Ah, Sims

Playing The Sims. It is extremely fun, and I love it. Sometimes it also feels like a second job.

I have never in all my born days encountered a game as buggy as Sims 3. It's possible the earlier versions were buggier for Windows users than for us Mac users -- the game was ported to Mac by a separate company, so they could have smoothed some out. Now that Electronic Arts is releasing both versions simultaneously, there's no wait but also no bug-fixing grace period. I don't think it's just that, though. This shit, I am telling you, is BUGGY.

I have a new expansion pack called Late Night. In it your sims live in a city, with apartments, and they get to be famous, all of which is very exciting. What's not exciting is the lag. There is a CRAZY amount of lag in the new expansion pack, which I played with heavily this weekend. When I found myself, instead of relaxed enjoying my delightful Sims game, tensed up, clenching my teeth, and screaming at my stupid sims to stop standing around thinking about ghosts and get in the fucking shower already, I decided it was time to quit for a while.

WHY it's so laggy I don't know. They will probably issue a patch at some point; they usually do, eventually. In the meantime, though, it's making gameplay difficult to say the least. The lags only occur in between actions; it's not a slowed-down pace overall. The sims will stand in "idle sim" mode -- doo dee doo, tapping their feet, thinking about that time they burned the waffles or whatever -- even though there is an action in their queue that they're supposed to be doing. This has always been the case with this game, but the lags between actions have been minuscule until now -- a quick pause before they hop to. Now they sometimes last several game-hours. My sims keep missing work, peeing their pants in public because they won't go to the bathroom (as you can imagine, this is particularly scandalous when you are famous, as my sims now are, and they are constantly miserable because they keep being publicly disgraced), refusing to get in the elevator, etc. This is all compounded by the fact that the new version of the game has elevators and trains -- which is cool! -- but which means that to get somewhere the sim now has to take a bunch of steps. Each step is a new opportunity for him to forget what he is doing and stand around like the dumb little robot he is, while I tear my hair out in frustration. Is it any wonder that sometimes they're not only late to work, but don't make it there before work ends?

Oh, there's also the issue of the fast speed not working. The game speeds up when your sims are asleep so you don't have to sit there staring at the walls for eight game hours. When the base game first came out, the fast speed wasn't fast. This was eventually fixed by a patch. It is now un-fixed, so I was back to having a magazine at my desk so I had something to do while they were slowly, slowly sleeping. Bit of a momentum-killer.

Perhaps all this wouldn't be quite so annoying, even, if I hadn't had to jump through hoops to install the damn thing in the first place. Trying to play after installing the expansion pack initially gave me something helpfully named "unknown error" before the game even started. The EA forums (my second home at a time like this -- and populated by helpful users, not by EA staff, who rarely appear) suggested a full reinstall. So uninstall and then reinstall I did -- over the course of a few days, because it was very time-consuming -- the base game, followed by the three expansion packs, one after another, including serial numbers, followed by a restoration of all my data. After this painstaking process (and after one "unauthorized disc" error causing me to quit the game and start it again, which I barely noticed because that happens about half the time), it FINALLY worked. I was very tired of fixing the game and very ready to PLAY the game, and it was great to be able to play it for a while and then perhaps doubly infuriating to be slowly drowned under lag.

After I finally came to my senses and quit, I went back to the EA forums to see if anyone was complaining about THIS error. Plenty were, of course. I posted a grumpy rant about it in one of the threads dedicated to this issue, and then logged off. And had a drink. Because I needed to relax. After playing this game. Which stressed me out quite a bit. Which is not how a videogame is supposed to work.

This morning, I logged on to see if there were any responses to my post. Indeed, someone had posted a possible solution -- user-created, of course; again, we rarely hear from EA on these issues. It was from another user, who'd heard it from a third user, who'd heard it from a fourth.

Reinstall the game? Delete custom content? Increase RAM? Nope. In a nutshell, the trick to putting a stop to the infuriating game lag, apparently, is:

Delete the fire station. Change the old fire station lot to residential. Change a different lot to commercial. Put the fire station there.

Yup. I haven't tried it yet. But four people have said it fixes all the lag issues and makes Bridgeport run smoothly. Even before trying it, somehow this has melted away most of my animosity toward the game, AGAIN. Because it's HILARIOUS. Of course moving the fire station fixes everything. Of course it does.

THIS GAME IS SO SILLY. And the amount of mental energy I expend on it is so ridiculous. But...it's my Sims. I CAN'T HELP IT. IT IS A SICKNESS.

It's been not quite 24 hours since I quit playing the game in disgust, and now I can't wait to go in there and see if moving the fire station works. WHY WOULDN'T IT?

I am recovering

from a MONSTER DOUGHNUT BINGE. Man. I barely REMEMBER the last two days.

OK, that's an exaggeration. But yesterday I did have a total doughnut binge. There's a doughnut place near me, a nice townie place that has gotten a lot of rapturous Yelp reviews but which I'd never been to. Someone in my office, who lives kind of far away but had once made a special trip to this very doughnut place just to try the doughnuts, got super excited when he found out I lived near there. I said I'd pick some up on the way in. He kicked in the cash, which was awesome. I got a dozen. Half honey-dipped (that means glazed) and assorted others. The place is right on my bus route, so I just hopped on my usual bus. When I got to work, I was greeted as liberators. Dick Cheney would have been proud. We plunked the box down and started housing.

These doughnuts are fantastic. The Yelp people did not lie. And if you've ever read Yelp reviews, you know that those people will deduct stars if like, a dog outside the restaurant gives them a slightly chilly look. Or if once they went to India and the Indian food there was slightly better. Or if the chairs are too comfortable. Yelp Nation is a bunch of petty, power-crazed wannabe-foodies most of the time. Yet these doughnuts somehow escaped their ire. And I can understand why. They were huge. They were floaty and doughnutty. They were all that a doughnut can be and more. They didn't taste like old coffee and the depressing feeling of unrealized potential like Dunkin's. They didn't taste like an atomic bomb of eye-bulging sugary fatty insanity that perhaps would be better left in its specially designed containment case like Krispy Kreme. They tasted just right, with just right dialled up and up. If these doughnuts were a first-season Star Trek: TNG episode, they would be "The Big Goodbye." Which is a really good episode. For Season 1. I could have tried to pick the best ep of the whole series but I barely remember them all and that felt like too much pressure. Anyway. Those doughnuts were delicious.

I probably only had a total of like, two and a half doughnuts yesterday. It's just that I was eating them all day. My blood was never clear of them. I ate one right off the bat, then throughout the day would eat sections of them. Mostly it went like this:

ME: I don't feel good. I kind of have a headache and I feel all jittery.

ME: It's probably from the doughnuts.

ME: Doooooouuuuuughnuts. Hey, I wonder if there are any left?

ME: *eats more doughnut*

This happened about 75 times throughout the course of the day. At least so I assume, since the day is a sugary, delicious blur.

Anyway, I woke up this morning with what I literally think was a doughnut hangover. True, I also had a glass of wine after dinner. But either there was some tequila in that wine (I THINK I would remember spiking my own wine with tequila), or it was the doughnuts. Had a bit of a time rolling out of bed.

Of course, I got to work and the first thing I did was check if there were any doughnuts left.

Which there were. And I ate another one.

Now they're all gone. The plague has run its course. Hopefully tomorrow I will be back in fighting form.

Good thing that doughnut place is far away so I won't be tempted ever again. Oh, wait.

Groceries and blog posts

Well, I think I'm off the blog-every-day train. I had a busy weekend and I'm not going to spam up a storm to catch up. I'm calling it good. However, I still intend to blog OFTEN. Just not every day necessarily.

I am reporting on two money things that have made me happy over the last couple of days.

1. I'm buying a new refrigerator!

OK, that doesn't sound like a money-saver, it's true. But my fridge has been old and leaky for a LONG while, and I have been meaning to buy one. It is last on a list I've had since I bought my condo of Big-Ticket Items I Need And/Or Want. This list has included: a new bathroom (that was the biggest ticket), a rug for the living room (done), bedroom furniture (bed, bureau, matching bookshelves -- all done), bedroom rug (done), tapestry thing to hang behind bed so I don't wake up in the night worrying that the heavy frame above my bed is going to fall on me -- neuroses, I has them (done), new electrical (not done, but if I ever have money again that will likely be the next big thing I tackle), kitchen island and chairs ('STOOOOOOORRRRP) (done), new stove (someday, maybe, but mostly what I want is a range hood, and I think what I really need to do is look into getting my kitchen entirely redone, and that is not going to happen right now, so the 'Storp will do very nicely for the moment).

The fridge became more urgent recently because my neighbor told me there was a bit of water coming through her ceiling. This may be because of how the last person who owned my place INEXPLICABLY WALLED IN THE PORCH to make A LARGE BUT OTHERWISE USELESS CLOSET (no electricity, no insulation). I know closets are great, but I happen to have plenty of them (that's what comes of living on the third floor where the edges of all your rooms are sloped in such a way as to be largely useless as living space), and I would SO rather have a porch. Where the porch used to be, on the outside of the house, there is a square, the size of the porch, that's set in about six inches. Like, they filled in the porch but didn't make the wall flush with the rest of the house. Why? I don't know.

