Thursday, August 31, 2006

No home would be complete without...

Here's something that the Joneses are getting that probably won't find a place in our house. I don't care how much pressure there is to keep up with them. How much time would you have to spend on the toilet to justify setting up an iPod dock with speakers right next to it? I guess it would be convenient and would match the cup holder and hot plate that we have mounted next to our toilet right now.

If you want to order your own, click here.

Begging

This morning waiting for the bus, a Jamaican-sounding drunk came up to me begging for money. I used my standard decline: "Sorry, my wife doesn't let me carry money." To which he responded, "don't she know it... give her man money when he leaves the house, he don't be coming back." Maybe that's what happened to him.

On another note, yesterday during a site visit to Astoria, Oregon for work, we stopped at a gas station for snacks and to stretch our legs. I was interested seeing a self-serve milkshake machine (a machine which I took advantage of by buying a small milkshake and drinking it while shopping around the store and then topping it off upon leaving) What was weird, though, was right next to the milkshake machine was a self-serve hamburger machine! Evidently you just put a raw patty on a little oven conveyor belt and when it comes out the bottom, it's fully cooked, at which time you assemble it and put on your condiments. YIKES! There are some things that I don't mind having a real, live person doing the work, and cooking a hamburger is one of them.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Bookworm

While not even an unhatched bookworm egg compared to my grandmother, I do enjoy reading when I get the chance. A friend's blog with the "books from my library" feature inspired me to add a similar addition to my blog (see right). I'm hoping that it will spur me into reading more rather than watching too much crappy tv this fall. My thinking is that if I know that people are watching what I'm reading, I'll be less likely to read Us magazine or anything by Jack Weyland. Feel free to send me any suggestions for good books to read.

9 to 5

Last night, in a fit of nostalgia, Margaret and I watched that Dolly Parton movie "9 to 5." It was crazy to see the workplace near the end of the major women's liberation movement. In the movie, the three women made all these "radical" changes to their workplace--like equal pay for equal work, on-site daycare, job sharing, etc. It's so great to see that in the quarter century since that movie came out, we've made such progress that now we're trying to tackle more current employment issues like equal pay for equal work, on-site daycare, job sharing, etc.

Monday, August 28, 2006

Old age

Yesterday was my little sister's birthday and she told me something that made her feel old, and by extension ME feel old. While I try to drown my feelings of impending death with sex, drugs, and rock and roll, occassionally something worms its way past my defenses and I can see the Grim Reaper standing there looking at his clock waiting to pounce. Well, what allowed me to see him yesterday was my sister telling me that she had had lower back pain all day and it was making her feel her age. Yikes! What does that say about me? I'm nine years older than she is. I'm probably going to be getting my complimentary subscription to "Your life's almost over" magazine--the AARP publication for the slightly less older set--any day now. Sigh.

Friday, August 25, 2006

Creative panhandler

This morning as I was making my way down Hawthorne to the bus stop, I saw the usual gamut of early morning panhandlers. It's surprising how many of them are familiar now after living here for almost 8 years. I can't remember if I wrote about this before, but one always talked about being from Salt Lake and had gone to BYU. I never knew whether I should believe him or take it as him being perceptive that I had Utah roots, what with my Brigham Young beard and Harold B. Lee glasses. Well, I hadn't seen that guy in quite some time, and we were in Salt Lake visiting family when, sitting on a restaurant patio, we see the panhandler walk by! I guess that confirmed his story. Either that or he's stalking us.

Anyway, one panhandler this morning caught my attention, which is saying something, since I try to avoid eye contact (a technique I learned from the Norwegians I tried talking to about religion). The sign that caught my attention said, "Girlfriend KIDNAPPED by ninjas. Need money for ransom. Any bit helps." If I would have had any change on me, I would have given it to him, as that kind of creativity should be rewarded.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Inappropriate condiments

The other day, Margaret and I had a hankerin' for the really good burritos from our favorite burrito restaurant. Little did we know that those burritos would come with a side of innuendo! We decided to eat out on the patio, where we noticed all the tables had these salt and pepper holders. Was it just us, or is that holder really inappropriate? We were racking our brains trying to imagine what was supposed to fit in the longer part, but decided it really was just supposed to be inappropriate.

