Category Archives: Play

Bowl-o-rama

Social

In which it’s practically a holiday.

Today is AmmZon’s birthday, and we’re going bowling just like we did last year. (Well, actually, AmmZon and Truck have already left to go bowling, but I’m not dressed and it’s fuckin’ cold out and I might drop by there and have a drink when I go out to find something to eat but right now I don’t want to go at all because it’ll take my car half an hour to warm up and being cold sucks.) Happy birthday, AmmZon!

Update: I stayed home and geeked out on my web site and did not go bowling. I mean, I meant to go bowling, but I just wanted to do this one more thing, and then this other thing… and then an hour and a half had passed and I’d missed the bowling window.

Things I've Done Today

Finance, Recipes, Work

In which I present you with a list of my recent accomplishments! Yay!

Gauntlet #11. I finished knitting the first gauntlet.

2. I applied for a job at Cambridge.

3. I wrote a letter to Brumbaugh & Quandahl, PC, LLO, Rat Bastards about the levy on my checking account, inviting them to either provide evidence that they were legally able to attach my account or to kindly get their fucking garnishment off my account and refund my NSF fees toute suite else be hearing from my lawyer.

4. I made coffee and drank it with Silk brand French Vanilla Creamer in it.

5. I read several chapters of Hyperion, and OMG it’s sooooooo good.

6. I added additional items to my Wishlist because God knows I don’t want to be at a loss when I get a job and need to start spending money again.

[Possible 7.] I’m thinking of going to the store to buy ingredients for chole (aka chana masala) (aka kabuli chana) (aka chickpea curry) because the recipe over at Dykewife’s looks freakin’ delicious.

In other news, the weather ’round here is expected to turn reeeeeeally shitty tomorrow.

CholeUpdate: I made the chole after all, and served it with rice, papadums, cottage cheese, and green chili chutney.

Instead of following a specific recipe I combined both of the linked recipes above, adding some of the pre-mixed chana masala powder I found, in the surprisingly awesome International section at Easter’s, for less than two dollars.

It was so good! I had seconds. Truck had seconds too. When AmmZon gets home, I bet she’ll also have seconds. That’s how good it is.

Clarity Comes Creeping

Wishlists

In which I know what I need! I know what I need!

I was over at Copperred’s this morning and he’d posted about watching Pinky and the Brain and suddenly I realized… that’s what I need! Some Pinky! Some Brain! Hell yeah!

Pinky and the Brain, Vol. 1Therefore, someone (ideally someone with more cash than sense) should rush immediately over to my Amazon Wish List and buy me Pinky and the Brain, Vol. 1. This will need to be done right away, of course, considering that I won’t be receiving mail at this address come three weeks hence. Not that I’m being demanding or anything.

I’d take Vol. 2 too while you’re at it. It’s a screaming deal, really.

NARF!

Yesterday I did laundry, applied for two jobs, brushed my hair, bathed, and successfully kept two meals down. Today I intend to crest Mount Everest before lunch, visit the post office, and then do a little knitting in the afternoon while various companies blow up my cell phone with calls for interviews.

In other news, you may have noticed that now when you mouse-over external links, there’s a groovy pop-up preview thingy. (It’s from Snap and I installed it yesterday and I saw it first over at Jake’s blog.) I just wanted to say that if you decide to install it on your site and you use WP, don’t bother with the plugin because it doesn’t appear to work; just paste the Snap code into your Header template and save yourself the bother, yo.

Arbitrary Mile Posts

Finance, Health, Social, Work

In which the mere change of the year does nothing for me. And it is, of course, all about ME.

At the awesome combination wedding reception/New Year’s Eve party I attended, someone wished me “a great 2007.” I replied that I was looking forward to 2007 because it certainly couldn’t be any worse to me than 2006 was.

Open mouth, insert foot.

Today is January 4th. This year so far, I have already had the stomach flu and learned that AmmZon’s landlord — who is also her mother — has evicted us, and that we have to be out of this, our cozy little house on 2nd Street, by February 1st.

Four days, people!

I have no idea how much money I have left, because I spent a more than I intended to over the holiday, and because what remains is all in AmmZon’s checking account. [I, you may recall, no longer have an account of my own because it was garnished, a result of the financial difficulty of the last year or so of my marriage.] I had thought that I had four or five weeks of money left, with which to buckle down and find that job I don’t really want…

— But turns out that, after you spend a few months NOT spending a third of your life dragging your ass to some bullshit job where you perform tasks that really have no meaning, you develop a soul-deep revulsion toward the whole idea. Getting a 40-hour-a-week job of any stripe just grates: getting up, dragging one’s ass through the morning routine, into the car, across town, into a building. To a desk. Push pixels. Rinse and repeat.

— Work as we know it is a bad fucking idea, it really is. We spend a lot of time convincing ourselves that we like it, that it’s fulfilling, that we enjoy it, blah blah blah, but the truth is that it sucks and everyone’s happier when they don’t have to do it.

