Blog Hopping

I've been mulling over Sur-reality's post, linked above, during my recent, random, and ever hopeful tours of the blogosphere (oh, how quickly the english language changes...) in search of anything profound. I'm not sure that I mind angst and venting. No, it's not always all that interesting - that's up to the blogger to make me want to read about why their life sucks. And I really can't see who would be interested in a blog about how much I love my job/commute/cat/dog/significant other/town/car/new jeans.

What does confuse, and yes, piss me off, are the blogs that are in code. There are entire blogs that are in teenage shorthand. I think I can make out the gist of most of them, eventually (okay, "ppl" means people, "woot woot" means "I'm happy about something" I think). But why should I have to? Why the hell would I ever want to??

I am so NOT the target audience. I get that. But when there are entire blog-hopping sessions in which all I will come across are pages of garbled love-sick and/or spiteful phonetic abbreviations, it gets a little discouraging. However, through Murphy's Law, blind luck or some twisted diety who likes to mess with me, just as I'm about to call it quits on the entire search something good comes up. I tripped over a blog the other day that was run by a (purported) 14 year old and she actually made sense. It was coherent, thoughtful and interesting.

(And did I bookmark it? Apparently not. I could have sworn that I did, but Explorer says otherwise. I'll have to sit down and have a talk with it about this later.)

It's that kind of thing that leads me to blog hop a little more every now and then. In addition to the teen-speak, I can gloss over the advertisements, the preaching and the slander for the odd little bit of interesting writing or wicked photography. I'm getting pretty good at glossing over. The second there's a cheesy GIF or a squirrelly thing following my cursor, I just move on. My index finger's getting pretty trigger happy - as long as I keep a close reign on it so that something loads before moving on. The good stuff has to turn up somewhere...

Weirdness on the Quarter Moon

Coffee break this morning was not the usual mindless catch-up Q and A. It was spent over a copy of each of our city papers.

Obvious is the prolonged discussion about Terry Schiavo and the meddlesomeness of government interference in such a personal matter. We all had our own strikingly similar opinions of "what if it was us, or our spouse" (enough, already) and agreed that the majority of people would probably agree with us. But this has got to be one of those cases where a majority consensus on any statement simply doesn't mean shit. There are no acceptable blanket conclusions here. This is a terribly private matter that has been forced out into the public circus - it doesn't matter whether or not it was unintentional - to be gawked at and fought over. No one can be at peace with any outcome after this is over.

Have you heard enough about that yet? Apologies - this case is everywhere and absolutely everyone has an opinion. Which is good. People need to know where they stand. But for god's sake, write it down, get it witnessed and tell the people who are going to be making the decisions if and when you're in that state; the internet isn't going to be the one at your bedside.

Our second discussion revolved around another school shooting, - this one, just across the border. Disturbingly close, but so sensationalized that it became almost unreal. It's a little mind numbing, really. There's just not much to say. It has to be beyond horrific for the kids, the parents and anyone who was near the place and no one's ever going to really know exactly every little detail that went on before hand and every little factor that may have contributed. That makes it a little more difficult to come up with any solutions.

Lastly, there was a local incident of the wrong patient being moved for transport to the morgue - needless to say, the patient was still quite alive. Just sleeping very deeply. Yeah, breathing can be a bitch to detect.

So, that was my pretty intense coffee break this morning. As you can tell, despite the remainder of the day and a much needed relaxing chiropractic adjustment, I'm still wound up about all this. And so this is my much needed subsequent rant. I had planned to blog about something else this evening, but I guess I just had to get this out there.

Here's to a long hot shower and a good night's sleep under a waxing moon, blissfully devoid of any mind whirling dreams.

To Hell with Popeye

Earlier this evening, in a very conscious effort to include a few greens in dinner, I reached for the bag o' spinach in the fridge. These things have been a god send - they're re-sealable, cut, cleaned and "ready to eat!".

This bag was now half full, having been opened earlier last week for additions to sandwiches, stir frys and anything else that seemed lacking in the veggie arena.

Two handfuls of spinach were added to the tomato sauce I was preparing. At that point, I dropped the stir spoon, flew back and began hissing and cursing as though enough sizzling air could put a Great Wall of China up between me and what I had just nonchalantly dropped into my dinner.

