Post-Soiree at Meanwhile Manor

Well, that was fun. The T is embarking on her own new year and so we threw a little shin-dig in order to get it started right. Those of you who know us well know that we need very little excuse in order to throw open the doors and have a party. You also know that when the guest list expands beyond five or six people, my upbringing at the knee of a woman whose house always looked ready for a Good Housekeeping photo shoot kicks in and I need to clean furiously lest I get a rash. So we cleaned. And cleaned and cleaned and cleaned...

...and barely made a dent in the debris of the abode. But at least it was presentable and somewhat child-proofed. Our breeder friends have a cute little routine upon entering the house. While Ma chats and trails the Mini while he investigates everything, Pa follows behind at a slower clip and tries to see the house through Mini's eyes. Wires, pointy things, fragile items, catfood dishes all look different to Pa, Ma, and Mini than they do to The T and I. Mini amused himself for a bit by trying to find all the occurrences of Bugs Bunny present in the house. He found a few I forgot about. Thanks, kid.

We introduced something new at this party: games. The germ of this idea was planted over xmas when I spent a goodly amount of time playing with a Wii. I thought we'd have a Wii bowling tournament. Well, I couldn't find a Wii for rent anywhere (I am not ready to buy since the remodel is still looming and I am leary of buying one only to have to pack it up for an extended period of time) so we fell back on the toychest of joy. The game of choice was Taboo. What a great way to learn how people see the world. It's essentially a word association game with some words disallowed. How can I make you say glasnost without using the terms perestroika, Gorbachev, or Reagan? After a few drinks, the question becomes even more amusing.

Today we'll do an assessment of the party protocol, debrief regarding the pros and cons of pizza toppings and wine choices, and begin planning the next gathering—optimally timed for when the house needs another good cleaning.

Well, whaddyaknow

Thanks to KFluff, I've put off grading and planning for another few moments. More importantly, I've discovered that I'm gorgeous. I mean, check this out:

I'm an Ingrid!!

How can you argue with the results of an internet quiz that combines both advanced logic and magic? What I truly want to know is how you tell the difference between those two ingredients? Processes? Are they nouns or verbs?

Anyway, here's more info about me than you might want to know. I added the first comment, btw.

You abhor color and live in a black and white dimension.

You are an Ingrid -- "I am unique"

Ingrids have sensitive feelings and are warm and perceptive.

How to Get Along with Me
* Give me plenty of compliments. They mean a lot to me.
* Be a supportive friend or partner. Help me to learn to love and value myself.
* Respect me for my special gifts of intuition and vision.
* Though I don't always want to be cheered up when I'm feeling melancholy, I sometimes like to have someone lighten me up a little.
* Don't tell me I'm too sensitive or that I'm overreacting! (I love the exclamation point here.)

What I Like About Being an Ingrid
* my ability to find meaning in life and to experience feeling at a deep level
* my ability to establish warm connections with people
* admiring what is noble, truthful, and beautiful in life
* my creativity, intuition, and sense of humor
* being unique and being seen as unique by others
* having aesthetic sensibilities
* being able to easily pick up the feelings of people around me

I don't think this is accurate. I'm often unaware there are even people around me, let alone that they might have feelings. My aesthetics extend only to how many different ways the primary colors can be used in my daily wardrobe.

What's Hard About Being an Ingrid
* experiencing dark moods of emptiness and despair
* feelings of self-hatred and shame; believing I don't deserve to be loved
* feeling guilty when I disappoint people
* feeling hurt or attacked when someone misunderstands me
* expecting too much from myself and life
* fearing being abandoned
* obsessing over resentments
* longing for what I don't have

Hmm, if I go through these extremes I am unaware it happens. I attribute any shame or guilt to lingering scars from Catholicism. Rather than feeling attacked when misunderstood I think the other person is a dolt for not seeing the obvious. Owning cats has alleviated any possibility of feeling abandoned. They do a good job of ignoring me to begin with.

Ingrids as Children Often
* have active imaginations: play creatively alone or organize playmates in original games
* are very sensitive
* feel that they don't fit in
* believe they are missing something that other people have
* attach themselves to idealized teachers, heroes, artists, etc.
* become antiauthoritarian or rebellious when criticized or not understood
* feel lonely or abandoned (perhaps as a result of a death or their parents' divorce)
Wow. The first five describe me as a pre-teen or teen dead on target. The last two, not so much. This is where neither advanced logic or magic came through in the test.

Ingrids as Parents
* help their children become who they really are
* support their children's creativity and originality
* are good at helping their children get in touch with their feelings
* are sometimes overly critical or overly protective
* are usually very good with children if not too self-absorbed

Nothing to add here since I am not a breeder. I think children are a parasitic affliction that can be easily avoided.

I'm going to float back to the top of this post and stare at myself a bit longer. I think I'm hot.

Side Effect of Italy

While at the villa in the Italian countryside, the group of 13 did a very good job of feeding ourselves. M, ever the good girl scout, suggested that a different group of people take the duties for one dinner during the week. She even wrote the schedule down and kept track of menu ideas so that trips so the Super Mercado could be minimized.

M and E came to Italy from northern Europe with a suitcase containing—I kid you not—six kilos of licorice and two wheels of cheese. Let's leave the discussion of the quantity of licorice for another day, shall we, and focus instead on the cheese and the person it has turned me into.