Speaking of inappropriate, a couple of Halloweens back, Margaret and I went to New Orleans and saw something on Bourbon Street that was SHOCKINGLY inappropriate. (I won't go into the details here, as it is a family blog--suffice it to say, it would never be shown on FOX, so you know it's bad!) I guess what should we have expected? New Orleans...Bourbon Street...Halloween...it was a recipe for debauchery unrivaled since ancient Rome. Anyway, after returning I had to rinse my eyes out with bleach to try and get the image out--it worked but my totally white eyes really creeps people out, now. Later, talking to a friend about our trip, I asked her if she could tell me if my judgement that the scene was shocking was because I'm Mormon or because it really was shocking. After telling her what we'd seen, and she picked her jaw up off the floor from shock, she replied, "No, that really is shocking!" It always feel good to get confirmation.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Price of being scatterbrained

After hearing the dying wheezes of my cell phone's battery, I looked in my bag for the charger, only to discover I'd left it in the hotel when I was in Pendleton this weekend. Aggravated, I went to the Cingular store to buy a new charger and was disgusted to find that a replacement charger was $30 DOLLARS! The phone, which I got on a promotion, was only $25. I can't believe that they would take advantage of people like that--oh, wait, I forgot, we DO live in a capitalist society. Of course I had to pay for it, because without it, I'd be without a cell phone and in this day and age, that would be akin to being without clothes--sure you can get by without, but there's so much chaffing! So $30 later, I got my new cell phone charger, and vowed to keep a better eye on my electronic gadgets. I then proceeded to lose the headphones off my iPod somewhere between the gym, Taco Bell, and work. Maybe I should have vowed not to have so many gadgets.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

The lost art of saying no

I wonder if saying no is an art lost to the annals of history along with well-written tv shows or easy air travel. Yesterday on the train, a young homeless guy was trying to resell a pre-read newspaper. Could see him coming down the aisle and was glad that I had my panhandler repellent on--my iPod earphones. Unfortunately the guy next to me wasn't so lucky. He was standing up, holding on to his bike hanging on the rack. When the panhandler got to him, the guy just pretended he was asleep. Brother! How obvious is that? Riding a busy, noisy bus, holding your bike, and STANDING UP! and he expects someone to believe that he dozed off? I can see if it was a horse or a cow standing in a field sleeping... Anyway, I was surprised when the panhandler actually called the guy on it. Evidently perterbed by the notion that the "sleeping" man just couldn't say "not interested" and feigning sleep didn't sit too well with him.

Speaking of which, that reminds me of a terrible occurence at a church dance. Thinking back on it, I still get embarassed about it... and I wasn't even the perpetrator. My brother and a friend were sitting in the chairs lining the side of the church gym. They'd been holed up there like GI's stuck in a foxhole all night. Eventually, this one girl built up her courage and came over to ask one of them to dance, since it was obvious that they weren't about to extricate themselves from those chairs. As they saw her making their way over to them, they didn't react with a fight or flight response--instead they chose the classic "possom-maneuver." Yes, I'm sad to report that they PRETENDED THEY WERE ASLEEP! That poor girl tried to wake them up, but since the music was so loud, I guess they didn't hear her. She eventually gave up and sought greener pastures among the "bad boys" in the ward... you know, the ones who refused to wear ties to the dances. Because of that incident, she probably ended up getting involved in a militant group that hates men and seeks ways to make their lives miserable. In fact I think she opened up a Jo-Ann fabric franchise in our hometown. You don't get much more vengeful against men than THAT!