A moth.

An inch long, fat, hairy, grey, and thankfully very dead, moth.

Fortunately, my husband was in the room and could dispose of the vile little bastard in short order. It's still sitting in the garbage upstairs, and I am giving it a wide berth. It looked dead, but it may just be sleeping. I've already point-blank refused to have anything further to do with that garbage, and it will have to go outside TONIGHT. I still probably won't sleep well.

Moths, as some of you may not know, are vicious. They careen around wildly only to land on you, if not blatantly slam into you - certainly with the intent to do damage. I'm positive that, one day soon, some scientist will prove that moths actually have teeth - headline: The Real Vampires Turn Into Moths. And, please do not forget The Mothman Prophecy with its inhuman creepy winged beings.... Seriously, it's a thing! Somebody chose that name for a reason.

Oh, I know: I can hear a few eyeballs rolling and the hint of a chuckle or two. Mock me now, if you will. Go ahead, eat your spinach and become oh so much healthier than I. It won't do you any good when the moths come for you.

i slept, i blinked, i must've eaten...

Next weekend is Easter (and that's unacceptably early this year) and we will have guests over the four days and more the following weekend. That's fine, except that I can't find my carpet for dog and cat hair and I've stopped turning the lights on to go into my bedroom for the fear that something other than my dog or cat might be living in there.

I have paperwork to do, I have paperwork to find before I can do it, I have a kitchen to clean and I have a computer room to excavate.

I'm not sure that everything that needs to happen will actually get to happen.

We've been way to busy lately with oil changes, choir performances, poetry studios, recording sessions, naturopath visits (the hubby's allergies are on the down swing), overtime at work and vet visits (Leo had his lump-ectomy stitches out and his hair is growing back while Mesquite had her follow up ultrasound that shows absolutely no change in her tumor).

Who wants to vacuum??

Fortunately, we don't entertain much. Except in the next few weeks. We'll dig ourselves out of our comfortable mess long enough for guests to navigate around our house and then we can once again relax for a while.

On the other hand, it may be instructional to just leave things the way they are. My parents just went out to their local shelter today and brought home a cat - a one year old Siamese. My mom is most worried about the influx of cat hair. Were my place to remain in its current condition while she were down for a visit, no amount of cat hair in her house could ever look as bad.

Ah, and so my messiness becomes my purpose, my gift, to those around me. How utterly, and terribly, convenient.

WIL WHEATON DOT NET

WIL WHEATON DOT NET

I don't know what to think of this. I honestly don't. I just felt this overwhelming need to blog it. I found this site linked in Blogger News and needed to read. It's...wait for it... a good read. Don't laugh. I think I mean it.

Despite what could best be described as indifference toward the concept of a Wil Wheaton blog, I actually kept going through a few posts. Considering that my attention span is pathetically short when it comes to blog-hopping and I tend to make up my mind before the page even finishes loading, that's a very serious and in-depth amount of reading that I did. (It may have helped that he's listed U2 Rattle and Hum under a "Watch" heading, but I still had to scroll down to get to even that info.)

This is still so truly mind-boggling. (mind-blogging, mind-bloggering.... oh dear).

It's late. I'm tired. I'm going to have to revisit this and see just what was so damned intruiging. Because, for whatever reason, it was.

Things I Learned Today

1. Do not stand directly underneath a vessel into which you are pouring water.

2. If the container out of which you are pouring the water has a spout, the water will preferentially pour out of that spout - even if it is not directly into the vessel into which you are pouring.

3. No matter how weird it may seem, it is actually a good thing to have a hair dryer at work.

I'm sure there must be profound enlightenment that can be realised from the preceding statements. Getting wet and subsequently drying my shirt did consume a disturbing portion of my morning (at least the berating myself for it did), so I'd better be able to get something good out of it.

I learned other things today, too, like:

1. When wiping down a shelf, check to make sure that it's bolted to the brackets first. That way your heart rate won't take ten years off your life when the shelf starts to slide off.

