This is funny, but perhaps NSFW. But then again, maybe it is. Todd has a link on his site to a barber’s ‘greatest hits’ picture page. Yeah, that’s right! Laurel, Maryland! The funny thing is that it looks like half the pictures are of the same kid. Where’s the one that says, “Punch Me Here?”
Blah. For a guy who got 8 hours’ sleep last night, I sure feel cranky, bored, and uninspired.
I love Jen, and she loves me; I’m at least reasonably sure of this because she came home last night and didn’t immediately attempt to kill me. This weekend was pretty brutal for the two of us because of the stress involved in choosing bridesmaid’s dresses. I’m actually pretty good at helping Jen pick out clothes for events—once I learned how to shop with her (and the Oprah phrase you make that dress look great, babe), we’ve made a good team together, and I’ve helped her find more than one beautiful dress over the years. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have been involved in this particular hunt, but with her sisters scattered to the four winds, she needed all the help she could get. And a spare pair of eyes to seek out the elusive color periwinkle, which seems to have been banned from current clothing altogether by an evil cabal of gay vampires who only favor black, white, and red.
Our first brief stop downtown to look at a formal dress store was not sucessful. The colors blue, green, and yellow have apparrently been banned from production, unless you’re looking at the J.Crew catalog, in which case you look like a Bennetton model from 1984. We also found out that when you’re a gymnast visiting from out of town, you have to wear a kerchief, or at least a little sock, on the required pile of cat sick which goes on the top of your skull. (There was some kind of gymnast/cat sick convention this weekend.)
We cruised through the exciting, squawking hell that is David’s Bridal, where hundreds of crazed women fought over dresses, changing rooms, and mirrors like sharks with blood in the water. I’ve never seen a spectacle quite like it. On the racks, the dresses hung limply after having been stretched, pulled, poked, and walked over; we found the three styles that matched up with Jen’s vision the closest and brought them to the front desk, where an angry-looking woman put them on a rack and had us wait for a changing room. Now, I like certain types of crowds, like New York City crowds, because they know what side of the subway platform to walk on, and how not to get in your way. Here, clucking Glen Burnie Hons ran willy-nilly through the store, tugging on dresses that crossed between styles like Spanish Harlot and Frosted Birthday Cake. Other women considered bridesmaid’s dresses that were less appealing than a hazmat suit, holding them up to their skin and yelling out to people across the store. “Oh, I like this color!” Well, it makes you look like you have jaundice, sweetie.
After waiting for about ten minutes and people watching, Angry Woman got us a room. Jen tried each of the dresses on, we took notes, snapped pictures, and consulted. There were two possibles, but no strong candidate. While she changed, I watched a group of women convince a tired-looking girl to buy a wedding dress stacked with more lace than a French whorehouse. (A woman who I took to be her mother was grabbing two handfuls of the back of the dress in an attempt to keep her boobs from falling out the front, while insisting, “They can take it in! They can take it in!”)
After a quick stop at the local formalwear store (where a bored 15-year-old barely resisted the urge to crack her gum while offering no help whatsoever), we retreated to the Towson Mall to look through a few other stores. I bought us some cafe mochas and we sat to regroup, which was good and bad—we got our gameplan together but wound up sugar crashing about a half-hour later. Here again, we found that black and red were the only colors offered by anybody on the three formal dresses in the whole mall. It was pretty depressing, really. The one dress we found in the right material and shape was an orphan in the Nordstrom Rack, missing its separate and worse for wear.
The upside to this story is that after returning home, Jen was able to get four or five dresses organized online, got her sisters to look at them, and spent about an hour in conference with Heather, the patron saint of dysfunctional weddings and cranky fianceés, who helped her narrow the field to a contender. Which was fantastic, because I had ceased to be effective or communicative sometime around 4:30. She was also able to resist the urge to kill me, for which I am thankful, because I know I was not helping her as much as I could have been. I think she may be on the downslope of this particular circle of hell, and I give her all the credit in the world, because I did not realize just how difficult this whole process has been until I experienced it first hand.