I know not what the cheeses were. This is partially due to the fact that every time I asked what the name of the second one was, a different person answered with either a completely different name or a pronunciation of a repeated name that sounded so different as to be a different word in my head. Thusly, I gave up trying to track this info and came home with pictures in my head instead of names. I like cheese in red wax and no wax. This particular info has not made it easy to find similar cheeses here in the States.

I exaggerate—but only a little. The first wheel was Edam and the second unknown. Regardless, downstairs in the chiller I now have a deli drawer full of foreign words or words of foreign origin now bastardized into edible English. There is a wedge of gouda, a wedge from Costmo, a wedge made in Seattle, and two other wedges not yet opened. I have become a cheese snob, as much as is possible here in the northwest.

Individually wrapped cheese slices are out. Huge blocks of bland cheddar are banished. "Gimmee something I can't pronounce" is my new mantra on the solid dairy front.

If you'd been listening in

Here is this morning's pre-coffee conversation.

Me: Now that I think about it, I don't think I've ever lived in a town where there were competing sex shops before. There's the one downtown, the lovely neon pink brick-and-mortar place—a well-respected member of the business community for years. And then there's that single-wide trailer just outside city limits that makes me hear the theme from Deliverance whenever I drive by. It's just a thriving business around here. (pause) Hmm, maybe I'm misusing the word "thriving". Maybe I want a different word.

The T: Like "throbbing"? I think throbbing is the word you want.

More thrilling words were never heard

"All jurors in the pool during August 4th to August 15th are released from service. We have no upcoming trials. Thank you for your service."

Oh, no. Thank you. I was called at the beginning of the term and sat in on a three day trial. I was gripped the whole time. This was the first time I've served and the whole procedure was fascinating. The case involved a plaintiff appealing the decision of the Labor & Industries Board to not re-open her injury claim. She wanted it re-opened and the Board said the injury was healed and denied her request. She appealed. That's when I became involved as a juror.

I have to say, with all my complaints about bureaucracies and red tape, I like that such an option exists for us little people. Hopefully I never need to appeal for medical attention (knocking on all wood within arm's distance right now) but I was happy to serve on this jury.

The cool part was that, rather than recall all the witnesses who testified in front of the Board, the lawyers read the transcripts to the jury. OK, it wasn't as dynamic as watching Hang 'Em High Harmon strut around on Law & Order: The Perpetual Trial but it was not boring. Each lawyer read the answers of their witnesses and they did a good job not putting us to sleep. Even the judge stayed in tune—we jurors were checking to make sure he was turning the pages at the same time as the lawyers. I wonder if my listening almost non-stop to books on bytes affected my listening skills during the read through.

Before we began deliberating, a juror asked the bailiff what the shortest time deliberating was that he knew of. He replied "about 18 minutes." Well, if our lunches hadn't already arrived (thanks to the County for that one, btw), we would have beat the record. Based on the fact that we all had ordered iced tea as our lunch beverage, I suggested we take an informal count to see if we also agreed on the decision. Turned out that we all agreed on that too! So we tucked in, discussed why we decided the way we did as individuals, recalled the bailiff, and skedaddled after agreeing with the Board's decision to not re-open the injury claim. I'm glad my first experience did not involve an actual crime.

A Real Green Machine

I learned today why there are cameras on cell phones. Sometimes you just need the snapshot and any delay will dull the moment or cause you to forget what pic you wanted in the first place. It was the latter that made me happy to have my iPhone on my person this afternoon upon exiting the library.

If it pleases the Court, we would like to enter the first photo as Exhibit A:


The purpose of this photo is to establish the whereabouts of our client as well as to demonstrate the impromptu nature of the discovery. The events in question are decidedly not staged. We can see from Exhibit A that our client has indeed just exited the library and has set the books on the hood of the vehicle in order to collect photographic evidence.

We would now like to enter the next photo as Exhibit B:


Shot from the same perspective, viewers may begin to see the reason why we were called here today. Look closely along the running board. See something decidedly not man-made and definitely more Mother Nature-y?

Finally, Exhibits C & D:



<--Exhibit C; Exhibit D-->









Let the record show that this tuft of grass is not stuck to the vehicle. The tuft of grass was not hurled against the car from a power lawnmower. Indeed, the Non-Electric Sheep is incapable of "hurling." Nor has the car been used for off-road activities (the only off-road experience of note was when The T pulled forward right over a parking block). Nor, was the tuft of grass dug up while our client was on some Dukes of Hazzard romp through the rainforest. Your Honor, this tuft of grass is growing on and from the vehicle.

In the spirit of rooting for the underdog and downright curiosity about how far this "little plant that could" will actually get, our client pledges to not mow or weed-n-feed or in any way interfere with the tuft. Stay tuned, grass fans.

Author's note: as per my previous posts on (1) things happening in 3s, and (2) my Non-Electric Sheep, I'm eagerly waiting the next event in my life that has a grass theme.

Well, I didn't see that coming

So there I was, minding my own business and listening to Chickeman protect Midland City from crime and/or evil while sharpening the lawnmower with—get this—a paintbrush when all of the sudden the lawn was mowed.

