about it, ask them before you give their 4yo daughter pink pleather hot pants and real, takes-acetone-to-remove-it-from-the-carpet, nail polish, too.

Karma Wants Me to Get Healthy. Really.

2010-05-16T10:35:00.004-05:00

We were members of the YMCA years ago since they have the only indoor pool(s) in town that allow kids in the pool.

Side note: J has lymphedema (more info at the woefully un-updated lymphbaby) and hydro is excellent for her feet. The condition is not severe enough to mandate Rx hydro, so we make do on our own at the Y. And I ~really~ wish she'd stop singing that song every time we get in the car to head over there!

When the budget got tight we let it lapse (2004, 2005? somewhere in there). Then dh got a new job in 2009. One of the benefits is that they will pay up to $30/month for gym membership. That's almost half our family membership to the Y, so we re-joined last week.

We signed up to get J in a nice, indoor pool for her piggies. And so that I could take the free monthly water aerobics classes.

See, I do want to get into shape. Being anywhere from 100-130lbs overweight, depending on the chart you use, is getting old.

7 years ago I thought I was big as a house, but when I go back and look at my fitness logs (yea, I know, I'm a geek and a list freak, I keep logs and spreadsheets of all sorts of crap) I weighed roughly 40lbs less than I do now. This is NOT GOOD.

I'm signed up for an official twice-weekly class after work beginning in June, and plan to attend an open (no sign up required) class at another location this month. Beginning Monday.

We went as a family to the pool on Friday night and I realized that the, ahem, plunging neckline of the suit I bought for vacation last summer was not really practical for an exercise class. Not if I wanted to stay IN the suit. (I totally bought it for dh... *egrin*).

All of which leads me to yesterday afternoon. When I commenced the Great Swimsuit Hunt 2010. Y'see, finding a suit that fits is no easy task when it needs to have enough fabric to cover me as to cover the front end of a small car. I did my homework online, but I wanted to find one I could try on. I looked up the stores where I've found suits in the past, then abandoned the fam and headed out on what I fully anticipated would be an hours-long slog through too many stores and dressing rooms.

The first store I went to (Sears, if any of you other size22/24 ladies are curious) had a decent amount of options in stock in my size. I wanted a one-piece with no skirt--those things hold something like 30lbs of water in the skirt material!--but that was not meant to be.

Failing that, I wanted something with:

a long enough top to cover things (mah belly) no one wants to see after having two kids
a sport back because straps tend to stretch over time and then the over-exposure problems begin again.
brief bottom (see notes re: skirted suits above).

After a bit of trial error I found something that met all the above requirements and got my first pleasant surprise of the day: I needed a smaller size (though only on top) than I thought I did. Woot.

Second pleasant surprise came 15 minutes later at the register: It was ON SALE.

Conclusion: Karma wants ME to get fit. I paid 50% off regular retail and got what I wanted at the first store I went to. What other explanation makes sense?

Healthy (?) Choice

2010-05-11T13:20:00.004-05:00

Okay... I am like, the world's WORST dieter.

The only time I kinda even a little stick to a healthy eating plan is at work. I bought a fridge, the office mate contributed an old microwave and I stock frozen meals and Campbell's Select Harvest Light soups. This is what you call dieting by default. It's not so much that I'm making a good choice as it is that I eliminated the unhealthy options. As long as Raidman doesn't call and ask if I want to go to lunch and foil my 'plan.'

I've always been a fan of Healthy Choice, just because their (old) bright green labels made it easy to grab and tell myself I was doing the right thing. I'm even trying, in a very lazy way, to get a little closer to natural foods, lower preservatives, less processed stuff, etc. So I was super excited when I found the Healthy Choice All Natural entrees at HEB a couple weeks ago.

Then I ate one for lunch yesterday. This one, in fact.

It is pretty good. The veggies are tender but still have a little crunch to them (which, I admit, I don't really like, but other people do so I'm mentioning it as a public service) and the ravioli themselves are pretty yummy in spite of the ricotta (ewww) inside. All five of the ravioli that is.

In the spirit of scientific inquiry I measure them. They are all of 2in square and NOT puffy (totally not Chef Boyardee looking!).

Chef Boyardee image courtesy of cfinke via Flickr.com

I know the picture on the HC box is meant to entice, but come on, it has twice the ravioli my box had, easily.

Serving size: 9 oz (255 g)

Umm, yea. I'm pretty sure that weight includes the plastic tray - and that it is 2/3 of the total.

I can easily believe the box's claim that this is 30% of my daily fruit and veg. Problem is, it's mostly fruit and mostly tomato sauce. I didn't count my slices (half slices, technically, since they were half moons and most even smaller than that!) of squash and zucchini, but there were less than a dozen total. And they were all half the size of the ravioli or smaller. I'm pretty sure if I wanted to get that 30% I'd have to dive in and lick the sauce off the plastic.

The sauce itself was, frankly, way too sweet. And I have a sweet tooth that has aided me in getting 100lbs over weight. Do you know how sweet it has to be for me to say it's too sweet?! Yea.

Then there's the thing that puts me over the edge. I'm overweight. I'm medicated for high blood pressure. And my "Healthy Choice" for lunch has TWENTY-FOUR PERCENT of my recommended sodium for the day? In five freakin' ravioli?! Come ON Con-Agra (*shudder* wish I hadn't read the side of the box to find out who makes this now... I've seen Food, Inc.!) If it was really a healthy choice it wouldn't have 8g of sugar (twice what it has in fiber!) and 580mg of sodium.

I want a healthy choice that's really healthy. Is that so much to ask? And, umm... Can it be healthy AND more than 8 bites? I didn't get where I am by eating light.

Side note: Here's a thought! Can someone make freezer meals for the obese that work like nicotine patches... You start out with Hungry Man portions, end up with Healthy Choice ones - gradual steps to retrain your body?

Damn, I'm a freakin' genius

Stumble Is Making Me Crunchy

2010-04-06T22:45:00.002-05:00

I ~used~ to be a Stumble addict. I'm mostly over it, but that handy dandy little toolbar button is good for morning coffee-not awake yet randomness.

While I am far from crunchy--being a working and wahm mom and wife I am all about convenience most of the time--if I can be greener/crunchier easily I'm willing to give it a shot. Stumble knows this.

A couple of days ago I stumbled (literally) across Simple Mom's blog post on the Oil Cleansing Method (OCM to the fanatics). I had flawless skin in high school. Then I turned 21. Being alcohol legal may have had something to do with the decline in my skin, but since I've never been a huge drinker, I doubt it. Then I had kids. And discovered the joys of adult acne. NOT.

So I thought, what the hell, I'll give this a try. Of course, my cleanser mix is insanely complex--Target didn't have castor oil, I was out of EVOO, and I have a shoe box of supplies I bought during my "home made bath salts" phase in the late 90s. We'll see. Washed my face tonight and the smell was fantastic. The tea tree, eucalyptus, and clary sage totally masked the sheep smell of the liquid lanolin...

I also followed the link to her post on going shampoo-free. Since I've been paying $15+ a bottle for 10oz bottles of conditioner for the last two years, Imma try that out, too.

And I followed the link to PlantoEat.com. 30-days to less convenience food AND it integrates with my Google calendar? Sure, sign me up!

If I start wearing hemp and stop wearing deodorant someone intervene and cancel my StumbleUpon account, please :-)

Tuesday Tirade - Brought to you by Thermos

2010-03-16T12:38:00.010-05:00

DISCLAIMER: I want to apologize in advance for (ab)using the Thermos (R) brand name, but I've never seen a generic name for this product, though I have seen the generic product, it just never registered.

Having said that...

Did you have a lunchbox when you were a kid? The old school metal ones with a thermos inside that had the built in cup/lid cover? They were cool, weren't they? I mean that literally, too. My kool-aid stayed cold all morning in that puppy. And my chicken noodle soup? You could burn your tongue at lunch if you weren't careful to eat your crackers while the soup cooled to edible temperature in the cup/bowl/lid.

Well, my girl doesn't have that problem. Why? Because some moron kid somewhere dropped a Thermos, the glass liner inside broke, and the idiot didn't notice the shiny silver glass shards or the tinkling noise it made and ate/drank from it anyway. Now they line them with metal.

Which DOES NOT WORK as well. Some days it barely works at all. You can still find a few glass-lined Thermos vacuum bottles, but they are all huge and meant for construction workers or whomever to carry coffee. Way too big for a lunch box.

So now my kid gets cold food. Or warm drinks. Or, my favorite problem with the metal liners... They create such a hard vacuum when you seal in hot food that she can't open it at lunch. Apparently the adult lunch monitors can't either. Yet I always can... (rant for another day)

Meaning my kid gets snacks for lunch and comes home starving crabby. Since the crabby is a semi-given at age 9, I could really do without the starving.

Please, please, BRING BACK GLASS LINED KID THERMOSES*!

(thermoses? thermosii? anyone know the 'correct' plural for this?)

(Thermos image courtesy of kaboodle.com, despite the watermark, lol...)

Made me giggle #248

2010-02-18T23:35:00.003-06:00

Toll Tag FAIL

Saw this on a car a couple weeks ago and had to snap a picture. I'm actually kind of impressed, though. Considering that the adhesive on these things is on the face, how in the hell did this person manage to stick it to the OUTSIDE of their windshield still facing the proper direction?

Spam-A-Lot

2010-01-25T00:24:00.002-06:00

That, apparently, is where this blog resides. Sorry to do it, but I'm turning the annoying real-person checker back on since I've wasted far too much time lately deleting spam comments. To those of you who ARE real people, I apologize.

I Stole This Topic From a Xangan

2010-01-09T11:43:00.015-06:00

I have a confession. Blogger and I, we're not exclusive.

I keep my book blog/reading log on WordPress, and a writing exercise blog on Xanga.

I don't like Xanga, but I signed up as part of a writing group several years ago -- our group leader was a Xangan and it was the only way to participate. I haven't posted anything to my Xanga site in ages and don't maintain it. But, while I was hanging out over there I found a few bloggers I enjoy reading and Xanga does offer the awesome feature of emailing me their entire posts, with images, in a daily digest.

Today's included this post by author Jeff Markowitz about books as gifts and asking people what books they gave or received for the holidays.

I love books as gifts, both getting AND giving. And I'm trying to encourage my 8 yo's slowly developing love of stories, so I buy her lots of books year-round.

For Christmas 2009 (since that's what we celebrate here at ScoopCentral) I gave lots of books:

Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz

My baby brother (he turned 30 last year, but being able to call him that as long as we both live is one of the few perks of being the oldest kid) is in lurve. He's in lurve with a woman who has him reading new things and is a huge Koontz fan. I am not a huge Koontz fan (and yes, I have read more than one of his books) but I LOVE his "Odd Thomas" series. I told the Penguin (baby bro's super-secret codename stemming from a childhood obsession with the aforementioned flightless fowl) that if he was gonna read Koontz he had to read these and got him the first one for Christmas. Turns out he'd already read it (damn! hate when that happens) but didn't own a copy, so all was good.

Jigsaw Dinosaurs by Anne Sharp

This was a shameless re-gift. The girl is 8 and girly and kicked this off her shelves about a year ago. I am, however, aunt/great aunt to two little boys, one 6yo and one 1yo. Boys tend to hold onto the dino thing longer than girls, so this one was cleaned up, made sure all the puzzles had all their pieces, and passed on to my 6yo nephew. I hope he liked it as much as J did (I had to work this joyous season and didn't get to see any of dh's side of the family open their prezzies).

Fail Nation by failblog.org

Bought this for the hubs. His favorite app on his ipod touch is the one from failblog, so this just seemed to fit. And he's impossible to shop for and I was desperate. And it was on sale.

What can I say, visual humor has a limited lifespan for me, so I don't find it all that funny, but hey, it wasn't a gift for me...

The Pioneer Woman Cooks by Ree Drummond

I've been reading Ree Drummond's blog off an on for years, and I was SO excited when I found out her book tour was coming to Austin. I put it on my calendar 2 months in advance.

Then, a week and a half before the big night my dad told me he was having surgery and wanted me to be there. Since he normally waits til after it's over and done to tell me he's doing things like this I figured I should take the day off, drive to Houston, and be there.
The surgery was the day before Ree was in Austin.

I could go to the book signing, or I could work late and make up the time for the day I took off and get a nice, whole paycheck 3 weeks before Christmas. The paycheck won. But Lisa got to to go and took lots of pics! She even let me fondle her signed copy of the book over the holidays.

I bought this one for my mom because Ree reminds me a lot of my mom and it's rare I run across a cookbook my mom will like that she hasn't already bought for herself. Ma's kitchen has three bookshelves--nuff said.

A Scanner Darkly (Graphic Novel) by Philip K. Dick w/ Harvey Pekar

Basically just screen shots from the 2006 movie, but it's cool anyway. And my Dad2 is a sci-fi geek who read PKD before they changed his titles and turned his stories into movies.

The Hungry Scientist Handbook by Patrick Buckley and Lily Binns

Okay... So I was browsing ThinkGeek.com and saw this and ordered it for Dad2 without checking the description. He taught physics and chemistry for 20 years, I thought it would be appropriate. Then he opened it and started flipping through it. This is one weird book. But he seemed to like it.

Just, well, I don't actually EVAR want to know about it if he decides to make the edible undies in the book!

Finally, the books I bought the GirlChild. Frankly, there are too many of them for me to attempt to go find cover images on the web and think up witty bonmots. You get a list and Amazon links and you're going to like it!

(sorry, forgot my audience for a minute there...)

Bad Kitty Gets a Bath by Nick Bruel - It's too easy for J, but she loved the original Bad Kitty so much I couldn't pass up this older kid book...

Chucaro: Wild Pony of the Pampa by Francis Kalnay - She's a horse girl. Nuff said.

The girls also likes cats... All of the below are by Erin Hunter

Forest of Secrets (Warriors, book 3)

Warriors: Ravenpaw's Path #1: Shattered Peace

Warriors: Tigerstar and Sasha #3: Return to the Clans

The last two are graphic novels. I started buying them for her last year in hopes that they would eventually lead to her reading the full-length, no-pictures Warriors books. For a change, it worked! She just finished the first Warriors book last week and was SO proud of herself. It is her first longer novel that she read all on her own. She started book 2 this week, too.

Now, the big question:

What books did YOU give as gifts this year?

The girl is just amazing...

2009-12-18T09:19:00.002-06:00

J is finishing up a poetry unit at school and her poem was so awesome (not that I'm biased) that her teacher (a) told me in advance that I would be surprised/wowed by it and (b) chose it as the opening poem in their class poetry book. Without further ado:

Her

by J

Her smile, so
beautiful
Blond, golden hair,
her light baby
blue eyes
Four years old
Too young
She left me.
I wasn't even born yet!

And yea, I teared up again just re-typing it.

For the new out there, my oldest daughter, S, died in a backyard pool drowning while I was pregnant with J. We've made an effort to make sure J knows about her sister and that we love them both, and well, obviously she's been paying attention.

And probably needs therapy, based on the above, but I'm hiding my head in the sand on that one for as long as I can...

na-NO-wrimo

2009-12-06T14:01:00.005-06:00

I just pulled my NaNo buttons out of the side bar. I am at peace with my decision to abandon my 2009 NaNoWriMo project. That does not, however, mean I want the tally of my failure to finish to stare me in the face every time I see my blog--no matter how rare, based on my recent posting history, that may be.

Around November 18th I got few days behind, something I know from past experience is easily fixable. This year I let it be the final nudge over the edge on a decision I'd been contemplating for a week. Abandoning my tale.

This year's book sucked. The idea was weak, at best, and not one I was remotely passionate about. Some people say it's better to NaNo something you aren't passionate about so you won't worry about the quality. Me? I need to be invested in it, at least a bit, or it will never go anywhere.

I didn't have anything I wanted to say this year. I seem to have an odd-years NaNo curse. I win in years ending in an even number. I abandon the project as dreck in odd-numbered years. Kind of teh suck, but, on the bright side, it means I'll make it next year. Write?!?!

Stolen from Lisa

2009-10-19T15:51:00.004-05:00

I'm home sick with day 5 of a headache and can't sleep anymore right now and don't trust myself to edit myself, let alone someone else's stuff, right now, so you get a shamelessly stolen blog post, courtesy of Lisa at Put It On the List - who stole it from someone else. Doncha love the interwebs?

Below is my vacation map. I've visited all of the places below and stayed long enough to do something memorable. If all I did was drive through on the way to somewhere else, or change planes, I skipped that state, otherwise I'd have to add New York, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Colorado :-)

visited 16 states (32%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

Looks to me like I need to get out more :-)

I'd like to visit:

Florida -- I want to take the girl to Disney before she's too old to enjoy it.
Minnesota -- I did a series of articles a last year on Minneapolis and it looks like an interesting place to visit.
Indiana -- Friends across the street moved up there a few years ago and it'd be great to go visit them. We were there as surrogate family when their oldest girl was born (4mos younger than J) and the girls haven't seen each other since they were babies.
Alaska -- Friends and family tell me I ~must~ be part polar bear I like it so cold. Be nice to see for myself. And I wanna see whales that are NOT in a ginormous tank at Sea World.
Hawaii -- I'd have to be insane not to want to go to our own US tropical paradise, right?
New York -- Hokey, I know, but I'd like to see the Statue of Liberty. And a Broadway show that is actually ON Broadway at the time. I lurve musicals.
Colorado -- My mom lived here for a while and, well, it just looks purty in the pictures.
Maine -- Just cuz.
Oregon -- Why? Cuz it's there. You hear about the attractions of California and Washington and Oregon seems to be the unloved middle child. I'm all about making a state feel loved. (did I mention I'm in a lot of pain and can't see straight and I reserve the right for this to make no sense whatsoever? I did? Oh good.)
Illinois -- See notes above re: Minnesota. I did a similar series on Chicago and want to see the Adler, the Field, etc.
Michigan -- I wanna see Mackinac Island. Read about it, have family that's been there (the hubs has family in Michigan so we might even HAVE family there, lol), and it sounds like a nifty spot to visit.
Oklahoma -- Being a good lil Texan I have spent most of my life disparaging the state immediately to our North (and based on my one hotel stay there it was NOT without cause!), but the pictures and stories of the Pioneer Woman and Shannon from Rocks in My Dryer have just about convinced me that I may have been a little too hasty in my judgment.

That's all I can think of right now. Must be time to go back to bed.

Tuesday Tirade: The Answer to All Of Your Questions is NO

2009-10-06T16:40:00.004-05:00

I moderate a small local moms' group. I joined a few years ago and kind of fell into moderating.

Lately, though, it's been a bit of a chore. Why? The economy, of course.

People are tightening their belts. They're getting more creative with their marketing, and trying to do more while spending less. Social media, whether its the evil FB, I really hate that site, almost as much as I despise MySpace, Twitter, online groups, whatever, is mostly about investing your time and your personality.

