Category Archives: Life

Two Things

Blurbs

How fun is it to be me? Not very, and yet at the same time, VERY.

First, I’m sick. As a dog. A dog with a possible sinus infection. (Rating: not fun.)

Second, Brett and I exchanged Xmas gifts last night. I gave him a BOSCH Powerbox, which is a super-tough jobsite stereo he can throw around and treat badly.

He gave me – wait for it – he gave me – actually, I think you should maybe be sitting down for this? – he gave me a REALLY, REALLY NICE ACOUSTIC GUITAR. I couldn’t believe it! I mean, it’s gorgeous and brand new and it sounds great and he also bought a killer brown guitar case with faux aligator skin in which he’d placed two sets of strings and a couple of picks and everything. It’s so sweet! (Rating: Really really VERY FUN!)

So now, to justify having such a lovely instrument, I’m going to have to learn how to actually play. (I took lessons when I was a teenager, and can noodle around a wee bit, but a real player I’m not.)

In other news, I did all our Xmas shopping yesterday. In one day. It sucked. Coneheads everywhere, standing in the middle of the aisles with their shopping carts in the way, moving in slow herds, talking on their cell phones and cutting me off in the frozen food section. (Rating: not so fun.)

So there you have it: one really really VERY FUN, and two not funs. My head is full of snot and I think I might have a little temperature, but my guitar? It’s HOT.

Caffeine

Blurbs

Apparently, I don’t believe anything I read. Not enough at least.

I read two unrelated blog posts today in which the authors had had too much caffiene and suffered frightening heart palpitations.

tiramisu

So for lunch this afternoon, I had a vanilla double latté (made with Radiance Dairy milk, the BEST MILK IN THE WHOLE WORLD) and tiramisu.

If only I had a Holter monitor I could promise to post the results.

Weekend in Review

Health, Music

I’ve been offline because I can only connect over my home dial-up in fifteen-second intervals, which makes me insane. You’re gettin’ a five-day update here. Yes, I blog from work all the time.

Friday, Bread came home from work at 12:30, sick, and slept for nineteen consecutive hours.

Saturday I had an afternoon rehearsal at J’s for his upcoming Christmas Benefit concert. It was a lot of fun.

There were three musicians there named Tim – they play mandolin, bass, and guitar – and at one point J said, “Tim, let’s pick it up at the B section,” and all three of them started playing at once.

Sunday I had another rehearsal at J’s followed immediately by a House 11 rehearsal, so I ended up doing music for about nine hours that day. It was wonderful – a whole day of music and musicans, with a couple breaks for lattes and pizza.

Monday I was sick.

Tuesday I was sick and missed work.

This morning I did a 180 on Cedar (the gravel road I take to get to Hwy 34) and put the jeep in a ditch. It took me a while to get out, but I have 4WD so out I got. The 180 happened because I was passed by some dumb asshole in an SUV who didn’t get far enough over, thereby forcing me to get way over to the right so we could pass without colliding, and in doing so I clipped my passenger side wheels in the icy slushy sludge that is Iowa gravel roads on this gloomy day. I lost control of the vehicle and spun entirely around, ending up watching the ass end of the jerk that had just passed me as he drove blithely off down the center of the goddamned road.

I have a rehearsal tonight, another rehearsal tomorrow night, and gigs Friday and Saturday nights.

In other news, this article, when I read the treeware version over the weekend, really bummed me out.

Well THAT was an interesting commute!

Weather

It which it was supposed to snow 3-6 inches last night. And it totally did.

There were about 4 inches of snow on my jeep when I went out to sweep it off and start it up this morning. I had to put it in 4WD to get from the farm to the blacktop.

I got stuck for awhile behind a tiny little rollerskate of a car with street slicks and Tennessee plates. The guy was getting absolutely zero traction; I could see his tires spinning. He was going about 15 mph.

I got stuck for awhile behind a plow truck, too.

And it’s still snowing!

SNOW ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 9 PM CST THIS EVENING.

SNOW WILL FALL THROUGH THE DAY… TAPERING OFF TO FLURRIES BY EARLY EVENING TO THE WEST AND LATER IN THE EVENING TO THE EAST. PERIODS OF HEAVY SNOW WILL BE POSSIBLE DURING THE LATE MORNING AND AFTERNOON HOURS. SNOWFALL AMOUNTS WILL BE MAINLY IN THE 3 TO 6 INCH RANGE. HOWEVER… LOCATIONS EAST OF A LINE FROM MACOMB TO GENESEO COULD SEE ISOLATED 7 INCH AMOUNTS.

A SNOW ADVISORY MEANS THAT SNOW WILL CAUSE DIFFICULT TRAVEL CONDITIONS. BE PREPARED FOR SNOW COVERED ROADS AND LIMITED VISIBILITIES…AND USE CAUTION WHILE DRIVING.