Anyway, this weird ineptly constructed corner area might be the source of the water. OR, it might be my fridge. Because, you see, my fridge leaks water, and has since I got the place. Not all the time, but often. This has worried me for a long time, yet I have continually put off buying a fridge. Because the water will stop, or because I need to clean it out and haven't done it, or because I need to measure doorways, or because buying a fridge is boring and buying bedroom furniture is fun. Now, of course, getting a new fridge has risen in importance. But my lack of money has also risen in importance.

Enter the Best Buy e-mail circular, which happened to be promoting a 30% off sale on a fridge that I had looked at before (the regular freezer-on-top kind -- I'm not messing around with your fancy unconventional fridges), that was cheap already, that had reversible doors, and that will fit through the doorway, which I measured a few months ago when I was half-assedly planning to get a fridge then. Thus I am able to get a fridge that I had already looked at and basically decided I wanted, for $370 instead of $599. This did not seem as if it was likely to get any better, so I went for it. So I'll have one more heavy credit-card month. BUT it needed to be gotten, I'm satisfied that I got a sweet deal (it was another $70 for delivery, but I'd call that well worth it, especially since they'll take the old one away), and after this I will stop worrying about the fridge leaking, and if the neighbor still has water in the ceiling at least I'll know it isn't that and is probably the $%#*ing porch/closet.

2. Yes, 2! This is a list! I had a 1 up there. Remember? That was like nine paragraphs ago. 2 is, I have wholeheartedly committed to a lifestyle in which I had merely dabbled in the past. This lifestyle is a lifestyle of SANDWICHES.

You see, I really QUITE enjoy a nice lunchmeat sandwich. Meat, cheese, mustard and a couple of tomato slices and I am very happy. I could eat that quite a lot. Yet I don't eat it very often, and mostly that's because I am a complete spaz about having any more than one or two of the hypothetically required number of perishable ingredients for anything on hand at any given time. Sometimes I'll buy lunchmeat, but I won't have any bread, or the bread will be stale even though it's in the freezer (this is utterly unfair because everyone knows that the freezer stops time), or I'll have bought whole wheat bread out of guilt but it's too gross and I don't want it, or the bread pieces are too small and hence the sandwich is too small, or the cheese will be moldy, or the mustard will be old, or I won't have any tomatoes. Occasionally I think "I should take a sandwich to work once in a while," but I never get it together to make one.

I know this makes me sound like the most pathetically lame person ON EARTH, and I can't really disagree. It's not that I'm incapable of making a sandwich. It's that I'm usually too disorganized to complete all the steps necessary prior to making the sandwich, and then remember to actually make it before I go to bed, or alternatively get up in time to make it, and then remember to bring it to work, and then not abandon it in favor of a burrito bowl or something. And even if I do bring it, I'm always worried that I'll still be hungry, because I have some sort of deep-seated caveman fear of not having enough to eat at lunch.

So yesterday at the store I bought:

• three kinds of lunchmeat (ham, roast beef, salami)
• provolone (a HUGE THING of provolone -- 44 slices -- which was $10 but was a WAY better deal than 8 slices for $3.99)
• two sliceable tomatoes
• some whole wheat, but not gross, and generously sized, bread
• some green bananas that will not be all brown and gross in a day and a half
  
• some pretzel chips

I made my sandwich last night. I had RECENTLY bought some mustard that is not anywhere near to being expired. I packed my sandwich, the least green of the bananas, and some pretzel chips in a baggie. I brought it to work and ate it and ENJOYED IT THOROUGHLY. I did not feel deprived. My inner caveman did not demand that I also eat a slice of pizza or something.

I plan to do this every day, or nearly. And I know this is like, halfway-house levels of sad self-sufficiency, but I'm proud of myself. It's not that I learned to make a sandwich, it's that I learned to be happy with a sandwich.

My alternate sandwich is going to be peanut butter and banana. Because this is the best sandwich of all time, and yet I hardly ever make it because I never have any bananas. Now I plan to outfit myself with a steady supply of bananas, so I will have one on hand when I need one. I will also have bread, and I will lay out a bit more cash for some peanut butter that is less than three years old, and then the magic will happen.

I spent way more money at the grocery store than I wanted to. But with any luck, it will provide me with like, a month of lunches.

Baaaaaaby steeeeeeps.

Room

So I'm reading the book I got out yesterday -- Room, by Emma Donoghue. It is not just better than Lucy (the one about the ape girl). It's like, a million times better. It's riveting. I went to Target after work, then got home and parked on the couch and read for two and a half hours. There was a suspenseful part, and I actually started SHAKING while I was reading it. I put a blanket on in case I was cold, but I kept shaking, and I only stopped once the suspenseful part was over.

It's so transporting that I feel kind of crazy now. I finally stopped reading because I was hungry, because it was 9:30 and I hadn't had dinner. I watched Community, but in the episode everyone turned into zombies, and it freaked me out. Now I'm watching Project Runway and starting to feel normal, finally.

The last book I felt this sucked into, I think, was Into Thin Air, the one about climbing Mt. Everest by Jon Krakauer. I remember my roommate calling me for dinner, and I felt like I couldn't breathe, like I didn't have enough oxygen. I remember eating dinner and feeling crazy and like I was still on a mountain. This book is like that.

I think I'm done for the night though. If I start reading in bed I'll be up til 3 in the morning. I'm already sure to have crazy dreams.

So, yeah. Good book.

Library win!

So there's another book I want to read. I checked for it in the library catalog of where I work, and two copies were listed. One was ordered, but not yet received. The other one was at the main library and was checked out. I requested it and quickly found that I was sixth on the list. So, no worries, the line will move slowly but it will move, and one day I'll get an e-mail that it's in and it will be an awesome surprise.

Today I went to check my request to see if the line had moved at all. Sure enough, I was now fifth. Woo-hoo! That's not the win though.

I idly clicked on the other copy, and it was no longer on order -- it was listed as being at the other library, AND NOT CHECKED OUT. One copy had five requests on it, including mine. The other copy, somehow, mysteriously, was AVAILABLE. So I booked it (har har) over to the library, afraid the book would disappear before I got there, despite the fact that I idiotically wore rain boots with no socks to walk to work this morning and have literally about 12 blisters. I ran to its place on the shelf, and -- it wasn't there. Oh well. Too good to be true. I had brought the last book I took out to return, so it wasn't a waste of a trip, even though I would not have chosen to go today with super hurty blistered feet.

As I was handing over my old book at the circ desk, at the last minute I figured it couldn't hurt to ask. She checked, and, guess what? The book I wanted was so new it was on THE NEW BOOKS SHELF. And bonus: The new books shelf was opposite the circ desk, like ten feet away. I didn't even have to walk anywhere else; I just turned around and there it was. Faced out to boot.

So, that's right, I somehow jumped the line of five people and got the OTHER copy of this book. In fact? I'm the first to check it out. It's a 28-day loan, but I'm quite certain it will get requested long before that once it occurs to someone else to check the catalog again and the jig is up. But until then, it's mine, ALL MINE!

Now, hopefully it's better than the ape-girl book.

Small victories, man! Small. Victories.

The Last Pretzel Rolls of Summer

Today was the last farmers' market at work. I brought my lunch (yay me), but I decided to get some tomatoes (I eat quite a lot of tomatoes) and two pretzel rolls. I am obsessed with pretzel rolls, and on Tuesdays in the summer I often have them for...well, with...lunch. They're from Mariposa Bakery. I don't know why they're so awesome. I don't know what it is that makes them taste like pretzels. I suppose this means I don't know what pretzels actually are. But whatever they are, these rolls are that. They are also salted on the top, which takes them over the line into awesome city.

I was too full from lunch to eat them then, but I took them home for dinner.

Sometimes when I bring pretzel rolls home I forget to eat them. This is a tragedy. They also come in a paper bag and I often forget to put them in a plastic bag (which you need to do beyond 12 hours or so), and then they get stale, sometimes much more quickly than I expected. Sometimes they're burned, and sometimes if you wait too long to eat them the salt sort of alternately melts into them and falls off. This is terribly disappointing and anticlimactic.

Sometimes I go overboard and get like four. This is never a good idea because I'm either forcing myself to eat pretzel rolls that I don't really want or I'm throwing out stale pretzel rolls a few days later.

So, at least partially because I'm thinking about money, I was quite determined to eat them both tonight and for them not to be stale. I didn't put them in plastic, but I made sure not to leave the paper open at least. I was pretty hungry when I got home, but I hate eating right when I get home, so I waited, even as I was somewhat worried that they were losing their mojo. And I just ate 'em, and they were both GLORIOUS. Soft and pretzely and not burned and with the salt all perched perkily on top. Soooooooo good.

A fitting end to the farmers' market season. (Also for dinner: tomatoes and cheese. Later, possibly, pudding.)

Although, as my sister often reminds me, if I really want them during the rest of the year I only have to go to Central Square. But, I don't know. It wouldn't be the same. See you next summer, pretzel rolls.

The Event

is getting kinda cool. I wouldn't call it a new Lost. But...it's getting kinda cool.

Soooooo, I don't have much more than that to say, but I wanted to log two posts today since I skipped yesterday. :P

I'm just saying, The Event is not half bad. Check it out sometime, won't you.

Money

I'm kind of freaking out about it.

My sister/roommate moved out, and also took her car. So I lost rent money and also gained a car payment. I have a nice cheap lease, but it's still a payment. Net result: Approximately $800 less a month than I'm used to. That is...kind of a lot.

