1. Black Friday.
Mr Swami started black friday off with a bang. I heard him say the S word then run two quick laps behind the computer desk. Turns out? He fell asleep at the mouse and dumped coffee on the keyboard. He drained the keyboard & set it to dry over a floor vent once he had calmed himself. Then he remembered that we had given away our newer spare keyboard and the 'puter did not want to recognize the antique one we found in the basement. Luckily once it dried out it worked okay.
We ended black friday by going to see A Christmas Carol - presented in the original Klingon, not Charles Dickens' inferior English adaptation. Actually, A Klingon Christmas Carol (at Mixed Blood Theater in Minneapolis) was so much fun! It told the basic story of bad Scrooge, 3 visiting ghosts and redemption from the point of view of the Klingon warrior culture. All the actors spoke only Klingon, with English subtitles projected above the stage, like they sometimes do for opera. And there was a Vulcan narrator on stage now and then who narrated a bit in English. I think Mr Swami & I have found a new Holiday Tradition!
2. Cyber Monday.
Not as many free shipping offers this year as opposed to previous years. I ordered from a couple of places but was remarkably restrained. Hooray for me!
3. Nose Sweat.
I have been watching too much Food Network lately and it has started to drive me crazy how often the chefs they show in cooking shows are dripping sweat from the tip of their nose! Kitchens are hot places so this must be just a fact of chef life. Anyway - when they have a close-up of a chef and a drop of sweat drops from his (usually his, haven't seen a her yet) nose while he is looking down - I do not need another close-up to know that the sweat has fallen into whatever he is cooking/plating at the time. Now I wonder how much nose sweat I have consumed in my lifetime. I mean, really wonder. Maybe even freak out.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Oh Crap-ito
It was nice to have Mr Swami home for a 4-day weekend.
It was nice of Mr Swami to cook us a huge skillet breakfast (making lunch quite unnecessary) for 3 of those 4 days.
But.
He used up waaaay too many potatoes! (Being a midwest country boy he likes potatoes for breakfast.) Now I have to go to the grocery store two.days.before.Thanksgiving because I don't have enough left to make mashed potatoes for everyone. *cries* I HATE the grocery store in the days before Thanksgiving! HATE IT!!!!
It was nice of Mr Swami to cook us a huge skillet breakfast (making lunch quite unnecessary) for 3 of those 4 days.
But.
He used up waaaay too many potatoes! (Being a midwest country boy he likes potatoes for breakfast.) Now I have to go to the grocery store two.days.before.Thanksgiving because I don't have enough left to make mashed potatoes for everyone. *cries* I HATE the grocery store in the days before Thanksgiving! HATE IT!!!!
Friday, November 20, 2009
Easy Friday
Mr Swami has the day off so we slept in really late. He made me breakfast in bed. :)
Now we are putting up Christmas lights & wreathes & snowflakes. We need to buy some outdoor timers this year. In previous years we just used one of those click-on things with the little remote - but this year I think we will just switch to a couple of timers and be done with it. We need two timers because we have stuff on both sides of our driveway and this is the easiest way to be sure we never suck up an extension cord in our snowblower. Tom tried that last year and while it was a very exciting 2 seconds of his life he doesn't want to do it again!
Now we are loading up some old electronics to take to the County site. Old TV, old Brother All-in-One, etc. Our plan is to make the third garage parkable again. For some reason the third garage became a dumping ground a few years ago.
Fifty degrees and beautiful in MN!
Now we are putting up Christmas lights & wreathes & snowflakes. We need to buy some outdoor timers this year. In previous years we just used one of those click-on things with the little remote - but this year I think we will just switch to a couple of timers and be done with it. We need two timers because we have stuff on both sides of our driveway and this is the easiest way to be sure we never suck up an extension cord in our snowblower. Tom tried that last year and while it was a very exciting 2 seconds of his life he doesn't want to do it again!
Now we are loading up some old electronics to take to the County site. Old TV, old Brother All-in-One, etc. Our plan is to make the third garage parkable again. For some reason the third garage became a dumping ground a few years ago.
Fifty degrees and beautiful in MN!
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Birthdays & Random Stuff
Today my baby boy turns 24. Yikes! I'm not even saying how old my oldest is, lol. (Her birthday was the 15th.) We celebrated son's bday this weekend and got him a ice cream cake from DQ - his perennial request. I think that's his request because I don't particularly like ice cream cake so the chances of me stealing an extra slice is exactly zero and the cake will be his all his!
I've been trying to figure out the nature of my likely craziness. I can see Evil Sister's craziness & faults very clearly. (She's hyper-controlling and the queen of passive-aggressive back-stabs.) Other sister is also a bit nuts (non-conforming?) but in ways that are rarely if ever focused on me. So I figure I must have some similar flaws. Mr Swami refuses to discuss this issue with me, which is both reassuring and worrying.
Today I am doing my first Thanksgiving shopping trip - all the non-perishables. I hate shopping when the holiday zombie shoppers are blocking the aisles looking for stuff they only buy once a year. Usually the zombies are a husband & wife with a cart parked between them and they cluelessly block the entire width of the aisle while trying to decide whether pumpkin pie filling and pumpkin puree are the same thing, and what is the difference between condensed & evaporated milk.
