Category Archives: Blurbs

Monday evening musings

Blurbs, Whining

In which I’m blogging because I’m not scrolling Twitter.

TWITTER:

I waste a remarkable amount of time on Twitter. Used to enjoy it, but now it’s more a habit than a pleasure. Sometimes it’s fun, still, and there are quasi-meaningful interactions with other users, but most of it’s just crap: the absurdity that is the White House, the bad performance art that is Fox news, international news of wars, crimes against humanity, the occasional interesting tidbit about an old word or some science. But most of it is really just unadulterated crap: recycled jokes, married women saying mildly clever coquettish things for male attention, pet pics, ads, and vitriol.

Now it’s been “improved” into a site that does not show you content chronologically; you see others’ Likes in addition to their Retweets; and the mobile app some months ago started refreshing to the top on its own, hiding older content and re-displaying seen content.

That was annoying, so I’d switch to the site in a mobile browser. But now the browser version has started doing that, too. You’ll be reading a tweet, and the thing will just reset to the top on its own.

Too annoying. Tab closed.

GERMS:

It’s been, oh, around 72 hours or so since a co-worker showed up visibly ill and breathed all over everything, and I now feel what may be the beginnings of Coming Down With Something.

Am I irritated as fuck? Why yes, yes, I am! Stay home when you’re actively shedding goddamned germs, people, especially if you work in public!

There are people out there, like me, who JUST DON’T LIKE BEING SICK, thank you, and worse, there are those who will FUCKING DIE FROM THE COMMON COLD, and you might be breathing on their caregivers in your public job, so do your best to stop it from spreading. It’s your civic goddamned duty. If you can afford to work in Uptown, you can afford a couple days off when you’re contagious. Working while sick is not a praiseworthy sacrifice indicative of a good worth ethic, it’s rude and, at a stretch, quite possibly involuntary homicide.

BIRTHDAY:

My birthday is Saturday. I’ll be 50. No friends or family in the area, so no party. At least I won’t have to put up with macabre black bunting and balloons and over the hill jokes, but also, nobody’s planning shit, so, yeah? Not gonna say I’m not disappointed about not celebrating my big five-oh with a proper party. Nobody cares about 38 or 47, but 50?

It’s looking most likely at this point that I’ll be snot-filled and bed-ridden for the day, but if not, I’m considering requiring I be taken on a date to a jazz supper club about twenty minutes away. Wear a dress, some makeup, a cocktail ring, eat a $25 plate of food, come home. Sounds fun!

DISHES:

I have to do dishes at work now, so doing them at home is making me mad. I grumble about it under my breath.

It’s sorta like my internal monologue when I was married and infuriated, except my current partner actually, you know, supports me, so mostly I just want a professional sink and sprayer setup because domestic dishes are stupid.

CHILI:

I made three bean vegetarian chili today in the Instant Pot. Came out yummy!

Chili

WEIGHT:

Having a job that requires me to move around has not only destroyed my feet (ye gods they hurt!) but I think might be helping me lose a little weight. I haven’t taken my measurements or anything, but my gut seems slightly less gigantic.

At the very least, my Google Fit app pings me each shift to congratulate me for taking my 10k steps for the day! I mean, it’s not like I’ve become sporty, but compared to the nothing I’ve been doing the past three years, it’s an improvement. A painful one for my feet, sure (ye gods they hurt!), but hey.

WEATHER:

It cooled down from the 90’s! Wore a hoodie and a scarf the past two times I walked to and from work; tonight it’s rainy and cool and I have the window open and it smells nice!

PHONE:

My phone, which works excellently, is doing that things all phones do after a couple of years: it’s telling me its full.

I have a massive SD card in it, but apps bloat endlessly. Apps also flat-out refuse to work if they get old enough, so you have to let them update in order to even use them, and then one day your phone’s full.

App bloat pisses me off. I remember when devs would try to keep code small and efficient, but the expectation now is of endless hardware and processor improvements, so nobody cares. In a few months, my phone will start telling me it can’t update installed apps, and then I’ll spend half a year deleting things until I’m down to a quarter of what I’d actually like to have installed, and then I’ll need to buy a new phone.

Cell phones are marvels of technology, they truly are, but the expectation of endless hardware upgrades is just humanity being fucking wasteful and dumb.

CLINGS:

I cannot wait until next Monday because I’m going to put THESE up!

Halloween clings

I adore me some holiday window clings, I truly do!

