Author: Average Jane

Oh, how I wish I could go on vacation right now.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any plans to do so until June at the earliest, then I have another long weekend booked in July.  None of that helps in the short run.

At least it’s Friday.  Tonight my husband and I are planning to see The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, even though the reviews have been rather mixed.  Tomorrow we’re taking a road trip to stroll through two big flea markets all day long.  On Sunday, I’ve promised my dad I’ll spend the afternoon at his house working on some publishing projects.

I’m too fried to think of anything interesting to say.  Hope everyone has a good weekend.  I’ll report on my weekend treasure hunting Monday.

My entire evening yesterday was taken up by the kind of activity that makes me realize I’m entirely too old and responsible.  My husband and I and our neighbors attended a lengthy informational meeting about the feasibility of switching from septic tanks to sewers.

Our neighborhood was established in 1947, and for some reason that I’m sure seemed very valid at the time, all of our houses have septic tanks instead of being tied to a sewer line.  About once a decade, a couple of people on our street decide that this Can’t! Go! On! and start the process of informing the rest of us about the joys of spending massive amounts of money to fix something that’s not broken.  Most of us stop the process in its tracks at Step 2 (a postcard that asks, "Would you sign a petition in favor of a sewer district for your neighborhood?"  No!) and everyone lives happily ever after until the subject comes up again.

Anyway, to prove that we’re responsible homeowners, we sat through the world’s most boring presentation.  They showed us a map of our backward neighborhood surrounded entirely by progressive, sewer-using people who are probably mocking us when we’re not looking. 

For some reason, there was an exhaustive (and exhausting) PowerPoint presentation detailing every type of septic system on the market, which seemed odd in that all of us already have septic systems and I’m willing to bet that most of us don’t have any idea what kind they are.  The presenter used terms like "scum layer" and "solids" that made me glad I hadn’t eaten dinner beforehand.

Finally, a planning engineer made a case for installing low pressure sewers (LPS to those in the know), introducing another disgusting concept:  the grinder pump unit.  Ick.

The question and answer session got rather heated, mainly because there’s a new regulation in effect that requires an extensive septic tank inspection when you sell your house that could possibly force you, the seller, to establish a connection to any sewer line that’s within 200 feet of your property.

After more than an hour and a half, we finally left because, despite the increasingly angry questions, it seemed clear to us that there was no way the majority of homeowners in our neighborhood were ever going to agree to step forward and pay $15,000 to $20,000 each for no good reason.  I’m sure it’ll come up again around 2012.

In my profession as a Marketing Babe, I’m familiar with the concept of customer evangelism.  In a nutshell, it’s the idea of a company’s customers becoming so enthralled with a product that they’ll voluntarily urge others to buy it.

I’ve always been inclined to share my opinion of products I particularly like or dislike.  However, I’ve lately found myself in the position of repeatedly being asked my opinion about one particular consumer good:  my hybrid car.

Ever since gas prices went from uncomfortable to downright painful, strangers have been approaching me to ask about my car almost everywhere I go.  One day I even had a guy next to me at a stoplight gesture for me to roll down my window so he could quiz me about my gas mileage.  Almost every trip to the bagel shop, the grocery store or the gas station results in my reciting the pros and cons of the Honda Insight.

I really like my car, so I’m happy to share my thoughts about it.  Unfortunately, the Insight is the rarest hybrid on the market.  According to this MixedPower.com article, it’s only available by special order, which would explain why I’ve seen a mere handful of others. 

The Insight is the only two-seater hybrid out there, and I’m sure that’s probably undesirable to many people.  It’s the tradeoff that gives it the highest potential gas mileage of all of the hybrids on the market, but only people without kids or dogs can really take advantage of it.  Wired Magazine recently published a good comparison of available hybrid models.  I should probably print it out and carry it around with me to hand out!

People always ask me about my gas mileage and I have to admit that I’m not trying very hard.  I’ve carried over my lead-footed driving style from the last few sports cars I had, so my gas mileage has been hovering around 50 mpg.  One of these days I’ll start paying attention to all the advice on InsightCentral.net to see if I can achieve the big numbers.

Would I recommend a hybrid?  Definitely!  I’m aware that the Insight isn’t for everyone, but I’ve heard good things about the Toyota Prius and the Honda Civic Hybrid.  They’re all small with no frills, but that doesn’t seem important when you’re spending less than $50 a month for gas.  The new hybrid SUVs aren’t quite as impressive in the gas mileage department, but I’m sure they’d provide welcome relief for people who are used to filling up almost daily.

I wish this post title referred to my virtuoso guitar soloing skills but, alas, I have no knack for stringed instruments.  No, I’m talking about shredding my junk mail, a task that I am beginning to resent more and more.

I spent about 30 minutes this morning shredding an armload of unwanted mail, mainly consisting of credit card and mortgage loan offers.  That was just what I’ve received in the last two weeks;  I have an enormous cardboard box and an overstuffed grocery sack full of other candidates for the shredder.

