Category Archives: Work

Snake

Redneck, Rural, Rustic

In which you all immediately feel very, very sorry for Bread.

This morning, the toilet backed up. All over the bathroom floor.

When I went downstairs to get ready for work, the floor was wet and Bread had a box fan running to dry it. “You,” he snapped, “will not put any more kleenex in the toilet!” (Everything is my fault.) As I stepped into the bathroom, he said, “Don’t go in there, the fucking toilet overflowed!”

“I have to take a shower and get ready for work,” I replied.

“Fine! Whatever,” he said.

I stepped into the shower pan, took off my undies, turned the water on and bathed. When I got out, I threw a towel on the floor and stood on that to put slippers on, then went and dressed in the laundry room.

I gave Bread shit for blaming the overflow on me. “It’s not from kleenex. I suppose the fact that the plumbing backs up every year around this time is totally irrelevant,” I said.

He went on again about how my flushing kleenex down the toilet was going to stop.

I rolled my eyes. “Okay, whatever, dude. You know more about plumbing than I do, but I fail to see how a bit of kleenex can hold a candle to an entire turd in terms of load on the system.”

“Trust me. Toilet paper backs it up.”

“Uh. Okay,” I said.

“You don’t have to run the snake!” he said.

“Oh, poor you. You have to do a chore today,” I said.

“I don’t want to do this shit!”

“Dude, it’s not like you’re busy. Plus, I’m guessing the toilet overflowed all over the floor because it was running, because you weren’t paying attention when you flushed it.”

“Well, yeah,” he said, frowning.

(Aside: the lever broke some months ago, so that one had to remove the top of the tank and plunge her entire arm in there to pull the stopper up in order to flush. I got sick of it right quick and solved the problem with some vinyl-covered clothesline wire and some packing tape. There is, as they say, nothing more permanent than a temporary solution, so if you come to my house in 2018 you’ll have to pull the green cord hanging out from underneath the slightly-ajar tank cover in order to flush the downstairs toilet. I guarantee it. The point of all this is that if the clothesline doesn’t retract properly, the toilet runs because the stopper’s still up.)

Basically, Bread hates plumbing, especially the part that deals with shit. He has a very healthy dislike for black water; it creeps him out. Our house is a zillion years old and we’re not entirely sure how the septic system works, but every year in January or February, we have to rent a snake and snake it out. It’s just part of living there.

“I hate this fucking place,” Bread said.

“It does present its difficulties,” I replied. I didn’t bring up the two thousand things I hate about it, because since he’s been home for the past three weeks and has done a little housekeeping of his own he’s started to regale me upon my return from work at night with statements like, “Now I understand what a pain in the ass it is to try to keep this fucking place clean! I spent all afternoon decobwebbing in here, and you can’t even tell.”

You’re preachin’ to the choir there, sweet thing, you’re preachin’ to the choir.

Big sites everybody's been using forEVER that I'm just getting around to checking out

Web

On playing with the innernizzle.

Today I played with Newsgator and then with Flickr.

Newsgator is cute and I’m going to try it out. So far I’ve tried Kinja and Bloglines and they both have really cool features but they both really pretty much suck at the same time. I realize that it’s a lot of information to present, but how hard can it be to build a simple interface for aggregation? I can’t seem to figure out how to export my OPML file(s) from either of my current aggregators, so we’ll see how it goes.

Since I run my own gallery application here at goblinbox, I never had any need for flickr but today I tried out their mosaic tool (thanks, 80) and ended up using my Y! login to set up a flickr account, blah blah blah.

I’ve had a bit of envy when visiting blogs with cute flickr mosaics in their sidebars… Thinking on it, though, my own gallery software has feeds so I could probably do the same stuff with it. Hmm.

In other news, I created and uploaded a favicon today but it’s not working in Firefox.

Please don’t hate me because I’m smarter than you.

Newton Love

LOTD, Nerd

In which I totally drool over obsolete electronic devices!

OMG, you guys, OMG I totally want this:

It’s the Newton Museum‘s entire collection! One of every single model of Newton ever made, plus a bunch of software!

I used to carry a Newton or two, back in the day. They were cute, cute, cute! I had storage cards, cases, even tiny little keyboards – the Newton will always have a place in my heart. The opsys was adorable. And the easter eggs! And the handwriting recognition!

Go win me that auction. I’m so worth it. *wink*

Morning is for Suckers

Domestic Goddess

In which I migrate even more toward my ideal sleep schedule.

I’m a night person. I like to stay up late; I like to sleep in. I could happily go months without seeing the hours between dawn and eleven in the morning.

Lately it’s been getting worse and worse. For instance, after getting home from the gig last night I stayed up ’til three or so and then slept until one-thirty this afternoon. I probably would have slept longer, but Mr. B woke me up to go Xmas shopping (knowing full well, I think, that I had a rehearsal at three and that there was no way we could make to Iowa City and back in time). So I’ll be doing the shopping tomorrow and he’ll be getting out of it, the stinker.

So I’m staying up late tonight, rushing through some much-needed housework. I’ve got the trash ready to go out, and a load of laundry in, and the furnace room’s all cleaned up, and I’m about to do some sweeping.

