An Excellent Interview

I realize some of you may have already seen this—I'm not sure if Neil Gaiman plugged it on his blog or not.

However, on the off chance that you haven't seen it, and if reading a transcript of a conversation between Joss Whedon and Neil Gaiman (moderated somewhat needlessly but unobtrusively by Time magazine) intrigues you, then stop reading my schlock and go read that instead.

I can't tell you how many times I wished I could cut through a con crowd with a full guard battalion of Klingons, myself.

For Our Pals in the Old 'Hood

Surely, if you watch television at all in that market, you've seen that commercial with the craggy-looking old man talking tough about some local lawyers. Part of the script is, "...tell the insurance companies...you...mean...business. Call (name of law firm)...right now!"

I have come to find out that is the low-rent version of that commercial. That script must be used all over the country, because we have a law firm here that has the exact same schtick working. Except...

It's Shatner doing the delivery! Seriously. Emmy award winning actor William effing Shatner telling me to tell the insurance companies that I mean business.

Trade You My Lead for Your Oreos

Who in their right mind would decide to produce those soft vinyl lunchboxes for kids with popular characters on them and then shoot 'em full of lead.

One of the best things about back to school for me every year was getting to pick out my new lunchbox. It was a serious decision; you would be stuck with that character all year, for better or for worse. Pick something lame and you could get teased. Pick something cool and you got to watch kids look longingly at the picture on your lunchbox all year.

Now there's kids out there getting lead on their hands and food while they're trying to trade away that egg salad sandwich. What I don't know is if this was a new development or if those boxes have always contained lead. I suppose you can take a "hey, we lived through it and we're okay" outlook on it, but look at the list of symptoms of low-level lead poisoning:

"Lead poisoning can reportedly lower intelligence, cause mental retardation, memory problems, depression, fatigue, hyperactivity, aggression, hearing loss, liver or kidney damage, osteoporosis, high blood pressure and anemia."

I mean, do any of those sound unfamiliar? Aren't those most of the conditions targetted by the drugs they market to us in those vague commercials with pictures of couples holding hands or guys playing tennis?

Ultrasound

I read somewhere once that no one wants to see the ultrasound pictures of your baby but you, your parents, your spouse, and their parents.

Well, T.S. Here it is anyway.

I know it may be hard to make out, but the bright white circle near the top right corner is the baby's forehead. Under that are two eyes, the nose, and then what the technician described as a "smirk". This was probably because the baby was kicking back at the ultrasound wand the entire time.

No one tells you that ultrasounds sort of hurt. They have to press kind of hard on your tummy to get a good image. It was worth it though, to see the heart beat, see the face, and then spend a couple of moments in suspense while we looked for proof of the baby's gender.

I decline to post the image that proves the baby's gender, although I will describe something humorous about it. There is a place for the tech to type in descriptive info (this was largely used for things like "arm", "leg", "kidney", "heart", etc. while the tech was taking measurements and such) but the proof of gender picture says GIRL on it, and just in case we weren't sure, she added a helpful little arrow toward the definitive area. I didn't notice the arrow until we were walking toward the restrooms on our way out, when I started to giggle at the silliness of it.

Anyway, everything looks healthy and growing as it should. And now I can make the final paint and decorating choices. I know you were all quite anxious about the drapes I was going to pick out. You can all rest easy now. They'll be pink to go with the light green on the walls.

The Spice Rack

This lovely spice rack is now up on my kitchen wall. I know it doesn't look like it, but it is actually level. There is an unusually long story that goes along with this innocent-looking spice rack.

I talked about my estate sale lampshade in the last post. This is an estate sale spice rack. I saw it in a pile of kitchen stuff, oh, must be over two years ago by now. It was marked $4.00, but it was Sunday, and Sunday was half-price day. $2.00 for a nice big spice rack! Excellent.

I snatched it up and purchased it along with some other stuff (I would never wait in a Sunday estate sale line to spend $2.00.) Packed my crap into my car and took it home. Then I looked around my kitchen in the old house.

There was no wall space large enough to hang it on. A moment's thought and I would have realized that before I bought it.