One moment the lawn looked both a little scraggly around the brown spots where I got a little too exuberant while spraying vinegar on the weeds and a little thick in the lush spots where the two elements sun and water come together in a phrenzy of photosynthesis. The next moment, passersby witnessed a green ducktail of finely sliced foliage sailing through the air.

I had no plans to mow the lawn this evening. I only wanted to try out the sharpening kit which included—get this—a paintbrush. It worked really swell. So swell that after I sliced through the strips of newspaper along the entire length of the blade, I wanted to see how it would do in the grass and the next thing I knew, the entire lawn was mowed. What had been taking up to 90 minutes or so due to the necessity of having to pass over the entire lawn twice took only 30 minutes or so. I think I only got through two Chickenman adventures and, due to his crime-fighting prowess, the stories are brief. So was the mowing.

The sharpening process is quite bizarre. It involves—get this—painting a minty-fresh metallic blue compound onto the blade and spinning the blades backwards. Then you wipe off the once-blue now-gray goo, protect said blades with WD-40 and you're ready to roll. I tweaked the adjustment of the only thing I can adjust just a bit when I found there was a spot where the newspaper could slide through unscathed rather than get sliced into a ribbon and I hit the lawn.

As with all gadgets I am enamored with, this finely tuned lawnmower now needs a name. And since I just watched Blade Runner: Final Cut the other night, this naming ceremony will be easy. So easy, in fact, it is done already. It is also relevant, me thinks, that this is a reel mower. Therefore, the lawnmower shall henceforth be known as The Non-Electric Sheep.

Earth Day +2

I missed the official holiday by two days but I still managed to do something nice for the planet. I ventured where few brave souls will go (at least that's how it is in my mind): the toilet tank. Both toilets have been running slowly but oh so constantly for some time now and I finally decided to stop ignoring it. The T was aware of the issues also. For some reason both of us thought the repairs were going to be a much bigger deal than either turned out to be.

Toilet 1 involved turning the floaty-ball-thingie two or three times in a clockwise direction so it would get higher sooner and shut the water off before it began flowing down the overflow pipe into the bowl. In retrospect: well, duh!

Toilet 2 involved directions that called for an actual tool, pliers (not used), and a sponge and the dismantling of the water filler system thingie. There is something disconcerting about directions that say "hand tighten only." Whose hands? Have you ever seen a plumber who does not look like he might be able to crack walnuts with his bare hands? I'm not delicate like a flower but I'm not crackin' any nuts with my hands.

And speaking of plumbers and cracks ... oh, never mind. We avoided that stereotype, gang.

We're back to non-running toilets and feeling all good about ourselves. Sorry we didn't do it sooner, Mother.

Onset of Reality

Cancun is only a week ago and it seems so very far away already. It was awesome, folks. We've never taken a vacation before that did not involve staying at a house of a friend or relative. We've never traveled (together) outside the contiguous 48. We've never before stayed at an all inclusive resort where your every need is met with a smile, you're fed, liquored, entertained and bedded while the exotic birds chirp, lizards scamper, waves crash and the sun toasts you ever so lightly. ...sigh...

Once more for time for those in the back row: it was awesome. It was more sun in a week than I've seen for the past six months. It was more heat in a week than I've experienced in the last three years. It was more fresh fruit in a week than my digestive system knew how to handle. Odd, isn't it, that I could pace myself with respect to alcohol but not fresh fruit?

The resort had a pool system, a vast array of swimming holes that may or may not have been connected to one another, but all of which had access to at least one swim up bar. One of these pools had a large area for water volleyball and trite games like Simon Says or water aerobics. We did not visit that pool but we could hear the daily festivities from our deck chairs. One day, on my way to the loo, I happened to see bikini-clad women scampering across the pool deck kissing strange men (read: men not known to them) while being trailed by a handler ... er, another gent who was counting planted pecks, I suppose. I'm glad it was a large pool and I was nowhere near these events. Yes, we staked out terrain that had both sun and shade, had easy access to the water, and was both on the main path of the circling waitresses and directly across from the swim up bar. All my needs for the day were met: sun, water, and libations, deliverable and fetchable. When I felt a little hunger creeping up, I wandered to the deckside grill or a little further to one of many restaurants.

That was how I told time: what beverage am I holding and what meal is this? If the liquid is coffee, it must be morning and this fruit must be breakfast. If the liquid is beer, it must be around noon and this fruit must be lunch and it requires a side of meat. Of course, if this liquid is beer and I am no longer in my swimsuit, then this fruit must be the side dish and that pile of meat and veggies must be dinner so it is evening. If the liquid is beer and I am lying in bed, it must be nighttime. It was quite the system and I have no tan lines from using this particular watch.

It was decadent and well-deserved. I started the quarter refreshed and recharged and not worn down from the previous quarter (which was my condition the day the travels started). It was exactly what a vacation should be: something that does not take place here and is a break from any routine. And it had sun and beer. I'm already looking forward to the next time.

New Workout Regimen

'Tis spring! Time of renewal and rebirth. Out with the old and in with the new. This sentiment exists more so now after we mess with the clocks than it does during the dark of winter when we flip the calendar to 01-01-YYYY. The sun has returned and I don't want ol' Sol to see me like I was; I'd prefer that a new improved me greet each day.

