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 I complain about my DH, mourn the loss of another dog, and comment on work.
Bread blew off going to work again today, which kinda pissed me off for some reason. The night before last he’d told me he was going up to Cedar Rapids the next day and would stay up there until Friday, then yesterday morning he decided not to work. He decided this morning not to work yet again.
It’s not like he’s lazing around; he’s been cleaning the property. He’s created a “fence row” and towed a bunch of vehicle carcasses back there. He’s shuffled a couple trailer loads of garbage and crap over to the burn pile (which is now half the size of our house). He’s removed the dead appliances from the driveway, moved piles of wood, and picked up garbage. He’s graded the driveway, and mowed an acre or two. (His mom gave him a tractor recently.) Yesterday he even did the dishes.
And it’s not like I can blame someone for not wanting to go to work. I mean, work sucks, and it’s Spring and gorgeous outside.
But. We’ve got maybe $90 until the next time one of us gets paid, which is probably him — and not until next Friday. We can’t keep gas in his truck for that, not to mention keep me in lemondrop martinis. (The lemondrop martini is my new drink. Summery, don’t you think? And delicious. Yum. And plus I’m sick of cranberry juice.)
~+~+~
NLW and the ever-gorgeous Mr. J had to put a dog down yesterday. (Everyone I know knows someone who has lost a pet recently, it’s like they’re all checking out at once.) I met NLW at the bar after work last night and bought her a drink. Funnily enough, she’s now drinking my old cocktail-of-choice, the Scarlet O’Hara. (The problem with online drink recipes is that no one makes them the same. I had to read nine lemondrop recipes to find the one I like. It’s ridiculous.)
Re-re IMed me today. She misses Dhuma. Says she’ll be fine for awhile, then will start crying.
Fuck.
~+~+~
“Oh, no,” intoned Buzz from behind me, just now.
“What,” I said.
“Look back at picasso,” he said.
I did.
Oh shit. BSOD. (Picasso is one of our very important internal servers here at work.)
I walked over to read the error. It said INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE. Trying to make Buzz laugh, I said, “Well, that’s not the worst BSOD you can get.”
He said, “It is about the worst you can get!”
If that box doesn’t come back up, he’ll start throwing things. (Last week he threw his phone and startled one of the people from the admin building. *giggle*)
~+~+~
Last night’s Windows Update is fucked. If you haven’t installed it yet, wait a few days. It breaks some computers display drivers.
Our boss rebooted his computer after the update and his display went to 800×600, so he right-clicked on his desktop to edit his Properties, and Windows promptly rebooted. It also rebooted when he tried to navigate to the Display Control Panel. Same thing happened to another engineer. Both have flat panel displays.
Aren’t Windows Updates fun?
~+~+~
This cracked me up. If I got a letter from my representative with curse words in it, I’d love it.
But I’m a person who deliberately uses the f-word as many times as I can in any given day, so the a-word wouldn’t rattle me even if it was totally out of context.
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 already planning dinner, and it’s not even lunchtime yet!
I’ve decided to brave that irritating, roo-infested store they call Everybody’s after work so I can buy ingredients for miso and sushi.
Because miso and sushi? Is what I’ve decided I want for dinner tonight. Mmm, sushi.
Maybe they’ll have soybeans for edamame.
I’ve printed out this sushi roll recipe because I think it’s adorable, what with all the pictures and all. I mean, it’s not exactly difficult to make sushi, but there are good ideas there.
As for the miso soup, my buddy Vuboq uses the liquor from reconstituting dried shiitakes in place of dashi, so I will too.
I’m going to put avocado, smoked tuna, and cream cheese in some of the rolls. Doesn’t that sound awesome?!
I might leave work a little early, to avoid as many roos as possible. Getting trapped in one of those narrow aisles with some campus lifer at either end is a kind of terrified I just don’t want to be today. Snort!
Here’s my shopping list:
sushi rice
rice vinegar
konbu
nori
dried shiitake
miso paste
tofu
pickles?
cream cheese
green onions
cucumber
avocado
mushrooms
soy sauce
wasabi
Then, when I get home, we are absolutely going to pig out on sushi. It’ll be so much fun!
If only there were somewhere in this God forsaken town to buy sake.
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*
In which one of our canine/human family passes.
Re-re called me last night after I’d gone to bed, so of course I didn’t answer. She called back a bit later and left me the message that I got late this morning: Miss Dhuma died last night.