HOBBY:

My traveler’s notebook/fountain pen thing is still going strong. I have a dozen (cheap Chinese) fountain pens now (anybody who’d drop $700 on a pen is a weirdo), and a half dozen bottles of ink.

Look at this precious little lipstick-sized swirled teal mini fountain pen!

Stationery stuff

Occasionally I go over to the Java Hut and practice calligraphy over a latte, though only for fun; I have no intention or expectation of actually mastering it.

Sunday

It’s pleasant and distracting; much better than scrolling Twitter!

1934 – 2018

Blurbs

In which a favorite author has died.

Several writers have said today that they think they’d have been afraid to meet Harlan Ellison.

Well, I’m not a writer, so I guess I don’t have a writer’s fear of having my work critiqued by Harlan goddamned Ellison, but I’ve been around smart, mouthy men, and if you feel you would have been afraid to meet Harlan, you haven’t learned how to tell people to shut the fuck up.

Which, if you’re a fan of his, you should have learned from him. Ellison was basically a walking master class in how to tell people to shut the fuck up.

The way you do it is this: when smart, mouthy men say or do stupid shit, you say, “Shut the fuck up. Jesus. Are you even listening to what’s coming out of your mouth?”

And if they’re smart, and you’re right, they will.

The only time it gets uncomfortable is if they’re dumb or you’re wrong.

I never met Harlan, of course, but I don’t think he was dumb. I mean, not that my opinion matters in the least, but it never once occurred to me that anybody’d be afraid to meet Ellison. He looks like he was an unmitigated hoot.

Tuesday

Blurbs

In which there’s, uh, random stuff.

Kitchen sink’s been filling up with water from the pipes, so I haven’t done dishes in days. Plumber’s coming tomorrow to fix it, but then I’ll have to do the dishes.

Already cleared out the cupboard under the sink, so the visit shouldn’t be too terrible.

Leaving for DC on the 30th, to see Amma July 1-2, so need to do laundry and organize my crap for travel. Probably need to buy lens solution, too. Have to check (and pay for) my bag because I bought a discounted ticket, so at least I can take full-sized products.

Have to wash a wrap or two, too, for flying. I’ve learned over the years that a wrap is the only way to handle the warmth of airports (throw it over one’s shoulder, out of the way) and the chill of flights (use it as a blanket). Jackets are useless: too bulky to carry, and too short to cover legs and feet.

Sleep cycle’s such that I’m generally awake all night, often reading, until dawn, then sleeping ’til 11 or 1 or 3. We have blackout curtains so with the fan and/or air conditioner on it’s easy sleeping even with the sun up.

Work schedule is still part-time, 5 to 10pm, but my employer lost the chat contract to a call center in India, so we’re all going back on phones in the next 4-6 months. I’m annoyed as hell and considering other work. They’ve never given me a raise, they never manage to give me the few days off I need each year, and policy is ever hostile and shitty. Of course, a job change would probably mean equally shitty policy and even shittier hours, so, well, we’ll see. Maybe something will come up in the neighborhood. Maybe I could check groceries, up the street at that co-op or something. Get me out of the damn building.

Holy fuck, it’s late May

Blurbs

In which there’s a blog post! ABOUT NOTHING.

It’s late May. The air conditioner’s been in for a week. There was a thunderstorm earlier and the power flickered but didn’t go out, so, sadly, I had to keep working ’til the end of my shift. It was fairly slow and I didn’t get skilled for fucking inbound calls. Win!

It’s 1:22 in the morning and I’m sitting at my desk watching a BBC police procedural and scrolling social media like an idiot.

Need to book my Amma retreat, but keep not doing it. Probably will decide on DC (couldn’t get registered for the Toronto retreat with rooms, tried Travel Exchange but no dice) and buy a plane ticket tomorrow.

Dad was here last week and took us to a Twins game. Mariners won, which is fine with me as a native Washingtonian. It rained for most of the game, but was warm enough it wasn’t a bother.

Mariners @ Twins

Bob’s Java Hut, a coffee shop a block away, has a fantastic thing called a Carburetor. It’s cold press with half and half and sweetened condensed milk and it’s brilliant. If I bring a jar, they fill it to the top. Magic.

I still need to see a dentist. OMFG do I ever. My mouth is a fucking crime scene.

Still rockin’ out regularly to my ancient iPod, dug up out of a drawer recently and which still holds a moderately decent charge. Backed it up to my computer finally, but haven’t put anything new on it. It’s so old there’s a playlist called “Pop Rocks” that features nothing under ten years old.

