Personal chef

Bob's in the kitchen cooking, and I'm in here polishing my toenails and staying out of his way. We have a small kitchen, and there isn't room for two of us in there. I did the grocery shopping--he was waiting for vegetables and herbs that I was buying so he could make beef stew to take on a hunting trip tomorrow--and I was hungry when I got home, but I grabbed a banana and a jar of peanut butter and came in here with my snack while he started cutting things up.

I think once he gets the stew finished and it's cooking, I'm going to make Reubens for dinner. We had them one night last week and they were really good, and I still have some sauerkraut left that we might as well use up. We're also having Caesar salad--does that go with Reubens? Probably not.

I had a good day today. I did all my usual stuff, went to the library and the post office and the bank, I went to the gym and worked out, and I spent an inordinate amount of time at Target. I love Target, although I have to say I was disappointed to read this story about Target supporting its pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions.

Liora wrote and asked about which iBook I bought; it's this one, the smallest (12") one. I had always wanted this one rather than the larger one--smaller=lighter/cuter--but also I've recently found out that the larger screen isn't as clear as the small one. It's larger size-wise, but not larger as far as resolution, so I'm very glad I made the decision I did.

When I had looked at them earlier, it cost considerably more (around $300 more) to get the dual drive, i.e., CD burner + DVD player, which is the main reason that I hadn't bought one before. $1,000 was pretty much my limit, so when I saw that the new models had larger hard drives (40GB), more memory (512 MB), faster processors (1.33 GHz), and the dual drive, all for a few cents under $1,000, I decided to go ahead and get it. It's a business expense, after all, so I can sort of justify it that way, also getting it before the end of the year made sense.

And Amazon was offering a $100 rebate on it. All in all, I'm very pleased with it and I think I made a great decision. Oh, and it comes wireless out of the box now, no additional Airport card, so all I had to do was turn it on, and I was immediately online using the wireless network that we already had installed at home for Bob (and at work--I'm wireless all the time on my G4 at work).

Later . . .

With all the cooking, Bob wasn't hungry, but I was, so he made me a Reuben and a bowl of soup, and now he's back in the kitchen cooking. It's awfully nice having my own personal chef.

previous | next

Criminal behavior

I ordered a new camera today.

I had been wanting one for awhile, but there were so many other things that I wanted more, and I really didn't feel like I could justify it. I had the new camera phone, which satisfied my urge to have a tiny camera to carry around, although the pictures aren't that great. But I'm all about immediate gratification, and I'll settle for a little less quality.

I took a few photos at Misty's wedding, but I wasn't really happy with them--they were dark and kind of blurry, and although Misty pointed out that it was dark, I was still disappointed.

And I'd stopped, pretty much, carrying my digital camera even on vacation, because it's so big and heavy . . . so Bob and I talked about it, and we did some research (which basically consisted of asking our friends which model they had), and decided to get the Canon Powershot SD200. That's the one that Barb has, and John has one, and several other people I know have the same brand, although I'm not sure of the exact model. But this one was affordable, $189 at Amazon. I also got 512 MB of Flash memory for it, since everyone we asked about them said to be sure to get more memory, since the memory card that comes with it holds about ten pictures.

I ordered it today, and decided to opt for the free shipping, since I absolutely HATE to pay for shipping. It will probably be here in about a week, I imagine. So I'll have it for vacation (Disney World the first week of December), and Christmas, and Mexico in February. Bob says it will be our Christmas gift to each other.

[I just checked the link to the camera page, and I see that they've reduced the price another ten bucks since I bought it earlier today! And they've got my order locked ("Shipping Soon"), so I can't delete it and reorder it at the lower price. Now I'm really glad I didn't pay for shipping!]

After I ordered the iBook from Amazon a week or so ago, when I got home Bob said that there was a message on the answering machine from Discover--I'd used my Discover card to pay for the online purchase. The message sounded very ominous. It said, "This is a message about your Discover Card account. If you do not return this call, you may not be able to make future purchases on your Discover Card."

So I called, of course, not having any idea what that was all about, except that I was pretty certain that there wasn't any problem with the card, that it had plenty of credit on it, and the order had gone through fine.

Someone answered, and I gave them my number, and they started asking me all kinds of questions, like what was Bob's Social Security number, and where had he been living when he got the Social Security number, and what was his mother's maiden name, and how old was he, etc., etc. I said, "I did just make a large purchase with the card, if that's what this is all about," and she made me confirm the amount, and she read off the last couple of things I'd bought with it before that.

