odd realization...

have you ever changed your appearance in some way, say getting a drastic haircut or changing from glasses to contacts? after you did it, did you notice that you had some reflexive gestures that went along with the old look? like flipping your hair over your shoulder, or pushing your glasses back up your nose? did you keep doing the gesture for a couple weeks after you made the change?

i just did that, with my nose piercing. for the last 6 years, i've had a style of jewelry called a (i know this sounds awful) nostril screw. it was basically a stud-style earring with a really long post that is bent around in a spiral so that it lays flat against the inside of your nostril. the great thing about it is that there's nothing on the inside to poke your septum, so it's very comfortable to wear. unfortunately, it can be really hard to fit those things. i've had three different nostril screws in the past six years, and the last one is the only one that fit right on the inside. unfortunately, the spiral it was in, while it fit great in my nostril, left the gem on the outside looking a bit "tucked in" and crooked.

so i went for a change, and after three or four adjustments to the fit, my piercer (pam at trilogy in the gayborhood. she rocks.) suggested a different style. she suggested i use a labret stud. to which suggestion i said, "a what-what-what?" i'd never seen one up close, never having had a labret piercing. anyway, it amounts to an earring with a cap-style back on it. however, the "cap" in this case is like a tiny metal bud vase. it's got a very smooth, flat butt on it, and a short barrel that the stone kinda snaps into. it's actually kinda neat from a variety perspective because once you've got that backing, you can swap out for any stone you want. so i got an opal. (pretty shiny thing!)

now, the odd realization that started this whole post is this: i apparently had a large number of reflexive gestures related to my old nostril screw. it had a tendency to spin in the piercing so that the spiral part of the stud was hanging down out the bottom of my nostril. when you're a giant amazon, and most people look up at you from some lower elevation, this is especially apparent and rather a social faux pas. pam changed the jewelry out for me last night, and i can't tell you how many times i've reached up in the last 12 hours to make sure that my nostril screw was adjusted correctly. i'm looking forward to getting used to this thing so i don't look like i'm picking my nose all the time. ugh.

ouch

 

why i hate PVP (Player v. Player) role-playing games. 

swiped from the blog of the dark clown...

not sure if this is amusing or scary. I'm thinking both. [ed. note: add horrible to the list. amusing, scary, horrible.]

For those unfamiliar, 'captchas' are the graphics with warped letters that some webforms want you to retype to verify that you're an actual human filling out the form, not a spam-bot or something of the sort.

Today, I became aware of this. It's like the illegitimate offspring of captchas and HotOrNot.com.

More productivity than you can measure

So, this first "work at home" week has been a good one. It's nearly over, and in spite of the fact that my company has changed my e-mail address and apparently this has caused me to lose access to most of the cool systems like time-sheet entry and software downloading, my spirits are high. I figure if they can break it in a week, they can fix it in a week, too. There was apparently another woman already working for said employer who has my name, and since the e-mail addresses are standardized on a firstname.lastname sort of convention, I gummed up the works when I was hired. This is why the HR department called me a couple days before I got my offer letter to ask me about how I wanted my e-mail spelled... It's not that my name is all that complicated or that they didn't have it written down somewhere. It's that they had to use some alternate version, and since that's not standardized, they were asking for my preference.

Anyway, the alternative I chose didn't work out so well, and was causing all sorts of access conflicts for the original employee, so they changed my e-mail address to one of my less-favored alternatives. I don't mind, but I was kinda hoping to avoid that simply because there is one very common spelling of my first name, and -- well, that's not the one I use. I do use the second most common spelling, but that's my Dad's doing. If my Mom had had her way, I would use the more common one. In fact, she taught me how to spell my name her way when I was a wee tyke. Then, when I was about 6 or so and I discovered that she had taught me a different spelling from what was on my birth certificate, I was livid as only a 6-year-old-going-on-17 can be. I don't know how long this went on for, but there was a period in which I wrote out my full name, as it appears on my birth certificate, on every single school paper I had to hand in. I eventually got tired of it and went back to heading my papers with my (much shorter) nickname, but it seems this name thing has always been an issue for me.

Anyway, for all I was afraid of it, I managed to get nearly all my laundry done in the last two days. I only have two loads left to do, and then I need to find the time to fold them all. As it is, there's a huge pile of clean clothes on my couch. Any volunteers?

The kitchen, also, has received a dose of much-needed attention. I've cleaned out all the science projects from my fridge, set my tofu to marinate, washed up all my dishes, watered all my plants, and ground beans for tomorrow's coffee. Whee! The cool thing is that I get most of this stuff done at lunchtime, or just on the break between work and dinner. So I'm not "shorting" my work any hours, and I'm not eating up all my social time with it, either. Not that it would hurt me to spend a little less social time and a little more home time for a while... I feel a little out of balance lately. But that, gentle readers, is a whole other blog.

Why Mohammed went to the mountain...

I understand now why Mohammed went to the mountain, instead of waiting for the mountain to come to him. If you wait for the mountain (of dirty laundry) to come to you, it has some very uncharitable things to say to you about the level of neglect you've applied to your housework. Thus, the lesson for today is that it is far better to approach the mountain with humility than it is to wait for the mountain to come to your eminent feet. If you wait, it's liable to come as an avalanche, just to teach you a lesson.

And for lunch today, I did two sinksful of dishes, started on the laundry pile, and carried my trash out to the dumpster. I feel so flippin' productive (and philosophical, in case you couldn't tell)!

so i did.

by monty powell and keith urban:

Well I've never been the kind to ever let my feelings show
And I thought that bein' strong meant never losin' your self-control
But I'm just drunk enough to let go of my pain
To hell with my pride
Let it fall like rain, from my eyes
Tonight I wanna cry.

