Month: February 2005

1. What time did you get up this morning? Around 7:15 – I meant to get up at 6:40 when Fred left for work, but I stayed up late last night, and wanted to snooze for a while before getting up and getting ready to hit the pet store. 2. Diamonds or pearls? Diamonds, I suppose, though I don’t really wear any jewelry at all. 3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? It was in Maine after Christmas, so I’m thinking… National Treasure? 4. What is your favorite TV show? Desperate Housewives, Lost, The Bachelorette, 24, The Shield. I can’t choose just one! 5. What did you have for breakfast? Half a blueberry bagel with a smear of peanut butter, and a scrambled egg. 6. What is your middle name? Leslie. 7. What is your favorite cuisine? I’m partial to Chinese food, though I do get cravings for Italian from time to time. 8. What foods do you dislike? Anything with green peppers or deer meat in it. 9. What is your favorite chip flavor? I don’t eat chips all that often, but when I do, I like sour cream and onion. 10. What is your favorite CD at the moment? The Cold Mountain soundtrack. 11. What kind of car do you drive? I’ll pass on this one for the time being, but there should be news in a week or so. 🙂 12. Favorite sandwich? If made at home, I like a ham and cheese sandwich. At Subway, I like the BMT on white with mayo. 13. What characteristic do you despise? What do you call the characteristic where someone sees a snapshot of an instant of your life and judges everything about every second of your life from that moment they see? 14. Favorite item of clothing? My nightgown. My poor, bedraggled nightgown. It’s ugly and it’s been washed so many times you can pretty much see through it, but it’s the most comfortable nightgown I’ve ever owned. It needs to be tossed, because it’s started to tear in places, but I can’t seem to make myself get rid of it. If I had the sewing skills, I’d use the nightgown as a pattern to make another one (or more!) of the same nightgown, but I am woefully unskilled when it comes to sewing. I’ve bought a thousand nightgowns, but none of them even come close. 15. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation where would you go? If I could get to Hawaii without the 12 hours on the plane, I’d go in an instant. 16. What color is your bathroom ? Our entire house is painted the same color – a slightly pinkish warm cream color. The master bathroom has blue-gray towels and a matching bathmat. The spud’s bathroom has a cat-themed shower curtain and towels. 17. Favorite brand of clothing? As long as it’s comfortable and I like the color, I don’t care about the brand. 18. Where would you retire to? Maine in the summer, Hawaii in the winter. Except that that would reallllly freak out the cats, that 12-hour plane trip. I’ll say Maine in the summer, Florida in the winter. Money being no object, of course. If I had to choose between the two, I’d say Florida, since it’s warm year-round. 19. Favorite time of the day? Dusk, when my family is in the house and we’re all doing our own thing but I know where they are and don’t have to worry. 20. What was your most memorable birthday? They all kind of blend together, really. Maybe the birthday when I turned 21 and could legally drink and got looped on one single strawberry dacquiri. Heh. 21. Where were you born? Bangor, Maine. 22. Favorite sport to watch? Ice skating. I’ll watch poker if I know the people who are playing. Especially Annie Duke and Howard Lederer. Although Annie Duke annoyed me when she was playing some all-stars poker tournament (I don’t remember exactly what it was called) and she knocked her brother out of the game and apologized profusely to him. DON’T APOLOGIZE, ANNIE. YOU’RE JUST PLAYING THE GAME. 23. What fabric detergent do you use? Tide. Every now and then I’ll give something else a try, but I always come back to Tide. 24. Coke or Pepsi? Diet Coke, preferably from McDonald’s. 25. Are you a morning person or a night owl? More of a night owl, I’d say. 26. What is your shoe size? 9 wide. 27. Do you have any pets? I have four cranky cats and you can see them here, here, here, and here. 28. How old are you now? 37. 29. What did you want to be when you were little? It changed pretty frequently. I remember wanting to be a vet (’til I realized how much school was involved), a teacher, an orthopedic surgeon, and a psychiatrist. 30. What are you meant to be doing today? Aside from doing laundry and vacuuming the upstairs, my day’s pretty much open. I need to watch some stuff I’ve DVR’d lately to clear some space.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ From my comments: The picture of Hawaii is so beautiful. Would you consider offering it as wallpaper? And since I’m about to experience my first 8+ -hour flight, can you offer any suggestions for how to best cope? The full-sized picture of Hawaii is here – you’ll probably have to size it down to use it as wallpaper, I wasn’t sure what size to make it. As for the 8+ hour flight, when I was getting ready to leave for Hawaii someone suggested that I get some Ambien from my doctor. She said it’ll knock you out and you’ll sleep deeply and wake up feeling really refreshed. I wasn’t able to give that a try myself, because I didn’t get a chance to see my doctor before I left, but believe you me – I wished like hell I had! If anyone else has advice for someone going on a long flight (and 8+ hours? My heart goes out to you!), leave it in the comments, eh? ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Okay, a lot of you don’t know what hotlinking is, so I’m going to explain it the way I’d want it explained to me. Say you look at this page, and you say to yourself “Oh my god, that look that Yo Boogity has on his face EXACTLY describes the mood I’m in today. I must put that picture up on my page!” What you should do (we won’t get into the fact that you shouldn’t be stealing pictures of other peoples’ cats for your own use without asking permission; that’s a whole ‘nother topic.) is right-click and save the picture to your hard-drive, then upload it somewhere, whether to tinypic or another free image hosting site, or if you have your own domain, somewhere on your domain. Then, when you’re ready to put the picture on your page, you would link to the picture where you saved it – whether it be one of the free image hosting sites or your domain. But if you’re a hotlinker, what you would do is right-click on the picture, see that the image is located at http://cats.robynand3rson.com/graphics/StanleyOne.jpg, and you would put that address in your image tag. That way, the picture shows up on your page when people check it out, but every time your page loads, it steals bandwidth from me, because I host the image, which is located at the cat.robynanderson.com address. I hope that clears it up for you. Have I mentioned that finding someone is hotlinking an image on my site really pisses me off? I spent all weekend obsessively checking my stats and changing image names so that someone who, say, intends to wish their friend a happy birthday by hotlinking to an image of a cake on my site might come back to find that they’re actually wishing their friend a happy birthday in a whole new way. If that ain’t the face of a bandwidth thief, I don’t know what is. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~]]>

comments in this entry about gave me a stroke yesterday. And yet, I read every damn one of them because I’m a sucker for stories that piss me off. Heh.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ So I went to the doctor’s office on Wednesday, because the skin on my face is itchy and blotchy and there are rough bumps – not all the time, but a lot of the time – and I’ve been meaning to ask the doctor if she thought I had rosacea for ages now, and finally I sucked it up and made the appointment. I was sitting in the waiting room, and it was pretty packed, because this is a very busy doctor’s office. Sitting behind me and over a few seats was a woman who didn’t seem to know that unless you want everyone in the area to listen to your conversation, you should use your Indoor Voice. Instead, Phone Woman was talking at full volume, and I did my best not to listen, and instead concentrate on my book, but she was so loud that finally I just had to put my book down, stare at a wall, and just listen to the conversation. Phone Woman, it appears, works with a woman named Brenda. Brenda is a horrible, horrible woman. She’s trying to hold Phone Woman back, she’s trying to mess with her career, she is INTIMIDATED by Phone Woman, who is a strong, black woman and won’t take any guff from anyone. Phone Woman doesn’t know why Brenda’s gotta be like that. Obviously Brenda is threatened by Phone Woman and is just lashing out. Brenda doesn’t even know how to say a simple “thank you.” Why, when Doug did her that big favor a little while back, Brenda couldn’t even be bothered to utter the words “Thank” and “you”. Instead, she said “I don’t need your charity.” All Doug wanted was a thank you, a little show of appreciation, and Brenda wouldn’t give him that. “Thank you,” said Phone Woman. “That’s all she had to say! A simple ‘thank you’ would have made Doug as happy as a sissy with a dick in his mouth!” My jaw dropped, and I wasn’t the only one – an older woman sitting across from me gave me a “do you believe this?” look, and we shook our heads at each other. Someone needs to teach Phone Woman how to use her Indoor Voice, because I’m 99% certain that the woman sitting two seats down from Phone Woman, the one with two kids under five, had to answer the question “What’s a dick?”, because those kids were listening to every word coming out of Phone Woman’s mouth. I wasn’t around to hear the question, though, ’cause it was my turn to see the doctor. She prescribed a cream for me to use on my face. Hopefully the blotchiness will go away; I’m keeping my fingers crossed! ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Did I mention that my parents are in Hawaii again? My father’s there temporarily for work, and my mother decided to go with him again. Obviously, the spud and I won’t be going to Hawaii again, but I had a dream last night that I we were in Hawaii during Spring Break, and it was beautiful and warm. See, this is how my memory works – I tend to remember how beautiful and warm Hawaii is, rather than remembering how miserable I was, with the head-to-toe rash and the noise from the street construction and how freakin’ HOT I was. I remember the good stuff, and I get the yearning to go again. I’m not going, but I kind of wish I was, you know? I told Fred the other night that someday we should go to Hawaii and drive out of the city to the North Shore, and hang out all day at the practically-deserted beaches. Which is what we should have done last summer, really. But then I remembered how it’s a matter of 12 hours on a plane, and how much it drives me crazy to sit in one place for that long, and how I wanted to run screaming up and down the aisles of the plane, because I was thisclose to losing it, and we were still 3 hours from Hawaii, and Fred reminded me that it’ll only take a few hours to get to the Bahamas (which is where we’re going for our 10th anniversary), which is pretty, too. Just give me the ocean and a little patch of beach, and I’ll be happy, you know? But Hawaii sure is pretty… ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ At the beginning of February, I decided to try to read a book a day every day of February. It’s going pretty well – see my reading list here – and I’m pretty sure I’ll make my goal of 28 books in 28 days, but I don’t think I’m going to do the book-a-day thing again anytime soon. See, I like reading. I love books, and I like hanging out on the couch and reading, reading for a few hours before bed, for half an hour or so in the morning after I’ve taken my shower. But trying to cram in a book a day this month has made me cranky and impatient. I had a long run of really good books, but the books I’ve read in the past few days have had me muttering “Yeah, okay, GET ON WITH IT, quit your yammering about what the room looks like, and GIVE ME SOME ACTION.” I don’t want to be cranky and irritable – I love books! So like I said, I’m going to finish out the month (and cheat by reading the shortest books on my bookcase), but next year when I say “I’m going to read a book a day for the entire month of (whatever)”, remind me that I don’t really want to do that, wouldya? ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I hate it when people hotlink, OH how I hate it. It’s another thing that makes me cranky and irritable, when I find that someone’s direct linking an image, and therefore they’re stealing bandwidth from me. Hey, my husband works hard so I can have my own domain. Why should I provide bandwidth for some cheeseball? Fucking bandwidth thieves. Hey, you know what would be kind of embarrassing? If you were so, so, so very cool. And you joined some badass ‘burb, like – just for example – the Go Fuck Yourself ‘burb. Or even if you didn’t join the ‘burb, you just saw an image you really liked. I don’t know. Maybe one like this: Only because you’re so, so, so cool, and also a badass, why would you bother saving the image to your own domain, or using one of the free image places, like tinypic? You’re so, so, so cool, and such a badass, that you have better things to do with your life. And that person who owns the site you’re stealing bandwidth from, she’ll never notice. And even if she did? She’d be impressed. Because you? So cool. So badass. She’d certainly never move images around and rename them so that instead of seeing the above image on your site you’d, instead, see this one: “Robyn,” you are whining. “This is unfair. Not everyone knows that hotlinking is bad! Not everyone knows that they shouldn’t steal bandwidth! You’re mean! I don’t like you! You suck!” To which I say only: Ignorance is not an excuse. And it sucks to be you. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Love to eat them mousies . . . Mousies what I love to eat! Bite they little heads off, Nibble on they tiny feet! ]]>

this site and this site this morning, considering that I neither love nor hate Paris Hilton. I mean, I think she’s a blight on the face of humanity, but other than that, I’m just kinda “eh” when it comes to her. Someone needs to tell her to stop tilting her head, though, or her neck is going to freeze that way.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ We were watching Survivor last week, and at one point (I’ll try not to spoil it for those of you who haven’t seen it yet), Jeff Probst said “Ulong.” “Oolong?” I said to Fred. “Is that like the tea?” “I dunno.” He thought for a second, then grinned. “Funny. I thought it would be spelled U-L-O-N-G, like an ‘unsigned long’ from programming. That’s a 32-bit number that can only be positive. And zero. Anything from zero to a little over 4.7 billion.” He considered. “Except I always figured it was pronounced ‘you-long’, because of the ‘U’,” he said. “Maybe that’s my Alabama coming out.” We watched TV for a second or two in silence. “4.2 billion,” he said suddenly. “Not 4.7. Because a regular signed 32-bit integer only goes up just over 2.1 billion – that’s 2 to the 31st power – and an unsigned would be one more power of two onto that, so–” I made a loud snoring noise and gave me a wounded look. But he shut up. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ So yes, Fred is having a vasectomy, which means (god willing and the creek don’t rise. Heh heh heh. I said “rise”!) there won’t be a little Fredbyn running around here and I won’t be blogging about our kid and getting into flamewars with people who leave snide comments about our parenting choices. Also, Fred won’t be gagging over a shitty diaper. Did anyone see that on America’s Funniest Home Videos Sunday? That was hilarious – you note that none of the people gagging over shitty diapers was a woman. Anyway. So I gather from the reaction that this is a surprise to some of you – someone in Fred’s comments said that it kind of came out of left field – which surprised me (that y’all were surprised, I mean), but then I remembered that you haven’t been here when we’ve been discussing it over the past six months or so. And then I remembered that more than five years ago I posted an entry saying that I was going to go off birth control in March of 2000 and start trying to get pregnant, so I guess I can see why the surprise. I don’t know at what point we ended up deciding that we didn’t really want to have another kid; I think it’s been a gradual decision over the last few years. We went from kinda wanting to have another kid, to definitely not wanting one. If one or the other of us desperately wanted a kid, I’m pretty sure the other one would go along with that, and I’m sure we’d both love the kid with all our hearts. In like manner, had I accidentally gotten pregnant I think we would have had the kid and right now y’all would be snarking about its name or clothing or lack of a hat in cold weather. But we just don’t want another kid, we really don’t. I know that disappoints some of you, but, well, to have a kid just ’cause y’all want us to would be pretty damn silly, wouldn’t it? ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Several people said that, in the Tubby movie I put up a few days ago, I don’t sound like they expected. That’s funny, because I’ve always wished that I had a whiskey voice like Ellyn from Thirtysomething. I don’t, though – I have a high, girly voice and usually it makes me cringe, though I didn’t think I sounded too bad on the Tubby video. Last month when I listened to Dooce on NPR, I was blown away by her voice. “That’s not Dooce!” I said. “That’s some GIRL!” I don’t know, I just didn’t expect her to sound all girly. I think I expected her to sound like Marge Simpson’s sisters. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ “You know you want me.” ]]>

Don’t they make you want to take a nap?]]>