— Actually, I did think of something I want to do, just this morning, while I was reading the back of a bag of pita chips. But I can’t do it because I don’t have any money. (Or experience in the industry.) See, there used to be a restaurant in town called Hykie’s Falafel. (I love falafel.) Later it was sold and became Baba’s Falafel. The last guy to own it — Richard, I think his name was (and damn was he CUTE) — would roll back in to town, open Baba’s and run it for a year or so, then close it suddenly and leave town again. (Cute FLAKE.) He hasn’t been back for awhile, but I bet all the stuff is in storage around here someplace.

— But see, that’s the kind of job I want these days. Roll in around nine or ten, serve lunch, spend the afternoon cooking and running the business. Serve dinner, close up at nine, go home. Hire some cute kids to help me. Find a morning-oriented kid, some Future Manger of America, to open up for me so I don’t really have to show up until lunch rush starts. I could take afternoon naps at whim. It would use all my skill sets — cooking, running a business, hiring, firing, being nice to customers — and plus, I love falafel.

— But I don’t know how to get a food service license, I don’t have the recipes, I don’t have any Middle Eastern food service contacts, and above all I don’t have the money to rent and renovate a store front. And since most of the marriage’s bills were in my name and haven’t been paid since June, well, it’s not like I’ll be getting any loans in the next four years. Oh well. Nix the restauranteur idea. Even though I do have all the skills and I really love falafel.

…Now. What the hell was I saying?

Oh, yeah: I thought I had more than a month left to get a job, and that everything was pretty mellow, that this shiny new ’07 was gonna be my year… how could it not be, after last year? But now I have to get a job immediately and a place to live, and I was just puking the day before yesterday so it all seems rather abrupt and cruel.

Change is good, right?

Right?

Mobile Bachelorette Party!

Love & Marriage, Social

In which I party myself into the ground! (Eh, like THAT’S news.)

This morning I emailed a bunch of cell phone pics to my Flickr account, only discover that one cannot send an email to Flickr with more than one image attached. Ergo, each of the six images that actually made it to the target web site represents four to six more that did not make it. What a pain in the arse it is, to get one’s photos off of one’s cell phone!

Bachelorette PartyThe party was fun. A bunch of women stood around in the high school parking lot introducing themselves to one another until the bus arrived. (AmmZon had to speak with the driver three times before he found us. Eek.)

We all piled onto the bus, decorated it with blown-up copies of the bride’s yearbook pictures, and started drinking immediately. (The hostess had put mixed drinks into water bottles, and brought coolers full of them. Brilliant!)

We picked the bride up at her house, then went on a tour of her life. Some of the girls put on wigs and did skits at various locations — one skit involved the bride’s sister in the role of the bride and Amazon Blonde [the original one, not my roommate] as herself, reenacting their meeting, which apparently occurred while the bride lay on the sidewalk in front of Wolfgang’s place, drunk, and said to the approaching Amazon, “Hey, I know you! We fucked the same guy.” After that vignette we piled back on the bus. We stopped at the hotel bar and more women joined us. We visited various landmarks important in the bride’s formative years, including: a couple of fields, Wal*Mart, the golf club, that huge ugly mansion with the bowling lanes downstairs and the caves over the pool, and the street in front of a few houses her boyfriends used to live in. The bride got properly shit faced. A fabulous time was had by all, and I remember remarking several times that the bride has KILLER friends, and also that there were a lot of really nice boobs on the bus. (Seriously. The majority of her friends have remarkable racks. Go figure — her own are freakin’ gravity-proof themselves.) Continue reading Mobile Bachelorette Party! →

In Hiding

Knitting

In which I’m all stealth.

It’s That Time Of The Month again, so I’m antisocial. I did not go anywhere yesterday, and I will not go anywhere today. I might go out and rip this town a new one tomorrow, though. We’ll see.

I’m online now to catch up on my email — haven’t checked it in days — and to get my calendar all straightened out — there are weddings and gigs and things I must attend in the next two weeks — and then? I’m going back to bed to read or listen to my iPod.

Speaking of iPods makes me think of iTunes which reminds me I owe Shenry a CD for the swap. Gah! How can someone with as much free time as I have be so behind on her social duties? I haven’t written to my relatives, or shipped the one gift I need to ship, nor even mailed my mom her wool slippers yet.

Bleeding sucks, but at least I no longer get the horrible cramps I was getting last summer. Those REALLY sucked.

I made another sheep:

Sheep: FINISHED!!!

It’s knitted out of wool and mohair and then felted. I started it about a year and a half ago and decided it was time to get it OFF. MY. NEEDLES.

In other news, a guy from this site asked me if I wanted to maybe contribute blog entries. Could be fun, but I bet they won’t fucking let me use the fucking F-word as much as I normally fucking do.

Knit-o-rama

Knitting, Work

In which I’ve been knitting.

I came down with a knitting bug, and decided I had to get a bunch of old stuff off of my needles. Some of these projects have been in progress for over a year, and that’s just wrong. So I finished some slippers, two hats, and am nearly finished with one of those sheep I was so into about two years ago.

I’ll be mailing out knitted items to two different households soon! I feel so… accomplished! (Yes, mom, the slippers I promised you over a year ago will be on their way soon.)