There’s no produce in my fridge. We need to go shopping. All I have is onions and wilted celery, maybe some carrots. How did people used to survive without year-round tomatoes?

Bought some clothes online and they arrived today! A new hippie skirt (my old ones both died recently) with a massive 25-yard spin; expensive as skirts go, but worth it. New sports bras, since the elastic always goes. A three-pack of tank tops because it’s FUCKING HOT OUT, plus a tank dress with pockets, because feminist Twitter spent, like, a month bitching about how women’s clothing never has pockets because OMG TEH PATRIARCHY and I just wanted to prove it’s not that you can’t get pockets but more like you don’t fucking bother to buy shit with pockets, ladies.

There are very few people who need to wash their bed linens as much as I do. Maybe I’ll pull that off tomorrow, so we can sleep in on the weekend in fresh, cleeeeeean sheeeeeets.

Here’s a tiny dalek.

#tinydalek

Protesting the fossil fuel industry, are you?

Blurbs, Soapbox, Social, Web, Whining

In which there’s some perspective.

Oil is in everything. Oil is in every single thing you ever use, touch, or buy.

How does food get to the store or farmer’s market? In trucks that are running on gas. How do you carry your food home? In plastic bags. How do you store your leftovers? In plastic containers in plastic fridge interiors sitting on linoleum, laminate wood, or carpeted floors, all three of which are petroleum products.

Your prescription lenses are a petroleum product, your window blinds are a petroleum product, your brassiere is a petroleum product, and every board and nail your house was built with were made with and transported to your property on equipments burning petroleum products.

Your toothbrush is a petroleum product, the materials used to make your shoes and coats are petroleum products, and the plastic clothes hangars in your front coat closet are petroleum products. Nearly all your personal care items are in plastic containers or contain petroleum products.

2016-06-20

It’s easy to get mad about spills and pipelines and fracking, but we have to remember that “the fossil fuel industry” is us. If we’re sick of it, if we want it to change, then we have to change.

We have to demand wooden toothbrushes, woolen coats, fewer cars and more trains. We have to refuse to place every single piece of succulent produce we buy into a thin plastic bag we subsequently throw away. We have to be okay with things arriving at stores unwrapped and possibly in need of cleaning before we can utilize them. We have to bring our own containers for nearly everything, and we have to recycle the shit out of what’s left.

We have to demand less plastic in all packaging, from bed linen sets to hummus to children’s toys. We have to quit buying baggies and Tupperware and Saran wrap, and re-use the stuff we already have. We have to quit buying plastic plates and forks and Solo cups for BBQs and camping.

We have to quit buying disposable crap. We have to demand that our appliances be repairable, long-term investments, rather than engineered to fail in 18 months.

We have to buy fewer cell phones. We have to keep our computers longer. We have to walk more and drive less. We have to quit ordering take-out and eat in, on dishes, instead. We have to demand paper wrapping for our drive-thru foods.

We need to stop buying individual beverage servings; everything in those cold cases in gas stations has to stop. Buy fountain drinks only, in paper cups or a reusable container you brought with you, or STFU.

We absolutely must stop buying bottled water. There used to be drinking fountains all over the place. Bring them back.

We also have to be willing to accept things that aren’t quite as good. Wooden toothbrushes are porous and capable of harboring germs. Woolen coats aren’t waterproof and compared to modern synthetics are heavy and bulky. Paper bags fall apart in the rain. Leather shoes are cold and they leak. Real rubber degrades in sunlight. Shake shingles don’t last as long.

These massive oil spills are not just happening in a vacuum. The fossil fuel industry exists because we buy their wares, and we buy them all day long, every single day.

Americans consume petroleum products at a rate of three-and-a-half gallons of oil and more than 250 cubic feet of natural gas per day each.

Every latte lid, every drinking straw, every produce bag, every cell phone, every oscillating floor fan. Every quick little errand in the car, every elective surgery, every bottle of herbal supplements or tube of organic moisturizer.

Every plastic laundry basket, every pair of Fiskars, every casserole dish lid. Every bottle of liquid laundry or dish soap, every bottle of shampoo and conditioner, every shower shell, every vinyl floor tile, every set of speakers, every stick of deodorant. Every hand tool, every automobile, every plush toy, every microfiber throw, every Rubbermaid storage bin, every USB cable and extension cord and surge protector bar.