The Powerbook is much, much quicker now—erasing all that crap from the drive really helped a lot.
Saturday night I stayed up way too late to watch one of my favorite movies of all time: The Right Stuff. You can’t get much better than a great movie based on a great book by one of my favorite authors, starring some of my favorite actors. And let’s thank God for the TCM network and its decision to broadcast good movies without commercial interruption, bleeping, or bad dubbing (e.g. “Forget You!” in place of the F-bomb.) Heck, you can even see boobies on a good night of the week, if you’re lucky. And that’s what I say: More boobies and more F-bombs on cable channels.
Geek-Out. Last night, while Jen sat on the couch and IM’ed her sisters attempting to come to some kind of consensus on bridesmaids’ dresses (which was about as sucessful as recent attempts for peace in the Middle East), I went through iTunes on my laptop and erased about 3/4 of my local music library. My Pismo has been getting slower and slower over the last few months, and while I fully understand that I’m using a four-year-old laptop, I’ve really noticed it slowing down using Photoshop 6 in Classic, which used to run like greased lightning. Anytime I get ahead of the user interface by a second or more, I get extremely frustrated, because often times my thought processes are two or three steps ahead of what I’m currently doing and it’s annoying to have to wait for the computer to complete some stupid task like making a button change color. (This would be the reason I have a copy of PS 7 for OSX and don’t use it.) Today I’ll be cleaning off some more gunk from the drive to free up some swap space and see if things improve. And thanks to Jason for the maintenance suggestion.
In honor of the previously mentioned Catholic SAT’s and the Jungian personality test (ENFP) they sent us home with, I bring you humorous games: Check out this link and tell me how you did. Fascinating stuff. I got 15/20, and it seemed that I mistook each type (fake/real) almost equally. #13 threw me, but I called it right.
Then, go take this test at McSweeney’s (Linda, this one is for you) to see how well you fare under the rule of the Empire.
This morning Jen and I made the first preliminary plunge into weddinghood by opening a joint checking account at the bank, which means that we actually have to save some money to put in it. Today we’re venturing out to a few places to look at bridesmaid’s dresses and wedding bands so that we can cross those off the huge list of Stuff We Really, Really Need To Get Done Quickly.
Yesterday I was iced in at the house and got some more work done in the Blue bedroom. Now that the demolition part of the rehab is over with, which is the easiest part, I started cutting shims for the plaster and replacing the baseboards around the room. The doorframe is back in, and the sections of plaster that fell out have been replaced with patches of drywall, which will require seventeen applications of mud and sandings—this after I thought I was done with all that crap.
In more optimistic news, it looks like the patch job on the roof over the upstairs office is holding firm. Two solid days of icy rain, thawing snow, and general moisture have failed to leak through to the wall below, so I’m going to chalk that up in the ‘fixed column’ and prepare to start the long repair job.
The Catholic church has this mandatory thing they do for couples who want to get married in their church where they sit the kids down with upstanding members of the congregation for ‘counseling sessions’. On the surface, it’s actually a good idea, because, as a friend of ours said, it’s a lot easier to get married than to stay married. However, as with any activity or social group consisting of more than three people, I looked at the idea with more than a healthy dose of skepticism. What are they going to ask us? Are they going to split us up into separate rooms and come at us like the Scientologists? Are they going to grill us on our beliefs or quote scripture at us until we beg for mercy?
We talked to a good friend about it the night before, and she assured us it was not as bad as our (OK, my) imagination. Essentially, the Church is trying to weed out the folks who aren’t really prepared for marriage—the kids who saw Nick and Jessica get married on MTV and thought it would be bitchin’. So after about a half hour through the first meeting with our sponsor couple last night, I felt a lot more at ease. (There was a point, when she read a prayer for marriage early on in the meeting, when I got a little worried, though.)