Not that I was always a little angel, despite my currently blindingly effulgent halo hovering over my head. Yes, there was a time when that halo would only be considered "radiant" rather than effulgent. Once such time was...of course... at a church dance. Ah, nothing like teen hormones and awkwardness to turn a wholesome activity into a social interaction more devastating than Lord of the Flies. Anyway, my little "that-wasn't-me-it-was-my-evil-twin-brother-Ruprect" moment was one time my best friend and I were chatting up these two girls we liked and while we were talking to them, saw a girl come back into the gym whom we'd given the unflattering name "Rumblebee" as she was a little on the larger size and was wearing a yellow and black horizontally striped dress. We told the girls what we'd dubbed her, you know, in that "I'm a cool teen in a position to judge anyone and everyone and by putting someone down, I'm really lifting myself up." Well, unfortunatley the ploy backfired--Rumblebee was the big sister of one of the girls! Of course being teenagers themselves, desperate for acceptance and boys liking them, they laughed along with us. I guess attention from boys trumps filial solidarity. Regardless, I was mortified. In fact a little bit of me died inside. Now after years of putting my foot in my mouth, I'm almost completely dead inside. I'm looking forward to when that process is complete, because then I can finally run for public office.

Monday, August 21, 2006

Road trip adventures

This weekend I had to go to Pendleton, Oregon for a salmon-related activity for work. Portland was over 90ยบ, and I wasn't looking too forward to going to the hot east side of the state. Plus, to make matters worse, I had totally spaced the date, thinking it was taking place on SEPTEMBER 19. Last Thursday, I got an email reminding all presenters about set-up times for the AUGUST 19 event--in TWO DAYS!! I frantically got my travel requests in, and gave Margaret a call, as she always gets after me for not telling her when I'm going to be travelling. At least I gave her a day's notice this time! What more could she expect? She declined to go, particularly when I told her that the trip would entail leaving Portland at 5:00 pm, probably getting stuck in traffic leaving the city, driving for 3 hours, resting at the hotel overnight, getting up at the crack of dawn to set up the booth, sit in the heat for 5-6 hours, then drive home. Can you believe she didn't have any interest? Going to the fabric store and sewing ranked higher on her "Things I'd rather do list" than a long road trip (which is what she did.) (And walking through the rolling sothern Lebanese countryside right now is more apealling to me than going to a fabric store.) The trip was pretty uneventful including one thing that was blessedly uneventful, but might not have been. Driving back, I was getting sleepy (despite drinking 96 oz. of Diet Pepsi in an effort to get caffeine and a ful bladder that is impossible to sleep through). I stopped at the Celilo Village rest area, where I thought if I took a little swim in the river, it would wake me up. I went down to the water and it was packed with people swimming and riding jet-skis. Since I didn't have any swimtrunks, I'd planned on just swimming in my underwear, but not being an exhibitionist, that location really wouldn't work (Well... if I'd had on my firetruck underwear I might have considered it, but since I didn't I felt I had to be more modest). Thinking I might find a more discreet location further downstream, I walked along the river bank and found a carefully groomed trail to the river. It looked pretty official, as the path was cleared of debris, the blackberries pruned back, and the trail was well worn. I walked right down to the river and it was perfect--secluded and deep. I swam around for a while and it totally did the trick waking me right up. After drying off and getting dressed again, I started back up the path, which was when I noticed a carefully written sign written in permanent marker on a flat rock that advertised for... well, use your imagination. I was instantly nervous that whoever had written that sign was lurking in the bushes. I made my way back down the path as quickly as possible, fortunately not running into another soul. Phew! Thinking back, I should have realized it was someone's lair, since the state doesn't maintain its trails that well.

Friday, August 18, 2006

Fast food credits

Yesterday, Margaret and I had a hankering for fast food, but there aren't any burger places really close to our house. Rather than driving the two miles to the nearest Dairy Queen, we decided to ride our bikes there. Given the current price of fuel, if we would had driven, it would have added $3 to our fast food fix, so we felt it was a good deal. Also, since we'd actually expended calories to ride over there, I felt completely justified in getting a dipped ice cream cone. I'm sure the 40 calories I burned on the ride was about equal to the number of calories in the ice cream, right? Right?

