|
|
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
| |
8:05 pm - No such thing as bad publicity
|
|
| Wednesday, June 17th, 2009
| |
2:11 pm - Everybody! Everybody!
|
|
If you're still playing My Brute, why don't you join the National Pummelers League clan. And hey, if you're not playing, why not try it. (Disclaimer: this is a pyramid scheme; if you join via that "try it" link, I get experience points. No money or personal information changes hands.)
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Friday, May 8th, 2009
| |
9:13 am - That was the opposite of helpful.
|
Yesterday afternoon, I was on a roll. I was busily working away at adapting and updating the materials for one of my classes, when I got a call from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) phragmites. Was I on the way home? We had an appointment at 6:30, did I remember?
I looked at the clock; it was 5:30. Had no idea it was that late. I'd just barely make it on MARTA in time for our appointment.
I needed to leave like now, but I didn't want to lose the stuff I was working on...I had eight or ten files open. So I set the computer to Hibernate and walked out the door.
This morning, when I woke up the computer, I got eight or ten error messages to the effect that "I lost all your data when I lost my LAN connection. Try saving to another disk, except oops, your files have all been changed to Read-Only, so you can't. Gee, that's a shame, isn't it?" For a while, it looked as if both the new and old files had completely disappeared!
After a full restart, I've at least got some version of my files back. I seem to have lost about an hour, hour and a half's worth of work, though.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Monday, April 27th, 2009
| |
5:49 pm
|
( The Book of Love )
Actually I don't much like this song; however, I think it works pretty well in the lyrics-as-poetry department.
Whole bunch of projects hotting up at work; I've got to keep on top of them and not drop any balls for the next couple months. Joy and fun; I think I can do it, but most of it is not in "fail-safe" mode. If something goes wrong, it'll be ugly.
Boring personal-life details follow. We went to a meet-and-greet for new members of the local parents' cooperative over the weekend. It was fun, though I can't say we made any new instant bosom friends. There were about three other couples with babies born within a few weeks of Aa, so we know there'll be at least a small cohort of age-mates for him. Other than that, we had a very homebody weekend; I worked on a class I had scheduled for tomorrow (cancelled, but I will be teaching it next week); phragmites did a lot of laundry, and we did hardly any of the yardwork that needs doing. (I did put in a couple hours of raking, which cleaned up somewhat under ten percent of the back yard. I think we may need to call in the pros...)
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Sunday, April 26th, 2009
| |
3:08 pm
|
|
| Friday, April 24th, 2009
| |
9:20 am
|
( Easy Silence )
Through circumstances too involved to list
(including, among other things, my trip
to Indiana and a birthday for
phragmites' dad) we've got P's mom and grandma
staying with us, Wednesday through until
this Saturday. Last night we grabbed the chance
to dump the baby off on them, and have
an evening out at Wahoo Grill, à deux.
They've got a weekday prix fixe menu which
we wanted to check out; it's quite a deal.
However, when the waiter offered up
some extra options, which we failed to ask
the details of, it turned out that we drove
our dinner bill up much more steeply than
we would've if we'd just stuck to the menu.
(A pro-tip: if you're not a heavy drinker,
get a glass of fancy wine, and skip
the "bottomless house Chardonnay"—you'll still
come out ahead, and you'll enjoy it more.)
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
| Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
| |
9:30 am - It's one day late, but here's my Shakespeare nod.
|
( Romeo and Juliet )
A later edit: Seems I've had my dates
mixed up the past two days or so, and thought
the date was one day later than it is.
Turns out today is not the twenty-fourth,
and so this song is not a day behind,
but falling à propos. Yay me, I guess.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
| |
7:10 am
|
|
| Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
| |
9:36 am
|
( The Girl I Can't Forget )
For two nights running now, our Aa has slept
from when we put him down (the neighborhood
of ten o'clock at night) straight through 'til half
past six a.m. This morning when
I changed his diaper, it was even clean
(though wet). I don't believe that that's the way
he ought to be behaving at his age.
We really should be getting up with him
two times a night for feedings and a change.
It's not yet worrisome, but shall we say
a bit unusual. If this keeps up
the doc will need to be consulted soon.
|
|
(3 comments | comment on this)
|
| Monday, April 20th, 2009
| |
2:48 pm
|
( Hold It All At Bay )
I thought I'd kicked this cold, but it's returned
and settled in my throat and chest, a cough
and scratchy throat I hope I'll shake
before tomorrow afternoon—I'm off
again to Indiana then, and hate to fly
while sick. It's bad enough I'm here at work
and coughing at the candidate we've got
to interview today in Preservation.
