January 2007 Archives

Heh!

(via)

This week has been pretty slow.

The other guy in my group is out on vacation, and the other engineer that sits in our area is traveling for work. So I'm not as busy and I'm sitting up here by myself.

I've had my headphones on all week. I usually don't, mainly because then I can't hear people talking over the cube walls. But I've been listening to FM017 all day every day. Love it.

I have a short-ish list of things that really ought to be done this week, but the world won't end if I don't get to them. I should be able to knock 'em out. I've been going through them slowly but surely. I'm just having a hard time caring right now.

I'm taking Friday off so I can relax before dress rehearsal Friday night. That'll be pretty intense. Plus, taking Friday off forces me to finish up my list tomorrow. Which means I'll be able to fill... half my day tomorrow.

Good problem to have. For now.

I'm eating an apple, and I totally just bit down on my thumb. Not talking about nipping the tip. I straight up bit myself, halfway down the nail.

Who does that?

I'm not divorced entirely, but I've gotten out of twice-weekly attendance.

I went through December, and I stopped after Xmas. Hadn't gone at all in January until this morning. They called me last week and asked what was up since I hadn't been around in a while. I said I didn't feel like I was that messed up in the first place that there was much benefit to be had. They asked me to come in one last time to evaluate my progress so far.

All signs point to Suze being family.

I don’t know for sure if Suze is gay, but isn’t the haircut a good indication? Plus if you poke around her web site it’s pretty easy to figure out that she has a “partner” in the “Suze’s Scrapbook” section. Also note: the overuse of the golf visor on vacation. I rest my case. So I’m amused when I see her books on my sister’s shelves and speaking at their “family” conferences.

(From Sitting Pretty, via Queercents.)

I love Suze anyway, but that's icing on the cake. I'm watching her latest public television show, "Women & Money." In which she is wearing a lime green knee-length suit jacket. Like something Rosie O'Donnell would wear....

When I watch Suze talk, I get Jesus. Her talks are a lot of financial common sense and practical advice, but they're a good deal of psychology and motivational speaking as well. Especially this one.

This is not true all of the time, but it's true often enough.

There was a question at work last week of whether or not we need to supply materials for some upcoming batches in a way that is counter to our normal way of doing so. This had been discussed previously, and my take away from those meetings was apparently different from someone else's.

I thought that the consensus was that if everything worked out that way, it would be nice, but we would not go out of our way to do so, and our customer wasn't requiring that. Someone else thought that since the customer had requested it, we had committed to doing so.

Had we committed to doing so, some paperwork had to be put in place. So there were two questions on the table: Are we doing it? And if so, who takes care of the paperwork? Someone else, under the assumption that we were going to do that, was insisting that I put the paperwork in place, since these batches are validation batches. I maintained that it's up to logistics or operations to put the paperwork in place, since it's a materials issue.

It was a legitimate question to ask and a detail that did need to be ironed out. Someone else is in logistics and it is his job to make sure stuff gets where it needs to be. But what pissed me off is that someone else accused me of not having my paperwork in order in the first place and asserted that I was lucky that he pointed this out before it was too late.

What. The fuck. Ever.

I obtained confirmation from a number of departments and also from the customer that we did not promise or intend to go the alternate material supply route and that it was not a customer requirement. In the mean time, tempers are flaring and emails are flying. This whole exchange also includes the other engineer in my group and the operations manager.

Someone else has been a little sheepish since. I've never had a problem with him before. We generally get along fine. I understand shit happens from time to time. But this has really left a sour taste in my mouth. It's also reminded me that I should really make sure I have my things in order. I do anyway, but a little extra care can't hurt.

The thing is, almost all the engineers have been in my role at some point, so they all think they know how it should go. Which is good in a way. But I'm here now with another engineer and a manager and we (and QA) will worry about whether or not we're doing it right. I'm not telling you how to do your job. I didn't rub it in when you scheduled all this stuff based on an expected shipment that we ended up not getting (like everyone else warned) and you freaked out because you had to reschedule.

Just sayin'.

So, the award comes with a reward. A reward in the form of a Visa gift card. My eyes got all big and I had all sorts of ideas about how to spend the money. But I made myself sit down and think about what to do with it all.

