Category: Daily Life

My company has started bringing in a yoga instructor twice a week. I missed all the classes last week for various reasons, but caught yesterday’s noon to one o’clock class.

Man, am I out of shape.

This morning, the soreness tells me that my right arm is a lot weaker than my left. That’s not surprising considering that I’m left-handed. I expected more hip and leg ache, but maybe that’ll take longer to set in.

Between the yoga classes and my new jump rope, I hope to shed a good 10-15 pounds of excess winter pudginess as quickly as possible. It would be nice to remain at the jeans size into which I’m currently shoehorning myself.

Another "ow" this week: my husband is the household’s latest victim of debit card number theft. It happened to him in almost exactly the same way that it got me a few weeks ago, despite our separate bank accounts, different last names, etc. We’ve been wracking our brains to figure out how someone got our numbers, and I’m inclined to suspect the data thefts from Marshall’s. We both shop there but not necessarily together, so both our numbers were probably on file.

The final "ow" of the week: tax time. Don’t get me wrong – I’m almost certainly getting a refund. It’s just that I procrastinated gathering up my paperwork until…yesterday. I probably could have gotten everything to my accountant in January, but I didn’t get off my lazy butt to find the charity receipts, etc. until last night. Fortunately, I’d been piling most of the obvious tax forms in a box on my desk as they arrived, but all of the stuff that I received throughout the year was scattered all over the house.

So how’s your week going? Ow or mmmm?

Just in time for April Fool’s Day, we learn that a Derbyshire resident (who wishes to remain anonymous – what are the odds?!) has discovered a mummified fairy. Check out the photos – they’re awesome.

I haven’t enjoyed an elaborate hoax this much since the pickled dragon from Oxfordshire. I’d say this demonstrates that the British are world leaders when it comes to establishing a good prank, especially when you also take into account the Cottingley Fairies.

My favorite gallery of all things hoax-y is the Museum of Hoaxes blog.  Someday I’ll get one of their Save the Jackalope t-shirts.

In my role as an advertising copywriter, I once wrote an outlandish character blog to tie in with a television ad campaign. I did a lot of research and loaded it with the most ridiculous and incongruous details I could think of. Characters from fiction and mythology appeared, as did many tall tale elements from American folklore. My goal was to make sure that nobody could take it seriously.

Of course, there were still a handful of people whose "face value" switch doesn’t operate properly. They left indignant and argumentative comments about how scientifically improbable the stories were. Well, yeah, and did you notice that one of the characters was a Norse god?

That’s why hoaxes will always entertain us. Even though the uber-skeptics like me will immediately clue in, enough people will want to believe to keep a few seeds of doubt planted in the mind of the public until actual evidence surfaces. Then we’ll have to move on to a fun new hoax.

In case you hadn’t noticed, I took most of the week off from posting. For a while it was because I had a miserable headache. After that, it was just too easy to keep cruising on my earlier laziness.

Here are a few things that have gone unblogged of late:

• I found a new vocal instructor. I’d been with my previous one for more than a year and I could tell that I was no longer making progress. In fact, I think I was starting to actually get worse in some respects. I found a new teacher who teaches the Eric Bruner Sing with Power method, which sounded promising. She’s a lot more expensive than the other teacher, but she guarantees results much more quickly and, in fact, promises to quickly put me on a path where I won’t need lessons anymore. My first lesson with her was last Tuesday and I was impressed with her approach. She records every session on CD so you can practice in between lessons and judge your progress. I also found it interesting that she starts by determining a vocalist’s full range and comfortable range, with the goal of increasing the comfortable range to a full three octaves.
• I made a delicious pizza. I always make pizza crust from scratch using the recipe that comes with the Kitchenaid mixer. However, I’ve generally used pizza sauce from a can or jar. Now that I’ve become leery of high fructose corn syrup, I decided to find a recipe to make my own sauce. The first one I tried was called Exquisite Pizza Sauce. It was quite good! I found it a tad too sweet (the next time I’ll cut back on the honey), but otherwise spicy and wonderful.
• I read a whole book in one afternoon. It was The Thirteenth Tale, which I selected for an upcoming book club meeting. I liked it a lot and kicked myself for not figuring out the "twist ending," despite many clues.
• My husband made a startling revelation. He swears he’s never heard of Calvin and Hobbes. How can that be? I even mentioned the "peeing Calvin" stickers on trucks and he looked at me blankly. I followed up with a question about Bloom County and received a similar response. Who’d have thought that our age gap would be revealed not by music, movies or TV, but by comic strips?

