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| You scored as Mulan A free spirit, a beautiful soul, all things that most people would tag on a lovely girly girl - but you're more boy than anything! Sometimes you're considered a 'nerd' or 'dork', but that just comes with the package - you even embrace your inner nerd. Go you!
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for those of you who observe easter: Happy Easter! He is Risen!
now, onto the topic at hand: mission drift
yesterday rose and i went off to help out at my sister's house. they recently replaced their carpet with wood flooring in deference to their highly allergic and now crawling youngest daughter. since the floor went in, their garage has been storage/workshop space. we went, ostensibly to help replace baseboards, but because the garage space had to be reclaimed first, we ended up minding the babies while my brother-in-law hauled trash and returned unused floor bits, etc. we left just as b-i-l's mom came over to dye easter eggs with the kids. (a narrow escape! i liked the clothes i was wearing!)
on our way home, we received a TOP SEEKRIT COMMUNIQUÉ from our commanding general, i.e.: the lady who had invited us over for dinner. our mission was to procure a cheesecake for the consumption and delight of the troops -- under cover of broad daylight. not just any cheesecake would satisfy the general, however. this particular cheesecake had to be unfrozen and ready in the next 15 minutes. after consulting all relevant sources of clandestine intelligence, namely rose's sister and her encyclopedic knowledge of all things procurement-related, we agreed upon a mission plan. we would approach the nearest greengrocer's establishment and attempt to procure a cheesecake in full view of everyone, without even the most rudimentary groucho-marx-style disguise. obviously, it is always best to procure cheesecake components, bivouac in the vicinity of an enclosed heating device and construct it yourself, but the 15-minute constraint prevented this course of action.
when we arrived at the greengrocer's, our driver and our gunner engaged in an evasive maneuver designed to sow confusion and doubt in the minds of the enemy, and to accommodate the gunner's busted leg. (the gunner busted her leg in utah on another mission and is in intensive therapy to recover the use of it before bike weather descends fully upon us). the gunner bravely took over the driver's post while the driver penetrated the perimeter at the greengrocer's in order to recon the location of the cheesecake and attempt to procure it. she had ALMOST made it safely inside when she was accosted by a member of a youth paramilitary organization, an all-volunteer brigade of the fiercest young women American society has to offer. these young women are known collectively as "The Girl Scouts", although intelligence indicates that they break themselves into age-based brigades of "Brownies", "Juniors" and "Cadets". the young scout was, according to the driver's debriefing report, likely a "Brownie". the youthful scout spotted our driver quite easily, assailing her directly but from behind the safety of a paperboard shield which bore her troop insignia and a piece of propaganda about cookies. the driver deflected the attack and kept moving, putting off the assault with a clever line about "buy[ing] some on my way out."
safely inside the perimeter, in the very heart of the greengrocer's base, the driver attempted to ferret out the location of the cheesecake. along the way, in order to maintain camouflage, she was forced to pick up some sugar-covered marshmallows in the shape of a rabbit. the locals use these items to celebrate the annual spring holiday of 'Easter' and refer to the candies simply as "Peeps". intel cannot uncover the reason for naming rabbit candies after bird sounds, and recommend further investigation into these so-called "Peeps". shortly after being forced to grab some "Peeps" for camouflage, the driver spied a bottle of very expensive wine on a very good sale price, and realized it would make an ideal club weapon in case she found herself further accosted by more of the paramilitary youth scouts. failing that, she could drink the wine later and realizing the value-added proposition this presented to her troop morale, she gathered the wine up and proceeded to her mission objective.
at last, when freed of the crowds of locals bearing "Peeps" and "Cadbury Eggs", the driver spied the bakery sign and made straight for it. there, in an unguarded case, she found three cheesecakes from which to choose. selecting the most lovely of the three for presentation to the general, the driver proceeded to the scanning devices en route to the exit. the driver found, with no small measure of luck, an unmanned station and was able to clear her purchases without being spied or noticed unduly by enemy forces. she began to make her exit out a door other than the one by which she entered, so as to avoid the "Brownie" troops. unfortunately, the "Brownie" had anticipated this course of action and had positioned reinforcements at the exit door. the driver considered using her improvised club, but these scouts had a large armored chest with them which was likely their weapons locker. they also had an assault vehicle parked nearby with trained drivers inside. feeling her chances of making a quick assault and good escape were nil at this point, the driver succumbed to the crowd of "Brownies", and emerged a few minutes later with only a slightly thinned wallet and a few boxes of Thin Mints and Samoas weighing down her step.
The ultimate lesson here: Mission Drift is a terrible thing. "Peeps", good wine, and Girl Scout Cookies are the price you pay for failing to stick to the core cheesecake procurement directive. Don't let this happen to you!
i'm off to do battle with the bike. i hit an algae-covered low water crossing the wrong way about a year ago and my bike slid on its left side up the opposing bank after dumping me in a creek and ripping my jeans off my right cheek. the good news was, thanks to my atgatt policy (All The Gear, All The Time!) toward protective gear, i stood up completely unscathed. head intact, skin intact, bones intact, pride... well, my pride was damp but otherwise unharmed. unfortunately, the bike did take some damage. the clutch handle and rearview mirror needed some work. the left foglight was all cattywompus, but still working. i ended up replacing both mirrors with prettier ones, since the left one was past saving at that point. the clutch handle was repaired with a lot of grunting and a little bit of wrenching. the foglight, however, has been doing its best to demonstrate "walleyed" ever since. walleyed (for the non-southern among my readers) is a compound word, pronounced WAWL-ide, and refers to a person whose two eyes point at opposing walls simultaneously. i've tweaked that light, i've wrenched it, i've beaten on it with a hammer... it just won't line up right and then stay that way. so, today it gets replaced. i've had the replacement lamp for about 6 months now, but it's been too damn cold out to work on the bike, let alone ride it much...