So let me be straight up: MY MAMAS ARE NOT A CAPTIVE AUDIENCE FOR YOUR CRAP.

We are a small group, under 40 members. Biggest we've ever been was around 90 and that was primarily due to a lazy (guilty as charged!) moderator.

We're small so that people feel safe and comfortable talking about their families, their kids, their nursing problems, sex after babies, whatever the topic du jour is. People who stick around like our rigorous moderation.

When a woman joins -- Yes, it is a MOMS-only group -- we send her a note asking her to tell us more about herself and her family and how she heard about our little group before her membership is approved.

Don't answer the survey, don't get to join.

When she joins she's moderated for a while, either until she:

Unsubs after deciding we are not what she was looking for. This sometimes happens immediately, sometimes not til inflammatory topics (the mingling of religion and public education is good for weeding out the wimps) come round.
Posts enough that we feel comfortable letting her post without a babysitter.
Posts so damn much (that is ok) that it floods my inbox with crap to approve and I unmoderate her just to make it STOP.

We are serious about making our little group a place where moms feel safe and secure. We state upfront that if you are here to market your crap you are not welcome. Not if that's the ONLY reason. We have a lot of WAHM members and they talk about work, but, like everyone else with something to sell (garage sales, craigslist items, etc), are only allowed to actively market their biz one day a week. If you only post to market yourself, we will eventually kick you because that's not why the rest of us are there.

I say all this because the last week or so has seen a rash of service-oriented spam join requests. People with brilliant things to say for themselves (in the initial Yahoo groups form---I'm pretty sure they all gave up hope when they got the follow-up member survey) like:

I teach your children music. -- Really? No name? No indication of gender or whether or not you have a family or are just a perve who wants to eyeball our kids in the group photo albums? REJECTED
home work -- Are you offering to do it for my kids? Are you a maid service? A tutor? A work-from-home scammer? REJECTED
A dental hygienist for a local pediatric dentistry practice. -- This one was nice, but still a solicitation and therefore unwelcome. I'm still debating forwarding her spam to the practice to find out if they stand behind it or she was trying to drum up biz on her own...

That's a week's worth. I don't have time for it, we don't want it, and I guarantee you we will never let you in. We had a member in the past who harvested group emails for her home cosmetics sales gig---she posted normally, too, but we had to electronically smack her around and tell her not to do it again.

Maybe it's time to re-write our splash page? I haven't looked at it in years, but if it will make the spam stop...

Photo:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cursedthing/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

Numero Uno

2009-10-04T16:04:00.003-05:00

Candy tagged me with a meme! The challenge - answers must be kept to ONE WORD.

Where is your cell phone? right
Your hair? thick
Your mother? awesome
Your father? sad
Your favorite food? chocolate
Your dream last night? eh?
Your favorite drink? coffee
Your dream/goal? peace
What room are you in? office
Your hobby? books
Your fear? heights
Where do you want to be in 6 years? housewife
Where were you last night? Lisa's
Something that you aren’t? gourmet
Muffins? no
Wish list item? lawnboy
Where did you grow up? Texas
Last thing you did? phone
What are you wearing? glasses
Your TV? wii
Your pets? dog
Friends? thankfully!
Your life? complicated
Your mood? contemplative
Missing someone? S
Vehicle? BugTruck
Something you’re not wearing? socks
Your favorite store? Internet
Your favorite color? Red
When was the last time you laughed? yesterday
Last time you cried? stress
Your best friend? A-Moms
One place that I go to over and over? basement
One person who emails me regularly? xanga
Favorite place to eat? Baris

It's official.

2009-09-30T15:01:00.007-05:00

As of a couple of hours ago, I am a nonsmoker. I have been a not-a-nonsmoker exactly half my life, with breaks for bearing, birthing, and nursing my girls.

I've known I ~needed~ to quit since the day I started. I just never really wanted to.

Well, I did, but I didn't. I wanted to quit for my health and to live long enough to be a burden to J and inhale less money, especially in recent years, but, well... The fact is I ~liked~ it.

I liked that it forced me to take a few minutes for myself.

I liked that, especially in these smoker-unfriendly days, it gave me an instant bond when I was in a group of strangers (at work, at conferences, etc) because we already had something in common, and as a collective group were persecuted for it.

I liked that it gave me an outlet for stress. Does a cigarette reduce stress levels? No, if anything it probably makes it worse, elevating the blood pressure and decreasing the amount of oxygen in the blood. But it gave me a minute to take time out and (not) breathe and relax and think and just, well, time.

Time I would otherwise not take for myself. The flipside of that, since I have gone to ridiculous lengths to ensure J did not know her mama sucked cancer sticks, is that I also used to make time to smoke. I didn't smoke anywhere near my house for a long time. Instead I would loop the neighborhood a few times on the way home from the grocery store til I'd finished. Or drive to a store twice as far away so I'd have time to smoke.

No more.

Did I quit for my health? Sure.

Did I quit to save money? Sure.

But mostly I quit because I had to.

See, I was a particular smoker. With the exception of the occasional deviation in emergencies when I couldn't find what I wanted, I smoked cloves exclusively, and a particular variety at that. --->

And I am old and set in my ways and I know what I want/like. And if I can't have what I like, I just won't do it.

And Uncle Sam says I can't have what I like. Someone decided that cloves were too much like the flavored cigs that Camel tried to make a few years ago (read that as Gateway Cigarettes-like other 'gateway' drugs) and they were no longer available for sale as of 9/22/09. I found out about the ~~impending doom~~ upcoming legal change on 9/13 and on the 14th went and bought as many as I could find within reason (7 packs). And smoked the last 4 cigarettes of the last pack today.

I am ~glad~ for the ban for the simple reason that it is forcing me to do something I've known I needed to do, but didn't want bad enough to do for myself.

That said... I'm still fomenting my rant about this because it's a stupid logic. If I start following this path I'll rant early and I want to save it for Tuesday, it's been too long.

Net result: Government being stoopid=good for Dy's lungs. Umm... yay?

(this post is both informational and a warning. In case I get all classic quit-smoking-nic-fit-bitchy, well, this is your warning and probably the only one you're going to get.)

PS - Anyone wanna give me odds on how long it takes RaidMan to notice I've quit? lol...

More Yarn Crazy plus NaNo Crazy Commences (sorta)

2009-09-30T08:14:00.004-05:00

Because it's not like NaNo is coming up and I'll already be crazy... I've decided to do this. It looked like fun & will give me a chance to play with some yarns I wouldn't normally buy.

Now if I could just decide if I ~like~ my NaNo idea or not. I'm a bit tepid about it, and afraid that doesn't bode well. The Austin ML is putting together some plotting and planning events in October. I may go to one of those and see if it helps this plan gel or if I need to scrap it and start again. I have 31 days to come up with a plot after all...

Sometimes Someone Else Says It Better

2009-09-29T14:17:00.001-05:00

My mood today:

Don't ask me why, the day started out nicely, but sometimes this is just how it is.

Can't Rant

2009-09-15T20:27:00.003-05:00

I was gonna rant but... (a) I want to do a little research on my topic and (b) I have a shiny new blog background and am finding it hard to be properly rant-ish.

Have no fear though, I am naturally inclined to snark and ranting, so I'm sure there will be some soon!

PS - I also took part in my first "Teaser Tuesday" over on my book blog, if you wanna check it out.

My Neverending Calendar Review Post

2009-09-13T11:14:00.005-05:00

Google Calendar

I heart you, G-cal, I really do, but, like my first high school boyfriend, you just can't give me what I need. I am, however, happy to report that at least you do not cry every time I try to break up with you like the afore-mentioned boyfriend. While it took me over 18 months (and the threat of a restraining order) to get rid of him, your sync uninstalled in mere moments!

See below, under Thunderbird + Lightning, for all the gory details.

Lotus Notes

I've used this at a couple of workplaces and it's OK. The mail features are decent, but the calendar kind of blows. Even if you decide you really really really like it, it's pretty much impossible to get a copy for home use.

Home users are NOT IBM/Lotus' target market. I know, I looked. It was a brief but torrid affair, and there was really only one reason for it.

Flexibility in changing repeating events. I like being able to change a repeating event (like, oh, "Mom: Work --am to --pm" that comes up M-F) without having to create a new event.

Case in point: In April of this year my hours were cut. This meant I got to leave work 30min earlier every day. In Outlook, in order to accurately reflect my old schedule in past events (because I'm nitpicky about things like that) AND show my new one, I had to create an end date for the old series and create a new series to reflect my new schedule.

In Notes I could make the changes starting with the effective date and tell it to adjust "This and all future occurrences." One step. I know, I know, it's stupid, but I am that ~~lazy~~ particular.

Okay, so this is really the only thing I like about Notes Calendar.

There's no good way to color code; you can only do it by event TYPE i.e. Reminders/Meetings/Appointments. For people not interconnected to a bunch of other people also using Notes those last two are the same thing.

It takes for-ever to load. Like longer than Outlook. Yea, really, THAT long.

Thunderbird with Lightning Add-On

(I wrote this one WHILE I was experimenting over the past days, so the tone & frustration levels are all over the map.)

I admit it. I haven't used Thunderbird since my Outlook Switch to make my phone work in May 08. I, dedicated blogger that I am, downloaded it and attached my gmail (the email I am least attached to, lol) and the Lightning plugin since Sunbird has apparently, largely, gone the way of the dodo from what I read on the Mozilla Messaging press release from last year.

Looks alright so far. I exported all my Gcals. I haven't deleted them yet...Now that I'm looking at TBird w/ Lightning I want to play with it a little before I go all Outlook. Import was easy, even let me import a calendar shared with me by someone else with no problems.

I'm off to explore the syncing options and will have to re-write when I'm done playing with it. I'd hoped to get this up in a day or two after the other calendar post, but now that I'm actually doing the research... Yea.

I hope you appreciate this Justin & Crystal. You two open source junkies are the main reason I decided to give TBird another try--so no one would accuse me of not looking at the OS option ;-) The things I do for my friends!

Well shit. Apparently Sunbird is still kicking cuz Google supports some kind of sync to it that used a lot of jargon I'm too tired to track to explain it (dunno when I'll post this, but it's 11pm on a Thursday night when I'm writing it, lol).

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Okay, so if I'm reading this right--understand I applaud open source, I don't actually comprehend it a lot of the time (despite working with it daily, lol)--I can subscribe to my multiple Google calendars using Thunderbird/Lightning and they will sync up on their own. This solves half my problem. That is, the whole local computer calendar not syncing to ALL Gcals (one for me, one for my freelance stuff, one for the kid, one for the hubs, one to keep track of bdays & anniversaries, etc) since Google's sync protocol for Outlook only supports syncing the main calendar.

Now... Google also only syncs the main calendar to my phone, as I recall. So how can I get the Gcals (all of them!) on my phone and in my local Tbird?

More mozilla forums in my future. Yay fun. Not.

Now up to 3 add ons & another util:

Lightning add on
Provider for Google Calendar
Google Contact Sync
and Nueva Sync to get it all on my phone

~~~~~~~~~~~

Many more wasted hours later...

Thunderbird won't DL the main calendar properly & every time it does it doubles up entries in Google. Half my cals won't sync w/ Tbird, the other half create duplicate events, and none of it was easy. I can't speak to how the air-sync works because, well, I've kept my phone out of this so far & it is fine---I want it to stay that way.

Google --- let people color code & build a sync for TBird that carries the color-coding over & you'll have me. Til then, it's back to the ole Outlook.

Sunbird

Looked at the page and decided to skip since it is basically a bigger standalone version of the Lightning add-on I already grabbed. And I do want my cal and email in one place. I'm a picky bitch like that.

Having said that, apparently Google does have a special process to sync with Sunbird, but I'm too annoyed with the whole damn thing to care at this point.

Microsoft Outlook

It's possible I keep coming back to this because it was my first mail client, and you know how they say you never forget your first...

More importantly, this works with my phone. Knowing what I know now I'm not sure I would by a Windows Mobile Smartphone again, but it's what I've got and it's paid for... Live 'n learn, ya know.

After all my adventures in Google and open source the last couple of days, I realized the only thing I like with Google that I can't get with Outlook is over-the-air synchronization. I'd love to ditch the cable, and am working on a tentative (and blessedly simple!) solution for that. Sure, Outlook is a monster processor hog, but it's a hog that does the job I need done and, after the initial set up and expense, which I already went through a year+ ago, it's pretty idiot proof. The last few days have left me feeling like an idiot, so idiot-proof is looking pretty darn good.

PS - While dissing the calendar, Google, I totally wrote this post over the course of 4 days and 3 computers, courtesy of the awesomeness that is Google docs :-D Thanks!

Calendar Redux

2009-09-10T22:21:00.001-05:00

Well, it's been a week since I wiped out all my calendars, my life... Or so I thought.

Turns out that the old computer DID still have something to offer---my calendar through February of this year. It also had preprog'd recurring events, like birthdays and anniversaries, that shortened by re-entry curve a bit.

Then the funniest thing happened. Scrolling through my Outlook calendar on the new computer, forlornly looking at the empty spaces, I saw... STUFF. I searched (well, okay, I'm lazy, I let Windows search) all over that hard drive, the secondary partition, AND the external drive and couldn't find any of those damned *.pst files. But somehow (black magic?) there were still events on my calendar.

I manually entered a few of them into the great Google and started recreating my schedule, the girl's schedule (far more crowded than mine, lol) and the litany of important days to remember.

Then I synced to my phone--woo hoo! I knew where I was again.

I just didn't know where anyone else was.

This sent me scrambling back to web to look up the sync deets again. Re-reading the info, I came close to tears. The only way to color code (currently, though based on my peek at the forum people have been begging big G to add this feature for a looong time) G-cal events is to put them on separate calendars.

Google only knows how to sync ONE calendar though, a girl's main events calendar. Read that as my schedule, since, as we all know (& contrary to what my daughter thinks), it really is all about me. Not so awesome. AND this rule applies to syncing with Outlook, too.

That tore it. I HAD to move back.

I need all my stuff to show up in one place, with one sync event, and color-coded on my monitor for ease of scheduling, period.

After a week of painstakingly entering events in six different Google calendars I exported them all back to Outlook and will be spending my free time for the rest of the week fixing the color-coding. Yay.

Coming Tomorrow: Calendar Comparisons featuring Outlook, Google Calendar, Sunbird/Thunderbird, and Lotus Notes.

Tuesday Tirade: Lower Price is Not Necessarily a Good Thing

2009-09-08T06:24:00.001-05:00

This has been bugging me for a while, and I was thinking I need to post more often...

For a number of health reasons I've been trying to incorporate more natural and high fiber products/complex carbs into my family's diet.

After trying about a jillion (or so it felt) different kinds of bread---and being shocked at the tiny amount of fiber in most whole wheat breads---I found one at HEB my family liked and that I, the occasional and totally random nutrition Nazi, approved. HEB's Glycemic Health bread--a healthy wheat bread with a whopping 2.5g of fiber PER SLICE.

It even, unlike many of the more expensive wheat breads, came in a sandwich-style option. You know, the really square bread with the thinner crusts. Since the girl has taken to pulling the crusts off her sandwiches and throwing them away, thin crust means more of her lunch makes its way into her face.

Lately I haven't been able to find my bread at all. I was upset, and finally decided a couple weeks I was going to stop by the store when I had a few minutes and ask the manager about it. Just to make sure I didn't look like an idiot, I went to check the bread aisle first. And found what I was looking for... sort of:

It had the same name, but a few key differences. It was, indeed, cheaper than the $2.38 I was paying before my bread went away for a revamp. It was also roughly 2/3 the size. The OLD sandwich loaf was 24oz and more slices since it was thinner cut. This little gem is 16oz and has fewer slices because it is no longer a sandwich-style loaf. It's also got the thick crust my kid won't touch with a ten-foot cafeteria spork.

A little math reveals that:

A) It is now more expensive per ounce, the package just has fewer ounces:
$1.59 / 16oz = 9.94 cents per ounce
$2.38 / 24oz= 9.92 cents per ounce

B) The ~~idiot~~ person who created their new shelf tags either lied on purpose or was dyslexic*, because there is no way that I can find that makes a 16oz loaf of bread that costs $1.59 work out to 6.63 cents per ounce. This math does work IF you keep the price and base it off the older, 24oz loaf size.

*I can totally say this --- my baby bro, the AwesomePenguin, is dyslexic, so I am not just making crap up here. It COULD happen.

I know, I know, it's just bread.

And I've watched in horror as coffee sellers have done the same thing for years now.

A coffee can from 1970 is the same size as the one I can buy today---but mine will have 3-5 fewer ounces in it than the one from when I was a kid.

This does not mean it is right. It also means I have to buy TWO loaves of bread for the week.

$3.18 vs $2.38

Somebody at HEB wanna step up and tell me just how that works out to a new lower price?

Yea, I didn't think so.

Someone Lost Her "Life" Last Night

2009-09-04T02:15:00.003-05:00

Wednesday I got the genius idea to sync my Google calendar, which I haven't really used since I went back to Outlook in May of 08 (because my stoopid smartphone wouldn't sync to my puter without it at the time), with said Outlook so I could keep track of everything. I synced my phone, first, as a test. Worked like a charm, woot!

Got home and, because the phone experiment went so well, synced it in a 2-way sync with my Outlook. Fine, sorta... Except for the bajillion duplicate listings on the Google cal that were defaulting to my old primary calendar on Google---which was used for business deadlines and color-coded accordingly.

I started sorting them today and got impatient with how long it was taking. I thought hey, Google has it all. I'll 1-way sync to the puter then clear out Google so I can change my primary calendar, then 1-way sync it back from puter to big G. A sound plan, right?

Yea, I've blocked out the deets, but basically I managed to wipe both calendars.

But I hadn't synced my phone since yesterday, so I still had a lot of stuff there, at least since May 08. I'd just sync the phone BACK to Google to restore it and give up on the Outlook calendar since it's too hard to share... Yea, not so much.

The sync wiped my phone calendar, too.

Now I have no past for, oh, the last five years or so of my life...

No big, theoretically... Have to reprogram birthdays and J's funky school schedule, a PITA but not the end of the world, right?

Not for me. I measure time by events rather than the calendar itself. Without a record of those events I lose time. Essentially I lose memories. Pre-electronic calendars I kept paper datebooks, and I have these in the house going back to high school. (Should I mention my 20th reunion is coming up soon?)

I flip through those things and remember little precious moments I would otherwise forget:

The first time we left J's older sister with a sitter.
The day of J's first day of Kinder.
The anniversary of joining my mom's group--where I've made the best, and first, real friends of my adult life...

It could get to be a ridiculously long list if I let it. All gone.

The only reason I haven't torn out my (rapidly greying) hair yet is that I am slow to move forward. Meaning that I haven't gotten around to wiping the hard disk of the old laptop I replaced in February of this year. Meaning that the Outlook on that one still has most of the last five years of personal & professional milestones.

Google is wiped clean, and since I took tomorrow off I can spend the day syncing Google to the old laptop and fill in the blanks from there.

And Outlook's calendar function can friggin' bite me.

I Know It's Free, but...

2009-09-01T06:59:00.007-05:00

Today's rant topic was up in the air til I got a paperback swap request that inspired me.

Here's the deal: Paperback Swap let's you list your unwanted books. If someone wants it, you mail it to them, paying the postage yourself, and you get a credit to use to order a book you may want from someone else. So, for the cost of postage at (usually) media mail rates--guaranteed to be cheaper than all but the most baseline clearance books at Half Price--you get a book you want to read without paying $5.99+ for it. Pretty sweet, right?

Not sweet enough for some people. I am, frankly, thoroughly tired of people who want me to send them something for free but have a laundry list of conditions the item must meet. Things I've seen people bring up in PB Swap conditions include:

"I don't accept hardback books without dustjackets." Really? That's too bad---you are very unlikely to ever get to read a book you want from my collection. Dust jackets annoy the crap out of me and 9 out of 10 of them that enter this house on a book I own get recycled. I'm interested in that's between the covers, not what's decorating them.
I am not willing to accept books that have been withdrawen from libraries" Pet peeve #1 - Do Not Look a Free Book in the Dustjacket and spit on it! #2 - everyone you request a book from will receive a copy of your conditions---take the time to spell your ridiculous demands properly people! #3 - If it's good enough for the library, why isn't it good enough for you? I ~never~ order anything from paperback swap with the thought of adding it to my permanent collection in mind. Why not? Because I never know what I'm gonna get. If I get something I want to add and it happens to be in good shape, yay me! If it's not, I'll read it and pass it on and pay for a permanent collection copy.
"Books with a strong moldy smell." Yea, cuz I post those a lot. If you have legitimate allergen issues (I always warn people who mention allergy issues that I have had cats near my books in case it is a problem) that's one thing, but statements like the above are just being b1tchy. Even more so since all of these gems came from a SINGLE person.

And I'm sure it will not come as a surprise to anyone that I rarely mail books to people like this. I've learned the hard way that demanding types like the one described above are almost never happy with what they receive (again, for FREE) and I've had one go so far as to deny credit for the book received.

Play nice with the rest of us, people, or take your unwanted books and go somewhere else! I'm sick of you, you paperback primadonnas!

Yes, I am probably overreacting, but I'm crabby and this person's poorly spelled laundry list of book issues just lit my fuse.

Drama o' the Week

2009-08-28T10:58:00.007-05:00

Is it just me or is it starting to feel like a serial radio drama (boy am I showing my age or What?!) around here...

"Tune in for this week's Drama with Dynila!"

My week started out quietly enough. Monday was ~so~ exciting I went home at lunch to do some laundry. Yea, well...

I left my cell in the car to charge while I was living the high life with laundry soap. As I was pulling out of the neighborhood my phone rang---apparently it had been ringing for most of the 30-40 minutes I was in the house.

I use my cell for the freelance biz so I don't flip out when I see an unfamiliar number. It was Raidman's boss. *ooh boy*

Calling to tell me he was at ER with my husband. By the time I got to the hospital--fortunately only about 12 minutes from my house, traffic willing--I'd emailed my office mate, called my bosses, my backup at work, a friend to pick up J from school, the school to let them know who would be picking her up and the daycare to tell them not to expect her. It was a busy twelve minutes!

3 hours later... All the tests look good (he was there for chest pain... I'm pretty sure when the last of the dark dye from July is gone I'm gonna be white-haired due to stress!) but they want to keep him overnight and poke and prod him some more. Poor Raidman--I think there was even a treadmill involved...

Leave the hospital @ 6pm, run home to pack him an overnight bag, out to pick up the kid and dinner for the hubs and I, and BACK to the hospital for dinner, homework, and a family game of Yatzee (yes, we are THAT cool!) Then home to get the girl showered and in bed. Call the hospital to check on the man, then, finally, asleep around 130am cuz I was still coming off the adrenaline high of, "I brought him to the hospital because he was having chest pains...." and the follow-up call from the nurse while I was retrieving the girl, "Is this the wife of xxxx?"

Hint to hospital nurses: If you HAVE to ask someone that, the next words out of your mouth ~really~ need to be, "He's fine." then you can ask your stupid medication questions!

Moving on...

More tests, more blood taken, more tests, and lots of waiting in-between, and: He's fine. Heart looks great, heart function is rocking it. Apparently the chest wall muscle is inflamed, which caused (and is still causing, truthfully) the pain.

Net result: Take 2 super-powered prescription anti-inflammatory pills a day and show up for your regular physical in 3 weeks.

W H E W !

Progress and the Lack Thereof

2009-08-23T22:49:00.000-05:00

First, to get it out of the way...

YARN STUFF:

The shopping bag is an awful, hideous, unmitigated disaster.

I'm still debating (a) whether or not to take pictures before I make it disappear, and (b) if it will simply 'disappear' or if I'm going to take the time to unravel it and retrieve my 5-6 balls of $2/ball cotton yarn.

I have, until this point, worked pretty much with solid cloth projects like scarves and blankets with the occasional open piece, but the open work was always very structured. The open work of the bag is...less structured. Too much so for me, as it turns out. My 15in bag is almost as tall as my 8yo. Yea, it's that bad.

I also frogged the Circulos this week. It was starting to show signs of the same affliction as the bag and well, that's expensive yarn. I decided to save it before I got so far that I couldn't undo it. That yarn just fuzzy enough to make pulling it apart a biotch and I ended up losing about 2 rows at the end due to tangles.

The net result of all this undoing?

A - Going back to what I do best & making a scarf for a pal who lives in a state where such things are necessities (*waves at Lanel*)

B - The last two weeks of wasted effort have really brought home to me the importance of something I've been avoiding dealing with: G a u g e.

It's time for me to make some dang gauge swatches. And do some research on maintaining an even tension. I can eyeball about half of my pieces and spot at least one place where I stopped work and came back later.

How? The tension obviously changed and the stitches are a slightly different size/shape.

Oh, and I picked up some yarn for a specific holiday project and a new crochet mag while at the hobby store with the girl :-)

WRITING

Started my writing group on the 15th. The first session was a bit rough and we cut it short but did get some writing done so it was not a total loss.

This week (the 22nd) was much better! We wrote a lot, got a lot done and, even more importantly from my perspective, I got a couple of short pieces (fiction even!) that I want to revisit and expand. One for sure, maybe two.

We are looking at moving to Wednesday nights so that we can add a couple more people (who can't do Saturday mornings) to the insanity. It will give us a nice mix, too. A children's writer, me--mostly a copywriter and a bit o' fiction, a humor and business writer maybe even a spiritual writer/blogger if I can talk her into it.

OTHER STUFF

Heh. The life and times of Dynila are a bit more than the usual level of insanity just now (which explains the awesomely optimistic last two posts...lol). I'm taking it a easy right now, sticking to the house for the most part, and trying to find some sanctuary and peace of mind. So if I come across as a bit antisocial right now, well, I am :-)

More later, mmmkay?

Just the Chorus :-)

2009-08-20T15:35:00.000-05:00

Today's theme song.

My Day So Far

2009-08-13T08:17:00.002-05:00

Today's theme song is Meatloaf's "Life is a Lemon and I Want My Money Back."

Enjoy!

Circulos in Apricot

2009-08-11T23:03:00.004-05:00

Yarn-haters, save your time and skip this one--it's all about my nummy new project.

Since I finished the wavelength I decided to reload the handy project jar with another (hopefully, as I just realized I am using the wrong yarn) one-skein wonder port-a-project.

Kim Guzman's Circulos Scarf.

Mine is working up in Jagger Spun's Zephyr Merino-Silk blend in Apricot. I was super excited when I bought the pattern last year because I ~thought~ I had the perfect yarn. Yes, I already had the yarn. It was a love-the-feel-love-the-color-gotta-have-it impulse buy from my fave LYS.

I'm pretty excited about this project. It's an intermediate project and this is the third time I've started it. I'm 8 rows in so far (of an estimated 50-58) and this is the first time it has looked mostly like the picture. I think my stitches are still too loose, but I'm calling it my interpretation of the pattern and letting it ride.

I am proud of myself that I can do something, so far, that I was thoroughly unable to do a year ago. It's also something I taught myself to do, out of sheer determination (and frustration at not being to make more advanced projects because my technique was ALL wrong!)

Taking up crochet again (I learned in 7th grade home ec... how old does that make me?!) has taught me patience. It has taught me to forgive myself. It's taught me to laugh at my mistakes.

Since I write and edit and type all day, it also lets me explore my color sense in a physical way. I never realized how satisfying hand-crafting could be---even if it means I will eventually die with the world's largest collection of home-made scarves!

As a nice side benefit, hands full of hooks and yarn cannot be filled with snacks and munchies while watching tv. This has yet to have a visible effect on my waistline, but hope springs eternal!

PS - Lanel: What colors, how long/wide do you like, and are you allergic to any artificial or natural fibers I need to know about?

Volare, Vino, Finito!

2009-08-10T23:54:00.005-05:00

DISCLAIMER: Justin, honey, we stomped grapes. There is a possibility I might not have cropped the feet out of all the pictures. You've been warned--scroll at your own risk!

Brenham, Texas is not exactly a resort town. It is purty, and it is home to the original Blue Bell creamery, which, by the way, is not open on weekends in the high ice cream season of Summer, but not exactly what most people would call a destination.

However, if you like flowers, in particular antique roses, native plants, or hardy specimens that can handle the Texas heat, you can swing 15 miles north of Brenham to the Antique Rose Emporium nursery in Independence, Texas.

On our way back to town, after sweating like draft horses (like this fake one overlooking town) at the nursery we got a tad lost. This turned out to be a very good thing since we found (a) antique alley a couple blocks off main, but did not have the time or the heat tolerance to explore it and (b) Volare Italian Restaurant.

Click the link and look at their menu kids!

OMG the food was soooo good! The artichoke & shrimp fondue was to kill for, rich, creamy, and they did NOT skimp on the shrimp. My entree was super nummy (even cold out of the hotel room fridge the next morning it was delish!) though Ma seemed less impressed with her veal piccata.

The sauces were amazing and it was pretty obvious from the taste that they make their own in-house. Theirs was probably the best marinara I've ever had; light, tomato-y, and fragrant with basil and thyme, but not overpowered by it and not at all heavy or pasty.

The deserts... Oh! Ma had tiramisu that was so gorgeous I was almost tempted to steal a bite. And I can't stand tiramisu! I had the creme brulee. This was a first for me and it was yummy! The sugar shell was a beautiful tawny golden brown and crunched just the way (I'm told) it's supposed to. The pudding or creme or whatever it's called (not a food blogger, remember!) was a little soft for me, and a bit bland on it's own, like thickened cream pudding. Add a little of the sugar shell, though, and it was magically transformed. I'm pretty sure the sugar was infused with a lemon somehow--it gave the sweet cream pudding a light, airy citrus flavor--not strong or tangy, just wonderful!

Can you tell that I like to eat? lol..

The rest of the day, both before and after dinner was spent lounging by/in the pool with margaritas masquerading as Sonic slushies ;-) I worked on my scarf a bit while Ma and I played this, then got a solid 8hrs of sleep---something that hasn't happened in weeks. Go me!

Vino...

Yesterday we dawdled at the hotel reading and doing our nails, til it was time to check out of the hotel & head to the winery.

We got there a little early and decided to do our tour and tasting first, then stomp some fruit of the vine. The tour was a little disappointing--they winery got a HUGE (14 bins) for them load of wine grapes from an area grower the day before and we were unable to go into the cellar due to a fume issue---they aired out and later tours got to peek in, I think.

On the plus side, I did get to learn the difference between a vineyard and a winery. Being a vino noob, the fact that there was a difference was news to me!

We tasted 4 wines and paid a little extra to satisfy my curiousity and taste a couple of ports. I confirmed my dislike for strong reds, particularly oak barrel reds. I tried a red/white blend that was aged in stainless and found it to be much smoother. I think I just don't like that tannin tang. The portsn were alright with the delish local artisan chocolates they served them with, but not really to my taste. The flavor was super stout, and definitely for small sips only. On the plus side, the port samples were larger than the wine tastings and, at 19.4% alcohol w/ no breakfast, pretty damn good by the time we got to the bottom of our glasses.

(Brought home two bottles of the Blanc DuBois, too--by far my fave from the tasting, though the Collina Rossa was pleasant, too.)

Buzzing a tad, we headed out to get grapey.

This is where we found out we had to PICK the grapes before we could stomp them.

The hike down the hill in the humidity (it rained in Brenham this weekend!) the fighting off wasps, bees, and fire ants, and trek back up said hill pretty much took care of the slight tasting buzz. Oh well. Now comes the fun part.

Finito!

Found myself with a lot of time on my hands again today and I... finshed the wavelength scarf! Go me! It's done, the ends are woven in, and it now just needs washing and blocking. It was a perfect one-skein project--love that there were only TWO ends to weave in! I ended up with a whopping 3 yards of lace merino left that will probably go into the scraft box for the kiddo.

Below, my unblocked masterpiece:

Over & Out

2009-08-08T10:56:00.006-05:00

My mom hit one of those round number birthdays this week. To celebrate we are off to a small Texas vineyard that puts their unusable season end grapes to profitable use by letting people pay to come stand in buckets and stomp them ala Lucy's Italian Movie. I hear the town where the vineyard is has some sorta firefighter celebration this weekend (eye candy!) so this should be fun.

Which means I will be away for a bit--the hotel has wi-fi and I could take my computer, but I'd rather hang out with my mom--sorry blogiverse.

J had friends over last night -- wanted to give their mom a little relief after a rough day plus she has my kid like ~all the freaking time~. I had big plans to work on a book I need to lay out (yes, I'm still freelancing in fits & starts) while the kids were holed up in J's room doing mysterious small person things (please not another ceiling fan swing!)

*sigh* What actually happened is that we took the kids to dinner, came home and they holed up in her room as planned. Then I sat on the couch and watched Raidman play Rock Band 2 til about 1230am and watched some "Castle" on the dvr til almost 3.

Crocheting all the while! I finished the first large panel of my shopping bag. It went from 13 rows to complete at 42 rows. I even got 4 rows done on the 2nd large side before calling it a night.

Also got a full row & change completed on the wavelength scarf yesterday (kind of a slow afternoon at the day job). It is in its jar in the trunk of the Bug to take to the hotel and work on tonight--the shopping bag requires too much in the way of extra supplies (more yarn, stitch markers, etc) and the scarf is all neatly packaged.

I lurve my project jar!

(sorry for the crummy phone pic)

Book club tomorrow night so I don't see myself back at a computer til Monday sometime, but I'm fairly certain you will all survive without me. Somehow.

Progress!

2009-08-06T23:01:00.006-05:00

(non-yarn content, too, this post -- scroll for it baby!)

Pics later, I promise, gotta get 'em off my phone!

I had to choose between yarn & blogging yesterday since my regular afternoon/evening routine was interrupted by doctor's appointments and grandparents in town.

The yarn won. I got another 8 rows on the new shopping bag's 1st panel.

Not much, I know, but learning a new stitch pattern on a project like this is always slow going. I have no idea how long I crocheted yesterday, but it was long enough to watch 2 more episodes of "Heroes" on the DVR with the commercials skipped (sorry NBC!)