I knew this was going to happen, but the reality of it is still sinking in. I am hurting over here. I have been working hard this month to eat lunch out less (which requires lots and lots of planning, which I am not good at, but I'm trying), and have bought nothing other than groceries and gifts, except for one $5 can of Behandla. I STILL can't make all my bills without transferring from savings. I HAVE savings, for the moment, but if this keeps up I won't have savings anymore.

I've stopped paying extra on my mortgage -- I was paying about $250 extra/month. That has helped a bit. I wonder if I can refinance. Except that will also cost money. Auuugh.

I really really really really do not want to have to get a second job. That would blow.

I just need to tighten everything down, to a way greater degree than I was doing before. That's all. I can do it.

Being a grown-up is hard. And Christmas is coming up, groan.

This post is not fun. Sorry.

Steamboy

This was the least Japanese Japanese movie I've ever watched. I usually watch animes with the original audio, but this one takes place in England, the subtitles seemed suspiciously vague (as subtitles often are), and I switched to English after a few minutes. I'm glad I did, because one of the voices is Patrick Stewart! Yay! And I just IMDB'd it and the boy main character is Anna Paquin. Nice.

I just liked it. The art was really good. Maybe better than Metropolis even. (Anime Metropolis, I mean.) This is steampunk, I guess. It's pretty groovy. Giant machines are cool. Steam seems a little unstable though. Seems to blow up a lot of pipes, etc.

And it was very European. Not like a fake Japanese-y Europe like Kiki's Delivery Service. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I really appreciated that all the Manchester people, in the English dub, had Manchester-y accents. Wikipedia says that they spent 10 years working on this movie. It does look very polished. And it makes sense, which is more than I can say for some animes I've seen.

OK, I'll be honest: the thing is still on, and I'm bored, because it's the shooting part, and the shooting part is very long. But I won't count that against it because most people enjoy the shooting parts. And up until that part I quite liked it. I won't post this until it's over, just in case it goes horribly wrong or something.

All right. It's done. After the shooting it got pretty good again. I'll still take Miyazaki over this kind of thing any day, but I'm glad I watched it. Also, now I can return it, and get more Mad Men. Hee hee.

In which I fail at Behandla-ing

I really slobbed it on there this time, and left a bunch just slimed up on the top so it would really sink in. Then I forgot to wipe it off for two hours. It's supposed to be wiped off after 15 minutes. Whoops.

I actually think it looks good though. It's really shiny and awesome. I scrubbed it off as well as I could. Didn't see any streaks or anything. The Stenstorp wants me to be bold. It's like a big oily wooden oracle.

For the record, I had pizza today. Whew. Now, I'm having a leftover burrito. I really loved those burritos, but I think I may be cured of burritos for a while after this. This is the trouble with me. I crave variety. When variety is not available, salt will usually do as a substitute.

Anyway, now it's time for MAD MEN MAD MEN MAD MEN MAD MEN MAD MEN MAD MEN MAD MEN MAAAAAAAD MEEEEEEEEN. (Those are the lyrics, you know.)

Pizza

Pizza is one of those foods where all I have to do is think about it for a SECOND, and I crave it.

I was all ready to have a leftover sweet potato and black bean burrito (very delicious), or some leftover rice with steak in it (also delicious). But I was watching last week's Office, and they were eating pizza and now ALL I WANT IS A PIZZA. Even the WORD "pizza" makes me want pizza. It's full of z's and triangles and the p and the a are like pepperoni. OMG I WANT PIZZA SO HARD.

Sometimes even the colors green and red together make me want pizza. Because of some old pizza box I had when I was a kid or something. Just the fact that I titled this post "Pizza" pretty much guarantees that I will eat pizza the next time I see it.

I'm probably not going to EAT any pizza, because I don't have any, and I don't feel like waiting for delivery because it's 7:45, and also I'm trying to be frugal and not get takeout all the time. But it is tempting. Indeed, it is tempting.

I said "one of those foods" up there, but I don't think any other food has this power over me. Though Mexican comes close.

I do have some pizza-flavored goldfish, and I am fairly sure that I'm about to eat about 150 of those.

Well. Off to do that then.

Behandla 2

So according to the Stenstorp instructions I'm supposed to Behandla it every other day for a week, then every three days for the next week, or something like that. So tonight was Scheduled Stenstorp Behandla-ing Number 2. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to sand it again or not. I did, though, because it was feeling a little rough. Maybe the oil opens up the wood's...pores or something? I don't know. I sanded, and then I put on rather more Behandla than I did last time. This time when I go to wipe off the excess I think there might actually be some excess to wipe off. I have a feeling this is closer to how I'm supposed to do it. I JUST WANT TO PROTECT YOU, STENSTORP.

I must say, the 'Storp looks pretty fine all oiled up and glistening. If butcher-block kitchen islands did porn, the 'Storp would be Ron Jeremy. Or something like that.

I Behandla'd my kitchen floor a little bit by accident. I wiped it up with the same cloth that already had the Behandla on it, which I was aggressively rinsing in hopes that it wouldn't explode SHUT UP THE THING SAID IT COULD EXPLODE. So part of my floor is probably going to be all shiny and fancily oiled. If it doesn't explode.

That, I think, is all I have to say about Behandla. Or Stenstorps. FOR NOW.

This is the best blog ever.

Reading is FUN...again

I forgot to post last night. Whoops! I'll count this as yesterday's.

I requested a book at the library, and yesterday afternoon got an e-mail that it was in. I went to get it and got the same kind of heady excited feeling I used to get as a kid coming home from the library with fresh books to read.

I've been reading more lately. I posted a while back that I was trying to accelerate catching up on all my magazines so I could get back into the habit of reading books. I've sort of done that -- I am definitely better at skimming than I used to be. But I'm still not caught up. So I sort of gave up on being caught up. Instead of a grand plan to get all my magazines read so that after I achieve that mythical goal, I can read a book again, I just...started reading books again.

And it's awesome! Because I love reading books. And I forgot that it's a totally different feeling. When I got my book from the library after work yesterday, I couldn't WAIT to get to the bus so I could crack it open. I read at the bus station, I read on the bus, and I got home and read half the night. (Which is one reason I forgot to write a blog post.)

I'm trying not to overthink stuff. Which is hard for me. And of course I'm overthinking the "Don't overthink stuff!" thing. But, one immediate benefit has been that I've read a bunch of books I've enjoyed. And some I haven't enjoyed that much. Which is also fine! Because everything I read doesn't have to be a masterpiece.

Take my current book, for example. To be honest, it's not that great. It's written sort of amateurishly, to the point where I was wondering if it was a YA book. (Not that that means bad writing; the last book I read was also YA and was quite awesome.) But it's very weird. I kind of don't know how it got published, actually. But the story is compelling. I am not into trashy romance novels or trashy chick-lit novels, but I am way into somewhat trashy vaguely-sci-fi novels about monkey people.

So, it's all good. (Maybe I should end every blog post that way.)

BBL.

My Stenstorp has been Behandla'd!

I finally made it to Ikea and bought Behandla oil. And I just slapped it on the 'Storp. I feel..somehow complete. (Now I have to do it like 70 more times, according to the instructions.) First you sand, then you smear on the Behandla, then let it sit for a while, then wipe off the excess. I don't think I really had much excess, but I did it anyway, because some horror story on those woodworking forums I was reading mentioned having gunky oil buildup. Also, it didn't explode. Yet. I rinsed the rag pretty thoroughly and laid it out to dry on my metal futon frame, so at least if it gets hot it won't set anything but itself on fire. Hopefully.

Also, as you may have noticed, I skipped like a week and a half of blogging there. That's because I went up to Maine for the long weekend, which was awesome but which did not feature Internet access. Then I came home and procrastinated. But I'm back, baby. I didn't blog every day for a month, but I'm going to blog for 30 days, just with a 12-day blank spot in the middle.

Um, so. I'm about to eat some cheese for dinner. That's pretty cool.

Two thoughts

before I go to bed and watch Mad Men even though I frigging have to get up for work tomorrow.

1. Raising Hope is a funny show. It's only been three episodes, but so far, it is a hundred percent good. It's not the FUNNIEST show I've ever seen -- that would be -- OK, I was about to go with 30 Rock, but if I'm honest, I think it's still The Simpsons. 30 Rock has the unfortunate Jane Krakowski factor. It's an uncreative answer but I can't help it. We cannot let these important decisions be dictated by the winds of fashion. Anyway, Raising Hope. Not as funny as The Simpsons. But it's consistently, harmoniously funny. A pitch-perfect mix of sweet and tart. I shall continue to watch it.

2. I was going to go to a lecture on the origins of Chinese writing tonight. I went to dinner with my family instead. I think I made the right choice. (There's still cuneiforms next week, anyway.) Also, on the menu were a bunch of nightly specials. The Thursday one was penne polpette. I was so sad that it wasn't the Wednesday one. I looked at everything on the menu and couldn't stop thinking about meatballs and wishing there was some way I could have them even though they were for Thursday. I looked back at the list of specials -- and I had read it wrong. The meatballs were for Wednesday.

I love when that happens. (They were delicious. And I have leftovers.)

OFFICE!!! PASTRIES!!!

Office pastries. Office pastries office pastries OFFICE PASTRIES MMMMMM MANY SUGARY LEFTOVER PASTRIES. THAT I HAD FOR LUNCH. ALONG WITH SOME LEFTOVER SHRIMP SO I TECHNICALLY HAD PROTEIN. Sooooooo many pastries of different flavors. HYPER HYPER HYPER HYPER HYPER.