The Forgotten (which I mailed 2 1/2 weeks ago) hasn’t gotten there yet, and To Wong Foo (which I mailed two weeks ago) hasn’t gotten there yet, either. But Saw, which I mailed on Friday at the post office, got there yesterday. We’ve always had problems mailing stuff from home – more than once I’ve mailed a bill payment (back when I was doing that silly “writing a check to pay a bill” instead of paying electronically) to have it just kind of disappear for a while, causing a late payment, and then show up a month or so later at it’s destination. For a while I stopped mailing anything at all from home, but I got lazy and started mailing stuff from home because it’s just so much more CONVENIENT than getting in the car and driving a few miles down a busy road to mail stuff, but I guess I need to go back to only mailing stuff from the post office. Or asking Fred to mail stuff from the post office on his way home from work. I can tell you this – I’m not terribly fond of my mailman right now.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ So I’ve been a cleaning maniac lately. I finally got around to cleaning the hell out of the library/ dining room last week, and did so much straightening and dusting that I almost didn’t recognize the room. I cleaned out the closet in the kitchen, cleaned the downstairs bathroom (which I do far too infrequently). Yesterday, Fred hooked me up with a wireless network connection, so that we could finally get rid of a wire or two, and then we moved stuff around on top of the filing cabinet, which is where the modem and, uh, other shit are located. He moved everything off the top of the filing cabinet, and I dusted (man, there was a lot of dust), and then I looked down behind the filing cabinet and decided to break out the vacuum cleaner and vacuum behind it. Finally, Fred ended up pulling the filing cabinet out away from the wall so I could get back there with the vacuum. Just so you know, that filing cabinet – and it’s a nice one – was put there the day we moved into this house in August of 2001, and it hasn’t been moved since. As you can imagine, there was a ton of dust and cat hair and crap not only on the floor, but clinging to the wall and the back of the filing cabinet. And under the filing cabinet, where there’s a gap of three inches? Scattered mouse shit. Quite a bit of it, actually. Apparently at some point in the past three years and seven months, we had a mouse living under our filing cabinet. Whether it was one of the mice the cats ended up eventually bringing upstairs to the bedroom, I have no idea. That’s the only place I’ve seen mouse shit so far, but I haven’t pulled my desk out to clean behind it since we moved in, so god only knows what’s living back THERE. I can predict that there’s an awful lot of cat hair, though. That much I do know for sure. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ So, Fred was looking at an old floppy, and he found a movie. Since y’all have been harassing (YES, I said harassing!) me for a new movie of the (ha!) week, I decided to upload it. It’s a movie of Tubby, just sitting on the back of the couch, minding his own business, while I try to get him to let loose with one of his bitchy meows. In fact, at one point I sound like I’m making sheep sounds at him, for some reason. So anyway, there ya go. Click on the “Movie of the week” link over there to the right under “Other”, and please right-click and save it to your hard drive, please. Oh, and by the way that manly-looking hand that reaches out and rubs Tubby at one point belongs to Fred, not me. In case you were wondering. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Spot practices his Paris Hilton “come-hither” look. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~]]>

Mo!!! (Miz Poo sends kisses to Frankie!)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Every time I put up a picture with the water bottle full of coins somewhere in the background – like this one – someone (or several someones) want to know when we’re going to take the coins to the bank. The answer, of course, is when it’s full! The long answer is that that change is going to pay for part of our 10th anniversary trip to the Bahamas (in 2008!), so we’re going to keep tossing our change in there until a few months before our trip, when I’ll start rolling the change. Which, I’m sure, will be tons and tons of fun. From my comments: Hey, are your cats on Catster? They sure are: Spanky, Spot, Miz Poo, Mister Boogers, Mr. Fancypants, and Tubby are all on Catster. One more thing.. I have a new mouthguard (similar to your old one in fact.) and ever since I got it I wake up thinking I am eating something. Trying desperately to CHOMP through whatever it is. Sheesh, probably a good thing I have the darn thing or I might not have teeth LEFT. Yours looks odd, no front to it. Thinking the back part must be quite thick.. Yeah, the back part is pretty thick – and the last few mornings I’ve woken up actually chewing on the mouthguard as if I had gum in my mouth. I swear, if I chew through this thing, I’m going to be pretty peeved! Also, I think that the way it’s made – with no front part to it – is so that I could wear it during the day if I wanted to. I don’t grind my teeth during the day, but some people do. I can’t imagine comfortably wearing it during the day, though – it makes me lisp even worse than I already do. My mouth guard looks a lot like your old one–is it the kind you boil? Anyway, the new one looks a lot comfier. Can you breathe through your mouth while it’s in there? (I had a cold a couple of weeks ago & couldn’t wear the mouth guard because I can only breathe through my nose while I’m using it, and what with the cold I couldn’t breathe at all with the mouth guard in. Sucked.) I know what you mean about the gag reflex with them, though–if my stomach is the tiniest bit upset I just can’t fall asleep with mine in my mouth. No, the old one was one I got from my dentist, too – years and years ago. More than 10, I think. They took an impression of my teeth and made the mouthguard, if I recall correctly. I don’t have any problems breathing through my mouth with the mouthguard in, thank goodness, since I’m a total mouth breather! Speaking of dreams! Robyn, I had a dream about you the other night. You invited a bunch of guys over to your house for a slumber party, and you told me that Fred, for SOME reason, was not happy about it. You said you couldn’t understand what the problem was. LOL He just never lets me have any fun, does he? Hmph! ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Pet store kitty pics from this morning are hither. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ “It is RAINING, and I am wearing MY COLLAR, and it’s PISSING me OFF.” “I will BITE at the air! Bite! Bite! Bite!” “I will BITE some more! Bite! And if The Momma doesn’t stop calling me ‘Boogity’, I will bite HER, too!” ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~]]>