My schedule has moved entirely to India time. I’m up all night, and I sleep all day. Sometimes I get up around noon and eat lunch, and then go back to bed. I’m such a rock star! (If only I had a rock star’s clothes, groupies, drugs, and deluxe tour bus. That would be tits!)

As there have been no jobs in any of the papers, I haven’t applied for anything this week at all. I was offered a temp part-time gig painting, but I don’t think I’ll take it. I don’t have any clothes I can afford to get paint on, and I don’t know how to paint. On the other hand, beggars can’t be choosers. Hmm. Maybe I’ll paint for a bit.

I splurged tonight: I had artichoke-spinach dip at the Dead Cock. That stuff is hideously good. Other gross things I’m indulging in are Justin Timberlake’s latest album, cans of icy cold Coke, and late night television. I’m disgusting.

Weather, working, and hippies

Finance, Knitting, Work

In which I couldn’t go anywhere even if I wanted to.

Freezing rain last night. It is, as they say, colder’n a witch’s tit outside. I can’t even open the jeep’s doors because they’re frozen shut.

I can’t finish the BME site until — gag! — I get a copy of MS FrontPage installed. Fucking ASP anyway.

Bread’s refinancing the farm so those litigious hippies will go away. I really don’t talk shit to people, but I’m afraid that if I found myself face-to-face with them I’d go right the hell off.

We were paying, damn it, and they decided to sue us because they wanted out of a contract they’d agreed to carry! They nickle-and-dimed us the whole way, from the $6k they added at closing for no reason to the money they demanded for the propane left in the tank the day we took possession. They’re creeps, basically, so screw ’em.

I have practice tonight for the 2006 holiday benefit, so I think I might bathe today.

In other news, I hear it’s NLW’s birthday!

I Still Ain't Got No Job

Finance, Geek, Knitting, Weather, Work

In which I didn’t go to jail.

I have made $0.07 from my Google AdSense ads so far. (That’s about $25 a year. Whee.) Go, me.

It’s getting c-c-cc-cold here. I am not diggin’ it. I much preferred yesterday’s chinook, in which I wore a long-sleeved cotton t-shirt and was comfortable, but right now there’s a winter storm watch for the area and I bet everything freezes solid tonight.

On the work front, I applied for the webmaster position at Overland last week. BvB, the other singer in my band (The Band That Never Gigs), works there, and tells me that she’s pushing to get me an interview. HELLO EMPLOYEE DISCOUNT!

I’ve also applied here, but they haven’t even acknowledged receipt of my resume, so no high hopes there.

Oh, in late breaking news, cops now love me. This totally freaks me out. For instance: the night before last, I drove a drunk friend home. This was after after-hours, so it was probably around three or four o’clock in the morning. I was sober, but I had a… questionable… item or two in my bag and my friend was most likely carrying; who knows. I have a brake light out, plus cops scare the shit out of me in general; when they turn their lights on I basically have a heart attack each and every time. I knew I was going to get pulled over, and depending on the behavior of my drunk friend I was possibly going to get Fucked With. My heart started going about 210 bpm and I was already dreading my name in the next day’s police report.

Anyway, this cop followed me for three blocks… and then turned off without pulling me over. I could not fucking believe it. And then, last night? A cop followed me down an alley as I was walking to my car, then waved when I turned to look at him, and then waited for me to get into my car — like, to make sure I was safe or something? — and then he drove away. It’s weird, OH YEAH it is, but I’m grateful. They can love me all they want, fer sure. Better that than pull my ass over!

I distinctly remember telling someone yesterday, “That was funny! That’s totally going on the blog!” but now I can’t remember what the situation was. Perhaps sleeping twelve hours a night affects one’s short term-to-long term memory transference?

I’m still into knitting, like, a lot; and also: my Wee Mee:

I gave her a bulkier sweater, boots instead of Birks, and a seasonally appropriate coffee cup. SO FREAKIN’ CUTE!!!

In other news, my band, The Band That Never Gigs, is doing a gig in December! A benefit for a guy with brain cancer, but a gig nonetheless. And tomorrow night I start rehearsal for JAM’s annual holiday benefit concert because, you know, hey, it’s for a good cause, even if he *does* try to make me sing Bette Midler’s From A Distance.

In other other news, I love Gmail on my cell phone. It rocks.

Loved all your jokes in the last entry’s comments. Thank you! *smooch*

Superfine alpaca, bitches! II

Knitting

In which I’m geekin’.

It’s cold out, and rainy, and overcast and unfriendly; plus I got totally hammered last night so I’m veeery lazy. So: cuddled up doing some knitting is just my speed today.

Sweater

Superfine alpaca, bitches. So soft.

I’ll probably get bored soon enough, but right now, I’m ultra super deep into knitting this brown sweater. When it’s complete, I will live in it.

Superfine! Alpaca! SO SOFT!

I also installed BOINC and checked out my stats. I’ve been running SETI@home for, like, ever.

In other news, Mother’s coming to Michigan in a couple weeks and I was really hoping to be able to go to the November programs since I feel like I barely saw Her in July but yeah like I can afford that. Oh well. Maybe next year.