This should last another half hour or so, and then I'll keel over at my desk.

Which will be when it's time for tea. TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA TEA!

It's a wonder I make it through the day sometimes.

Heat

On Saturday I took my living-room air conditioner out.

On Sunday, I woke up and it was 64 in the house. Hello, fall!

I didn't turn on the heat on Sunday. It seemed too fast. I mean, air conditioner! In my window, the day before! It had been in the high 70s the previous week. Yes, it's technically October, but -- I wore flip-flops to work on Friday!

So I sat under a blanket while I ate my breakfast, I wore a bunch of layers, I took out the window fan in the dining room so I could shut that window. I opened all the shades in hopes the sun would warm up the house. It did, a little, but it was a kind of cloudy day. When I was moving around I was fine. When I wasn't, I'd bust out the blanket. I wore socks.

This morning, I woke up and the house was 63. It's supposed to be cloudy for most of the week, it's not supposed to go above 64 before Friday, and I had to take a shower. So I turned on the heat. I only had it on for about half an hour, and then I turned it back off once the house was comfy.

Why am I rationalizing it? Because I'm a New Englander. And being miserly about the heat is our way. People will get into these contests about how long they can go without turning on the heat. I used to do this too, or at least feel guilty if I didn't get at least past the middle of October without caving.

But then one time I read a Boston.com (really, Globe, but I haven't read a paper Globe in, oh, one million years or so) article about this phenomenon, and in the comments -- always a pleasant garden of courteous, friendly fun, the Boston.com comments -- there were people talking about November, December; about wearing coats inside; about giving their kids a whole bunch of blankets. Someone said he didn't touch the heat until it was below 55 in the house. It was around the time someone mentioned his BABY that I thought, you know what? This is IDIOTIC. Saving money and energy is ALL well and good. But we don't live in treehouses or sheds. I'm not saying we should crank it up to 80 and prance around the house in a bathing suit. But, I'm sorry, I'm not letting the house get down to 55. I'm not wearing a down coat, hat, and mittens inside. I have things to do, man. And I sure as HELL would not let it get that cold if I had a BABY.

Now, I'm not talking about people who can't AFFORD heat and literally have to choose between eating or not wearing outdoor clothes indoors. I'm talking about Yankee cheapskates whose main reason for holding off on the heat is for bragging rights, or to win some made-up competition, like in A Christmas Story when the dad has this ongoing contest with himself for how quickly he can change a tire. I mean, do what you want! But I'm out.

I layer quite a bit in the winter, including scarves if necessary. I'm pretty anal about turning off lights. I recycle. I can get slightly psychotic about reusing napkins and plates (I'm not averse to, if I have a bagel for breakfast, brushing the crumbs off that plate and using it for a sandwich at lunch). I wash my clothes in cold water. The highest I ever turn up the heat is 70, for an hour or so in the morning when I'm getting out of bed; the rest of the time (when I'm home, and awake) it's at 68. And, of course, I save plenty of energy in the summer, since it wouldn't even occur to me to wish for air conditioning until it hits 82 or so. I broke down and bought two window units this summer, as I've mentioned, but I didn't use them all that much. It was a hell of a summer, so I can't say I was sorry to have them, but it's the first year I've really felt I needed them.

See, still justifying. I can't help it. It's in my blood.

Anyway. I turned the heat on this morning. And then I got dressed in contentment instead of feeling like I had to curl up in the fetal position under the blanket when I got out of the shower. It's off now, but if it's freezing in the house when I get home, I might turn it on again. And I might turn it on tomorrow morning too. And if it stays chilly, I might LEAVE it on, EVEN THOUGH it's only early October. Because heat is there to heat you, not to prove what a tough old bastard you are. And I don't like being miserable. Sooooo theeeeere.

Is there anything more delicious

than Cheez-Its? I mean. I made myself a delicious dinner tonight: couscous with pork and onions and squash, and it was super yummy and I even made myself use half whole wheat couscous because I am grudgingly trying to be healthy.

But man, I'm looking at the Cheez-Its and feeling lust in my heart. Even the reduced-fat ones.

Also acceptable: goldfish. What IS it about baked-in cheese?

And yet I don't like asiago cheese bagels. They just gross me out.

Profound thoughts, people. Profound thoughts. Blogging every day for a month. I'm gonna make it.

I cleaned my house today

I hate cleaning the house. But I love HAVING a clean house. Right now I'm sitting in my living room just basking in it. I also put candles on the dining room table, which now looks awesome.

Remember when I said I would never really be a hoarder because I have tipping points when stuff gets too messy? Well, they all tipped today. Too many clothes on the floor, too many dishes, too many catalogs, too many balls of fluff. So I cleaned it all.

It's nice to know the system works.

Catching up on sleep

is not a real thing. Right? You can't go a week of staying up too late and getting up too early, and then sleep for an extra couple of hours on Saturday and it's all magically fixed.

Suuuuuuuure feels good though. Ahhhhhhhh.

Who you gonna call?

David Duchovny, apparently. Had a dream last night that David Duchovny was, basically, a ghost hunter. Not quite a ghostbuster, with proton packs, &c., but his job was to come to a house and basically shoot lightning out of his hands, which would destroy the house but also chase out any ghosts. I think he would also fly through the house while the lightning was shooting out. Surprisingly, this did not, in my dream, have anything to do with The X-Files. It might have had something to do with The Sims though.

So I was like, his wife or something, which was not in the context of sexy tiems, but I had to follow him around and keep his paperwork and shit. I think a lot of the dream was me sitting around waiting for him to finish doing his ghost-zapping thing so we could leave.

But then there was this part where we were on a talk show, and the talk show was hosted by Ryan Seacrest. Three of us were on a couch: ghost-zapping David Duchovny, then me, and then next to me and closest to Seacrest, Joel McHale. With no shirt on. (I did watch Community right before bed last night, though Joel, improbably enough, kept his shirt on during that episode.)

And also Ryan Seacrest, the talk-show host, was partly sunk into the floor. His head, hands and feet were showing. I don't think he was actually dematerialized, but he did look sort of like Mr. Potato Head, with his head right above his feet. I remember feeling annoyed at him that he wouldn't climb all the way up through the floor (which was a pattern of black-and-white squares) to do the talk-show interview. Quit half-assing, Seacrest!

That's it. What it means, I do not know. I'm glad David Duchovny has finally found a way to put those lightning-shooting hands to use, though.

I have nothing to write about

because I waited too long to post and now I'm too sleepy.

Let's see, after work I went for wings and a beer (it's pretty awesome to say "Eight wings please" and they're like "That'll be two dollars"), then to my sister's to watch Glee (my DVR borked it), then home. Just watched SVU, which is actually not terrible so far this year. They had a couple of bad years there. Like, really, hilariously bad. Like, there's a rapper with a gold necklace and a hyena eats him and the reason they figure that out is they find the hyena hanging around the rapper's house with the gold necklace dripping out of his mouth bad. (If you want to murder someone by having a hyena eat them, why would you LEAVE THE HYENA THERE? Really.)

So this year it has not yet sunk to that level of ridiculous. Of course, it's only been three episodes. There's still time to add a hyena-related twist or two.

Robots

OK, this whole blogging every single day thing is starting to take a bit of a toll, in that I can't think of what to write about. So I'm staring at the blank blog page, at my title, Tea and Robots, and I realized I have blogged about neither tea nor robots, except for the time I posted about Wall-E. So, what the hey: I am presenting my Top Ten Robots Of TV And Movies. Because, you see, I like robots quite a lot. So here we go. These, BTW, are not in any particular order, except for Wall-E probably.

1. Wall-E. I think he's my favorite. It's Pixar, for God's sake; how can he not be? He is dorky, lovable, and steadfast (he keeps collecting garbage on Earth for a thousand years or however long it is). I could easily make this an all-Wall-E list, but I'll just stick all the Wall-E robots in here: I also love Eve, I cry every time her theme plays, and I named my iPhone after her. And I love Mo and Burn-E and the dispenser guy in the Burn-E short who hands Burn-E the lights, and the one who learns to wave at them, and PR-T the hairdressing robot, and all of them. The thing about Pixar is, anthropomorphizing stuff is their specialty. The same way the jumping lamp in the logo is delightful is how Wall-E is delightful. They're geniuses. End of story and onto the next.

2. David from A.I. There are not many who are as fond of that movie as I am. I know it has plenty of flaws, but it gets me right here. David is the little boy robot played by Haley Joel Osment who's "adopted" by a couple whose real little boy is in a coma. His "mother" goes through the long programming sequence that bonds David to her forever. Then their asshole real kid wakes up, makes David's life a living hell, and eventually provokes David into almost drowning him, so the parents decide they have to get rid of him. His weeping mother leaves him on the side of the road, and he tries to run after her and JFC I'M NOT MADE OF STONE. Then he spends the rest of the movie trying to find her, because he can't stop loving her because HE'S PROGRAMMED TO LOVE HER, IT'S NOT HIS FAULT. And a bunch of stuff happens at the end that also makes me cry because I'm a sap and I love robots. Best movie ever. (Not really.)