This weekend was the Dogwood Festival,
and so we thought we'd go to check it out.
We drove, which turned out not to be the best
decision, since the parking was insane
(we found a spot about a mile away,
at least as distant as the MARTA stop).
There's little that pertains to dogwoods there;
it's really just an art and music fair
on steroids, with too many artists' booths,
too many people, too-expensive food.
(I mean, you more or less expect to pay
an arm and leg at festivals like this,
but six-buck corn dogs? That just isn't right.)
We spent the afternoon, but basically
we think that we'd have been more satisfied
by going to the park some other day
without a big event to bring us there.
These artists' fairs don't scale up very well,
at least to the extreme presented here.
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
| Friday, April 17th, 2009
| |
2:46 pm - A reminder
|
Blank Verse Blog Week begins this Sunday!
Blank Verse FAQ
Prose FAQ
I doubt I'll find too many song lyrics in blank verse, or even iambic pentameter, without delving into Shakespeare and such. Not yet sure what strategy I'll adopt...I'll prolly end up doing lyrics in other metrical forms with my own words in blank verse.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| |
10:30 am - Overdue for more poetry
|
( Hot Buttered Rum )
So yeah, a lot of my selections for the month seem to be on the subject of love, one way or another. Edit: Actually, looking back, that turns out not to be the case. But a lot of the songs I've considered for inclusion are about love. I'm not deliberately trying to skew it that way; it's just the nature of my source material. That said, this is probably one of my favorite songs evar.
Two of my three trips to Indiana this month are done; I enjoyed spending time with my friends in Bloomington this week. My time with G was strictly limited—he's gotten himself elected to the county government, and was slogging his way through a protracted meeting basically all evening. We talked for about ten minutes during a break in the proceedings, but then he had to go back to wading through budgets and programs. I did spend the whole evening with A and small-g; we had a good time catching each other up. I showed off a slew of baby pictures, she gave me a present to take back to Aa, and we exchanged blog and facebook info. (Hi, A!)
Boy howdy, did being back in B-ton ever peg my nostalgia meter! I seriously need to go back and spend at least a week revisiting old haunts—a surprising number of which continue to be there after ten years, which is cool. There's an amazing sense of continuity, walking into Howard's Bookstore and meeting a fine-haired black cat who could be Pearlie Mae's grandkitten...or driving around and noticing that both Sahara Mart and Costume Delights are still in business...or turning on WFIU to discover that Joe Bourne is still hosting "Just You and Me" before "All Things Considered" comes on. (kreynard, mona_lisabeth, ophymirage, scholargipsy, if any of you want to stage a micro-reunion, I'm totally up for it!)
Back on the home front, we've finally got our phone and internet up and running again, after three long weeks. This past weekend I called AT&T to complain—again—and tell them I had no intention of paying for the three weeks of no service; the guy on the other end of the phone said that it was their practice to credit for time without service. We'll see whether that actually materializes when the bill arrives. Somehow or other, I predict another miffed phone call in my future.
|
|
(3 comments | comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, April 14th, 2009
| |
10:32 am - This one is a suggestion from scholargipsy
|
( Graceland )
In about an hour and a half, I'm off to Indiana again; looking forward to seeing old friends G and A. I'm, sorry to be leaving phragmites alone with Aa right now, as they both have slight colds and are thus not quite as chipper as they might be. I've got the same cold myself; we're a very sharing family. Not overjoyed to be traveling with it, but compared to the crud I had on my Mystery Hunt trip, this is cake; I can deal.
One interesting twist to my three Indiana trips this month, is that Indianapolis (so-called) International Airport has built a new terminal, on the other side of the field from the old one; the company GPS doesn't have the new location in its list of stored landmarks. I tried downloading an update, but it didn't fix the problem. This trip, I'll try kludging it by marking the new terminal as a "favorite" spot, which should get me back there if I remember to look for it instead of just picking the pre-set landmark. And also assuming enough of the access roads and highway exits actually existed prior to the terminal construction.
I suppose I could also check Google Maps and print out the directions; that's what I do when someone else has the GPS...probably wouldn't hurt as a backup...
