Life and Other Things I Don't Understand
Sunday, May 30, 2004
To Do List
Yuck. Awful wind, almost-but-not-quite-chilly outside today, and the most important of what I have to accomplish with my two days off is outside.
Things I have to do:
1. Laundry
2. Clean and dust
Things I have to do that I can't right now:
1. Grocery shop
2. Get clarifier for pool (the green-brown murkiness is gone, but the annual opening-the-pool cloudiness remains)
3. Take back and exchange the solar cover we bought last year. It's rotting and my fingers are poking right through all the bubble-wrap-type pockets of air (I like popping bubble wrap, but not when it costs this much!). It's got a two-year unlimited warranty, and I plan to take 'em up on it.
4. Get mice to feed to the snakes so they stop trying to eat each other.
Things I gotta do and am trying to avoid but I can't:
1. Spray degreaser on the underside of the Suburban's engine area (not fun with a 'breeze' strong enough to make my hair blow into my mouth and whip sand into a frenzy by the front door). Then spray it off (ooh, boy, aerosol solvent breezing about (and most likely, most of it all over my legs))
2. The degreaser is to make it easier to take off the dead starter, and to make sure the contacts are all clean before...
3. Bolting on the new starter and crossing my fingers that that's the problem, since it wasn't the 20-month-old battery (which I exchanged yesterday).
The best part is that I get to do all of that in the street, as the Suburban's too big to fit into the garage. Well, actually, it could. If we didn't mind not being able to get out. And if we cut a strip out of the garage door to accommodate it closing over the trailer hitch.
I know how to work on the vehicles we have (don't like it, and I cuss up a blue streak doing it, but I do know how), and Ed works six days out of seven most weeks (today's day five of his workweek), so if I want to be mobile before Tuesday, I gotta fix it. Laying on newspapers and old towels to cover any degreaser residue left on the pavement (I am not in the mood to try to push that beast forward and away from the yucky stuff) with the sand swirling around my head and into my mouth and eyes. Ooh, boy.
Maybe I'll just remove the starter today (really, the easier part of fixing it) and let Mr. Popeye Forearms hold the new feels-like-twenty-pounds starter in one hand while he screws in the bolts with the other. He doesn't have to be in tomorrow 'til afternoon.
Well, I shouldn't put it off any longer. Sooner begun means sooner done, right? So off I go to cover my legs in solvent and chew some yummy sand... wish me luck and wear your earplugs (I swear LOUD when I'm frustrated!).
Thursday, May 27, 2004
I Got Got Got No Time
Sorry for the lack of posts this week. Life's been busy but in a mindless sort of way.
Took the cover off the above-the-ground pool this week and found it to be a half-full murky green pond. Not enough of one chemical or too much of another last October, it seems. Or maybe it's just the late opening and the warm weather we've been having. In any case, one quart of concentrated algaecide and two bags of 68% chlorine shock treatment later, now it's a semitransparent brownish green and I think, if the pump and filter had a consciousness, they would hate my very guts for making them work so hard. Ah, well, too bad. I still hope to be swimming sometime this weekend.
After three years of refusing to get his hair cut, and fighting a slight trim of the dried-out split ends, my almost-thirteen year-old son decided to cut it all off on Tuesday. Over a foot of thick and lovely blond hair was chopped off in one massive ponytail. He's keeping it (for sentimental reasons, he says), but I'd sure love to make off with it and get meself a weave... *sigh* Now his head sports one-inch long spikes on the top and a scant three-eighths of fuzz all the rest of the way around. I hope he remembers to use the sunscreen on his neck, which has hardly seen a single ray in ages (even when he pulled the whole mass of it back into a ponytail - a daily thing at Mom's insistence - it still pretty much kept it covered).
That's it from Albuquerque for this week. Gotta go water the garden, and put water-remover into the gas tank of the Suburban (thanks, Shell, for the bad gasoline I'm still trying to work through my car's system some three weeks later...)
Thursday, May 20, 2004
Opinionated
Women with more than a half-ounce of body fat really shouldn't wear stretch-denim hiphuggers that are one size too small. Especially with a babydoll tee that's short enough to show off a pierced bellybutton.