Does This Bike Make My Butt Look Fast?

so... as i said in my last update, i had the rest of the week tightly planned. tuesday, i hung out with mom and we had a fantastic day of r&r. we went to the tejanita seafood restaurant and had shrimp cocktail for brunch (envision a bloody mary with huge boiled gulf shrimp and pico de gallo and limes in it), followed by X-Men 3 in the theater (maybe not as good as x-2,, but overall a good film), followed by salty-lime smoothies (basically, a virgin margarita in a cup the size of Sonic's Route 44 drinks), and then pedicures! yea! then, we rented movies and watched 16 Blocks (Bruce Willis does NOT look like himself in that movie, and Mos Def has a very annoying accent but delivers great acting, as always), followed by The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. i'd heard from other people that it wasn't up to the standard set by the book, but since i read the books when i was in 4th grade, it lived up to the foggy memories i had. it hit all the high points and was beautiful to watch, at any rate.

wednesday, i worked on my fish tank and then had swim-time with a friend of mine. i had bought some new rocks and plants and such for my tank, and i wanted to put them in. the new gravel is a mish-mash of reds, pinks, and purples which goes very well with my plants, which are green and red. i had to get the fish out so i could get the gravel in, so that meant i had to get a bunch of water out, too. i used my gravel vacuum to siphon a bunch of water into my largest cooler. that didn't look like enough, though. not that i didn't think my fish would fit in there, but i had to net all my fish out of the tank. it's easier to chase the little boogers down when they don't have much water to run and hide in. so i had to get the water level pretty low just to make the process of catching them easier. so i got my next-biggest cooler out and used it, as well. then i decided i could get more water into both of the coolers, so i siphoned off a little more. that accounted for about 75% of the water in my 45 gallon tank, and i was very pleased with myself. i should've known, at that point, i'd made a mistake. as they say, though, experience is knowledge you acquire five minutes after you needed it. i netted out the fish and put them all into the big cooler. then i started pulling out the rocks and stuff that were in there. there were also a few adventures with the electricity, the tank lid, the light, the bubbler, and the filter, but they don't make for a good story. i'll just say that i spent some time jacking around with all that gear before i ever got to the good part, which was putting the new stuff in the tank. just before i got to add the new rocks to the tank, i looked over to check on my fish and noticed there was one in the smaller cooler.

WTF?

i had, as previously stated, put them ALL in the large cooler. and as i was looking over and noticing this stray fish in the small cooler and pondering how he got there, he jumped right out of the small cooler and onto the table it was sitting on. EEP! so i dashed over and caught him gently and replaced him into the large cooler. you'd think at this point that i'd close the lid on the cooler, right? NO! so i added the gravel to the tank, mixed it in, put in the new plants (they look fabulous, btw) and turned around to see a fish on the carpet next to me. *gasp!* i picked him up, pulled the dog hair off him and put him back in the cooler. he was okay, it seemed, as he swam off. i had another adventure adding a new bubbler column to my undergravel filter, seeing as how i was missing a part i needed. i had to improvise some tubing foo, but by this point i'd been on the phone with my swimming buddy a couple of times and i didn't have time to get over to my Local Fish Store (LFS) before i went to swim. i looked over in time to see the SAME FISH leaping again out of the small cooler and onto the table top, so i rescued him again and still failed to close the lid on the cooler. i got all the large, decorative pieces back into the tank and added the new hunk o' driftwood (supah-fly!) and then started putting the water back in.

it's not as easy to siphon water INTO a tank as it is to siphone water OUT of a tank. in fact, unless you have a jackstand, it's nigh impossible to get the water in the cooler up high enough to make a siphon that'll put it back in the tank. so i siphoned the water out of the coolers and into my 3-gallon water-change bucket and poured it back into the tank.
one.
bucket.
at.
a.
time.
there was a lot of water to be moved. i siphoned out of the big cooler first, hoping to keep any more fish from committing suicide. in the process of getting water back into the tank and getting the filter running, i did find one fish who'd managed to jump out and die and dry off completely before i found him. burial at sea. back to business. so, tank reassembled, electrical power restored, bubbles bubbling, rocks and plants and driftwood and fish all in place, it occurred to me that i might've just buried my snails. oops.

i know i mentioned that i had two snails. i got them as a kind of bonus when i bought my day-glo tetras. what i've noticed since then is that i have FOUR snails. this leads me to the conclusion that some of my snails are reproducing. i know for absolute certain fact that i've only put two in there, but i also know beyond any shade of doubt that there are four snails in there now, at least. there's a giant brown one, a medium brown one, a tiny brown one, and a spotted one. i hoped that i hadn't killed them and went off to swim.

swam. yea! good times visiting and swimming, even though it was cut short by a call to duty. my friend went to work, and i stopped by the LFS to get the part i was missing for my second bubbler column. parts purchased, i went on home and rigged up my second bubbler. yea! found another pescicide victim. i have to assume he jumped of his own accord and wasn't thrown out of the cooler by his buddies, but he was dead and dry and looking kinda like something you'd find in a plastic baggie in an ethnic grocery store by the time i found him. still no snails. burial at sea. good night's sleep.