I bought outdoor LED lights from Lowe's yesterday. The truly amazing thing about this is that Outdoor Light Grinch Mr Swami specifically asked me to! He did a lot of work this fall replacing some fence posts near our driveway - now he wants a 100ft light string along the top of the fence so everyone can admire his lovely posts. Okay by me!
I've been trying to figure out the nature of my likely craziness. I can see Evil Sister's craziness & faults very clearly. (She's hyper-controlling and the queen of passive-aggressive back-stabs.) Other sister is also a bit nuts (non-conforming?) but in ways that are rarely if ever focused on me. So I figure I must have some similar flaws. Mr Swami refuses to discuss this issue with me, which is both reassuring and worrying.
Today I am doing my first Thanksgiving shopping trip - all the non-perishables. I hate shopping when the holiday zombie shoppers are blocking the aisles looking for stuff they only buy once a year. Usually the zombies are a husband & wife with a cart parked between them and they cluelessly block the entire width of the aisle while trying to decide whether pumpkin pie filling and pumpkin puree are the same thing, and what is the difference between condensed & evaporated milk.
I bought outdoor LED lights from Lowe's yesterday. The truly amazing thing about this is that Outdoor Light Grinch Mr Swami specifically asked me to! He did a lot of work this fall replacing some fence posts near our driveway - now he wants a 100ft light string along the top of the fence so everyone can admire his lovely posts. Okay by me!
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Disaster Avoided!
Whew! I have spent the past week searching for my address book. I love my address book! It has all my secret passwords & personal stuff in it, and a few phone #s and addresses that I don't have stored anywhere online - so losing it was a disaster!
I always keep it in the same spot in our home office. Sometimes it will be briefly left by another telephone but it is never just arbitrarily stuck someplace. Tom knows where I keep it and he is positively anal about putting stuff like that where it belongs if he finds it in a wrong place. Yet somehow? When we re-organized the family room (moving most of the furniture) my address book wound up hiding between paperback books that I read years ago, on a bottom shelf of a large bookcase. I'm sure I did it. It did not "hide" on its own. *whacks self in head*
This is what it's going to be like getting old, isn't it? Losing your own stuff to random inconsistencies. *cries*
I always keep it in the same spot in our home office. Sometimes it will be briefly left by another telephone but it is never just arbitrarily stuck someplace. Tom knows where I keep it and he is positively anal about putting stuff like that where it belongs if he finds it in a wrong place. Yet somehow? When we re-organized the family room (moving most of the furniture) my address book wound up hiding between paperback books that I read years ago, on a bottom shelf of a large bookcase. I'm sure I did it. It did not "hide" on its own. *whacks self in head*
This is what it's going to be like getting old, isn't it? Losing your own stuff to random inconsistencies. *cries*
Friday, November 06, 2009
Tickets! Get Yer Tickets Here!!!
Today I am ordering theater tickets for the December Holidays, when my family will be here. This is a lovely way to go broke, lol. Six tickets for Ella and eight tickets for Triple Espresso. I can't think of a nicer way to go broke.
In other news - Holy Moly is it nice outside! With apologies to the sinking Seychelles - I really like global warming falls.
In other news - Holy Moly is it nice outside! With apologies to the sinking Seychelles - I really like global warming falls.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Wednesday Randoms
1. Your Stimulus Dollars are finally resurfacing the road I use to get into town. I wasn't sure if you would get it done before winter, but you are. So thank you!
2. I am getting about 3 Christmas catalogs in the mail every day now. I love them! I go through each one and carefully fold down the page corner when I find something I really want/need. Okay - want. Sometimes I will find 10 or 12 things in each one! Then I throw the catalogs away.
3. They are trying to ruin Splenda! (I put 2 Splenda packets into my morning mug of coffee; it is an essential on my shopping list.) Yesterday as I was tossing the box of packets into my cart I noticed that it said "now with fiber" and had a whole little front-of-box spiel about how most people don't get enough fiber. So I flipped the box over & checked the ingredients. The "fiber" they are adding is corn cellulose, which I assume is the crap left over after they have squeezed everything else out of the corn kernal. Or maybe it is just the cobs - who knows? One thing I do know is that I do NOT want another source of corn by-product in my diet! Corn is evil! I did find that the smaller boxes were still corn-free so bought 2 smaller boxes. Phew!
4. Mr Swami has requested more outdoor Christmas lights this year. I almost fell off my chair! This is the man who hates putting up lights. However, he did replace a bunch of fence posts this summer and he wants to run a string of lights along the topline of the fence. All the better to admire his new posts I guess.
5. Oh! Bonus on the newly surfaced road! I can listen to my car's CD player again. I gave up on it a year ago because the endless potholes made every CD skip like crazy.
2. I am getting about 3 Christmas catalogs in the mail every day now. I love them! I go through each one and carefully fold down the page corner when I find something I really want/need. Okay - want. Sometimes I will find 10 or 12 things in each one! Then I throw the catalogs away.
