Archive for the ‘It’s all about me’ Category

One of my neighbors is an asshole

Sunday, June 15th, 2014

Our trash pickup normally comes on Friday mornings, so you usually see trash cans appearing outside garages on Thursday evening. The only time it changes occurs when we have a holiday during the week, which causes pickup to happen Saturday.

I put my trash out this past week like I usually do. Friday, when I got home, my trashcan was still full, so I thought they hadn’t picked it up. I left it out, even though I couldn’t think of a holiday that would have caused the delay. Saturday evening, it was still full. This morning I realized that the trash in my trashcan wasn’t mine. Someone had come by after trash was picked up and dumped their trash into my can.

I understand that they didn’t want their trash stinking up their garage for the next week, but I’m pissed they felt justified in stinking up mine.

A minor peeve

Wednesday, May 21st, 2014

I’m watching one of the Japanese ‘rubber suit monster’ movies that “stars” Ghidrah. Given how the name is spelled, I’d expect his name to be pronounced, “GHEE-drah.” All of the voiceover actors are saying, “ghee-DOOR-ah,” though, which is bothering me more than I’d expect.

These movies are an acquired taste that I’m not certain I’ve really acquired, so I’m trying to decide if it’s irritating enough to cause me to stop watching.

I’ve been sick

Tuesday, February 25th, 2014

For a while, actually. I originally came down with it at Christmas, and the medicine I was prescribed seemed to work fairly well. Unfortunately, I suffered a relapse. I got prescribed more antibiotics, but it’s been a struggle. At one point, I spent five consecutive days flat on my back, all day, every day.

I’m much better now, but I still have a bit of a cough and my voice isn’t completely back. I was going to go to a local ukulele jam tonight, but I came home from work exhausted and took a nap, and it’s too late to show up now.

I’ve been accumulating links, and I may make a huge “miscellany” post, or I may go through and keep the reference links and discard the rest. I’ll decide that later. Maybe.

That’s one way to tell I’m getting old

Sunday, January 12th, 2014

I had a strange and surreal dream last night. Normally, I don’t remember dreams, but the alarm went off in the middle of this one.

I dreamed that I was lying face-down in bed, reading a section of the paper that Marion had just handed me. Apparently, the mattress was not an impediment to sight, my arms, or the newspaper. I was reading an article, illustrated with numerous photos, concerning people who had had copyrights violated or their DNA stolen, or both. A Japanese woman was next to me, explaining what had happened to a Japanese track team that was shown in one of the pictures.

When I was younger, if I had dreamed of being in bed with two women, we would not have been reading the newspaper.

Cooking is great. It’s a wonderful excuse …

Sunday, November 3rd, 2013

for playing with knives and fire.

I have a button that says that. I do enjoy cooking and baking, but the toys can get awfully pricey. I don’t have really good knives, but I do have reasonable ones, and I do try to keep them sharp and take care of them – I own an assortment of sharpening stones from 200 to 6000 grit, as well as two or three books on sharpening and use of knives and other edged implements.

I ran across a mention of Japanese Binchotan charcoal the other day and got curious, so I searched on the web. Most of the sites I found were merely descriptive, but I did find one that sold a few varieties of it. It also sells a number of Japanese-made knives. I believe that this one one is the most expensive knife they sell. Note that they charge 50% more for left-handed versions.

It’s a bit rich for my tastes. I can’t justify a $300 knife to myself, let alone something like that. I also don’t have need for such a specialized knife. That being said, I can dream, can’t I?

So here I am …

Thursday, September 5th, 2013

… sitting at home, with plumbers (plural) working on the drain mechanisms of my two tubs, and my car in the shop because it broke down on my commute home yesterday.

The tubs need repair because the lever that shifts the drain mechanism is made of two dissimilar metals – a bad idea in moist environments – and I was unaware that I had to open and close the drains regularly in order to prevent corrosion from building up and locking the mechanisms. Bleah.

Replacing the drain mechanism is a two-plumber job, involving one plumber working in the tub and the other beneath the tub. It’s taken three hours or so to do the upstairs tub (the easy one). For the downstairs tub, the plumber will have to chip away some of the cement floor beneath the tub in order to have room for the new drain mechanism. Again, bleah.

The car is in the shop because, apparently, Saturns with standard transmissions are notorious for having problems with the mechanisms connecting the shift lever to the transmission. When you’re on the road, and all of a sudden the shift lever starts flopping around, it’s not a happy occasion. This is the second time I’ve had it happen. The first time was almost exactly a year ago – Marion and I were returning home from a play, and when I shifted into neutral at a stop light, all of the normal “feel” of the shifter went away, and it flopped around loosely. I flipped the lever around a couple of times and joked to Marion that she shouldn’t feel bad, this sort of thing happened to every guy now and then, but there wasn’t much humor involved in waiting for a tow truck at midnight, miles from home. My mechanic replaced the cables that were part of the linkage mechanism, and I was good to go.

This time, I was on my way home and it happened while I was shifting gears coming away from a stop light. It wasn’t the cables this time. It was a couple of plastic parts that the cables go to. Same effect, though. I’m just lucky that both times, the car ended up in neutral. If it had been in gear, it would have been tougher getting it onto the tow truck.

Joe tells me the repair parts may be in tomorrow, so I may get the car back tomorrow afternoon. Not the way I wanted to spend today, but what can you do? Once more, and third time’s the charm … bleah.

Milestone

Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013

Ten years ago today, I posted the first article on my first website. That blog lasted a little more than three years. I moved from there to here so that I could obtain my own domain.

There’s nothing significant in that first post (or, indeed, most of my posts), but it’s interesting to me to see some of the sites I had in my blogroll back then.

It’s been a while

Saturday, January 5th, 2013

… since I’ve posted anything. I’ve got a few hundred links I’ve accumulated that I could dump, but I haven’t felt like dumping them yet. I was on vacation in New York from just before Christmas until just before New Year’s Eve. I had a good time, and got introduced to Armenian Mulberry Vodka, which is wonderful, although I’ve been unable to find the same brand online.

Currently, I’m missing out on a Pompeii exhibit that I had a ticket for, because I’ve been sick for the last few days, and today is actually the worst so far. There’s apparently something horrible running around. I just hope this clears up soon – I’ve got a ticket for a different museum show tomorrow, and I can’t afford to lose much more time from work at the moment.

It’s a mystery

Tuesday, November 27th, 2012

I won’t say that I live and die by 3×5 cards, but I use a fair number of them. I take notes, copy recipes, write down dance steps, save web pages, contact information, and so on. Every now and then, I find some cards I haven’t seen in a while. A few days ago, I found a stack of cards I hadn’t seen in a while. Probably a long while, but there’s no date information on the card.

Beside the URL of a defunct website and the title and author of a book that I thought I might want to acquire, the card contains the following list:

  • Shipbuilding
  • Prevention
  • Bourbon
  • Naval Mine Warfare
  • Pollinator Protection
  • Hockey
  • Friends of Liechtenstein
  • Contaminated Drywall

I’m pretty certain that there’s no common thread there, but there’s nothing else on the card to let me know why I copied these topics down, or from where. Still, I can tell that I wrote the list as a single entity – it wasn’t something I added to over a period of time – so I’m intrigued by the possibility that there is a common thread, if I can just remember or deduce it.

It’s Veteran’s Day

Sunday, November 11th, 2012

I’ve put a lot of my service time out of my mind, for various reasons, and I haven’t kept up with my old buddies that much, either. Still, if you’re a veteran, you have my thanks. And my sympathies, given the election results. I remember how things were under Carter, and they have to be worse now.