Burning off calories reminds me of how emaciated I became while in Norway. While some missionaries end up gaining a lot of weight on their missions, Norway on average wasn't one of them. The members hardly ever fed us. While some missions have enough dinner invitations to feed the missionaries lunch and dinner every day of the week, in my mission, I could sometimes go for weeks without even an offer of toast and jam. In only one area did I get regular and frequent member dinners. At first I thought that it was because there were so many good and supportive member there who had a Christ-like desire to help the missionaries. Well, that was a crock...I found out after a couple of weeks of daily gorgings that my new companion had told people at church that his new companion was an Indian and that he only spoke his tribal language and Norwegian. Well, of course everyone wanted to get a glimpse of the real, live Indian, so the invitations poured in before I even arrived. They were really put out to find out that I could only speak English and Norwegian. Plus, I didn't even have long hair (at that point I still had a youthful hairline, though), and didn't wear a loin cloth, but a boring shirt and tie. Thinking back, I probably could have had a lot more success as a missionary in Norway if I had been walking around there in a Dances with Wolves outfit. (Although that wouldn't have been such a great idea during the Norwegian winters, I suppose.)

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

What were they thinking?

Yesterday I caved to advertising and tried one of those new Diet Pepsi "Jazzy" flavors--this particular one was strawberries and cream. Yikes! What were they thinking? It tasted like a Pepsi float made out of strawberry ice cream...MELTED strawberry ice cream. I think that if I were responsible for coming up with innovative products, I'd be concentrating on interesting flavors...like rum (non-alcoholic, of course, for the kiddies and Utah consumers). Of course this didn't teach me anything... I'm sure the next random flavor that comes out will somehow speak to me and I'll be compelled to buy it. What a well-trained consumer I've become, thanks to all those Saturday morning cartoons.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Public transit adventures: episode 566

Riding home on the bus yesterday, I sat near the back of the bus next to a pregnant woman. She was normally dressed, had a little knapsack, and a pillow with her. Everything was going fine, I sitting there contemplating why dogs always want to play with me despite my absolute hatred with touching them--you know, just the usual time-wasting things you think of on the bus. Anyway, some guy gets on the bus, who looks, to be generous, a little cruddy. He sits down on the back bench opposite the pregnant woman. After a minute, the guy leans over and asks the woman, "Have you considered calling the so-and-so shelter?" The pregnant woman gave him a blank stare and asked him what he was talking about. He said, "You are homeless, right?" at which he pointed at the pillow. The lady said no, in fact, she wasn't. HOW AWKWARD! Then they had to sit next to each other for the rest of the bus ride. I can't believe how I would feel if someone looked at me and thought I was homeless. I had a huge self-esteem deflation once when someone asked me if I bought my clothes at K-Mart. (Which in fact I did, but had hoped that it wasn't so obvious.) That poor lady probably went home and vowed never to bring a pillow with her on the bus ever again.

Friday, August 11, 2006

Diminishing discretion

Last night, Margaret and I had to go to the store for some pop neccessities. When we went in, there were two teenagers standing at the makeup section, one of which had a skirt that was so short it could have been used as a wider-than-usual belt. Normally when I'm making a comment, I try to make sure I'm completely behind the person's back, which I thought I was tonight, as I remarked under my breath to Margaret, "could my skirt GET any shorter?" After we turned onto an aisle, she said that one usually says stuff like that more than two feet away from the person being judged. Yikes, I'm becoming that old guy who comments on "kids these days."

Speaking of which, I remember the first time I heard someone my age say that, and boy was I amazed. We were at a family dinner in Salt Lake with Margaret's aunt, uncle, and cousins. Sitting around talking after dinner, one of the cousins mentioned that the city pool in Fillmore, Utah wasn't heated and that his kids wouldn't swim it in...and in his day they were grateful to swim in it, even though they would be blue with cold. His wife then responded that kids these days were just spoiled that way. I looked at her and said I couldn't believe that someone MY age actually used the phrase "kids these days..." and she asked, "who said that?" When I told her that she had just uttered those very grown-up words, she was so embarassed and couldn't believe she'd actually said it. Now I truly can say those words...and mean them. Especially when I see those stupid kids with baggy jeans hanging down below their underwear. I mean, WHAT is up with that? Am I so out of touch?