3. They are trying to ruin Splenda! (I put 2 Splenda packets into my morning mug of coffee; it is an essential on my shopping list.) Yesterday as I was tossing the box of packets into my cart I noticed that it said "now with fiber" and had a whole little front-of-box spiel about how most people don't get enough fiber. So I flipped the box over & checked the ingredients. The "fiber" they are adding is corn cellulose, which I assume is the crap left over after they have squeezed everything else out of the corn kernal. Or maybe it is just the cobs - who knows? One thing I do know is that I do NOT want another source of corn by-product in my diet! Corn is evil! I did find that the smaller boxes were still corn-free so bought 2 smaller boxes. Phew!
4. Mr Swami has requested more outdoor Christmas lights this year. I almost fell off my chair! This is the man who hates putting up lights. However, he did replace a bunch of fence posts this summer and he wants to run a string of lights along the topline of the fence. All the better to admire his new posts I guess.
5. Oh! Bonus on the newly surfaced road! I can listen to my car's CD player again. I gave up on it a year ago because the endless potholes made every CD skip like crazy.
Monday, November 02, 2009
It Was Forty Years Ago Today...
It was 40 years ago today that my dad died. I am really sorry that I never got to know him as adult-to-adult. I was in college then and technically grown up, but still very much a teen at heart. In typical teen fashion I didn't appreciate what a terrific guy he was, and how much he truly cared for me.
This is the way I remember him best. He loved his gardens and all things natural. He was an environmentalist before that was even a word. He always wore a suit except on Saturdays when he indulged his wood-working hobby.
This is his high school graduation photo. He was a 3 years older than the other students because at one time he had to drop out and work to support his family of younger siblings when his own dad had some health issues.
Dad got his BA in Physics, summa cum laude, phi beta kappa, all kinds of prizes. He was a brilliant guy! Super at math; he could multiply 3-digit numbers in his head really fast. 784 x 959 = would take him only a few seconds to compute. He had a full scholarship to MIT to study physics but only completed one year before he had to drop out again and support his large extended family. He was his family's most capable & responsible person, and they did not fail to take advantage of him. This photo is from a summer teaching job he held at Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland, where he met my mom. He really, really wanted to be a college professor and spend his life doing theoretical physics research but he never got the chance.
This is my mom & dad as a young married couple. Dad was a brilliant physicist but worked for most of his life as an engineer. There were few jobs for theoretical physicists during the Great Depression, but there were a few for engineers. In one summer dad took and passed the Professional Board Examinations for Physical, Structural, Civil and Chemical Engineering. He always said being certified as a professional in so many engineering fields was not that hard for a physicist. He just had to memorize a bunch of area specific formulas--he could always do the math!--and as a physicist he knew how everything worked just about as well as anyone could.
This is dad and I with a telescope he gave me for Christmas. Dad was a huge astronomy buff and some of my best memories of him involve the night sky, and his fabulous informal lessons in the structure of the universe. He was a natural-born teacher, and brilliant--I mentioned that, right? He always had time for me. Like all great teachers, when you were with him he was totally engaged in that teahcable moment.
I wish I had known him when I was an adult. I wish my kids could have known him as a grandfather. He died way too young of heart disease. It seems all wrong that someone with such a huge heart should die of heart problems, but there you go.
I'm going to go be sad for a while now...
This is the way I remember him best. He loved his gardens and all things natural. He was an environmentalist before that was even a word. He always wore a suit except on Saturdays when he indulged his wood-working hobby.
This is his high school graduation photo. He was a 3 years older than the other students because at one time he had to drop out and work to support his family of younger siblings when his own dad had some health issues.
Dad got his BA in Physics, summa cum laude, phi beta kappa, all kinds of prizes. He was a brilliant guy! Super at math; he could multiply 3-digit numbers in his head really fast. 784 x 959 = would take him only a few seconds to compute. He had a full scholarship to MIT to study physics but only completed one year before he had to drop out again and support his large extended family. He was his family's most capable & responsible person, and they did not fail to take advantage of him. This photo is from a summer teaching job he held at Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland, where he met my mom. He really, really wanted to be a college professor and spend his life doing theoretical physics research but he never got the chance.
This is my mom & dad as a young married couple. Dad was a brilliant physicist but worked for most of his life as an engineer. There were few jobs for theoretical physicists during the Great Depression, but there were a few for engineers. In one summer dad took and passed the Professional Board Examinations for Physical, Structural, Civil and Chemical Engineering. He always said being certified as a professional in so many engineering fields was not that hard for a physicist. He just had to memorize a bunch of area specific formulas--he could always do the math!--and as a physicist he knew how everything worked just about as well as anyone could.
This is dad and I with a telescope he gave me for Christmas. Dad was a huge astronomy buff and some of my best memories of him involve the night sky, and his fabulous informal lessons in the structure of the universe. He was a natural-born teacher, and brilliant--I mentioned that, right? He always had time for me. Like all great teachers, when you were with him he was totally engaged in that teahcable moment.
I wish I had known him when I was an adult. I wish my kids could have known him as a grandfather. He died way too young of heart disease. It seems all wrong that someone with such a huge heart should die of heart problems, but there you go.
I'm going to go be sad for a while now...
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