Well, April is long over and I haven't blogged in a month. Every once in a while, I get so overwhelmed with everyone I'm supposed to be communicating with that I just unplug and go cold turkey. For nearly a month, I haven't blogged myself or read any of the blogs I usually follow on Google Reader.
I'm slowly finding my interest coming back, so I thought I'd write a quick word of apology here.
Showing posts with label BEDA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BEDA. Show all posts
Bleah
I just spent the past 2 hours working with S_ on doing the accounting for an organization that our offspring belong to. S_ took over as their financial person last fall.
I think I may shoot myself now.
Oh, and I cannot publish this today as Blogger has flagged my blog as spam.
it just keeps getting better...
I think I may shoot myself now.
Oh, and I cannot publish this today as Blogger has flagged my blog as spam.
it just keeps getting better...
Got it!
Finally figured out why comments weren't being allowed. It was a buried permissions thing. Now you can all comment to your heart's content. I will work on adding an acceptable profile picture next.
Off to work now, but I will try to post again later.
Off to work now, but I will try to post again later.
Aggghhhh....
Obviously, I'm working with the look and layout of the blog. I've changed a few settings and I've had a few failures in adding a picture. More on that later. I've spent the last hour trying to set up the blog so that comments will show up. I've changed all the settings and the comments should be allowed, but for now, it's not letting me do it.
If I can't figure it out by tomorrow, I'll change the entire template and go from there.
BEDA buddies, I haven't forgotten you.... I just can't figure out how to let you talk to me.
:(
**************
On anther note, I finally finished He Who Fears the Wolf by Karin Fossum. This is the second of her Inspector Sejer mysteries that I read. I'm really impressed so far. They're tight, good little mysteries, but since they are originally written in Norwegian and we are reading them in translation, they are not exactly like American detective novels. I like that we are getting a little bit of daily Norwegian life in the course of reading the book.
I have yet to finish Robin Hobb's Ship of Destiny, though I am slowly working my way through it. I love Robin Hobb, but you have to emotionally prepare yourself for the ride. The characters are so real and she makes you care for them, even when you watch them make perfectly reasonable decisions that lead them down the path to destruction and ruin. Ugh. Sometimes, I just can't take the emotional heartbreak. I asked S_ earlier this evening about the book, which she read sometime last year. I'm in the last third of book three, I said. Surely it must get hopeful from here on in... Surely... She just smiled at me sadly. Dammit.
If I can't figure it out by tomorrow, I'll change the entire template and go from there.
BEDA buddies, I haven't forgotten you.... I just can't figure out how to let you talk to me.
:(
**************
On anther note, I finally finished He Who Fears the Wolf by Karin Fossum. This is the second of her Inspector Sejer mysteries that I read. I'm really impressed so far. They're tight, good little mysteries, but since they are originally written in Norwegian and we are reading them in translation, they are not exactly like American detective novels. I like that we are getting a little bit of daily Norwegian life in the course of reading the book.
I have yet to finish Robin Hobb's Ship of Destiny, though I am slowly working my way through it. I love Robin Hobb, but you have to emotionally prepare yourself for the ride. The characters are so real and she makes you care for them, even when you watch them make perfectly reasonable decisions that lead them down the path to destruction and ruin. Ugh. Sometimes, I just can't take the emotional heartbreak. I asked S_ earlier this evening about the book, which she read sometime last year. I'm in the last third of book three, I said. Surely it must get hopeful from here on in... Surely... She just smiled at me sadly. Dammit.
My wife wants to know why I don't write about her more
So, in the spirit of including S_ more often, here are 5 things about my wife.
1. She was told as a child that her ears were her most beautiful feature. (Point of fact: Though beautiful, they are not what drew me to my wife.)
2. She has a book sickness. Her Amazon wish list currently runs 20+ pages.
3. Up until right now, she thought that Phalanges was spelled with an "F".
4. She hates cauliflower and so has prejudiced my offspring against a perfectly innocent cruciferous vegetable.
5. She is a devotee of Asphalta, goddess of parking spaces. She always gets the space up front. She says it is a matter of faith and that I, as an unbeliever, cannot hope to acquire the same level of parking mojo that she has.
All of this is true. She is hitting me as I write this...
1. She was told as a child that her ears were her most beautiful feature. (Point of fact: Though beautiful, they are not what drew me to my wife.)