woke up early and hit the road for my motorcycle safety class. yee-haw! i learned how to drive a motorcycle! two days of class. i had a great time, i only dropped the bike once, and i passed the test. i survived the early morning starts (i had to BE THERE, ready to go, at 7 am. feel my pain.) with the assistance of good coffee and a good sense of humor. the class was great, i recommend it highly. (http://www.aplusrider.com) that afternoon, i went down to the dps office, took my written test, and got my M endorsement on my driver's license. yea! the only bad thing is that i DID have helmet-hair for my picture. ah, well. at least i'm not wearing the same plaid shirt that i've had on in my last three license photos. the license always expires in january, on my birthday, and for the last three photos i've been wearing the same red plaid flannel shirt. as mild as the winters are here, it doesn't get much wear, but once i realized that i'd worn it in three consecutive license pictures, i retired the shirt. it's gone.

anyway, after two days of intense concentration in the summer sun, i was wiped out. so i took a nap. when i woke up, i went and checked on my tank and found -- my snails! yea! i saw all four of them at various points in the evening. i did find that one of my fish had died and been caught on the filter intake. or got caught on the filter intake and died, not sure what order it happened in. i think it was probably the guy who got dog hair stuck to him. fish are notoriously fragile and that sort of trauma is usually deadly. i managed, with some considerable effort, to net him out of the tank and bury him at sea, as well. i also checked my mail and discovered that my new work gear had arrived. i've got an all-in-one print-fax-scanner thingie, a wireless router, and a laptop. whee! cool new toys!

saturday, i spent the day shopping for motorcycles. i found three that really "fit" well... A Honda VTX1300C, a Yamaha RoadStar, and a Suzuki Boulevard C90T. Also notable were the Yamaha Stratoliner and RoyalStar, and of course the one I drool for but have yet to straddle, the Honda Valkyrie. i haven't gotten to sit on it because it's been discontinued and i haven't found a used one yet that i could flirt myself into the saddle of. i'm working on it, though. i've definitely got the bug and want to buy something, but i'm waiting to get the new job situation settled and finances straight before i do it. and i need to sit on a valk so i can get it out of my system. either i'll sit on it and love it and go buy one, or it won't fit right and won't be comfortable and i can then move on to one that does fit me.

saturday night, my girlfriend and i went to see "Turtles and Tuna" at the Majestic in downtown Dallas. WOW!!! that was a funny show. it was the Turtle Creek Chorale as backup singers for Joe Sears and Jaston Williams, the "Greater Tuna" actors. they did a sendup of all things smalltown and southern, with an emphasis on the local Dallas flavor of the thing. highlights: the cattle stampede, the Strangerettes tryout, and the "Baptist On The Roof" spoof of "Fiddler On The Roof". yee-haw!

sunday, i slept. a lot. and i ate. and then i slept some more. wrapped up the night with a rousing game of WoW and then i slept some more.

today, i start the new job. wish me luck!

Update

Gosh, I'm behind on the blog. So, the people that called and asked how I wanted my name spelled in my e-mail did make a formal offer. So, I've got a new job. Last week was my last on the old job and I did the transition with the new guy and everything. The nice thing about leaving is that I don't really like the new guy. This is unusual for me, because I get on well and easily with almost everybody I've ever met. He seems to be trying too hard, though, and he aggravates me. So, between the new guy and the fact that I was bored off my bum in the old position, I'm really keen on starting the new one.

The new job starts next week, so I'm off for this one. So I spent the weekend visiting my godsons, which was awesome. I love those boys. The baby is starting to talk, and he is terribly amusing. He calls Molly by name, such as his pronunciation is, but their two family dogs he simply calls "dog". He's a little unclear on the concept of "fetch" and when he throws the ball to Molly, he chases after her declaring loudly: RUN!!! As she gets to the ball and turns around and runs past him, he giggles and follows, again crying: RUN!!! He lets you know you need to catch him by declaring "JUMP" just before he launches himself into the air from wherever he's perched. The middle one is a stereotypical redhead. He's a total kamikaze, and loves nothing more than to be picked up and thrown around the room. I was bummed to have had back trouble the whole preceding week, because it made it difficult for me to swing him around. Regardless, we managed to have fun. He loves to play imagination-games, and I usually end up sitting still and asking a few questions to move things along while he spins an entire world of fantasy around me. The oldest is almost as big a geek as I am. I love it! He's planning to be George Washington for Halloween. How cool is that?!?! I sat and watched him play video games and he explained to me how to kill Geonosians (the insect-like bad guys from Star Wars, Episode II: Attack Of The Clones) and the finer points of earning merit badges in the Veggie Tales Cub Sprouts game. It was an enlightening weekend!

Then I went to see my baby sister in Austin and we assembled the furniture she'd bought at Ikea. That was fun, and we only made two mistakes. Once, we put a drawer-slide on the wrong supporting leg, but that was easy to fix. The other mistake was going from the wrong direction with screws that fixed the drawer to the rails, so the drawer wouldn't close. She figured out how to pull the screws out while I fussed with the keyboard tray and we got it all sorted out. We ended up having to perform some percussive adjustments (with a hammer) to other parts of the thing to get it all put together right, but we did it. Nothing broke, and it all worked. Of course, I've received reports that there was a good deal of percussive adjustment required in the assembly of the bench that went along with the desk. I hope it holds together when she tries to sit on it!

