In which the weather went just plumb crazy.
A massive storm rolled in this morning. We had 60-mile-an-hour-PLUS wind gusts, and the atmosphere was filled with tons of suspended dust.
All the stuff on the porch ended up in a pile. Gramma went out and released our retired Christmas tree from its stand, and the whole damned tree blew away – we haven’t seen it since.
Tree limbs hit the roof and fell to the ground, littering the yard with broken branches.
Two of the three guy-wires holding my uncle’s old ham radio antenna have snapped. Half the shingles came off our neighbor’s rear roof elevation and are piled up in our yard (but I didn’t notice any missing shakes from our roof when I went out to look) and very few people still know where their garbage cans are. The entire city lost power for over five hours.
My employer’s data center (‘the vault’) was down for 45 minutes, because the generator battery failed. I didn’t have to come to work until 3 o’clock, because with no power the call center couldn’t operate. And now that I am here, I’m calling hundreds of customers who’d left voice mails to explain why our auth and email servers didn’t work earlier today.
Here are more pictures of the carnage, taken by a co-worker’s friend.
There are houses with trees through them, cars with trees on them, downed power lines, and general chaos everywhere. (In other words, if you’re an insurance adjuster, you should load your fuckin’ ladder and get the the hell out here. There’s mega mad damage, yo.)
In other news, there’s capuccino cream pie in the break room!
Update: It’s 9:17 and I just spoke to Gramma. She tells me the power’s still off at home, which means no reading in bed for me. Ugh.
In which you tell me what to do!
I want movie recommendations. From YOUSE, my babies!
If you use Netflix, befriend me (I’m goblinbox, of course) and recommend stuff. And if you don’t use Netflix, leave me a comment and tell me what to watch!
Thank you. *smooch*
In which I’m not particularly pleased.
I had an appointment with Gramma’s dentist at 11:00 this morning. A tech took $119 worth of x-rays, and then I sat in a chair for 15 minutes and meditated. Then the doctor came in, looked at my films, poked my teeth, and told me I need two fillings. He told me I should either get braces (?) or have $2,000 worth of cosmetic porcelain work done to fix my upper front teeth, one of which is pushed slightly forward. There was no prophylaxis hygienist available, so I had to make a second intake appointment before I can make an appointment to get my teeth cleaned.
While the dentist was really nice and he looked sort of like Santa Claus, this is not the sort of service I was hoping for. Sure it’s neat to know that – if I had money – I could get fun things done to make my teeth look like those of a movie star, but I don’t want any of that shit. I want my TEETH CLEANED. And I should not have to pay for two preliminary appointments just to be able to get a prophy appointment!
The ‘cavities’ are two slightly soft spots on one of my molars. Sure, they might turn into real cavities, but considering that I’m nearly 40 and have never had a cavity in my entire life suggests that there’s really not a high risk of the tooth rotting out of my head in the next few months. Only one of the two spots even goes through the tooth enamel so I think spending $500 on fillings I don’t really need can fucking wait.
The doctor suggested that I have one of my top front teeth ground down and the one behind it filled in, and both covered with porcelain, to create an even-looking top arch. And if I should find I need to sit for a Rolling Stone cover shoot, I’ll certainly consider the cosmetic work then but right now all I want is to get my teeth cleaned.
I think I’m in the market for another dentist.
In which there’s a brief overview.
Saturday morning I slept in. Then Gramma took me grocery shopping, and I spent $50 on things like bulgar and red lentils and canned chickpeas.
When we got home, I cleaned out the jeep. I put the few things I’d left in it into the basement, and filled a large bag with garbage. I left its key with Gramma because a kid was coming over to buy it at five. The jeep is dead, long live the jeep!
(Now I really don’t have a car, but at least it’s out of the damn driveway.)