2. She has a book sickness. Her Amazon wish list currently runs 20+ pages.
3. Up until right now, she thought that Phalanges was spelled with an "F".
4. She hates cauliflower and so has prejudiced my offspring against a perfectly innocent cruciferous vegetable.
5. She is a devotee of Asphalta, goddess of parking spaces. She always gets the space up front. She says it is a matter of faith and that I, as an unbeliever, cannot hope to acquire the same level of parking mojo that she has.
All of this is true. She is hitting me as I write this...
On the Bill Tonight...
Grey Gardens for S_ - a sad and tragic tale of relatives of Jacqueline Onassis that went from wealth and privilege to living alone in a ramshackle house like hermits. You can learn more about them here.
I spent the night watching Twilight, the movie, on pay-per-view.
O.o
Yes, I know.. but I never made any pretense at being a deep person. At least my wife understands and accepts my pop whoredom. I spent some time earlier in the day watching Kathy Griffen: She'll Cut a Bitch, her latest comedy special on You Tube as well. All in all, a great day.
I spent the night watching Twilight, the movie, on pay-per-view.
O.o
Yes, I know.. but I never made any pretense at being a deep person. At least my wife understands and accepts my pop whoredom. I spent some time earlier in the day watching Kathy Griffen: She'll Cut a Bitch, her latest comedy special on You Tube as well. All in all, a great day.
BEDA is slipping away... Thank God for BEDA Buddies
AAAARGH... I've already missed a few days. I think I will have to do penalty blog posts into May.
I have received my BEDA Buddy group from Maureen. To whit -
Jennifer Cliff (ilessthanthreeyouu.blogspot.com)
Profession: Student/Accountant/DFTBA'er Interests: photography, tennis, being random, singing, music, road trips.. etc... I generally just blog about what's on my mind, or what happened in my day.
Jennifer - I am also really pretty random. I put your blog feed into Google Reader.
Carrie Nicole
If your buddy pairing would be helped by some key words, the things I love are: The Velveteen Rabbit, cupcakes, dress up time, the ballet, sushi with lots of wasabi, soy lattes, really fat cats, punctuality, Jeux d'enfants and any other whimsical French film. Things I DO NOT love are pigeons and meanness. :)
- Carrie Nicole, I left a comment on your most recent blog post. I've never been kidnapped by my friends, but, frankly, given their nerdy predilections, I'm probably glad.
me: "Aggh, What is this?!?!"
friend: "We are kidnapping you for nefarious activities! Prepare yourself!"
me: "Cool. So where are we going?"
friend: "Over to my basement. We are building a replica of Babylon 5 out of popsicle sticks."
me: O.o
friend: "The hot glue gun is already heating up. Let's roll."
me: "NNNNOOOOOOOO!!!!"
Amber (geckobird.livejournal.com) - Amber, I have added your blog to my blog feed on Google Reader. I have to say, your entry on trying to fix your car made me sweat. Even though my father was an engineer, I did not inherit the "put tool A into correct slot B" gene.
OK, I will try to check your blogs everyday for the rest of April. Good luck!
I will cuddle them and their names will all be George
I have signed up for a BEDA buddy at Maureen Johnson's ning. I am sitting here quivering, waiting for my new BEDA buddies to show up and shower me with online support and affection.
Hopefully, they will do so appropriately, with all boundaries intact.
right?
Hopefully, they will do so appropriately, with all boundaries intact.
right?
I Want a BEDA Buddy...
I am going to sign up for a BEDA Buddy as Maureen suggests here. Why am I so susceptible to her crazy influence? Perhaps she has perfected her mind control ray from Skull Island. She probably sent the sharks to attack the Somali pirates too. Not enough profit sharing most likely...
5 Good Things About Today
1. I have tulips coming up in my backyard. Yea, Spring!
2. I dyed Easter eggs with S_ and both offspring this evening. I now have 8 awesome colored ovoids sitting in my fridge.
3. I got the girls to sing Row, Row, Row Your Boat as a round for the first time today after trying for several nights. They were finally able to get through it with a minimum of giggling and forgetting what they were supposed to sing.
4. I got an e-mail from a work colleague today telling me that one of my minions was awesome. I knew he was, but it is always nice to hear.