Today I finally got to work on my scarf again! I haven't touched it in months, so that was nice. It's a very small yarn/hook though, and a very long scarf, so got a few inches done in the 15min I had on break at work, but that's all.

Also managed to get another 3 rows on the shopping bag ("Burn Notice" on the DVR, lol) tonight, so pretty sure I made my 20min for the day. Woohoo!

AND NOW FOR MY NON-YARNALICIOUS NATTERING:

I was part of a small writing group a few years ago that met at a restaurant in Hyde Park that was so danged crunchy I couldn't even get coffee there (FAIL!).

I quit going for a while due to family stuff (it was 2hrs on a Saturday morning) and when I went back about 4months later, they were GONE. A little digging on the Writer's League of Texas website tells me the group apparently called themselves, "15 minutes of fame" and had a Yahoo! Group and other stuff I had no clue about. They moved to BookPeople (i.e. even ~further~ into Austin!) and now appear to be defunct.

What I liked about this group was the format. I don't currently have any writing goals other than to do MORE of it. I have no target market, nothing I want critiqued, etc. The group was very freeform, loosely based on Natalie Goldberg's, "Writing Down the Bones". Met for 2 hours, socialized a little, then did 10-15min sprints based on prompts suggested at random by everyone, then read aloud.

You ~could~ bring a WIP and read from it, instead, if you wanted an opinion, but writing was supposed to be done with the prompts each time. It was a refresher, a mind and word expander for 2 hours a week. I wrote a lot of dreck. I got stumped and wrote nonsense sometimes, but by golly I WROTE.

I also wrote the only piece of fiction I've ever sold at one of these Saturday morning sections. It was flash fiction and sold to a now-defunct webzine, but, by george, someone paid me ($10--woohoo!) for my fiction.

I'm trying to start something similar with Jenn.

Something closer to home, so my precious escape-from-the-house time isn't mostly spent driving downtown. Something with no heavy expectations of me, particularly since I am living in the land of the dayjob these days.

Jenn wants something with a structured (at least a little) critique format so she can work on stuff to submit to publishers.

We're working now to establish a happy medium, most likely still based on "Writing Down the Bones" (gawd I love that book!). Will let you know when we figure it all out and will put out a call for other interested writers once we have something firmed up.

In other news: I'm going to be a grape stomper!

I'm taking my mom to a small vineyard this weekend for her birthday so we can channel some Lucy & Ethel and gets our feet purple. There will be photographic evidence of this expedition (it's included in the package) but there are no guarantees I'll share the pics.

New Project!

2009-08-04T23:57:00.002-05:00

In an effort to actually MAKE my goal of coming into hands-on contact with my yarn every day this month (ha!) I took my scarf project in it's little canister up to work today to work on in my off moments. Then ended up running to the grocery store for the fam over lunch and not having any free moments.

I got home and stared at my afghan. I'm using a way oversized hook for the yarn, so it's pretty airy, but still heavier than I want on my lap when it's our 45th day this year of 100+ degree temps.

With this in mind, I decided to start something new. Really new. Up til now everything I've done has been pretty simple--scarves and super simple afghans. This is pretty darn simple, too, but still a new thing for me.

I'm making a shopping bag to keep in the car--I seem to always forget to have a bag on me when I go to the library and always manage to leave with more books than I stopped to drop off. I'm working on this absolutely adorable bag from CrochetKitten.com, the Shopaholics Shopper.

I went with Lily's Sugar 'n Cream because (again!) I got a bunch on clearance this Spring when Hobby Lobby reset their yarn aisle. My main color is sage green with the citrus fruits ombre for the trim (& possibly the bottom since I have 4 balls of the green and 2 1/2 of the ombre).

I DID start this tonight while watching old Heroes on the DVR (5 more eps & I'll be caught up!) and got four rows in. Then had to frog the last two because I realized at the end of row 4 that I'd frelled the beginning of row 3 and it was just ~wrong~.

But I touched yarn! I even managed to start making something with it! Woohoo!

Bought Me Book

2009-08-03T22:42:00.003-05:00

Well, it's 1043pm and, once again, I have yet to lay hands on yarn today.

I found myself having to choose after work between going to the grocery store or going to the book store. The book store won and let me tell you, I heard about the lack of milk in house when I got home. The things I do for this blog!

I brought home a copy of Easy Beaded Crochet. I saw it Saturday when I was shopping for small people birthday gifts (for the uber fun pool party Saturday night) and books for my reluctant reader and talked myself out of buying a book for me. All the purty lampwork beads yesterday made me rethink that decision. So at least I got a fiberrific book.

There's a scarf in there, supposedly 20's inspired, that I want to try. The yarn in the book is green, but I have something of a similar weight/feel in a sweet pale mulberry color that I got for an even sweeter price at the discount shop last year. I just need to check my arts and crafts stash for some beads.

I'm a little concerned that the beads will misshape the scarf, and the directions in the book even indicate that this is a strong possibility. That's the clearest part of the directions, sadly. The directions in this book are extraordinarily brief. I'm almost sure I can figure it out, but the sparseness is a but intimidating.

I still have an hour (yes, Candy, I spent 20min on a blog post, what can I say, I'm slow and friggin' verbose) so Imma go grab some yarn... :-)

Salado Art Fair Round-Up

2009-08-02T23:59:00.001-05:00

I went with my mom and aunt to the 43rd Annual Salado Art Fair this afternoon after helping a friend do a little moving (okay, a LOT of moving, but I was only able to help with a little due to prior plans above).

Sweat ungodly amounts in the nicely overcast, cooler-but-so-humid-it-didn't-matter Texas sunshine. Quick rundown because I'm exhausted, STILL need a shower, and it's already after midnight and I gotta be at work @ 8:30am.

Artists:

These ladies had original oils on display that TOTALLY would have come home with me, if I had several thousand dollars of disposable income. My faves are not in the galleries on either of their websites, but I'll be watching them and looking for prints down the line. The websites, sadly, do NOT do justice to their paintings:

Jeanie Yu Wyatt and Natasha Mylius

Yummies:

Lorena Martinez's Austin Gourmet Foods : Taste-tested her spinach, garlic, and herb fettucine and it was to-kill-for yummy. Plus whole-grain organic, so not too shabby. I know my kids (that is, Raidman and the girlchild) wouldn't touch the stuff, though, so I brought home a couple smaller packages of her zucchini pasta (sadly discontinued as an unpopular flavor) just for me! All Mine! Muahahaha!

Anyway.

There were a lot of glass artists who work with dichroic and lampwork beads at the show, but my fave by far, was this lady. Her website is sparse, but she does shows most weeks here in town so I can go look over her stuff whenever I want. :)

Speaking of sparse websites, I wonder if AGF would be willing to trade web copy for organic pasta... Hmmm...

Saved my favorite for last: The Literati Bookmark. I could go on and on about how much I love this thing (not to mention how many I bought!) but I did that earlier today on my book blog, here.

I was really disappointed that there were no fiber artists (yarn geeks to you unbelievers) at the show. :-(

I did get some wicked pretty pics of the trees in Salado creek when the three of us waded into it to cool off--apparently a traditional part of attending this event for my mom and aunt. Will try to post later this week.

Managed to blow my 31-days of fiber already. Today was yarnless, but lots of art!

Partial credit, maybe?

I did get a few inspirational ideas. All that gorgeous lampwork has motivated me to head back over to Half Price books and pick up the beginner's crochet-with-beads book I saw there yesterday--will try to do that over lunch tomorrow.

Fiber is Fun!

2009-08-01T12:27:00.004-05:00

Okay, if you are one of my many non-fiber/yarn obsessed friends, feel free to go away. For, like, a month. I've decided to take part in Fiber 'Tudes Daily Dose of Fiber 31-Day Challenge.

Why?

I've been neglecting my yarn lately. I've added to my stash, a bit fanatically, but not only am I not doing anything with it, I recently (last weekend, while cleaning my ~~lair~~ office) frogged* a bunch of WIPs that I decided were not what I wanted them to be. So I have all this yarn, all these patterns, and I'm not doing anything with them.

*FTR, I'm a crocheter, not a knitter, but we don't have a special word for this in crochet so I borrowed the knitting term. The Fiber 'Tudes gals are knitters, but I hope they won't mind me hooking along this month.

Oh, and the holidays are coming and I'm feeling the need to inflict homemade gifts on everyone I love again, haven't done it in a year or so.

Current WIPs (that were not taken apart for their yarn) are an afghan for my aunt, and a fancy scarf for me.

The afghan is a super simple ripple variant mostly Simply Soft with a little fancy stuff I got on clearance thrown in every 5 rows or so.

The Wavelength scarf, well, if I ever manage to finish it and get it blocked (I ~need~ to stop stalling and get some foam mats for blocking projects) it will be fantabulous. The pattern is here and the yarn I chose, inspired by the pattern's name, is Ella Rae's lace merino in color 106 (the teals).

Pics of WIPs later, gotta get the girl ready for a late afternoon swim party :-S

The Girl (Detective) Has Gotta Go!

2009-07-31T23:56:00.002-05:00

I am a book fiend! There are books all over our house and if you ever look at the sidebar you'll see I'm usually barreling through 3 or 4 at any given time. My girl, on the other hand, is a reluctant reader. Not the classic definition of such though--when pressed she reads a full grade-level plus ahead of where she is in school. It's the pressing part that's the problem.

She'll occasionally pick up a book and read for pleasure, but the times are few and far between. When she does it's usually something digestible in short bites (kid's magazines), something way below her reading level (Dr. Seuss), or something that is all pictures with bite-size chunks of text (graphic novels or the Dorling-Kindersley nonfiction books).

These are all good, legitimate choices that have their time and place. That place, unfortunately, is not homework reading. She's in a charter school and last year in 2nd grade most of their assigned reading was done in class. She still had to read 20min a day at home--which she fought us hard on. Since the checklist from the teacher only had signature boxes for Mon-Fri she refused to read most weekends. Homework reading, though needs to be up to her level, i.e. chapter books; books that put the pictures in her head, not on the page.

She started school this past week and the homework battle began in earnest on Wednesday night. She CAN read longer works, she just doesn't want to put forth the effort and has yet to meet a skill-appropriate book that made her WANT to read. In desperation I spent my lunch hour yesterday consulting the children's librarian at my favorite library branch. I grabbed some of ~everything~ she suggested I try and several things she didn't and carted them home.

One of the suggestions was, unsurprisingly, graphic novels, which I enjoy, her dad loves, and I've reluctantly given her in an effort to get her to read ~something~. I grabbed this one:

because, like many of us, I grew up with the spunky girl detective--funny how the idea of a female character named "George" is no longer the oddity it was when I was young... Gawd I'm easily distracted.

As much as I love the original Nancy Drew, the books are a bit dated these days, even by my standards. Jay wouldn't even understand what a lot of the things ~are~ because the references are so out of date. This seemed like a good way to introduce her to a favorite character from my childhood.

While she was showing off the bounty of books I brought her to her dad, I started flipping through the above to see how badly the girl detective was mutilated. It was a bit vapid and shallow (sadly, this is somewhat expected in books aimed at girls these days) but basically harmless. I was going to put it back in her stack when I saw this:

Oh hell no. I showed it to Raidman and even he was annoyed by it, "you are father, eh?"

I tossed that sucker back in my bag and took it out to the car to return to the library posthaste. As much time and effort as I know goes into lettering and inking graphic novels this is, to me, an unforgivable oversight.

That and my girl has trouble with apostrophes. For the last six months she's been creating plurals by adding " 's " to nouns. I think I've finally broken her of the habit, but it's taken months and this sort of thing will not help.

The girl detective had to go.

In case you're curious, she did pick a book and read it (mostly) willingly last night and tonight. Sadly, it was this.

Whee!

2009-07-25T12:55:00.005-05:00

J has a friend over, a little girl who spent the night last night.

I confess, this is one of my favorite of her friends.She has just as strong a personality as my girl and won't let J run everything. Also, she's more rambunctious than most of J's friends, and, frankly, I think my girl needs rambunctious 'cause heaven knows her Dad and I are anything but.

These two girls in combination create more mischief in 24-hours than my house sees all week most of the time, and I wouldn't have it any other way (so stop wigging Crystal! It's fine, really, I even like it!).

While walking by J's room earlier I decided to open the door ~~and assess the damage~~ to improve the upstairs air flow.

Imagine THIS:

Only where it has chains and chairs, there were scarves (shut UP Candy!). Where it has people there were small stuffed animals tied into the scarves. Where this has a big pillar and lots of mechanical stuff I don't understand in the slightest, the girls had the ceiling fan. Thankfully on LOW, but still.

I just stood there with my mouth hanging open for a couple minutes---then yelled the girl's whole name and instructions to come upstairs, "RIGHT NOW".

I ~wish~ I had taken a picture before I lost my temper and made the girl take everything apart.

"But mom... it wasn't ~my~ idea..."

Yea? So. If you take part in, or do nothing to stop, something that you KNOW will get you in trouble, it's your fault. Teaching the kiddo that she is responsible for making sure her friends know our house rules is proving to be one of the hardest lessons to teach her and I can't seem to figure out why. I didn't yell at J's friend. By the time it was cleaned up I was giggling about (and part of me was wondering why *I* never thought to try that!) it and running out to the den to tell her dad all the details.

Oh, and I confiscated all items used to create this in-room carnival ride except the fan--for a week.

PS --- For those of you who asked regarding this tweet from Thursday night:

Ignore the date, I always forget to reset the camera clock when I put in new batteries...

Yes, I really did paint the mirror in the girl's bathroom blue. I told her if she tries to tamper with it it will be repainted an opaque black. And if that doesn't work I'll just take it down.

I really, really, am tired of how much time she wastes staring at herself and posing in the mirror. If it was a new thing it'd be different, but she's been like this since she was 4.

On the plus side, she was dressed amazingly fast & had time to eat breakfast at the table on Friday morning.

Swing Ride image courtesy of Stock Exchange.

In Living Color aka why you should just pay the colorist and not pretend you can do it yourself at home

2009-07-10T07:40:00.012-05:00

Let me start by saying that I strongly suspected this was a bad idea when I started, and I did it anyway.

I have very, very dark brown hair. It is not black, but it is not any of those fun colors like golden or auburn. It's just brown. Really, really brown.

my natural color

In high school I wanted to be a redhead and took to coloring it myself. I even went so far as to upgrade to semi-pro products--Hello Sally Beauty Supply!--to get the lightening I wanted before covering it with red dye. This (bad!) habit carried on into my 20s. Which means when I met Raidman, I looked like this:

Yes, that's my other half, the cute one grinning on my shoulder. This picture* just doesn't do the color justice. I looked like a 20yo female version of Carrot Top with straight hair. And yet, he married me in spite of my insane (and badly dyed) hair color. That's L O V E people.

*There's one of those goofy Internet stories about how I acquired this picture, but I'll save it for another time.

I've been playing with funky hair colorants for a year or so now (blue, red, magenta, etc). All temporary because I'm a chicken. And disappointing. My hair is so dark most of them don't show up, or they're visible, but only to me because I'm looking for them.

About the only thing that does show up is the temporary hair makeup (think neon-colored mascara and you've got it about right).

Monday I hit on the ~brilliant~ notion (can you taste the sarcasm here?) to use a highlighting kit to lighten the hair I wanted to make funky colored. That way the color would show up. In my defense, this part of the plan was sound.

The part about me applying lovely streaky highlights that I could then Punky Color in a rainbow of shades as the mood hit me? Less sound. My recipe for disaster involved incredibly thick hair, an utter lack of hand-eye coordination, and the mistaken belief that anything that promised to lighten my hair could also be "demi/semi-permanent."

This is me fresh from washing the product out of my hair. I went to cry at Raidman about the result. He came after me while I was blowdrying it with the camera or you would NOT have this shot.

Actually, looking at it again, I think it looked better wet. Like all hair, it lightened as it dried. :-( Ligtened MORE I should say.

So my head looked like I'd spilled bleach on it. Crunchy looking orangey-yellow all over the place. Since I couldn't really afford to call in sick over a (granted, Extremely) bad hair day, I tried to fix it in the most non-damaging, non-permanent a way I could think of. Bring on the red mascara!

Yea, I tried to down the screaming yellow (think yellow lines on the highway here) with a red mascara wand. It kind of worked. I still looked like a bleach accident, but I looked like one with multi-tonal color. Enough to make it look like I mighta done this to myself on purpose.

Trust me, in Austin, that's all it takes. Living here, even the librarians didn't look at me funny when I was at the library Wednesday afternoon looking like this:

In my defense, this picture is a quite a bit warmer than the actual result. One of the things I lost in my computer switch in February was my photo-editing software, so you get what you get and you don't throw a fit. And no, I had NO idea how spotted that mirror was--the lighting is not all that good in there. For those of you who worry about such things, the mirror is now clean :-)

The moral of this story?

That $6.99 highlighting kit is probably going to cost you a LOT more than that. My stylist, Jennifer, will be telling me just how much more tomorrow afternoon at 1pm. New pics after, I promise.

I'd love to, but...

2009-07-05T17:10:00.003-05:00

I've been reading Jaden's Steamy Kitchen blog intermittently since my Stumble button sent me to THIS recipe a couple years ago. I still haven't tried it, but I made the peppercorn salt and Jaden was nice enough to respond to my comments (as a first time commenter on her blog) when I was trying to figure out if I'd bought the right ingredient at the Asian market.

Fast forward to last month when I finally figure out how a feed reader (Google reader) works and subscribe to the jillion blogs I've had bookmarked forever and never make time to check. I rediscovered Steamy Kitchen, along with Ree's Pioneer Woman site, Housewife Barbie (though Merritt's renamed this again since my last bookmark) and others. Heck, I even found some of them on Twitter (I am sucha twitter junkie!)

Then along comes THIS.

Jaden at Steamy Kitchen is a food blogger, yes, but she's also an all around food pro, with a food column in the Tampa paper, a cookbook author, and does cooking and food guest spots on TV. Sony contacted her about some special food blogger oriented pre-release events they are doing in LA for Julie & Julia this week and wanted to bring her out there to cover it. Jaden can't go, but is picking a guest blogger to do it for her and report back.

Gawd, I'd like to do this. Except I'm not really qualified.

I've only read Julie/Julia once or twice.
I've never read Julia Child
Heck, I don't even ~like~ Julia Child. The few times I saw her on TV when I was a kid she struck me as (a) nigh onto impossible to understand what she was saying and (b) incredibly snobbish.
Ummm... I can't cook and therefore wouldn't know how to ask an intelligent question on the subject at hand.

So I did what all underqualified and envious kids do---I forwarded the link to my mom. Who does know Julia (though she's not a huge fan, either, I don't think) and cooks. Well and often. Like I drive an hour each way JUST for the food at my mom's Christmas Party (I used to skip it til I tasted the leftovers one year--haven't missed one since!)

Good Luck Ma!

My Kid Rocks!

2009-07-03T15:49:00.009-05:00

Made a new CD for J this week, at her request. She picked all the music that went on it herself. Check out the playlist. My kid is just plain COOL. Though this will probably mean more therapy when she's older...

Whoop it up!

2009-07-01T06:53:00.004-05:00

I got to spend a whole day home alone with my girlchild on Monday. Just the two of us.

I swear I did my best to make up for the past 10 months of not being home to give her hugs in the afternoon, etc. We spent most of the day cuddling and doing craft projects--I started a new afghan for my aunt, she made a stepping stone to honor a family cat we had wander off and not come back in 2005. It was lovely.

I have my friend E and her totally cute kids to thank for this day of maternal contentment. Why?

Well, because her kids--unintentionally, and I know she feels bad about this--came to a huge group playdate with a cold that turned out to actually be pertussis (whooping cough). Woulda been awesome for the kids that DID pick it up if the pedi's office had called a little earlier in the day, but oh well.

Bright and squirrely Monday morning (at an hour when I'm not usually dressed!) I was bleary-eyed in my office (@ Mega Corporate America) emailing everyone that I would be out for the day. Take a lesson kids: These are the draconian measures you are forced to if you forget to put your boss' phone number in your cell!

9:20am - Well, 9:08 to be honest. I know it's hard to believe, but I/we were ~early~ for the doc appointment to explain the exposure situation and determine if they wanted to do a culture, etc.
They did not, since it turns out if she doesn't have any active symptoms (J did not) then they can't culture it anyway.

The girl is on UBER antibiotics for a week and the doc told me to take her home, wrote me a note for my boss, and promised if I took her to daycare on Tuesday I would ~not~ be irresponsibly passing on a contagious disease in a location that provides infant care.

Since I never came into contact with E's kids I got the all clear (woot! No Zithromax for me--have you SEEN the size of those pills?). My bud Candy didn't get as lucky -- her dh picked it up as did her niece who is visiting. Basically their whole house is quarantined and taking antibiotics for a week!

I started to go off on a tangent about vaccinations and whatnot, but I gotta go shower and go to work, so this is it for now. Probably a good thing. I'm the grandchild of a doctor, I like vaccs and don't really feel like having the anti-vaccination posse come try to change my mind.

Ka-runchy Mama

2009-06-21T00:42:00.001-05:00

Jenny Gniadecki, who I had the privilege of meeting at a VA industry conference a few years ago, recently asked, "How are you a crunchy mama?"

I started typing the reply below in her comment box, then realized I needed to just blog it.

Why?
(a) it was getting ridiculously long for a comment
(b) I need all the blog fodder I can find

I am a little crunchy, but not much.

--I've started seeking out hormone-free milk and eggs. I don't like the word games food labels play "No Artificial Hormones" means they can still add all the darn extra natural hormones they want to the food. So I'm going hormone-free on the two products most likely to have hormones added that we consume most heavily, particularly the girlchild.

--I recycle. A lot. Glass, plastic, paper, aluminum... I keep a bin on each floor, one in my office and one in the kitchen so no one has to walk too far to recycle stuff (probably since I know some members of our household will NOT walk far to recycle, lol).

I love this picture! It's somewhere in Europe and there are bins for (L-R)
Paper, Plastic, Glass, Metal, Organic Matter, and Batteries.
The ugly grey one on the end is for cigarette butts.

--I buy green dish soap for the dishwasher. Yes, not using the dishwasher would be greener, but that is just not going to happen. So I buy the soaps that promise a smaller impact when they wash down my drain.

--I buy many of our clothes at thrift and consignment stores. Well, Me & J's clothes anyway. Hers because I can't bring myself to spend $20 on a shirt she'll outgrow in 4 months and mine because I still have delusions of losing weight and it's okay to buy more fat clothes if they aren't new fat clothes. That and fat clothes are ridiculously more expensive for what amounts, often times, to less than a 1/2 yard of fabric more--totally unfair!

--I buy brown (unbleached) coffee filters. I know, it's a stretch, but I'm trying.

--I used cloth diapers with my kids. Not exclusively, cuz I couldn't handle carrying the leftovers around in public and hoping the ziploc didn't leak, but I did use 'em. The baby in the fam is 8 now, so this no longer applies.

In many ways I am ~less~ crunchy than I was when I was younger.

Sometimes this makes me sad, sometimes it makes me feel practical; depends on which side of the coin is up after the flip.

- I used to cut my hair and the kiddo's until the entire family begged me to stop. I'm being literal here--Raidman begged and my other relatives, in desperation, got me a decrepit 70's book called, "The Guide to Home Haircutting." If you're interested I have it on my paperback swap page, lol.

