More cute Google goodness: Google Reader. It’s in beta, of course.
In which I discover I hadn’t moved my old old blog folder over to the new server.
Gregg tagged me with a ‘meme’. I forgive him because not only does he have three G’s in his first name, but he’s also a man who isn’t gay and yet still occasionally comments on my blog. (My small straight male readership is loyal, but chatty they’re not.)
Anyway, onto the meme:
1. Delve into your blog archive.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions. Ponder it for meaning, subtext or hidden agendas.
5. Tag five people to do the same.
My 23rd post is about the weather, snow actually. The sentence is, “You’re still coming down, aren’t you!”
It’s not really my 23rd post. I mean, I couldn’t even find my actual 23rd blog post, since I wasn’t even using a CMS back then. Actually, my only remaining original 23rd blog post is here, and it says, “06.18.00 I love my device. I love AvantGo.com. I love Peek-A-Book!” That was not my first 23rd blog post, however, because that was posted on my long-defunct first web site, http://www.liscoplus.com/mush, which is totally gone forever.
As for meaning, subtext or hidden agenda? Well, it could easily be a metaphor for my crumbling social life, as in, You’re still coming down, aren’t you! I mean, you’re still coming over to my house? We’re going to hang out, right? Right?
Ah, the joys of country living.
Anyway, don’t worry, I’m not going to tag anyone. Do it if you want, don’t if you don’t. (But if you do, link back or I’ll cry.)
In which you learn what kind of mouth I have.
I broke down and bought an Oral-B Braun electric toothbrush yesterday. It was twenty bucks, and several people have told me in the past year that they really like their own electric toothbrushes.
Well, the electric toothbrush rocks.
I can’t tell you how fabulous it is for someone with my particular dental issues to have a device that not only makes brushing easy, but gets the plaque out of places regular brushing doesn’t.
Appparently there are two types of mouth: acid and base. One gets cavities, the other gets plaque and gum disease. I get the latter. My dentist actually tries to schedule me for prophy every three months because I get so much plaque that my gums try to receed away from it… which eventually would make my teeth become loose and fall out, according to the scary full-color poster at my dentist’s office.
Anyway, the electric toothbrush works so well that I can’t believe my dentist and/or hygienist hasn’t suggested one. In fact, I can’t figure out why they don’t do anything more than clean my teeth and yell at me about flossing.
I now know that a girl can buy a device for $20 that will actually make a dent in home plaque removal, and I know there are things like plaque-removing mouthwashes available… so why don’t dental professionals, the self-same people who keep telling me my teeth are going to fall out, ever suggest I purchase and utilize these plaque-killing tools?
I think next I’m going to embark on Bo’s patented baking soda-and-peroxide home whitening routine. I hereby announce the beginning of what will later (in my astonishing unauthorized biography) be dubbed my Very White Teeth Phase! Yee-haw!
Japanese music industry calls for an ‘iPod tax’:
The industry has asked the Japanese government to charge a royalty, to be added to the retail price of portable digital music players like Apple’s iPod, which has been explosively popular here. Money earned from the fee, likely to be 2 percent to 5 percent of the retail price, would go to recording companies, songwriters and artists as compensation for lost revenue from home copying.
Compensation? Lost revenue? Apparently the music industry now believes that copying my CDs onto another device – say, my iPod – constitutes lost revenue? In which alternate universe does this even make sense? When I buy a CD, I own it and can listen to it in any format I want to.
“Recording industries on both sides of the Pacific are trying to find all kinds of schemes to make more money,” said Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies, a consulting firm in Campbell, California. “They have this alternative commercial channel, and they’re just trying to block it or tax it.”
In which I both attend satsang AND go out on a Saturday night.
I agreed to sing a few songs with Snow for Navaratri, so I showed up at chez Wadsworth between 1 and 2 on Saturday. Snow and I immediately sat at the piano and absolutely butchered a whole bunch of cheesy 70’s fake book songs – it was great fun. C finally asked us if we had any plans in the direction of actually getting ready for the gig, and we giggled and got down to working up a quick 5-song set for our 25-minute gig. We did three chants from the Seventh Ray album, J’s cover of Amazing Grace, and an old George Harrison tune.
The ‘gig’ was at the ashram at 6:30. When we got there they were chanting the Thousand Names of Mother Divine. When they were done we did our little acoustic set, then there was arati. The prasad was yummy. I felt great, as I always do when I drag my ass to satsang, and I had a really good time. I also think that C might have been secretly tickled to have her man there, since they actually have different gurus and I don’t think he goes to satsang with her.
Between rehearsing and performing I sat in the jeep in front of the Wadsworths’ and read Olympos and smoked a cigarette, and Bread called me to tell me he wanted me to go to Mt. Hamill with him & Truck for chicken, and then to a party out at Bowling Jesus & Wife’s place. I had to explain to him that I’d just finished rehearsing and wasn’t going to perform until 6:30 and was not available. He was completely fucking pissy about the whole thing (as he generally is when I go off to do things I care about but he thinks are stupid), but he called back later in a much better mood to let me know what my NEW plans were: AmmZon was working until 7, and she and I would hook up after my gig and go to Bowling Jesus’s together. He gave me directions, and I called AmmZon and left her a VM about the whole thing. (She didn’t know about it either, apparently.)
After I left the ashram I checked my phone and AmmZon had called, all stressed out because she was supposed to have gotten off work at seven and her replacement wasn’t even there yet. I drove over to the bar and had a cocktail while she fumed and yelled the word “asshole” a lot. She’s adorable when she’s pissed. Eventually the guy showed up, and AmmZOn sat beside me and ate a cheeseburger from Torino’s while I ate some fries, and then we called our men.