3. Lal from Star Trek: TNG. This was Data's "daughter" that he somehow made one time for some reason I forget in like season 3 or something. Here's a secret: Despite my love of robots, I was never super into Data. I like Brent Spiner, and I enjoyed Data's one-liners, but every time they did a "Data goes to the holodeck and learns to [fill in the blank] so he can learn what it means to be human" I just kind of groaned. They really REALLY flogged that stuff and it got cheesy. And don't get me started on the emotion chip bullshit. Anyway, but one day Data made Lal and she was really kind of a simpleton and he eventually had to deactivate her, for reasons I also forget, and I remember that whole thing so vaguely that she probably should not be in my top ten list. But I liked her, and she was so much less annoying than Data. (Who in turn was still a billion times less annoying than Lore.)

4. The Iron Giant. Enjoy crying? Then you'll love The Iron Giant. That was Brad Bird before he came to Pixar and did The Incredibles, so there you go.

5. The trash robot from Metropolis. OK, so there's an anime version of Metropolis that follows a very similar storyline, but there's a lot more robot-y stuff in it, because, let's face it, the Japanese enjoy robots. There's Tima, who is a little-girl robot who's vaguely equivalent to Hel/Maria in the Fritz Lang movie -- she was made by a crazy inventor on the orders of a megalomaniacal ruler, only in this movie she's modeled after his daughter, not his wife, and instead of becoming a crazy robot skank like in the Fritz Lang movie she becomes a little girl with amnesia basically after she escapes the lab, and this kid named Kenichi finds her and they become friends and she realizes her destiny, etc. throughout the course of the movie. She's nice, but there's this robot who is a glorified trash can, who is nice to them and brings them food (garbagey food) and generally helps them and beeps and smiles a lot. It had a name, this trash robot, but I forget what it is. Anyway, I loved that fella. He is eventually sacrificed to their cause and it's very sad. I cried when that trash robot got shot. Yes, I did.

6. Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot from MST3K. How could I not mention them? They don't do much that's very robot-y -- they just snark on terrible movies, and sarcasm is usually not something I especially value in a robot, but they cannot be left out. Remember when Tom Servo wrote a whole song about rampaging through and destroying Canada after they had to watch a horrible Canadian movie? You can't not love him. I always loved Tom the most, partly because he randomly cried a lot.

7. Plen. He's not on TV but he is on YouTube, so there. He rollerskates!

8. Vicki on Small Wonder. Small Wonder was one of the stupidest TV shows ever made, but the kid who played Vicki was really, really good at being deadpan. Not just the monotone line readings, but how she would just stand there totally expressionless while everyone else was talking. I salute you, Tiffany Brissette.

9. Tik-Tok from the Oz books. (He counts as movie because he was in Return to Oz, though I liked him better in the books.) He was really a clockwork man, and he had to be wound up all the time. He had three windup keys: for thoughts, for talking, and for action. If you wound up his talking without winding up his thoughts, he would say crazy shit. If you wound up his action but not his thoughts, he'd spaz around all over the place. Dorothy or whoever was always scrambling to keep him wound up properly, and there was always tension about when he might wind down. He was very loyal and also shiny and made of copper, and he had a mustache. He was always one of my favorite characters.

10. This is a bit of a cheat, but I keep coming back to it: The Sims. Not the Sims now, in Sims 3 or Sims 2 even, but the ones from Sims 1. You made little people, and you gave them personality points, and you put them in a house. They were dumb and pixelated, and no matter how pretty or glamorous you tried to make them, or what sexy duds you drew on them, it was all on the surface -- underneath they were all dorky little robots. They would get hungry and they would make hungry gestures and look at you accusingly. You'd buy them a new toilet and they'd go into the bathroom and clap approvingly. If they didn't know how to cook (and they never learned on their own; you had to force them to study) they'd set the stove on fire and cry and freak out and then immediately forget about it (provided they didn't burn to death). If they couldn't get past an obstacle, they'd turn to the "camera" and look helplessly at you and complain. They didn't want to get up when they were tired and they would have a tantrum if you woke them up early, the same exact tantrum every time. If you didn't get them to the bathroom in time they would pee on the floor, and then cry with shame. (Then immediately forget about it.)

They could fall in love, and if they made out enough times they would have a baby, who appeared before them fully formed in a cradle. I'll never forget when I made my first Sims, Harry and Lily, and after a while they had a baby, and Lily picked the baby up and cuddled and sang to it. I felt almost awed -- I'd created her, I'd been feeding her and figuratively wiping her butt, and I gave her a baby and she immediately started mothering it. I hadn't known she had it in her. I felt...a responsibility almost, and pride. It was an odd feeling.

The later versions of The Sims are much more sophisticated, graphically and AI-wise, and I'd never go back to playing Sims 1 -- I can't believe I spent that much time staring at lumps of pixels -- but nothing will ever be quite the same as the original Sims. You didn't love them any less because they were a bit simple.

Well, there you have it. Perhaps next time I'll do tea!

Oiling my Stenstorp

Yes, I realize that sounds dirty.

I got a Stenstorp kitchen island for my birthday (thanks, family!), and I love it. I got barstools for it too. I have more counter space! At least theoretically, because I haven't used it too much yet. You see, I was supposed to, according to the instructions, get some Behandla oil and oil it up several times before letting it get wet or anything like that. Unfortunately, I didn't know that until after I got home (Ikea's about a 45-minute drive away) and opened the box and read the instructions. Luckily, Behandla oil is only $4.99 online. Except unluckily, the shipping is $21.50. Oh hell no.

So I figured I'd just go to the hardware store and get some oil that was more or less the same as Behandla. Thus was I thrust into the confusing world of wood oil. Holy crap, there are a lot of different kinds. The Internet kindly delivered me to several different forums where people were discussing the merits of various wood-oiling strategies. Behandla is part linseed oil and part tung oil. Some people prefer linseed. Some prefer tung. They feel slightly different and produce slightly different colors. There's also mineral oil, and different kinds of waxes. With a kitchen counter, whatever gunk you're putting on it has to be food-grade. If you don't apply it properly and scrub it off properly, it will get all gross and sticky. There's also sanding involved. Then there's the added complication that linseed oil will apparently spontaneously combust if you leave a rag full of it sitting around. So that's nice.

A lot of these people freaking out about food safety were people MAKING CUTTING BOARDS, so that's a little different, because you will literally be chopping pieces out of it and eating them (small pieces, but, you know), so yeah, whatever you slather on it better not be poisonous. While my Stenstorp is a kitchen counter, I don't plan to use it to actually cut food on, though if some food falls on it I'd like it not to turn into poison. I assume the Behandla oil is safe for that sort of thing, despite its tendency to spontaneously catch fire once in a while.

I saw some wax at Home Depot that was specifically for butcherblock counters. I saw a giant can of linseed oil at Dickson's Hardware that I backed away slowly from lest it explode. I also saw some tung oil, and I thought of buying that and the linseed oil and putting them together and approximating Behandla (Approximating Behandla, my new novel about a woman who finds herself, and unexpected love, on a journey around Asia), but then I figured that I would probably blow my house up in the process and/or burn a hole in my leg, and also I had no idea of what the proportions would be, and it just seemed like it would probably end in disaster. And also it was boiled linseed oil, and one of the sites I read said something about boiled linseed oil versus some other kind of linseed oil, and one of them was right and one of them was terrible and I'm damned if I can remember which was which, of course.

So honestly I will probably not put anything on the 'Storp until I go back to Ikea and get the stupid Behandla. Because I am lame and indecisive. Or maybe I'll go back to Home Depot and get that food-grade butcherblock wax stuff. But that's not oil. The Stenstorp wants oil. I don't want to disappoint it.

These are the kinds of decisions I waste most of my energy on.

THE RACE!!!

The Amazing Race is back. Hooray!! It's the reality show I feel the least stupid for watching. And, as with all reality shows that I watch, I of course imagine what I would do if I were on it. This is also the case with American Idol, America's Next Top Model, and The Biggest Loser. I cannot sing, I am five feet tall and in my 30s, and I have never been overweight. But I still try to figure out what I'd do on all those shows. In case I ever become a model, or weigh 350 pounds, I guess.

(I actually dream about being on America's Next Top Model a LOT. I think that's one reason -- along with paperdolls -- I can't stop watching it. It's very familiar to me.)

So, of all the terrible reality shows I have watched, the Race is probably the one I actually would theoretically have some chance of being on one day, as it does not require talent (or being extremely overweight). Sometimes I watch and I think, "I could do all this stuff, and I would be way less dumb than these idiots and could totally win this." Other times I watch and think, "NO WAY IN HELL." I have, over the years, compiled a mental list of my pros and cons for being on the Race. So here it is.

Reasons I would be great on the Race

1. Knowledge of other countries. I'm not saying I'm an expert on any countries in particular, but I'm sort of a geek for geography, and at least I wouldn't be stumbling around saying stuff like how Paris is the capital of London or whatever. I'm not fluent in a second language, but I have some knowledge of a BUNCH of languages. Basically, I'm not a total idiot, but that is not a given on this show (or any other reality show).

2. Reading/following directions. One thing that trips people up on the Race a ton is when they don't read the clue all the way and they forget to pick up the gnome, or they're supposed to bring the clue to somebody, or one of those. I am great at reading comprehension and I am a terrific direction-follower. I will obey that damn clue to the letter.

3. Map reading. Speaking of directions. I am pretty good with maps.

4. Puzzle solving. Sometimes comes in handy, though ironically it was the undoing of the puzzle-loving geeks a few seasons back.

5. Assembling Ikea furniture. One time there was a challenge where they had to put together an Ikea desk. I am amazing at assembling furniture. I would have rocked that challenge. Do I now think of that every time I assemble some furniture? Why, yes I do.