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Snooze

I swear, the snooze button on our alarm clock is getting more and more of a workout as time goes by. We keep setting the time back so we can have more snoozes before we absolutely have to wake up. We're practically at the point of setting the alarm for 2:00 am. The only thing that drags me out of bed in a timely manner is the promise of a bottomless Diet Coke at Noah's Bagels.

Which reminds me of my first week in Norway. Being that between Utah and Norway, there is a nine-hour time difference, it should come as no surprise that I experienced jetlag from the trip. (Today I swear I feel jetlag when we fly to Salt Lake from Portland, with its one-hour time difference...but we're also setting our clocks back 50 years, so that's probably it.) Anyway, our mission president believed that the best solution to jetlag wasn't to sleep but to get out and work the crazy hours of a missionary. (Nowadays I know that the cure for jetlag is caffeine and lots of it.) So for the first few days, that's what I did. Rising, zombie-like at 6:30 in the morning, stumbling around during the day listening to a language I could barely decipher, and crashing into sweet, sweet slumber at night. Well, after about a week of this, we came home for lunch and the other missionaries were already there and had prepared some food for us. Since we didn't have any food prep time, we had about 45 minutes after lunch and before the next bus came. My companion, whom I'll call Elder Bullwhip, because he was always cracking it to get me going, said he'd allow a nap and that he felt like taking a short one, too. So he carefully set his alarm clock for 30 minutes and laid down. I fell asleep instantly, but after twenty minutes, all the juice I'd drunk during lunch served as a biological alarm clock and I woke up to go to the bathroom. Coming back to my room, I glanced in Elder Bullwhip's room and saw that he was soundly sleeping. In an act I can only blame on the sleep deprivation, I crept into his bedroom and silently as possible, reached up and turned off his alarm clock, then crept back to my bed. And when I say crept, I really mean it...I was so sleep deprived that I'd do anything for a little more sleep, even lower myself to crawling on hands and knees and kill someone silently in their sleep. Fortunately the opportunity to turn off the alarm clock spared me the messiness of a homicide. Fifteen or twenty minutes later, Elder Bullwhip was jolted awake by the sound of the bus zooming by our house...another not to return for another sweet, sweet hour. He kept cussing himself out for setting the alarm clock but forgetting to turn it on. As for me, I just rolled over and got another 45 minutes of much needed sleep. I didn't tell him what I'd done until he was getting ready to go home. Fortunately he'd mellowed out (something that I hope I played a role in, since I think that was why I was sent to Norway--to teach how to not take this whole "religion" thing so seriously).

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Another reason to love Scandinavia

I just love Scandinavia. It shifted my politics so far left I actually BELIEVE in the United Order (the Mormon principle of collective ownership that the current population of Utah Republicans try to pretend never exisited). Anyway, check out this reminder of why Scandinavia is so cool:

Sweden plans to be world's first oil-free economy

In a response to climate change and the dangers of rising fuel prices, Sweden is to take the biggest energy step of any advanced western economy by trying to wean itself off oil completely within 15 years. And it plans to do so without building a new generation of nuclear power stations, reports John Vidal in The Guardian.

The attempt by the country of 9 million people to become the world's first practically oil-free economy is being planned by a committee of industrialists, academics, farmers, car makers, civil servants and others, who will report to parliament in several months.

The intention, the Swedish government said yesterday, is to replace all fossil fuels with renewables before climate change destroys economies and growing oil scarcity leads to huge new price rises.

"Our dependency on oil should be broken by 2020," said Mona Sahlin, minister of sustainable development. "There shall always be better alternatives to oil, which means no house should need oil for heating, and no driver should need to turn solely to gasoline."

According to the energy committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, there is growing concern that global oil supplies are peaking and will shortly dwindle, and that a global economic recession could result from high oil prices.