So it is with great verve that I dedicate myself to my new workout regimen. It is neither time consuming nor sweat inducing, yet it has me wide awake before the break of dawn and occasionally makes me dizzy. There are only two things I need to do in order to bring out the me that is within and maintain her ever-loving happiness: dry out and self-inflate. Perhaps some details would be in order, eh?

I'm off to Cancun in three days for a week of sun, more sun, and hanging with ye olde nuclear family and all my sib's sig-O's. Three generations of the clan, all on the Yucatan peninsula. For my part, I promise to abstain from instigating any international incidents but if any Mexican national inquires, I will offer that they can have Texas back. But back to my new workout. Getting to Cancun involves flying. This involves a pressurized cabin, the better to enjoy the complimentary peanuts. The presence of pressure, in turn, has been known to transform me into a whiny, sniveling, weepy snot of a human. The joy begins the moment the jet door is closed and I am encapsulated with my fellow travelers like so many peas in a pod (or perhaps the tiny bits in a Con-Tac capsule is a better analogy; peas have way more leg room than I've ever had). My ears refuse to pop. I've tried yawning, chewing gum, blowing air out through my own ears, and special ear plugs. I've worked my way up to numbness through alcohol if only to keep myself from sticking an ice pick into my ear canal. Often my ears stay in this state of disequilibrium for longer than the flight lasts. It is painful and because I am also deaf during this period, I am oblivious to the aural clues that I may BE SPEAKING TOO LOUDLY. Me flying is truly joyous for myself and those around me.

I visited an ear-nose-throat specialist in my latest effort to alleviate the flying-induced pain. After waiting for almost an hour for the medicine man to appear even though I had a 7:45 a.m. appointment, he suggested I try chewing gum, yawning, and self-inflating. It was this last that got my attention. Self-inflating? I had the restaurant scene from Monty Python's Meaning of Life where the fat guy is offered a "thin mint sir, very thin" flash through my mind. He ingests the thin mint and explodes. You want me to do what, Doc?

Blow air through my own eardrums by pinching my nose shut and ... and ... well, I don't know how to tell you to do this but I think you know what I mean (he didn't say that to me; that's what I'm saying to you). This technique is known in the med-biz as "self-inflating." I am to force air up through my eustachian tubes to push my eardrums out against the pressure which has pushed them in. Well, Doc, did you miss the part on that little form there that I filled out almost an hour ago that says I've tried that? He says I need to do this constantly during take-off and landing while the pressure is changing. OK, that's news. I didn't realize I should do it constantly. I've been practicing and this is the part of my workout regimen that makes me dizzy.

In order for this technique to work—and here's the rub—the eustachian tubes must be clear. And now we've arrived at the other piece of the workout: I have to dry out my sinuses to clear out my tubes. I've always had moist sinuses. Turns out I'm probably allergic to dust and other by-products of merely being alive. Over the years I've tried all kinds of meds to dry out my sinuses and stop the post-nasal drip. It's not the nasal drip, it's the post-nasal drip that bugs me—much like it's not the math but the aftermath that gets under my skin. The only drug that has ever made a difference is Claritin-D and it is the D that had me wide awake and starting this blog at 4:45 am. People complain that Claritin-D keeps them up. That's not me. I can fall sleep during anything. However, after about six hours of happy slumber when my sleep cycle circles around to a shallow point, the D in the Claritin teams up with the urine in my bladder and I am wide awake. To give you an idea of how early this happens, today I was awake before the NPR fund-raising campaign began. Roosters envy me. Anyway, I gave up Claritin-D in order to see if I could still wake up early on my own (no) and now I'm taking it again to see if I can fly without pain.

BTW, I just tried self-inflating and only had success with my right ear. So far the only benefit of this new workout plan is that I've blogged before the sun has risen. The Doc was hesitant to put in tubes to solve the pressure problem because he scuba-dives and he thinks that is why I'm going to Cancun. I sensed a little transference on his part but he won't have the same out when I tell him I'm going to Italy. If the self-inflating does not work next week, I'm going for the tubes before I head off to Europe next fall. Gaia forbid I am seen in Heathrow yelling WHERE IS THE LUGGAGE RETURN?!? not because I am an obnoxious American but because I am simply deaf.

Started on my iPhone, posted after dawn from behind the coffee mug.

A Soggy Rube Goldberg

Another life lesson was learned this past week. I'm not exactly sure what the lesson is yet but it involves a garage, gutters, and rain barrels.

The T and I live in a house totally dwarfed by its detached garage. The garage is by far the largest structure in the neighborhood.


Yes, that is three stories of garage you see there. When explaining to folks, friend or stranger, where we live, at some point their faces light up and they exclaim, "Oh, the Taj Garage!" or "The Garage Mahal!" and they know exactly where our house is based on the gravitational pull of this structure. The building has its own fan club. I've taken to calling it the Monolith, ala 2001: A Space Odyssey. And, no, I'm not calling it the monolith just so I can work this cartoon into my post, although I'm happy to do so.

Recently, because we had manual laborers staying with us on their vacation, we decided to get some gutters up on the Monolith. I took this idea one step further and installed some rain barrels to save the water for my summertime ritual of growing my own compost material. This is where the, ahem, plan went awry.

