Category: Daily Life

I began today’s birthday celebration at a 12:01 a.m. showing of the new "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie.  My husband and I were watching random TV shows all evening when a commercial for the movie came on at about 11:25.  He said, "I can’t wait to see that."

I mentioned that I’d heard there would be midnight showings, so I checked out our theater’s website and, sure enough, it showed a whole slew of them.  "Get your shoes on and we’ll leave now," I told him.

Thus, we found ourselves in a rowdy theater crowd just past the stroke of midnight.  I loved that we saw several dozen theatergoers dressed as pirates.  During the previews, every time an R-rated movie trailer appeared, patrons all throughout the theater yelled, "Arrrr!"

We heard a few people mocking those in costume, but I’d never do that.  As I told my husband, "Let she who has never attended a ‘Star Wars’ premiere dressed as a female version of Han Solo cast the first stone."  Yeah, that’s right.  My geek cred is solid.

The movie was…okay.  There was lots of action, good special effects, etc.  It could have been 45 minutes shorter and I don’t think we’d have missed anything.  Still, I thought it was an enjoyable way to mark the beginning of my birthday.

I suppose I’ll turn in relatively soon (it’s past 3:30 a.m. now) and try to sleep a bit.  I have a birthday lunch with friends scheduled for 12:30 and dinner reservations at my favorite steak place at 6:30.  In between, I’ll spend the day wireframing a website, ordering a set of girly-styled shirts to wear at my dad’s upcoming seminar, and perhaps writing some more song lyrics.

I spent much of the last year really struggling with the idea of getting older, but now I feel comfortable with it again. Nobody can tell me I’m too old to wear rock t-shirts, sing in a heavy metal band, do cartwheels in my yard, or anything else I feel like doing. 

My age doesn’t mean anything at all.  I’m me, I do what I do, and that’s how it is and how it’s going to be.  Now that that decision is out of the way, look out!

I slept a little later than I should have today, so here are some links to more entertaining things on other sites:

• I must have this t-shirt that reads, "The Sun is Trying to Kill Me."  There’s a guy version, too.  It would go a long way toward explaining my deathly pallor.  So far, it looks like it’s going to be another indoor summer for me.  I can’t even remember the last time I went to a swimming pool.
• Here’s a good article with tips for Overcoming Procrastination.
• Pop Culture Junk Mail is a site I just dug out of my del.icio.us list and plopped into my blogroll to make sure I don’t forget it.  It’s very random, yet entertaining.

That’s all for today, folks.  Enjoy your Thursday (it’s my Friday).

I don’t have much to report regarding our Independence Day celebrations.  We went to breakfast at about 11:30 a.m. and then I worked for my dad for a couple of hours.  After I got home, my husband and I ran some errands, had a late lunch and watched "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" on DVD.  (It was really good, too.  I wish I hadn’t listened to the critics – I’d have seen it sooner.)

We’d planned to see "Superman Returns," but the showing we wanted was sold out and we didn’t feel like waiting around.  We’ll probably see it next weekend and save the new "Pirates of the Caribbean" for the following weekend.

After the DVD ended, I decided I felt like watching some fireworks.  It was just a whim, really, but I looked up local displays online and chose one about 20 minutes away.  When we got near the town, there were cars parked along the highway starting several miles out.  We pulled into a parking lot and quickly realized that we could barely see the fireworks from where we were.

By then, I was over the whole fireworks wild hare, so we left and just enjoyed whatever random fireworks we spotted on the drive home.  Next year, we’ll plan ahead.

Once we got home, we got sucked into one movie after another on TV and I finally went to bed at 2:00 a.m.  Thank goodness I bought some Red Bull over the weekend.  I think I might drink one now.

So that’s my lame finish to the weekend.  The good news:  I only work two days this week!

What did the rest of you folks in the U.S. do with your holiday yesterday?

Yesterday, I learned that my husband is failing to keep his weird sense of humor in check and probably freaked out G, our new guitarist.

On Sunday, while we were having our marathon recording session, I noticed our tabletop mist fountain (which looks sort of like this) sitting on my desk, empty.  On a whim, I took it downstairs, rinsed it out, filled it with water, plugged it in and set it on the kitchen counter.

When hubby and G came downstairs, G asked what it was, apparently never having seen one before.

In reply, my husband popped off with, "Oh, didn’t you know?  Jane is a white witch and she uses it for her spells."

WTF?!?

My husband tells me this story as if it’s sidesplittingly funny and all I can think is, "Why would you tell someone something like that?"

I said, "I hope you told him you were kidding."

He said he did, but his tone made me wonder if he’d made himself perfectly clear.

I guess the silver lining is that he didn’t cast me as a black magic practitioner.  Even so, why would he say something so odd to someone who doesn’t know me very well yet?  Sigh.  I just don’t know what to do with that man sometimes…

The best part of this story is that the weekend is still going on!  I have today off (probably because our company knew it was fruitless to try to get everyone back into the office for one day before a holiday) and tomorrow, too.