At a quarter to three C came and picked me up, and we went to RB’s and recorded a demo. You can listen to ’em if you want – they’re fucking awesome and once RB put compression on me I liked the mic a lot better. (The linked MP3s are roughs, which means the engineering and production isn’t finished. I think one of the solos is going to be re-done, too. I’ll post the finals when they’re ready. Your job is to listen and tell me how awesome I sound, k? K.)
I had a totally transcendent moment when all four of the guys were singing back up on Get Ready. I’ve always, always ALWAYS wanted my own male backup singers! Oh teh happinez!
After recording for about five hours, C and I hit the store and then went over to his house, where we delivered feminine hygiene products and cheap wine to Syl. She was bleeding and watching a Star Trek marathon and cute as hell. (Her periods suck as much as mine used to, poor creature.) Eventually Syl kicked us out so she could get back to James and Spock, and C and I went to The Oasis over at Stateline to see a band play. We made the singer and drummer listen to our demo; the singer looked at me like I was holy and told me I was amazing. C dropped me off at home at two and I listened to the demo tracks a few times and then went to sleep.
Today I did laundry, helped Gramma pack up some of the Santas, and cooked dinner. (Tofu, couscous, and spinach.) Then I went to my room and watched I Am Legend on my laptop. (A guy from work gave me a bootleg; it looks like an Oscar copy.) (I used to date a guy whose grandfather got to vote, and we watched several “For your consideration…” copies of movies.) It was a good monster flick but Will is far too skinny.
So, that’s it. I’m a rock star! A tired rock star. It’s bedtime. G’night, my babies.
In which I complete an unpremeditated transaction.
I woke up this morning to the sound of my cell phone trilling. I had a text message. The message informed me that my paycheck had been direct-deposited into my account. Money! Yay!
During my lunch break this afternoon, I dutifully went to the post office and bought two money orders: one for mom, one for the lab that doesn’t take plastic. Later, I dutifully called and paid the surgeon and the anesthesiologist their payments.
And just now? I went to eBay and bought one of these, with a 128Mb storage card, for no good reason.
I had no intention of buying a dedicated ebook reader; it just happened. I’ve been thinking about getting one for awhile now, because while I used to love the multipurpose functionality of my Pocket PC, I no longer use it for anything but ebook reading (I use my cell phone for everything) and the form factor’s not as ideal for that as it could be.
Not only is the 1150 much less expensive than the Kindle or the Sony Reader, but it boasts instant page-turns (without the Kindle’s momentary blackscreen), a back-light, free online storage, a built-in dictionary, built-in dial-up modem, a USB port, and a gray-scale display equal to the other more expensive devices.
It seems like the 1150 is best option available, particularly considering the Kindle’s page-turn bug would drive me utterly bat shit within moments and that neither of the other devices have built-in freakin’ backlight, AND with the bundled expansion card it holds 200 books – more than either of the others. (How in the hell is someone supposed to be able to read in the dark with a device that isn’t fucking back lit? Gah!)
Anyway. I have yet to see the thing, so I don’t know if it’s really all that or not. But I think I’m gonna love it and hold it and pat it and squeeze it and call it George, and that’s the coolest thing that’s happened all day!
In which Xmas day was super plus fun!
Christmas Day totally rocked.
It’s been years since I’ve celebrated this holiday with my blood family, and it was really great to be at Gramma’s house with a whole passel of aunts and uncles and cousins and their spouses and parents. We ate dinner mid-afternoon, then Dave went to get his kids and we opened gifts around three in the afternoon.
Yes, I said three. Three! In the afternoon! It took forever to get to the present-opening; I thought I was gonna die. (I got cute red jammies from Gramma, two gift certificates, earrings, coffee, mugs, candy, and lots of other fun stuff. It was awesome.)
My band wanted to record a demo that afternoon, but I didn’t go. While their enthusiasm is awesome, as far as I know we don’t have even three songs worked out yet. The idea is that we need to slap together a demo and start booking gigs so that we will have a reason to practice… we’re all people who write papers the night before they’re due, I guess.