One of the things they do is sit you down with a booklet, a pencil, and a Scan-Tron sheet like the ones we got in 9th grade for spelling tests, and have you each answer the same set of 150 questions. The test is designed to highlight the stuff in your relationship you haven’t really thought of or covered yet, like money, sexual, or family issues, and see if you have the manual dexterity to fill in a page full of teeny circles. The questions range from the mundane—Would it create a problem for you if your future spouse earned more money than you did? to the funny—I have a gambling problem which will cause future problems in our relationship—to the expected—We have decided to raise our children as members of the Catholic Church. You fill in an answer for ‘Agree’, ‘Disagree’, or ‘Uncertain’. They take these answers, collate them, and then work on the areas where you’re out of sync.
Really, we weren’t supposed to be comparing our answers, but some of the questions were vague or worded poorly, and it took some figuring to understand what the question was really asking. (e.g.: My future spouse and I seldom disagree about how we spend money.) We did find, however, that our money situation is the place where we need to pow-wow before we sit down with the counselors again, because we still approach it as two separate individuals instead of one single unit. I do have to say, though, that based on a lot of those questions, I think we’re about forty light-years ahead of other folks. Still, I’m nervous about getting our church SAT’s back, because I’m pretty bad with math, and if I fail us, we won’t get into heaven.
Under the Radar. Because he is a on the down-low, ‘I’m not into making a big deal about my birthday’ kind of guy, Todd has not mentioned his birthday today. I had to read about it on his log. (frowning.) So stop over the the Land Of Pleasant Living and say “Happy Third Birthday” to XLT.
Random Fun Links. ooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhh. Nice. Totally gotta get us one of these little babies. You Are Watching Big Brother. Swipe, from the good folks at Turbulence.org, helps you read your driver’s license barcode, provides links to data warehouses, and calculates how much money you should charge for your personal data.
winter (via my beautiful fiancee), 2.4.04
It could just be my brain playing tricks on me, but this morning I woke up and the house was positively balmy. For the past two months, I’ve been wandering from room to room layering and unlayering like a Vegas stripper due to the unequal climate zones in our house. The first floor is barely heated because many of the radiators were moved out to the enclosed porch, which is barely insulated. Our clothes are stored out there (long story), and there have been weeks where picking out that day’s wardrobe meant hopping from foot to foot and peering through the fog of one’s own breath. Making coffee in the morning started not with cleaning the pot, grinding beans, or getting the milk, but opening the lower oven door and cranking it up so my feet weren’t frozen into blocks of ice, ghetto-style. Meanwhile, the upstairs rooms are a faithful recreation of the Sahara desert. Jen has been positioning herself directly over the humidifier to stave off splitting sinus headaches due to the total lack of moisture in the air.
Today I was grinding coffee beans and looked out at the thermometer in the kitchen window. It read thirty degrees, which was enough to send me into spasms of chills a month ago. This morning, I casually considered wearing shorts to work.
Q: Is It Gonna Make Me Sweat? A: Yeah! I learned this afternoon, in doing some research on steam heat that if your radiators are noisy (e.g. the radiator in Jen’s bedroom, or the one in the living room), you should place a small, thin block of wood under the side without the pipe to off-level it slightly for better water circulation. I also found out that in steam heat systems, cleaning or replacing the air vent can wake up a dead radiator—close the shutoff valve at the bottom, unscrew the air valve, boil it in vinegar and water for a half hour, and replace it. And finally, using the shutoff valves to regulate the amount of heat won’t work in steam systems; you need an adjustable air vent instead. All of this is good information.
Welcome To The Jungle. Li’l Gn’R. I shit you not.
Today I looked at a free comment service called HaloScan and signed up for a membership. It seems to be pretty easy to use; the code is clean and doesn’t muck anything up on the page, so I’m going to test it out over the next few weeks to see how I like it. So let me hear what you think, people! If I write something stupid on here, tell me about it. If I write something good, let me know. You’ll see a small ‘Comment’ link at the end of a post if I’m interested in hearing feedback—but I probably won’t be adding one for each.