Right now I’m trying to figure out why I’m up so dreadfully early.  I went to bed around 2:00 a.m., so it’s just plain wrong that I’m awake five-and-a-half hours later.  Maybe I can work in a nap this afternoon.

I’ve been enjoying my free time so far.  On Friday I babysat my niece and sleeping nephew until about 11:00 p.m., then returned home and watched an awesome vocal instruction DVD called The Zen of Screaming.  I’ll definitely be using it as an adjunct to my live weekly vocal instruction.

On Saturday, the hubby and I got up late, went to breakfast and ran errands all afternoon.  I took a brief nap and then went to a party while he stayed behind and worked on loading drum samples into his computer.  Yeah, he’s not much of a partier.

On Sunday, we went to breakfast around 12:30 p.m. (are you sensing a pattern here?) and then tidied up the house in preparation for an all-day recording session.  I wrote the lyrics to a new song called "Predator," about that gut feeling you get when you meet someone who makes you uneasy.

We recorded for about eight hours and got five songs down pretty well, except for bass.  We don’t have a bass player yet, so our guitarist will probably play the bass tracks for now.

I need to write lyrics for that fifth song, but I have some ideas for the melody already, so that shouldn’t be a problem.  After that, I’ll have two songs left to write of the original seven, and our guitarist – let’s call him "G" – brought me recordings of four more new songs yesterday.

At the rate we’re going, it looks as though we’ll easily have an album’s worth of material recorded and mastered by the end of the summer.  If we can find a bass player and a rhythm guitarist, we ought to be out performing by the fall.  I should start honing my stage moves in front of the mirror!

Today I’m planning on shopping for garden decor with my sister and I think we’ll probably catch a movie.  I had to promise my husband we’d take him along if we decided to see "Superman."

But first, I’ve been craving an iced mocha from Starbucks since yesterday afternoon.  Because dairy and singing don’t mix, I gave it a pass then, but there’s nothing stopping me from having a morning treat now.  I’m off to caffeinate myself.  Have a great Monday!

This has been one of those weeks that makes me wish I could ditch the role of responsible adult and go back to the blissful ignorance of childhood. 

It all started when I realized that my bills for this part of the month were playing "beat the clock" with my payday (today), and the bills were winning.  I had already used up all my overdraft protection before I got the notice that my car payment was being debited.  I had to race to the credit union and deposit my lunch money just to keep afloat.

It’s all well and good that I’m being paid today, but since I’m already $500 in the hole and the bills are still coming in, I don’t think the money’s going to go very far.  As a special bonus, I also need to pay my annual car licensing and registration in July, as well as get a new driver’s license.  Sigh.

I found out this week that I’ll be needing some minor surgery.  I put it off until August because July is just too activity-packed, but that just gives me more time to worry about it.  The helpful, illustrated pamphlets from the doctor’s office that were supposed to make me well-informed and ease my mind ended up freaking me out instead.  See "blissful ignorance" above.

My last medical experience taught me that I’ll need to call my insurance company in advance and make extra sure everything is covered (as much as possible).  I’m still expecting plenty of out-of-pocket expenses.  Well, at least I have insurance.  Things could always be worse.

The last straw came yesterday when I got a notice from the IRS that there was a discrepancy on my 2004 taxes and I need to pay them an additional $1,200+.  My first reaction:  Ha ha!  Get in line, IRS!  At this point, they might as well be asking for $1.2 million dollars, seeing as my bills and debts consistently outstrip my income.

The good news is that I think I know what the problem is with the taxes.  For the company in question, I started out as an independent contractor and went to full-time employee status mid-year.  The IRS is saying I only reported about half the income that the company reported, and that’s probably because the other half shows up as 1099 income, which isn’t itemized on the return.  At least I hope so.  I’m turning the whole thing over to my accountant the minute she gets in today.

I have a four-day weekend starting tomorrow and I plan to just shut off the portion of my brain that deals with all of this other crap until work starts back up on Wednesday.  I’m going to play with my niece and nephew, write songs, sing, goof around in the kitchen, read, watch TV, lie on a blanket and watch fireworks, and basically party like it’s 1983.  (Except that it’ll be legal for me to drink and I won’t be such a fashion "don’t.")

Now, to make it through one more workday…

Today I decided it was time I wore my new glasses to work.  They’re really quite cute.  Note the zebra striping on the inside of the stems.  There’s also an orange tiger-stripe pattern on the inside of the main portion of the frame.  The lady at the optical shop referred to the hidden patterns as "a party in the back," which immediately caused me to dub these my "mullet glasses."

The hard part about getting ready without having my contact lenses in is that I have no idea how to put on makeup when I can’t see.  I couldn’t get close enough to the mirror to put on mascara or eye liner effectively, so I’m just hoping nobody peers through my glasses that closely.

I’ve been wearing contact lenses since the 7th grade, so it’s really weird for me to do the glasses thing, even on a lark.  I’ve learned the hard way that my tender eyeballs can’t take being around cigarette smoke or, heaven forbid, chopped onions while I’m wearing my glasses.  Fortunately, I have no plans to drink at a bar or cook anything today.