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Since I never did get a TV blog up and running again, and it’s all just too much of a pain in the ass for me right now, I decided to co-opt Fred’s forum, and post there about Survivor: Palau. In fact, I think I’ll do all my TV yammering over there from here on out.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Petstore kitty pics from Monday are here. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ So, I bought the spud Season 2 of Xena Warrior Princess (on DVD) for Christmas. She started watching it a few weeks ago, and then realized that in the set were two disc 4s and no disc 5s. Of course, this wouldn’t do, so I told her to leave it on the counter and I’d figure out what to do with it. Time went by, a thick layer of dust grew on the DVD set, and finally I got tired of seeing the set sit on the counter. I sent an email to Amazon telling them what the problem was, and asked what I should do. I got back an email from an Amazon customer service rep who told me that because it was more than 30 days since I’d ordered the Xena DVDs, they’d never send out a replacement, but this one time they’d make an exception and were going to send me Xena – Series Finale and I needed to send them back the Xena set within 30 days or they’d charge me for the DVD they’d sent. So, to recap: I am missing Disc #5 from the SECOND SEASON of Xena. The brainiac in customer service thinks that sending me the Xena SERIES FINALE is a good response. The more I deal with Amazon, the more they piss me off. I’m about to move my fucking wish list to Barnes & Noble or Waldenbooks or what-the-fuck-ever, because every fucking time I have to deal with Amazon, I end up wanting to tear my hair straight out of my friggin’ head. Amazon is like a boyfriend who can’t be bothered to call when he says he will, who paws other women right in front of me, who makes snide comments about my ass AND YET I KEEP ON GOING BACK FOR MORE. Amazon is the Jonathan Baker of boyfriends. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ And before you suggest it, I’ve already emailed Anchor Bay Entertainment – who put out the DVDs – to ask what I should do. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Not only do I have daffodils blooming in the back yard, but I also got a BOX of daffodils via Fedex yesterday. They came from 2G Roses, sent by someone who clearly lurrrrrrrrves me. I love daffodils, have I mentioned? ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ “If I go outside, will I get zapped?” ]]>

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I read Kathryn Harrison’s The Mother Knot the night before last. It’s such a small book that it took me about an hour – if that – to read. I always forget how much I like her writing, even though she kind of weirds me out a little at the same time. I’ll always think of her as the woman who had an affair with her father – and then wrote a book about it – and if that doesn’t give you the willies, I don’t know what will. This is a woman with Issues, I guess you could say. But an amazing writer. I recommend The Mother Knot.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ In the back yard, my daffodils are beginning to bloom, and the temperature is somewhere in the 40s. It hit 70 degrees on Tuesday, then we had some crappy weather yesterday – (in fact, when we were sitting in the lawyer’s office signing the refinancing papers yesterday, the tornado sirens went off, and Fred and the lawyer did a rousing rendition of “Them damn tornado sirens iz fer pussies and I ain’t takin’ no shelter and it used to be that the sirens didn’t go off unless there wuz an actual tornado spotted, but now if the sky gets a little windy they set those damn sirens off without thinkin’ twice, uh-huh” replete with a little soft shoe and jazz hands.) – and the temperature dropped into the low 50s, and it seems to be getting colder and colder and JESUS CHRIST I MOVED TO THE SOUTH SO I WOULD NEVER HAVE TO BE COLD AGAIN. Why, god, why? I’m sitting here, my fingers are freezing, my toes are freezing (and the big-ass cup of Diet Coke with lots of ice I just finished drinking has NOTHING to do with that, I’m sure), I have two space heaters going (though a portly Poo is flopped down in front of one of them, stealing the heat so that it won’t get to me), and I am FREEZING. Clearly I need to move to South America. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I finally remembered to go to the frame shop where I’d dropped off the picture I cross-stitched for the spud. I dropped it off about a month and a half ago, and they called the week after to let me know it was done, but I kept forgetting to go pick it up until this morning. It looks good; I was a little worried whether the red mat would work, but I think it worked out just fine. However, does it look just a little bit off-center to you, or am I just seeing things? I look at it one time and it looks fine, and then I look at it again and it looks off-center. What do you think? ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ::sniff::sniff::sniff::sniff::SNIFF::SNIFF::SNIFF:: Miz Poo does not appreciate being sniffed when she’s minding her own business hanging out on top of a box.]]>

This picture made me giggle (thanks to mah baybee for the link).