Had I received cash to go in the bank, I would definitely have spent it differently. Namely, I probably would have kept a little bit for cushion and then put the rest towards one of my credit cards. That entire chunk of change would be gone already, and I just got it on Friday. Even if I didn't put it all on a card right away, it would at least be sitting in my bank earning a little bit of interest. Or I could have put it in my money market so it could earn a little more interest. I might have even cut a check for charity, but frankly, Erica's debt reduction is the charity here.

But it's not cash, so I have to spend it. Otherwise, it's like I don't even have it. I could have decided to use that gift card only for my regular expenses that I would ordinarily pay cash for over the next, oh, three months and put all the extra unspent cash towards my credit card. But that's no fun, either. This is a reward for my hard work, and I deserve to treat myself. Within reason. Even though watching my credit card balances go down is a treat in and of itself.

But I'm going to spend some of it, so here are the guidelines I've come up with.

1. I cannot initiate anything that will involve an recurring expense, like the satellite TV and DVR I was thinking about. Because that's committing to more money than I just received, and am I really going to stop the payments in however many months when the balance runs out?

2. I cannot purchase anything that exceeds the amount that I just received. Because that's money that I wasn't going to spend in the first place. It sort of doesn't make sense in that I can now purchase something I really wanted for far cheaper, even if I still have to spend out of pocket for it. But considering my two options were a sofa and loveseat or a new MacBook, it's still a lot of extra cash, even with the newly acquired deep discount. I received a sign, though. I just got a hot lead on a new-to-me pullout sofa. And, unlike the last pullout sofa I purchased, the pullout will actually be usable. I'd already resigned myself to just purchasing a new battery for my iBook and hoping it continues to limp along. I got a pretty good overhaul at the last servicing, so I think it'll be okay for a while. That strategy hasn't exactly worked for me in the past, but I'm still trying. Which reminds me, I really need to back it up.

3. Whatever I buy has to tangibly show added value. It has to contribute to my enjoyment of life in some way. You're free to disagree with whether or not what I choose is value-added. This chiefly means no clothes.

4. I need to carefully track whatever I don't spend on treats for myself and put towards regular expenses, and guarantee that I put the resulting unspent cash in the bank towards my debt.

So here's what I've done so far.

Another company meeting today. Last company meeting was pretty fruitful for me. This company meeting? Employee of the Year, baby.

I'm spent.

And I'm buying an iPod video.

Grey's Anatomy

Actually it was just a little bit of watery eyes along with some hand waving and "oh my god oh my god"-ing.

Miranda Bailey is the shit.

• Tina Fey was The View today. Woo!
• You ever have one of those where you get up, you get dressed, and you later realize just how well put together you are today and you really ought to find something to do this evening so that others can enjoy your put-togetherness? I did well today, but I'm at home this evening anyway.
• Spending an extra $50 this month at the grocery store resulted in a $100 reduction in spending on eating out.
• All those holiday flavored creamers are now half off. Score! Pumpkin spice is better than gingerbread.
• I've decided that getting the satellite tv is just not worth the money, even at the reduced rate. I watch too much tv as it is.
• My boss and I had on the same color scheme today. I dare say I looked better in it.

Haven't done that since the Clinton years. Of course I wasn't really listening for the latter 50 minutes.

He gets points for his Madam Speaker opener. Every time I looked at the tv I felt like Dick Cheney was staring into my soul.

I think if he runs over an orchestra should cut him off.

I've been wearing two pairs of socks every day for weeks. Mostly just for warmth, but with the added bonus of having drier feet. I wear running socks on the inside and they wick.

I think my feet would stay drier on all but the hottest days if I wore two pairs of socks all the time. My non-sneakers don't breathe at all.

Hey Lachlan,

Buns and Chou Chou have discovered Rayman.

And they can dance!

Sometime this afternoon, I stopped being able to connect to the internet through Firefox. Damn IT bastards. I could still get through on IE. I fuckin' hate IE.

What's worse is I'm significantly less busy these days, so I need a little internet fix. How am I supposed to browse without tabs?!