As I am not nearly kitchy enough to hang a spice rack in any room other than the kitchen, it ended up in my garage. I am physically incapable of throwing something like that away, even though I felt silly for buying it.

I should probably have offered it to CK and LWC when they bought their house, as they have plenty of wall space for something like that. By then, though, it was forgotten in a corner in my garage.

I pulled it out of one of the kitchen boxes that I didn't pack and had a momentary flash of annoyance as I remembered how I bought something I should have known I couldn't use. Then I remembered that I was in a completely new house, and looked behind me to see a roughly spice rack-sized space of open wall next to the cabinets on the stove wall.

When I finally found the level in the basement today and remembered that I knew where the screwdriver set and the toolbox were, I hung the thing and put my damn spices away.

Took me two years, but I finally got to use the bloody thing. My $2.00 at work!

My Goodness, the Packing

Here is a picture of one of our glasses. I know it's hard to judge the scale. I probably should have put a quarter or something in the picture so that all of you could see what sort of glass we're talking about here.

Suffice it to say, you should consider this a regular-sized drinking glass.

Now I would like to illustrate how insanely carefully the packers packed our stuff. I'm not done unpacking yet, but I swear, I still feel like I'm swimming in packing paper and empty cardboard boxes. I'd just say they over-padded the items in their boxes, but I'm not sure that statement does the truth justice.

This is the amount of packing material that was around that single glass. Again, I realize now it's hard to judge the scale. That, my friends, is a picture of four pieces of butcher paper. Butcher paper is roughly the size of a large piece of posterboard. One was partially stuffed into the glass and the rest was wrapped around the top. The next two were wrapped puffily around the glass, and then the fourth was wrapped smoothly around the outside of the entire package. When I picked the first one up, I was trying to figure out what had been in my kitchen that was that big.

I also unpacked a large box filled about 85% full with butcher paper and 15% full with a single lampshade. Yes, it was a large lampshade. Yes, it is covered in plain cloth that could theoretically be damaged if something sharp were packed with it.

I also know that I purchased that lampshade at an estate sale for $2.00. I'm not sure it was at all worth the trouble to pack all by its lonesome in a rather large box with approximately $85.00 worth of packing paper around it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go stuff some more packing paper into empty boxes so we can, you know, walk around.

What the—?!?

With very little time left in the Monday night Cowboys/Redskins game last night, I was despondent that they were doing so poorly. I believe I speculated, when Tom walked through the room with about 4:00 left in the fourth quarter, that it wasn't whether they would come back and win but whether they would be shut out or not.

So I turned the game off. I'm not good at watching them lose to the effing Cowboys. Again.

Then they proceeded to win the fucker.

And I missed it.

Apparently, all they were waiting for was my lack of faith. Does this mean I'm not allowed to watch them anymore?

Turing Test

Sorry, I had to implement the bogus, annoying, Turing test (CAPTCHA) on the comments. I just had to delete five (five!) spam comments from the post I made about an hour and a half ago. Some stupid spambot must be tracking me through my rss feed and posting when I make a new post.

Why me, I dunno. Bitches.

Still Love Stephen

Even though he's wearing the wrong colors, boy, do I still like to hear about Stephen Davis having a kick-ass day.

Good thing that asshat Spurrier ruined the last bit of his time as a Redskin by trying to run him to the outside and then pretty much benching him.

Three touchdowns. Lovely. At least I don't hate the Panthers. I can't tell you how horrible it would be if I had to watch him do that stuff for the Cowboys or something hideous like that.

How To Tell You're Still a Geek

It's when you read an article, linked from Slashdot, about the UI design of Firefox, and you get upset when the author suggests that the tabbed browser windows don't conform to some outdated IE UI standards.

I mean, my heart started beating faster at the notion that someone might listen to this guy and ruin the best part of Firefox, the beautiful, unconnected-from-each-other tabs.

I have eight tabs active right now. Ask me if I want 8 separate windows (no) or if I want all these tabs to share the same forward/back history (no).

Goodness, though. Even through extreme cardboard box-related and cable company-induced (more on this later) exhaustion, I still have the geek factor necessary to get all worked up about browsers and UIs and such.

And here I thought my brain was already turning to mush.

