Category: Daily Life

Sorry I didn’t post on Friday.  I had a marathon business trip to Denver and back and I didn’t have time to write before I left.

When I got home, I was so wiped out that I could barely stay awake to watch a movie.  I made it through "Alien vs. Predator" (which wasn’t too bad), but slept through most of "Van Helsing" (which, from what I saw, was absolutely awful).

After I finally woke up at noon on Saturday, I ended up having a fairly active weekend.  We went bowling on Saturday night with four other couples.  I started out with a strike and a spare on the first game, but it was downhill from there.  I hadn’t bowled since last year;  my husband hadn’t bowled in about 35 years.  Luckily, it was all just for fun.

For the past several years I’ve meant to plant a kitchen garden, and yesterday I finally made it happen.  I went to a huge garden center to buy potted herbs:  oregano, cilantro, parsley, thyme, rosemary and more.  I was tempted to buy hundreds of dollars worth of other plants, too, but I limited myself to the project at hand.

When I got home, I dragged my small roto-tiller out of the shed and began the laborious process of trying to get it to start for the first time of the season.  I don’t do any of the proper maintenance, so it’s always a struggle to get it going each spring.  It finally started and I tilled a strip of ground in front of an existing flower bed to the left of our front door.

I edged the new garden with bricks, picked out all the grass and weeds that were mixed into the dirt, and went to a nearby hardware store for manure, peat and topsoil.  Once the bed was prepared, I planted each herb and seeded lettuce around the perimeter of the bed and between each plant.

The result is a tidy row of varying shades and textures of green plants set off by black dirt.  My husband suspects that the rabbits will get more benefit out of the garden than we do, but I hope he’s wrong.

Today I have sore muscles from shoulder to knee, but it felt good to get outside and accomplish something.  This week includes another business trip and a massive amount of office time, but at least I’ll be able enjoy watering my new garden each morning before I face the day.

My husband and I went to my aunt’s house on Sunday afternoon.  As we prepared to leave, she said, "You have to try these."

She handed me what looked like two tiny, elongated oranges and said they were kumquats.  I’d heard of them but never tried one before.  Despite her assurance that they were delicious and could be eaten peel and all, I thanked her and tucked them into my purse for further consideration. 

Yesterday morning I noticed an odd odor.  At first I thought it was something in the house, but it followed me to work and intensified when I opened my purse.  It smelled like…a rotten orange.  Aaagh!  I’d forgotten to take the kumquats out of my purse!

My purse is at a record low for excess junk, but it was still a challenge to locate even one of the kumquats.  The second one was still more difficult to find because, well, it was the odor culprit and it had turned grey and fuzzy.  Ick.

The pungent smell permeated my purse and all its contents to the extent that removing the source had minimal effect.  I can only hope that airing it out will help eventually because there’s not much more than can be done.

That was my lesson for the week:  Don’t put food in your purse. 

Would I have told this story if the fruit in question had been limes or plums?  Perhaps not.  A legitimate chance to use a funny word like "kumquat" is impossible to resist.  Say it with me:  "Kumquat, kumquat, kumquat."

</silliness>  Thank you.

We slept with the windows open last night!  Spring is on its way!

Winter wasn’t that bad this year, but I am so happy that the season is changing.  I’ve been keeping a tally of each sign of spring I see:

• Crocuses blooming
• Robins in the yard
• Daffodils blooming
• A bluebird in my sister’s yard
• Greening grass
• Hyacinths blooming
• Magnolia trees and forsythia bushes covered in blossoms

All leading to last night’s warm, windy weather that allowed us to air out the house and sleep bathed in fresh breezes. 

Man, this topic lends itself to a lot of alliteration!  (I almost said "bathed in balmy breezes," but even I know when to pull back.)

Have a lovely pre-spring Wednesday!

Well, well, two more volunteers!  That’ll round out the game nicely, I think. 