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ This is horrible to admit, but from April of last year to February of this year, I didn’t touch the company financial books (the company being the publishing company we formed to publish Fred’s book) aside from entering a few invoices. I didn’t enter the monthly bills into the books, I didn’t balance the checking account every month, nothing. Nada. Zilch. Don’t you wish I was responsible for your books? Since Fred needed to get our stuff to the accountant so that she can do our tax return this year, I finally sat my ass down almost a year’s worth of bank statements, a ton of printed-out Amazon orders I’d never entered, and I concentrated on getting the books in order. Know how long it took me? About an hour. After putting it off all month long because I didn’t want to deal with it, it ended up being almost painless – I started music playing, sat down with a big cup of ice-cold Diet Coke, and got it done. I plan to stay on top of things for the rest of the year. Har. The books are almost gone, which means that hopefully before the end of the year we can shut down the company and close the company checking account, and I won’t have to do it all again next February! I kind of made a resolution at the beginning of February to keep on top of our personal financial books, because I have a bad habit of letting a week or two go by without putting in the debit card purchases, and so far I’ve done a pretty good job of it. Does this mean I’m turning into a grown-up? ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Speaking of turning into a grown-up, Fred and I had an appointment this morning with a lawyer. That’s right, a lawyer. Because we’re getting a divorce. HA! JUST KIDDING! Did I make your heart skip a little beat there for a second? No, we’re not getting a divorce – we were doing something that requires MUCH more paperwork than getting a divorce, and that is refinancing the freakin’ house. We signed and signed and signed and signed, and every time I had to sign “R0byn L. And3rson”, I clenched my teeth, because I’ve made it a point to always use “R0byn And3rson”, no middle initial for everything – checking account, credit cards, all that good stuff, specifically because I hate having to sign with that middle initial, and here I was having to sign that freakin’ middle initial 45,000 times. But it was actually fairly painless, and now our mortgage payment is reduced by (approximately) 21.428571 percent. AND we don’t have to make a mortgage payment for March! Par-tay! Also – and this makes me so happy I could just giggle – this means that Chase Manhatt@n is OUT of our lives. Buh-bye, Chase Manhatt@n, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out! Our new mortgage company is a small company in Ocala, Florida, and I think we all know what that means: our mortgage will probably be sold to Chase Manhatt@n in two seconds flat. Ugh. So now that the refinancing is done, we’re going to go shopping for a car for me, and just in the nick of time because I think the electrical system on the Jeep is going a wee bit haywire. Last night I drove to McDonald’s for an ice cream cone, only there were about fifteen people in line and I said “FUCK THIS”, and drove back home, and I was driving along minding my own business, and suddenly the lights started flashing on and off and on and off and I had no clue how to make it stop, and I worried that the person in front of me was going to wonder why I was flashing my fucking lights at her, but just as I was about to pull off the road and figure out how to deal with the flashing lights, they stopped. I fully expect that any time now, I’ll be driving down the road, and the Jeep will fall to pieces, and I’ll be sitting there holding the wheel, with my foot on the gas and a big cartoon question mark hanging over my head. I have a pretty good idea of what I’ll end up getting as a car, but y’all will just have to wait ’til I actually have it in my possession before I tell you, because if I tell you, someone will have something not-nice to say about it (not YOU, of course, but see that scowling chick over THERE? Yeah, she’s primed and ready to snipe, I can just tell), and Fred’s head will fall off and bounce across the room, and I kinda like his head where it is. But worry not – once the car is mine, there’ll be pictures galore, I promise! ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ “Whatnot” would an excellent name for a blog. You could even make it a wedding blog and make a play on words with “What Knot?” ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ So after the refinancing, I went to Sam’s since I was in the area anyway. I wandered around and got annoyed because Sam’s has stopped carrying the gum I love – Trident White Spearmint – and also they had no tea, no Crystal Light Pink Lemonade, AND no cherry Kool-Aid. I did get bottled water, boneless skinless chicken breasts, and a bottle of Flintstones vitamins, so the trip wasn’t a total waste. When I was standing in line at the checkout, I saw the 32-ounce cups they sell for 74 cents (which you take over to the soda fountain and fill up with the soda of your choice), and I decided that I should get a cup of Diet Coke at Sam’s instead of going through the drive-thru at McDonald’s – which I’d been planning to do – because the 32-ounce Diet Coke at McDonald’s is twice as much as the same size and same soda at Sam’s. I bought the cup, filled it up with Diet Coke, and when I sat down in the Jeep I took a big swig of the Diet Coke, and it sucked. I don’t know if it was flat, or the machine needed to be cleaned, or maybe just that McDonald’s puts crack in their Diet Coke, but my Sam’s Diet Coke was a great big letdown. Guess I’ll know better next time. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Fred found a pile of floppy disks in the dining room the other day and started using them to copy stuff for the thing he’s working on (she said obliquely), and I took one to make a copy of our books for the accountant. I checked first to see what was on it, and found a little treasure trove of Tubby pics from November 2003. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~]]>