I while back I mentioned I had this idea as to what to do with my other, non-blog domain. Right now, if you go there, there's a splash page with my email address on it, and that's it.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how, since I was left on my own in my job with very little training or experience, I've been forced to travel pretty steeply up the learning curve. It was particularly enlightening to go to a training seminar last summer and see how other companies do things instead of continuing to operate in a vacuum.

I've been wanting to put my observations, questions, struggles, learnings, etc. somewhere. In addition, I've been figuring since I use my email address at that other domain on my resume that maybe there ought to be something there that could actually help me get a job. Or I should at least have an electronic copy of my resume available.

So between all that, and then with the growing number of professionally-focused personal websites, I thought I should put together some kind of site that combines all that. I've listened to Chris Penn say it enough times that it finally sunk in.

Subject: hey sexy
Body: u like a model or something!!!!!!!!!!!! can we chat on the phone?

Do not send me a message like this. Especially if you are a 39-year-old grown ass man. Unless I know you and you are clearly joking.

Also, do not follow this up with a friend request.

Bear with me. You have to follow the train of thought.

1. I was reading Women's Hoops Blog, where they were reporting on last weekends' games. Seems the University of Rochester is up there near the top of the D-III standings.

2. This catches my eye because Fly Girl did 3 of her 4 degrees at U of R. So I click through to the U of R website and I see this proclamation that U of R is one of the 25 "New Ivies."

3. So I want to know what the heck a New Ivy is. The short of it is there's a bunch of schools that are not Ivy League schools that are of Ivy League-caliber and just as competitive.

So now I'm thinking that this is just kinda funny. Because that image totally fits with her. Nothing but the best for FG. And I'm thinking "Yeah, yeah, this is some kind of something Kaplan came up with and now all these schools have another marketing gimmick they can use."

Of course I have to flip through the list (included below if you don't want to read the whole article). It's in alphabetical order. I get to Macalester College, which catches my eye because it's here in St. Paul. So far all these schools are really small and/or private schools. I'm thinking that they probably all will be. And I'm thinking this list is kind of silly.

And then the next school is Michigan. Michigan, where for years you've been able to purchase "Harvard, the Michigan of the East" t-shirts. I should probably shut up now.

Michigan was also followed by the likes of NYU, Carolina, UCLA, and Virginia. So they're not all small and/or private. The article lists NYU, Penn, and Northwestern as Michigan's overlap schools. U of R's overlap schools are Cornell, Brown, Tufts, NYU and Northwestern. By some transitive property does that mean Michigan and U of R overlap?

Anyway, to spell out the hypocrisy of it all, I thought the list was silly until I found out my school was on it.

Enh, it's still kind of silly.

*raises hand*

I love this show.

When did "sick" become a noun?

I missed that one.

No one is going to think this is funny, but I'm going to tell the story anyway.

The Alto 2s had a sectional rehearsal last night. Always fun. We come early for food and drink before our accompanist shows up and the rehearsing starts. Then we hang around after for more food and drink.

Every time we have a sectional, we agree on something to do as a group in our next regular rehearsal to see if our director notices. We've shown up wearing matching outfits. We did this thing once where we all as a group sat up extra straight in our seats at a certain gesture.

So we have this one song that has a line in it about Naiads. During sectional, when we got to that line, two ladies raised their arms and gave the pageant wave, like they were coming up out of some placid lake or something. Cracked my shit up.

So we decided that when we got to that line in that song in rehearsal today, we'd all put our arms up and wave. When our director announced the song, we all looked at each other in anticipation. We got to that line, and since I was in the front row I turned slightly to sneak a peek out of the corner of my eye. Sure enough, arms waving everywhere, like a big ol' synchronized swimming team. Yes! Our director totally busted out laughing.

Mission accomplished.

LL Cool J was on The View yesterday. I don't even care about the book he was trying to sell. I just like to look at his lips while he talks.

*rowr*

SXSW Interactive festival pass is purchased! Or rather, the current status is "received by sxsw." They give you 48 hours to book a hotel room through them before they finish processing your purchase, if I understand this correctly.

I've missed my 48 hours, but I wanted to see what I could turn up on my own or if anyone else happens to be going or what. Plus my friend that lives there offered me space to crash, too, if need be.