Dorothy accepted my challenge by asking me these three questions, to which I’ve added my answers:

1. You mentioned not being above wearing leather and fishnets on the
   proper occasion in one of your comments. What is the best occasion and
   worst occasion for wearing such items?
   Obviously, I find it appropriate to wear some combination of leather
   and fishnet stockings when singing with a hard rock band (as I am wont
   to do on occasion). On rarer occasions, I will attend such a
   performance dressed thusly, but more often than not I prefer the
   comfort of jeans to stockings (although the leather still works).  The worst occasions for wearing leather and fishnet stockings include:  grocery shopping, church, visits with the elderly, and any situation
   that finds one standing on an urban street corner for more than a minute or two.
2. How many cats is too many?
   I have four cats, which makes me an authority on the subject of how many cats is too many. My answer: 3. Not that I don’t love all of my cats individually, but once you have more than two cats sitting on a single piece of furniture with you, your house begins to look infested by them.
3. If you had to buy your husband a car, what would you buy him?
   If money were no object, I’d buy my husband this car.  If there were cost limits and I could exercise my practicality, I’d get him this vehicle.

Here are my questions for the second and really final round of the Interview Game:

Dorothy

1. What’s the most impertinent thing anyone has ever said to you?
2. If you could write for any magazine in the country, which one would you choose?
3. Is there a song that you and your husband consider "your song"?  If so, what is it and when did it become significant?
4. Would you ever buy another old house?
5. What’s your favorite comfort food?

Goofy Girl

1. What are your five all-time favorite books?
2. If you could plan a trip anywhere in the world, where would you like to go?
3. What has surprised you most about being a parent?
4. What is your most vivid memory from childhood?
5. Just how goofy are you?

The two of you may post your answers to your own blogs along with a copy of the rules below:

The Official Interview Game Rules

1. If you want to participate, leave a comment below saying "interview me."
2. I will respond by asking you five questions – each person’s will be different.
3. You will update your journal/blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

That’s it for my end of the game.  I’ll sit back and see what everyone says and follow their readers’ questions and answers.  Enjoy your Monday!

I thought more of you might be interested in playing, but that’s okay – it’ll be a lot easier to come up with 10 questions than 100!

Here are my questions for the two victims, er, volunteers:

Cagey

1. What’s the biggest culture shock experience you ever had when traveling abroad?
2. When is it better to buy a knitted item instead of knitting it yourself?
3. What’s your dream job and how likely are you to ever pursue it?
4. Name something that’s supposed to be fun that you absolutely don’t enjoy doing.
5. What social or political issue concerns you the most?

Mojokittycat

1. What’s the sneakiest thing you’ve ever done to get your husband to eat vegetables?
2. How are you most different from the rest of your family?
3. Carnival/fair food on a stick:  delicious or disgusting?
4. If you had the choice between another baby or another cat this time next year, which would you choose and why?
5. Via what medium do you get most of your news?

Okay, now post your answers and the terms of the game to your own blogs and comment here to share the link.  Refer to my original post, if you need a refresher on the details.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Let me run you through a little scenario to explain the way my cell phone has been behaving over the past seven months or so:

[Phone rings]
Jane:  Hello?
Caller: Eh oh a oh eh ooh…
Jane:  I’m sorry, hang on.  I can’t hear anything you’re saying – I’ll call you back from another phone.
[Hangs up.]

If this had happened with every call, I might have addressed it sooner.  However, it happened randomly enough that I might have a day or two of acceptable call quality and start to forget what a piece of junk my phone had become.  Then it would go bad again.

Last week I finally informed my phone company that I am taking my business elsewhere.  My contract expires early next month and I knew I had a small window of cancellation opportunity before they sneakily renewed me.  I ordered a fancy new phone from another company that’s small and shiny and has a camera and a color screen and fun ringtones (some of which aren’t too annoying).  In other words, it’s the kind of modern phone that everyone else already has.

I left behind my old phone number in the transition, but I don’t anticipate that being a problem.  Sometimes it’s kind of nice to get a new cell phone or a new e-mail address and have a fresh start.  It doesn’t take long before the unwanted calls and e-mails return, but there’s a brief respite in between.

Now that I have a camera phone, I’m planning to start a moblog.  I’ll try to get it set up this weekend or next weekend and I’ll post the link as soon as it’s up.

Have a great Wednesday!

A couple of months ago, a friend excitedly told me about a new all-female roller derby league in town.  She had attended an exhibition game and was toying with the idea of going out for one of the teams herself.

Last Saturday was the first game of the season and I lined up with a group of friends outside the rink to see if this was going to be as interesting as it sounded.  I was dimly aware of the sport’s past, particularly in the 1940s and ’50s, but this sounded like it might be considerably different.  Apparently roller derby still thrives throughout the country.  There’s even a blog about it:  Wayne’s Derby World. 

I doubt there are many banked rinks left since the last time roller derby was popular, so these teams competed on a flat rink with the boundaries marked by rope lights.  Some of the skaters were quite good; others fell down only slighly less than I would in the same situation.