With my glasses on and my hair in a pony tail, I feel like I’m sporting my secret superhero identity.  Unfortunately, no super powers are associated with my unruly hair and more visible eyes when I cast off the disguise.

The past weekend was relatively uneventful, which was exactly what I needed.

On Friday evening, my husband and I rented a DVD of Dave Chapelle’s Block Party and ended up watching all of the extras, too.

On Saturday morning, I got up around 8:30 a.m. and went to a large farmers’ market to get produce.  I bought tomatoes, zucchini, green beans, eggplant, a green pepper, sweet corn and new potatoes from a combination of Mennonites, hippies and small-town farmers.  I bought stuff until my shopping bag got too heavy to carry, and I only spent about $9.00.

I went home by way of a regular grocery store (I needed bacon and I hadn’t thought to buy Mennonite bread) and made veggie omelets for breakfast.

The rest of the day wasn’t quite so productive.  I meant to get a few things done, but I was kind of tired and it was easy to laze around and watch it rain, which it did most of the afternoon and early evening.

I finally got moving again around 6:45, just as the rain stopped.  I had a ticket to the roller derby, so I went there and met up with a group of friends.  I sat on the floor at the edge of the rink until a falling roller girl came barreling into me.  After that, I decided I’d stand.

Foregoing the after-party in favor of an early bedtime, I managed to sleep until 8:30 Sunday morning and then from 8:30 until 10 on the couch when it turned out I wasn’t really ready to get up yet.

After one more trip to the grocery store, I spent much of the day cooking.  I made breakfast, salsa, two dishes for a Soroptimist Club Ronald McDonald House dinner, and ended the day grilling burgers and steaming corn and new potatoes for our dinner.

It wasn’t the most productive weekend I’ve ever had, but at least I got a decent amount of rest.  Now I just need to make it through one more work week before the four-day weekend!

With everything else going on this week, there was one annoying constant:  itching insect bites from last weekend’s party and party prep.

The chiggers got my ankles and one knee.  It’s kind of hot in my office, so the bites itch pretty much all day long, but I tune them out as much as I can.

The chigger bites are nothing compared to the piece de resistance, a spider bite on my upper right arm.  It itches, too, and also sports an alarming 1.5-inch diameter round, red blotch.  Believe me, I looked up spider bites online to make sure it wasn’t going to dissolve my flesh.  After a week, this is as bad as it gets.

When I was growing up, nature was much closer and nastier.  We couldn’t play outside until our parents checked the peony bushes for rattlesnakes and copperheads.  Thanks to the snakes, we weren’t allowed to go into the barn by ourselves.  All summer long there were ticks everywhere and the dogs would be covered with them.  We had plants in our back yard that produced little "stickers" that would stick painfully in your bare feet.  There were nettles in the woods and thistles out by the barn.

Now that I live in the ‘burbs, I’ve gotten spoiled.  We have less than a half acre of yard, yet I complain about every case of poison oak and chigger bite I get when I’m out there.  I start to think it might be fun to move into the city and live in a loft.  Then if I need a nature fix, I can just go to a park!

I won’t do that, though.  I’d probably never go back to a more rural existence, but I’m pretty happy with our big expanse of yard.  I just need to learn to apply repellant from now on.

Last night was my installation as president of my local Soroptimist club.  I’m still not quite sure why they picked me.  When I end up at board meetings wearing jeans, a t-shirt and my Converse All-Stars while everyone else is dressed in business attire, you’d think the "which of these things is not like the others" vibe would give everyone pause.

It’s especially intimidating given that our particular club was chartered in the 1920s and we have archives filled with photos of former members wearing hats and white gloves to the meetings.

Even though the club is definitely not "high society" anymore, I’d hate to be the person who lowers its standards one more notch.  That’s why I usually dress up on meeting days, even though it tends to make people at work suspect that I’m out interviewing on my lunch break.  (For the record, I’m not.)

Because I am a huge procrastinator, I wrote the outline of my "theme for the year" speech just moments before I left work.  The outline turned out to be a bad idea because I can really only organize my thoughts when I’m writing.  When I had to stand up and talk through the topics in front of people, I was nervous enough that I rambled, skipped over stuff I’d meant to talk about, and eventually ditched the last two sections.

From now on when I have to give a speech, I’ll know to just write the whole thing out and at least have it available for reference if I don’t want to stand there and read it verbatim.  I should have joined Toastmasters back when I had more free time.

Before the installation, people kept asking me, "Are you ready to be president?"

My answer then and now, "I don’t know.  I guess we’ll see."

I’ve purchased a 12-month accordion file so I can keep track of my paperwork (for once) and a separate calendar to make sure I don’t miss any important deadlines.  I’ve given every club member my e-mail address and cell phone number so they can reach me whenever they need something. 

Beyond that, I’ll just have to cross my fingers and hope for the best.  Wish me luck!