- I used to compost, then the rats moved in. I'm in the burbs near a cow pasture and it's an open compost pile cuz no one told me that open compost here is different than at my old house in the city proper where all we had was squirrels.

Weird, right? I'd have expected rats in town but it's been the other way round. Still have the pile, but won't go near it cuz of the rodents. This one, incidentally, still fills me with guilt. Composting is so simple anyone can do it, and I FAILED. And I hate throwing away food trash.

I was a bad composter, though, possibly the origin of my rat trouble. I figured compost was supposed to be an artificial duplicate of the rich loam and rot from a forest floor, right? Which will occasionally include dead animals, right? I was not too particular about making sure protein scraps/fats didn't go in the compost--baked potato skins with butter & sour cream debris? Sure! Why not!

THe ginormous colony of rodents that moved in under the shed immediately adjacent to the compost bin (another egregious error I realize in hindsight) is the visual aid answer to the, "Why not?" above.

- I use a pest control company. But, I use their organic product/service plan. Do I get, like, half credit?

-I use a clothes dryer. I have hung 3 different clotheslines in our backyard in the nine years we've lived in this house and every one has been a disappointment. The retractable one didn't, the plain one lost tension all the time, etc. Hanging large items like comforters over the open railing on the 2nd floor is more practical than any of the clothes lines I've tried. Sad really, I miss the smell of clothes dried outside.

Rain in Central Texas. Sorta

2009-06-20T15:45:00.004-05:00

Woo hoo!

I deleted an old blog last year, lock stock and barrel without backing up my old content in the midst of a personal crisis. I've since regretted the impulse, but it's too late now.

One of the things I thought I'd lost was a short video I shot of Raidman and J singing, "It's Raining Men." Wonder of wonders, I'd used Google Video to upload it and the GV account I'd forgotten I had still had the file. So, without further ado, the mighty duo does karaoke:

PS - Please don't tell him I put this back up. It's just too damn funny, though, and I was unable to resist. It's not my fault, really!

Brings Me Round Again

2009-06-19T07:16:00.004-05:00

My husband. He's funny and knows me pretty darn well. That's a good thing, since we celebrated the 14th anniversary of the beginning of the madness last week.

I was in my office being totally useless after the girl was in bed last night, round 10ish--hey, it's Summer, or will be this Sunday. I was randomly surfing--yea, okay, Stumbling--the Internet for writers' sites when I hear the new (to us) Singstar crank up downstairs. When the man isn't trying to hit the weird notes on Rock Band (read semi-falsetto too much of the time) he's got a pretty nice voice and I do like to listen to him sing. But I was ~not~ going to join him.

It's a Freudian thing. I'm totally blaming my mother.

My mom told me from puberty through last month (cuz I haven't sung around her since then) that I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket. Casting directors for any of a number of musical theatre productions from 5th - 12th grade concurred, though they were more polite about it, so I don't sing. Not in public and not around other people.

My one public karaoke experience involved so much alcohol that it was a miracle I managed to stay vertical. Two hours and lots of bad bar coffee to sober up after ONE song. Any wonder I skip this particular form of entertainment?

The ironic and cruel twist to all this is that I love to sing. I sing along with music I love for my own pleasure all the time because it makes me happy. (And I play the music loud enough I don't have to hear myself much!)

I was firmly boycotting the karaoke last night in favor of discovering new blogs to say I'm going to follow then fail to follow through on. So what does he do? He starts singing an Elton John song. Does he know me or what? I am such a sad little fangirl when it comes to Elton.

I tried to resist. I may be a little slow, but I know an obvious ploy for my attention when I ~~see~~ hear it. I'm weak. Before he got to the part in Rocketman where it goes, "I think's it's gonna be a long, long time..." over and over, I was downstairs singing along.

And there I stayed for the next two hours. Oh, and did I mention that the painters painted the front door late yesterday evening so we were unable to close it? Yea, I bet the neighbors loved that last night, especially when we dug out the 90s disk for a little "Baby Got Back*" action.

It's a silly little thing, but it tickled me. Incidents like this remind me why I married him and why, after 14 years and a lot more crap than any two people should ever have to endure, we're still HERE. He knows me well, my Raidman.

* FTR -- I may not be able to sing, but I can rap like a mofo when I want to and totally kicked his ass ;-)

Taking it Down a Notch

2009-05-31T11:50:00.003-05:00

I'm not a food blogger. Really, I'm not!

But... I had to work on the salsa today so I can take the leftovers to a family birthday party this afternoon. 4 jalapenos is normally not all that much, and turns out I had closer to 5 cups of salsa last night when dh got out of it long enough for me to tell.

I cannot figure out why this stuff is so damn hot. It's hot enough that Raidman, who is generally way tougher than me when it comes to spicy food, didn't eat much after it had been in the fridge for a while. And that was when it was fresh.

After a couple hours in the fridge it was Really Hot.

By the end of the evening last night it was making me cry, literally (I really did try to salsa my infections away--to no avail, sadly).

So today I added two more whole tomatoes, a can and a half of diced tomatoes (but the whole can was Mexi-style and may have actually added more peppers), a couple of rings off a large onion, and more lime and vinegar.

Now it's a tad sweet and just BARELY mild enough to eat without tearing up. I'd water it down more but my food processor isn't big enough and I'm out of 'maters. HALP?

Could garlic be contributing to the heat? I used a garlic minced so fine it was more like paste, but I've used it in other things without this problem. Okay, so I used four jalapenos. I usually use serranos, and about twice that many. Did I get mysteriously super-hot jals, or are we just wusses this weekend?

Dunno, but the birthday party I'm taking it to is for my lil bro and my aunt--both of whom consider themselves conossieurs of fiesty food, so Imma see what they say.

Yum! or Why My Husband Looks Afraid

2009-05-30T17:26:00.005-05:00

I am cooking.

This is something that normally makes Raidman look a bit green around the gills. Add to it the raging ear/sinus infection the doc told me I have and the impaired sense of taste/smell that gives me and you start to understand.

His eyes bugged out of his head a minute ago when I shoved a chip coated in thick green goo with tiny red dots at his mouth, but, because he IS a smart man, he ate it anyway. And survived. Then discovered he liked it!

Woot - my first time making homemade from scratch guacamole was a success. I'd share the recipe but (a) I am SO not a food blogger and (b) I didn't use one.

*It woulda been all the way scratch but I had some un-canned diced tomatoes in the fridge I needed to use up, so I used them instead of fresh.

The salsa was not as lucky. Apparently those with unimpaired olfactory organs can smell the garlic from the floor ABOVE the kitchen. RM came to my rescue and we saved it, but it was close for a while there.

And, ummm, it's really hot.

It was funny watching him take a big bite and start to grab another jalapeno to add to the batch--when suddenly the FOUR already in it hit him and his face turned fire engine red. Yes, four--in about 2c of salsa. I'm hoping to clear up my sinus infection with salsa therapy :-D

J has a pal sleeping over and we've got some of dh's work friends coming over for dinner and a little RockBand2 in about 30min, so I better go get rid of the evidence...I mean clean the kitchen.

Tuesday Tirade: Staycations Don't Work!

2009-05-26T06:56:00.010-05:00

I despise and revile the bastard pseudo word "staycation," but I understand its genesis. And I'm here to say it does NOT work.

I had the usual 3-day Memorial Day holiday--more sharply poignant this year after burying my grandfather with military honors in a national cemetery two weeks ago. More on the family drama that accompanied that event another time. I have to say, though, that the folks at the hotel were fantastic when we checked out and had to check back in 4 hours later after my dad collapsed at his dad's funeral.

J has been out of school for the last five days. In all fairness to the school, unlike most of the days mentioned in my previous post, this one was our fault. The small person had minor surgery on Thursday morning relating to complications arising from her lymphedema. It wasn't urgent, but needed to be done and we wanted to handle it before our vacation so she'd have a couple weeks to recover physically. I guess technically I was off that day, too, but I'm pretty sure spending half the day comforting an anxious child and the other half being her slave does NOT count.

Yes, I did sneak out for dinner with my mom posse, but not til I knew MY mom was on her way to rescue Raidman.

He, not incidentally, was sent home to be with his kiddo/family around mid afternoon Thursday and hasn't been into the office since. He DID work from home Thursday afternoon (ok, til about 2am Friday making up for lost time spent with aforementioned kiddo) and part of the day Friday, but he's been here for four and a half days.

All kinds of togetherness and time off, right? Stay home, chill out for the long weekend, return to the world rested and recovered... *snort*

Yea, not so much.

I spent my holiday weekend doing too many loads of laundry to count and loading, running, and unloading the dishwasher over and over again. The unloading, incidentally, is theoretically a J job.

I DID do a fair amount of lying about, finished two books, and got blisters from playing Rock Band 2 with the fam (I am the drummer for Hopelessly Outnumbered, lol). But I also did waay too damn many chores, and, if I'm honest, I'm a bit cranky 'cause I am the ONLY one who did so for 3 days.

Told Raidman when we go on vacation in June I'm going to do NOTHING except lounge about, read, and maybe go play in the sand or go fishing (yes, I like to fish) or something. Since we're staying at a rental not a hotel it probably won't happen, but a girl can dream...

Tuesday Tirade: Off Again!

2009-04-07T08:19:00.001-05:00

I've been busting my ass at housework (teh suck!) and not doing much else but the 8-5 gig and watching too much tv trying to get the number of shows on the DVR below half a hundred. What I'm saying is that, aside from being sleep deprived and not having/making time to write, I'm almost content just now. Which makes coming up with a Tirade harder. But, for you, my 2 readers, I'll do it!

I've gotten used to the weird schedule. I don't like it, hate it, in fact, a lot of the time, but I freely acknowledge that Raidman and I chose to put J in a charter school knowing it was on a semi-year-round type schedule and only 4 1/2 days a week. It, like housework, is teh suck, but we knew it going in.

What I ~don't~ understand is what all these extra weird-ass breaks during the school year are for. When I was kid you went to school five days a week except for Thanksgiving (Friday only), Christmas/Winter holiday (1-2 weeks) and Spring Break (1 week in March). Now, though?

The kids are off on Good Friday AND the Monday after Easter. My kid's school has a 2-week Spring Break, so she just went back last week and now she has a 4-day week this week and next week? WTF?! Still, charter school...

Except all the Austin-area school districts are doing the same damn thing!

Apparently they are unfamiliar with the concept of two-income families. Or are unfamiliar with the fact that many families, even with two incomes, can't pay for childcare at all.

Please, please stop screwing with the schedule. These out-of-the-blue holidays are a pain in the ass, and, if they happen to line up with an in-service day at the daycare, leave me screwed, as happened on MLK Day. Bosses have kids, too, but telling them you have to stay home because your kid is out of school and the daycare is closed doesn't really fly.

The school is ~always~ hitting us up for money. How's about not effing with the schedule so I can actually go to work and earn some to give ya, eh?

Like Julie & Julia... Only Not as Cool.

2009-04-05T12:45:00.009-05:00

A couple weeks ago I took my mom to see Elton John and Billy Joel (also awesome, but not as awesome as Elton!) in the dream concert event for a piano rock junkie like me: the Face to Face tour! This was the 3rd time we got to see EJ in the last 10-12 years and if I could figure out a way to afford it, I'd go ~~see~~ hear* him again at Caesar's before the Red Piano gig closes this month.

*Yes, hear. I am a music fan, and, as a rule kind of prefer NOT to know what the artists' look like (an old Journey video ~almost~ made me have to give up listening to them; Steve Perry's scary hair was THAT disturbing) so all my EJ tickets have been in the nose-bleed section, where no one cares if I get up and dance and sing along. But I digress...

I don't treat myself to things like concert tickets very often, so I tried to hold on to the experience as long as possible, loading up my iPod with Elton & Billy tunes and listening to it loud enough that my office mate threatened to kick me out.

That's what made me decide to pester dh into re-learning the piano. His mom taught him the rudiments when he was a kid, but he preferred guitar and bass and has been asking for a new guitar for a while now. He grumbled about the bad memories (forced piano lessons) I was dragging up, so on March 25th I made a new decision.

I am going to learn to play the piano!

Things like the fact that I am tone deaf (per my mom) and can't read music or tell one note from another will NOT deter me. I think the piano is by far the coolest instrument ever and love to listen to it, have since high school. And I want to learn to play it.

Of course, I am too cheap for a real piano and full-on lessons (don't you people watch the news, sheesh!) so I found myself an online lesson series and ordered a keyboard.

Lessons: I'm not revealing the source of this one til I see how it works out. Even if they totally suck, I only spent $40 so it won't break my heart or my wallet.

I'm trying to keep this new hobby/habit/bad idea on a pretty limited budget in case it turns out to be a disaster or I give up on it. I just paperback swapped $60 worth of books on OOAK doll-making/customizing--a hobby that sounded like a cool plan during my last pregnancy 8 1/2 years ago--and moved a couple hundred bucks worth of supplies for the same into J's giant craft supplies box, so losing interest is not outside the realm of possibility.

Keyboard: I ~so~ want a full 88-key real feeling keyboard, but those suckers are hugenormous and around $500. Since dh is musical I made him help me pick out a 61-key for starters online, then devoted an afternoon to Froogling to find the best price. What I ended up with was this, and this link is where I got it, too (no kickbacks, sadly, so it's safe to satisfy your curiousity).

Free shipping, so I think I did pretty good -- Spent $100 on a nice Yamaha (same brand as EJ's pianos...not that I went all fangirl and looked that fact up or anything) to learn on that will resell decently if I abandon it.

Book: I found a book (still no kickbacks... obviously I don't do this for the money, lol!) on learning piano for kids that had the best of the many different "how-to-read-music" explanations I've read lately. I shredded the dust cover, though, so now I can read it at work and no one will notice I'm 25yrs older than its target audience.

Extras: Last but not least and probably most expensive, I spent $60 at Fry's this weekend buying a stand for the keyboard--because it is as big as my dining room table and was taking up the whole thing--and a stool to go with. The latter is mostly to help me learn proper playing posture; after all, you never see people playing the piano while sitting in a wingback, ya know?

So far in the past two weeks I've managed to learn:

How to find the middle "c" on any keyboard, even a short one like mine.
That this is going to be a helluva lot harder than I thought.
How to get the keyboard back into the box so I could move it upstairs and invade the mancave.
Playing (with) said keyboard without the headphones late at night will get me in trouble with my husband and child :-D

Who knows what I'll learn next? Yea, me either. Since I have nothing else to blog about we'll see how many interwebbers are interested in the trials & tribs of a 36yo music novice with ADD learning to play the piano without formal instruction. This should be fun!

PS - Reading sheet music is frellin' HARD.

Review: McDonald's Coffee

2009-03-11T10:08:00.006-05:00

Raidman has been taking the small person to school in the morning since he went back to work. This has been awesome as we are all likelier to get where we need to be ~on time~ if I'm not making extra stops in the morning.

I am one of those people whose friends tell her to show up 15-30min before they actually want her there, so that she might actually be on time for a change. Yes, I know. Everyone hates people like that, me included, and I am working on it, honest! I'm just, uh, easily distra... ooh, a cloud!

See what I mean?

Anyway...One of his special treats to get her moving in the morning is to occasionally stop at McDonald's on the way to school for cinna... somethings (no clue what these things are called).

Well, J's morning chauffeur threw his back out yesterday; actually, he probably hurt it Monday but yesterday pain went from 3 to 8ish. Out of a desire for something more effective than Doan's and Tiger Balm, he is headed to the doc this morning and asked me to take the little one to school.

I am SO not a morning person.

I told her if she would get up, get dressed, and make her own lunch while I showered and dressed we'd hit Mickey D's. Yes, I checked the lunch to make sure it had decent nutritional value, I'm not a total loser mom.

We went to McD's and I grabbed a latte (sure there were/are 3 cups worth of coffee in the ginormous thermos in my purse, but, well, you can never have too much coffee!) which got me her cinna-thingys for free and grabbed the kid a hot cocoa (in Austin 43 & rainy is COLD ;-) That's when it got weird.

"Whole or nonfat milk" whoa. At a McDonald's?!

"Nonfat."

"Flavored syrup? We have vanilla, sugar free vanilla, caramel, and something-else-Dy-has-already-forgotten"

"Umm...SF Vanilla?"

Bizarre drive-thru experience. I guess that just shows that when I ~do~ go to the overpriced coffee places I always go in...

Even with free cinna thingys I spent almost $6 for a large latte and a small hot chocolate. Yea, I coulda had a Starbucks for that. I am not a SB pimp and don't think their coffee is ~all that~ , but it IS consistent. I can order something at any Starbucks and get coffee that tastes the same in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Temple, Conroe, Brenham, or any of the other locations I visit.

The vanilla was... overpowering. Sickly sweet, and I have a sweet tooth that has paid for several dentists' boats. Everything smelled overpoweringly strong. The cinnamon smell was overwhelming in my little bug, the hot cocoa smelled like a chocolate store, it was all just too much. (or maybe it's that I'm weaning myself off the wicked tobacky plant and CAN smell things now...?)

At any rate... The coffee was pretty strong; I had to add some Splenda when I got to work--the vanilla was sweet, but the coffee wasn't, if that makes sense... It was okay, but if I go back it will only be cuz I'm bribing the kid.

Oh, yea -- they do get kudos for knowing what I meant when I asked for a kid-temp on J's hot chocolate. Minuses for not actually giving us a kid temp hot cocoa, but at least the person inside wearing the head set knew what I wanted...

Overall, not bad, probably better if you aren't doing the diet version, but not stellar, and not an experience to repeat unless it's a choice between McDonald's coffee or scary gas station coffee...

Tuesday Tirade: This One's for the Girls

2009-03-10T09:35:00.000-05:00

(my apologies to Martina McBride for the blatant title theft)

(potty talk alert - sorry ya'll, there's simply no way to avoid it this week)

Yes, it's a gender specific gripe; it's allowed, since I'm railing against my own gender. Hell, it's allowed cuz this is ~my~ blog. :-)

I need to talk about hovering. You hoverers out there, you know who you are... Stop, please, just stop.

For the uninformed, a hoverer is a woman who is obsessed, to the point of paranoia, with the notion of germs on toilet seats in public restrooms. So obsessed that rather than sitting on the toilet she will "hover" over it in some bizarre semi-erect squat and attempt to pee in the bowl without touching the seat with any part of her body.

I gotta tell you: most hover-types have lousy aim.

So women-who-hover, I have to ask. WHY?

You can't get pregnant from sitting on a toilet seat.
Unless the skin of your backside is covered in open sores, you can't catch a disease by sitting on a toilet seat.
The most "eww" things on a toilet seat are deposited there by (you guessed it!) other hovering chicas.

Just sit your butt down ladies!

Failing that, clean up after yourself! If ~you~ don't want to clean up your own urine, why the hell do you think someone else wants to?!

And, and this should go without saying, but I'm going to go there anyway, if you are in the loo to make a more significant deposit, please, please, please, sit down!!!!!!

Bucket List

2009-03-08T16:05:00.002-05:00

My mom, dad, & aunt all send me these periodically in some sort of how-well-do-you-know-your-relatives round robin. This particular one had a few items on it I'd never seen before, so I actually filled it out and sent it back. Then decided to post it here cuz I'm desperate for blog material (the real reason blog memes were invented!)

I've accomplished 37 of 49 (though accomplished may not be the right word). Being the mother of a small person, I better not be watching my grandchildren sleep anytime soon. Being a happily married woman, the blind date thing is pretty unlikely. Being terrified of heights and all planes smaller than a 767 the whole pilot thing is pretty much out of the question, but those other 9 I'm missing? I might have to work on those...

If you wanna play, copy & paste the text and place an (x) by all the things you've done and remove the (x-or other indicator) from the ones you have not. Then send me a link in the comments.

(D) Been to Europe
() Been on a cruise
( ) Gone on a blind date
(D) Skipped school
(D) Watched someone die
( ) Been to Canada
(D) Been to Mexico
( ) Been to Florida
(D) Been on a plane
(D) Been lost (Physically, MENTALLY & SPIRITUALLY)
(D) Been on the opposite side of the country
(D) Gone to Washington , DC
(D) Been to Vegas
(D) Climbed a lighthouse
(D) Swam in the ocean
(D) Cried yourself to sleep
(D) Seen the Cherry Blossoms in Washington , D.C.
(D) Played cops and robber.
( ) Flown a plane
( ) Owned a boat
( ) Watched grandchildren grow
(D) Recently colored with crayons
( ) Been to the Kentucky Derby
( ) Been to Key West
(D) Been to a rodeo
(D) Rode in a limo
(D) Smelled puppy breath
(D) Sang Karaoke (group only)
(D) Paid for a meal with coins only?
(D) Done something you told yourself you wouldn't?
(D) Made prank phone calls.
(D) Laughed until some kind of beverage came out of your nose
(D) Caught a snowflake on your tongue
(D) Danced in the rain
(D) Written a letter to Santa Claus
(D) Been kissed under the mistletoe
(D) Watched the sunrise with someone
(D) Watched the sunset with someone
( )Gone scuba diving
(D) Gone on a picnic
( ) Seen the green flash at sunset.
(D) Blown bubbles
(D) Rode a horse
(D) Watched your child sleep
(D) Gone ice-skating
(D) Gone roller skating
(D) Gone to the movies
(D) Gone to a concert
( ) Owned a convertible

Anti-Theft Run Amok!

2009-03-03T09:09:00.000-06:00

I get that theft is an increasing problem in some types of stores, most notably drugstores. Maybe it's just most noticeable to me there because the draconian loss-prevention seems to have gotten really out of control at my local Walgreens. Well, since it has been that way at all the Walgreens' locations I've patronized in the last six months I suspect its an area-wide thing at least and possibly nationwide.

Drugstores sell a lot of relatively cheap merchandise, presumably with a narrow profit margin. That said, I am just about DONE with these stupid Walgreens! I bought hand lotion there a couple months ago for my desk and I am ~still~ trying to get the little foam sticky dot off the lid (it's a tube, it rests on its lid--the part I have to grab and touch every time I use it!) that was holding the lotion to the shelf in the store. Yes, the merchandise was damn near glued down. Irritating as hell, but I get it--I buy a little bit more expensive than average cream because of allergies and because it lasts me a long time. I assumed this level of ridiculous was being reserved for something a little more expensive, but not so pricy that it was locked up.

Wrong.

I bought a nail polish remover pen last week, one of those things for cleaning up your manicure in a hurry, right? It's packaged in plastic with the plastic glued to a cardboard backing, pretty standard stuff. I finally opened it last night and discovered that the bottom of the pen was glued to the bottom of th plastic overlay with that funky flexi-tac stuff (like they use to hold your ATM card to the letter they mail it to you on). I can't get it off. I got the pen off the plastic but cannot get that damned tacky stuff off the bottom of the pen. Meaning it will collect stray hair and piece of lint and random penny it touches in my purse for the next month (eww!) I assume this sticky bit is to keep people from sliding said pen out the bottom of the package without paying for it, but... Really? It's a $2.99 nail polish pen people! Get a grip.

Scratch that--loosen the grip a little would you? Before I have to go back to buying this stuff at the grocery store--where the packaging doesn't stick to me OR make me feel like a criminal just for picking it up!

Tuesday Tirade: Blinded by the Light(s)

2009-02-17T13:08:00.004-06:00

It's dark, it's cold, and you just want to get home.

You see lights ahead of you,..Suddenly, from around the bend in front of you, blinding light!

You can't see the road, you can't see anything, and you're pretty sure you must have missed the signs and drove onto the set of a Close Encounters of the Third Kind re-make.

Then you drive into the rock the road curves around and really DO see the light...
~~~~~~
Extreme? Not really, especially not for anyone who has driven in the Texas Hill Country at night.