6. Patience. I am good at not flying off the handle and screaming in rage when things don't go my way.

7. Driving a stick. No, I don't actually know how to drive a stick, NOW. But if I were going to be on the Race, you can be damn sure I WOULD know how before I got there. COME ON, YOU GUYS, IT'S THE SEVENTEENTH SEASON.

All right! Perfect Race candidate? Yeah, not quite.

Reasons I would not be so great on the Race

1. Talking to people. Sometimes they have a challenge where they have to sell people ice cream or pick up their newspapers or something. I am terrible at talking to people. I would probably take the other challenge, no matter how difficult, and then lose. I also would not be good at being assertive with cab drivers, and I would be bad at asking for directions. And at running up to someone and yelling in English at them and getting mad that they didn't answer me in English even though we were in Mongolia and they were Mongolian. Which, let's face it, usually gets you somewhere eventually if you yell at enough people.

2. Logistics. All that figuring out of flights and stuff -- augh, I'm getting stressy palm sweats right now.

3. Running. There's no getting around it, I am not a fast runner, nor am I especially athletic. If it's one of those "it comes down to a footrace" situations, I am not winning that footrace, unless the other team is Team Slow Grandpas.

4. Swimming. I cannot swim. At all. That in itself pretty much puts me out of Race contention. Not only can I not swim but I'm afraid of the water. So if there was a Detour where you had to either jump in the water or talk to people, I'd just sit down and weep, probably.

5. Heights. I fear them.

6. Lack of sleep. I am not good with insufficient sleep. I start getting cranky and just shutting down. I imagine things would go downhill very quickly if I got hardly any sleep. Killer fatigue? Probably like day 3 for me.

7. Competitive eating. I am a slooooooow eater. And I don't have a big appetite. And I have a low tolerance for spiciness. And grossness. The eating challenges are where I see most clearly that I would suck on the Race. I would just not be able to do it. Or maybe I could, but it'd take me a day. And I have to say that I am not keen on avoidable barfing.

Sooooooo I guess that, in addition to never being on American Idol, The Biggest Loser, or America's Next Top Model, I am also never going to be on The Amazing Race. Oh well. I still won't stop planning for it, just in case. I think I could have rocked that watermelon challenge. Except that I would have drowned in the boat part before I got there.

Today's post

is brought to you by sweet potato fries.

Oh, sweet potato fries. Even for someone who completely sucks at cooking, you are easy to make. Chop up a sweet potato into strips, then put them in a baggie with olive oil, salt, pepper, and if you want some garlic and rosemary. Jiggle them around, then put them on a cookie sheet and bake at, I dunno, let's say 400 for, oh, 25 minutes maybe? I wing that part every time. And then they're hot and sweet and salty and delicious. And not bad for you! Except for all the olive oil and salt. But they could be a lot worse.

I had those for dinner tonight (along with a grilled chicken breast). I have them for dinner a lot of nights. Because they're delicious. I never get tired of them.

Maybe someday I'll learn how to cook something different. But until then, that'll do, sweet potato fries. That'll do.

*music*

OK, this post kind of sucked. But I'm trying to get it done so I can go watch Mad Men. See ya!

Missed a day

Yesterday was kinda crappy. Why do I have to go to work every single day? That's what I'd like to know.

I bought a new showerhead today though. See, I have this crazy good water pressure, but my shower is so-so. I turn on the faucet and it just zooms out. The shower, you know, it's all right, but I have to find the big chunk of water if I want to rinse anything. By which I mean, there are patches that are more water and patches that are less water and it's just sort of all over the place. It's way, way better, however, than the showerhead I had when I moved in, which was a super cheap one that literally sprayed some mist at you and that was it. I learned about how you can go to Home Depot and buy showerheads, and I did that, and it was so much better than the first one that I was content with it for a long time.

But lately I've been annoyed by it, and wishing I could truly harness the power of my awesome water pressure. So I was at the Depot today and I bought another one. Still cheap, but a different brand. I picked it because it was called "Power Spray" and it promised to provide more "water force." And WOW. It's like...even. All the little holes are putting out the same amount of water at the same time, and it's a lot of water, and it's all pointed at me. I dare say rinsing was quicker than usual. I am pleased.

I also bought tread thingys for the bathtub so I won't fall down in the shower. Not that I've done that, but you never know.

Well, maybe I'll post again later, and then I'll be caught up. We'll see about that. Pretend this is yesterday's post, at any rate.

Today, I made a cat very happy

She loves to sit in my bedroom window. But she hasn't been able to, because the air conditioner was in there. (I broke down this summer and bought not one, but TWO air conditioners. I am no longer a Yankee. I know.)

So she sits on the floor and stares at the window. And looks sadly from the window to me. I don't think she's been doing this the whole time the air conditioner's been in there, but lately she's been doing it a lot.

One time a couple of weeks ago, I don't know what was there, but she took a flying LEAP into the side accordion thingy. She never does that. She didn't get very far, but she did dent it with her head. She must have seen a bird or something.

It IS late September, and I've been meaning to take the AC out, but I keep not getting around to it. This morning I was leaving for work and she was there again, sitting on the floor, looking at the window. So, even though she is a cat, I promised her that I would take the AC out when I got home. And I did.

She's sitting there now, and purring up a storm. Don't know why that particular window makes her so happy, but. She doesn't ask for much. And sometimes it's the little things.

Chestnuts

It's that time of year again.

It's like getting a little Christmas present. They look like lumpy kiwis or something.


But then you open them up and there they are!


And lo, they are born into delightful shininess.


And then you leave them on your desk for a year. It's the circle of life.

Boozing

Ooops. It's 11:49 on a Tuesday, and I forgot to write a post again.

Well, since I've had a glass of wine, here are my three stages of being drunk:

STAGE ONE: Man, I am not feeling this at all. I have such a higher alcohol tolerance than I used to. I'm cool!

STAGE TWO: CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER

STAGE THREE: *zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz*

The extremely rare STAGE FOUR: OMG I feel nauseous. What! This is an outrage! *hurl* Whaaaaat!! That is seriously uncool. I am NOT the sort of person who gets drunk enough to throw up. WELL I NEVER! I'm never drinking again. Hey, I feel better now. It's a miracle! I'm going to bed.

As you can see, I'm a fun drunk.

Well, it's the middle of the night and I have work tomorrow, so. Time for bed. So happy not to be in Stage Four. Not a fan of that stage.

Baby sister

One day when I was eleven I got a baby sister.

I had another little sister already (and we'd already had many adventures together -- paperdoll-related and otherwise), but she was three and a half years younger and more of a peer. This one was a baby. I watched her get born. She had a ton of dark hair and big eyes. She was ten pounds and she barely fit into newborn suits, but she was still ridiculously tiny. It was so crazy -- one day we didn't have a baby at home, and the next day we did. She just lived with us all of a sudden.

She was pretty entertaining from day one. First she learned to smile, and that was pretty awesome. My other sister and I would fight over who got to hold her or sit in front of her infant seat and sing funny songs to her. Then she learned to sit up, and crawl. She had this walker that my mom would put her in and she'd just scoot around the house like it was her personal flying saucer. She also had a car that she'd push around, holding onto the handle at the back of it. Eventually she could walk without any of that.

She hated wearing clothes. She had these diaper covers (it was cloth diapers all the way in my house) that used velcro instead of pins. One day she learned that it was very easy to reach down, rip open the velcro, and that was that. My mom would wrestle her to the ground to get her diaper on, let her go to get her, I don't know, some pants or something, and she'd stand up, *rip* the velcro, and take off as the diaper fell away. So my mom would have to chase her, wrestle her to the ground again, re-diaper her, and it was a race to get pants on her before she did it again. Who needs clothes anyway, really?

We taught her "toothface," which was basically sticking out your bottom two front teeth. This is especially funny when you only have two teeth. A born entertainer, she very quickly learned to do it on command, especially when she figured out it would make us laugh every time.

Almost as soon as she learned to talk, she learned to sing. When she was three or so, she'd require the whole family to sit down together while she gave a concert -- which consisted of her vamping and making up song lyrics. There was no fixed endpoint to these concerts -- she'd sing and make up lyrics and dance steps as long as we'd sit and watch her.

She loved performing. My other sister and I both took ballet when we were kids. Neither of us is especially graceful or coordinated, and we both gave it up sometime around our pre-teen growth spurts and accompanying awkward stages. My baby sister followed in our footsteps when she was three, and hasn't stopped dancing since. I guess if you put enough kids in ballet class, one of them is bound to finally be good at it.

When she was seven, I went away to college, then moved into my own place. She got taller and taller -- she passed me around age ten. I remember the day she asked me to get her down a glass, and then we both laughed when we realized she could reach it better than I could. She topped out at five foot nine, a full nine inches taller than me. Her baby face matured and one day I realized she looked just like my grandmother as a teenager. In the meantime, she went through school, high school, the prom, lots of dance performances. She went to college. She spent a semester abroad in London.

When she graduated, I had just bought a condo and was looking for a flatmate to share costs for a little while. She was ready to move to the city. We thought: what a perfect solution for a few months. She stayed for three years in my dining room, and instead of a smiling baby or a toddler running after me or a little girl making funny jokes to make her big sisters giggle, she was suddenly a fellow adult. She comforted ME when I was sad. She taught me how to make margaritas. She gave me clothing advice. She's way more organized than I am, and whenever we were going anywhere, I'd just let her direct me to wherever I was supposed to be, whenever I was supposed to get there. (It worked out better that way.) We suffered through Heroes together, and realized together one day that Fringe wasn't stupid anymore and was, in fact, awesome. We made breakfast on Saturday mornings (I cooked the bacon; she sous-chefed). We put our Totoros next to each other on the bookshelf.