5. It's Friday and I have no plans for tomorrow.
2. I dyed Easter eggs with S_ and both offspring this evening. I now have 8 awesome colored ovoids sitting in my fridge.
3. I got the girls to sing Row, Row, Row Your Boat as a round for the first time today after trying for several nights. They were finally able to get through it with a minimum of giggling and forgetting what they were supposed to sing.
4. I got an e-mail from a work colleague today telling me that one of my minions was awesome. I knew he was, but it is always nice to hear.
5. It's Friday and I have no plans for tomorrow.
This Fray Well Becomes Me...
Finished reading Cherie Priest's Those Who Went Before Remain There Still. A short, tight read. I liked how pared down it was; it would have been hard to retain that suspense for a longer read. I'm not sure what was going on with the sister in the mine, but I loved the quote that she holds on to -
No gypsy slut nor doxy,
shall win my Mad Tom from me
I'll weep all night, the stars I'll fight,
the fray shall well become me.
Does this fray - my life and all the current running around - become me? I don't think so, but does it make sense to say that I want to be in the midst of a fray that well becomes me?
Getting on with it
Offspring #1 is getting stronger. Today she started to use the baby walker we got for her. S_ attached her bike basket to the front, and Offspring #2 is playing on it. I will take a picture and send it out to friends and family. I will be going back to work tomorrow and that will be hard. Today, for all the craziness with Offspring's cast and medication, seemed really normal. The problem is that there was nothing normal about it. I slept until 7 (2 hours later than normal) and we were finished eating dinner at 6 (before I get home usually). It just really brings home that the commute I have is really having a negative impact on my life. I'm not sure what to do about it, but I will have to try to do something.
In other news, I found the cutest nerd art I have ever seen. They even have a giant squid! O.O drool...
I also am geeking out over the early reviews of the new Star Trek movie. I know it comes out in a few weeks, but the reviews here and here are making me feel really confident that it's not going to suck. And let's be honest, after all the crappy scifi (or syfy) / fantasy / superhero movies that have sucked over the years, our first reaction is usually "how much will it suck? - hopefully, not too much" rather than "this should be awesome". Those few genre movies that rock - Iron Man, The Dark Knight, LOTR - that are great just make it that much more agonizing for the others. Clearly, a good genre movie can be done, it just takes the will to do it correctly. Dare I hope for Star Trek?
And the Clouds Lift Briefly...
I'm sitting here with both the offspring eating breakfast. We are getting ready to go to swim lessons. It's a beautiful day outside. A big vase of yellow forsythia sits on the table in front of me and my paycheck hit the bank this morning. With sushi planned for lunch today, life is good...
Is is hard to sneak carrying grooming implements?
We have reached the stage of the offspring's development in which knock-knock jokes are considered hysterical. I must make some phone calls to spread the pain. The godfather is going to be on the receiving end of some serious knock-knockery later on.
On another note, gtchaos is attending the New Zealand sheep shearing championships today (or possibly from the future). Live streaming video from here. I saw some sheep being sheared when I was in the En Zed, but this is on a whole new scale. You know, the sheep look simultaneously startled at being manhandled and relieved at getting the shear. I'm trying to imagine what kind of equivalent action could be done to a person to provoke both reactions at once. All I can think of is being manhandled and forcibly back waxed by a ninja beautician strike team.
BEDA Advice
Maureen Johnson notes her strategy for BEDA here. It seems to consist mostly of deception and blathering.
To whit.
1. This morning, it was raining and disgusting.
2. I answered enough e-mail at work today to choke a dead horse. And if I never hear the word "Uigher" again, it will be too soon.
3. I am not watching it, but my wife is watching the last episode of ER. Evidently, John Stamos has cute dimples.
Project Fill-In-The Gaps
Not sure if I dare to take on Moonrat's Project Fill-in-the-Gaps. Reading 100 novels within 5 years is not a problem. It's just that some of them are books I have actively avoided my entire life, "classic" status notwithstanding. I've only read two so far, Watership Down, and The Chocolate War. S_, of course, has read two-thirds of the list.