Here's the math portion of the post, sung to the tune of woodchucks chucking wood: how much water could a garage accumulate if a garage could accumulate water? To rephrase the question in our own words so as to help us set up the equation: how much water hits the roof of the Monolith rather than the ground and how many barrels do we need to contain this water? The dimensions of the roof are 30 acres x 30 acres ... no, wait, I'm exaggerating. It's only 30 x 30 feet. So how much water hits this 900 square foot expanse during a drizzle? Well, a 1 inch rainfall results in 129,600 cubic inches of water. For those of you getting thirsty just reading about water, grab a big glass because that's 561 gallons of water! In only one inch of rain!! Do you recall I live in the pacific northwest and not in the atlantic southeast? I'm not praying for rain. I'm cursing the gods for the squish my lawn has 6 months of the year.

But back to our exercise. How many barrels do we need to contain the water? To be as precise as most of my students are when working their exercises: a truckload—and let's go with the big truck. We were feeling all happy with ourselves when we took advantage of the last two days of sunshine to get the gutters up and the barrels in position. We were whacking ourselves on the foreheads when, after a one day drizzle, the barrels were full and the overflow was once again threatening to float the Monolith down the block. We got two more barrels and didn't exactly think through how we were going to connect them to the first pair and so applied some Rube Goldberg logic and went to bed, thinking we'd have some time to trouble-shoot before the barrels were full.

Are we dolts?!? The next morning, thanks to some thick rain, aka: snow, this second set of barrels was full and the overflow was splashing down between us and our cars. Now we have to wade through Lake Overflow to get to the back alley. So let's once again divert the water until we can come up with something. Here's the current solution:


Barrel #1 in the foreground is full and the drainpipe now runs directly to Barrel #2 which is also full. Yes, that is an electrical circuit box you see on the side of the Monolith. Let's not think about Water + Electricity right now. Anyway, the clear tubing runs from the overflow spigot to the extra piece of drainpipe propped up on the barrel which diverts the water off to the property line and allows us to get to the alley and our cars without strapping on life preservers first. Please don't trip over the gutter pipe on your way out of the yard.

I hope the neighbors are enjoying the entertainment we provide.

One Day It Happens

For my birthday a few weeks back, I received a card that said:
One day it happens: You think to yourself, "You know, that music is kind of loud," and you reach over and turn it down. And you are 40.

I will not beat the dead horse discussion regarding how the number the volume dial is set to is inversely related to one's age until hearing aids are needed. Today I will add to the list of age determining tools. The measuring stick I speak of is the importance of household appliances and the effect of their performance on your well-being. More specifically, I am speaking of vacuums.

There are many levels at which appliances can be used to measure your age. The first is the fact that household appliance are even on your radar as a topic of contemplation. The second is that you went out and purchased a new vacuum rather than just using the one that was left behind by the previous renters or by the roommate who never used it even though it was his/hers. The third is that you did research into which vacuum is best on hairballs, both human and feline, pet hair, human hair, and hair of unknown origin. The fourth is that, even though it is Saturday and there is not a category 5 hurricane or a blizzard or a herd of wilderbeast outside your window, you chose to vacuum your entire house because you were so excited to have a new vacuum and you could not wait to see how it performed. For gaia's sake, you even got an extra hour of party time tonight because daylight saving time is over and you spent it vacuuming!

My personal experience, very recently, is that I was ready to throw out all the rugs, both throw and wall-to-wall, into the trash because they were filthy and only getting worse even though my Roomba was trying its hardest to keep up between my miserable bouts with the other so-called vacuum. You know it's bad when walking across the rug sends up little clouds of dust much like softball players do when when trotting across the infield. It was bad. So out came the Consumer Reports and off to Costmo we went. Upon arriving home, we couldn't wait to get the super sucker out of the confines of the packaging and plugged in. (Side note: the cord on this thing is so long, we can vacuum the neighbors' houses without changing sockets. Is this a symptom of McMansionitis?)

Much joy!! Our rugs are blue! Not gray—blue! The one in the hallway is green! Not gray—green! The one in the breakfast nook is tan! Not tan—tan! OK, that last rug didn't change color so much as it did texture. Just as joyous.

So, one day it happens. You think to yourself, "You know, I really need a new vacuum," and you go out and buy one and use it and love it. And you are 40.

Access Forbidden

Another story I can't make up.

I acquired new software. Cool. It's a calculator emulator for the computer. It works just like the actual handheld but the keystrokes stay visible on the screen. I figure this could eliminate about 250 questions per quarter. Questions along the line of "How did you type that in?" or "What are your window settings?" Anyway, our adventure begins when I try to install it on the computer in the classroom. I tried to log in as an administrator. No luck. The domain is not available. I don't know a lot but I know that is a problem like when an individual Borg is cut away from the collective. No individual thought is possible since all the applications are sitting on a server somewhere ... somewhere over there, wherever there is. Considering the PC I am trying to log into is a 10 year old PC, the analogy is not far off. This beige box is one glitch away from being a doorstop.