We wound up the night at Poodie's Hilltop Bar and Grill in Spicewood, TX watching game 4 of the NBA finals. Wow, was that a nail-biter, or what?!?! As my friend said, the officiating was total crap. We were accosted by a very drunk cowboy who was either a Bull Rider, Retired Bull Rider or Rodeo Clown and was somewhere between 32 and 52 years old. He introduced himself variously as all of those things at one point or another in that conversation. He managed to dance once or twice with my sister before he was thrown out of the bar, and we came to the conclusion that one should NEVER miss the opportunity to be ugly to a drunk rodeo clown. We also met some zany Hawaiians who also had a house there in Spicewood. Anyone who has a Humuhumunukunukuapua'a tattooed on their butt is probably good people. However, if they'll hike up their shorts and show it to you in a bar, you should probably question their sobriety. The really funny part of that encounter was that the husband of the tattooed woman decided that he had my sister and I figured out, based on the 15 minutes he'd spent talking to us. He declared that my baby sister was obviously the Smart One, and Good With Numbers; I was the Crazy One. We played along with him for the moment and giggled to each other for the rest of the night. If anyone with a modicum of knowlege about my sisters and I were ever asked to classify us, I can absolutely guarantee that I'd be "The Smart One" and my baby sister would be "The Crazy One". The middle sister would probably be either "The Tough One" or "The Sensible One". She's damn amazing, and I'd call her "The Pretty One" but I might offend the baby sister if I did that. Can't wait to see which of them I get comments from first after that. :)

So, the weekend past, I made my way down to my folks' house and hung out with Mom. Dad's working out of town and I probably won't get to see him while I'm down here. Anyway, Mom and I are having a good time. I'm blogging from her laptop right now, drinking red wine and watching Comedy Central. This is kinda like carbs for the Atkins-dieter in my head. I've been cable-free for so long that watching it is both a huge rush and a bit shameful.

Well, I've got the rest of the week and weekend tightly planned. Hopefully, I'll get to blog about it more sometime soon. Until then, I'm off to have more of the wine and the cable. Hopefully I don't sink into a sugar coma.

camping foo!

i had such an outstandingly good weekend last weekend, it's just taken me a couple of days to process the photos and get around to writing it up.

friday night was our last softball game of the season. what's that you say? you didn't know i was playing softball? aha! i'm a woman of many secret talents... /me trails off mysteriously
anyway, i played 2nd base, as i always do. the thing that has flummoxed me over and over this season has been the infield fly. i know... they're easy. and i ALWAYS get under them and i ALWAYS catch them, but either because of bad technique, or bad luck, or a stiff glove or one of a million other reasons that's been suggested to me by many wise and caring onlookers, i USUALLY drop them. the ball hits the pocket of my glove, bounces out, and hits the ground. this happened to me TWICE!!!! during friday's game.

now, we play co-ed city league with some rule variations that are intended to facilitate a league schedule, and some that are intended to level the playing field for men and women. we play with a clock, for one thing. whenever time runs out, you finish that inning and then the game is over, no matter how many innings you have (or haven't) completed.

friday, we were up by 4 with three minutes on the clock when what should've been our last at-bat came around. we tried (unsuccessfully) to run the clock out, but there was still about a minute left when i was thrown out at first base for our 3rd out of the inning. so we had to take another inning in the field. our right-fielder made a really bad error wherein she ran down a ball after it landed near her and rolled off (afraid of the ball, doesn't attempt to catch it) and threw it backward (is too nervous to throw overhand, tries an underhand pitch to first) over her own head. by the time she'd recoverd the ball and managed to get it in to first, what should've been a single was a 3-run homer, and we were only up by 1. somewhere in there we got two outs, and with the clock dead if we can get a third out before they score again we win. at this point, an infield fly comes to me at second base... do you have ANY idea how bad i wanted to catch and hold that damn fly ball? well, as these things go, i DID catch it and hold it. i must've had the most triumphant look on my face, i probably looked like i'd just won an oscar or accepted the enemy general's surrender or something... everyone cheered, people clapped me on the back... it was great.

so then i went home to pack for camping. yea!

p and i got up (fairly) early in the morning and loaded up my truck with coolers, tent, sleeping bags, dog, and selves. we drove up to lake murray in oklahoma (not far from turner falls) and met up with some lother chicks to camp out. our site was literally atop a cliff overlooking the lake, with an easy boulderfall path down to the water, so we ambled down there and molly fetched her fool head off. some of the other women had brought their (older) dogs who were doing their all just to get down to the water and prance along the shore. molly, on the other hand, didn't stop swimming until nightfall. she was blissfully exhausted.

around sunset a guy who'd been fishing a little ways down decided to pull up and go home, so he offered us his catch: a catfish and two bluegill. i spoke up for them, but then that meant i had to clean them! i went looking for a fish-cleaning station, but none was in sight. one of the couples we were with had given me their big cutting knife, which was utterly unsuitable for the task. the blade was too flexible and too dull. if it'd been that dull and pretty stiff, i coulda used it ok. if it'd been flexible and sharp, it woulda been perfect. anyway, i was having so much trouble with the catfish, i eventually took p's swiss army pocket knife and finished the job with it. i'll spare you the gory details, but i got the fish cleaned on top of a flat rock, by the light of a coleman lantern, using a swiss army knife. i felt so dyke-y i could've popped!

we had delightful kabobs with marinated chicken and peppers and onions. we roasted marshmallows over the fire and smooshed them atop homemade brownies (the knife-providing couple had brought them from home. we didn't actually bake over our campfire). we told stories and drank beer until all of 10:30 when sunbaked exhaustion and full bellies and early rises took their toll and we all crawled off to our sheets.

so sunday dawned and i woke to find coffee brewed (in a percolator over the fire!!) and "mess" made. "mess" is some kind of breakfast mashup made from grits, eggs, and bacon. it was great! thank you, s, for making coffee and making breakfast and for letting us all sleep until a decent hour. in short, thanks for being a morning person, and for realizing that not everyone shares that particular orientation.

we struck camp and went down to the marina to rent canoes. we canoed out with the dogs and paddled around for about an hour. we played a little "bumper canoes" and had some adventures when molly decided to jump out and swim. she had a hard time getting back in, of course, and ended up swimming to shore. everyone (but me) was afraid she was going to try to kill the fledgling geese that were on the shore, but she ignored them utterly and went over to a picnicking family to lick them and see if they had any gooshyfood. they didn't, so she came back to the boat and i hauled her in. p managed to keep us balanced so we didn't flip over while i did that, and i kept a foot firmly planted on molly's leash for the rest of the ride. no more swimming for her!

we lunched and drove back home in time to clean up, nap, wash dishes, and fry up those fish! (you'd already forgotten about the fish, hadn't you?) they were yummy! and now, my girlfriend knows how to fry catfish.

many thanks to my dad for the tip on frying the bluegill whole and lifting the filets off after they were cooked. it worked perfectly!