Award travel through Northwest appears to be plentiful (still, so far), so I'm not too worried about booking that immediately. Interactive starts on a Friday. I haven't yet decided if I want to fly down Wednesday night and have all day Thursday to hang out, or if I just want to fly down on Thursday. I really really really wish Mel could come, but it's sounding like things are a little too up in the air with her.

In other travel news, my mom and sis are not coming in a few weeks. They couldn't really afford their tickets, and I could have but it would not have been comfortable. We decided maybe later in the year, with more advance planning. Frankly, I'm not sure either of them will be able to afford it more comfortably then, but I will with a little advance planning. And it gives me more time with my therapist to work up my nerve.

But then I've already got 3.5 vacations in various stages of planning (SXSW, BlogHer, hopefully something with The Boyz, and possibly a trip to Europe in the latter half of the year), so maybe not.

• The Cajun Shrimp Rolls from Trader Joe's are pretty tasty.
• I bought a bottle of ylang ylang-scented shower spray from Target. When I remember to use it, my bathroom smells awesome. And while I'm skeptical about the function and wary of the price point, I'm willing to buy more just because it smells that good.
• I had an idea about something I could do with my other domain (the one with my real name on it). It's career-oriented. I googled around today and found exactly one site that was only tangentially similar. Let's see how lazy I get about it.
• I kind of want to start up a hyperlocal blog like this one, for my own neighborhood. Again, lazy.
• I was gonna skip posting on the whole New Years not-resolutions thing this year, but I had a(nother) revelation, so I'm inspired to write that up. My not-resolutions have actually changed for the first time in several years.
• What typically happens when I have a little extra cash floating around is I get overly excited and I put a chunk towards one of my credit cards. Almost inevitably, I don't anticipate quite right and I pay up a little too much and then I end up strapped for two or four weeks. Sometimes I really fuck it up and end up being short and then the NSF fees cut into the extra I paid up in the first place. I have a little extra right now, and I'm trying really hard to tell myself to simma dow now and be smart with it.
• Somebody left a book of awesome Target coupons sitting in the mailroom at work. I don't know who left them or why, but they're mine now.

• I've decided I like Viognier.
• I've decided the next time I brew it'll be a Belgian.
• I've had some really strange dreams lately. Two involving Fly Girl, one good, one bad. One this morning involving me being topless in a public pool, in which I was a little embarrassed, but also enjoying it.
• I actually flipped the news on this evening specifically to see Sven Sundgaard and he wasn't on and I was disappointed.
• I went to Trader Joe's this evening and the cashier in the wine shop asked me what I had planned for the evening. I had no answer. I couldn't even open my mouth and say, "Nothing." I just shook my head. I don't in the least mind having nothing planned, so I don't know why I had so much trouble admitting that to the guy in the wine shop at Trader Joe's. He then asked me what I was listening to ('cause I had headphones on) and I then had trouble admitting that I was listening to a podcast on personal finance. He did a good job of acting interested and asked me a bit about podcasts.
• Cinnamon Streusel quick bread in the oven. I am so cool I don't even have words for my own coolness.

Stay tuned.

*squee*

These are from my visit to the Bay Area last summer. Post-BlogHer and post-half marathon.

Traffic drowns me out at the end here.

Click To Play

The Marina is not where I usually hang out when I visit.

Click To Play

Having hung out in the Marina all day, I notice it's a little different over here.

Click To Play

• Had a good chat with my boss today about goals. I get my goals mostly given to me, which is fine, so I don't worry about me so much. But I want to know there are bigger and better things in store for our group/department, which it sounds like there are. Plus it's really nice to hear his outsider's perspective on things.
• Had a surprisingly good time at happy hour with co-workers.
• Getting excited for the upcoming choir concert.
• South by Southwest. Haven't actually booked anything yet, but I've figured that it's definitely doable.
• Already planning for BlogHer. I think I've got Wendy convinced to come with.

While at happy hour, I heard a song which I haven't heard in forever: Alana Davis covering Third Eye Blind's I Want You. (Alana Davis, you'll recall, is best known for her cover of Ani DiFranco's 32 Flavors.) Have a listen (right- or control-clicking and saving as, please):

Third Eye Blind - I Want You
Alana Davis - I Want You

Which is your favorite?