I place a call for help. It goes something like this:

Me: D, I can't log in as an administrator. Can you fix that?
D: Sure. I'm on it.

time passes

D: I logged in as you.
Me: How did you log in as me when I couldn't log in as me? Never mind. Before you answer, when I logged in successfully as a student, I couldn't reach the internet.
D: You ... couldn't ... reach ... the ... internet ... [D isn't thick or slow; he was just thinking out loud.]
Me: The last time this happened, J said he had to 'hit the switch in the closet.' Something I couldn't do.
D: Oh, is this in G10?

From the sound of his voice, I know D has clearly figured out what the problem is from my little comment. Are you ready for this?

D: When the janitor for that building pushes his bucket too far into the closet, it disconnects the internet connection.

I was severed from the most massive human creation in history by a bucket. Let the jokes begin.

Do you think stuff like this ever happens at NASA or in the Pentagon?

Always funnier without the citation

The quality of the internet that I love the most is the aura of mystery surrounding what lies at the end of a link. Even though there may be some context clues available that can help define or categorize the general topic of a link, there is always that little bit of wonder lurking around the edges. It is this edginess that keeps us looking over our shoulders for nosy co-workers while we surf since we never know when links such as Mysteries of the Tax Code Revealed!!! are going to result in yet another link to really badly done porn.

The same is true for Wikipedia links. This factoid behemoth has cast more doubt on what I thought I knew than any other website besides the Microsoft Word Help pages. For instance, just this very morning, a mere few moments ago, I found at the site grow-a-brain a herd of links dealing with lists of items: a list of premature obituaries, a list of lost and found grocery lists (which has achieved what all lists hope to be some day: a book) and its accompanying newspaper article written in list format, and—the topic of my own post today—a list of fictional colors.

Before I get to why I called you here today, can we just for a moment revisit the fact that a newspaper in a major metropolitan area had nothing else to report other than a man collected lists found in grocery stores and then wrote a book about them?!? Is the war over? Has my universal health care card come in the mail and it's tucked under my latest Netflix dvd? The national food supply is safe? All the droughts have ended? Whew.

Back to my story about fictional colors. So there I was in graduate school, having successfully put off joining the real world for yet another year. This was my single semester attending graduate studies in anthropology. I look back on these 15 weeks fondly. I recall one class taught by a woman who made a career of studying blood in populations who don't mingle with the rest of us, aka: the Amish. One day, she was on a real roll and I was quite gripped. It was fascinating. One particular gem I remember is that it takes longer than you would think for inbreeding to result in a short bus candidate, although the actual number of generations has been lost to me. The other gem involves a lecture when, in the middle of her talk about characteristics of Amish blood that differs from non-Amish blood, she realized there was something missing from her lecture notes. As she moved to the door, a student who sounded remarkably like Johnny Olson said, "I happen to have an Amish gent right out here in the hallway. Let's bring him on in."

But, you ask, what does this have to do with colors and lists of colors? Well, nothing.

Another class I was taking that quarter was a basic course in everything you need to know about anthropology. And in this class, the professor talked about the art and science of anthropology, specifically he talked about dropping yourself into an unknown culture and trying to make understanding of what was happening around you. The demonstration accompanying this was great. He had a box of cups, mugs and glasses and he brought them out one at a time and asked us eager young graduate students to identify each. It was easy for the first few, we had no problem agreeing as a group that exhibit A was a "mug" and that exhibit B was a "glass." But things got pretty sketchy pretty quickly. Was exhibit C a mug or a glass and why? We needed a new term: cup, and things went downhill from there. The presence of a handle was not enough to define it as a mug. Nor was the material it was made from, the color, the size, or the dimensions. He made his point that so much of culture is based on shared agreements about definitions and even those raised in the culture may not be able to agree totally. And let's not even get into what happens when nobody but white men start defining terms for the rest of us.

But, you ask again, what does this have to do with colors? Well, think about the color red. The perfect red. The ideal red that you think of when someone says "think about the color red." Got it? Well, the shade and vibrancy that you have in your mind is very likely the same as the image in my head as well as the images that Francois in Paris, Kaleem in Riyadh, Santiago in Brasilia, and Foster in Canberra all thought of. RED seems to be universally agreed upon, regardless of culture—and it is the only color for which this is true.

When archaeologists and anthropologists studying ancient Greek texts found no mention of separate colors for water and grass, the question was asked: could the ancient Greeks not see the difference and therefore there is a physiological reason or was the difference visible to the ancient Greeks and they just didn't care to differentiate by using two words? Even though we might not agree that blue is the correct term for that hue, shouldn't there at least be a term for blue? Rather than the blue of the water and the green of the vegetation, the Greeks talked about the deep grue of the sea and the rich grue of the fields. (I don't think grue (or even eta-rho-upsilon-epsilon) is the actual term the ancient Greeks used.)

As the professor droned on (at this point the fascination of the mug/cup/glass demo had worn out), a note began circulating around the table. The effect the note had on each individual was striking. Each person who was respectfully listening, taking notes, or lightly snoring before seeing the note began to giggle before sending the note on. On the note was one word: bleen.

To this day, more than 10 years after the grue-bleen lecture, I still giggle when I think of grue or bleen. And THIS is the point of today's post. The fact that the words grue and bleen can make me laugh out loud!!—and then I go and learn something by clicking on the link.

Aside: I want a pair of Crayola crayons, one labeled grue-bleen and the other bleen-grue.