My windshield kept icing up so I had to pull over three times to snap the blades. The jeep was being bitchy about going in and out of 4WD. Half the people on the road were going so slow they were practically driving backwards, and the other half wanted to drive over the speed limit. It’s seriously amazing that more people don’t off themselves driving in this weather. The conditions are bad enough; the other drivers are a damn hazzard. (I drive like an 80 year old woman, but at least I don’t go 15 in a 65 with my lights off when it’s snowing and visibility is low.)

At Least My Ass Is Warm

Blurbs

In which you have no idea why you’re reading this crap and you wish I’d do better. (Doesn’t the woman have an original thought in her damn head these days?) (Oh jeez, please don’t be mad at me. I’m just so boring this time of year, you see.) (Oh God, now we’re talking to ourselves in front of people. Shit.)

I buy hair care products based on the shape of the bottles and the smell of the product within. I bought these wacky hair products at the grocery store recently and apparently I liked the bottle shape so much that I got the whole line, from shampoo and conditioner to straightening balm and this spray-on moisture seal shine (whatever that is). This morning I used too much of the balm and now half of my hair looks like it’s still dirty. (I tend to get into hair products in the winter because I’m blow drying and why the hell not.) My stylist bitches me out for buying shampoo at the grocery store, but I have hard water and so it really doesn’t matter what I wash my hair with.

And baby, it’s cold out there. This morning I busted out my old fleece-lined jeans. They’re worn out but they’re all fleece on the inside and they make it almost tolerable when skittering from building to car, car to building in the sub-zero temperatures.

Almost.

Blogger Verification

Blurbs, Web

God damn it!

If you’re a Blogger and/or Blogspot user and I read your blog, I probably tried to comment on your blog today. But since I’ve been getting the exact same identical word verification image for several hours now (even through restarting my browser and everything!), I haven’t been able to comment.

Blogger doesn’t mention that this is a bug, but I’m betting it is. I mean, the whole rest of the intarweb’s working for me, images and all.

I’m curious. Any Blogger users out there (who have word verification turned on) who are actually receiving comments this afternoon?

Bad Day

Blurbs

In which another’s misfortune makes Bread feel better.

Yesterday Bread had a Bad Day At Work. Apparently he got bitched out for something he didn’t do; all the windows (which were totally finished and painted) at the jobsite in question had been set 3/4″ too low while he was working at a totally different jobsite. He’d had, in short, absolutely nothing to do with that particular SNAFU whatsoever, but got yelled at for it and had to spend his day ripping out twenty windows and resetting them by cutting 3/4″ out of the headers.

The whole thing made him mad and cast a pall upon his whole day. But seeing this,

josh\'s truck

which is Jimbo’s little brother’s truck on its side, made him feel ever so much better. So much better, in fact, that he actually snapped a picture of it and told me to post it on my site.

Which I have.

(Jimbo’s little brother drove the truck away after Bread and Jimbo helped him get it wheels-down again. No harm done, other than all the windows being broken.)

Update: Dinner party? Hell no.

Blurbs

In which I tell you about my day.

…what actually happened today is that I spent most of the day in bed, reading ebooks from Fictionwise, suffering bouts of awful Cramps From Hell™.

If I were to anthropomorphize my own guts, my uterus would be the biggest, meanest, pissed off-dest BITCH you ever met. And she would be punching me in the head for no apparent reason.

In other news, a tiny muscle on the inside of my right knee has been spasming for two hours now. FOR NO APPARENT REASON.

I’m going back to bed. I’m obviously a useless mess. Hurumph.

Winter Is Cold

Blurbs, Domestic Goddess, Weather

And I hate being cold.

I think Nature’s just showing off with this 6-degrees-outside crap. We all know there’s really no reason to be that far below freezing. (Actually, it’s 23 degrees out right now. But it was 6 when I drove home from band practice Thursday night.)

I’m sitting here at my desk in my office drinking a rapidly-cooling latte and surfing Fictionwise for something to read in front of the fire. My office is cold.

Brett’s going to want me to do crap with him today, he’s got this list he wants to get through but as usual I don’t really want to do what he’s doing. I want instead to do some cosmetic housecleaning and go shopping and invite some people out for manicotti and too much wine for dinner.

Bread got up early and drove the dump truck to the dump. It had about six months’ worth of household garbage in it and, he says, most of it was frozen to the deck and he had to kick and shovel it to get it to slide out.

We live too far out in the middle of nowhere for garbage service, so we used to burn the majority of our garbage, composting the wet stuff and recycling the rest. Then Bread got tired of emptying the ash from the burn barrel, so we switched to throwing everything into garbage bags and into the back of the dump truck. My recycling and composting juju is gone – I’m a terrible world citizen and you should mock me. (It’s incredible how much garbage two people make in six months, when you can see it just piling up in the back of the dump truck. It’s sick. Literally.)

In other news, I haven’t brushed my hair since Thursday.