Average Jane

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  • Average Jane Tries to Enjoy Spring

    I would be a much bigger fan of 2010 if I weren't currently sick for the THIRD TIME since the beginning of the year. This time it's a rafter-rattling case of bronchitis – the kind that makes you have to sleep sitting up so you don't choke to death. Yeah, delightful. The good news is that I have Zithromax and codeine cough medicine now, so presumably I'll be getting better pretty soon.

    The sad thing about being sick when it's absolutely gorgeous outside is that you feel as though you're being cheated. I took a few minutes this morning to walk around the yard and take photos so I can enjoy all of the following once I am not so preoccupied with breathing.

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    Oh, and just because he's adorable, how about a photo of Dr. Jones, asleep:

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    Have a lovely week!

  • Average Jane LOLs

    I have been waiting for someone in my real Facebook universe to produce something worthy of Failbook and today was the big day.

    Witness the exchange below, with names and avatars removed to protect both the deliberately joking (the post originator and commenter #1, who happens to be me) and the completely clueless (commenter #2, who obviously didn't read my comment). Click to embiggen, if you can't read it.

    Failbook  

    For a little bit of background, this refers to the results of an actual mayoral race in a nearby suburb, although obviously the new mayor is not the long-dead former Ozzy guitarist.

    But, yeah! We need more musicians to lead the way…rock on!

  • Average Jane is Speaking at BlogHer

    BH2010_S_125 It's taken me six years to get to this point, but I'm finally going to be speaking at BlogHer! I'm sure this milestone would have come sooner if I'd ever proposed a session before now.

    As it turned out, my session suggestion didn't get quite enough votes, but instead I was invited to join Mayberry Mom and Nonlinear Girl on the Room of Your Own panel Little Fish in a Big Pond: Understanding, Accepting, and Loving Your Small Blog.

    It'll be on Day 2 (August 7th) from 3:00 to 4:15 p.m.

    If you're one of my elite group of regular readers, you know that this is the ideal session for me. Average Jane is the ultimate "what you see is what you get" blog, and while I will appreciate you forever if you like it, I certainly won't take it personally if it fails to hold your interest.

    Not every reader is willing to play subject matter roulette with the topics of recipes, cats, rock bands, gardening, books, childhood memories, Sea-Monkeys and random Internet memes. But you apparently are, and for that I thank you.

  • Average Jane Takes Dr. Jones to the Vet

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    Today is the day that Dr. Jones goes to the vet to be neutered. He's about 5 1/2 months old, so it's time. Also, we have found ourselves using the word harbls in reference to him a lot lately, so it really is time.

    I'm sure Trillian will miss him while he's gone all day and overnight, but the humans in the household are frankly rather happy to have a break from him. We're very much looking forward to the day when he is grown up enough to take "no" for an answer.

    He is awfully cute, though, don't you think?

  • How Average Jane Spent Most of Her Sunday

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    I know I've previously mentioned playing Battlestar Galactica, which is another strategy-heavy board game. Well, yesterday I got together with a group of friends to play the 1979 board game Dune [click to read about the history and game play], based on the Frank Herbert novel.

    We started around 1:30 p.m. with a couple of learning rounds, then proceeded into a full game that lasted until almost 8:30 p.m. Later on it was discovered that we'd missed a couple of rather important aspects of the rules and thus made things much more difficult for ourselves (and probably made the game much longer), but it was still an engrossing way to spend the afternoon and evening. I'm looking forward to playing again soon.

    Until recently, I hadn't been exposed to games of this complexity. I grew up with Monopoly, Scrabble, Life, etc. and later branched out to Trivial Pursuit, Pictionary, Scattergories and other "game night" kinds of games. And sure, games like that are entertaining enough, but there's so much more depth to spending several hours playing a character or group with a unique skill set.

    Do you have any strategy games you really enjoy and recommend? We also sometimes play Pandemic (but didn't get to it yesterday for obvious reasons), and Last Night on Earth is on our group's to-do list. What else are we missing out on?