I guess it was a security thing. After I got off the phone, Bob asked me how much the computer had cost, and I said it was just over $1,000. He said something like, "That's nothing!" and I said, well, yeah, it's not nothing, but it's not like I'd charged a $20,000 car on it or something.

Security is good, obviously, and I guess I'm grateful that someone is keeping an eye on things, but it's annoying to be treated like a criminal when you buy something.

previous | next

Creature of habit

Dan is currently working on-site at a client office, so he isn't in our office much lately. He came in late this afternoon to pass some work on to me that I'll be doing tomorrow, and I was going to catch him up on what I'd been doing since we'd last talked. I said, "I got an iBook!" and he said he already knew--that he'd read it in my journal. And he said he'd laughed at my account of getting lost going home the other night.

Actually, it was him who made me think about getting on 635 and finally making it home--he lives basically out in the same direction that I do, and he said that as he's driving downtown, if it looks like traffic is slowing down considerably on I-35, he'll jump onto 635 and go to work that way. I'm still not altogether sure how that works, but I did remember that when I was driving on the unfamiliar highways, and it allowed me to find my way home.

I'm basically a creature of habit. I'm not very good at remembering how to get places. I can follow directions, and I can read a map, but I don't pay attention when I'm not driving, and if, for instance, someone asked me how to get to Bennett Spring, in spite of having been there maybe 50 times, I honestly have no idea. If I had to drive there, I would get out a map and plot a route, and it would look familiar to me as I drove it, of course, but I couldn't tell you how to get there on my own.

Sometimes if I have to drive somewhere unfamiliar, I'll write the directions down so that I can reverse them and get home afterwards. Which reminds me of something that happened a couple of weeks ago, before Misty's wedding. Did I mention that I was in the wedding? I was. I read The Invitation, by Oriah Mountain Dreamer. I was very nervous about it--especially when I found out I was going to have to use a wireless microphone--but it all worked out okay.

But it also meant that I was involved in the wedding rehearsal. It was in Olathe, at a park, and I had directions provided by Misty. I hope Misty won't be offended when I say that her directions bordered on the surreal. I was talking to David earlier that day, and said that I had to drive somewhere that I was unfamiliar with, and he asked if I had directions. I said, well, yes, but they left a bit to be desired. I don't have them in front of me, so I'm paraphrasing, but it was like, "go south on I-35 to 151st Street, then go west until you see a sign with a quail on it; if you see Target, you've gone to far. Once you pass the sign with the quail on it, turn right on the street with no name, and look for a house with a blue door . . ." Okay, now that I wrote that down, I remembered that those weren't the directions to the rehearsal, those were the directions to Misty's parents' house, where they were having a pre-rehearsal pumpking carving party, and I wasn't going to be able to get away from work early enough to go to that, so the directions were moot.

But anyway, I related my directions, and he laughed, and said, well, just be sure you pay attention and are able to reverse them to get back home, and I said, "Oh, you mean like: leave the house with the blue door and go back down the street with no name, and when you see the back of the sign with the quail on the front . . . "

previous | next

Clumsy

My spate of unluckiness/clumsiness continues--this morning I was washing my face and stuck a soapy finger right in my eye. Like I'd never washed my face before. Was I just not paying attention? You would think that I could be thinking about something else while I'm washing my face, it's not like it's the first time I've done it, or that it would require any major powers of concentration, but apparently, for me, it does.

And then tonight, I was making my lunch for tomorrow, spooning some cottage cheese into a small container. I picked up the container to put the lid on, and then somehow just dropped it on the floor. Except I didn't just drop it, I kind of flung it, so that the cottage cheese landed not only on the floor, but on the cabinets, the refrigerator, the stove, and in the cats' food dish. The exclamation I made isn't printable.

I asked Bob later if he hadn't heard me (he was upstairs) and he said yes, he had, but it didn't sound like a cry of pain, only of frustration, and he decided the best course of action was just to stay upstairs out of the way. Probably wise.

Let's see . . . the rest of the day. We worked out in the yard--Bob cleaned the gutters and cut down a small tree, and raked leaves, and I cut off all the leggy herbs and spent flowers and ran the leaf blower. The only minor catastrophe was that Bob ran the leaf blower for awhile and sucked up a tennis ball into the mechanism, but he was able to remove it with a knife, a pair of pliers, and some judicious surgical work.