In completely unrelated news, I have a dental appointment on January 2nd. Yay! I need to get my teeth cleaned so bad it’s disgusting, but this particular office didn’t let me make an appointment for a cleaning – I have to got through their evaluation and intake crap first, and get x-rays. They’d better get me back in the next fucking day, though, because I think my teeth are so plaque-ridden that I’m running a low-level infection in my gums. Which is totally gross, and which makes my mouth taste like tin foil, and which makes my tongue all white and gross when I wake up every morning. I’ll probably need another planing and scaling, which is expensive and takes four visits, but which keeps one’s gums from receding and leaves one’s mouth pristine.
First the uterus. Then the teeth. Next, the eyes. Eventually I’ll be practically normal!
In which I count my blessings this holiday season. (I’m a blessings-counter by nature.) (Which seems like a good quality, but it gave me a fucking panic disorder when I was too stupid to know when I was unhappy.) (Just sayin’. Pollyannaism ain’t always good.)
Dangerous, my uncle, sent me a huge Amazon.com gift certificate. I’ve been trying to figure out exactly how to spend it: get stuff off my Wishlist? Get other stuff? Get a bunch of little things? Get one big thing? It’s so fun. (Last year, my mom gave me a $100 certificate for a knitting store and I nearly went ballistic trying to figure out what to get.)
The house is full of good stuff to injest. Salty snacks, cookies, oatmeal bars. Booze.
My dog is fat and happy.
I rearranged my room yesterday and I like it better. I found some computer stuff I’ve been looking for for months, in the bottom of a box I thought was completely full of files.
Someone’s offered to buy the jeep as soon as I find the title. He only offered me $150, but I might just take it to get rid of the thing. It’s not like I’m gonna part it out or anything, and a scrap yard would probably only give me half that.
I’m slowly making friends here – musicians and co-workers. It’s good.
There are presents under the tree with my name on them. I didn’t do much Christmas shopping because all my money goes to pay medical bills, but I do have a little something under the tree from me for everyone.
My aunt and uncle will be at the house when I get home from work tonight. And I get to leave early, because the phones aren’t ringing. The boss was called by the shift supervisor, and he said he was on his way with some Christmas Cheer for those few of us here and then letting us go home early.
I stayed up ’til three in the morning reading a good book.
Life is good. Peace to you and yours!
In which this post covers everything that matters.
Work
Work last night? Verged on insane. I won’t get too jargony on y’all, but one of our servers ran out of disk space, which caused our internal apps to fail and a bunch of authentication errors for customers. Both the engineers were unavailable, so I just worked my arse off last night. I still had call-backs to do at a quarter of nine, and I’m usually done at least half an hour before that. Gah!
Music
RB picked me up at nine and took me to Barnaby’s for open mic. We found a drummer and a bassist to play with us and did a really mediocre version of Get Ready, followed by a fuckin’ smokin’ Stormy Monday. (Then we got off the bandstand ’cause we didn’t have anything else to do.)
A few people shook my hand and told me I’m awesome, which I always like to hear… particularly when the audience is comprised entirely of other musicians. RB and I talked about a bass player we’ll be auditioning this weekend, and then he dropped me off at home around eleven. I let my dog out for five minutes, then went up to bed and crashed.
Food
Tonight is the company Xmas party, which means not only do I get my dinner paid for, but I get off work early! W00t!
Sex
Actually, there’s no sex to speak of. I just thought it would be good if I used the word in a post once in awhile.
In which I work on becoming a big fish in another small pond.
RB came and picked me up Saturday afternoon, and we went over to his studio (which is actually his mom’s basement, but you can still record albums in it) and we listened to stuff. Then C came over and we talked about possible bass players (of course I don’t know anyone in town, so they had that discussion themselves) and then we talked about the covers we could do to start out with.
