What Kind of M*A*S*H Person Are You?

The Hallmark channel just rewound to the beginning of series one of M*A*S*H, which I usually have on in the background between 5 and 6. This got me to thinking...you can tell a lot about a person by what kind of M*A*S*H person they are. Are you a:

1. Frank or Winchester?
2. Trapper John or BJ?
3. Henry or Potter?
4. Margaret: the Frank era, the Donald era, or post-divorce from Donald?
5. Company clerk: Radar or Klinger?
6. Cross-dressin' Klinger or not?

These are important questions. Take your time and really think about it. I'll post mine in the comments.

Butterfly House, Mark II

During the Thanksgiving weekend, I had another excursion to the butterfly house. I discovered that it is much busier on a Saturday afternoon of a holiday weekend than it was when I randomly went in the middle of the week, but it was still quite nice.

Here are some of my best shots, which I can show you this time because I actually remembered to take the camera with me. Several of the shots were ruined because it's hard to keep the lens clear in the humidity, but I like all of the following ones:

Stuck

Well, we've reached that "sit on the couch quietly and try to be calm" portion of the pregnancy. Yes, folks, I've been told to "greatly moderate [my] behavior".

I therefore now intend to bring you a glimpse of the kind of fun you can have from your own couch. The first in this series is a link to a new article at snopes.com with some pretty funny sports jokes that are making the rounds via email. Yes, you may have seen a couple of these, but there were one or two there that were new to me.

I especially like the Toronto and Philadelphia ones.

Our Date With Harry (no spoilers)

Our last big night out on the town before the baby comes has now passed. I know, I know. There's still forty-odd days (and I do mean the odd part) before that's likely to happen, but I'm already uncomfortable enough that I don't really enjoy trips away from the house anymore. I very soon will no longer be a very fun date, even though it's clear to all that I put out. (ha)

The movie itself (no spoilers, this is about the theater experience) was actually a much more laid back affair than it could have been. There was the typical big long line waiting to be let into the theater, but we got in it at just about the right time. We still got the seats in the general area we wanted and didn't have to wait in the line for more than 20 minutes. I commandeered a chair and none of the theater employees seemed too put out that I'd done it, especially as we put it back as soon as the line started to move.

As we went to the 7:00 showing, there were a fair number of rather young kids in the theater. I was wagering that the magic (pun not intended) of seeing "OMG it's Harry Freaking Potter" on the big screen would engross them to the point of rapt attention, and that was mostly true. The most annoying person in my immediate vicinity was the guy next to me, who kept getting Fred (or George, I suppose) mixed up with Ron, and asked his wife to clarify things about ten times during the movie. I blocked him out, as I'm really far too tired at this point to start some sort of pissing match in the theater.

I am now resolutely rejecting the reflex to discuss the movie. I know a lot of people haven't seen it at this point, as the theaters are pretty crowded and many of you probably don't have such a burning desire to see it that you have to brave the high population theater experience. I'll wait about a week and then post my thoughts, because I know you're all just on tenterhooks waiting to see what I think.

This Just In

All local cable company monopolies should be broken up. All monopolies of all kinds are evil. They encourage abyssmal customer service and lack of quality. Why would you even bother developing a quality product when you have no competition?

Do you want a good laugh? Our cable TV and telephone service both don't work in outdoor temperatures below freezing. Don't even get me started on how stupid that is. Want to know when they propose to fix it? Friday. Oh, not this Friday. The Friday after Thanksgiving.

It's been two months and they haven't given us consistent service in all that time. Their proposed compensation? Limited credits that don't even really cover the amount of my time they've wasted and the amount of time we've had poor or no service. News flash: not charging me money for not giving me things is not compensation. That is not a favor. That is called not mugging me.

They are so full of shit. I hate them. And whoever makes their customer service policies should be fired and then deported.

Clumsy!

Borrowed from an article I read online:

"Many women feel ungainly and tend to knock things over a lot when they're pregnant, particularly in their last few months."