In the House

So, we and our stuff are inside the confines of the house. There is still an incredibly large cardboard quotient going on here. Also, the cable order got screwed up and they didn't bring boxes for all the television sets. This means we have no remote control in our bedroom and that we can't hook up the TiVo yet, which makes Kathy cross.

However, we do have the internet and the wireless up and running (using it to write this now) which makes me feel like a real person again. Some of the cable is working as intended, so hopefully that will mollify me a bit. A bit. Not all the way, but a bit.

Telephone is hooked up. Still waiting to switch over wireless phone numbers until the move shenanigans are over, because all of the move people only have those two numbers. Those of you who currently have our telephone numbers can expect an email or something with the new numbers in the next week or so.

God, there's a lot of cardboard here. Some of our furniture is still shrink wrapped. I have money flying all over the place. Oh, and the deal on the house in VA is now done, and we don't own that house anymore. The relocation firm does, and I can officially forget about it. Nice feeling.

More later. Miss all you VA people. Stay safe with that hurricane or tropical storm or whatever it's calling itself now. Blog so we know you're okay and you still have power and whatnot.

Podcasts...We've Got Podcasts

A lot of you who might be reading this are familiar with Mike Stackpole. Most of you will know him from his writing, most popularly, his Star Wars novel work. A fair number of you also know him personally through The Company. Meeting nice guys like Mike Stackpole is one of the things that sucks about the crash and burn of The Company, actually.

Through a fairly circuitous route, I just stumbled upon a project that is at least partially brought to us by Mr. Stackpole, The Sci-Fi Podcast Network. I haven't had a chance to listen to any of the podcasts yet, but several of them seem really promising!

The Hidden Porn-O-Rama

I'm still giggling. I was looking at my site statistics and found this keyword that brought some poor, misguided dope using the MSN search to this here humble blog.

just fucking and sucking

And also from, I'm assuming, the same MSN user, came this:

sucking games

Imagine how disappointed you'd be to be looking for the type of thing suggested by those search terms and end up here instead. Not once, but twice!

Also, we closed on our new house this morning and we can go ahead and move into it tomorrow. Normally that would be a whole blog post, but I find myself infinitely more amused by the search terms.

Dammit Crap Can You Believe the Timing

The baby is kicking really hard against my hand right now. I can see my hand moving up with each kick and I'm sure I can really feel it from the outside, not just from the inside.

Tom, of course, will not be back from work for another hour or so. He hasn't got to feel one yet and it always seems to happen when he's not accessible. Argh!

Made It

Well, we got here yesterday at 11:15 p.m. local time, after leaving the beach at about 10:00 a.m. The cats did a great job in their cage in the back seat. Tosca even allowed Muse to use the litter box at one point, which I was very concerned about as she is quite territorial. I was very proud of how they both just rolled with it and even seemed to enjoy looking at the sights out the windows.

Trip was pretty uneventful. Our gas mileage, even with the hybrid-unfriendly West Virginia mountains, was right around 40 miles to the gallon. We had to stop every couple of hours so I could walk around and get circulation moving around the baby, but it didn't seem to hold us up too much. We pretty much thought the whole time that we'd show up here just after 11, and we did.

For right now, I am in the hotel room (where we'll be until we close on the house later this week) and I plan to take a massive nap right now. Had to get up to get the cats to their last boarding facility until I can get them settled at the new house as soon as we take possession. I felt horrible leaving them in yet another cage, but I have nowhere else for them to be. At least they will be safe and they are in the right state, finally.

We miss all you guys already. It still really hasn't sunk in that this isn't a vacation. On the drive yesterday, I kept wondering what all the stuff we were passing would look like from the other side of the highway before I remembered that this was a one-way trip.

More later, after I get some more sleep.

Moving on my Birthday

So, today is my 33rd birthday. It is not, however, the only time I have ever moved on my birthday.

Back in 1984, my family moved from California to Virginia so my dad could take a promotion. I remember goofy bits of the move like helping my mom pack our stuff, how much my dad was gone (he started the job six months before we moved—which I realize now was done so we could finish the school year) and the long, boring drive across the entire country.