She's still hilarious and still loves to perform (now, people pay to come see her), but she's also a great listener, an intelligent, thoughtful, and articulate person. She's no longer my roommate -- she moved out last month to her own place with her boyfriend. But she's still my pal. Tonight we polished off a pot of fondue and a few drinks in the Square, where we both work.

I can't believe she's 25 years old today. It really does seem like yesterday that I was singing to her in her infant chair, holding her chubby little hands as she looked into my eyes.

Happy quarter-century, baby sister.

Let the Right One In

Watched it this morning (I only watch scary movies during the day) while assembling an Ikea chair, so it was a Swedish sort of morning. I actually didn't find it scary at all, but it was very cool. I thought both the kids were terrific.

I didn't realize until watching the extras that it was supposed to take place in 1982 or thereabouts. It did look sort of timeless though, which I liked. The movie made me think about how in a lot of Swedish movies, I feel like the people always look as if they just took their winter gear off and/or are about to put it back on. Like, their hair is sort of messed up from a hat, and they have a turtleneck on and they're holding a scarf or something. And rolled up pants. Their clothes don't look like real clothes, just like a placeholder for layering under your coat. I suppose in Sweden in the winter you ARE usually either about to put winter outdoor clothes on or have just taken them off. Anyway, this movie did nothing to dissuade that.

I am curmudgeon-ily opposed to the foofing up of vampires -- while I find vampire myths at their core kind of neat (this is a great movie, BTW), I do not get why they're now so firmly associated with teenagers -- OK, the forbidden lusting, the danger, unattainable sexiness, whatever; I'm sure there are 5,000,000,000 dissertations on it so I'm not going to write another one. But I find it really, REALLY hard to take most popular portrayals of vampires seriously (and I'm not even talking only like Twilight here, I'm talking this kind of business), and the teenage swoony stuff does NOT help with that. If the vampire wears a tuxedo OR is a lovestruck teenager, I kind of check out. This movie, though, I liked. The little girl was unearthly yet human in a way that worked really well for me. It made me think about how lonely it would be to be a vampire. And how you would just have to get real comfortable with killing people, or if you weren't able to do that, with dying. It really kind of sucks. Oh God. No pun intended. I swear.

Anyway, I'm curious to see what the American version does to the story. I'm sure it will be a lot grosser and more full of startle moments, so I'll probably have to wait to catch it on Netflix so I can watch it in the morning with my hands over my ears.

Oh, and this movie also did something no movie, I think, has ever done for me: it made me kind of miss winter. I AM SERIOUS, that NEVER EVER HAPPENS to me. Well played, Sweden.

Mad Men

I just (finally, some would say) started watching it. Gosh, there was a lot of sexual harassment back in the '60s.

Terrific-looking show though. *ass slap*

Paperdolls

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, when I was a kid I LOVED paperdolls. My sister and I played with them for hours at a time. And we had lots and lots of them. They were labor-intensive -- you had to painstakingly cut out each doll, then the clothes, including the little tabs. But that was half the fun.

Of our paperdolls, there were two VIPs, and a few minor players.

Dolly Dingle

I think my sister and I ultimately got the most mileage out of the Dolly Dingles. Plural, because, while Dolly Dingle was a single character, we didn't see it that way. But I'm jumping ahead. Dolly Dingle was drawn by Grace G. Drayton, who also drew the Campbell's Soup Kids. She's a little girl with chubby cheeks and short blonde ringlets. I don't know if she has a backstory or not. The first volume that I have -- these were reprints from Dover Publications -- has Dolly visiting various countries, and dressing in the costumes of those countries: Japan, China, Italy, Holland, France, Spain, Scotland, Ireland, India, Austria, Egypt. Each page has a picture of Dolly in a petticoat, and a bunch of clothes, and various native friends and pets. Ethnic stereotypes were enthusiastically embraced -- I'm not going to lie to you, there is a dog on the China page named "Chinkie." The other two volumes aren't as clearly themed -- Dolly does stuff like act in La Bohème, serve Christmas dinner to "Poor Little Polly," dress up for Halloween, cook, go skating, pretend to be Martha Washington (twice!), and run an Army/Navy canteen. My sister and I tortured my father by forcing him to guess the names of the various Dolly hangers-on. When he couldn't guess "Beppo," "Miles Standish," or "Prince Dalim Kumar" we thought it was the most hilarious thing in the world. Man, he is a patient guy.

But for us it wasn't Dolly Dingle having multiple adventures. The main reason we liked the Dolly Dingles so much was that there were so MANY of them, and they all looked similar, but different enough to tell apart. We were obsessed with twins and triplets, and with fat sausagey ringlets, and with lining things up and naming them and giving them personalities, and the Dolly Dingles fit the bill NICELY. We divided them up between us and gave them all names. Among mine were Grace, Annie, Anna, Doris, Dora, Karen, Joanna, and Jenny. She had Harriet, Emily, Shirley, Rachel, and a bunch more that I don't remember. They had a club, called the Dolly Dingle Club (there was one named Dolly, but in our storyline that was considered to be just a coincidence), and only little girls with blonde ringlets were allowed in. (Nice, huh?) We did have a few dramas where somebody with brown ringlets or straight blonde hair was let in after much debate among the club members. They ranged in age from two (Emily) to eleven (Grace) (yes, we were fine with the idea that a two-year-old and an eleven-year-old would be in the same club). I don't remember what the club actually did, other than have occasional parties that allowed us to use the fancy dresses or the international clothes (most of the time they just wore the club uniform, which handily enough was a white petticoat).

So that was the Dolly Dingles. That was one of the two epic paperdoll series we had as kids. The other one was

Lettie Lane

We had the Lettie Lanes before the Dolly Dingles. My aunt gave them to us. They were our first paperdolls that were at a more complicated level than the little punch-out kinds we'd had up until then. The Lettie Lanes were SRS BZNS. They were by Sheila Young and were much more realistically, less cartoonishly drawn than the Dollys. They were a little earlier, too -- pre-WWI, where as the Dollys were WWI–WWII-era. Unlike the Dollys, they were actually SUPPOSED to be all different people. So there was no entertaining look-alike element, but we managed.

And they were a LOT of different people. First there was Lettie herself. Then her best friend. Then her little sister, and baby sister (plus nurse), and little brother, and older brother. She had an older sister too, who was getting married. The wedding presented a whole other cast of characters that took up several pages: maid of honor, two bridesmaids, groom, best man, two flower girls, a minister, a couple of cousins who came to the wedding. There were also Lettie's mother and father, grandmother and grandfather. And I'm sure more that I can't remember. Each person had a page FULL of glorious, dripping-with-lace fancy outfits, along with various accessories and hats. Many of the little girls had ringlets or at least curls. And one of the best things was the DOLLS. The paperdolls had dolls of their own, AND THE DOLLS ALSO HAD CLOTHES. Tiny, tiny clothes with tiny tabs. We basically went into a cloud of bliss the day we got these paperdolls and emerged, I can only imagine, weeks later.

We, of course, named everyone. I don't remember all the names now, but Lettie's best friend was Amy and her big brother was David. I forget her bride sister's name, but Charles was the groom. The flower girls were Marie and Clara after the varying names for the main character in The Nutcracker. I remember one cousin named Christine and one named Alan. The bridesmaid dresses were appropriately sugary and flower-covered. The petticoats, again, were substantial enough that when we didn't feel like dealing with tabs we just let them run around that way.

At some point we got another book, which had more members of Lettie's extended family (one cousin was a Campfire Girl). We actually didn't like Lettie herself that much -- she looked snooty. But we had favorites among the cousins and other affiliates. Lots of adventures were had. Lots of tiny clothes were worn by lots of tiny dolls.

Other paperdolls we had over the years included Kate Greenaway, The Ginghams, Magic Mary and Magic Mary Jane (their clothes stuck on with magnets -- groovy), a set that I think was called Little Dancers but is not this, at least one teddy-bear one, one called Denim Deb (VERY '70s -- and my sister when she was little called her Dedham Deb, which I still think of every time I encounter the town of Dedham), this one set whose name I can't recall to save my life that took the ingenious step of making the dolls two-sided, and the clothes also two-sided, and instead of having tabs the clothes slipped over the dolls' heads -- we loved that set because there were lots of hats with different lengths of ringlets -- and probably lots more that are slipping my mind. All were painstakingly cut out (sometimes not all the accessories, but always the dolls), carefully named and bestowed with personalities, and lovingly played with until they fell apart.

So when I try to figure out what it is that appeals to me about America's Next Top Model -- why I get these little-girl feelings of greedy glee when they start lining up and saying their names and showing off their different outfits and hairstyles -- I always come back to paperdolls. There's nothing in my grown-up life that compares to that epic era.

Except, of course, for The Sims.

P.S. What is this bullshit? No.

I had all these grand plans

but I can't do it. This day sucked. Soooo tired. Plus the cat is licking my hand and the monitor out of hopeful almost-food-time excitement. And she just hit the escape key with her head but luckily nothing happened.