Alicia I know nothing at all about Little Ponies, Mine or Otherwise. I only know from reading Katherine’s entry that they have a symbol on their butts that go with their names? Or something? Okay, so my My Little Pony name would be Badass and my butt symbol would be a sneering smiley face. Will that work, or are the Little Ponies supposed to have names that consist of more than one word? I’m so confused! 2. “What do you think of when you look up at a brilliant night sky?” – Athena Usually I wonder whether the stars whose light I’m seeing are still around, or whether they winked out of existence a billion years ago. Sometimes I wonder who else in the world is standing in place and staring up at the stars at the exact moment I am. And I always wish that I had a skylight over my bed, so that I could lay in bed and look up at the stars every night as I go to sleep. 3. “Have you ever felt prejudice towards anyone, or felt it aimed at you? Describe/explain.” – Becky Since I’ve been living in the South, I find that more and more I have a knee-jerk prejudice toward people who try to cram their religion down my throat. I used to be willing to listen to someone who’d knock on my door and try to tell me how it is, but now I have no patience at all. As soon as I hear anyone say anything at all about church, going to church, or anything church-related, I stop listening immediately. As far as feeling prejudice aimed toward me? Sure, I’m a fat woman who dares to go out into public. People take one look at me and are certain that I sit on my ass on the couch all day long cramming Twinkies into my mouth. Clearly I don’t exercise at all, and as far as eating healthy, balanced meals? Sh’yeah. 4. “You suddenly notice a doorway in your home that you’ve never noticed before. You open it and find your room! Describe it.” – Carrie It would be a small, cozy room; there would be large windows on two of the walls, and the third and fourth walls would be floor-to-ceiling bookcases stocked with books and magazines I hadn’t yet read. The walls would be painted a very light shade of yellow. In one corner would be a chaise longue with a couple of fluffy pillows and a warm quilt. There’d be a small refrigerator near the chaise longue stocked with bottles of water and cans of Diet Coke. In another corner of the room would be an overstuffed chair, and scattered on the floor in various spots would be cat beds, because you KNOW a room can’t belong to me without a sleeping cat or two nearby. 5. “Pick a song that can make you cry every time you hear it and explain the reason why it does.” – Cricket This would probably be a shorter list if you’d asked which songs DON’T make me cry! A song guaranteed to make me tear up every time would be Beloved Wife by Natalie Merchant, because of the lines A depth so deep/ Into my grief/ Without my beloved soul/ I renounce my life/ As my right/ Now alone without my beloved wife/ My beloved wife. Who doesn’t want to be loved like that? And no one else on earth could have done that song justice the way Natalie Merchant does. You were the love For certain of my life You were simply my beloved wife I don’t know for certain How I’ll live my life Now alone without my beloved wife My beloved wife I can’t believe I’ve lost the very best of me You were the love For certain of my life You were simply my beloved wife I don’t know for certain How I’ll live my life Now alone without my beloved wife My beloved wife I can’t believe I’ve lost the very best of me You were the love For certain of my life For 50 years simply my beloved wife With another love I’ll never lie again It’s you I can’t deny It’s you I can’t defy A depth so deep Into my grief Without my beloved soul I renounce my life As my right Now alone without my beloved wife My beloved wife My beloved wife My love is gone she suffered long In hours of pain My love is gone Now my suffering begins My love is gone Would it be wrong if I should Surrender all the joy in my life Go with her tonight? My love is gone she suffered long In hours of pain My love is gone Would it be wrong if I should Just turn my face away from the light Go with her tonight? 6. “If you could, in retrospect, change one thing about your childhood, what would it be?” – Danielle I’d have a mother who knew how to be consistent about anything at all. 7. “What was your first job?” – Debbie I was a carhop/ waitress at the Hi-Hat III drive-in restaurant in Lisbon, Maine for about a year, starting at the age of 15. Surprisingly, I found that I was pretty good at dealing with the public (and got even better after I quit that job and started working at McDonald’s). It was a pretty good job, although my boss was a bit of an ass. It’s because of that job that I’m an excellent tipper today – many times I busted my ass waiting on someone only to get no tip at all. Bastards. 8. “Explain the name of your journal. How’d you come up with it?” Fred came up with it, actually. We were sitting around trying to come up with the right name, and as soon as he said it, I knew it was perfect. 