My favorite part is that the transition committee includes industrialists, farmers, and car makers. Can you just imagine getting Wal-Mart, GM, and Ford to help transition the U.S. away from fossil fuels. I think they'd be more likely to argue for a $15 raise in the minimum wage.

You can read the entire article here.

Punctuality

This last weekend, a friend of ours told us that despite planning on leaving at 10am, she didn't expect to, as Margaret and I have a reputation of being late. This surprised both of us, who try to be punctual as much as possible (except to work, but I have a floating schedule so that works out). We weren't sure what to think of it, until last night, at the same friend's birthday get-together, we were 45 mintues late, and since we made up a third of the party, they couldn't start the dinner until we got there. The whole drive there, the words, "you guys have a reputation for being late" was ringing in our ears--and here we were, living up to it. I was tempted to call and say we were having car troubles just to throw them off track about the real reason for our tardiness.

Whenever I'm late, I think of a story my grandmother always told about the first time she was tardy to school. For one reason or another she was a few minutes late for the beginning of her first or second grade class--I can't remember which. Anyway, as she walked up the aisle to her desk, every person on each side of the aisle reached over and pinched her--and she tells us that it wasn't a friendly pinch, but vice-like twisting pinches that left bruises and drew blood. The entire time she was making her way on the death march down the aisle, she thought, "this must be the punishment for being late." It wasn't until she sat down, bloody and sore from all the abuse, that she looked around and noticed that all the other children had shamrocks pinned to their clothes. Prior to school starting, the teacher had given all the children one to pin on for St. Patrick's Day and since she wasn't there to get one, she paid the consequences. She says that to this day, when she's late to something, she always wonders if she'll be pinched for it.

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Random facts about me

A while ago for a project, I had to compile a list of 100 facts about myself. I just found the list and thought I'd put them up here for posterity (an to be completely narcissistic and self-aware). I'm going to filter out the ones that are out of date or for one reason or another not appropriate to put on this forum, but here goes: Too many things that you never wanted to know about me:

  1. I am the oldest of four siblings
  2. I was born on an Indian reservation
  3. A freak accident with a horse bridle makes me nervous to ride another horse
  4. I was deathly embarassed as a child to have to wear husky pants
  5. I have a degree in Conservation Biology but hardly ever use it
  6. I wish I would have gotten a degree in Classical Studies
  7. I learned to drive a year behind the rest of my classmates
  8. That was still a year younger than in most other states
  9. I took shop in high school and only made things I had to cut out
  10. I am moderately germaphobic
  11. I hate when odors stay on my hands
  12. I am addicted to Diet Pepsi
  13. My first car was a Cadillac
  14. My second and third cars were VW Jettas
  15. I speak Norwegian
  16. I inherited my family's propesity for back problems
  17. I am a sucker for food with melted cheese
  18. People that deviate from the norm attract my attention
  19. I have a penchant for spotting misspellings on signs
  20. I started watching 90210 because a girl I liked watched it and it gave us something to talk about
  21. I have an irrational fear of my wife dying
  22. I start to prepare her funeral every time she's more than 15 mintues late to meet me
  23. I eat at Taco Bell almost every day
  24. I love Taco Time's Crustos
  25. I've only used Macs at all my jobs where I used a computer
  26. I first used Apple computers in third grade
  27. I got in trouble in third grade when I said my work was done so I could use the computer and the teach found out I'd lied
  28. I once got a week's detention for peeking in the girl's bathroom in forth grade
  29. I once cheated on a math test with my calculator watch
  30. I owned a calculator watch!
  31. I had eight Swatches during their 80's heyday
  32. I gave them all to my brother
  33. I've since gotten two back
  34. I hate fishing and hunting because I anthropomorphize the animals
  35. I love animal burrows under trees and fantasize about being samll enough to live there
  36. I only buy lottery tickets if the jackpot is over $100 million
  37. Despite never winning the lottery, I'm pretty lucky
  38. Despite saying I'm pretty lucky, I've not been so lucky with cars
  39. I got in a car wreck on my way to my missionary physical
  40. I got in another car wreck while on vacation to the Oregon coast
  41. Being evaluated drives my performance
  42. I am an Eagle Scout but can only remember 2 or 3 knots
  43. The first while book I read in Norwegian was a Nancy Drew book
  44. I play with my lip when I'm thinking and don't realize it until someone points it out
  45. I only read Richie Rich comic books growing up
  46. I grew up Republican but am now a very left-leaning Democrat
  47. I often tell people I'm from North Idaho, as if it's a state unto itself
  48. I love maps, both looking at them and creating them
  49. Once people annoy me, I have a hard time being around them
  50. I can remember camping with my family when I was only four
  51. I hate doing push-ups but I do them anyway
  52. I would rather be too hot than too cold
  53. I would rather the weather be too cold than too hot
  54. The first time I ever went skinny-dipping, a leech attached to my inner thigh
  55. The second time was in Sweden
  56. I can't stand snakes
  57. I love the Simpsons
  58. I usually take two showers per day
  59. I've always wanted to visit Paris, but all I've seen of the city was the train station and the airport
  60. I developed an MSG allergy when I was 29
  61. It completely changed my eating habits
  62. I love to swim for exercise because I don't sweat
  63. I really like the scent of marigolds
  64. I prefer running on a treadmill over running outside
  65. I had absolutely no desire to be in drama calss in high school
  66. Still the thought of being in a play never tempts me
  67. I had to do Indian sign language in a church play
  68. I watch too much tv during the winter
  69. I like rain
  70. I can't stand my hands to be sticky
  71. I clean as a form of procrastination
  72. If a project loses my interest, it's almost impossible for me to regain any enthusiasm for it
  73. I had long hair when I was 10 because my parents wanted me to be in touch with my Indian background
  74. When I asked to get it cut, I felt guilty because my mom said I was rejecting my native roots
  75. I really like installing moulding
  76. I detest cleaning a toilet
  77. I love having new gadgets
  78. I have a birthmark on my forehead that used to be covered up by my hair but now is fully exposed
  79. My favorite cookie is snickerdoodles
  80. I love meatloaf but can't eat it in restaurants because it probably has MSG in it
  81. I hate when people load a dishwasher incorrectly
  82. I have been know to unload an incorrectly loaded dishwasher and reload it correctly
  83. I have a well-developed superiority complex
  84. I can justify just about anything
  85. I think gift bags are totally cheating and a little lazy
  86. I don't mind waiting in lines
  87. I can't stand non-cotton underwear
  88. I had a hernia operation when I was 7 and I still don't know how I got the hernia in the first place

There you have it--a long, long list of completely random things that you probably never needed to know about me and that you can now use against me or to make my life a living hell. Enjoy!

Monday, August 07, 2006

Early-onset Alzheimers

This morning, I was talking to my brother about some video game I'd read about this weekend and he asked me how old I was because he'd told me about it several weeks ago. I had totally forgotten about it and here I was so excited to tell him about this cool new video game. Arg. Then, a little later in the conversation, I asked him if he'd watched the new Aquaman tv show. Once again, he asked me how old I was getting, as he'd given me a review of the show last week. Oops. Now I really do feel old.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Crossed communications

Last night my brother called and told me that he'd just watched a movie and that it was good, but depressing. We'd been talking about Syriana the night before, so I assumed that was the movie he was talking about. I went on and on about some aspect of the movie and he said he had to go to the bathroom and that that must have been on then. I continued with talking about Syriana and finally he said he'd just gotten out of "An Inconvienient Truth." Oops. I guess there are two depressing, but good movies out right now.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

All things to all people

I was going through some photos and rediscovered this one we took while we were in New York last year. It was in Chinatown in an import house. I have no idea what the designer was thinking--I guess they thought they would make something that would appeal to people into angels, that peeing Beligian boy statue, AND frogs. But to have an angel peeing into the mouth of a frog just seems like it would only appeal to fundamentalist Christians that have a fetish of peeing on amphibians--a MUCH smaller demographic.