Phantom Meme!

You scored as Christine Daee. Christine Daee is the sweet, young and beautiful new soprano at the Opera Populaire. She thinks that the voice teaching her to sing in her head is an Angel of Music, sent by her dead father from heaven. Soon, she learns that this mysterious tutor is the Phantom of the Opera, who dwells beneath the Opera House and is madly in love with her. She is horrified by his mutated face and brutal murders, but she feels sorry for him. Soon, her childhood boyfriend Raoul turns up as the Opera Populaire's patron, and he doesn't like the mesmerizing power that the Phantom holds over her, the Phantom doesn't like how Raoul tries to turn her away from him, and thus the love triangle forms. Christine Daee 64% The Vicomte de Chagny 36% Erik 32% La Carlotta 21% Who Are You In The Phantom of the Opera? created with QuizFarm.com

roadtrippin'!!!

so i made it out to talimena with some friends. it was gorgeous!

it was my first long ride, a day out and a day back, and i really enjoyed it. i wasn't too sore or tired at the end of it, but i will NEVER forget to put sunscreen on my neck again!

we stopped along the way at some little town that had a neat-looking old building in it. it was apparently an old storefront of some kind, and was quite dilapidated. i took off my helmet and set it down in the shade on top of some old steps that now only carry the traveler up into the air. my best guess is that they used to lead up to a side porch or loading ramp of some kind.

That's my shiny new helmet. Ok, it's matte black, so it's not shiny. But it IS new. And it's got a very sexy steer and barbed-wire theme going for it, not to mention an almost-but-not-quite obnoxious Texas Lone Star graphic on the side. *swoons*
Oh, yeah, that building. It really was neat-looking... And it had some really odd surroundings. Like this jar of pickled peppers that I photographed for my baby sister. I've got no idea how old these things were or why they were sitting on top of a defunct camper shell in front of this ramshackle storefront in the middle of nowhere. My baby sister and I share a love for all things pickled, but I doubt either of us would be brave enough to take on this jar. Anyway, speculating about their origin, their destination, their purpose and their suitability for consumption gave me something innocuous to dwell on for the next several bike miles. As a bike passenger, you have to be pretty self-entertaining, so the pickled peppers were a great find.

We lunched in Clayton, OK at Judy's Place, where they served sweet tea and yummy home-cooked food. I wished I'd had a camera with me when I used the bathroom, however, because there was a sign posted on the wall and I would have LOVED to put up a picture of it. To the best of my recollection, it read (emphasis mine): "Ladies, please do not put paper towels, feminine napkins or toilet paper into the toilet stool or this bathroom will be closed to the public! Thanks, Judy" I ask you, gentle readers, what are you supposed to do with the toilet paper if you don't put it IN THE TOILET?!?!?! No answer was forthcoming, and I didn't really want to take it up with Judy. She seemed to have put some thought into the sign, as it was very neatly hand-lettered with no spelling or grammar mistakes. I didn't think she'd be as amused to receive my critique of her logic as I was to think it up.

From Judy's place, it was a short ride up into the Kaimichi mountains, and the scenic Talimena Pass. We stopped frequently at the overlooks along the way and took some pictures. Here are the bikes: And this is me as "cargo" on my friend's bike: She rides a 2005 Yamaha Royal Star Tour Deluxe, which I point out to you only because I'm really bad with names and I've gotten it wrong pretty much every other time I've tried to tell someone what kind it was. I just copied that out of her (patiently worded) e-mail correcting me on the make and model, so I thought I'd share it with y'all. Maybe now that I've written it out I'll be able to remember it. Hey, does it look to y'all like I'm a conehead in that picture? Another thing about bikes: they lend themselves really well to either very long or very short hair. It's the helmet-head thing. I can stuff my hair up under a do-rag like the one I'm wearing here, and most of it becomes Very Flat. However, there are significan portions of it, notably around the edges, that remain Obstinately Fluffy and Curly. What to do? Well, for your protection, I've hidden it behind the do-rag, but that is subject to the vagaries of wind, so it's taken on a distinctly non-head-shaped shape for this picture. Ah, well. It's not a beauty contest...

And that's all I've got. There were a few more photos, so I may come back and post them in another update. For now, it's time for me to scoot.

holy funny stuff, batman!

This article cracked me up. My very favorite part was when he explained leetspeak, thusly:

Unintelligible spellings: When you see things like OMG the pwn3d haX0r is the ghey LOL!!11!1 you are reading the language of people who consider themselves elite computer users. Translation is possible, but unnecessary; nothing ever said in this tongue concerns you. At all.

k, that's for you!

i <3 the muppets!

You Are Scooter

Brainy and knowledgable, you are the perfect sidekick. You're always willing to lend a helping hand. In any big event or party, you're the one who keeps things going. "15 seconds to showtime!"