My director made the observation last year that I'm one of those people who accomplishes much more when there's much more to be done.

Absolutely true. There were entire days where I did not surf the 'net once. That is highly unusual. Not that that should be the metric, but you know what I mean. Now that I'm less swamped, I'm finding myself less motivated. I have plenty to do, but no emergencies, not much pressure. I'm just not as efficient as I could be.

I keep a post-it note on my monitor with Small Imperfect Start written on it. I forgot where I got that from. Some GTD site somewhere. This is my reminder that I just have to do a little—retrieve a file, write one sentence, file one paper, something, anything—to get going on a task. I don't need to have it all composed in my head or all planned out or whatever.

That message has gotten me over a lot of humps, but it's not doing a whole lot these days. It is, actually, still working well when I choose to follow it. I just... don't. As much.

Q: How many altos does it take to change a light bulb?

I played hooky took some comp time without actually telling anybody had the afternoon off yesterday. Really, it only worked out to be a couple of hours. Didn't get a whole lot extra done, but it was nice to just be free. I did keep my work e-mail open, though, and even responded to a couple.

In other news, new t-shirt! I've been coveting this shirt (which Laura has) for years.

Okay, so I was thinking about this whole SXSW Interactive thing. Can I afford the festival pass? Can I afford a plane ticket? Can I afford accommodations?

Frankly, no idea how much hotel would run. I know you can purchase accommodations right when you buy your festival pass, but I haven't peeked far enough into that process to see what the rates are. I'm wondering how hard it's going to be to find accommodations on my own. Although I just now remembered that I have a friend that lives there.

Festival pass, I can make that work. It's $275 until this Friday, $300 until Feb 9, and $350 after.

The plane ticket is the wild card. My mom and sis will be visiting here in a few weeks, but that's only if I can come up with plane tickets for them. Roundtrips from Detroit to here are running $200. Not too bad. $160 if I spend 10,000 miles on a Cash & Miles ticket. Tickets to Austin are running $320. Or they're freely available at the moment for 25,000 miles.

I only have 32,000 miles in my account right now. So for 2 DTW-MSP tickets and 1 MSP-AUS ticket, it looks like my options are either $640 + 20,000 miles, or $400 + 25,000 miles. No brainer.

Must put in for vacation immediately.

I did an interview today with Minnesota Public Radio. Except that I was the one conducting the interview.

I wrote up Fantasy Legislature on MBTC last week, and the guy in charge of it, Bob Collins, left a comment. I wanted to know more, so I emailed him about it and then I talked to him on the phone today.

I totally didn't realize how high up he was until just now when I looked up that link to his article archive.

I wasn't sure how to go about it at all. Didn't really want to go the trouble of arranging a meeting. I knew I wouldn't be able to concentrate enough to have a conversation and take notes. Email didn't seem adequate. So I ended up talking to him on the phone and recording the conversation as best I could on my laptop with Audacity. I'm sure I was a sight, holding the mouth end of the phone to my mouth and the ear end to the mic on my laptop. The recording came out pretty well, though.

It was sort of intimidating, him being a journalist and me being... not a journalist. Bob made it easy, though. I just asked a few questions here and there and he talked and talked. Very nice and friendly, too.

Now I gotta translate 25 minutes of conversation into something blog-ready.

I brewed my beer yesterday. It smelled so delicious. Lots of malt, and some cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg. The wort was sooo thick. The other brews I've done, the wort was still pretty liquidy at the end. This definitely started to take on some syrupy characteristics.

Put it in the littler glass carboy, pitched the yeast, put the fermentation lock on top, and when I got home today there was a little puddle on the floor.

The fermentation lock has water in it, so gas can bubble out, but air from outside can't get back in. Blow off is when there's so much kraeusen (the foamy product of fermentation) that it can't be contained by the fermenter and stuff backs up into the fermentation lock, actually blows it off the carboy, or, in rare cases, plugs the fermentation lock and blows up the carboy.