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
| Friday, April 10th, 2009
| |
1:14 pm - A new challenger has entered the arena!
|
|
| |
12:42 pm
|
( Field Behind the Plow )
phragmites and Aaron got back home last night; I was most extremely glad to have them back. I am so broken to harness; even with a 4 AM wakeup to change a diaper, I slept better last night than I have almost the whole time they were gone.
I've got three trips lined up this month to Indiana for classes—three instances of the same class, in three different locations, all of them more or less in the Hoosier boonies. I was up there this past Tuesday and Wednesday, and will be returning next week and the week after that. Next week I've arranged to stay the night in Bloomington, that being the nearest place with a decent hotel apparently, so I'll get to revisit my old haunts, pick up a replacement for my broken Howard's Bookstore mug, and meet up with friends G, A, and their son small-g. Last time I saw small-g, he wasn't yet talking; now he's 11. How time does fly.
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
| Wednesday, April 8th, 2009
| |
7:33 am - Pome and a pole
|
|
| Tuesday, April 7th, 2009
| |
9:35 am
|
( peace comes stealing slow )
Off to Indiana this afternoon, for the first of three trips in three weeks. Making up for last quarter when I had one on-the-road class in three months. On the upside, next week I'll get to spend the night in Bloomington. I'm gonna try to hook up with some people I know there for dinner, if I can get in touch with them.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Monday, April 6th, 2009
| |
3:47 pm - A funny
|
|
| |
1:02 pm - Death-defying feats of arborism
|
( Killed by a Coconut )
That last line has become something of a catch phrase for me, actually.
Having no internet at home is for the birds. I'm trying to get back into the habit of posting, and actually had time and inclination to do so over the weekend, but not the means. Blah. I spent pretty much all of Saturday working on the yard, which sorely needed it. The lawn, which hadn't been mowed since October, was seriously scraggly in front, and was over a foot tall in the back. In fact, the back yard was so jungly that I decided to use the weed-whacker on it instead of the mower. That worked fine for about two-thirds of the yard, then the machine ran out of string.* The last bit I did use the mower for, and it took about three times as long—I basically had to go over every bit of it three or four times to cut down all the grass. I also got out the ladders and the bow saw, and cut a bunch of dead branches off of the (really ugly) dogwood tree in our front yard.† While I was working on that, I was glad that the wife and kid were not at home; if phragmites had seen me leaning the extension ladder against the selfsame branch I was trying to cut, she'd have thrown a very calm, quiet fit and stopped me. Anyhow, I did manage to lop off the dead branches, didn't break my own g____m neck in the process, and now the tree is—well, still ugly, but at least not ugly and dead-looking.
Both front and back yards are still seriously in need of a raking,‡ but I ran out of gumption.
Sunday was supposed to be my day to work inside the house, doing the laundry, dishes an'etc that I have left to pile up while I'm living the temporary bachelor lifestyle. Somehow, the gumption for those chores never really materialized though...so I grabbed our store-credit card from the Home Depot and went on a spree there. Bought a little of this and that, all stuff we either needed or could seriously use.§ Futzed around doing non-SNAG "manly work" for a good while, then met my brother-in-law A halfway between our respective homes for sushi. Both our womenfolk and kids were away at their ancestral stomping grounds in North Carolina for this meet-Aaron party, and it was a rare opportunity for both of us to go out and eat raw fish, so we jumped at it. Had a good time.
Today, work. I have plenty to do, and would probably be staying late tonight,|| but instead I'll most likely end up calling the blasted AT&T technician to see if he can come over and fix my blasted phone. Again. He was good and showed up last Thursday when he said he would, but decided on looking at the setup that there was nothing he could do without standing outside in an eight-inch-deep puddle—which he was reluctant to do, and I didn't really blame him. But it's dry today, and I have had enough of no phone service. So let's try this again, shall we?
*A little longer, and I'd have run out of extension cord instead.
†"Really ugly dogwood tree" is one of those phrases you don't run into very often.
‡Who'm I kidding. They need a lot more than that...
§Except for when it didn't work, like the light-socket dusk-to-dawn sensor that didn't fit in the fixture I wanted it for.
||Since, you know, the family being gone, it's one of the rare times I can do so with impunity.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Friday, April 3rd, 2009
| |
2:13 pm - Now this, I never would have expected.
|
|
Massachusetts, yes. California, no suprise there, even though it didn't last. Connecticut, even. But Iowa? Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have just achieved mainstream.
|
|
(7 comments | comment on this)
|
|
|
|
|
0 (0.0%)