I was googling for a pic or a reference for this post and all I was able to find are articles, primarily on auto insurance websites, touting the benefits of upgraded headlight bulbs. No one talks about the down side.

I am light sensitive and tend to wear sunglasses even on overcast days. Driving at night is easier for me because, generally, I see better. Until some dippo with super-bright blue or purple headlights pulls up just far enough behind me that their lights glare into my car via my side mirrors. Or a situation like the above with opposing traffic comes up. I've hated these damned things since they hit the market. Now that I no longer drive a SUV and most headlights are eye-level with me (see previous rant re: trucks and people who don't need them) it's worse.

Sure those lights improve visibility for the driver of the car equipped with them. That's awesome. That way they'll have a nice clear view of the compact car as it runs into them when the driver is blinded by said flippin' super-bright headlights.

Tuesday Tirade ... And Justice For None

2009-01-27T13:34:00.010-06:00

I had jury duty yesterday. I didn't want to go, but I did. I didn't meet any of the conditions for WHY they should excuse me, and, well, apparently getting people to show up for JD in Travis county is hard because they've started issuing arrest warrants for no-shows. So I went.

Don't get me wrong. I think jury duty is genuinely important, one of the responsibilities of liberty. It is one of the few opportunities for people who are not lawyers or politicians to be involved in the legal process in this country. I don't believe in summary judgment or that any one person has the right to determine the guilt or innocence of another--too easy to abuse such a system--think dictators and police states! The right to a trial by a jury of our peers is important. Or at least, it should be.

My father always says he would ask the court to decide were he ever in criminal trouble. I asked him why. He told me, "I don't want my fate in the hands of twelve people too stupid to get out of jury duty."

image shamelessly borrowed from potbust.com (one of the coolest I found googling "Justice images")

Yea, makes ya all warm and fuzzy inside, don't it?

It's sad, but that seems to be the attitude of many. In the weeks leading up to my jury duty I had people tell me all kinds of opinions about it. Things like (and I wish I was kidding):

Let people on welfare do jury duty, they're already getting paid by the state.
Lie and get out of it, that's what everyone else does.
What a waste of time!

Maybe it's the last vestige of the 8th-grader-who-wanted-to-be-a-lawyer-when-she-grew-up in me, but this response bugged the hell out of me. If I were wrongfully accused of a crime, I want a trial in front of intelligent, hard working people. The problem is intelligent hard-working people don't want to be on juries.

Let's address my number one reason for not wanting to go: If Mama don't go to work, Mama don't get paid.

In a short 2-4 day trial that is an inconvenience, for me, but not a tragedy--now that dh is working too. If mine were the only paycheck feeding the family it would be a different matter altogether. A long case, such as one that may involve the death penalty or life in prison, is a break in pay no one with a job can afford. I've always dreamed of working for one of those rare companies who understand that jury duty is a legal and moral obligation and not a get-out-of-work-free card and pays people while they are out. If more places did this, more responsible, intelligent, hard-working (emphasis on the working part) people would be willing to serve on juries.

I feel bad for the defendant in the case I came four people away from being on the jury for yesterday. The ADA told the jury pool that the jury would most likely come from the first three rows. By the time voir dire was over most of the first FIVE rows had been excused on a litany of thin reasons, like, (yes, someone said this!), "Well, it never happened to me, but my mother's best friend's sister's nephew had it happen to him and I just don't think I could be impartial in this case."

Maybe the decline in the justice system in America isn't all the lawyers' fault. Maybe, just maybe, it's our fault, too.

Good News!

2009-01-22T20:01:00.004-06:00

After just over 6 months of unemployment, which is apparently about average for geek gigs in the Austin area, dh has found a job! Woo hoo!

We're excited. I've never had his earning power in the traditional workforce and we knew we couldn't live on my income alone without eventually joining the many people caught in the mortgage crunch. (Though I did have some nifty plans for decorating our refrigerator box backburnered!) So relieved; both relieved and immensely thankful in this economy, do not even begin to approach how we are feeling right now.

I'm also excited because he sounds really psyched about the job. He thinks it will be interesting and challenging, things he'd been longing for at mega-evil-laid-off-my-husband-corp and it's good to see him excited.

Now I just have to plan for how to survive if this happens again (have I mentioned the awesome economy?) to either of us since we are a two job family now. Three, if we count my sad little freelance biz.

Now that the big worry is gone, time to move on to the little things:

getting the small one adjusted to our new normal, one that includes things like after-school and summer care and fewer playdates since mom isn't home to chauffeur her around and helping her be happy with it.
paying attention to my writing again. I'm taking the rest of January off, but for a newsletter gig, and then I want to try to build a new routine around the new, new life that will let me build my biz back up to the point that I can talk about coming home again (maybe) when my contract is up in late 2009.
make plans for some badly needed home repair projects that were put off in the face of no income
and, maybe, the Good lord willing, a v-a-c-a-t-i-o-n sometime this calendar year. We've been married 14 years and have never truly been on vacation together. Okay, fine there was ONE, but we're trying to put that week we shared a beach house in Galveston with my family and waaay too much beer (neither dh nor I drink beer--draw your own pictures for this story!) behind us.

I get that this really doesn't matter to anyone but me, but I just needed to express my relief and hopes and worries for the future. That is all. Move along InterWebs, nothing to see here.

Tuesday Tirade: Do Ya Really Need a Truck?

2009-01-20T02:38:00.006-06:00

I live in Texas. Home of trucks the size of egos, which is to say freakin' huge. I also live in ~urban~ Texas where such things are rarely more than some guy's ridiculously oversize compensatory device.

Yes, I said it.

If you live in town and drive a big truck--especially one jacked up even higher--women, or at least this woman, are going to think you are making up for some shortages south of the border, if ya know what I mean.

Even if you own a boat/trailer/off-road toy, most of the places you will drive to and park to use it are, ummm... paved.

The bulk of people who own these trucks ~never~ need a giant truck in their daily lives--my mother and brother both did this, so I know whereof I speak. My brother never used his truck (not jacked up--he lacked judgment, not taste) as anything other than point A to point B transportation. After a few years of feeding that sucker at the pump and paying the frequently higher-for-trucks insurance he traded in his truck for something still guy-like (the new Charger) but more practical in his daily life.

My mom? She ~loves~ her truck. And ends up helping everyone she knows move their furniture as a result. She also bought her truck when she was living out on an unpaved road and working at decidedly uncivilized construction sites--in other words, she actually needed a truck when she bought one. When she moved into town feeding it got tiresome and she bought herself a little VW that she uses for 90% of her driving.

You know why I really hate all these stupid urban trucks (and let's not even get me started on the Expeditions, Escalades, or, heaven forfend, the stupidest thing ever sold to people who don't need it, the frickin' Hummer!) though?

Because their owners seem to think that driving them gives them the right to be flaming nimrods on wheels, in parking lots, and pretty much anywhere else. You own a truck--it fits in one parking space, there is no good reason to spread it across three--especially somewhere that parking is already limited (like, oh, a school parking lot!)

Nothing pisses off a guy in a ginormous pickup as quick as me and my little Bug not being intimidated by him. Dude, I have friggin' awesome car insurance, a seat belt, and air bags--you don't scare me.

Petroleum is at a premium, exhaust is in excess--really, unless you have a career in a field that requires the blatant consumerism and (looking for another word for excess, gimme a sec) that is a Texas pickup, give it up and get a real car.

Tuesday Tirade: No Butts About It

2009-01-13T06:23:00.003-06:00

Woohoo! After a long hiatus to twiddle my thumbs & paint my nails, Tuesday Tirades are baaaack!

Today we're talking butts. No, not the one you sit, the ones you most likely walk on: cigarette butts.

I've been a smoker. Some of my good friends smoke. My parents have all, at one time or another, been smokers.

I don't want to talk about the health implications of tobacco use (it's bad for you, duh!) or the environmental impact of the tobacco industry (*shudder*) or even secondhand smoke. I just want to talk trash.

Smoking is not exactly the most publicly acceptable vice, and many places these days, especially in Austin, don't accommodate smokers. I happen to work someplace that does.

There are pretty color printed signs protected by plastic all down one side of the building that say "Designated Smoking Area." Said area is conveniently in a dead end that no one who does not want to suck nicotine has to walk through to enter or exit the building. Even with all the construction going on around my office they've made an effort to accommodate people's nic fits. There are several picnic tables, all of which are under cover--a rarity in Austin smoking areas.

And there are lots of trash cans. Three very large square bins, two of them the quaint kind with the sand pit in a tray on top--so people have a place to put out their smoke. So... Why the heck do I have to walk through a snowstorm of cigarette butts to exit and enter? How hard is it, really, to rub that puppy out and PUT IT IN THE TRASH!

I walked past a grounds guy one day between Thanksgiving and Christmas on my way into the office. He was on his hands and knees next to one of the previously mentioned trash cans, hand removing each and every butt people hadn't bothered to throw away. They litter the ground all around the smoking area, yet the giant ash trays are almost always empty.

What is wrong with you smokers? Have you just gotten so used to tossing your trash (which incidentally stays in landfills a really long time and requires the deaths of a heckuva lot of trees each year to make the paper that's wrapped around the tobacco) where ever you happen to be when you finish your cigarette that even when you have a place to toss it, you can't be bothered?

This is Hard

2009-01-10T14:05:00.003-06:00

No, really.

All you bloggers who have the time and energy to live life, work, and blog prolifically, I salute you. I don't know how you do it.

I'm guessing some of it is prioritizing. It's bad of me, but my blog is a low priority item in my life (how's that for social media sacrilege?!). I have work, I have J, I have home and a life to lead/live/build/survive. That takes time and effort and I am a slacker at heart.

Which means that the world is largely forced to live without the benefit of my occasional snarky insights. Woe is you. (roflmao!) Yea, right.

I'll try to be better, in honor of my three followers--I didn't put them in the sidebar so they wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen there. I will attempt to at least make my weekly tirades, k y'all?

Who knows, I may get better than that, but, for now, that's all I'm promising.

World's Worst Blogger

2009-01-05T06:56:00.004-06:00

A-yup, that's me. I shall now enumerate all the endlessly entertaining things I've been doing instead...

Working a full day for someone else for the first time in 5 years--interesting developments on this front, we'll come back to this later.
I spent November writing my magnum opus--which I now need to finish! I hit 50k words on the night of November 30th & just stopped, heaving a bleary-eyed sigh of relief that I could take a break. It's been a little over a month and I need to haul it out again, finish the draft, then put it away again for a month or two so I can see if it has any merit sometime around June.
Christmas and all its attendant gory details (shopping, wrapping, travel, parties, etc). Still haven't looked at my Trail of Lights Pics from 08 and it is now 09--see, blogging isn't the only thing I've let fall by the wayside.
Painting my nails. Don't laugh! Somehow, without me noticing it, I actually managed to grow finger nails this Autumn. I've been a nail-biter since age 3, so this is uber weird for me! As a result, I have been painting them obsessively, changing them every week and picking some colors so weird even my 7yo looks at me like I'm crazy. Hey, I figure if my mid-life crisis never gets more extreme than a series of bizarre nail polish color choices, I'm doing all right. And it's cheaper than a sports car ;-)
Speaking of cars... I got a new one! Not new, new, but new to me. Her name is Serenity and she's a metallic charcoal grey 02 VW beetle. If you're a sci-fi fan you can probably follow the roundabout path to how she go her name.
Crocheting. I started numerous projects as gifts this year, most of which did not get done in time, BUT, I am still proud. I tried new things. Round things, things that were not just large straight lines, including my first hat and a Dalek. When the Dalek is done I'll post pics :-)
Struggling to keep my freelance biz alive. I am pretty much down to just one client these days, and that is more cuz she loves me and, even more likely, because she dreads having to dig up someone else to do what I do. I want to take on more, but I still genuinely don't feel settled into this new life.
Reading - I always read more in the last half of the year, probably due to the urge to curl up & hibernate, even if our winter weather thus far has consisted of mostly 60-80 degree days.
Life. Life happens and it is complicated and messy and tiring. Especially mine.

That's it, then in the world's largest nutshell - what I've been doing instead of blogging. Now you know.

Use Your Hands!

2008-11-24T15:05:00.006-06:00

J brought this home from school last week. I have no idea what the assignment was, and, honestly, don't care--it made me giggle and I scanned it to use as my desktop as work.

Since it was already scanned, I thought I'd share...

Schooled in the School Parking Lot

2008-11-18T13:26:00.002-06:00

It's that time of week again. Tuesday Tirade and I am, unsurprisingly, talking school trash, again.

Before I had a child old enough to attend school I used to daydream about having a kid old enough to be in school.