2. When working in a room that has a baby monitor for an intercom, and therefore is always on, use your inside voice.

All in all, a most instructive day. I don't think any of this quite qualifies me for the Darwin awards, but it would make for an interesting background history should I ever be so honoured.

On that note, I'm off. I've many more things to do tonight: must go dig something out of the toaster with a fork before I draw a bath while listening to the radio.

The Ants go Marching

Ah, yes it's March. It's sufficiently far into March as to be disturbing.

March comes in like a lion and, to date, I have no evidence to the contrary. The lab I work in has moved buildings and we have been busy throughout. I have evening and weekend plans booked that actually make it seem like I might have a life.

March is reported to go out like a lamb but I fail to see how this can be the case. My bookings, both at work and in my off-time, extend well into April and I believe that events are still being scheduled, even at this very moment by my husband.

And so, I plod through, on a course laid out for me by others, like an ant following the trail set down by his ant buddies. That's okay. I wouldn't fall in with the flow if it weren't okay. It is certainly easier. Ants may be onto something. They get to go off on travels they may never have been on before, but it's still all planned out for them. It simply screams with potential for all the excitement and none of the stress. In theory.

So, I'll go marching through the next month and see what the trail is like. Worst case scenario, at the end of March, I will have to stop following ants and find a lamb to hang out with.

(Knowing my luck, it will be an April-fools' wolf in lamb's clothing but that'll be a whole other post...)

the art of the eyebrow - one hair at a time

It's now been one week since I had more facial hair removed in one sitting that has ever been removed from me before. And this was accomplished by threading - another thing that has never happened to me before.

I appear to have survived.

I went to a new salon near my work on my coffee break with two co-workers - both of whom are no strangers to threading. I'd been telling myself I should go get threading done since I saw this place open earlier last month, but venturing into the unknown is an easy thing to turn away from. But, now my friends were going, and so I had to go too. This was a trial run, and apparently the girl was very good at systematically ripping all inappropriate hairs. Apparently, she's also a little pricey (but then there are those of us paler skinned folk who still think a pricey thread is damned cheap) but well worth it for the convenient locale.

I watched my two friends get their eyebrows shaped and then it was my turn. I had originally only asked to have my lip done. Now, I am fair. My lip is not really hairy. But, there are little blond hairs that I noticed one day. Then, I kept noticing them. Then, they started bugging me and I decided that they must be removed. However, there were more hairs to be removed than even I had realised. She was able to thread hairs across my entire upper lip - not just the ones I'd seen near the corners of my mouth. No, it seems that there are little hairs everywhere. It wasn't particularly painful, but the sound was rather disconcerting. Instead of the defined, single, band-aid-esque tear of waxing, threading sounds more like repeated velcro-ing. It actually reminded me of pulling weeds from between the stones in my front walkway. Except it hurt. A little. And, I got used to it rather quickly. My eyes didn't get used it, though, and insisted on tearing up throughout the entire process.

At the end, I sat there, naked-lipped, and the girl (oh dear, what was she: esthetician? threader? hair-removal associate?) asked when I'd last had my eyebrows done. Actually, it was a while ago, but I was kind of proud of how well I'd been keeping them up. Pff - this was an obvious money grab.

Or not.

She had a few minutes. My friends and I still had a few minutes. She threaded one brow and showed me the difference. Um. Yeah. My upkeep had been rather lacking. It's probably akin to how I'm able to ignore my roots for months on end....just something I get used to. My hair is darker near my scalp, and my eyebrows are a little mishapen. That must just be the way I am.

After it was all over, the tears were dried and the tips were left, I spent the rest of the day at work, thankfully not having to venture too far out into public. I had a uni-red-brow for a few hours and a slightly puffy-feeling lip, but I was assured that it really wasn't as noticeable as I thought.

Once my skin recovered from the assault, it did not take long to become accustomed to fewer full follicles on my face. I came through the process essentially unscathed and no hairs to show for it. Despite my nerves, it was an inoffensive event with pleasant results. I can tell that this is going to be a trend for me, for the next little while, at least. Because of the nearby location and a few friends to keep me on the straight and hairless, I may be able to maintain this state for a significant time. As long as I can get used to being to the idea of paying to be plucked like the chicken that I am.