The Muppet Personality Test

and, as a side note, a hypothetical question: when you've had a job interview (or three), but no offer has been presented, and you get a phone call from the human resources department of the company in question requesting the preferred spelling of your name so that they can create your e-mail address, should you open the champagne bottle immediately? or should you wait for a formal offer letter to materialize?

i'm in the "wait for a formal offer" camp. readers? comments?

not dead yet...

hey, i'm not dead!

i had that interview. it went great! the guy wants to offer me the job. i've met his boss before in a previous incarnation of my career, and he's seen me work at the sort of tasks i'd be doing here. so that guy wants to offer me the job, too. yea! now it's just a matter of getting approval up the chain as needed. unfortunately, this could take from one to SIX weeks.

SIX WEEKS!!!

it's a darn good thing i'm employed and haven't made any plans to jump ship. i was a bit sickly the day after the interview, so i took a mental health/sick day. it was just what i needed, i slept 6 of the 8 hours that i would've otherwise been at work.

in other news, my darling little nieces were "Dedicated" at church last weekend. i tease with my friends that their parents called into "Love Songs With Delilah" and dedicated a sappy love song to them. seriously, though, it's basically a baptism, but without water. my sister and brother-in-law have promised to raise their kids Christian, and i was proud to be there to support and record for posterity. there were some really funny moments, like when the minister was reading the blurb on the little girl whose parents described her as "a social butterfly" just as the girl had a shyness attack and hid her face behind her hands and then burrowed into her mother's skirt. also good was the moment when the minister asked the congregation to bow their heads and pray and my sister swiped a cheerio from her husband's shirt pocket in an attempt to quiet one of her girls. got it on camera!

anyway, i'm roadtripping this weekend on the motorcycle with my friend, so i'll post pictures when i get back.

dog on head

so i had a terrible night with my asthma last night, and it's primarily my fault. i had a job interview (or so i thought) for which i was supposed to pick up the interviewer at his hotel and go to a dinner interview. i knew i had to clean out my car for this, but i didn't get time to do it until yesterday afternoon on my way out to the interview. so i just grabbed my backpack and my suitcase (which was still in the car from my weekend in phoenix) and threw them on the floor of my apartment and headed off to be interviewed. i was running late because i'd been detained at my day job, so i called to let the interviewer know when to expect me, and that's when we discovered further proof (as if we needed it) that I Am Not Good With The Fixed Construct The Rest Of You Call "Time". the interview is, in fact, NEXT thursday.

so, yea! i'm all dressed up with no place to go, so i called up a friend who was headed to Chick Happy Hour (CHH) in dallas and i got directions to the bar. CHH is a great concept, analogous to the Guerrilla Girl Bar they have in L.A. and austin and some of the other major metro areas around the country. it's a once-a-month grassroots bar invasion that aims to enable flirting, socializing, and networking outside the limited array of full-time gay bars. great concept, but i suspect the grassroots organizers don't adequately prepare the bars we invade. the bar chosen this time around was plenty big enough for all the people, but the parking was pathetically inadequate. anyway, i made my way over to the designated bar, found some reasonably safe-looking parking a block away, and went in search of my friends. found 'em, had some frosty libations, socialized, watched the volleyball players, discussed jumping into the pool fully clothed (the bar was called "the back yard bar" and was set up to resemble -- a BACK YARD!), and then felt the heat and the smoke and the crowd cutting off my airways.

i queried the available friends, friends' friends, and friends' friends' friends for a rescue inhaler and came up empty-handed. by this point, i was wheezing pretty badly. i got an over-the-counter inhaler at a grocery store up the road, but those things are really inadequate for a full-blown asthma attack and further, the medicine BURNS when you inhale it. that calmed things down for long enough for me to get back to my car and drive home to get my prescribed inhaler, but it was neither pretty nor fun. by the time i got home, my extremities were numb and tingly.

then, to make a bad day worse, i went out for whataburger after the medicine did its thing and i was breathing easy again. whataburger is not what made the bad day worse, despite what some of you may think. i had my mouth totally set for chicken strips dipped in gravy from whataburger, and i made the mistake of not looking into the bag when it was handed to me. i just drove home to eat it, and when i got home, discovered i'd been delivered a double-meat hamburger. bad day. worse.

even worse yet, it was storming pretty hard last night and my dadgum dog climbed on my head no fewer than five times. usually, i like storms. i like the sound and the thunder and the light and the rain and the atmosphere of the things. my dog, she does not. and she expresses her displeasure by putting her feet on my head, neck, shoulders, and face. so, dog on head, i struggled to breathe, and eventually was pulled down into sleep.

Molly and the Red Shoes

Last night, I tried out Molly's new dog shoes. They were NOT a scintillating success. The process of getting them on her was actually quite painless and she adjusted to them very quickly. She didn't try to pull them off, but she did take a very strange gait for the first few minutes she wore them. It looked like she was trying to step out of them, lifting her feet very high, like a Tennessee Walking horse. Once we got past that, she was her old romping self and we went on down to the river. There, the shoes failed. On the way down to the water, two of the shoes removed themselves from Molly's feet. I don't know if poor shoe design, poor dog design, or poor fastening technique is to blame. In any case, I tightened up all the shoes before she went into the water, to no avail. After the first fetch, she came back with only two shoes on. Both the back ones had come off, either in the grass or the current, I can't say which. I checked the two front shoes off and on over the course of the walk, but even with that, we lost another front shoe. By the time we got back to the apartment, Molly was down to one shoe, and that one had a blowout where the sole was detaching from the upper part of the shoe.

My inclination is to blame poor shoe design. I did purchase the cheaper of the two varieties of shoes offered at my local big-box pet store, but in my defense, they were a third the cost of the other variety. I'm going to look into buying something online that has a better design and a moderate price. The ones I had were merely slippers with a velcro strap that tightened up around the narrow part of the paw. Basically, sling-backs for dogs. So, hopefully with a more athletic shoe, I can protect Molly's little feet from the broken glass and other dangers of the river.