It turns out I have been practicing some scientific philosophy by throwing the words grue and bleen around willy-nilly. According to The Wik (can I call you The Wik?), X is grue if it was green when it was checked before some specific time. X is blue if it was not checked before said time. Seems like time is once again the variable here, kids. Let's not leave out bleen. X is bleen if it is blue and was checked before time t or green and was not checked. From The Wik:

The problem is as follows. A standard example of induction is this: All emeralds examined thus far are green. This leads us to conclude ... that also in the future emeralds will be green, and every next green emerald discovered strengthens this belief. [A smart person] observed that (assuming t has yet to pass) it is equally true that every emerald that has been observed is grue. Why, then, do we not conclude that emeralds first observed after t will also be grue, and why is the next grue emerald that comes along not considered further evidence in support of that conclusion? The problem is to explain why.

OK, I need to go to the local java hut in my outfit of the day which has no color coordination whatsoever and mixes both a soothing plaid pattern and a shocking yellow and ponder the grue-ness of my beverage. Just because all cups of joe have been brown up until today, will they still be brown tomorrow? And how do I know this???

Car smarter than human, cat a distant third

June 30th was our 1-year anniversary of having joined the other gadget cult: Prius owners. 365 days and over 20,000 miles of unadulterated bliss.

The T and I are thrilled thrilled thrilled to own this car. At the risk of sounding like the marketing campaign for every single item available for purchase today, let me say that this car really is Fun to Drive. Hooked on Phonics—make learning to read FUN! Fruit Roll-Ups—make snack time FUN! Monistat—make yeast infections FUN! Well, the Fun part of driving the Prius is the LCD panel in the center of the dash reporting your overall mileage, as well as your mileage at this very moment, or at least the moment a moment ago. You can also see what is propelling the car, gas or electrons or both. For a data-head like me, this constant flow of info is car-topia.

Aside: My brother, Dr. Sarcastic, also has a Prius and is current holder of Best Snappy Comeback in the Mileage category. When asked about his mileage, he replied, "I have an appointment scheduled next week to learn how to put gas in it."

In addition to all its features and comforts, the car is also sporting a computer brain bordering on artificial intelligence. Yes, this car is smarter than me. For instance, in our ongoing attempts to fuse all of our gadgets together into one giant gadget, we upgraded the base package a few clicks and got the Bluetooth feature so our future phones could be integrated into the car's audio system. We could then have phone conversations through the 42-speaker JVC stereo system (just imagine what "pick up some milk on your way home" can sound like with that extra sub-woofer under the passenger seat). The smart part of this particular package is the smart-key system: I only have to have the key on my body in order to unlock the car and start it up. This means that I never have to know where the key is, I just have to wear the same clothes over and over. The day's attire: one less decision I have to make because I own this car.

One result of this smart-key system, besides having far less laundry, is that I have totally disassociated the act of shutting the car off from a physical action. Turning a car off is typically associated with physically turning a key counter-clockwise, pulling it from the steering column and dropping said key into a purse or pocket or other synthetic blackhole. Having a smart-key means I just press a button to turn the car off. Pressing a button is the same action I use to get cash out of an ATM, start Mr. Coffee, fire up the iPod, get a can of high fructose corn syrup out of the vending machine, etc., etc. The act of shutting off my car is no longer unique in the annals of mechanical devices and, therefore, it is now utterly forgettable.

And yes, I have forgotten to shut off my Prius a number of times. But the Prius is both wise and patient. When I try to walk away from the still running car, it will chirp a few times. I interpret these chirps as, "get back here you idiotic carbon-based lifeform and shut me off." These chirps sound similar to the chirps for "I am shutting off the passenger air-bag because the unit in the seat doesn't weigh enough to be an adult" and "You left the hatch unlatched—again" and "You can't initiate a phone call while the car is moving."

Well, the last time I failed to press the button and left the car running, I walked away without hearing the chirp. So the Prius kept running. And running. And running. Granted it was parked out back on it's landing strip in the alley behind my abode, but the engine was on and running efficiently. Twenty (two-oh, 20, XX) hours later, when I was leaving for work, the car did not start up because it was—all together now—still running from the previous morning.

I think the thing that saved me from having to learn how to jump the car without blowing it up was that the climate control was set to "comfy-68°". Overnight, the gas engine kept kicking on to maintain the cabin temperature and also, thankfully, send a little juice over to the batteries. To it's credit, the Prius did not chirp sarcastically when I got in. In fact, it's silence was more damning than any comment it could have blipped or beeped. The only indication it gave that an electron crises was just narrowly averted was the LCD image of a very, very purple battery-juice level indicator line very, very low on the gauge. Oy. I dropped my mileage for that tank of gas from a typical 50+ miles per gallon to a mere 40+ miles per gallon. Sitting still for 20 hours will do that, I guess.

Well, patient Prius, consider this lesson learned ... until the next time.

Blessed are the Not-So-Bright...

... for they make the rest of us laugh out loud. And on occasion we must use all our willpower to keep from spraying iced tea through our nose.


Overheard at La Cuillère Graisseuse* this morning:




Patron: Can I get a piece of coffee cake to go, please?

Waitron: Yes. Would you like that heated? With butter?