  • An Average Jane Quarterly Staff Review: Velvet

    IMGP0958 Dear Ms. Velvet,

    Since the unfortunate demise of your colleague, Ms. Velcro, you have been promoted to the position of my primary downstairs cat companion, a.k.a. #2 Downstairs Cat or VP. It was my understanding that you had been eagerly awaiting this opportunity, but there are some associated job duties upon which I feel you need to concentrate more effort.

    Your primary duty in this role is to sit on my lap whenever I am seated on a couch for more than, say, 5 minutes. Purring is much appreciated as well, but not mandatory. However, licking is strongly discouraged.

    Of late, I have noticed your tendency to leave my lap for extended periods of time in favor of lying on your cardboard scratchy thing. You are welcome to take brief breaks to enjoy any of your toys or play with your colleague, Ms. Xena, but please keep your lap duties in mind and adjust your playtime accordingly when I am around.

    Don't forget that there is a pair of eager young interns in our Studio Department. If you are unable or unwilling to fully embrace your position, there remains the possibility of transferring Ms. Trillian and Dr. Jones to your department. At that time, either or both of them may permanently assume most or all of your lap privileges.

    Thank you for your attention to this matter.

    Sincerely,

    Average Jane

  • How Average Jane’s Brain Works

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    ["I'm A Regular Here" by Megan Reardon]

    This is the actual progression of thoughts I had while driving home this evening. Low blood sugar may have been a factor.

    I like the thermal coffee mugs with stainless steel inside better than the ones that are plastic inside.

    I wonder if we're eventually going to find out that stainless steel does something bad to you when you drink out of it?

    When ancient conquerers used to drink out of the skulls of their enemies, I'll bet they picked up all kinds of bad stuff. Well, maybe the alcohol killed everything, but I don't think so. Creutzfeldt-Jakob, anyone?

    That was a great X-Files episode. "Good people, good chicken."

    If you're going to drink out of your enemy's skull, would you just cut off the very top part or would you leave the eye sockets so it's easier to tell that it's a skull? Or would that make it too hard to drink out of?

    I wonder how much liquid the average human skull holds?

    So anyway, I need to wash some coffee mugs

  • Rip VanAverage Jane

    Once upon a time, a woman fell asleep on a Friday afternoon and the next thing she knew, it was Monday night.

    That's the way I feel after the weekend I've had. I had to leave work after just a few hours on Friday because I felt absolutely horrible. I made it through a conference call after I got home, then dealt with a brouhaha involving someone who was trying to use the name "Average Jane" for a group in Kansas City. After that, I had no energy left for anything but a hard sleep.

    I woke up and made a doctor's appointment late in the afternoon. The nurse practitioner prescribed some antibiotics because my symptoms suggested a kidney infection. Once I got home, I installed myself in bed until late Saturday morning.

    Somehow I made it through all of my obligations for the weekend, which included a birthday lunch with my aunt, a gig with my band, a volunteer shift taking care of the adoptable cats at Petco, and a hair appointment. I cannot even fathom how I managed to sing forty rock songs in front of a crowd as bad as I felt, but I give all the credit to Gatorade and the over-the-counter pharmaceutical industry. I couldn't tell if it was the stage lights or my fever that made me feel uncomfortably warm the whole time.

    I slept for hours and hours and hours over the weekend. My appetite was shot, the fever lingered, and there was nothing in the world that I wanted to do other than lie down.

    This morning, I actually thought I was feeling better when I woke up. I went upstairs to read my e-mail and check in to see what I'd missed on Twitter and Facebook. (I'm disappointed that I didn't catch any SXSWi chatter this year.) By the time I went downstairs to get ready for work less than a half hour later, I was wiped out. I tried to get dressed, but had to stop and lie down. I gave up and went back to sleep.

    The nurse practitioner called in the afternoon and said I could stop taking the antibiotics because I didn't have a kidney infection after all. She said I probably had some kind of virus, which left me no recourse but to rest, drink lots of fluids, yadda, yadda, yadda. As if I hadn't spent the last three days doing exactly that.

    Now I think I actually do feel better. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I can make it through the workday tomorrow and the next day before I head to Waterloo, Iowa to speak at Creative Bloc. Wish me luck getting caught up.