In the meantime, those of you who find yourself with an uncontrollable urge to litter, please get help. Carry your beverage conveyance (I KNOW it's inconvenient, but putting shoes on a dog is more inconvenient, I promise!) until you get to a garbage can, and if it happens to blow out of your car/hand/bag/etc., pick it up and chuck it back in. Thanks. Oh, and Molly thanks you, too.

Fish Tank Goodness

So, i managed to get out to PetSmart finally and buy shoes for Molly. yea! She has cut her little paws too many times down at the river, and she needed some protection. So, last week on Tuesday, my friend and I went down to PetSmart and bought Molly some shoes. She looked a little funny walking around in the one I put on her to check the size. However, she always walks a little funny when something like that is on her foot, and I'd rather she be walking funny because of shoes than because of bandages. Since I know you're all DYING to see how they turn out, I promise I'll post some kind of update on the progress of the shoe situation when I get a chance to try them out. Molly spent the weekend with her cousin-dog Orenda at my sister's house, since I was out of town. And here, of course, is the segue into the subject line...

I was in Phoenix over the weekend for a friend's birthday party. Supercoolfunstuff... yea! When I got back, my fish were not having a good day. I had shut off my computer when I left on Friday, because we were having storms and I wasn't entirely sure that my flight would actually leave. I didn't want to tempt the Wild Little Green Men in the sky into zapping my computer with lightning while I was gone, so I shut off the computer and everything else when I left. Of course, the filter and air pump stayed plugged in for the fish, but I did leave the tank light off. My apartment gets indirect daylight a-plenty through the mini blinds, so I figured that would take care of my fish while I was gone. They're tropical, and I've read in the books that they need to have a well-lit tank. It never says what happens to fish in a poorly-lit tank, though, and it doesn't really explain how lit a tank has to be before it's considered well-lit. This is probably heavy-handed foreshadowing, but that information would have been REALLY USEFUL LAST WEEK.

Anyway, when I got back from Phoenix, I noted that the coloration of all my tetras was "off". They usually look like this: My fish, however, did NOT look like that. Their blue top stripe looked very dark blue just above their side fins, and pale blue everywhere else. Ordinarily, the whole thing glows a uniform blue that varies from deep indigo through teal, depending on the lighting. Also, their red bottom stripe, (which is usually the color of freshly oxygenated blood) from mouth to tail was completely missing. They were translucent with a barely discernible pink tint. Finally, as if their coloring wasn't bad enough, they were effectively lying on the bottom of the tank behind the rock they usually hover above, and "gasping". That's what it looks like, anyway, they work their gills hard and rapidly and it looks like they're struggling for air. Errr... ummm... water. Which has air in it. So, air. Yeah, my fish were gasping for air. There were two that kinda stirred about, but the other four were only occasionally and spastically moving their fins, just enough to keep them from colliding with each other in the faint current at the bottom of the tank.

EEEEEP! Knowing how fragile fish are and how challenging it is to bring them back from illness, I set my friend to researching tetra illnesses online while I began trying to figure out what I'd done different lately that could explain this. I was gone all weekend, and I left them with a weekend fish feeder tablet. I haven't changed their water in about two weeks, and I just got some plastic plants. It's the first time I've used a weekend feeder since I got the tetras, so I decided giving them their regular flake food might fix this. Maybe the tetras weren't eating the fancy krill and spirulina so lovingly time-released by the tablet. So I turned on the tank light to let them know food was forthcoming (because fish appreciate the warning) and I opened the tank and sprinkled flakes in it. Well, the zebra danios (who were perfectly fine, by the way) gleefully ate almost all the food. The two tetras that were kinda swimming around made weak lunges at some of the food bits, but didn't appear to get much. In the meantime, I'm hearing terrifying things about sporatozoa and necrotic tissue being read to me from the internet.

I settled in to watch the fish and listen to the disease descriptions coming from the computer, and noticed that the most active of the two active fish suddenly had a red flush over parts of his belly which looked like it was slowly spreading. His blue color was never as bad as the others, but it seemed to be almost back to its normal distribution, not concentrated above his side fins at all. I thought that maybe since he'd gotten some food, he was perking up, so I tried the food again. Alas, the four at the bottom still didn't stir, but the two who were out got more of the food and seemed to be improving by the moment. Knowing you can't force-feed a fish that's less than an inch long without traumatizing it to death anyway, I resigned myself to writing off the four at the back and decided I would have to find an alternate weekend fish feeding arrangement. Bummer.

About five minutes later, I checked in again, and the two active fish were totally back to normal. Better yet, the four at the back of the tank were moving around and their color was returning! But they didn't get any food... at least not that I could tell when I was watching the others feed.

Newsflash: tropical fish need light. Lots and lots of light. Especially the kinds that "glow" when the light is shining. I thought that enough ambient light was getting in during the daytime through my blinds, but apparently, I was wrong. Food or no food, after about 20 minutes under the lights, all the tetras were back to their zippy old selves, and their color had completely normalized. *WHEW* And that, my friends, is Fish Tank Goodness.

