November 2005

hey, that’s not a toy!

one of my cats, who shall remain nameless because i don’t have eyewitness proof of this yet (although i suspect a particular little boy who is being very cute and sleek and is sitting complacently at my feet right now as if he’s never committed a kittycrime in his life) has taken a great liking to my maxipads, the kind that come all nicely individually packaged in little yellow plastic wrappers. i regularly find them on the floor at different locations in the house. once it was on the other side of the bathroom. another time it was in the middle of the hallway. once it was in my office. they always have little kitty-tooth-sized puncture marks in the plastic, and various small rips and tears. not enough to be unusable, necessarily (’cause those things are not a dime a dozen) but definitely enough to indicate that a cat has been chewing on the wrapper. during such times as i am in regular need of them, i keep them in a tall box on a shelf by the side of the toilet. they sit at the bottom so that there is a good eight inches of empty space between them and the top of the box. as near as i can figure, somebody, and i’m not saying who, is resourceful enough to reach in, hook a claw into one, and pull it out without tipping the box over. i have to give him credit for oustanding eye-claw coordination. and then i guess he tosses it around like a dying mouse and pokes a bunch of holes in the wrapper. and when he realizes it’s not going to fight back, carries it off somewhere and leaves it. i suppose that i ought to get a box that has a lid on […]

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new toy

i got myself my christmas present today. for a long time i’ve been wanting a digital snappy-happy camera. i love doc’s prosumer model sony f828 but it is rather bulky and not so convenient for just carrying around day-to-day. so i decided that once we got paid for the brochure project from hell that i helped doc with in august and september, i would take a little of that money and get myself a camera as a christmas present. so i did, just a bit early. i got a canon powershot sd400. my decision was based on a number of factors, the most important being size and image quality. i wanted one that was sub-$500 (sub-$400 if i could) and at least 5 megapixels. it may be a snappyhappy, but i wanted decent resolution. my research pointed at this particular canon model. it is quite tiny (about 3.5″x2″x1″) but has a large LCD screen and will fit nicely into my purse. plus, i love the way it looks — it feels solid and heavy and has a somewhat retro/james bond-ish look to the body. the camera plus a 1GB memory card only came to $400, so it was definitely in my price range. the other one i was particularly interested in was the new sony t7. it’s only about 1/2″ thick, and about 4″x3″. amazingly thin, beautifully designed. i was initially leaning towards the sony because i’m familiar with the interface and controls on sony models, but this was $450 (although for that price you get 7 megapixels) and it takes memory stick pro duo (not memory stick pro, so i couldn’t use our existing memory cards in it) — and the duo memory is prohibitively expensive. so i went with the canon. so far, i’ve only found 2 things […]

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dream toilets

why in hell do i have so many dreams about going to the bathroom??? can someone please shed some light on this?? am i the only one??! i don’t have any particular ISSUES about going to the bathroom, other than i prefer a clean seat and clean floor, i cover not hover whenever possible, and i prefer not to do #2 in public unless it’s a real emergency, and only then if i can be assured that i’m completely anonymous. i don’t think that those caveats are anything unusual. so why are public toilets featured prominently in my dreams? and i’m not talking about mundane dreams where i go in, pee, wash up, and come out without incident. i’m talking about stalls without doors, stalls with walls only 3 feet high, huge bowls and seats, oddly colored potties, all around odd looking potties, strange people in the bathroom, non-flushability, a fear of actually using the dream toilet for various and sundry reasons, toilets that change shape or size as i’m using them, etc. i don’t get it!

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6th anniversary

doc and i have been married officially for six years, as of yesterday. and together for ten. wow. ususally, it doesn’t feel like it’s that long. i usually don’t even think about the length of time we’ve been together. i guess that is probably a good thing, that it means our marriage and our relationship is working well. not that that surprises me. 🙂 it does make me sad to think that a number of our friends have not fared so well lately. i know how lucky i am. doc is sick with some sort of icky cold. he woke up this morning and could only croak out words. i got him some nyquil and orange juice. right now i’m making a big pot of soup from chicken broth, leftover turkey, carrots, celery, and garlic. it smells great. hmmm. i’m flipping through a neighborhood coupon mailer and see an ad for garage door repairpeople, “the spring replacement specialists.” and that’s what is broken on our garage door. maybe i should call them. they’re specialists! i’m pretty sure we can’t repair a garage door on our own. in fact, we can’t even lift it and have been parking in the driveway for a few weeks. it broke as i was at work, on the phone with doc. i heard the crash sound over the phone. he walked out into the garage, saw the broken metal cord, and walked around to the front of the house, after saying that he thought maybe someone had tried to break in through the garage door. and then… the phone went dead. i couldn’t get him back on the line. i was on the verge of calling 911 when he called me back. he’d gone too far away from the phone’s base station.

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great quotes

“I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.” — comedian Jon Stewart “A love that risks nothing is worth nothing.” — Unknown “Forgiveness is accepting that you can’t change the past.” — Unknown “The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.” — Bertrand Russell “The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” — Bertrand Russell “I shall stay the way I am because I do not give a damn.” — Dorothy Parker “If you want to see what God thinks of money, just look at all the people He gave it to.” — Dorothy Parker

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shopgirl & the weatherman

we just saw “shopgirl” tonight. loved it. i am a huge steve martin fan. i loved how the characters were so complex and flawed. i was distracted occasionally, wondering how it felt for claire danes to do love scenes with steve martin, who is like 35 years older than she. (and that’s not to say he isn’t attractive. he’s up there with harrison ford, patrick stewart, and and sting in the “hot older men” category.) on saturday we saw “the weatherman.” i am also a huge nicolas cage fan. he was fantastic in this movie. again with the complex and flawed characters. i must mention that i never thought the bob seger song “like a rock” could make me cry — because it’s used in those fucking pickup truck commercials — but it did. damn you, michael caine! go see them both.

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