I have absolutely no reason to refute the above. It's 8:11 a.m. and I've already surpassed the number of clumsy accidents I used to have in a day.

First, I was making a sandwich for the mister's lunch this morning, and after I washed off the lettuce, I set it on the paper towel for a second to put on the condiments and I brushed it with the nozzle on the top of the mustard. The lettuce fell straight to the floor and landed right in the little pile of stuff I'd just swept up in the kitchen that I hadn't gathered in the dustpan and thrown away yet. Yes, he got new lettuce. I'm not a monster.

Second, I went upstairs and got my laptop once I was sure the thunderstorm had passed. I was balancing the mouse on top of it along with the grocery store ad and the cordless phone so I could set up on the couch for a bit. I made the turn in the stairs and saw the mouse start to slide. I overcorrected and that sucker went flying onto the wood floor in the entryway. It made a horrible noise. By the time I gathered everything back together and tested the mouse it didn't work, of course. I decided to try to fix it later and went to the second mouse, stuffed in my laptop bag. Which brings me to...

Third, I found the mouse (and my Gameboy, which I've been wondering about) in my laptop bag and retreived the transmitter part (it's wireless) from another place in the house. I can't explain to you how they got separated, except that things are still in a great deal of flux here. Anyway. All that walking around, and what with it having been at least seven and a half minutes since the last time I had to use the restroom, and of course, I had to go again. Once I, er, well, took care of the one call you can't put on hold (according to Thrakkorzog) I picked up (I thought) the transmitter and the mouse and started toward the couch. Well, I didn't really have a good grip on the mouse and it fell to the kitchen floor. I swear to the FSM that it made the fricking same exact noise as the other mouse I'd just casked.

Well, neither of the mice seemed to work after being dropped. Multiple attempts to connect them with their transmitters failed. I removed batteries and waited, then reinstalled and tried again. Nothing. In a desperate attempt (I'm playing WoW tonight and have to have a mouse; if neither of these worked I'd have to go out today and buy a new one, and I still have some serious napping to do as I woke up at 4:00 with the thunderstorm and haven't been back to sleep yet) I put new batteries in both of them and tried to reconnect.

I'd like to report that my clumsiness does not, in fact, have a mousey body count. After switching the batteries out for new ones and reconnecting, both mice/transmitter combos seem to be working again.

I'm not sure there's a moral to this story. Maybe it's "stay out of the way of the lady in her third trimester, because you don't know when she's going to drop a mouse on your foot". I suppose there are worse morals.

Diamonds Under Pressure

Okay, I just saw a diamond commercial (can't remember if it's for a jeweler or just for DeBeers...I wasn't really paying attention). The only reason it caught me and made me look up was because it featured a Queen song. Under Pressure, to be precise.

Those of you who know the song, isn't there a tinge of irony here?

I'd link to a site where you can read the lyrics, but I once got a load of spyware on my computer from visiting a website to find Queen lyrics. It seems like bad mojo to do it again. However, a big part of the jist of the song is that it's about people who are hungry and living on the streets, people in dire situations struggling to survive.

And I just watched a well-heeled young man saunter into a nice-looking house and open a black velvet box with two huge diamond earrings in it, all to the tune of Under Pressure.

Surely there is a more appropriate song to pick for this. I don't have anything against diamonds per se (though I personally think they're a waste of money, and my own wedding ring isn't a diamond, so take me with a grain of salt) but why would you go out of your way to pick a song with such a contrary message?

The Infrastructure Here Is Crap

Sorry, I'm mad; bear with me. This city really sucks.

First, the sales tax is something like 8% here. I keep goggling when I hear totals at cash registers, because I kind of add things up as I go along and then estimate the tax. Old habit from my college days when I usually only had $20 on me to pay for the groceries and I had to come in under that. Eight freaking percent? The roads should be gold-paved! And this is a red state, friends. Where they supposedly aren't "tax and spend". Hah.