We'd get up in the morning with ease, after all, it wasn't like she hadn't been getting up two hours before I wanted to for years or anything... I'd make a hot breakfast to start her day off right, pack a well-balanced, nutritious lunch, then she'd shoulder her adorable, but not so heavy as to be unhealthy, backpack and we'd stroll down the street to the neighborhood cut through to avoid the car traffic at the school and I, smiling, would hand her over to the person who would take care of her for the next 7 hours while mournfully walking home alone, my duty done til 3pm.

(pausing to allow those of you bent double with laughter time to recover)

The reality is a little different. Okay, a LOT different. For starters, she doesn't go to the neighborhood school. I tried to get her into Pre-K at a charter school (not that I was attempting to shuffle her off to school a year early or anything) and didn't make it.

Then RaidMan made friends with a local guy who told him horror stories about our schools--you know, the schools we'd moved out of Austin to get to? Yea.

We got word, shortly after that, that J's name had come up in the lottery at the Charter School. I liked their numbers (max class size of 16) and dh liked that they weren't the "scary 'hood school" Whatever. I've heard nothing but good about the primary, elementary, and high school. The junior high has been dissed, but, well, it's only 3 years, right? Right?

So we enrolled her there and discovered the joy of taking one of 700 enrolled students to a school with no bus service. How I envied the parents off-loading four kids in the morning--at least they were getting their wait's worth out of it!

Year two of school and J's school expands massively, taking over a school that was previously church-affiliated and hit financial hard times. Woo-hoo, parking!

Not so much. The way the new administration handles morning drop-off is not the same as the way the old one did.

For most of last school year the carryover parents just did the way they always had: Stopping in the middle of the aisle & blocking traffic while they released their kids into the wild, sometimes even getting out of the car to help them with bags or projects. Did I mention this was in the middle of the friggin' parking lot driving lane?

Then these kids were left to find their own way from parking lot to class on a busy open air campus. Yea, cuz that's safe *snort*

My own personal issue, though, I've saved for last.

Just because ~your~ kid is safely in the school does NOT mean you get to drive like MY KID is a traffic cone!

Parents who drop their kids and seem to immediately perceive the parking lot as a road-rage video game drive me mad! (no pun intended, this time) The parking lot, because it was built by the church, has multiple entry points and the school has not enforced any kind of traffic flow standard. There's a whole lot of going in through the out driveway, people coming from all angles, paying little or no attention to the world around them.

Looking from across the street while I decide which driveway is less likely to get me killed, it kind of looks like oversize bumper cars, or a scarily coordinated synchronized event. You know, one where all the participants are precise fractions of seconds away from crashing into each other.

You can always tell the cars that still have kids in them, too. They are between the lines, there is no rubber smoke billowing out of their wheel wells. The drivers, while harried looking trying to make that first bell, are polite. They park far enough away that you can get in and out of your car.

Mom or dad alone? (I hate to say it guys, but Dads definitely seem to be worse about this!) You'd better not leave your car door open too long getting in or you might lose it when they back out of there like a bat outta hell. Actually, I'm pretty sure some of them can drive faster in reverse than a bat can fly...

This is, apparently, a problem for any school that has anything other than a narrow 1 or 2 lane driveway, so I know I'm not alone.

To all you frustrated race car drivers who drop kids at my girl's school:

Would you kick the ass of someone who endangered your kid in the school parking lot? So would I. Remember that the next time you drive around me like I'm a speed bump, or I may be forced to prove it.

PS - anyone know any handy tips re: assault laws in Texas? kthanxbai!

NaNo Nuggets...

2008-11-13T06:19:00.007-06:00

Nuggets o' wisdom (well, as wise as I get) that is. I'm 40% of the way through my 50,000 words as of last night and I've learned a few things along the way.

It is completely, utterly, hopelessly unpublishable. Portions of the story are based in my life and the lives of people I know and, frankly, they would hurt me were this ever to see the light of day. That's okay, I ~need~ to write this story. The things that are based on life are sad, but also incredibly cathartic and I am pretty sure I'll be mentally and emotionally healthier for them when I am done. The pure fiction aspect of it, well, I am in love. I created a character that I adore that I am pretty sure I will have to think up a story for later just because I like her. She has a weird name and is unhealthily obsessed with lawn flamingos, what's not to love?

Probably because I have a job that only requires me to actually work ~maybe~ 2-3 hours of the 8-9 I have to be there daily, NaNoing while working is actually proving easier, for me, than taking part in this madness the years I was at home. I don't write much at home, especially fiction--too many distractions. Now, I have a spiral notebook and access to my Google docs page from work and time. It IS hard, though. Most of the really emotionally wrenching scenes I've written while at home, longhand, and typed up during the day. Can't cry while re-typing at work, that would upset people. BUT, back to the whole catharsis thing, I find I generally only cry over the first draft. Afterward I can look at it and be sad, but not lose my cool. Progress, right?

I can make people do what I want! I was walking the dog the other night, thinking about one of my plot points based on reality. "But self," says I, "that's not how it happened." "But," the sinister little inner voice whispered back, "it could be." Yes! I have the power to make the people in my life do what I want! Fictionally, of course. The corollary to that is that I give myself hope. I don't know what the future holds, but fictionalizing it lets me express the way I hope things will turn out.

Competition is ~good~. I have a couple friends doing NaNo this year, real life friends, people who are friends the other 11 months of the year as opposed to the people I see a lot of every November... I'm not really competing with either of them, but their word counts help keep me motivated. Truthfully, I am in awe of one them, her words just seem to flow and she's doing GrEaT! Even greater if you think about the fact that she's first-timer. I was at a write-in last night and we decided to do a word war. I wrote damn near 1000 words in 20 minutes. And still came in 3rd, but it was great for my word count!

There will likely be more NaNo insights this year, but I have to go to work and do training and have a lunch meeting later today and, well, it's time for another cup of coffee and to start my day.

Tuesday Tirade: How Many Damn Diets Are There, Anyway?

2008-11-11T10:15:00.002-06:00

For those of you who don't know this about me, I spent over four years at home full time with my spawn, from when she was 2 to about 6 1/2, then went back to work part-time last Autumn, and full-time last August.

I did lots of foolish things over those years, put on weight, made friends with Crystal & Candy *wink*, started a home-based writing business, and *gulp* bought a frightening quantity of women's magazines, particularly "Women's World". I told myself it was for the recipes, and market research because they run a couple short stories each week, predominantly mystery and romance.

I am a total sucker at the checkout line, I freely admit this. An overweight sucker. And ~EVERY SINGLE ISSUE~ of Women's World has a bunch of little article teasers off to the left side of the cover and, taking up most of the right side, is a picture of a woman who lost ___ lbs in ___ weeks on ___ plan! You can too!

It took me a while to realize this, since I did not shop or buy the magazine every week. I thought I was only being suckered by the diets that looked like they might work for me. Nope. I found (and recycled, thankyouverymuch) a stack of these things cleaning my office this weekend, and I was horrified when I looked at several issues all together.

They all had a diet plan. They all had multiple testimonials from people it worked for. All of them. How the hell do they even come up with 52 different diets (that don't sound insane, they actually came across as vaguely scientific and reasonable) each year?

Well, I bought the magazines. I even tried some of the diets (I think? Dunno, I've slept since then) and I'm still here and still overweight. I just don't buy Women's World anymore, it's an obvious sucker bet.

My Part for Publishing, Part Deaux

2008-11-10T10:10:00.004-06:00

Had my book club meeting last night. Of the six of us there, 3 were driving & 2 are nursing. This left me the lone consumer of the bottle of wine I brought. After ruining dinner for the fam I had a glass before I left the house to shore up my ego while dh & the kid ate hot dogs. 2 more at book club, another 2 watching TV with dh last night... Yes, I drank an entire bottle of wine on my own in about 6 hours. So I was not happy to wake up @ 6:15 this morning.

Which means when I made my coffee and stumbled to my computer, I was not ready to face the day. But then I had mail from Amazon. You see where this is going, right?

Yes, I made another contribution to the publishing cause. This time I went slightly more mainstream:

Stolen by Kelley Armstrong -- Thanks to Paperback Swap and my birthday I have books 1, 3,4, & 6 in the "Women of the Otherworld" series. B&N did not have 2 last night, I looked. So I ordered it for meself.
Haunted by Kelley Armstrong -- Book 5 in the above-mentioned series, which I was also missing. This series is up to 9 books, but is the kind of thing I only buy in paperback, read once, then swap, so I'm stopping at six for now. Good news? I couldn't find it on PBSwap so someone will snap it up quick.
"Okay, Girls - Man Your Bunks!" Tales from the Life of a WWII Navy WAVE by Helen Gilbert -- I've been fascinated with the Navy WAVES since I found out (sadly, after she died) that my grandmother was a WAVE, and well, this is yet another book that no one will ever think to buy me, so I bought it myself. And if I'm gentle with it I can repurpose it and give it to my Mom for Christmas, since her mom was the WAVE she'd probably like it too.

For the record, yes, books 1 & 2 above are total brain candy, like beach books. I write ~~boring~~ enthralling business copy and do various other unexciting things for work. For relaxation I like mindless fluff with vampires & other paranormal stuff (witches, weres, etc), so sue me.

I never claimed to be into the classics and freely admit I only got through Moby Dick by listening to it. If I'd read it I would probably still be in the coma it would have put me in. The writing was beautiful, but the whale nonsense, especially when I'm enough of a marine bio enthusiast to know how incorrect it was, drove me nutty. But I listened to it. Every single freakin' word. I deserve a medal, lol.

Did my Part for Publishing...

2008-11-09T17:18:00.004-06:00

Of course I didn't buy anything really cool... $75 @ B&N later and I came home with:

Children of the Lamp #4: The Day of the Djinn Warriors by P.B. Kerr -- I lurve the series. Yes they're YA and no, I don't care. I buy them for me and save them for when J is old enough to enjoy them.
On Writing Well by William Zinsser -- Because I've scoured the house (as much as I can in its permanent state of "Federal Disaster Area") and I can't find my copy. This one, at least, I can deduct.
Temple in Vintage Postcards by Michael Fan -- a Christmas gift for my mom. Or her sister. Or one of a bajillion other relatives I have who live there.
The Everything Chess Basics Book by the USCF and Peter Kurzdorfer -- So I'll be able to help my little chess fan & understand her when she talks about things like "castling".
Crochet Techniques by Renate Kirkpatrick -- It has a section on Tunisian and one on crochenit, so I was (pun warning) hooked!

It would be even better to support your local bookstore, but, honestly, the chains are what make publishing go 'round :-S Either way, if you bought a book this weekend, take a sec & tell me what book & why. I did.

Get thee to a bookstore!

2008-11-09T14:22:00.002-06:00

Yea, I know, like I need an excuse*...

But, if I did, this is a pretty good one. For you non-clicky types, the link is to a GREAT post over at EditorialAss about what happened to publishing this Fall and how booklovers (like me and some of you) can help.

So, now I'm off to the store. Was looking for an excuse to run away for a little while.

*I am in fervent denial that I should join the B&N Members thingy. After all, then I'd have to admit I spend waaaay more than $250 you have to shell out before it pays for itself each year. I'm pretty sure my taxes will tell me I spent more than that just on books for my business, but, well, denial is denial and I am in it. 'Sides, you know how 'spensive the annual Writer's Market is? And, natch, I finally upgraded from my 05 to the 08. And a week later the 09 came out. Grrrr...

Getting Old Sux

2008-11-08T19:26:00.004-06:00

It's November - can you believe I'm wasting words on blogging? Yea, me either, but here I am.

~~~~~

Remember when staying up all night was just one of those things that happened occasionally because you were having a good time, needed to cram, or just got caught up in a good book and forgot about the time?

I do.

I've also decided that one of the definite, confirmed signs that I'm getting old is the fact that in order to stay up all night now, I have to plan ahead. I have to pack snacks and caffeine and my meds to take in the morning. I have to arrange for amusement for the kids. Staying up all night with friends is very nearly more chore than fun, but once a year, I can manage it.

Maybe.

After last night (and staggering home and to bed at 8am!) I'm convinced I'll never do another 12-hour write-in, but by next year I'll probably change my mind.

I got a little over 5000 words written between 8pm (I was late to the write-in, go figure?!?) and 7am. Nice, but only about half what I wanted to accomplish. At least 20% of it is so bad that even as I updated my word count I knew I would be cutting it later, or, as I declaimed in the small hours of the night, more than a little high on cappucino and gummy bears - "Type it all, you can always fix it in post!"

With that thought in mind, here are a few of my novel experiences from week one 2008:

--my MC's bff changed names twice, since I start a new doc each writing session to keep me from editing old stuff and I could never remember the damn name (it's Jenn, btw... or was it Jane..?)

--I knew the MC was going to get married at some point in the story. I did NOT know "the man" would show up the first week til the phone rang on day 2, the MC answered, and "her face lit up". I sat back in my chair, stunned. It's a man. OMG, it's him, THE man. WTF is he doing here already?

I tried to explain this event to my husband and he looked at me blankly then said, trying to be helpful, "But hon, you're the one writing the story." Yea, well, sometimes these things write themselves...

--I discovered I don't like writing about growing a relationship. I had about 5 moments I wanted to write about between first date and honeymoon, that's it. If I run out of ideas and my word count is low I may fill in the blanks, but it just doesn't interest me. The honeymoon only got two sentences.

--Trying to write emotionally wrenching scenes at 4am just doesn't work. Don't try this at home kids. Really.

Okay, that's it. I gotta go make dessert for J and her sleepover friend and figure out how I'm gonna deco a box for CRRE in only 2 days...

Your Negativity is Bringin' Me Down...

2008-11-04T07:00:00.002-06:00

...on the side of your opponent.
~~~
That's right, it's Election Day here in the U.S. To be bit schmaltzy for a moment, today, far more than the 4th of July, is a celebration of what makes our nation great. We have the right to VOTE freely without fear of reprisal in a democratic election. This is both our greatest strength and, in years like this one when the cream didn't exactly rise to the top, our greatest weakness.

And I live in a country where I can say things like that and not worry about men with guns knocking on my door in the middle of the night (unless its my crazy relatives with the concealed carry permits, but that's another rant altogether).

So exercise your right people~! No matter what your politics, get out and VOTE today if you haven't already. If you don't vote, you don't get to bitch later!

And now, back to our regularly scheduled rant:
~~~
I love that I live in a country with free elections, I really do.

I hate that the same document that gives me the right to whine about the election, the candidates, and any other political topic I so choose also gives the candidates the right to say virtually anything they want (and call me at home & hang up on my answering machine, but that, too, is a topic for another day).

I am a bit of a political noob. I tend to avoid the news because it either angers or depresses me, frequently both. So with a hotly contested election coming on, I decided back in September to follow both candidates on Twitter, once I verified which feeds were the official ones. And I learned absolutely nothing.

Obama's campaign posted things like, "I'm in (city)(state) having a (trite campaign phrase) rally, check it out on the web at (URL). "

McCain's campaign posted links to their new campaign ads as they came out, in brief, "New Ad: (inflammatory ad title here) (URL)".

After 5 weeks of this I got annoyed and stopped following both campaigns since I wasn't learning anything anyway.

(image shamelessly borrowed from :
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a349/judahverrecke/election08.jpg)

I did, however, out of morbid curiousity, click on some of the links sent by the McCain campaign. Then I got pissed. Not about what the ads said, I expected most of it, based on the debates. I was mad about what they didn't say.

None of the ads told me anything about McCain, his view on major (or minor, I wasn't picky at this point) issues, his goals for his Presidency, how he thinks he will accomplish those goals, etc. Nothing. Not one single piece of information about John McCain. His ads were all negative ads directed at Barack Obama both personally & professionally.

I've never seen an Obama ad. I debated going to his website to look for one and decided I didn't want to.

Then there's the guy running for county tax assessor-collector here in Travis County who ran a series of ads featuring urban legends (guy in the bathtub full of ice, specifically) implying that this is what the current TA-C is doing to the people of this county. Honestly, even if it's true, the ad was so distasteful I was immediately put off the candidate in question.

TELL US WHAT WE WANT TO KNOW!

Use those ad dollars to tell us why YOU are the best choice for the job, whatever it is. Don't waste your money and our time telling us what the other candidate did/does/thinks/feels that is wrong. In theory, that's what the press is for. Your dollars should be spent wooing me, not dissing the other person.

For me, negative ads are a turn off. If it's like most elections and the only way I recognize a name on the ballot is because I've seen a negative ad (or got one in the mail, these especially irk me) by that candidate, I'll vote for someone else.

Negative ads hurt everyone and help no one. And, if you are one of those people who believe everything you see in a negative ad/mailer/email, I have one thing to say to you:

SNOPES.COM

That goes triple if you are one of my parents :-)

Oh, and FTR, I voted a couple weeks ago and it's none of your business who I voted for, this is about ads, not candidates.

~~~

Tell me what bugs you in the comments. Bonus points if its on the same or similar topic as mine. Triple bonus points if this is a week where I Tweeted the topic in advance and you sent me your rant ahead of time. Alas, points have no value whatsoever :-)

Remember, if something is on your mind and you just can't wait for the weekly tirade, email it to me in advance and I'll include your rant in my post with a little link love.

I Love November

2008-11-01T00:01:00.001-05:00

The weather in Central Texas FINALLY cools off. Ok, yea, not til mid-November, but still...

And there's that holiday with the big bird... Yea, that's nice, too.

And, for the 10th year in a row, there are crazy people ALL OVER THE WORLD writing novels! Whole 50,000 word novels in a mere 30 days. For those of you who do not participate and therefore have not done the math over and over, that works out to 1667 words a day.

Want a reminder or two? I dug through the NaNoWriMo.org calendar forum and found links to several different desktop NaNo calendars for you to download that will ~~flog you into writing more~~ encourage you along the way. If you use one, remember to send it's creator a note saying "Thanks!"

Cool space pic with Carl Sagan quote calendar.
~~~~~
Simple calendar with daily word count requirement in green, blue, pink, or orange.
~~~~~
Basic white with encouraging words - Be warned though, this one looks odd because the weeks go Monday-Sunday rather than the more traditional Sunday-Saturday.
~~~~~
Several basic ones with daily word counts (both 50 & 100k) & various background images and resolutions.
~~~~~
Orangey Woodgrain with word count only
Orangey Woodgrain with counts AND inspirational quote (I like the quote on this one, fwiw)
Candle with word count only
Candle with counts AND inspirational quote
I shouldn't say anything since I do NOT have the skill to make one of these at all, but that candle pic makes my eyes hurt
~~~~~
For the truly ambitious, here's an eye-strainingly blue one with daily word counts for those foolish enough to attempt 100k words in November!
~~~~~

Open Book: 800x600 1024x768 1280x800

Cup of Coffee: 800x600 1024x768 1280x800

Computer Keyboard: 800x600 1024x768 1280x800

Tea and Book: 800x600 1024x768 1280x800

~~~~~
50k is just Beachy
~~~~~
Desktop Style - I admit, the first thing I thought when I saw this one was that someone spent too much time at J.K. Rowling's website waiting for HP7 hints, but it is spiffy nonetheless.
~~~~~
Several pretty ones, but they are very slow to load. You've been warned.
~~~~~
Inspired by an old noirish-Nano poster in800x700 1024x768 1280x900
~~~~~
There is a "Twilight" movie one, but I have standards, if you want that one you have to go find it yourself.
~~~~~

Speaking of which... When I wrote this post (10/10/08 - you don't really think I'm wasting precious words BLOGGING on November 1st, do you?!) there were all of the above, and then some, in the forum. I'm stopping here because I've been writing this post for an hour now and I'm tired of scrolling. It's a really full forum, you'll have to scroll through the chaff and comments to find the links (sorry)! I'm sure there will be more by the time it really is November 1st.