I remember when we began the drive, I could hear the stadium announcements of the last game of the season for our local AA affiliate. The stadium was right down the street from us, and we drove past it on our way out. With dad gone most of the summer (the move took forever in the end...we had trouble finding a house and then we couldn't get into it until September) the three of us went to every single baseball game that season. Some of the players knew me by name. Especially the relief pitchers, as I tended to hang out with a gang of kids who spent a lot of time in the metal bleachers near where the relief pitchers sat in their folding metal chairs, waiting to be called to warm up. One of them used to sneak me baseballs when he could. They were ususally old and scuffed and probably would have been thrown away if he hadn't given them to me, but the biggest fit I pitched during the move was probably when my mom told me I could only pack one or two and that I should give the rest of them away to the other kids.

So yes, although I spent most of my youth uninterested in watching or playing sports, I did spend one glorious, odd summer at a minor league baseball park. For every single game but the very last one, that is. That one, I heard one of the players ground out to the shortstop as we rolled by the stadium in the car.

That was probably six days before my birthday. It took us five days to drive across the country. We only drove about six or seven hours a day. My mother had a set of AAA Triptiks with each day's route planned out and hotel reservations in each town we were to stop in. I remember the moment that I did the calendar math in my head and I realized that we would be arriving in Virginia on September 10th and that I would be starting school the next day.

On my birthday.

First day in a new school, first day in middle school. All of which would come, rather miserably, on the one holiday a year that belonged only to me.

Well, I survived it, obviously. I don't even remember it being all that bad in the end, as I met the two people that day who I would be friends with for the next several years, and they accepted me into the group at their lunch table that very first day. We were still staying in the apartment my father had rented, waiting for our things to show up on the moving truck, but we went out to dinner for my birthday and there was a cake hidden in one of the cabinets when we got back. It really wasn't so bad at all.

Finally, as we turn our attention back to 2005, I hope the same will be true this time. I probably wouldn't choose to spend my 33rd birthday in a car for more than a dozen hours, pregnant, and cramped because of all the stuff we have to cram somewhere in the car. I certainly wouldn't choose to spend it with my poor cats locked in a cage in the back seat of that car, making the most pathetic and wretched noises that make me wish I could snap my fingers and they'd be safely in Archtown.

We joked last night about taking a picture of them in the cage and posting it to one of our blogs with the caption, "Because of you, WH, we are locked in this cage. Thanks." It was funny at the time, I promise.

However, like I've been saying to myself over and over for the past week or so, things may be complicated for us right now, they may be stressful and they may be rather labor-intensive. The one constant is that the minute hand keeps making dizzy circles past all twelve numbers and that hour hand keeps crawling along too. No matter what happens, as long as we get the big stuff taken care of, the time will tick by and we will put this all behind us. I will, sooner rather than later, be 33 years and one day old, and time will continue to march on.

Peace Out, Y'all

Well, we got professionally packed (courtesy of the new airplane company) yesterday and then loaded onto a moving truck (again, thank you new airplane company) today. Our old house is now empty and waiting for the closing.

Even though I had to do much more minimal labor than if we had to move ourselves, I still feel somewhat like a truck ran me over. I've just completed a two hour nap, which brings me to 9 hours of sleep over the last two days. Hopefully I will sleep most of tomorrow, when we drive somewhere between 13 and 15 hours in one day out to the arch. We have to do it in one day, you see, because we will be carrying two cats in a cage in our back seat. I just didn't have it in me to put them in the cargo hold of an airplane.

Those boxes to the right are a mere pittance of the 210 boxes and 160 "misc." items on our manifest. Where did we get all that crap?

The very good news so far is that, contrary to many professional moves, our load is the only load on the truck, and the driver is actually based out of Archtown. He is really happy to be headed home and basically asked me when I wanted the stuff delivered. I went from having a 3-7 day delivery window to being able to say, "How about 9 a.m. on the 15th?"

This means that all my televisions and my computer will be there and out, ready for the cable, telephone, and internet installer to show up that afternoon and connect everything.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Anyway, to those of you still in beach country, we're out as of tomorrow morning. Thanks for everything.

For the Record, I'm Not Completely Miserable

So, tonight, talking to a friend, my sister's current age somehow came up in conversation.