So I took off the fermentation lock and took out the cork and instead I have a big rubber hose in the neck of the carboy, and the other end of the hose in a pot of water (again, so the gas can bubble out, and the water blocks air from getting in). Stuff keeps bubbling out, and the bubbling in the pot of water sounds like my faucet is dripping. It's driving me nuts!

The bag of boiled grains is sitting in my trash can. I swore I could smell it from my bedroom last night. I went to bed a little hungry, and not quite tired enough, and this was driving me nuts. And then when I returned home today the grain smell was quite obvious. I might have to fish that out of the trash and take it out to the dumpster.

Tiffany listed hers, and I started to answer in the comments, but it's a long list. Feel free to share your favorites (with me and with Tiffany).

• Addicted to Race -- Race and the media. Started out with focus on mixed race and has evolved a little to encompass race in general.
• alt.NPR: Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything -- "An ongoing attempt at understanding the many diverse and seemingly unrelated threads that make up the human experience." Pretty entertaining. Hasn't been an update in a while.
• Amanda Congdon on ABCnews.com
• AmandaAcrossAmerica -- Done broadcasting, due to the podcast right above this one, but I haven't watched them all yet.
• APM: Future Tense -- "Public radio's daily journal of the digital age."
• APM: Marketplace Money -- The weekend personal finance show.
• APM: Marketplace Money Money Clip -- Occasional videoblog. Sounds pretty much like anything else from Marketplace, only your watching it. Might drop this one.
• Chasing Windmills -- Locally produced four-minute daily soap opera.
• Commonwealth Club Radio Program -- I occasionally hear a Commonwealth Club speech on NPR and I always love it, so it was great to find out they podcast them all.
• Faculty Lectures - Best of Philosophy Talk -- Downloaded, but I haven't listened to any eps yet. Thought it would be a good primer on the subject, but I'm a little wary that it'll be boring/over my head.
• Financial Aid Podcast -- I don't have a financial aid need, but Christopher Penn includes some decent personal finance tips in there and he's also big into the podcasting scene in general.
• Flak Radio -- Weekly radio show from Flak Mag.
• Grey's Anatomy Official Podcast
• In Our Time -- From BBC Radio. "The big ideas which form the intellectual agenda of our age are illuminated by some of the best minds." Haven't listened to this one yet, either.
• Jetset Show -- "A five-minute weekly youth culture show on the web featuring cool, weird, fun, geeky, underground, true-to-life, curious, quirky things and people found online and off." Somewhere between Sesame Street and Wonder Showzen.
• JohnEdwards.com -- So I can start finding out what the guy has to say. His website offers RSS feeds for all the different sections.
• Learn Spanish with Coffee Break Spanish -- Just found it, so I haven't tried it yet. I like to keep practicing, even if just a little.
• Michael Feldman's Whad'Ya Know? -- All the news that isn't.
• Minnesota Stories -- Local community videoblog.
• NCAA DoubleACast -- Podcasts from the NCAA.
• NPR: Story of the Day
• NPR: Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! -- One of my faves.
• NYT: David Pogue -- Tech writer for the NYT. This one's new, too, and I'm kind of expecting to get bored with it, but I'll try it out.
• On The Media -- "Compelling radio that examines the impact of media in our lives." The ep from Xmas week was a hilarious parody of themselves/NPR.
• Out On The Stoop - Videoblog. "A web guide and conversation generator for newbies, concerned citizens and the group mind." Only seen a handful of videos. Jury's still out.
• Rocketboom
• Slate Explainer Podcast -- I can't decide which is more entertaining: Slate's Explainer column, or June Thomas reading with her accent which I think is some sort of British variety, but possibly some regional accent that I'm not used to hearing.
• Starring Amanda Congdon -- One of her personal projects.
• Start the Week -- Pop culture from the British point of view.
• Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog -- AMAZING.
• The L Word -- Showtime's official podcast.
• The Planet: The Podcast for L Word Fans -- Hilarious. More so if you actually watch the show. KC and Elka have a conversation which is a little insidery without being at all alienating. And they're just funny.
• This American Life

Just because the picture is so damn cute.

Via AfterEllen.

I didn't get my act together to inquire about Showtime in time for the season 4 premier of The L Word so I will be(gin) downloading shortly.