A car is not a phonebooth that goes seventy-five miles an hour.
Three-year-olds have better enunciation than a person with a fresh tongue piercing and a headcold.
The world at large does not care that you're wearing thong underwear, nor what pattern is on your boxer shorts. Pull up your damn pants.
Laugh and the world laughs with you. Walk into a wall and they laugh harder.
The loudness of your neighbor's constantly barking dog is inversely proportional to the number of hours remaining until you need to get out of bed.
The sensors that automatically open store doors also emit a trip signal to your child's bladder.
Computer printers and photocopiers have secret built-in urgency detectors to spontaneously trigger paper jams.
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Lesson Learned
This relates to a story some of you dear readers may have heard about last autumn. Anyone remember the boy who got suspended because the vending machine at school dispensed two Sobes when he'd only paid for one? That was my son. (The suspension came about because he had the audacity to use the machine for two days in a row and get four-for-two... like the entire school didn't know the machine was on the fritz... the line to use that sucker stretched wall-to-wall. Mason, however, was the only one to get any sort of reprimand, and that was because a teacher overheard him telling a classmate in the cafeteria, who was apparantly the only kid in school who didn't know, why he had two cans of Sobe stuck in the pockets of his cargo pants yet he was drinking the milk that came with his lunch. But I digress (sort of...))
He graduates from that middle school tomorrow. The other day, in one of his classes, the students were asked to share the most important thing they learned or the one thing they'll remember most from their two years there.
Mason's answer:
"Sometimes you get accused of doing something wrong that you didn't do. And you get punished for it anyway. When you prove that you were right and the people in charge were wrong, they get mad and find mean little ways to get back at you for it."
What a lesson to learn at twelve, eh?
Friday, May 14, 2004
Full Moon? Sunspots? or Just Monday Morning?
Some days are just... days. Ho-hum get-through-’em sorts. And some rare gems are absolutely wonderful, starting out smooth and full of promise and somehow the day just keeps getting better.
Some of them, however, go completely overboard, disguising themselves as Mondays with fangs and jammed into overdrive.
You know you’re thick into a false Monday when:
Turning off the alarm, you drag yourself out of bed and into the kitchen to start the morning coffee, then schlep into the shower to wake up. Wet hair wrapped in a towel, it’s back into the kitchen for the java, stealing a glance at the clock on the wall. It’s 3 am and that damn alarm clock only went off in a (really bad) dream.
You roll over and crack open one eye to see how much longer you get to stay in bed. Cheeky red digits are flashing without meaning. Apparently the power flickered off and back on during the night and you find out the hard way that the backup battery in your alarm clock is dead and you’ve slept an extra hour and a half.
You only thought you hit the Snooze button (actually, you turned the noisy little bugger off completely). Run out door almost on time, barely dressed and having to pee.
The conditioner bottle pretends to be the one full of shampoo and you find yourself with a rich, creamy handful of what you put on your head after what you haven’t used yet.
The tiny sliver of soap pops out of your fingers and slithers down the drain. Mumble a colorful phrase or two and wash yourself with the last of the shampoo.
You forgot that you used up the last of the shampoo yesterday after the itty-bitty soap went spelunking in the drain. Drip your way over to the cabinet under the sink for more of both and discover that everything is in the linen closet down the hall.
Get half of your head done when the plastic tip of the curling iron falls off.
With eyes barely open and pants around your ankles, you realize that your butt is sinking lower than usual with no way to stop until warm skin meets cold porcelain...
Your hairbrush swandives into the toilet.
Try to put your toothbrush into the rack on the counter, somehow miss, and it drops into the open toilet. (Haven’t you learned to close that thing yet?)
Your blowdrier poops out with no warning and nearly sets your hair in fire in its overzealous death throes.
Forget to replace the hairdryer that died yesterday and now you have to deal with weird hair for two days in a row.
The nozzle on the hairspray bottle (which was just fine yesterday) grew a sticky clog. You discover this when the first pump shoots a stream into your left eye.
Realizing just before you sprint out the door that you forgot the antiperspirant, you run into the bathroom, untucking your shirt on the way. It’s the final bit of the solid stick and it flops out of the container, rolling a wide white trail down your pantleg before plopping to rest on the toe of your just-shined black shoe.