so today i'm taking advantage of the fine springy weather and replacing my left foglight. with a nod to my late granny tootsie, who averred that it ALWAYS storms on good friday, but not until the afternoon. so i'm gonna get to it and be done before the storm.
you've seen, i trust, those cartoon sequences in which a character crawls across the hot burning sands of the sahara chasing a mirage that looks like water? and then all the infinite commercial variations in which they bump into something completely improbable in the sahara, like a coke machine? improbable, but utterly satisfying.
i would be utterly satisfied if i could go crawling down to my kitchen and find a mug of hot coffee waiting for me. rose had a meeting this morning, and she had to jump up and run to it without making coffee first. she's a lot smarter before her first cup than i am and therefore infinitely more qualified to operate complex machinery like a coffee pot. although i'd LOVE to have a coffee pot like the one below, i fear i'd only be awake enough to use it after my 3rd cup. and then only when i wasn't on some cold medicine that warns you not to drive or operate heavy machinery under its influence...
EDIT: i ventured down there to make coffee, rationalizing that if i was smart enough to write this, i was also smart enough to make coffee. i spilled grounds all over the counter and i poured brewed coffee on my yellow dog. i made coffee, but with absolutely ZERO points awarded for style.
HappyBox has met her demise. the were-cricket did her in and it was time for a new thang. so i bought a mac. above, you can see the new queen, ShinyBox, looking down from her cardboard throne on the bones of her fallen predecessor. true to reputation, i've been able to just plug in and run with all my existing hardware on ShinyBox. my keyboard, trackball, printer, external drives, GPS, and coffee cup warmer (thanks, sissie!). it all just works. i'm thrilled!
i got my WoW setup all squared away but of course i'm having to miss wow tonight because i'm traveling. so... i'm blogging from the admiral's club again.
i had some friends in from out of town this weekend and we went out to see the sights in the gayborhood. it was fun, i got to scoot a boot, and then we went for breakfast afterward. y'know, there are some people who really shouldn't drink alcohol... we were sitting next to one of them at breakfast this morning. he arrived late and loud with suspicious stains down the front of his shirt. he'd either spilled a red drink all over himself, or he'd puked on himself. either way, he was sloppy drunk. he spent the entire meal embarrassing his friends and attempting to get our attention as we noshed at the next table over. his name was curtis merillo, and he was from central missouri, originally. he wanted everyone to think he was from the FBI or CIA or somehow affiliated with secret agency of some kind... but mostly he was a jackass. the best part of the meal was when we were leaving. he reached out to try to high-five me, as though we'd shared some victorious experience, his surviving a meal without me stuffing my fist down his loud, stupid throat. so i grabbed his hand, shook it, and in the most pleasant tone i'm capable of using, i told him he was obnoxious and embarrassing and should have a good night. and i skipped off home to get my short night of sleep.
nothing beats the build-your-own crepes at cafe brazil for putting me in a good mood at 4 am. i damn sure wasn't going to let curtis merillo kill it for me.
my baby sister got married on leap day. she eloped! i'm proud of her and happy for her, and i just wanted to congratulate her and wish her all the best and many happy years.
I took my dead computer off to my friends' house this weekend. There was going to be an exceptionally high concentration of geekery there, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to use my friends for free tech support. Or for a source of expendable RAM that we could feed to my motherboard, however you want to view it. The good news is, they have a server with the same RAID controller that my dead motherboard sported so we were able to simply plug my drives in and watch them work. Yea! In addition to that, there was some griping and whining about the configuration of the case and how the video card was in the way of getting the drives out and blah blah blah cry cry cry whine whine whine blah blah blah. The hysterical bit about that is that the guy doing the crying was the one who PICKED THAT CASE IN THE FIRST PLACE. He spec'ed the computer for me three years ago, and my dear friend jaasper was the one who got stuck building it. I made stew and kept jaasper fed and watched him do all the crazy kit-bashing. I'd never done it before and while I'm certainly capable of reading the documentation and putting a kit together from scratch, it is far better to do such things with an advisor on hand. If the advisor is further willing to twist the tiny screwdriver himself in exchange for dinner, so much the better. Anyway, in the process of yanking the drives out of the box so they could be hooked up to the server, we discovered the most likely cause of the fried RAM. It was a WERE-CRICKET!!! (and it came from the swamp...)
A scary, hairy, desiccated, fried cricket slid out of the case when we pulled the cover off the backside. The hair was mostly dog-looking, but the way it was fused to the exoskeleton (I guess by the electricity?) the carcass quite seriously resembled a were-cricket. I had a computer bug!
Many, many thanks go to my friends for getting my hard drives back up and running so I could get all my data off them! Now I must merely bide my time, grow my patience, and refresh my web browser every 30 minutes until I see that my new Mac has shipped.
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