December 8, 2008 at 9:40 am (Christmastide, It happened in the H.V., Once a New Yorker)
Tags: seven things meme
Courtney tagged me for the “seven things” meme. I probably shouldn’t open the post that way, lest you say to yourself, “ick. a meme. I never read those masturbatory odes to oneself.“ But there’s no test at the end, so if you want to skip learning seven things about me, that’s cool. But before you go, I just want to let you know these are seven things about me that relate to the last four days! (And there were rules and stuff to this meme, but I’m ignoring them, because like my bloodline, it ends here.)
- I started volunteering at the Dutchess County SPCA as a dog walker. It’s perfect for me because I like dogs, but I don’t want one of my own. (That’s also how I feel about kids, but there’s no shelter around here that lets you take kids on a walk.) I walked about half a dozen dogs, one at a time, along a route down to the pet cemetery on the property. Almost all the dogs peed on a statue to the dead dog named Lady. Those dogs have no respect, and I hope that doesn’t keep them from finding a good home.
- I keep gloves in my glove compartment, but only to make a point. A few years ago, I was playing Trivial Pursuit, and I got one of the stupidest questions ever. It was, “out of ten people how many keep gloves in their glove box?” I gave it some good thought, trying to figure out the trick of the question. It was obviously a low number, because otherwise why bother with the question? But there’s a good chance that at least one of those ten people used the glove box for such a purpose, because I believe that at least some of the population of America puts gloves in a glove box, and I was trusting that those ten people were a reasonable sample of Americans (or even Canadians.) With that in mind, I guessed “one person.” The answer on the card was “zero people,” which is such bullshit, because that means that statistically no one ever, ever keeps gloves in their glove box. But I do! I do because I need to prove that ridiculous question wrong. And I’m glad I do, because I realized I forgot to bring gloves with me when I went to the dog walking. But for the fact that my “prove a point” gloves are too small, have a hole in three fingers, and were never really warm to begin with, they were better than nothing.
- When I moved, I got a card for 30 days of a free BJ’s membership, so I used that over the weekend. Wow, is a warehouse club the opposite of everything I stand for, but I still bought more than I intended, because they gave me all these coupons! While I was shopping, I was so out of my element, I almost ate a sample of the grilled chicken they were hawking. But then I remembered I’m a shop local vegetarian freak. Sometimes it’s fun to go against everything you stand for, in this case, because there is something cool about knowing I don’t have to buy deodorant again until Obama’s second term.
- I have this gray hair that grows near my forehead, and I’ve had it since high school. I leave it alone, because I figure that way it will leave me alone, and it won’t bring friends. I was wrong. I found another yesterday. I would really like to hightail it to Max right now for a cut and color, but I don’t have the money at the moment. I hope I can scrounge up some savings before I start to resemble Birmingham.
- There is only one kind of pool that I’m good at, and that’s a swimming pool. Billiards, not so much. I played with friends over my extended weekend when we couldn’t get a bowling lane, and damn I’m bad. I only sunk the balls I didn’t mean to, including the opponent’s balls a few times. I guess playing once every three years does not a hustler make. I’m still sad that there are plans to turn the local pool hall into a branch of the evil empire.
- I had a lot of down time over the past few days, and I used it to watch all of the first season of Mad Men. What a damn fine show. If anyone can tell me a way to watch season two without having to buy it on iTunes or wait for the DVD release, I’d be most grateful.
- This being my first year of not living on a Christmas tree farm, I decided that if I couldn’t cut down my own real tree for free, I would get the opposite of a real tree. So I dropped twenty bucks at a store that sells above-ground pools, fooseball tables, and billards tables in addition to a small holiday section. I think I succeeded in finding the most festive tree ever, because for the price of one, I got three trees in one box. What do you think?
Metallic purple: the opposite of real
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October 10, 2008 at 8:59 am (Kickball, My Heart Bleeds Blue, Once a New Yorker, Saturn)
With apologies and thanks to Stefanie, for being so kind about letting me steal the Friday Five…
ONE: Went to Jersey yesterday to get the radio in my car fixed. (Random buttons would stop working at random intervals.) They gave me a refurbished one which is exactly like the old one, except that it only has 18 presets on the radio instead of 24. Now, there are not even 24 radio stations in the Hudson Valley, let alone 24 I would want to preset, and I never used more than the first 6 presets at any time. But man, I’m still pissed that I’ve been given an inferior replacement! I liked to keep presets 19-24 on New York City stations, just in case.
2: Anyone else scared shitless that our country and economy is FUCKED? I’ve got nothing else to say about that.
III: There’s an item on the local news today that for the first time in history, Democratic voter registration has outnumbered Republican registration in Dutchess County. (Fun fact: in the four times he ran for President, Roosevelt never carried his home county! And they even made his mug the mascot of Hyde Park.) The radio report says that the influx of Democrats has a lot to do with former New York City moving up here. I love being a small part of an important and heartwarming news item.
Cuatro: A friend of mine from kickball shares the same name as a friend of mine from high school. The kickball friend and his girlfriend had a bit of a break-up on Wednesday. Yesterday I saw my parents in New Jersay and I was telling my mom that I had gone dancing Wednesday night with the kickball friend to try and cheer him up. She seemed really upset as I was telling her some of the details of what happened. Then she made a joke that she was the most upset that he wouldn’t be able to fix her computer, at which point I said, “Mom, do you think I’m talking about The Man of Action? Becuase I’m talking about Pantsless.” To that she said, “Oh, THANK GOODNESS! I was just so upset about that. I feel much better now. … I mean, I’m sorry for your kickball friend. I’m sorry for any pain in the world. But I’m so relieved that nothing bad happened to The Man of Action.”