9. “Describe your bedroom when you were 17. And now?” – HMW I really don’t remember much about my bedroom when I was 17, except that it was in the basement of the house where my parents live today, and I couldn’t leave clothes on the floor because they’d start growing mold in less than a day. My bedroom now is about as perfect as it could be. I’ve got a queen-sized bed, the walls are a warm cream color, I’ve got a chair in the corner of the room where I sit and read every morning after I’m out of the shower (because you can’t go directly from showering to getting dressed; bras are impossible if you try to put them on when you’re still damp). There’s a bookcase full of books I haven’t read yet, and a TV with a VCR and DVD player across the room from the bed. Also, I’m slowly starting (after 3 1/2 years!) to hang things on the wall, which really makes the room a little more cozy. 10. “What does being a woman mean to you?” – Jenn Being able to create and sustain life. And never being able to walk down a street at night without fear. 11. “Name one thing you to did today that made you step outside your comfort zone.” – Jolene Not a damn thing – I live pretty much inside my comfort zone and don’t venture out of it too often. Isn’t that sad? 12. “If you could do anything, knowing that money, opportunity, talent, etc. weren’t considerations, what would you do for a living?” – Katherine I’d be a pop star! I can’t sing worth a shit, but I sure would love to be able to! 13. “When you’re feeling down, what can you always count on to cheer you up again (even if only temporarily)?” – Kathy 14. “When you’re having a bad day, what do you find most comforting?” – Lissa Having the spud fill me in on all the gossip from school, snuggling with Fred for a little while, or picking up and cuddling with Miz Poo or Mister Boogers are all guaranteed to make me happy. 15. “Have you ever had a friendship go sour? If so, describe what happened to tear you apart.” – Lynda The only friendship that comes to mind is my friendship with Denise. We were good friends when I was a senior in high school and for the few years after, but Denise is one of those holier-than-thou people who tends to look down on everyone, and I guess she decided I wasn’t good enough for her, because she just kind of cut off all communication at some point. Can’t say I much miss her. (Denise story: Liz and I were taking college classes on the Navy base in Brunswick, and Denise said “I told my mother you two were taking classes, and she got mad and said ‘You’re smarter than either of THOSE TWO, you should be taking classes, too!'”, and then gave us a look that made it clear that she agreed. Um, I think NOT. There’s a difference between being SMART and being A KNOW-IT-ALL. That’s okay, though – I got my revenge when Denise, Liz and I took a history class together. She got a D, and me? I got an A. HA!) 16. “Using MapBlast or MapQuest, find the distance between your current home and your hometown (or, if you moved a lot while growing up, your birthplace). How many miles or kilometers separate you from that place now?” – Melissa 1401.1 miles. Mapblast claims it would take me 20 hours to drive from here to there. I bet I could do it in 18! 17. “What would be your ideal job?” – Nance I think the job I’ve got now is pretty damn cushy. Aside from this job, though, any job that would let me traipse through someone else’s house and check out how they have it decorated would be the perfect job for me – realtor, cable installer, housecleaner, house appraiser. The list goes on! 18. “Do you Google people you know or come in contact with, and do you think Googling people is a good thing?” – Noreen I Google people all the time, both people I went to school with, and people I meet currently. I think Google is THE SHIT. 19. “If there was one thing you could change about yourself, personality-wise, what would it be and why?” – Reb I’d be less of a phone-phobic, and I’d be less worried about going into new situations. (Yeah, that’s two. So sue me!) 20. “How does your current life differ from what you thought it would be like when you were 10? How (if at all) is it the same?” – Me When I was 10, I thought I was going to be a veterinarian, and married to Donny Osmond. I had a very elaborate scheme wherein I would move to Utah, down the street from where Donny lived, and I would casually walk by his house, and he would be immediately struck by love, and he would run out of his house and sweep me in my arms and we’d run away and get married and live happily ever after and I would be the TOTAL envy of every woman in America. Suffice it to say that I’m not a vet and I’m not married to Donny Osmond. I think that Donny and I are probably both better off for it. I also didn’t think, when I was 10, that I would have any kids, despite the fact that Donny Osmond would probably have required me to have a thousand of them. 21. “If someone were to gossip about you, what do you think they would say?” – Say-Say “My god she’s a spaz. Boring, too!” 22. “If you could spend 24 hours living the life of one other person, just for fun and the sake of seeing how someone else lives and feels, who would it be?” – Sherry I think I’d like to be a guy for 24 hours. A good-looking guy who could get any woman he wants. Ooh! I’d like to be Brad Pitt, that’s who. Then I’d know exactly what was going on with Brad and Jen, and whether he really was fooling around with Angelina Jolie. Also, I’d be interested to see what it’d be like to be unable to go out to the store without being swarmed by the paparazzi. Also, I’d find out what it’s like to walk around with a penis. To quote Elaine from Seinfeld, “I don’t know how you guys walk around with those things.”

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