~+~+~
Years and years ago, Dhuma and I cohabitated. Actually, her people at the time, Re-re and her then-BF RP, shared a house with Bread and myself, but that’s secondary. Dhuma and I lived together, so I knew her well, and she was an awesome person. Awesome fur person. Whatever.
Dhuma was not only Stella’s littermate, but one of the many, many dogs that ties a rather large group of very old friends (and lovers, on occasion) together. The canine family lineage goes like this:
Once upon a time, Blount got a dog. A short-haired Golden/Lab mix bitch he named Tigger. [She’s 14 now.] Blount was close with Bread, Re-re, RP, BoS, Truck, and others. Tigger became the foundation bitch for five generations of dogs, many of whom are owned by our friends.
Tigger begat, among others, Ginny [12 yrs] (originally Trucks’ dog, and now living with the Craig-Phillipses) and Kaia [12] (the apple of BoS’s eye, and the One Who Has Been Known to Physically Push Girls Out of BoS’s Bed On Occasion if They Were Sleeping In Her Spot).
Ginny (now known as Jenny) begat, among others, by Bread’s dog Stimpy (deceased), both Stella [10] and Dhuma.
Kaia begat, among others, BoS’s dogs Shiva, Luna, and Buddha, and Prana [5], RP’s current dog.
When Stimpy died, Bread took Stella because she was one of Stimpy’s. Eventually Stella begat, among others, my Shiva, and Thea [5] (who makes her home with Jenny and the Craig-Phillipses).
There are other dogs from these various litters who live with other friends of this extended group of people…The point is that a great number of our family-of-friends’s members have dogs from this line, so it’s more than just a friend losing a pet: we’ve all lost her.
Dhuma was a honey-colored short-hair Golden/Lab mix, a world-class swimmer and fetcher, and a really nice person. Dhuma had a cute pinkish-brownish nose instead of a black one. When she greeted you she’d sing this wonderful keening love song just for you and wiggle a lot and growl and smile, pulling her lips back and ducking her head. I used to say, “Dhum-dhum-dhuma-dhuma-DHUMA!” when I visited her house, and she’d sing at me with her deep voice, and grin at me.
She was obedient (in her own special way), and gentle, and smart, and handsome, and loyal.
I loved that dog. She was the kind of dog who’d give you a happy-to-see-you-dance whether you hadn’t seen her in four hours or four years. And she was a great snuggler.
You’ll be missed, Dhuma.
I’m going to hug Stella and Bindu and Shiva now.
In which it is girls’ night out! Whoop!
Gorgeous texted me Friday night: ‘Pre-party at my house 9:pm.’
I was late, of course. Bread and I had had a fight, and after had to spend some quality time “making up,” if you catch my drift. When nine came by, we were in the shower. I got quickly dressed and as I was leaving, Gorgeous texted me to say, “Where u at?”
I texted something dirty back to her — something along the lines of ‘on my way, had to get me some’ — and hopped in the jeep and drove right to her house stopping only at Mi-T-Mart for cigs.
Gorgeous & Rockstar and Ray were chillin’ in the basement, and we started drinking Tuaca while we chatted and watched a Jamiroquai vid. (I love Jamiroquai, OMG.) TiRi came over; I haven’t seen her in forever and she looks fantastic, so skinny and tanned with her cute little belly jewelry. By eleven thirty it was decided we absolutely must at least make an appearance at the bar; we four women walked over. At the Dead Cock we socialized and had drinks.
Gorgeous, Ray, at the Red Rock
When the bar closed at two, we walked back to Gorgeous’s house, screaming loudly the whole way about sex. Particularly, the myriad of wrong ways there are to perform oral sex on a woman and about the prettiest cocks we’d seen in our various sordid careers. It was a complete and total drunken laff riot. By the time we entered Gorgeous’s neighborhood, we were hissing loudly in an attempt to be quiet, hanging off each other, cackling, and trying not to trip over the broken sidewalks.
We hung out in the basement until nearly four in the morning. A few other people were there when we arrived, hanging out with Rockstar; a few more were supposed to come for afterhours but never did.
I drove Ray and TR back to 2nd street, where they’re next door neighbors, and then crashed on the bed in Ray’s basement ’cause I wasn’t in any shape to drive all the way to B-ville.
I woke up at 10:30 this morning because my phone rang. I missed the call, but it was NLW wanting me to do something with her so she could escape having to work all day. I went upstairs but Ray wasn’t home (and she hadn’t left me a note, either, wench) and then I went back downstairs, curled up with my new best friend Miss Muffin — the friendliest, cutest little tortoise shell cat you ever did see — and called Bread.