  • Average Jane Fails at Book Club

    Right now I'm in three different book clubs, but I don't always attend all of the meetings. However, I saw last week that one was coming up on Sunday the 7th, so I glanced at the e-mail thread, procured the book The Help by Kathryn Stockett, and blocked off my weekend calendar so I could quickly read it before the meeting.

    I spent Friday evening and Saturday morning and afternoon reading the entire book. I really, really liked it and couldn't wait to have a discussion about it with the book club.

    Caramel cake was mentioned repeatedly throughout the book, so I decided to track down a recipe and make one to bring with me. I choose this one from Cooking Light. I'd never made a caramel cake before (nor even heard of one, to be honest), but I followed the directions to the letter (except that I made a sheet cake instead of a layer cake due to lack of proper baking pans) and it turned out absolutely wonderfully.

    I was a little early to the meeting, so the hostess and I had a few minutes to talk in the kitchen before everyone else arrived. One of the first things I said to her was, "I really enjoyed the book!"

    She'd chosen this month's book, so she excitedly started telling me how different it was to read it now compared to when she was in her twenties. A little alarm bell went off in my head because I was pretty sure that "The Help" had only recently been published.

    Then she began naming her favorite characters and scenes and I had absolutely NO idea what she was talking about. The other book club members arrived just as it was sinking in that I'd read the wrong book.

    I grabbed my phone and looked up the e-mail chain again. It turned out that I'd read the book that had been selected for May. Not March, not April, but May. It would be two months before I could have my much-anticipated discussion of the book I'd just finished.

    The book I should have read was The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. You'd think with my English degree I'd have read it at some point in the past, but somehow I missed that one. So, yes, I sat through an entire discussion of a book I knew absolutely nothing about.

    Needless to say, everyone in the club was initially a bit confused about how I'd been inspired to bake a caramel cake based on the book under discussion. However, it turned out that there actually was a mention of a caramel cake in one scene. It seems like a very random coincidence, but since both books are set in the South, the odds were in my favor.

    So that's the story of how I discovered a delicious new dessert, revealed myself to one of my book clubs as a complete dingbat, and listened in on a very confusing discussion. It could happen to anyone, right?

  • Average Jane Says Goodbye

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    Velcro
    1992 – 2010

    She had a great day on Saturday. I took her to the vet to have her electrolyte balance checked and the vet even commented that she seemed to be doing surprisingly well.

    I had no plans outside the house, so she spent most of Saturday sleeping on my lap while I read a book.

    On Sunday morning, I could tell that the previous day had been her last rally. When I woke up, I found her wedged beneath our wire CD rack, tangled in the electrical cord of the lamp. I gently freed her and put her in her bed on the floor. The next time I went in the living room, she had gotten herself tangled up under the table again. After I rescued her for the second time, she never had the energy for another attempt.

    When my husband came downstairs, I told him to make sure to pet her before he went to bed because he probably wouldn't have another chance. He started to brush me off and say that I'd made that prediction before, but once he'd had a good look at her, he came back in the kitchen and said he knew I was right.

    I had a lot of things on my agenda and as I bustled around the house cleaning and baking, I kept stopping by to pet her and see if she was still breathing. By the late morning, it was clear that she was no longer aware of her surroundings.

    I didn't see any value for either of us in sitting around staring at her all day, so I went ahead with my volunteer shift with the adoptable cats at Petco. Later in the afternoon I attended a book club meeting and when I called my husband on my way home, he told me she was gone.

    Of all the cats we've had, she was the first to go quietly on her own at home, rather than be euthanized at the vet's office. Fortunately we'd had a week or so of warmer weather, so my husband and I were able to dig a hole in the back yard to bury her. I'll plant some bulbs there as soon as I get a chance.

    As sad as we are, we realize that we were fortunate to have her for the extra two weeks after her initial medical crisis. She had a rough start in life – found tied into a pillowcase in a Salvation Army donation box – but she had loving homes, first with my mother and then with us after my mother died.

    Still, we'll miss her. She was definitely one of the good ones.