I just looked at the estimated property tax on this house. It's comparable, on a per-square-foot basis, to what we were paying in the old city. Except that, in the old city, that amount included trash collection, something we're paying for here.

Next on my hit parade is the fact that I have to drive fifteen miles to get a property tax waiver so I can register my car. I have an office that does registrations about two miles from the house, and they can do everything EXCEPT issue this bogus waiver. It seems to me to be just an excuse to charge new state residents an extra $10. The ladies in the (outsourced) license office were great, got me my license quickly and easily, and commisserated that the waiver is a bullshit requirement. I can only assume they were good and efficient only because they do not work directly for the bureaucracy that infects all who come into contact with it.

And finally, last Friday, we got an infraction notice from the city because we didn't buy a $25 bullshit occupancy permit that we didn't know about and no one told us about. I was further informed that we were "illegally living in [our] house" which we paid nearly a quarter of a million dollars for a couple of months ago. Hey, hey. I haven't felt like a radical since I went to a protest in downtown Boston when I was 20.

When I innocently asked for directions to city hall (not way downtown at least, the local one) I was run an incredible 'tude that included this interaction. Keep in mind that I was biting my cheek and trying to be humorously self-deprecating to get this lady to help me. I'm really bad with directions, which I cop to without reservation on relevent occasions. I think I started with, "Can you tell me where I need to go? I'm horrible with directions and I might ask some questions."

Her: "Go to <main road I know how to get to.> Then turn at the Phillips 66."
Me: "Right or left?"
Her: "<sigh> Right."
Me: "Do you know the name of that cross street?"
Her: "<heavier sigh> I think it's <name of street>."
Me: "Okay, what side of the street is the building on?"
Her: "It's City Hall, you can't miss it."
Me: (thinking, 'Doesn't she work there? Is it so hard to say left or right?') All right. What does it look like?"
Her: "It's behind <name of shopping center I already told her I didn't know by name>."
Me: "Great. What color is the building?" (thinking, 'Maybe if I ask direct questions I have a better shot at getting an actual answer.')
Her: "<great big heavy sigh, like she gets a bonus for each one> It's stone. Kind of grey."
Me: "Well, thank you. I'll get that taken care of."
Her: <hang up unceremoniously>

Jesus. I'm sorry you had a fight with your boyfriend or whatever, but you honestly shouldn't be in a job where you occasionally have to talk to people and dispense information. I can be cranky (big surprise there) but for heaven's sake...even when the cable company and I were in daily contact when we first moved in because they were utterly unable to deliver all of the services I wanted to get from them and kept changing their story about what the problem was, I never got shirty with them.

I wouldn't be shocked if someone came by and told us we needed permits for the plants in the yard or something like that. I'm sure it will be $3.50 per plant, $4.00 for trees, and I'll have to drive 45 minutes to some bad neighborhood somewhere to get my permit in person. Bitches.

Sports Night

We went to a Blues game last night. If they hadn't been plastered in "their worst game of the season", it would have been a great time.

Oh, who am I kidding? I left the house and went somewhere I've only been once before, had a pretzel and some cotton candy, and got to see my favorite player. It wasn't a bad night at all.

We went for a walk between period 2 and 3, and I think someone in the row behind us said, "Now there's a dedicated fan" when I walked by with my hand on my stomach in that pregnant lady way. Not that there were many people in the row behind us. The rink was depressingly empty, as the poor Blues currently have the lowest point total in the entire NHL.

You know what though? I still had a good time being out of the house. Those nights will be much further and fewer between quite soon, and I didn't go into labor there in the arena. It could have been much worse.

We happened past the Edward Jones Dome on the way. I have to stress that I have nothing in particular against the Rams unless they are playing the Redskins. Truly, I'd say the same thing about any team's field if it looked like the EJD. That being said, the hospital where we're taking our Lamaze class is less sterile looking than the Rams' stadium. By a wide margin. It was the Purell version of a football stadium. It was honestly depressing looking. I've never seen a dome in person before. I have to say, I'd prefer being rained or snowed on as I watched a game.