I'm hoping tomorrow is a less obnoxious day at work. It can hardly be MORE obnoxious.

This does not bode well

Ack! ONE DAY and I already almost forgot to blog. This is going to take a bit of getting used to. This...consistency thing.

Tonight I went to the university pub and ate 25-cent wings. SO DELICIOUS, wings are. Of course, I felt like my mouth was turning inside out from the spiciness. I ordered "mild" wings and could barely eat them. Ah well, that's part of the adventure. How does super spicy food taste to people who love super spicy food? I always wonder if they just enjoy spiciness in a way I don't, or if the taste I get from something "mild" is closer to what they get from "spicy" -- because of a higher tolerance or because of differing tongue architecture or...I don't know. Anyway, more wings, please. Even though there was no blue-cheese dressing. There's supposed to be blue-cheese dressing.

Then I came home and watched America's Next Top Model. After the last season I swore I wasn't going to watch it again. But it came back around and sure enough, I caved. This show is the purest definition of "guilty pleasure" for me. I don't even know why I like it. I played with paperdolls a lot as a kid, and ANTM reminds me of paperdolls. They're all different, they all have names and personalities and different hair and different faces, and they dress up in all kinds of clothes. I think I like ANTM in much the same way I liked playing with my Dolly Dingles or my Lettie Lanes. Or with my box of superballs when I was little. They, too, all looked different and had names and personalities and different talents (some could bounce higher, some were pleasingly squishy, etc.). In my imaginary school for superballs (yes, really), some superballs were mean to other ones, some were the clear standouts, some were jealous, some were the pretty ones, etc.

Anyway. I am probably going to watch this stupid show as long as it's on TV. And I'm not especially proud of that. But -- they're all new and different, every year! They're pretty! They wear pretty clothes! They all have different names! Sigh.

Hoarders, and a month of blogging

My good friend Jenn has made a vow to blog every day for a month. As a fellow lazy blogger, I'm jumping on the bandwagon.

I'm watching Hoarders. This show is endlessly fascinating to me. Almost as fascinating is the rage that people have when talking about it. People get HIGHLY emotional watching this show, to the point where I hear a lot about people wanting to slap the hoarders, scream at the hoarders, set all the hoarders' shit on fire, leave the hoarder to die in a ditch, etc. I'm not trying to be all "Your human feelings, as you call them, are intriguing" about it, but I don't have as strong an emotional reaction to it. I mean, I watch with the same horror everyone else does, but mostly I feel terribly, terribly sorry for the people, and curious as to what makes them that way.

I'm not a hoarder. I do have a tendency, though, to save more crap than I should. A lot of it is just inertia. The most insightful thing I ever read about hoarding is that hoarding is about putting off decisions. If you throw it out, it's gone forever, un-undoable, that's it. If you don't throw it out, it doesn't mean you're SAVING it. It just means that you haven't decided yet whether to get rid of it. I can fall into that trap pretty easily if I'm not careful. I even think I have many of the symptoms of a hoarder: the whole can't-make-a-decision thing (good lord yes), the packrat leanings, and the tendency to personalize objects. And the hatred of wasting things (a LOT of hoarders seem to be fine with giving something away but can't handle the idea of its being thrown out). And procrastination; oh, am I good at that.

I think the difference is, if I put my mind to it, I can let go of things. Without that much difficulty. It's just that my default is to save stuff. I have tricks to talk myself out of saving stuff if I need them: my favorite is to remind myself to weigh the value of the object against the value of the space it's taking up, multiplied by the length of time it's in the house. (I MIGHT wear that old sweater again, but also, it'd be awfully nice to have more room for the other sweaters that I do wear.) Another trick is to remind myself that my house is not a museum. I have a good memory, and I have a lot of things with memories attached to them. It's very easy to fall into "But I can't get rid of this, because [memory]." I have to remind myself that the existence of that memory and the connection with that thing doesn't mean that I have to keep the thing. I can keep SOME things. Just not ALL the things. (The hoarders on Hoarders seem to get tripped up on that quite a lot.)

So I guess I watch Hoarders with a bit of the "there but for the grace of God" kind of feeling. It is very easy to, instead of throwing stuff out, just...not throw it out. It's not any action they take. It's the lack of action. I am too prone to going into fits of housecleaning to be worried that I will ever make it all the way up to hoarder status. (Like so many who watch this show, after it's over I often find myself straightening up, tossing out stale crackers, cleaning out drawers, etc.) I can't imagine, in my wildest nightmares, ever getting to the gag-inducing point most of the people on this show have reached. Though I have my days of leaving clothes all over the floor or not putting the old magazines in the recycling, I have a switch, a tolerance level, that I don't get beyond. But -- I don't have a mental illness. Which is what this is. I have felt the urge to take some of these people and put them in a psychiatric hospital where they won't be allowed to have anything but two changes of clothes and a book to read. I have yelled "BECAUSE YOU'RE A HOARDER" at the TV when the hoarders talk about how they're not sure how the house got this messy, or why they haven't bothered to cook for themselves in four years. But mostly I'm just so glad I'm not them, or their families, because my God, that is a shitty way to live. And I feel more sympathy than I do anger, because obsessive-compulsive-type behavior is a BITCH of a thing to deal with. You can't tell a depressed person to just snap out of it and quit being so mopey; well, you can, but it's not going to get you anywhere, because depression is not a mood or a personal failing, it's an illness. So is OCD, and so is hoarding.

Well, back to it. I've already gone through my mail pile, so after this show maybe I'll go clean my bathroom.

Typing Intrigue

When I was a kid I had a computer game called Typing Intrigue. It was a typing tutorial, obviously. There was like a murder mystery or something. Basically, you had to earn points to unlock new pieces of the story, and you earned points by doing various typing exercises. It was more or less text-based, with this sweet midi soundtrack that is on the edge of my mind but I can't quite recall.

I didn't know how to type (I didn't learn properly until I took a typing class my senior year of high school -- side note: my guidance counselor told me not to bother with a typing class because I was on a college track -- suuuuuuuuch useful advice, 70-year-old guidance counselor lady, that I'm glad I did not follow) (that happened in the '90s, BTW, not the '50s). I wasn't really interested in learning to type, either -- I thought I was incredibly fast with hunt-and-peck, which I was, for hunt-and-peck -- I just wanted to play the game. There was this one exercise called "Rain" -- droplets with letters in them fell from the sky (pretty graphically sophisticated for 1986 or whenever it was) and you had to type them as they fell, before they hit the ground. You could do different levels of rain (up to "monsoon") and different sets of letters, up to "letters, numbers and symbols" probably. The easiest set was Home Row. I quickly figured out that I could rack up a lot of points by doing Home Row on Monsoon level, over and over and over again. And that is what I did, and that's how I eventually got enough points to solve the mystery without actually learning to type (though I did, and do, have that home row good and memorized). Hooray?

Anyway. I really, really wish I could find that game again. I have googled to no avail. Part of the reason I want it is of course for nostalgia. Part of the reason is that I don't remember the answer to the mystery (it was down to one of three people as the culprit and I remember I think two of them but I don't know who it ended up being). And another part, sadly, is that now that I know how to type I think I could kick ass in Rain. I would like to crank it up to "every blessed key on the keyboard," turn it to Monsoon, and go nuts. That would show...me!

The other game we had that was massively awesome was Transylvania. This was a super gigantic technology leap in that it was graphically based. All the pictures were very clearly done on MacPaint, which I knew because I also had MacPaint and I recognized all the patterns, the paintbrush widths, etc. But they were awesome. Basically you wandered around doing stuff, like in Myst. Only a tad less sophisticated. And there were vampires or something. It was text-based in the sense that instead of clicking on the picture of where you were, you had to type in what you were doing. So there was a lot of guessing, like "hit door," "kick door," "burn door," "punch door," etc. and you never knew what was going to work.

This was before hints -- because this was before the Internet, y'all! Like, waaaaaaay before the Internet -- but once I found a hint file in whatever the plain-text app was back then. I have no idea where it came from -- I have a vague sense that we got the computer used, so maybe the person who had it first put it there, or maybe it came with the game (which I don't recall us buying, it was just there, so it must have been on the computer when we got it). It said hinty things like "Pulling the antlers beats kicking, twisting, or spitting every time!" I, of course, completely missed the value of vague hints and proceeded to edit the hint file to include explicit instructions on how to do everything. (Thus inventing the "walkthrough," I guess.)

I don't think I ever solved Transylvania. My friends and I spent hours sitting in front of it though. And this was on one of these babies. All in all, though, I think I liked Typing Intrigue better.

So, if anyone ever comes across either of these games, let me know, willya? I am a hundred percent certain that they're exactly as awesome as I remember. :)

EDIT: OMG, TRANSYLVANIA IS AVAILABLE AS AN IPHONE APP!!!!! For ONE DOLLAR!!! Apparently I've googled Typing Intrigue but never Transylvania. Yeeeeessssssss. I'll save you, Princess Sabrina! (whose name I only remembered from reading the Wikipedia page)

Wow, ask and ye shall receive

Not three hours after I posted lamenting that the Globe never dynamically page-generates anything unintentionally hilarious for me to laugh at anymore, what do I see in a comment thread on a story about Verizon billing some guy for $18,000 after his "unlimited use" contract expired without his knowledge?

Yep. This. (Price is GUARANTEED to never go up!)

Thanks for your awkwardness, Globe. Always. /hands you a rose

P.S. You win again, Google robots.