Fin: Two of my kickball friends are getting married later today! So I took the day off work to celebrate their love. I’m going to the wedding stag, and I’m stoked about that, because I’m going to dance off my pants off. Except I’ll be wearing a dress.
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August 18, 2008 at 10:28 am (Hooray for Hollywood, Once a New Yorker, That Darn Cat, family matters)
Tags: skee-ball
- Two days is not enough time to be considered “time off.” If you’re planning on going out of town for a weekend in the month of August, just take Friday off. Everyone else is doing it, so it’s not like you can reach anyone you need to anyway.
- SisterAlyson has definite ideas about music that she likes. On Friday morning, I picked up my little sister at the train station and drove her to Boston with me so she could visit her friends while I visited mine. My iPod, which is loaded with about 600 songs was in the car, and she played DJ, which meant that she rejected most of my music for being too slow, too weird, or “good, but I don’t want to listen to that right now.” At least she stopped and listened whenever Springsteen came on.
- The black plague started in India in the 1340’s. On Friday I met up with Nancy Pearl Wannabe, and we went to the Boston Museum of Science, a place that she’s been many a time with her middle schoolers. We had some fun taking shadow pictures, flattening pennies, and generally making things go. I’m no scientist, but I knew a lot of the science stuff already, because the museum is not exactly dealing with quantum physics. But there was a display about the history of the world, and it included that little snippet about the plague, which I never though of existing before London in the 1600’s. Now I know.
- I should have seen The Lost Boys a long time ago. It would be a damn shame if I went all the way to Boston and actually went out and saw any of it, breaking my near-perfect record of going there for short work trips, swim meets, and religious functions (in my past life…) So while NPW and I were thinking of something to do, we ended up staying in, drinking Margaritas, and watching The Lost Boys because I never had before. When it was over, I told NPW that watching it is a lot like swimming the butterfly. If I had just done it fifteen years ago, it would be a lot easier to deal with it now. But wouldn’t you know it, knowledge of the movie gave me a little edge when we played Scene It later that night! Speaking of the fly…
- Sometimes it’s better to do a half stroke than to glide in. 1/100th of a second! Crazy.
- It turns out that I’m actually kind of good at skee-ball. I was a bit nervous, going all the way to New Hampshire for Beej’s birthday, where I would meet Aaron for the first time, after this long, arduous internet flirtation we’ve had. I knew that skee-ball was going to be involved, and the last I remember, my skee-skills were equivalent to my mini golf skills, which is to say not skillful. But NPW, Chris and I got some practice in while we were waiting, and I scored 300 points not once, but twice! So when Aaron and Mara finally came back from their trip to Massachusetts to put money in their car meter (how did that take such a long time?), we were all on a level playing field. Sadly, I had to leave after only a couple of hours, but when you have that much awesomeness in one arcade (me, NPW, Chris, Aaron, Mara, Beej, Beej’s gal, Beej’s offspring, and Ted, who I didn’t realize was an actual person until I saw him in person) it’s hard to contain it. Because they’re such great hosts, I gave my skee-ball ticket winnings to NPW and Chris so they can put it towards their dream of winning the lobster salt and pepper shakers. You can see photo evidence of the skee ball on NPW’s blog.
- I’m still pretty great at driving cross-town. On the way back from the beach, we picked up SisterAlyson, and the two of us went to Queens via the LIE and the most beautiful sunset I’ve ever seen over Manhattan. I was Jersey-bound after dropping her off, and instead of taking the FDR uptown, I decided I had enough time to drive across 57th St and take the West Side Highway to the GWB, just for old time’s sake. I love driving cross-town (espeically in someone else’s car,) because there’s a trick to changing lanes quickly so you never get stuck behind someone who’s trying to turn uptown or downtown. It makes for a thrilling ride, and it was good to see the city at the street level, however briefly.
- Babies are cute, and they don’t all hate me. My friends and their 6-month old son just bought a new house in Jersey, and they put out an APB for friends to help them paint and get the place ready for their move-in at the end of the month. So I went over on Sunday to help them out. In between edging the doorways, I went upstairs to chat with my friend and play with the baby. That’s when I got put on babysitting duty for a few minutes, with the instructions to pick him up if he fussed. I did it, and he even stopped fussing! I even enjoyed it and his little baby smell, but I was totally happy to give him back and continue my edging after a short period of time. Verdict: not ready for motherhood, not by a long shot.
- It’s very easy to hook up a Mac to my parents’ wireless router. I spent about an hour trying to figure out how to get my new computer or my old computer, which is now my mom’s computer, hooked up to their wireless connection. The only success I had was when I was able to hook up their PC laptop to the wireless network, which is pointless because that computer does not having working “shift” key, and makes a scary whirring noise when it does anything. I called The Man of Action for help, but he was MIA until I was driving home, when he was totally available, but I was exactly half way between both places of computer trouble. By the time I got home, he was already on his way to Scotland, as always happens when I need technical help.
- My cats really, really do not get along. The Dutchess of Kickball was brave enough to potentially encounter the landlesbian in order to feed my cats for me while I was away. But being well-fed did not stop them from fighting, as evidenced by big tufts of Lucy hair all over the bathroom and living room, adjacent to the piles of cat puke, and best of all, the big old puddle of cat pee on the loveseat where Lucy likes to hang out cower. It took me about an hour of clean-up last night, and Lucy is not smelling so great at the moment. I fear that there is not enough pheromone spray in the world to keep Micki from being a nut job, and I’m not sure what I’m going to do when I go away for a full week in September.
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