Even if you ride your bike to the greenhouse for a bouquet of fresh flowers, your bike was built with petroleum products and the greenhouse’s mulch and seeds were brought in on trucks.

Here is a picture of a long line of people standing on a beach protesting fossil fuels:

protest

Swimwear and flipflops? Petroleum products. Lotions, sunglasses, SPF cream? Petroleum products. Ice chests and parasols? Beach towels and plastic zippers? Nylon rope, surf boards? All petroleum products.

Everything in your medicine cabinet and under your kitchen sink: petroleum products. The kiddie pool, the lawn hose, the patio furniture: petroleum products.

It’s not that I don’t think massive spills aren’t a problem. I do. But we need to change the market if we want to change big oil; there’s no other way to reduce these risks or to reduce or stop fracking.

Oil is in everything. You use three gallons a day just sitting on your [synthetic and therefore petroleum product-containing] couch doing nothing but looking at your petroleum product-containing TV, the channels of which you change with your petroleum product-containing remote. When you get up to have some eggs, you cook them in your petroleum product-containing pan, and top them with cheese that came out of a petroleum product-containing package. When you go to wash your plate, you use a kitchen sponge made of petroleum products.

“The fossil fuel industry” is us. If we’re sick of it, if we want it to change, then we have to change.

Sunday

Blurbs

In which I am the epitome of non-productivity.

Had a pick-up gig last night; apparently someone in Junkyard Jane was sick so we did their Ice Harbor Brewery show for them at the last minute. Great crowd, nice vibe. Free dinner!

Here’s Rob, me, Luther, and Kit:

Coyote Kings w/Mush

Today I’m a bit hung over. I don’t intend to accomplish much. I’d wanted to bake something — egg muffins or a fritatta — to make breakfasts easier this week, but I don’t know if I’ll get to it. I’m feelin’ pretty severely lazy. I’ve cooked breakfast and I’ve boiled water for tea, but that’s it.

Tea

I’m listening to the Gita and surfing amazon.com for samovars.

The LDBF is currently at the Mall of America with his mom, who is visiting for the weekend. I never expect to hear from him again. Malls. Heh.

In the near future I’m going to make myself another cup of tea and watch an old Depp movie on my tablet while sprawled lazily in my unmade bed.

Basically the only thing I care about lately is VACATION IN LESS THAN TWO WEEKS!!!1! Cannot wait to smooch on that LDBF again. Also looking forward to traveling and getting out of town and seeing new stuff and all that, but mostly the smooching.

February is almost over so I thought I’d check in.

Blurbs

In which I haven’t posted in over a month so I’m just gonna spew some utterly boring crap into a CMS interface and publish it.

Oh, not much.

You?

Well the usual. Some gigs and stuff. Work, a lot of time fucking off in IRC with kids, some time visiting with friends – mostly the Wendover-Briggs Machine on their comfy patio. A couple loads of laundry, some cooking, some cleaning. I bought some ebooks, took some naps, got my hair did.

The band’s been working up the material from the new album. The guitar festival is next month! Come see it!

I got new glasses and new contacts: expensive but so needed, and I also had my teeth cleaned. I’d much rather spend that money on the vacation I so desperately need, but of course I don’t have insurance and I need the services so the money has to be spent.

(In related news I’m really pretty pissed off that I am going to be required to carry a health insurance policy I can’t afford in the very near future. I mean, if I could afford it I WOULD ALREADY FUCKING HAVE IT. (One of the many reasons I choose not to own a car is the expense of insurance. In all my years of paying car insurance, I never once got anything back out of it. Even if you pay for years and your claim is valid, they find a way to deny you.) Like the lottery, insurance appears to be nothing more than an idiot tax, but unlike the lottery it’s fucking mandatory. Insurance is merely a way to make the greedy richer, just to make a hideously weak blanket statement.)

I got my hours cut 25% and have been taken off salary and demoted to hourly. My employer says this change is intended to make me happier in my job, but I’m not sure how a pay cut is supposed to increase my contentment. In compensation for the cut, I’m supposed to be free of first-tier calls, but for now they’re still happening. Hopefully when the kinks are ironed out I won’t have to set up dial-up with some old guy on Windows 95 ever, ever again.

I’m now working 10 – 5, so the waking up at 5:30 bullshit is curtailed for the nonce, but I don’t really feel like I have more time off. Maybe I’ll decide to work 8 – 3 and get a PT evening job, except that would never work with my gig schedule so fuck it. While I do get pissy sometimes about having to do gigs, at the base I’m grateful I gig frequently enough to even be grumpy about it.