Also, I made soup today, but I wasn't so lucky. I kind of ruined it. I made my regular vegetable soup, then I thought I'd put some pasta in it to make it a little heartier; if I don't get filled up at lunch, I end up buying something from the snack box, and that's not really a good idea. The pasta was a good idea, but I guess I should have waited until the soup had cooled and then added it. It soaked up most of the liquid in the soup, and got really big and mushy; now instead of being macaroni, it's more like really soft noodles. I guess it'll taste okay, but I'm disappointed.

And my arms hurt from lugging the leaf blower around.

Several people noticed the NaNoWriMo icon below and asked me if I was participating this year, and if so, if I was going to post the chapters like I did the last time I did it, in 2002. The answer is yes, and no. I'm going to try very hard to write this month, but I don't have a clear picture in my mind of what I want to write, so rather than just blow it off, I'm going to take their "No Plot? No Problem" manifesto to heart and try to write 50,000 words this month, but not put pressure on myself to make it a cohesive, cogent novel.

50,000 words. I should be able to do that. But whether I'll want to share them, I don't know yet. I'm just going to try to write and not attach any pressure to the outcome, and see what happens. That's the best I can do right now.

previous | next

Road to hell

Quite often I'll think of something I want to write about, and think about it and think about it, and then sit down to write about it, and I get distracted, or interrupted, and I don't finish the thought. That's what happened the other day when I was writing about music, specifically the music at Misty's wedding. And the music in Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys. I listened to the audio book version and don't have the print version, so I can't look up a quote, but Gaiman postulates that the world was created by singing, that things (and people) can be healed by songs, and sometimes I believe that's true.

When I was thinking about music, and the emotional effect it has on me, I was thinking about Christmas carols, and hyms sung in church, and the music played at funerals. I remember sitting next to my sister at my uncle's funeral, and both of us were holding it together very well until they played Oh Danny Boy, and we just looked at each other and though, "Uh oh." We clutched each others' hands and just gave in to the tears. Some songs just tug directly on your heart and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. Amazing Grace is another one.

Things haven't been going very well the last couple of days. Last night I got lost going home. I've been taking the highway a few times a week rather than going home through town. I'm leaving late enough most nights that rush hour is basically over, and it's quicker than taking surface streets. But I guess I haven't quite got it down yet, because last night I missed the highway onramp entrance and ended up on the wrong highway, heading for who knows where? Not me. It wouldn't have been so bad if it had been daylight. It would still have been bad, just not so bad.

I was sort of afraid to just get off anywhere, since it's not that great a part of town, particularly at night. And, also, it's not like I'm just driving aimlessly around regular streets, I'm going 65 miles an hour down the highway to hell, basically. I couldn't exactly pull over and leisurely consult a roadmap.

And I honestly, truthfully, had no idea where the heck I was, or where I would end up. I had some ideas, and they weren't exactly thrilling. I figured if I got off the highway I would end up in The Bottoms, or someplace in Kansas City, Kansas, neither of which were very good places to be if you don't know where you are.

So I'm driving and driving and cursing under my breath, and I eventually saw a sign that said I was getting close to the Kansas Turnpike, which I'm not exactly sure what that means, but which made me fearful that I would get on it and not be able to get off, and perhaps also have to pay a toll, and maybe eventually end up in Topeka. So I got off onto another highway and drove for awhile, trying to figure out where I was, or at least what direction I was going in, and then I saw a sign for 635, and I thought, well, I've driven on that highway before going to the airport, maybe if I get on that I'll start to see something that I recognize, and wonder of wonders, I did, and I got on the right highway, and I made it home.

Oh, well, not home, but to the gym, where I couldn't get a treadmill except for the ones that I can't figure out how to work. So I just did the weightlifting part of my workout, and went home and played with my new computer for awhile instead of doing the work that I should have been doing, because I just didn't feel like it.

And then this morning my closet collapsed on me.

Bob's been warning me it's going to happen for months, if not years, and I knew it was inevitable, but I just kept putting off cleaning it out. This morning I was bending over to pull a t-shirt out of the lower shelf, and everything that was on the upper shelf fell onto the top of my head. Pyewacket ran in to see what had happened, but I made her leave in case the fallout wasn't over. I guess I know what I'll be doing this weekend . . .

previous | next