I don’t know about other cities’ leagues, but ours could be described as "professional wrestling for people with liberal arts degrees."  The bouts are punctuated by a good deal of staged brawling, punished by a devil-suited character called the Die Master, who rolls a giant foam die to determine the penalties.  The scorekeeper is a man in a bunny suit called, naturally, the Score Bunny.  For this match, there were breakdancers and a live band to entertain the large and varied crowd in the breaks between the three 15-minute periods of the game.

I was pleased to note that a portion of the proceeds from ticket sales went to the YWCA to support their new initiatives to combat racism and empower women. 

After Saturday’s game, my friend decided that she’s probably not up for being repeatedly knocked down by younger and more aggressive women.  Still, I imagine we’ll all keep attending the games because they’re so much fun.  The somewhat amateurish, art school feel of the latest incarnation of roller derby isn’t a detriment at all.  It’s made the sport into "underground" entertainment that anyone can enjoy.  How often do you find something like that to keep you busy on a Saturday night?

Suzanne recently invited her readers to participate in The Interview Game.  It sounded interesting, so I wrote her and asked to be included.

Here are the questions she came up with for me, along with my answers:

1. When a stranger passes you on the street, what about you catches their eye?
   Well, 99% of the time it isn’t what I have on, so it would probably be the dark hair color I’m sporting right now, juxtaposed with my blue eyes.
2. What is the most outrageous thing you’ve ever done?
   Outrageousness is relative, of course, but I’m not an extrovert by anyone’s standards, despite my tendency to say whatever springs to mind and my past as a heavy metal singer.  I really can’t answer this one because I do a lot of unconventional things that don’t strike me as outrageous.  My friends and associates may think otherwise!
3. Romance.  Rate its importance in your life on a scale of one to ten.
   I’m trying to think of an answer that won’t make my husband all pouty, but he knows me well enough to be well aware that I don’t crave romance novel-type swooning.  I enjoy little loving surprises (and we’ve stepped those up with the help of MateMinder), but they’re secondary to comfortable compatibility and shared laughs.  I’ll say: 3.
4. Is chili really chili if it contains beans?
   I grew up in the Midwest, so for me, chili isn’t chili unless it contains beans.
5. What concerns you the most about the future of earth’s environment?
   Where to begin?  We already see many policymakers turning a blind eye to the damage that environmental pollutants cause to animal species.  When we realize just how toxic our environment has become to humans, then will things change?  Or will it be too late?

Tough questions, Suzanne!

If you’d like to play, too, here’s how it works:

The Official Interview Game Rules

1. If you want to participate, leave a comment below saying "interview me."
2. I will respond by asking you five questions – each person’s will be different.
3. You will update your journal/blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

I have some errands to run this morning, so I thought I’d distract you with some of the other glorious content available online for all to enjoy:

• I know I’m probably the last person in the world to discover zefrank.com, but it’s loaded with cool Flash toys and a lot of the designer’s short comedy videos.  This one, called request, was one of my favorites (it’s QuickTime, FYI).

• If you get online from more than one location, del.icio.us is a great tool for keeping all of your bookmarks in one place.  Even better, it allows you to choose keywords with which to identify the sites you’ve added.  When you view your list online, you can see who else has bookmarked the same sites and find other sites you might like based on similar keywords or interests.

• Are you a Monty Python fan?  You can keep up with the latest Python-related news at PythOnline’s Daily Llama.  It’s one of my little goals in life to see "Spamalot" performed…even if I don’t make it to one of the Broadway performances.

That’s it for now.  I have an activity planned for Saturday night that promises to be very blogworthy.  I’ll leave you to wonder what it might be…

I live in a town where St. Patrick’s Day is a big deal.  There’s a parade and many people take the day off from work, drink all afternoon and then take the next day off, too.

I like a green beer as much as the next gal, but I did the all-day St. Pat’s thing once when I was in my early twenties, and so far that’s holding me.  I’ll be heading to work this morning as usual.

I had planned to pack a lunch to avoid the drunken crowds, but I lost track of that idea while planning to meet up for lunch with a teacher friend who is on spring break this week.  We’re going to a restaurant in an area of town that isn’t too bar-heavy, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Perhaps I’ll mark the day with a pint of Guinness once I get home.  It’s one of my favorite Irish things, so it seems fitting.