I have seen no Oscar nominated films. I consume very little news. I watch BBC shows on streaming video sometimes. I have about 30 books on my Kindle I haven’t finished reading. I took a three-hour nap last Sunday afternoon after sleeping in late and before going to bed early.

Apropos of nothing, I spend a lot of time wondering about the people who find it necessary to admit they’re posting/IRCing/tweeting/etc while pooping. Is this a sign of poor potty training, or a wonderful lack of shame? I just cant TELL.

A blog post.

Blurbs, Reading

In which I blog more because it’s time than because I have anything to say.

I got my hair cut and colored after work Thursday night. It’s got honey blonde highlights and medium brown lowlights and it’s been cut into layers and it feels great. I also got the shit waxed out of what had become some truly gigantic unruly eyebrows and look like a girl again. The experience cost $102 plus tip, and was worth every. single. cent. My stylist had discovered The Secret in the past year so there was some “the world is as you are” midst the gossip, which was good because it reminded me it always starts somewhere, even though to be honest The Secret is really baby tier spirituality about getting desires fulfilled more than anything else.

Then I went to Marcy’s and drank my dinner so yeah, Friday morning sucked ass, but I had fun and got to see Kimi whom I’d been missing, so: totally worth it.

I’ve been weirder and more emotional and internal than I’ve been in a loooong time. It feels like some important evolutionary phase, somehow, but I have to be honest that the mood swings are so bad they’re almost hilarious. I’d suspect perimenopause except I’m ovulating like clockwork so it’s more likely I’m just being crazy (although what with last month’s loooooong term bout of The Dread and now this… hmm. yeah. beginning of the end, probably). These unexpected bouts of, like, heartbreaking existential loneliness have been bizarre. All kinds of midlife-crisis loops playing in my head (WHERE IS MY BEAUTIFUL HOUSE etc), plus the short days and the fucking rain and overcast skies and glacier-paced days at work and, as usual, knowing basically no one my own age and, well, I can go days without even really talking to anyone that isn’t a customer. Oh, the human condition: you’re just so funny. None of this matters, except oh holy shit it fucking matters. Gah. (tl;dr The panic has passed and now I think I’m a little depressed.)

Since my last post I’ve actually managed to sleep a lot, hit up Goodwill for some jeans and tops, sign up for a yoga class, buy groceries, make Egyptian and Turkish dishes, and take a bubble bath. For someone who never does anything I’m pretty good at crossing items off of to-do lists.

The Internet crush, surprisingly, continues apace. It’s pretty cool. There may be plane tickets at some point.

I’ve now been employed again for long enough that I’m living for weekends. Damn you, 40-hour work week: damn you and your soul-killing length.

In other news, Barnes & Noble bought Fictionwise awhile back and now, of course, they’re closing it. I received an email inviting me to transfer all my Fictionwise books — many many hundreds I’ve purchased over the past 8 years or so — to a Nook account. There was no way to bulk-download my purchases, nor any easy way to download the DRM’d items in multiple formats. I’ve basically lost access to a bunch of shit I OWN because I happened to buy a Kindle instead of a Nook. Good job, the publishing industry: you suck at internet.

News in brief.

Blurbs

In which I have a metric fuckton of time, but still feel like I’m too busy to blog.

I survived the Morgan family reunion last weekend, which was, in essence, five days of drinking like a fish bookended with two six-hour trips on Greyhound buses with my brother.

Apropos of nothing: THIS IS AN AMAZING GODDAMNED BOOK. You can get it for free here.

I’m doing part-time QA work again, which is good because it looks like I only have two weeks of unemployment benefits left. I went to a mandatory three-hour meeting at WorkSource this afternoon. They showed us how to fill out forms and made us watch PowerPoints on Washington state’s unemployment rate. Totally uplifting. Not.

I’m probably going to have to get a food handler’s card because I’ve started applying at grocery stores and coffee shops. That year I spent taking CCNA prep classes has resulted in a grand total of zero cool jobs to apply for, so maybe I’ll just go the two-part-time-jobs route. (Luckily my gig schedules are usually solid pretty far in advance, so I’ll just be that old crafty bitch who asks for weekends off three months before the kids remember to.)

I’ll be performing at Ritzville this weekend. Yay! So excited!

I know it’s finally summer and therefore really quite hot out, but I’m making chili for dinner anyway.