I estimate that about 5% of the mail I receive is actually of interest to me.  The other 95% sometimes overwhelms the bills, letters, cards, magazines and other items I actually want.  As I was shredding, I found the May/June issue of Archaeology magazine buried in the pile.  I have no idea when it arrived.

I’m in the habit of shredding at least the name and address portion of every piece of mail that arrives.  I used to keep the shredder in the kitchen so I could keep up with the mail every day.  Unfortunately, that got away from me fairly quickly, so now the shredder is up by my desk surrounded by its eventual victims.

I’m hoping to put a stop to some of the excess mail by using the Direct Mail Association’s Mail Preference Service.  Unfortunately, they have a finky policy of charging you $5 to register online (even though you’d think that would be cheaper for them in the long run), so I’m planning to register all our name/address combinations by mail instead. 

Maybe soon the shredder (me) can have a much-needed break.

It’s tornado season in the Midwestern United States.  Spring arrives with robins and blooming plants, then tornado season follows, marked by the wail of sirens and the appearance of multicolored county maps plastered across the lower left of the TV screen.

We had a severe storm yesterday that came up quickly and dramatically while I was still at work.  The sky turned dark with a greenish cast, then came heavy rains, hail and the distant sound of sirens.  The bad weather lasted only a few minutes, but the watches and warnings persisted into the evening.

When I was growing up, we lived out away from the city and took tornado warnings very seriously.  I remember our family huddling in our dank cellar with a flashlight, a battery-operated radio, and every dog and cat we could round up, waiting for the all-clear.  We never had a tornado touch down near us, but because the high school a few miles away had once been demolished by a tornado (before I was born), we figured it was better safe than sorry.

My husband believes for some reason that tornadoes never hit within a city.  He’s of the "stand on the porch and watch the sky" school of emergency weather reactors.  I don’t know how safe and sturdy our basement is, but I’m willing to spend some extra time down there sorting laundry or organizing our holiday decor storage during a warning period if it could mean the difference between life or death.

After years of tornado watches and warnings, it does get kind of easy for me to downplay the danger.  However, I’m sure everyone who lives somewhere that’s prone to its own variety of natural disaster gets used to the looming threat.  Whether you live on a fault line, near an ocean or river, adjacent to a semi-dormant volcano, or in "Tornado Alley," you probably learn to put the worry aside until something bad starts to happen.

What’s your area’s biggest natural threat?  How do you react to it?

Yes, that’s right, I’m left-handed.  Supposedly that makes me clumsy, accident-prone and right-brained.  Considering that I have a big bruise on my foot from dropping an insulated coffee mug earlier this week, the clumsy and accident-prone part sounds right, although I can’t positively attribute it to my being left-handed.  The right-brain stuff sounds correct though, as writing is my preferred occupation (despite my being shoehorned into a left-brained project management job right now).

The world isn’t particularly accommodating for lefties, but I’ve adapted some ambidextrous habits that serve me pretty well.  For example, in elementary school I started out competing for the few pairs of left-handed scissors available before giving up and just learning to use right-handed scissors instead.  That alone has probably saved me an enormous amount of inconvenience in my lifetime.

I embroider left-handed but crochet right-handed, because my great-aunt taught me crocheting and we both found it too complicated when she tried to teach me "backwards."

There’s only one specialized kitchen tool for lefties that I’d like to have:  a left-handed measuring cup.  I always end up with the metric side facing me and it would be nice to be able to see the English measurements without awkwardly holding the measuring cup in my right hand.

I put my computer mouse on the left (which doesn’t always reach very well, let me tell you!), but I use the buttons in the usual right-hand configuration.  Several jobs ago, an IT person helpfully programmed my mouse buttons in reverse but I couldn’t get used to it and I made her change them back.

I’m curious about how many of my fellow bloggers and blog readers are left-handed. Left-handers are a distinct minority among the population at large, but the whole right-brained thing could tip the balance a little more toward lefties among bloggers.  Which are you?

Yesterday morning I could barely resist the urge to skip work and play in the sunshine all day.  Instead, I skipped my daily blog entry.  Sometimes life is all about compromises.

Really, I didn’t have much to say.  I had a delightful weekend celebrating my husband’s birthday with a series of fun activities, none of which sound nearly as interesting when reeled off in print.  We’ve decided that we’re bored to death with going to the movies, going to the same old restaurants, etc., and our goal for the spring and summer is to seek out different things to do.  As of this weekend, we’ve covered:

• Friday night happy hour with friends
• Dinner and drinks at a restaurant and bar featuring a jazz singer and keyboardist
• Visit to a museum of modern art
• Lunch in the museum’s courtyard
• Garage sale that happened to feature a live band

See, I told you it doesn’t sound all that interesting, but it was one of the most pleasant and relaxing weekends I’ve enjoyed in a long time.  I remember smiling a lot.