Go Nano! See ya'll in December!

Ain't No Fun in School Fundraisers

2008-10-28T18:51:00.005-05:00

I was working on a list of common things that irritate me that I don't normally take time out to talk about (it is shockingly short thus far) and trying to decide what to rant about. Then Candy was nice enough to spend the afternoon ~~whining like a little girl~~ inspiring me.

Got kid(s)? Then I ~know~ you feel me. If they've left the nest, I'm betting the memories still linger. If they're too young for school, remember, you were warned. If they're in school now, well, you probably walk around in a mild state of "annoyed" pretty much the entire school year.

I ~know~ education is horribly underfunded in this country. All public schools have funding issues. From where I sit, small, high performing public schools seem to get the worst end of it; doing too well for most grants, but not well enough to attract big money donors (especially in elementary school where there's no football...)

Since neither I, nor anyone I am personally acquainted with, has a child in private school I can't speak to how it works there, but my fading, painful memories of Catholic school make me think it's pretty much the same.

So, since she started this, let's talk about Candy's woes: not quite nine (9) weeks into school and her kids brought home their THIRD fundraiser this year. This is stupid, seems to me, since parents tapped too frequently are parents who get burned out and start throwing away the paper as it comes home. Space the fundraisers people! Really, it's not rocket science. I'll leave this alone--I'm sure Candy has a lot more to say on the topic!

~~~

Then there's my friend C's school. Their PTA does what Candy wishes hers would, a no-frills fundraiser where the kid basically comes home with a bill and they offer a payment plan. Nice in theory, but the school sets the amount. Plus, the last 2 years the due date for first payment has been a week or less after the form went out.

My kid's school does something similar, their "Cash Cow" program; sponsor a cow for a certain amount per family, add more if you have multiple kids at the school, and we'll leave you alone the rest of the year. Nice theory, but since fundraisers are pimped (yes, pimped/hyped/sold) to the entire student body, your kid still gets the brainwashing.

Leaving aside arbitrary requests for money and the fact that it doesn't always work that way... A bill? I was shocked the first year she told me about this. She is in the midst of a divorce, working full time, single parenting 3 kids 7 or under and they want her to donate a 3-figure amount to the school? Granted she lives, courtesy of a great landlord, in a higher-end 'hood, so the school has probably come to expect it, but still... The whole class is excluded from some stupid reward or other if one kid doesn't bring the form back. She sent it back last year with a note explaining that while she was happy to help where/when she could, that figure was completely unrealistic.

The school mailed her "balance due" notices all year! WTF?!?!

~~~

My kid's school. Knew we'd get there sooner or later... She's in a charter school that is Pre-K to 12, so, to start, we have issues about inequity in fundraising i.e. the little kids' families do most of it yet the cash gets spread all over the school.

Then there's spacing. In the last 2 years a number of the founding/active families have left the school and with them, apparently, went the organizational skills. We used to do one big fundraiser a quarter. We did NONE first quarter. Now we have Fall Fest--where you are asked to shell out for game tickets, raffle tickets, food, etc. Four days later we have the Bowl-a-Thon.

The person who used to organize the Bowl a thon quit this year, so it didn't happen 1st quarter at all. Couldn't get it any further in this quarter because the bowling alley didn't want to lose holiday bookings. We just got the form a scant 2 weeks before the event.

Then there's the thing that has driven me nuts about this particular annual fundraiser from the beginning: It is NOT a true -thon. The kids have to raise a minimum amount of money in order to bowl, that's it. Not a penny per pin, or any other logical "sponsorship" style. They just panhandle and people pretend like that's NOT what it is and write their name and donation amount on the form.

First year I made my parents and brother donate. Last year, and, probably, this year, I'm just gonna pay the minimum. No way in hell is my kid wandering around the 'hood asking for money & I'll get fired if I do like our parents did and take it to work. To my mind it's not a fundraiser, it's blunt force extortion. Cuz, I'm like, gonna tell my kid she can't bowl with the rest of her class.

The event IS co-sponsored by a local organization who picks up the tab for some of the kids who don't make the minimum, but only in the lower grades. And they did lower the minimum a lot this year (from $25 to $10) to be more inclusive, but extortion is extortion, no matter what cute name you put on it and how cute a kid you use to sell it.

~~~

Whew. And I thought I didn't have anything to rant about. How's YOUR week been? And remember, if something is on your mind and you just can't wait for the weekly tirade, email it to me and I'll include your rant in my post with a little link love.

What's Your Writing Totem?

2008-10-25T10:29:00.000-05:00

John Saye recently had a spiffy post on writing totems, particularly in relation to NaNo. I've never been a big believer in such things, but when I stopped and thought about it I've had them the last couple of years.

In 2005, for my first NaNo there was nothing. And I only made it a little over 5k that year.

In 2006 I set myself the modest goal of achieving 10k. I made a bit over 51k and won that year. What inspired my project that year was a mysterious photo (a series of them, actually).

When my grandmother died in 2000 I helped my mom clean her mother's things out of the nursing home. By the time she died she was in the full-time nursing care wing and her personal possessions were cut down to what she could fit into a tall dresser and a desk beside her bed. In the desk I found a series of photos of my grandmother in her 20s obviously affectionate with a man decidedly NOT my grandfather or her brother. In light of her limited space, who was this man that was so important she kept his photos with her 60 years later and after over 50 years married to someone else? I looked at those pictures a lot in November 2006.

In 2007 I wanted to win, but never managed to bring my plot into focus enough to get past the set-up (all 35k of it!). I gave up when I went back to work, part-time, the week of Thanksgiving. Last year's book was, loosely, about a hydrophobic woman who tried to commit suicide by drowning herself and discovered she was a mermaid. (oops?!) I didn't have a totem, just a mermaid sticker pilfered from my 6yo that I put on the wrist rest of my laptop.

So, maybe there is something to totem/project touchstone thing after all... As soon as I figure out what I'm using this this year, I'll spill... Or not, since I don't like to talk about my NaNo project too much til I'm done or it is.

Mommy Pride

2008-10-24T09:37:00.001-05:00

I am doing NaNoWriMo, as usual, this year. What IS new and exciting is the fact that my daughter is old enough that she, too, has decided to participate.

I asked her if she wanted to do it and she said yes. We originally sat down talked about it, then, using the handy guidelines from the Young Writers Program website, set her a goal of 3000 words for November (100 words/day). This week she started getting antsy and told her dad she didn't want to do it (but kept plowing through the workbook anyway).

We got together Wednesday night and I told her she didn't have to do it at all if she didn't want to. She decided to stick, but lowered the word count goal to 2k. For her first time I have no problem with this--I offered to drop it to 1 and let her off the hook on word count altogether.

Only registered users (or their mothers *egrin*) can access the Young Writer's Program website and author blurbs. I think this is fantastic for kid safety, but it makes it hard to share my pride with the rest of the world. It means I have to copy & paste, dadnabbit.

Without further ado, J (ok, J's MOM) presents:

When I asked her later why Clark didn't just eat Clara when he bit her (standard barraduca behavior) she rolled her eyes, looked at me like I was a little slow, and said, "Because then I wouldn't have a main character Mom!" I just about died...

Happy Noveling, y'all! If you know (read: parent) a Young Writer and want to get in touch privately I'll ask Jay if she wants an age-appropriate writing bud for the month.

Doesn't Play Well With Others

2008-10-22T16:27:00.009-05:00

The title line up there has always been a pretty good description of me. I'm not (too) mean/aggressive/pouty/snarky, really, I'm not. I'm just...self-sufficient. I am happy to spend large blocks of time alone with my book/computer/yarn. I take a looong time to come out of my shell (semi-anonymous blog bravery doesn't really count here), but once I do I'm a PITA, ask my friends :-D

My point is, this tendency toward being a loner must be very deeply ingrained. It has even affected my eyesight. Really! I got new glasses last month and realized the instant I put them on that something just wasn't right. I tried them out for another day or two, then tucked them away and started wearing a pair from 2 years ago.

I finally got around to taking them back to the doc last week and they told me the specs matched the Rx the doc wrote, so I needed to schedule an appointment for a re-check. The appointment was today at lunch.

Apparently the doc and RaidMan were BOTH right and wrong. The doc said my Rx was lower (i.e. my vision had improved). When I told RM I couldn't see out of the new specs he told me, "Yea, I didn't really think your eyesight had gotten better, but I didn't want to say anything..." um, ya just did babe!

When we re-tested today the prescription was perfect---for each eye individually. When I tried to see the little chart with both eyes open I lost focus. Translation: Each eye is strong and needs a weaker Rx, BUT they can't work together at the lower Rx. In order for me to see the way I should, he had to overcorrect.

Yep, even my eyes can't work together, and, as usual, if I'm gonna do it I have to overdo it, lol.

~~~

On a separate note, I discharged my civic duty today and voted. They moved my precinct this year. Rather than try to find the new location I just hit early voting. No matter what your opinion, even if I disagree with it, exercise your right and your obligation and VOTE. If you don't vote now, you don't get to whine later...

School Zones for Dummies

2008-10-21T20:40:00.005-05:00

Everyone else has a weekly blog event, mine, I think, shall be the random rant. So, welcome to Tuesday Tirades with Dy. I'll go first and you can chime in.

The above sign is not a suggestion. I ~hated~ school zones when I was a teen learning to drive. Once I had kids I was a bit more tolerant. Now that I have a kid IN school, I get it.

SLOW DOWN!

Is anyone really in such a hurry that the extra 60 seconds they save going too fast in the school zone is going to make a difference? More important, though, my peeve is that people need to do it right.

There is a major road (Parmer, for you Austinites) that I take to cross the North side anytime I'm not taking J to school. It has a school zone that takes the speed limit from 50 to 35. People hit their brakes at the beginning of the zone because it is right after a light. Then hit the gas literally the instant they have passed the school. School zone goes on for another 1/2 block because a residential neighborhood that feeds to the school, sidewalks and all, has its entrance there and kids do walk in the mornings. Don't speed up til you're past the WHOLE school zone folks!

In all fairness, not many kids walk and it is a 6-lane road, but still...

I pass another school frequently. This one is a ridiculously expensive private school, also on a major thoroughfare. This school is so far back from the road you can't even see the building from the street. It has a school zone almost half a mile long. And, because it is a private school with no bus service, NONE of the students walk to school. NONE. Zip, zilch, nada. You never see a kid anywhere near the street there. But I have to slow down (45 to 35) for a half a mile.

Personally, I think the sole purpose of this school zone is to make it easier for the parents to get in and out of the parking lot.

Another school just up the same road, that is RIGHT on the road and has kids that come via public transportation (and the bus stop is across the street) can't get a school zone at all! They are on the line between jurisdictions and no one wants to take responsibility for who would establish and maintain said school zone.

So, no matter how much the school zone irks you in the morning, slow down all the way through, or find another route.

To the people in charge of establishing school zones, a little more common sense would be nice.

Some schools don't need them (or at least don't need them to extend damn near a 1/4 mile to either side of the campus entrance!) and some do, use your brains people!

Therapy by the Skein

2008-10-20T18:43:00.008-05:00

I am also currently going through... something. Honestly, not sure what, but a trip to the doc is in the works to see if she can help me figure it out before I climb the UT tower with my knitting needles (I don't knit, I bought them because they are longer than the stabilizers that came with my hairpin lace loom).

Crochet is, at its heart, a mind-numbing (and carpal tunnel inducing) repetitive motion with a concrete result in short order. I have complete and total control over it (nice for a control freak like me). I get to pick pretty colors and soft yarn. It's very calming. even when it doesn't go well.

It's also taught me in the last couple of years that this old girl can learn new tricks. I couldn't crochet properly 2 years ago and now I am slowly navigating my way through increasingly complex patterns. And, as my mother says, it's cheaper than heroin. She should know, she sews and has more fabric than Crystal & I combined have yarn; it has its own room in her house!

All of which is good when Mama has one of her special days, or like the tail end of last week, several of them in a row, aggravated by a failing motherboard, a crabby, overbooked child, a printer that will print for everyone BUT mom, overdue deadlines (see motherboard note), and the joy of my life that is WoW with new features (taste the sarcasm, like Skittles but bitter). Times like this Mama hides in her room with a hook, a basket of yarn, and a cup of coffee and waits it out. It settles me and, well, keeps me from saying or doing something that I'll regret when the funk fades.

And I like to make scarves. They offer instant gratification, don't take too long, and, well, I just like making them. Now I'm trying to figure out what to do with them as the stack gets larger and larger. I'm split, 70-30 between finding a homeless shelter to give them to and trying my hand on Etsy. After all, just because someone is homeless doesn't mean they wouldn't appreciate a little handmade beauty. And, well, if I'm going to be doing this instead of therapy or pharmaceuticals, I need to find an outlet and if Etsy lets me make a little money to buy more yarn...

I dunno why, prolly cuz I spent the weekend working on a new scarf (pics when I finish) I wanted to talk yarn. Feel free to skip this post and come back when I feel witty.

Isn't It Ironic...?

2008-10-14T12:51:00.006-05:00

Both RaidMan and my bud, Cheryl, have pointed out the irony of what I ~~do for a living~~ dabble in from time to time. Why?

Because....

While I am notoriously well organized at work, at home, where I write, not so much. (insert pictures of scary office here)

and I ghost for a professional organizer

If you read Crystal's blog, and you've seen the pics she's had up lately, you know I am not a small woman.

and I ghost for a weight loss counselor

I keep my books in a spreadsheet I created 4 years ago.

and I blog for a bookkeeper

I am the Queen, nay, the Cosmic Universal Superpower of Procrastination

and I write for an efficiency coach

I am pretty sure that I am living proof that you don't have to "write what you know" to get paid.

Left Alone Too Long

2008-10-06T21:27:00.002-05:00

with nothing to do but fill an empty new blog... muahaha!

I only stayed home with my oldest for 14 months before the quiet and not-quiet of at-home motherhood drove me back to the workforce where I was lucky enough to find a job I liked working with truly awesome people. Well, except one or two, but one of them quit and the other was arrested (at work, no less -- made my day!) so it was all good. I put our daughter in daycare and spent weekends taking her to the zoo and the fair and to see my parents, and being busy. So when RaidMan took her away for a weekend, I was excited. I read books, went to the movies, caught up on laundry, and enjoyed the alone time.

With J, who is 7 1/2 now, I was home the first 8 months of her life, went back to work, hated it, and came home again just after she turned two. And stayed home til this past August. I went back to work, part-time, in November of 07, but I was still the one who took her to school, picked her up, chaperoned field trips, handled play-dates, was the class library lady, et al.

Just to get it out of the way, we had two children, both girls. Now we have one, the youngest (J), and no, I don't want to talk about it tonight. You get just enough info to keep the odd stranger from asking why I only talk about child in the singular most of the time.

RaidMan had to go out of town and the kiddo is on a school break right now, which means he had to take her with, since Mama has to go to work.

And I am utterly and completely lost.

This happens anytime my girl is gone for more than 24 hours, but with BOTH of them gone, well, it hit me when I walked in the door tonight. I wandered around my house, looked in her room (why?), checked my email, took myself out to dinner to get OUT of my empty home, and now, here I am, blogging instead of working on freelance projects or doing dishes and laundry or working on the never-ending TBR stack...

Being home for a long time changes you. I know the loss of one changed me, but I don't think that's why I'm at such loose ends when GirlChild isn't home. I am *me*, my own person, but I am so much more MOM than I ever thought I would be. Mostly I think this is a good thing, since I was always afraid I would be a crummy mom, but now I feel lost without someone to Mother--even if it's just to tell her to go to bed.

Heaven help me when she goes to college; I may drink more than she does her freshman year!

Me Me Me Me Me Me!

2008-10-06T10:41:00.005-05:00

See, it really is all about me!

You know why I ~really~ started blogging agan? So I could play stupid blog games like this meme from ATF.

So...

STEP ONE: I'm supposed to blog a list of six things people don't know about me.

I'm actually
with Crystal on this one -- among the people likely to read this blog I have very few secrets, and those I may have, well, I probably have them for a very good reason... But I'll give it a shot anyway:

I preface waaaay too many sentences with the word "So." I have to consciously edit it out or you would see it 100s of times a day from me .

I ~like~ wearing heels. Walking around in stilted footwear makes me feel like a girl. I like, and yet am embarassed by, that hard, sharp, staccato sound they make as I stomp my way through life.

Writing fiction scares the crap outta me. I'm only slightly less afeared of trying to write humor, which is one of the many reasons I admire the heck outta Crystal over there.

My clumsy self ~~actually~~ took years of both ballet and tap dancing as a child. Gymnastics, too. Yea, I don't believe it either and I have the pics to prove it.

I took theatre classes, went to camps, etc. from 1985 - 1993 and I am still shy. I did my best acting off stage and am still frustrated that I never managed to turn that off-stage talent into a decent on-stage performance.

I am a firm believer in breastpower. If a man is stupid enough to give me/do what I want just because I have cleavage, it is his problem, NOT mine.

Because I am newly re-entering the blogosphere on a personal level, I refuse to obey rule #2 and tag six other people. If you wanna play, go for it, but don't blame me :-)

Starting Over, Again...

2008-10-06T07:59:00.000-05:00

No, this is not my first blog. Probably NOT my last one, either. I am a blog dilettante. I scrubbed the Web clean of my old blogs after some personal drama and trauma earlier this year and now I find I miss it. So, I'm back.

I tried desperately to think of something clever to call this blog. The old one was "PsychoSAHM", but, while I am still more than a little psycho I am no longer, sadly-and you'll hear me bitch about this a lot so just get used to it-a Stay At Home Mom.

I tried to think of something, a phrase I use frequently, and, all I could think of was the word "Actually". Yes, I was one of those annoying people. After my kiddo started saying it all the time and my adoring spouse RaidMan was kind enough to point out where she got it, I went to great lengths to remove this annoying word from my vocab. It still crops up, and seemed to fit a spot to blather about me myself and I. So, yea, it IS all about "Me, Actually" ;-)