Average Jane

Blog

  • Average Jane Loses a Blog Friend

    I was shocked to learn yesterday from Mac at pesky’apostrophe that blogger Star Foster of Sarcasmo’s Corner passed away on Sunday. According to The Phillyist:

    Star had been complaining of a pain in her foot, which she thought had
    to do with some bad moves she’d made at dancing class, but it turns out
    there was a tumor in her leg which metastasized and went to her heart.
    She had a seizure this morning, her boyfriend Mike called for an
    ambulance, she had another seizure on the way to the hospital, and then
    died of a pulmonary embolism.

    You can read more about her here.

    I never had the opportunity to meet Star, but she’s been on my blogroll almost as long as I’ve been blogging.

    It’s hard to sum up how I feel about this news without sounding like a cheesy inspirational book filled with photos of sunsets, but it is a reminder of how fleeting life is and how important it is to make every day count.

  • Christmas With Average Jane

    The only Christmas-y things I’ve done so far this year are shop and bake a batch of cookies for a cookie exchange at work. One of these days I’ll get around to putting up the tree, I suppose. It’ll have to be this week because my niece is coming over to bake and shop with me on Friday and Saturday, and I’d never hear the end of it if she arrived to find the house sans holiday decor.

    To help me get in the mood, I figured I’d pick up this holiday meme I first saw at Everything I know about hiking…I learned wearing flip-flops.

    1. Eggnog or hot chocolate? Hot chocolate! I like it with a shot of peppermint or butterscotch schnapps and some whipped cream on top.

    2. Does Santa wrap presents or just set them under the tree? Santa wraps presents and puts them in stockings and/or on the hearth. For the last several years, we’ve been letting Santa off the hook for gifts because neither I nor my husband really find a lot of value in trying to gather a stockings-worth of little presents for each other.

    3. Colored lights or white on tree/house? I have white icicle lights outside, but I’m not going to put them up this year. For the tree, I just bought some colored LED lights.

    4. Do you hang mistletoe? I have a little ball of fake mistletoe over our kitchen door that’s been up since last Christmas because I forgot to pack it with the rest of the decorations. It inspires less kissing than you might imagine because we’ve pretty much stopped noticing that it’s there.

    5. When do you put your decorations up? Usually I do it at the beginning of December, but I’m running late this year.

    6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)? I love roast turkey and dressing and I’m perfectly happy to have it for Thanksgiving and Christmas both.

    7. Favorite holiday memory as a child? I always enjoyed Christmas eve. My grandparents, aunt and uncle would come to our house for dinner. We’d have a fire in the fireplace and sing Christmas carols, and then my grandfather would tell or read Christmas stories.

    8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? My parents went to great lengths to keep the illusion going (buying different wrapping paper for Santa’s gifts, etc.), but I eventually started to figure it out. When I asked my mother if Santa was real, she explained it in terms of what Santa represents, which satisfied me.

    9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Not necessarily. However, my husband has a very difficult time buying me a gift and not giving it to me immediately, so sometimes we’ll exchange our gifts early.

    10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree? When I first moved out on my own, I bought a bunch of fairly plain starter ornaments and I’ve been adding one or two pieces to my ornament collection every year since. I like to get ornaments to commemorate things I like or places I’ve been.

    11. Snow, love it or dread it? I love the way it looks but I dread having to commute in it.

    12. Do you know how to ice skate? Sort of. I learned when I was a kid but I never got very good at it. The last time I tried to ice skate was on a first date with a guy while I was in college. I got out onto the ice and immediately fell backward and hit my head on the ice HARD. I saw stars and it hurt so much I cried. Needless to say, the date was pretty much over before it began.

    13. Do you remember your favorite gift? I remember my first Barbie doll when I was a kid. She was just a standard Malibu Barbie, but I liked her a lot.

    14. What’s the most important thing about the holidays for you? Getting together with family.

    15. What is your favorite holiday dessert? Chocolate cake roll with peppermint ice cream filling.

    16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? See #14.

    17. What tops your tree? I have an angel that looks disturbingly like Celine Dion.

    18. Which do you prefer giving or receiving? Giving. I love watching people open the gifts I got them.

    19. Favorite Christmas song? I like "O Holy Night." I worked on it at a recent vocal lesson. It’s a good one to sing.

    20. Favorite flavor of candy canes? Classic peppermint.

  • Average Jane’s Thursday Link-o-Rama

    I have to get out of the house early today to take Friday back to the vet, so here are some of the sites I’ve thought were worthy of del.icio.us bookmarking in the past week or so:

    • WishRadar – It may be a little too late for this holiday season, but I like the idea of a more wide-ranging wishlist than Amazon has to offer.
    • Shop NOLA – Links to various stores in New Orleans selling arts, jewelry, clothing, candy and books.
    • Are you a fan of scorching hot blues guitar? Then you’ll probably like Eddie "Devil Boy" Turner. His site is chock-full of downloadable tracks.
    • If I weren’t still working on rolls of wrapping paper from 5+ years ago, I’d consider buying some of the beautiful papers at Funnel Paper Goods.
    • Ever wonder what your pet’s food tastes like? This blogger can tell you.
    • Speaking of pet food, I bought a variety pack of canned cat food from Merrick (warning: audio on site), on Flippy’s recommendation. With flavors like Grammy’s Chicken Pot Pie, Thanksgiving Dinner, New England Boil and California Roll, it was an instant hit with my somewhat picky old cat, Kato. It even looks and smells good when you open the can. What other cat food fits that description? Too bad it costs twice as much as his usual food, but when you’re dealing with a 17-year-old cat, I guess it’s worth it just to keep his weight up.