Eventually C had to leave, so RB and I sat around and listened to more music (including his album Blue Movie, which is really fun and worth a listen) and shot the shit for awhile longer. We hit Taco Bell on our way to The Oasis to see C sit in with a local country band, the name of which escapes me.
During the band’s second set, I sat in – with RB on bass – and sang Stormy Monday. The crowd didn’t really seem care much for me (they were there to line dance, not listen to the blues), but the band pretty much dug the shit out of me. And I dug them: they were all really hot players. I was impressed as hell.
After singing, I proceeded to get drunk and disorderly with C’s girlfriend, Syl. (She kept ordering tequila.) RB went home. I stayed because Syl said she and C could drive me home. I thought we’d be out of there by midnight, but I didn’t get home until two because C had to wait to get paid for the gig.
It definitely was not the type of bar I usually find myself in. There was a lady with the most amazing hair I’ve ever seen: it was a huge tall gravity-defying beehive, with a braid up the back. (It must have taken a whole can of Aqua Net to keep that where it was.) There was a wheat farmer with ink all over his throat and arms, and big smooth buttons embedded in his earlobes. I kept harassing him ’cause he let me; he was a good friend of the monster guitar player in the country band.
Everybody else was totally normal looking… if you think Western wear is normal. I wore the only nose ring in the whole place, and my usual silly drunken dancing was way over the top for the venue. I ignored the looks and danced anyway because it wasn’t my fault they think country’s gotta be danced a certain way. At some point Syl smacked me because she thought my dancing was inappropriate. I sat down for a few minutes and then started dancing in my chair, which she seemed to think was even worse. All those stiff-backed line dancers, jeez. C’mon, find your root chakras, people!
The band was playing rock covers by the time the last set arrived because most of the line dancers were gone home. I was gyrating in my chair lip-syncing ZZ Top’s Tush while a couple near my table was grinning at me and bouncing along in their own chairs. (The women at the table behind me were appalled that I even existed, probably because I was having entirely too much fun, but whatever.) An Alaskan logger tried to take me back to his hot tub but I made Syl pretend she was my angry girlfriend until he went away. I had a great chat with the bass player. Eventually I fell into the back of C & Syl’s van and they drove me home. Syl and I had a brutally graphic discussion about fellatio.
Been exchanging MP3s with RB via email, and he offered to take me to the open mic on Wednesday. Hopefully we’ll be able to run a song by then, and hopefully C and whoever they get to play bass will be there too so we can see how we all feel about playing together.
Long story short: I have managed to bypass all the self-styled garage rockers and am already meeting the actual players in town. RB, who is proud of himself for finding me, says, “Every time you sing people ask, ‘Where’d you get her?,’ and they’re already talking about you at the Blues Society meetings.” COULD MY HEAD GET ANY BIGGER?
In which my heart is breaking.
Yesterday I was groovin’ to my iPod and though I saw that the battery was in the red, I just let it play until the battery died.
Then I plugged it into my laptop with its USB cable…
Now it won’t boot up. I let it charge for three hours, took it off the cable, and tried to restart it. The hard drive clicks, but it only gets as far as the Apple screen and no farther. After awhile the backlight goes off. When I reconnect it to the USB cable, it gives me the “battery very low” message for awhile, then tries to boot and hangs.
I let it charge all night. When I tried to wake it up this morning, no joy.
I’ve brought it to work with me and have it plugged in to my work tower’s USB port. It seems to have finally charged enough to boot all the way up. God, I hope it’s okay because I really don’t have a very good backup of my music library. I mean, I have all the files, but they’re spread out all over the goddamned place and it would not be easy to reformat a new MP3 player.
Update: Charging the thing on my work tower worked! MY IPOD BOOTS UP AGAIN! I AM SO RELIEVED! I probably should have rebooted the laptop before panicking.
VSCO
Instagram has become unusable crap, so please click the icon below to see my latest pics.
4 random books from my Library!