Here's the list -
1. Native Son, Richard Wright
2. Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
3. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
4. Watership Down, Richard Adams
5. Ragtime, E.L. Doctorow
6. Middlemarch, George Eliot
7. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
8. Women in Love, D.H. Lawrence
9. The French Lieutenant’s Woman, John Fowles
10. The Lottery, Shirley Jackson
11. Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon
12. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
13. Moll Flanders, Daniel Defoe
14. Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
15. Foundation, Isaac Asimov
16. House of Mirth, Edith Wharton
17. Persuasion, Jane Austen
18. Chocolate War, Robert Cormier
19. The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
20. Dead Zone, Stephen King
21. Underworld, Don DeLillo
22. The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
23. Swann’s Way, Marcel Proust
24. Of Human Bondage, Somerset Maugham
25. Bless the Beasts and Children, Glendon Swarthout
26. The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd
27. While I Was Gone, Sue Miller
28. American Wife, Curtis Sittenfeld
29. The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
30. The Radetsky March, Joseph Roth
31. Digging to America, Anne Tyler
32. Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
33. War & Peace, Leo Tolstoy
34. East of Eden, John Steinbeck
35. A Light in August, William Faulkner
36. The Conservationist, Nadine Gordimer
37. The Good Terrorist, Doris Lessing
38. Memoirs of a Good Daughter, Simone DeBeauvoir
39. Carry On, Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse
40. The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong-Kingston
41. Gotham, Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace
42. A Fable, William Faulkner
43. The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter
44. American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser
45. Finnigan’s Wake, James Joyce
46. Sophie’s Choice, William Styron
47. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Raymond Carver
48. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
49. The Plague, Albert Camus
50. Miss Lonelyhearts, Nathaniel West
51. White Teeth, Zadie Smith
52. Charming Billy, Alice McDermott
53. Summerland, Michael Chabon
54. Farming the Bones, Edwidge Danticat
55. Silence, Shusaku Endo
56. Ulysses, James Joyce
57. Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Yukio Mishima
58. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
59. The Known World, Edward P. Jones
60. Kokoro, Natsume Soseki
61. The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot
62. Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen
63. My Antonia, Willa Cather
64. Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin
65. The House of Spirits, Isabel Allende
66. Herzog, Saul Bellow
67. The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow
68. The Boat, Nam Le
69. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
70. Three Lives, Gertrude Stein
71. Hounds of Baskerville, Arthur Conan Doyle
72. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
73. Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
74. Possession, A.S. Byatt
75. Under the Net, Iris Murdoch
76. Housekeeping, Marilyn Robinson
77. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
78. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, Haruki Murakami
79. Runaway, Alice Munro
80. In America, Susan Sontag
81. The Stories of John Cheever
82. God’s War, Christopher Tyerman
83. Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann
84. A Model World, Michael Chabon
85. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
86. The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Oscar Hijuelos
87. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley
88. American Pastoral, Philip Roth
89. The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx
90. The Book Borrowers, Alice Mattison
91. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
92. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields
93. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
94. Bad Behavior, Mary Gaitskill
95. Empire Falls, Richard Russo
96. Rebecca, Daphne DuMaurier
97. March, Geraldine Brooks
98. The Second Sex, Simone DeBeauvoir
99. Gilead, Marilyn Robinson
100. Werewolves in Their Youth, Michael Chabon
Maybe as money is tight this year, I will use this as a library list. Perhaps not... Economic times will have to get pretty dire for me to read Ulysses.
Blog Every Day April (BEDA)
Inspired by Maureen Johnson's verve and determination to BEDA, as well as disgust at my complete inability to write, I have decided I am going to go for it as well. I'm not saying I won't resort to the "5 things make a blog posting" rule on occaision, but here it goes.
Today, I have dealt with the following issues:
1. I almost killed an employee I sent on travel. Traveling is part of his job and I was making a point as he had not traveled in over a year, but the man had an anxiety attack at the TDY location and ended up in the hospital. (sigh)
2. The AC has been broken on my floor for the second day in a row. At 1:00 in the afternoon, it has finally kicked in. I will scoop up all my melted parts and try to reconstitute myself before my 2:00 meeting.
3. People are freaking out since our security office has ruled that no cell phones can be brought onto our floor. There is no place outside our floor to put the cell phones either. The proposed solution? "Leave them at home." When asked what the plan would be if there were another 9-11 mega-emergency, the reply was "Well that won't happen, so don't worry about it." Niiiiice......
4. Offspring A was to have surgery on Monday for a long-standing problem. Serious but unavoidable. We were all set to go and it was postponed at the last minute for a week. Now S_, my wife, is on edge for another week, barely sleeping...
In addition,
I find the Peekaroo to be creepy.
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