Wow, wouldn’t it have been a horrible shame if you’d missed out on all of that vital information forever? </sarcasm>

Have a delightful weekend.

Yesterday, one of my other blogs was featured in the newspaper along other local blogs.

I haven’t subscribed to the paper for many years, nor do I read it online, but I found the link to the article in the morning and purchased a dead-tree copy on my way to work.

It was a nice gesture for the paper to tip its hat to the local blogging community, and I did a blog post welcoming anyone who might be stopping by after reading the article.

Total number of new commenters: 1
Apparent increase in traffic: Non-discernible
Only person who called after seeing the article: My 75-year-old dad, who will never, I repeat never, see the actual blog online due to his lack of computer skills.

I hesitate to draw sweeping conclusions from this one experience, but it certainly seems to confirm that the intersection of old media and new media is practically nil. It also seems to suggest that newspapers’ efforts to bring their content online aren’t having the desired effect either.

I’m curious about your media consumption habits. Where do you get your news? (Mine comes almost exclusively from Google News these days.) Do you read a daily newspaper? If so, is it paper or online? Have you ever typed in a URL you found in a newspaper or magazine?

I’ll be interested to see just how many of us have left old media behind for good.

On Sunday, my husband and I took a trip to the zoo. We’d had enough of being cooped up inside and we figured it would be a good way to kick off a spring full of walking and exercise.

It turns out that early spring is the perfect time to go to the zoo if you want to see lots of animals. Almost every animal was outdoors and feeling very playful. Some were a bit beyond playful; I couldn’t help thinking of this recent audio clip from The Onion, Abstinence-Only Education Ruined by Trip to the Zoo.

We walked briskly around and saw the majority of the exhibits. The walking part was a bit of a problem. After months and months of sitting in an office chair or on a couch for 99% of the time, it turned out I was in poor shape for hiking over acres of asphalt. My hip started hurting and I had to stop and do toe-touches a few times. This aging stuff is no fun at all.

There weren’t that many other visitors, but we kept catching up with one whiskey tango family who exemplified annoying zoo behavior. They banged on the glass to try to wake the animals, yelled at the animals (seriously, if one guy had shouted "meerkat" one more time, I was going to slug him), and spouted ill-informed speculation to their children, ignoring the correct information posted on signs all around the exhibits. I’m pretty sure I saw one guy tossing pieces of candy to a monkey. What part of "Don’t Feed the Animals" escaped you, man?

We eventually managed to evade that group and finish up our visit in peace. We wrapped things up after a couple of hours and headed out for a late lunch, hindered only by our inability to find my car in the parking lot.

We haven’t taken a walk since then, but I’m feeling optimistic that we’ll get outside more now that we’ve gotten a taste of it. Of course, it would be nice if the pollen counts would subside a little first. I don’t have enough room in my pockets for the tissues I’d need for an hour-long walk right now.

Last week, my debit card was declined when I tried to use it to buy lunch. Fortunately, the person accompanying me owned me a lunch anyway. The card worked for cash advances and any purchase that involved the PIN, so I didn’t think much of it until it was declined again.

I called my credit union and learned that there had been a couple of suspicious charges. They didn’t sound particularly familiar, but they were for small amounts and I was so fixated on the convenience of the card that I asked to have my account unblocked.

I learned just how stupid an idea that was on Saturday morning. I doing my morning Bloglines surfing when I received a call from Visa. There had been two debits the previous evening: $28 at a Mexican restaurant (legitimate – that’s where we had dinner) and $1,000 at Wal-mart. Uh oh.

I make a special point of avoiding Wal-mart, which left no question that someone was fraudulently using my debit card number.

All weekend long, I was forced to get by on old school purchasing methods: cash and checks. I don’t have a credit card anymore and I hadn’t realized how dependent I had become on the debit card.

The thing that really gets me is that I resisted getting a debit card for a ridiculously long time. I’d had an ATM card in the late ’80s, but had then foregone all bank cards until just a couple of years ago.

It didn’t take long before I was using the card for everything and never carrying cash. Lunch here, coffee there, a book, some groceries and a tank of gas – all on the debit card. La, la, la.

The credit union says I’ll need to wait for the fraudulent charge to hit (that is, wipe out) my checking account, then come in and fill out a dispute form. I guess there’s no police report or anything like that involved, although I can’t really understand why not. I want someone to track down the thief! Does this kind of crime really go unpunished?

In the meantime, the credit union has canceled my debit card and will be issuing me a new one with a different number.

