In which I have to move my site. Uh, probably today. (Which is why Rants is down; I’ve already backed up the database.) And some other random stuff, too.

I drove Bread’s truck today. He took the jeep to Cedar Rapids because the jeep gets 20 miles per gallon and the truck gets, like, 5 gallons per mile.

We watched Jarhead last night on pay-per-view. I liked it. Although I have to say that men, especially young men in groups, make almost no sense to me at all.

I have the dread because the Cramps From Hell� are coming. Ugh. I hate hormones. I feel overwhelmed and cranky. I hate hormones! *bangs head on desk*

I’m going to get a latt�.

I made a lasagna last night. This lasagna. (Except without the mushrooms, and with a jar of roasted red peppers in olive oil and garlic tossed into the sauce.) Yum.

Oh! In other news? I have a massage at two o’clock this afternoon.

In which I did a hard-reset on my PPC and started over.

I did a hard reset on my PPC at dinner the other night. Factory default. All data lost.

Yesterday I sat down and took the time to load it full of software again. I flashed to Windows Mobile 2003 SE, like, finally. I installed Pocket Universe, an adorable little app I bought back in January of 2004 but hadn’t run for awhile because my device was out of memory. It allows you to set your long. & lat. and then cleverly displays all the naked-eye objects in your night sky. (It’s a really handy app to have in one’s purse when someone says, “What’s that?” because you can look it up on the spot — it even has satellites.)

The company that made the application, Stellarmetrics, is no longer online, but it looks like these people are still selling and supporting (what appears to be an older version of) it.

I have too much PPC software to install it all on the device I have, so each time I start over I load different stuff on it.

I still want a new one. Not just because it’s full already, but because the buttons don’t work correctly and it’s all scratched up.

Excuse me while I go re-enter two weeks worth of checkbook items.

In which I have a dinner date. Good thing I took a shower this morning!

Yesterday, Bread called my phone seven times. (Seven times!) Today he called it three times. There are aspects of having a househusband that make. Me. Crazy.

But that’s not the point. The point is that he’s taking me and Nanner out to dinner at someplace called the Red Barn Bistro tonight! Yay!

I’ve never been there, but it sounds like it’ll be fun. From the looks of the menu I’ll be having a salad and fries, like I do in most Iowa restaurants (pasta, the vegetarian’s standard fallback menu option, is rare in this part of the world for some reason). According to the restaurant’s web site:

“Upon arrival at The Red Barn Bistro, patrons are greeted by our two family goats. Billy Bob and Becky Sue love eating crackers and Bistro mints.”

So. Yeah. We’ll see how it goes. Good thing I love me some rustic!

He also told me that he thinks Bindu hurt her back again. Poor girl. I got him to agree to carry her nasty, stinky ass upstairs — they’ve been rolling in something dead, apparently — and baby-gate her into my office where there is no furniture she can jump up on. The last time she hurt her back, the vet gave her doggie muscle relaxants and instructed me to not let her jump up on anything for a week. (She was on total doggie lockdown. She hated it. She had to spend all her time in my office, and I even carried her outside to pee because stairs were off limits. Oh, the looks she gave me.) I think I have one or two of them left. If not, I can at least give her half an aspirin when I get home. Back pain sucks.

In other news, this arrived today and now my iPod is all cozy and protected. Whee!

In which I wonder about superstardom.

The world’s facination with the millenium certainly wasn’t Prince’s doing, I realize that. But he did write a song that has become such a part of our landscape that references to it appear everywhere.

This morning I saw the New York Times magazine insert at the coffee shop, so I grabbed it and sat outside to enjoy my almond latté and a smoke. One of the articles was entitled “Party Like It’s 1994,” and I thought for a moment about how cool it would be to have written such an iconic pop song — one that would be ironically paraphrased in the NYT sixteen years after it came out!

Then I turned the page until I found an article I actually cared about and totally forgot about The Purple One altogether.

I love the New York Times magazine insert. I really do.

In which we discuss health & beauty aids, personal hygiene, and how cool rain-style showerheads are.

I really enjoyed my shower this morning. I don’t know why, usually I hate everything about morning. Maybe it was because I’d already had a cup of chai before I got in.

Anyway, I had many thoughts about bathing and bathing products. Not a single one of them is profound.

For instance: I love the bath poof and I love liquid soap. I have no idea how people got decent lather back in the dark ages of washcloths and bar soap.

I brush my teeth in the shower because that way I can drool all I want and it makes no difference. I keep my tongue scraper in the shower, too. I adore my tongue scraper. A mouth isn’t truly clean until all that white crap has been scraped off the tongue in the morning.

I push my cuticles back in the shower, while they’re soft. This is why I have perfect cuticles the vast majority of the time.

I am constitutionally incapable of using the same shampoo three times in a row. I always have at least three different brands available to choose from. I have a short shampoo attention span.

Ears are difficult to clean.

A large hot water heater is a Very Good Thing.

A giant rain-style showerhead is also quite pleasant. (Don’t be dirty, it’s not removable or anything. It’s just nice to stand under. I didn’t insist on a removable showerhead because the one upstairs was. But then the upstairs bathing opportunities went the way of cracked pipes, and now there are no removable showerheads in my house. So I have to take care of that particular personal ritual manually, as it were.)

I have recently noticed that I seem to have a hard time using the last of anything; I have multiple bottles of product with one or two uses left. This morning I deliberately emptied a bottle of shampoo, a bottle of conditioner, and a bottle of coconut-lime-verbena liquid body soap.

Post-shower application of product is a difficult territory for me. I have to put my contacts in first, to avoid getting anything greasy on them. But often by the time I have my contacts in I’ve forgotten that I needed to moisurize or that I wanted to put some crap in my hair. Also, I prefer to moisturize immediately, while the skin is still damp, but the contact lens application ritual screws that plan all to hell. If I weren’t a big baby, I’d get RK. Er, if I were a non-big baby with two grand lying around I’d get RK, rather.

I love Neutrogena body oil. Mmm.

In which I’m fucking bummed.

Microsoft Reader killed my Pocket PC!

A few weeks ago, Sin gave me some ebooks. Several were in MS Reader format.

I loaded one onto my PPC Saturday, then opened Reader to see if the newly-loaded ebook showed in the library. It didn’t, and Reader had the audacity to tell me it wasn’t activated. (I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to ‘activate’ Reader. It’s a total pain in the ass.)

So I navigated to the ebook and double-clicked on it.

Reader booted… and hanged. And hanged.

And hanged.

So I reset the device, which has worked in the past.

But not this time, boy howdy! Now the device itself won’t boot. It’s hosed. And it had my checkbook register on it, which I haven’t backed up in almost two months.

So I have a useless PPC, and no idea how much money I have. Grr.

Bread told me to go online today and shop for a new one. He wants me to print them out and show them to him, for some reason. (I think perhaps he actually listened when I told him he had to start giving a shit about my hobbies or I’d poison his meatloaf for real this time. Old dog, new tricks and all that.)

Update: I think I might get a Dell Axim, even if Dell is about to retire the line. It’s either that or an HP iPaq. Most PDA manufacturers are heading into the Windows Mobile market, and I don’t want a cell phone/PDA combo. *sigh*