This is Candace Parker's 6th dunk of her career (in her second year of eligibility). There have only been 7 others, total, in women's college basketball. But this one was at UConn.

Photo by Michael McAndrews at the Hartford Courant

Yakko's World:

Yakko's World lyrics on Wikipedia. Totally ripped from Andy.

Bonus: Wakko's America!

Wakko's America lyrics also on Wikipedia.

Somewhere on the internet yesterday, I saw the word "terlet" and it's been cracking me up ever since.

Today we had the first of a handful of Saturday choir rehearsals leading up to our February concert. Despite the early hour (rehearsal at 9 a.m.) folks from my section met up beforehand for breakfast at Turtle Bread.

Great time. I was the youngest one there by at least 15 years, but I'm totally okay with that. Gave me the warm fuzzies. I love the singing, but I love the people more.

Someone made a comment about how for the first time in a long time they didn't have fun at rehearsal on Wednesday. When you do two concerts a year with about 20 songs in each, there are always going to be some songs that you don't like. The songs we're working on now are the ones we know the least, and I think they are probably low on a lot of people's favorite list. But after rehearsing them today, I'm feeling better about them. Sometimes it's hard to tell what a song is supposed to sound like until you get all the parts and the accompaniment together. We're finally getting there with those last few songs.

Four weeks until the concert. Can't wait!

I was listening to the latest episode of This American Life and lo and behold a girl I went to high school with was on the episode (see Act One). Right there talking to Ira Glass. Trippy.

So I Googled because I was not familiar with the endeavor which lead to her being on TAL in the first place and I find her myspace. Which means that I find a whole bunch of other people from my high school on myspace. Including my sister, whose myspace I've never even seen. And now I've been clicking through myspace for an hour.

I can't decide if this is better or worse than when my first boyfriend from 7th grade found me on myspace.

WTF does she think she is doing with this Wind it Up business? How the hell do you sample Lonely Goatherd and make it a rap song?

SERIOUSLY. WHAT. THE. FUCK?!

???

I'm not just saying that because it totally ruins the best song from The Sound of Music which is only my favoritest movie ever. No, this is objectively wrong.

You have to be careful when you add that drum line in. Destiny's Child made it work with Lose My Breath. You, Gwen Stefani, you've just made a bad song worse.

I'm clearly not the only one that thinks so, either.

I tried to draw up an outline for the problems with this song, but I got stuck when I couldn't decide what came after that beginning yodel.

I for one hope Julie Andrews, the goatherd, the girl and goat high on the hill, and the girl's mama with the gleaming gloat open a can of musical whoop-ass on you.

I know nothing about Pitchfork except that the hipsters alternately worship and then hate on them, but because it bolsters my argument, I'll throw in that they hate it, too.

Interestingly, all three reviews include Fergie references. What's up with that?

Last weekend I did absolutely nothing and promised I'd make up for it all this weekend. Between last Tuesday and today, I:

• cleaned my bathroom
• cleaned the kitchen (including the floor!)
• updated my resume (just because, not planning anything)
• did not eat out once the week of Xmas
• dusted my living room
• dusted my bedroom
• did laundry
• put up curtains in my office/dining room
• rearranged my living room furniture (again), including reconnecting all the electronics because I decided that I really would rather keep my entertainment center (this could all be more satisfying if I actually had the missing pieces of furniture I see in my head)
• sorted my large piles of mail/paper/magazines/catalogs
• made beef stew
• got this gigantic PC that I no longer have a need for disassembled and off my work table (it's now under the table)

Still to be done today:

• buy white wine to make lemon garlic chicken with
• buy distilled water to brew with
• clean off my kitchen counter that is serving as a junk drawer
• consider reconsidering the items that are currently stuck to my fridge, but probably not actually do anything with them
• work on some work stuff that I should have started before now but frankly, if I've come this far, I might as well wait until I get to work tomorrow

Still to be done this week/end:

• brew
• write xmas post-holiday letter
• find somewhere to donate this PC
• return wireless card I bought for said PC, grumble over only getting store credit, but remember that I have a sizable chunk of store credit from another returned purchase and possibly buy a printer with it all

Items in bold are particular sources of pride. What's next? *dusts hands*