Fambly. This Christmas my Mom asked me if I could scan and retouch a picture for her; in a story involving a Coach purse, some guilt, a picture frame, and an anniversary, she’s hoping I can take a beat-up Polaroid of my late grandfather and clean it up to the point where we get some new prints made. I scanned the picture in at 400dpi, cleaned and sharpened it, and looked at the results. The resolution was not up to snuff, so I rescanned at 800dpi and enlarged by 200%, hoping the extra information would be enough to extrapolate good pixels from bad. This time I got better results, and I’m almost done cleaning to the point of cropping. (Mom, I’m going with the one you don’t favor, because your father is actually smiling in this one.) Once I’m done, I’m going to import it into iPhoto and send out for prints, probably tonight.
I don’t have a whole lot of information about my biological grandfather, only short anecdotal stories; I know that he was a stonemason his whole life, supporting his family at a very early age, and he built his own house. He had big hands, and played the piano. He didn’t like having his picture taken, which is why this is a big deal. He died a month before I was born. Maybe my Mom will write me with some more information about him that I can share here.
Oh, Well. The ice storm that was supposed to shut the mid-atlantic area down never materialized; it’s raining outside but of course they shut every school system down within a 100-mile radius. I’m considering home schooling for our future children, because it seems that the local public school systems will cancel classes for a strong breeze. Jen and I were hunkered down last night rubbing our rabbits’ feet, hoping we could make some inclement weather happen; she was hoping for a day to catch up on sleep and I was looking forward to a solid day to concentrate upstairs. As it was, she was asleep by 10:15 and I got a bunch of drywall installed in the Blue room. It’s going to be a long slog to repair the plaster, because it’s been beaten on enough that it’s brittle, but I think the Pink room will go a lot quicker—the plaster in there came off a lot cleaner.
I have not seen one bottle of Pepsi in this area featuring this promotion. I’d drink yer damn Pepsi if I could just find a bottle.
The Tortoise has been running on a suspended registration for longer than I care to admit. I got pulled over in front of the stupid Royal Farms on Fleet Street last year by a city cop who apologetically wrote me a ticket for a busted taillight, saying that the state poopers were cracking down on them. I got caught up in moving and so forgot all about the ticket until I realized that the sticker on my license plate was a month out of date. At this point, every time I got behind the wheel, I became Steve McQueen in The Great Escape, constantly searching over my shoulder for the cops on motorcycles to chase me over the hill firing guns. So this Saturday I got the work order inspected, and ventured down to the MVA this morning to get my new registration. I brought three books, figuring I’d be trapped in the usual Soviet-era queue hell, but surprisingly I was in and out in twenty minutes—the longest I waited was for a parking spot.
Thoughts on the Superbowl.
- Good frickin’ game.
- Who the hell is Puff Daddy and why is he famous?
- The commercials, which were hyped as much as the game, were mediocre.
- No, seriously. Puff Daddy? My Dad could rap better than that guy. And who the hell is ‘Nelly’?
- Adam Viniateri is breathing a huge sigh of relief this morning.
- Jen’s brother Rob called me right after the halftime show to ask me if I had also seen Janet Jackson’s boob pop out. Unfortunately I was washing a bowl at that time, so I missed it.
- The Panthers, who I was not rooting for, played a hell of a game.
There’s something about the sound of football on the TV that makes me happy, especially when I’m working in the house. I like to tune in and listen to the games while I’m building something, or pulling down walls (one of the most Zen moments I can remember in my old house was installing the backyard deck under a brilliant sunset—the Ravens game was on, and every time somebody would score, I could hear the folks in American Harry’s around the corner yelling at the TV) but the problem is that I usually wind up watching the game more than working. Especially around the fourth quarter. Which is why I now enjoy the NASCAR when I’m demolishing a room. You see, NASCAR is so frigging boring for 99% of the time, I’m not tempted to look at the TV at all. The announcers are always yammering on about ‘adjustments’, e.g. “He’s been runnin’ that car so hot for so long, they’re gonna need to make some adjustments,” or “The car was super, and we switched the tires and made some adjustments…” Who the hell cares? This is a sport where people get excited about stopping for gas. The good part is, it’s mostly dull with the possibility of major catastrophe at any time. And that’s really the only reason I leave it on. Unlike football, I could give a crap about who actually wins, but I like to have some kind of conversation going in the background.