“Hi,” I said when he answered. “I’m not dead, but I am hung over!”
He laughed and said he’d figured that. We chatted, I agreed to pick up some motor oil for him, we hung up. I called NLW at home, she didn’t answer. I got dressed, sat around a bit, then called Ray. She didn’t answer. I left, drove around a bit, called NLW’s cell. She didn’t answer.
Got coffee, got tacos, went to Wally World. Bought two cheap plastic pitchers, some cheap plastic cups, and two quarts of 10/40. I felt inordinately proud of myself that I’d remembered to get pitchers; our last two were broken and eaten by a dog, respectively.
I got home, made a pitcher of Tang and a pitcher of iced tea, poured myself a cute little lime green-colored plastic cup of Tang, and answered my phone when it rang.
It was Re-re. Her dog, Dhuma, Stella’s sister, is dying. It’s awful. She’s having horrible seizures, isn’t eating or drinking every day, hasn’t gotten out of bed at all today. Re-re’s had that dog for over a third of her life, and Stella’s the same age as Dhuma. You know when you get them that they’ll die someday, but it sucks when it happens. I sat on the porch with my Tang and had a smoke and we talked dogs and life and other stuff; I watched my beloved Bindu as she flopped down under the Little Red Wagon for a nap and realized that she’s ten this year, which is really old for her breed. (An ACD’s life expectancy is 9-10 years.) She’s getting cataracts. And Stella has arthritis and has to be lifted into the truck most days. Oh, the dog love. So deep. *sniff*
Bindu, my Australian Cattle Dog
When Bindu goes, I’ll have to be sedated. Seriously. That little Nazi Hitler of a blue thing owns me, absolutely owns me. I sing “Am I Blue?” to her and change the words so it’s about her. She’s an excellent cuddler. She’s totally velcro, which I love in a dog — I don’t like having to look for them. She’s half cat. She’s wonderful. She’s the dog of my heart.
In which I go on and on and ON and on about trivia that barely even interests me; God only knows why I expect you to read it!
Bread’s been cash-poor lately, so he’s taken to waking me up early in the mornings and handing me my checkbook so I can sign a blank check for him. I always mumble, “Bring me a receipt,” before sinking back into sleep. He doesn’t, of course.
The last time I sat to enter checks and receipts into my register, I just left the amounts blank for those three checks I’d given him. And then I forgot about it. Until last night, when I sat at the bar and updated my register again. Whoops! I had $26.14 in my account, and three checks I still hadn’t entered. Turns out those three checks totalled $211.
Oh, shit.
So last night I told Bread I was gonna need two hundred bucks today. He groaned. I said, “Well, either that, or $380 on Monday to pay the check amounts and the NSF fees. Your choice.”
He called me at work this morning and said he was bringing me money. (He’s not working today.) He took me out to lunch at Pizza Hut, where we had the buffet. It was totally white trash but it hit the spot.
I completed and e-filed my taxes today. (I usually do my taxes in February; I don’t think I’ve ever in my life left them this late.) The good news is that I’m getting refunds because my student loan was reamortized, getting me a big fat 1098-E from my lender so I was able to claim the maximum allowed.
I calculated both my federal and state taxes with and without that $2,500 on Line 18 of my 1040A, and while it didn’t affect my federal return either way, the inclusion of that interest deduction gets me a hundred bucks back from Iowa while without it I owe them $63. Weird, huh? Thank God for debt, I guess.
In other news, I added that QuickLinks sidebar (to the right) today and I love it. Love it! It lets me use del.icio.us to post interesting links directly to my blog. Trust me, it’s hawt.
In other other news, it went straight from winter to muggy and hot, and skipped the breezy part of spring altogether. Go Iowa.
Mushroom Quiche Recipe Mmm, goood.
In which nature fucks some shit up! (This post is mostly for Fairfield ex-pats.)
Iowa City is an hour away from here. It’s where one goes to party and shop when one lives in Fairfield. A tornado cruised through Iowa City last night, killing one person, ripping the roof off Menard’s and the Old Capitol building, and making a big mess. Here’s links:
- KCCI Des Moines News: Tornado Kills 1 In Stratford
- ABC News: Tornadoes Kill 1 in Eastern Iowa
- Pictures: Damaged car dealership
In Batavia, it merely rained.
VSCO
Instagram has become unusable crap, so please click the icon below to see my latest pics.
4 random books from my Library!