In other news, House 11 rehearsal tonight rocked. This band is so hot! Not only are they all great musicians but I like them all. Our Sunday rehearsals run from 3:00 to 9:00 and we take a break at 6-ish for pizza, when we sit in PK’s living room and eat and talk and laugh and discuss things and it’s just so remarkably comfortable. Usually there’s at least one asshole in every band; some prima don/na you want to hold under water until s/he stops being annoying, someone who plays too loud, or is too bossy, or never practices, or can’t count to four, or tries to be the band leader when someone else already is the band leader… it’s just like a relationship but there are multiple people, all with their different goals and egos and issues. It can get extraordinarily complicated. But House 11? They’re universally adorable. I’m so pleased.

It's December, So Naturally Everybody Wants To Spend Money

Work

In the past fifteen minutes, I shit you not, I got three potential freelance gigs.

I walked over to the 2nd Street Coffee House for a latte because it’s cold out and some sweet warm milk with caffeine sounded good. While I was there, I ran into a woman who volunteers for Noah’s Ark (the local no-kill shelter) and she chatted me up about installing this software for non-profits and importing their Excel contacts into it for them. Bless her heart, she even bought my latte for me for my “consulting time.”

Then I came back to my desk, and a co-worker called me and said the local Yamaha franchise needs a site, the owner is her friend, and could I call him and give him a quote on a web site?

Then I got a call from these math geeks, and they need their site tweaked because their web master got a job on the left coast!

Just thinking about all this work has got me exhausted. Plus two gigs this month with two bands, and all the insane rehearsal time that implies. Ooh yeah.

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?

Bor. Ing. Boring.

Domestic Goddess, Music

In which I have a suspicion.

Rehearsal last night rocked. I love this band. We ate an entire box of chocolates during the dinner break. (“We” being everyone but the bass player who didn’t have any chocolate at all.) Please note we’ll be playing the ballroom at the Best Western with Bambu on NYE and you should be there. I’m even going to buy new shoes for it.

After rehearsal I drove home and promptly fell asleep… which means I woke up at three in the morning. Then I slept from six ’til ten. My sleep schedule is toast.

In the war on domestic disorder, I’ve swept and dusted and tidied the house and carried laundry baskets up and down the damn stairs, and brought in wood and kindling, and started the dishes. (I hate doing the dishes, so I put them all in to soak in scorching hot water and never go back to finish them. Because I HATE them.) I scrubbed the toilet, which makes me wish to live in an all-female commune because the things that men do to toilets leave me shocked and irritated. I finished the dishes. I made enchiladas for dinner and key lime bars for dessert. I made myself a White Russian and drank it. I washed and folded two bushels of clothes. I opened the back door and swept all the leaves back outside where they belong.

It occurs to me that I could not be any more boring if I were clinically dead. (Which I might actually be; haven’t checked.)

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.

Home At Last

Geek, Travel

In which vacation, like all good things, comes to an end.

We left Laramie and went back to Boulder, taking I-25 this time since the highway we’d taken up was an eternally long strip mall. We went to BearMountain’s house to get Truck, but his luggage was all up at Ron’s. Mr B bitched and moaned about it, but drove back up so Truck could get his luggage.

We stayed in a Super 8 in Nebraska that night because by 8 pm Mr B had been driving for twelve hours and was fucking done with it. The motel allowed dogs in for $5 per night each – I simply adore hotels and motels that take dogs! Mr B and I enjoyed the spa and the pool briefly while Truck lounged in his room, then the three of us went across the street to a Mexican restaurant and sat in the entirely leather bar for dinner and drinks. (The table tops were leather, the chairs were leather. It was bizarre. It was Hannibal Lecter bizarre. It may have been the bizarrest thing I’ve ever seen. I’d have taken pictures but I didn’t have my camera and my phone was dead.) After our meal, we couldn’t resist the tavern just up the street with the martini glass-shaped sign so we waddled up there. The women’s restroom in that bar was the tidiest, nicest, neatest restroom I’ve ever seen in a bar: there were rugs on the floor, the walls were tiled, it was spotless, and on the back of the commode were three fresh rolls of paper and a container of antiseptic wipes. On the counter near the sink was a tray containing lotion, matches, and a can of hairspray. Trust me, it was strange.

The next morning we rolled out a smidge before noon.

We arrived home Sunday around six. The Amazon Blonde came out to collect Truck. I unpacked, made sandwiches, ate, and went to bed. I’d have gone immediately to sleep too, but Mr B nagged me until I ravished him. When he wanted to cuddle I snarled, “If you wake me up one more time, I will poison your meatloaf!” He chuckled and rolled away until only our feet were touching. “Will that do?” he asked. “Yes. Now stop twitching, for God’s sake, I startle awake every time you move,” I said, and was asleep within 45 seconds.

Truck was coming down with something on the drive home, and by Sunday had almost no voice. I spoke with him on the phone today, and he’s got pneumonia. No shit.

In other news, I went to Farmer’s Telephone today to pay my landline bill, and learned I can now actually get 256k line-sharing DSL at my house! For $30 per month. (And a $115 modem and a $60 setup fee.) Yes, that’s outrageously expensive. Yes, I’m totally thinking about it. I mean, 256k is 200k faster than the 56k dial-up I’m on now.

In other other news, on my vacation I bought the coolest sunglasses ever and a pair of new moccasins.