My payback for ignoring the blog on Monday is that I had to deal with an infestation of comment spam this morning.  Man, that’s irritating.

Today I’m not so disinclined to go the office, mainly because it looks as though it’s going to start raining at any moment.  I have a busy week planned, including lunches with friends almost every day, activities every evening and two birthday celebrations for my niece.

This should be a delightful spring and summer.  I’ll be sure to tell you all about it.

To say that I have a poor sense of direction is a massive understatement.  Not only do I have trouble finding my way around in a car, but it took me years to develop a reasonable amount of confidence regarding which was my left hand and which was my right.  (Hint:  Hold up both hands in front of you with the thumbs parallel to the ground.  The one that forms the letter "L" is left.  You’re welcome!)  We won’t even talk about how long it took me to learn to tell time.

I know I have bad directions genes because I clearly remember my grandmother driving around with a water-filled compass mounted next to the rear view mirror in her car.  Still, I usually get around okay in the car, but that’s mainly because I’ve lived all my life in the same town.  However, I’ve gotten lost twice this week and driven around in circles trying to find my way back to a familiar road, all because I never have any idea which direction I’m headed at any given time.

On Wednesday night I attended an event at a college about 50 miles from home.  I couldn’t leave the auditorium parking lot the way I came in because of all the traffic, and consequently I got trapped within the campus for a good 15 minutes or so.  I didn’t know any of the street names and I couldn’t even hazard a guess at the direction I should be heading, so there was a great deal of U-turning and doubling back before I finally reached a street with a name that meant something to me.  Eventually, I made it to the street I needed to get home, but I wasted a lot of time in the process.

Clearly I’m having a multi-day bad direction spell because yesterday I got lost again.  I was heading to my dad’s house (which is less than five miles from my house), when I encountered a detour around some road construction.  I followed the first sign but didn’t see any further ones, so I turned left, which should have led straight back to the road I wanted.  Except it didn’t.  I found myself wandering aimlessly through a neighborhood I don’t know at all, vainly hoping to find a street I recognized.  I finally encountered a main road less than two miles from my house, which meant that I’d ended up almost halfway back home as I meandered around.  Sigh.

I don’t know if the solution is a car compass, a GPS, a homing pigeon or what, but it certainly is awkward to try to explain how you got lost two miles from your own house.  From now on, maybe I should hire a guide…

I have been visiting the same dental office since I was a child.  As of this morning, I have seen four different dentists there and watched the surrounding neighborhood decline in minor increments with each visit.

My first dentist was a wizened gnome of a man who was not at all sympathetic when I cried about having my first cavity when I was in college.  It wasn’t exactly comforting that he was an old-school amalgam filling guy.

When he died, there was an interim dentist that I barely remember and then the practice sold to another dentist who stayed there for many years.  I remember him as a friendly, soft-spoken man with very large fingers who eventually replaced all my ugly metal fillings with more attractive porcelain ones (and added quite a few besides).  He recently gave up his practice to devote time to some family issues, so I knew that my appointment this morning would be with yet another new dentist.

In the course of making the appointment, I learned that the receptionist was the new dentist’s wife and that she was very pregnant.  That led me to suspect that he was rather young, but I don’t think I was quite prepared for the reality.  I kid you not, he looked like he was twelve.

That was neither here nor there, but I couldn’t help reflecting on the course of dentists who had ranged from my grandparents’ age, to my parents’ age, to just a little older than I am and finally ended with this guy who could have been my own son if I’d been a more reckless teenager.

The hygienist took x-rays, partly because I was overdue thanks to a missed appointment late last year and partly because I suspected a cavity on the upper left.  She went to develop the film and the dentist proceeded to skewer my gums with the sharp, metal hook.  I’m used to a gentle cleaning by a hygienist, so I wasn’t too thrilled with the torture treatment.  The dentist gave me the usual lecture about flossing and brushing my gums.  Whatever, Junior. 

The hygienist then did a ham-handed polishing job that flicked sandy, mint-scented gobbets of paste onto my face continuously until she finished.  In the meantime, the dentist examined my x-rays and reported that I did not have a cavity on the left side, but I did have one on the right.  It was difficult for me to resist the urge to ask him if he was sure he hadn’t read the x-rays backwards.

I have a filling appointment scheduled a few weeks from now, but I’m having a difficult time deciding if I want to continue with the whippersnapper dentist and his klutzy assistant or if it might be time that I moved on to a more convenient location with more experienced personnel.  On one hand, I’m sure the young ‘un is probably well versed in the newest dental theories and techniques.  On the other hand, I’m not sure I want to serve as his practice case while he perfects his craft.

In the meantime, I’ll enjoy my clean, smooth teeth and the cool orange and green toothbrush I got.  It doesn’t quite make up for my unpleasant morning, but it’s a start.