When I get the new card, I’m not sure how to handle it. Obviously, the more I use it, the more chances there are the someone might copy the number. I hate to carry cash, but at least if someone steals your cash, they’re only getting the amount you have on your person rather than the entire contents of your checking account.

What a pain…

If you had walked into my office restroom a few minutes ago, you’d have caught me sticking Scotch tape to my eyelids and gingerly peeling it back off.

Why? Because nothing else I could think of would remove the last traces of the eyelash glue from last night. Every time I blinked, the corners of my eyes would stick lightly and it was driving me insane. The glue had hung on through two episodes of attempted makeup removal and a shower and I just couldn’t think of another solution.

Considering that fashion mags are always going on about "don’t rub the skin around your eyes because it’s SO fragile," I imagine I’ve done a bit of damage with the tape. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t sting a little.

However, it worked. So there.

My, what a busy weekend I had! It was so busy that I had to add an extra day to fit everything in.

On Friday evening and all day Saturday, our main task was to clear out the guest room so that my husband’s sister, brother-in-law and nephew (who’ll be three in July) could stay with us on Sunday and Monday night.

In the process, I threw away an enormous garbage bag full of junk mail, some of which dated back to 2004. Yes, I’m ashamed.

My husband moved all his drums…somewhere. I think they’re hidden in the bay window of the studio behind the drapery. Now you know why I haven’t posted "before" and "after" photos of the studio yet. We can’t seem to achieve a nice enough "after" to take the shots.

Between cleaning and running errands on Saturday, I managed to make it to a three-year-old’s birthday party and a 50-year-old’s birthday party. On Sunday, I attended a 90-year-old’s birthday party. I clearly have a dizzying variety of friends.

Sunday was the day we had our electrical upgraded to 200-amp service.
Woohoo! Now I can use the oven and ALL of the stove burners AT THE SAME TIME and not have to tromp down to the basement to reset the @#$%& breaker anymore.

When our houseguests finally arrived on Sunday evening, we took them out for dinner and had a good time. We hadn’t met my husband’s brother-in-law before but he seems like a nice guy. He’s in the Army and they’re on their way through town because he’s being transferred to the Seattle area.

I awoke on Monday to learn that our nephew had been up sick all night long. I’d taken the day off so we could do more dining and running around, but our beleaguered guests weren’t up for anything but sleeping all day. I also had a suspicion (which never panned out) that I might need to go into work for a while, so I stayed tethered to my computer most of the day. The only thing I accomplished before five o’clock was playing with the kitten so much that I actually wore her out for the rest of the day.

By that time, they’d taken our nephew to the hospital. He’d been throwing up all night and all day and couldn’t keep any liquid down. The diagnosis: rotovirus. Not something parents want to hear when they have a long road trip ahead of them. Last night they moved out of our guest room to a hotel near the hospital. I wish there was something more we could do, but there really isn’t. We’re just glad it happened in a big city and not in the middle of nowhere.

So that was my three days of…not much. At least I got a chance to enjoy the nice spring weather.

Last night, my husband and I decided that it might be nice to go out for dinner. We drove to one of our favorite pizza places, went in, and stood at the register for about 10 minutes. The place wasn’t completely full, but it was pretty busy. One employee walked by and muttered something about getting back to us soon, but soon never came. We left.

After that, the next best option was a Houlihan’s restaurant not far away. Nuh uh. It, too, was packed and we could see people waiting in the foyer.

By this time I was getting low blood sugar-y and cranky. "Screw it! We’re going to McDonalds!" I told my husband.

I could tell he didn’t believe me, but I’d made up my mind. I knew it was close to home, cheap and wouldn’t make me wait. I also knew that I would regret eating there, but I was prepared to deal with that.

Thus, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I had a Big Mac, fries and a Coke for dinner. And you know what? It was pretty tasty. As I predicted, the Coke made my abdomen look as though I’d swallowed a watermelon, but that subsided quickly enough. Damned high fructose corn syrup.

Speaking of eating things I shouldn’t, I just got a new comment on my 2004 post Average Jane Loves Easter Candy. I must say, I still stand by everything I said then. In fact, I’m about due for a Cadbury Cream Egg.

I’m feeling very cranky today. It’s a good thing that the other drivers couldn’t hear me berating them on my way to and from work.

I can’t even blame the weather because it was sunny and relatively warm today. I even got to enjoy a bit of the outdoors walking to lunch and back.

I think it would help if I cut down on caffeine and sugar and stepped up the exercise. Until that happens, I guess I’ll stay tucked into my spiny shell.