-pause-

Patron: Could you heat it with a microwave?




To the waitron's credit, she replied 'of course' and walked away. I had no such escape, perched upon the counter stool as I was, and I think I did physical damage to my sinus cavity making sure the iced tea went down and down the correct pipe.



* desktop translation programs are dangerous in the hands of the monolingual

... yet the police were never called

Let's have a party! suggested Rainbow Hemp. Sure thing! we replied. Well after having that conversation for about six months, it finally happened last night. Here are the highlights:

- Both The T and I went to Costmo' on separate shopping trips and shopped from the same list. The T did not have her cell phone on her and did not get my message that said, "I got out of me meeting early! Do not go to Costmo'!" When we both arrived home and unpacked our cars, we had each gotten items in all the same categories but we had no duplicate name brands. For example, I bought the Utz snack mix and The T bought Chex Mix. Of the 12 bottles of wine we bought, we had no doubles.

- The house is clean. If nothing else, this was true for a window of about 75 minutes when we finally put away the vacuum and broom and the first guests arrived.

- Everyone who RSVPed and answered my question about what beverage they would like on hand and said "beer, dark beer" all of a sudden wanted a Corona when the walked in the door. WTF?

- Using the washing machine as the beer chest was the biggest hit of the party. I have not yet opened the lid this morning (afternoon?) to fish out the last few Fat Tire Ales and Black Butte Porters before spinning the ice dregs away.

- Each guest was asked to put on a name tag with their favorite mavie line written on it—or the only movie line they could recall at that moment. My second favorite event related to the movie lines was when someone slapped a sticker on the chest of the college president that said "Nice knockers." My first favorite was when he knew what movie the line was from and began quoting other lines.

- Quote of the party: What happens in the laundry room, stays in the laundry room.

We have a lot of food left, including an unopened 6 lb bag of pretzels. What was I thinking? I wonder if I can donate it to a shelter or something. I am not wondering the same about the unopened 4 lb bag of potato chips. That can stay. We also have boatloads of fruit salad and veggies and cheese and crackers. Let the grazing begin.

Musical Fruit Meets the Muter

Friends, I come to you today with a message of hope, with words of joy. Yea, though I have groped through the crisper drawer of fuzzy dampness, I fear no veggie.

My story begins with a simple bag of dry beans. Oh, we all have one of these secrets in our cupboards: the bag of bulk food we bought because it seemed like a good idea at the time. We were going to start eating healthier. We were going to learn how to cook something that required more directions than "just add water" or "heat and serve." The beans called to us from the dispenser at the co-op. Buy us, they crooned, for we are good and good for you. I fell for it and giddily added a bag of them to my groceries, verily I skipped down the aisle with my basket of nutritional nirvana.

When I arrived home, I tucked the beans into their new home, front and center in the food pantry. They sighed contently. I smiled warmly. We were happy to have found each other, even if our time together was going to be brief. For I was going to prepare some culinary treat that would make the heavens sing in exultation over the healthiness of it all. I closed the cabinet door and went off to find a recipe worthy of such ingredients as the beans.

Well, that was six months ago and I just used the beans two days ago. And the only reason I finally used 'em in a dish was because I was tired of moving the bag out of the way every time I reached into the pantry for the bag of Fritos. Now there's some goodness for you!

I made some turkey chili on Sunday. I was motivated both by my need to get these beans out of the pantry and to make a pot of something I could nosh on all week. I had the chili recipe but had no idea how to adapt real honest to goodness dry beans to the directions that called for cans of this and cans of that. These are canless creatures, these beans o' mine! How many of them would fit into a can? I wondered. Off to the internet I went.

Amid the plethora of websites all eager to help me in my conversion confusion, I found one site that suggested I throw a carrot into the pot of re-hydrating beans and the ... uh ... tooting quality of the musical fruit would be muted. Oh, really. Do I look like I just bought these beans yesterday, chum?

Well, I gave it a shot. What did I have to lose, really? This was one more way for me to get a slowly softening veggie out of the crisper drawer of doom and actually do something with it before I lobbed it onto the compost pile. I found two perfect candidates for toot-absorption duty, cut 'em up into 2-3 inch chunks and dropped them into the pot with my 2 cups of dry beans that would yield 1 pound of beans that is equivalent to 1 can of beans. The carrots stared up at me with their one good eye (did they have that eye when I threw them into the veggie drawer?), blinked disconsolately, and then rolled over in the murky broth.

And do you know what? It worked! I kid you not. I have been eating chili for two days now and have not needed to open any windows or step out of the room to go "check on the cats." Whatever the carrots did, they did it well. This might as well be beanless chili for all the impact the little legumes have had on my intestinal tract. I'm a believer.

I can't wait to go buy more beans.

What you'd have heard, had you listened in

It's a sunny day! Let's walk to breakfast.

We do. We begin to walk back. I see a super-ultra-cool thingie hanging in a window. Not only is it cool but it brings together two of my interests: mobiles and cut glass. I see this thing hanging there and realize that I would never have combined the idea of a mobile with the media of glass. I look at The T and say, "Just smack me and tell me how stupid I am."

The T, to me: Contrary to what you believe, I do not enjoy advertising your stupidity.

And this is why we've made it together for 10 years.