Turns out she's 37 at the moment.

It's a long story, but another friend of ours has this quoted at him all the time when he is playing World of Warcraft with his Clerks-themed character (even though it refers to the wrong character, which is part of what makes it funny).

I didn't realize it right away, but when I realized I was being smirked at, I remembered the significance of 37. It was quite funny, and we had a lovely laugh.

Especially when I added, "In a row?!?"

Pack it Up

For heaven's sake. I have a team of people coming here tomorrow to pack up my house.

How have I been preparing for this for the past I-don't-know-how-long and yet I'm terrified that I won't be able to finish the getting ready festivities this evening? I have to pack a couple suitcases of stuff I don't want them to mess with. I have to put post-its on everything else I don't want them to pack.

So why am I sitting here instead of getting off my ass and taking care of it? I just couldn't tell you. But I'm getting up now to take care of it.

I feel like I'm taking a test I didn't study for! Ack!

The Definition of "Not Getting It"

Sometimes I forget exactly how disconnected the truly rich and powerful must be from the rest of regular society. It's quite natural, I suppose, if you find yourself in an advantageous position, to take the simplest path. That path leads to acclimating yourself only to your own circumstances and assuming that everyone not in that golden light with you is somehow struggling along okay no matter what happens to them.

After all, if they're poor, they must be used to being miserable, right? So it doesn't really much matter how you might feel if you were in their position, because they are somehow innately equipped to deal with adversity because of all the practice they have with it.

Where is all this leading? Listen to this shit. For those of you who can't hear the clip or just don't feel like clicking on it, that is Barbara Bush saying: (highlight to see the text below, I'd rather have you hear it in her voice if you can rather than just read it...it's anticlimactic this way)

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this—this is working very well for them."

Holy Crap

I just got done looking at the list of things I have to do before I go to sleep this Friday night. It seems simultaneously far away and so close that I can't breathe.

Maybe I just never let it completely sink in. The list is long. Not so long it can't be done, but long enough to make me want to pull the covers over my head and hope it will all go away somehow.

I was sitting here about a half hour ago and I had to get up to get something. I felt the by-now familiar pull of gravity on the heavy bit of my stomach that's sticking out, and it hit me all at once.

I'm the adult. The one on this end of the move, anyway. I have to do these things. I have to grab them and make them all happen. No one is going to swoop in and make it all go away. I have to be the grown up and take the responsibility that it will all happen.

Then it all really hit me. The number of living beings counting on me to not screw this up, this series of things that are now my responsibility, is the largest it has ever been in my life, and this is the first time I didn't have a safety net of my parents or someone else behind me to help me in case there's one last little thing that I just couldn't seem to manage.

If I mess something up, it could mean anything from inconvenience to a financial penalty to complete and utter logistical disaster.

Somehow, we both have to be in St. Louis a week from tomorrow. I know it sounds dumb that I just didn't get it until now, but I just did.

The hardest thing on my list right now is getting some effing sleep. That list is just sitting there, lurking on my desktop and making my head spin. I understand that there is little I can do to affect the situation at 2:00 in the morning on the Labor Day holiday, but somehow my brain thinks that keeping me awake will be helpful in some way.

Screw it. I'm at least going to turn out the light and close my eyes. Maybe the rest will follow if I just let it happen. Maybe I should enjoy the one thing that's just supposed to happen, the thing that doesn't take a phone call, planning, negotiating, action.

I think I actually realized I have to be a grown up.

Leave of Absence

Well, that was interesting.

I've just gotten back from spending a few days in the only place, presumably, that I can't just open my laptop and find myself on a wireless network—my parents' house.

I mean, I am leaving and taking their soon-to-be grandchild 900 miles away. I really wanted to visit for a bit before we left.

My head is swimming with so many different things, and honestly all I should really do is go back to sleep. The one thought that keeps swimming through my head is:

"How, exactly, do you live in the same house with two people for 18 years and end up completely in accord with them on half of the things that come up, and absolutely diametrically opposed to them on the other half?"

I mean, there's no middle ground. None. I'm either nodding my head as they speak, or trying not to argue with them. Weird. Very weird.