    Was that random enough for you? Have a lovely Thursday!

  • Six Weird Things About Average Jane

    I dodged this bullet for a couple of weeks, but now Dorothy has finally tagged me with this popular meme:

    Here are the rules – Each player of this game starts with the "6
    Weird Things about You." People who get tagged need to write a blog entry of
    their own 6 weird things as well as state this rule clearly. In the
    end, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names.
    Don’t forget to leave a comment that says ‘you are tagged’ in their
    comments and tell them to read your blog!

    1. You’ll never see me take just a big bite of egg in any form; I always take little bites of bread, meat and potatoes (if applicable) in the same mouthful.
    2. I put my contact lenses in the ‘wrong’ sides of the case. For some reason, I like to have the "R" side of the case on the left and the "L" side of the case on the right. Really, it makes no difference at all because both lenses are the same prescription.
    3. When I’m folding laundry, I always give each item a little pat after I put it on the pile. I would never have noticed that I do it if other people hadn’t pointed it out to me.
    4. I talk to animals. (No, they don’t talk back to me!) Not only do I talk to my own cats, but I’ll also greet any squirrel, chipmunk, bird, dog, etc., that I encounter outdoors.
    5. I can raise my left eyebrow by itself, but not the right one. When I tried to find the muscle that would raise my right eyebrow, I ended up learning how to wiggle my right ear instead.
    6. It took me an abnormally long time to learn to read a clock face. I was probably in junior high or maybe high school before I stopped consciously counting by fives to figure out the time. Even today, sometimes I’ll look at a clock, speedometer or other gauge with a clockwise readout and end up reading it backwards (for example, seeing 9 o’clock and reading it as 3 o’clock, or seeing a 3/4 full gas gauge and reading it as 1/4 full).

    I’ll tag Blaugra, Stacey, Rozanne,  SueBob, Keith and The Misanthrope.

  • Average Jane Christmas Shops

    There’s nothing like online shopping to ensure that every evening includes a game of "What’s in the box?" Yesterday’s shipment threw me for a loop because I didn’t recognize the sender. It turns out it was a prize pack I won at Popbytes a couple of weeks ago for answering a trivia question. Woohoo!

    Other purchases of late (without giving away any Christmas secrets), include the Coat of Arms and There/They’re/Their shirts from Threadless and the "Superhappy" notecards from blogger and artist Joolie of Oh, My Stars and Garters. Both of those shipments were "gifts for myself."

    If you’re looking for good shopping ideas, Sars of Tomato Nation posted a good Gift Guide yesterday. Mrs. Kennedy of Fussy has a new store associated with her site as well. Thanks, Internet, for helping me shop this year!

  • One Man’s Trash is Average Jane’s Treasure

    I spent yesterday evening helping my husband go through the mounds of stuff he’s collected in the studio since the mid-’90s. It was a long overdue process.

    He was inclined to just throw away everything for which he does not have an immediate use, including an upsetting number of books. I’m of the "never throw a book away" school of thought, although I had to admit that some of his old MCSE study guides, etc., were too outdated to keep. I retrieved the other books one by one for later Bookcrossing. Someone may want them!

    There were other things that I couldn’t let him pitch without at least trying to sell them on Ebay: a "learn to play the guitar" booklet from 1974, an 8" x 10" glossy of Joe Montana and Dan Marino in their respective uniforms of the time, a 1982-1987 import car repair CD-ROM…all potentially valuable to the right buyers. I squirreled away a good sized pile of Ebay stuff that I’ll start listing in my spare time later this week.

    What about my own stuff? Well, I haven’t tackled that yet. There’s some Ebay and/or garage sale fodder there, too. Surely someone will want the hand-carved M*A*S*H movie symbol: a hand making a peace sign atop high-heeled legs. Sure, the person who carved it did the legs backwards, but it’s the thought that counts! The office has always been full of quirky stuff like that, but I think it’s time we pared down the collection.

    The day I can look around our office and studio and see only the equipment and furnishings needed to make them function will be a red letter day indeed. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it’ll happen by the end of the year.

  • Average Jane’s New Home Office

    I’m posting especially late because we’ve been getting settled in the new office and studio this evening. The downstairs laptop is out of the picture until I go to the Apple store in the morning to replace the power cord, which has gotten dangerously frayed.