Wet mascara plus in-a-hurry equals uncontrolled sneezing. Now Tammy Faye Bakker doing A Clockwork Orange is staring back at you from the mirror.
Forget that you added a drop of SupraClens (an overnight enzyme treatment) to your soaking contact lenses last night. Take one from the case, give it the usual ten-second morning rinse and check it for any stray yucky stuff, then insert the lens. Your eye immediately begins to melt and the lid won’t open enough to take the searing bastard back out again.
The only clean socks are the ones with toe holes.
The morning is humming along perfectly. No oversleeping, had time to drink that extra cup of coffee... in fact, it couldn’t be going more smoothly. Even your hair’s cooperating today. Keys in hand, ready to walk out the door... and realize that it’s the weekend and you’re off today.
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
What Are You Reading?
Got this from Lisa, who saw it on Mark's, who took it from Silja...(feel like I'm quoting the Bible, here... and Silja's begat Mark's, which begat Lisa's and Rhonda Elizabeth's... Oy. I'll just stop that now).
To get to the point:
Take the nearest book. Open it to page 23. Find the fifth sentence. Post this sentence on your blog (together with these instructions).
My closest books were the dictionary and a thesaurus. Not much help, sentence-wise. So I picked up the next closest one.
Accumulated chemical cues help the snake zero in on potential prey while approaching within its preferred striking distance of less than 8 inches (20 cm).
There. Pretty boring one, eh?
Wednesday, May 05, 2004
Van Helsing
Wow for the special effects and moody scenery. This is a great showcase for what those wizards at Industrial Light and Magic can do now. A movie that absolutely has to be experienced on the big screen. It'll definitely lose some of the impact if you wait for it to hit home video.
All that mid-1800s atmosphere was almost enough to make me forget its shortcomings. It didn't have many, but there were some overacted moments and weirdness in the timeline that just tossed me right out of the fantasy. If I were rating it by the ever-popular stars, it'd lose one for that. But only one; it had enough realistic creatures and action to suck me right back in again.
Artistic license abounds here; if you're a purist about time periods and places for the classic horror bad guys, this movie will irritate like sand in your shoes. Just enough to rub you the wrong way, but not so bad that you'll end your journey. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were not menacing Paris just one year after Dr. Frankenstein was killed by an angry mob in Transylvania. In a nutshell, a bit weak in the storyline and dialogue.
If you can push that aside (actually, pretty easy to do with all the visuals to take in), it's worth sitting in the dark for just a little over two hours. If you go in expecting something on par with The Mummy (in my opinion, the best of the classic horror villains to be redone with a new-style storyline), you'll be just a little disappointed.
Instead, buy your ticket with no expectations but that this is a passable story with I-believe-I'm-the-character-I'm-portraying acting done only by the two leads (Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale) and knowing that the real star is ILM's special effects and backdropping, and you'll thoroughly enjoy the ride.
Tuesday, May 04, 2004
Sneaky Peaky
Got tickets to tonight's preview showing of Van Helsing. I'll let ya know just how much it's worth (or not worth) seeing.
Sunday, May 02, 2004
Tick, Tick, Tick...
Well, I've sent an email to Dr. Rock to let him know he's the latest recipient of the torch and gotten no reply. Not even a 'go to hell, I'm not answering those.'
Hmmm... I hope it's only that he doesn't check the email linked to his blogsite very often and not that he thinks I passed the questions on to him because of his stated viewpoint about why/how the game was begun. I meant what I said about it being an honest thanks for suggesting it. People who know me know that I don't play headgames and I'm not into placating squeaky wheels, either.
(Matter of fact, once I'd read the thread suggesting the Torch Q&A game, I didn't even visit that one a second time, having already formed my turned-out-to-be incorrect opinion about where it would lead... and didn't commit to memory who'd made the suggestion in the first place.)
To be fair, in case he hasn't checked his mail or he's taking his time formulating his answers, I'll wait another day before passing the torch to someone else. If there's no response from the Doctor, either by answering the questions or in the form of a 'no thanks, I'll pass' by Monday afternoon, you're all fair game in my sights...