Enginerdiness

So... how's this for weird? I was outside this afternoon in the "smoke shack" taking a break. I don't smoke, but it's got benches and it's in a shady breezeway, and it's covered in case of rain, so it's the ideal spot to sit and take a break. I could NOT stare at my monitor for another second lest I tear out my hairs by their tender roots. So, I'm out in the smoke shack and one of the smokers comes out to have a cigarette. She and I get to talking, and she starts telling me how my potential is being wasted in my current job and I should think about looking for a better position closer to Dallas. How am I supposed to tell her that I have a phone interview tomorrow for just that purpose? Anyway, I thought that was weird. The good news is, I have an phone interview tomorrow! I just got the e-mail setting it up today, although I had a rumor of it from an anonymous source two days ago. Anyway, I think it would be a good company to work for, so I'm very keen to find out more about the specifics of the positions.

As for my weekend, it was great. I played softball with my work team on Friday night, and we WON! We've lost two games so far, and this last brings our record to 2-1. Yea! I played pretty well, I fielded a couple of balls that came to me off the bat and I caught a couple at second to get the runner out. I had a really hard time with the pitcher, though. He had a weird pitch that had a lot of "hang time" and a really quick vertical drop over the plate. I don't want to sound like sour grapes, or anything, but it was a bit much for a slow-pitch, co-ed, 4th-tier league, in my opinion. That said, the pitcher himself was no peach. By the end of the game all his own teammates wanted to string him up by his toenails from the field lights, so I guess he's got bigger issues than whether he's putting too much heat or spin on his underhand pitch. I generally do pretty well at the plate, and I'm sort of what you'd describe as a "giant amazon", so I can usually smack the ball pretty far. Okay, I'm what I would describe as a giant amazon. Maybe you'd use another term, something like: Jolly Green Giant's Wife. I dunno. Point is, I was endowed by my maker with some really long limbs, which give me a really good moment arm for rotational motion, which in turn translates to a high linear acceleration rate when I transfer that rotational momentum... oy. Enginerdiness overcame me. I hit the ball hard. K?

Saturday I went on a motorcycle ride out to Hico, Texas with my friend Rose and her motorcycle club. That was a fun trip! The sun was warm, but not too hot, and the breeze was cool, but not too cold. The wind was pretty strong but nobody got blown off their bikes, and all the bikes stayed on the road, so I guess it wasn't that bad. We met up with a motorcycle club from Austin at a restaurant there in Hico, and I had fried pickles for lunch. Okay, I had something else, too, but it wasn't very memorable. The thing that WAS memorable was that I had fried pickles. yum!

Sunday was Scarborough Faire. I got my hairs braided, and they looked like this: That's an arrangement called a "Star Crown", if I recall correctly. Anyway, I had a good time at the fair. We saw several shows, some juggling, some bawdy tavern wenches, Ded Bob, and The Mud Show. Highlights: the tavern wenches, Iris & Rose (Wild & Thorny) sang a song about circumcision in honor of their Jewish patrons, since it was Easter. That didn't make any sense to me, either. I think it was just an excuse to sing about circumcision.

Anyway... at the Ded Bob Sho (which I highly recommend) I noticed that Bob had a new dummy. Ded Bob is not your run-of-the-mill ventriloquist show. In this show, the puppetteer is silent and wears a bag over his head while the dummy does all the talking. In fact, since the puppetteer wears a bag over his head, he might not even be a ventriloquist at all. Anyway, the puppetteer used to be named Smudge, and I would swear that this year Ded Bob was calling him Pudge. That's not the good part, though. The good part is that I got to be BobZombie #1!!! If you've ever seen the show, I'm the one who is shy, petite, and virginal and who ends up hopping mad. (You're welcome.) I think one of my friends took pictures. If so, I'll see if I can get a copy.

Finally, we saw The Mud Show. This was very different from before, when it was titled "The Sturdy Mud-Eating Beggars". I guess the beggars have eaten enough mud that they were able to retire, because I didn't recognize any of the players from my first several years of fair attendance. The new show features a lot more splashing in the mud (picture the first few rows of the Shamu show at SeaWorld), and a lot fewer potty humor moments. That aside, it's still good, dirty fun. The show was a re-enactment of the epic saga Beowulf, and I highly recommend it. Look at your bench before you sit down, though, and note that if there is any mud on it, you WILL become dirty at some point in the show if you sit in that spot.

Last bit: my dog got sick over the weekend. I would complain about how distraught I am over this, but really, she's a lot worse off than I am. She had the 'squirts' for three days, and has been on a rice diet since Sunday as a result. She had a much better day today, but she had to wake me up in the middle of the night a couple of times to get her outside. As unpleasant as that is, I far prefer it to her letting me sleep and then waking to find she's squirted on the floor. Yeah. ugh. Enough of that.

Those are all my thoughts for now. I'll say something profound about the job interview when it's over with.

power outages

I had a really great post mostly done yesterday when the power went out. Apparently, we're in the midst of some rolling outages due to an unexpected wave of heat that has everyone turning on their air conditioners.

Bleh.

Kindly direct your attention to my new subtitle. Enginerdiness is my new favorite word.

I'll try to get back to the old lost post as soon as I can.

just a quick note...

i'm alive, but i'm tired. i'm going to bed!

i have new fish, i still need to put up a picture or a video of them... i'll try to do that. i took some video of them, but it's not very exciting, frankly. i have a very small, very primitive webcam with a very narrow focus band, so basically i just point it at the fishtank and hope that the little goobers swim into focus. :)

i nearly got sent to victoria this week to do some research, but that was delayed at the last minute. just as well, neither of my parents were home, so i'd have been hanging out in their back yard waiting for the cleaning lady to come over with her key and let me in! wow, that would suck. so, hopefully i'll get to go next week.

if you haven't seen it yet, Willie Nelson did a gay cowboy song and video. the video was shot partly at the gay country bar here in dallas, the roundup. so go here to see it!

is it friday yet? well, it will be in fifteen minutes, so now i REALLY need to get off to bed.