She and I were extraordinarily luke warm about the idea of driving all the way to Keosauqua to stand around in a field drinking beer, even if there was a bonfire. Bread and Truck had just arrived at Bowling Jesus’s when we called them at a quarter past eight, and it seemed they had plans that revolved around a fifth of Jagermeister and passing out drunk in the truck like total rednecks.
So AmmZon and I went to her place for awhile and tried to figure out what to do. We decided to blow the whole Keo thing off, called Raybo, and went to the Backroads instead. Raybo and T showed up and we all had a ball drinking cosmopolitans and talking. At midnight we went to Ray’s house and I made scrambled eggs while she made stacks of buttery toast, and after our little snack the four of us sat on the front porch and had a fun time amusing ourselves. (Three of the four of us, it turns out, were long-time bedwetters, so we cracked each other up telling horrible stories about that.) At three in the morning, AmmZon and I finally took our leave.
That Ray & T couple? Way fun and cool.
I dropped AmmZon off at home and drove out to the farm and passed out. Bread was asleep on the couch when I got home, so he must have been pretty drunk himself because he usually goes to bed earlier if he’s not. Sunday I was totally fucking useless – I had the worst hangover you can imagine, complete with aches and a bitch of a headache. All I did was lie around and eat soup.
I’m too old for real drinking, really, but I have to re-learn that simple fact at least once a year. Doh.
One of my favorite programs of all time, meaning I’ve run it on absolutely every Windows box I’ve ever had access to since ’98 came out (which is a lot of boxen), is TClock.
It’s a free little program that replaces your taskbar clock and, among other things, displays the day and date next to the time. You can enter an NTP server and it will automatically sync your system time with an atomic clock, which is, you’ve got to admit, way cool.
It also lets you skin your Start button and the Start menu banner, manage your open windows, play alarms or hourly chimes, do some basic Windows tasks (like shut down your system by double-clicking on it), and more.
But basically I’ve been using it for so long that I feel weird on a system that doesn’t have the date in the lower right-hand corner. I just can’t train myself to quit glancing there for the date.
In which I have a social life, and friends come over for dinner! Yay!
Last night I sat at my desk until well past five, cleaning up my blog’s CSS. Brett called me and asked if I were still in town and if I wanted to have a cocktail, which I was and did.
He picked me up and we went to the Red Rock. Hattie was bartending and Joe came in, and eventually it was agreed that they’d come out to our place and we’d have dinner together. The men left, I finished my drink and left for the store, and Hattie cashed out her register.
At the store I bought two bratwursts for Brett, dog food, a frozen pasta entree for myself, and a half rack of PBR. When I got home, Hattie was already here.
For dinner, there were cajun brats, marinated new red potatoes, sauerkraut, and Caesar salad. Hattie and I finished off a rather large jug of wine and Brett and Joe drank PBR.
After dinner, Hattie and Joe and I sat outside in the cold chatting for about an hour.
The wine and the two huge, stiff Bulldogs I’d had at the bar combined to get me drunk. By the time Brett had gone to bed and Hattie & Joe had left, I was pretty tipsy, which is probably why I slept until ten today.
Thank God I didn’t get up at 5:30 again, I’d have had to kill myself.
In which I talk about knitting.
1. Do you knit continental or English?
English.
2. How long ago did you learn to knit?
A few years ago, from a booklet I bought at Wal-mart.
5. First FO?
A sweater for a doll, on tiiiiiiny little needles.
6. Favorite yarn?
Lamb’s Pride bulky. I loooove knitting wool on bamboo needles, it’s the best texture ever.
7. Favorite pattern?
Fuzzyfeet! There is something so wonderfully satisfying about this pattern. It knits up quickly, it taught me how to turn a heel and kitchener and felting, and when you’re done you have toasty toes.
8. Favorite pattern source?
Knitty.com, I guess.
9. Favorite needles?
My bamboo DPNs, size 10.5 – I use them the most.
10. Nicest thing you�ve ever knit?
Probably Redbone’s gray hat (from this pattern), because it looked good, fit well, and he actually wore it all winter last year.
11. Most hated project?
I don’t think I hated any. Some I finished much faster than others, but I don’t think any made me want to use the word ‘hate’!
12. What do you have on the needles right now?
A sock, a sheep, and a shrug. All things that start with S.
~+~+~
I stole this ‘meme’ from enviroboi’s blog and posted it to Iowa Chicks Knitting, and am now answering the questions here.
In which I’m link-happy.
Today, I worked on the site a little. I think it’s officially completely moved now – I got my dad’s blog all snuggled in, and I fixed the problems with my Gallery so it works now, and I even imported some older images.
The farm looks so cool on film. And looking at this old gallery made me remember how excited and geeked out we were during our first winter there… in spite of the time the power to the well pump went out, or the first flood, or the time the roof leaked and did a bunch of damage to the walls. (We call such experiences “the joy of home ownership,” yo.) You wouldn’t believe the amount of shit that went wrong the first year we lived there!
And look, that face on the left? Shiva, when he was tiny and small. And again, as a teenager. Such a handsome dog.
I also made a new theme for this here blog, to go with the weather. The image is about a year old; it’s our barn in front of a weather front. Nice, eh?
Thanks to Amy, I now have a few images of Brett & Bo’s trip to the 2005 Telluride Blues & Brews festival. Looks like they had tons of fun!
(I still can’t believe I missed the Very Reverend Al Green, but I had so much fun in New York that it was worth it.)
In other news, I got those pesky permissions problems fixed so the rest of the Galleries work again. Yay! (Since I don’t have root, I had to go in and chmod every single file and sub directory in Gallery’s albums folder seperately.)
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