    While my husband got my desktop Mac to communicate with our wireless router, I put together a set of black, powder-coated steel shelves on which he can display his collection of snare drums. There was much cursing involved (on my end, that is; hubby had no trouble getting my computer up and running).

    I’m now sitting at my desk with dark windows on either side of me and the studio behind me. I have iTunes on shuffle and I don’t recognize the song that’s playing right now, but it sounds good now that I’ve fixed a little wiring problem with the speakers.

    I still have two enormous tubs of paperwork and miscellaneous gadgetry to sort through, but that can wait until tomorrow. Okay, now there’s a song I recognize: "What is Hip?" by Tower of Power.

    That’s enough stream-of-consciousness posting. It’s past my bedtime, I’m tired, and the buzz of satisfaction from building the shelves won’t be enough to keep me going for much longer.

    Have a great weekend and I’ll resume my regular Monday through Friday posting next week.

  • Average Jane and the Wintry Wonderland

    I’m being sarcastic about the "wonderland" thing, but it is getting decidedly wintry around here. It rained slushy ice pellets all day yesterday and we’re expecting a big snowstorm later today.

    I have to admit that I kind of like the snow when it’s not actually storming. It’s pretty when the sun shines on a clean expanse of white, glittery snow. However, I am not particularly fond of trying to drive to work when there’s ice all over the roads.

    I didn’t have any trouble getting home from work last night, probably because I waited until after five o’clock to leave the office. I think the people who got nervous and left early probably encountered the most traffic and delays. By the time I left, most of the early birds were out of the way and I made it to the highway fairly quickly.

    Because I probably won’t be so lucky today, I bought the ingredients for minestrone to start in the crockpot for tonight’s dinner. I also picked up a package of bacon in case we end up eating breakfast at home. If we’re stuck here for lunch, well, I guess we’ll find out whether the leftover Thanksgiving turkey is still good.

    I’m going to go get the soup started and try to decide whether it’s practical to try to get to the office today. Wish me luck!

    *****************

    Today’s the final day of NaBloPoMo and it’s been a lot of fun. The extra two days of posting per week weren’t too big of a deal for me, and I really enjoyed reading all of the blogs I found in the randomizer. Thanks for putting this together, Mrs. Kennedy!

  • Average Jane Shops for the Holidays

    On Black Friday, I spent lots of money, but it was all at Home Depot (or as Monkey refers to it, Home Despot) and Lowe’s on behalf of our studio remodeling endeavor. It was great: no lines, no crowds, no one violating my personal space. I also sat on my couch with the laptop (with some violation of my personal space by the cats) and ordered tile samples for a potential bathroom remodeling project, and a new light fixture for our kitchen.

    That’s how I’m planning to handle all of my Christmas shopping as well. My goal is to do about 90% of my shopping online and the other 10% at Target and Costco (notice there’s no mention of going to a mall). I have a pretty good idea of what I’m getting for everyone, so it should be easy to accomplish.

    My Kaboodle lists are really going to help. It’s nice to be able to bookmark cool sites with a photo and a description so I can remember what they were. You’re welcome to browse my collections for shopping ideas: Cool T-Shirts, Handcrafted Jewelry, Paper Goods, Eclectic Home Decor, and Kid and Baby Gifts.

    I’ve been shopping online almost as long as I’ve been online (the other day I ran across a receipt from an online order I placed in 1996). Every year it gets more and more convenient and I get less and less interested in fighting the crowds to shop in the brick-and-mortar world.

    What’s your planned online/offline shopping ratio this year? Or are you foregoing gift-giving altogether?

  • Average Jane’s Parking Pet Peeve

    I have come to loathe "compact car" spaces in parking lots for a variety of reasons, including:

    • Everyone seems to think their car is "compact." Yes, your Hummer H3 is a lot smaller than the other two models, but that doesn’t mean you can squeeze it into a six-foot-wide space.
    • The spaces don’t take into account that you have to get in and out of your car once you’re parked. I’ve had to force myself to stop caring about all the door dings regularly inflicted upon my car.
    • There’s no room for error. Parking even a little to one side or, heaven forbid, crookedly, is a recipe for disaster.

    I drive a very small car, a Honda Insight hybrid that’s less than 5-and-a-half feet wide. Even I can’t comfortably park in many compact car spaces, particularly if someone is already parked in a neighboring spot.

    Yesterday I parked in a compact car spot and returned later to find that the car to my left was way over the dividing line and just inches from mine. Not only did I have to crawl in via the passenger door, but I also had to fold in my side mirror to keep from hitting the other car’s mirror as I backed out. I can’t imagine someone getting out of his or her car, noting that parking job and thinking, "Looks good!"

    It’s almost as bad as when I used to parallel park every day when I was in college. Within one semester, paint on the edges of both my bumpers had been scraped off by other drivers.

    I don’t know that there’s any good solution at hand, but I guess I’ll just have to start making a point of parking away from other people or in the larger spots. Grumble, grumble.