Christmas 2010

This year, I've opted for the minimalist approach.

Okay, I say "minimalist" but really it just means I was in no mood to deal with all the nut jobs in the stores or the mess in the garage to get to the decorations and tree. So there's no decorations, no tree, no pretending to be merry (it's this last one that makes it all worth it).

There's a few presents for my mom (I buy stuff for her year round and just give them to her; that leaves the Christmas options pretty slim) and a couple for friends. The couple of family presents can wait until the next time they visit (January... maybe...). The dogs got treats and a new toy and the cats are spoiled year round. Usually I use Christmas as a time to torment them (what could be cuter than a 20-lb white cat wearing an elf-hat and looking like he wants to smother me in my sleep??) but those too are trapped in the pile of crap that is my garage right now.

I was going to make dinner but that whole "People in stores are douche-bags right now" got in the way so it's pasta and vino tonight.

Uneventful, drama-free and absolutely lovely.

Tomorrow may be a whole other story. It's the anniversary of my dad's death. Mom's still apt to burst into tears; I may drag her to Wal-Mart for a couple hours. After-Christmas-Hell may help her forget for a while. Or at least give her an outlet for her pain. Take that, rude old lady with the 4 year old in diapers chewing on a dollar bill. That's right, bitch; you're goin' doooowwwwwnnnnn!

*klickety kklack*

Trying out my new flip-out keyboard for my iphone (sometimes the touchscreen sucks and you need more control than a couple little tap menus).

I might even start posting more since I rarely open my laptop lately. I figure I stare at a computer screen for 8+ hours a day at work; I don't need to do it at home, too.

Life is good. Health is better. Ass is smaller. And time is spent doing what makes me happy, not cleaning up after other people and dealing with their hangups and bullshit. Oh, and I'm getting a raise! So all in all I'll be finishing this year on a high note. I'm hoping it'll last at least until tax time.

Apparently the only way for me to catch a tax break is to either buy a house (which I don't need) or marry and/or breed. So I guess that just leaves marriage. I think I'll found a church instead...

Sent from my iPhone

Bah, Bah, Black Sheep

I've caught myself contemplating church. (I say “caught” as if it's forbidden but it's really just that I've never given much thought to organized religion, at least not in the sense that it's for me). It's as if I'm hoping that by just being there things will change. The logical side of my brain says that is nonsense; you can't find contentment by following the herd, especially a herd that for most of your life has represented all that is hypocritical and wrong in the world. I think all I really want is peace, a little quiet in my life.

It feels like there's this little part of me trying so hard to be optimistic, that everything will work out. A very small, mute part. It's like a flutter, like something is trying to get me to calm down. Inner calm or self-preservation? It's hard to heed when everything around you is falling apart.

31 years of Faith has left me wanting.
Is Religion the answer?
A shiny new box to store it all in?

Victory!

Well, a small one at least. I can see the floor if the back bedroom. 3
bags of trash and I've barely made a dent.

How can one person live in such filth? I have no idea whats important
and whats trash. It's all goin in the bag. I should toss in the
spiders as well. If I have to deal with them so should you X\

Sent from my iPhone

To-Do List?

To-Do NOVEL more like...

What started out as a quick jot-down of things that I need to accomplish this coming weekend quickly snow-balled into a time-sucking creature of insatiable appetite with a penchant for seeing me humiliate and/or harm myself.

I am an excellent organizer as long as it STAYS organized. The first time I miss a day or something doesn't get filed properly it all goes to hell. I'm hoping the lovely thought of pulling my home and life back from the red-neck/white-trash hell that it's spiraled into since my father died and it was left to someone else to care for will be a great motivator.

Each room/area has its own tab and is broken down into basic categories like Repair and Replace. I've tried to list things that I know need to be done now and started listing stuff that I might like to do in the future. Right now it takes up 7 pages, single spaced.

Granted it also contains a number of items that need to be priced or compared or farmed out to someone more competent but a lot of it I can handle myself. I've either done it before or someone somewhere wrote a book on the subject. I'll be fine. Just keep the emergency kit handy and remember that 911 is always speed dial #1.

Violin Update - I still suck. But I suck 3 times a week now :D

Guess what?

THIS is actually about you -

Good Riddance.

Testing New Linux Blogger App

Blah blah blah... So, whatcha doin?

Finally some peace and quiet

As of Friday Last-Minute-Man is out of my house. I know the drama is nowhere near done, but I already feel better. This should have been done a long long time ago. It's amazing how much one life-sucking parasite of a useless man can make your home and life a living hell by just being there.

Even the tedious tasks of cleaning (he was a fucking slob who apparently had no problem living in filth) and packing all his things (he pulled his usual Bitch-Baby crap and left with only a small backpack of who knows what) is a pleasure. I'm in no hurry to get his things to him; I just want his shit out of my house.

I apologize in advance if in the next coming months I seem a little bipolar. He still has a way of making me puppy-murder furious even when he isn't around.

So in summary - Whhhhhhhhooooooooooooooooo Hoooooooooooooooooooooo!

My Nookey Nook

The new Nook update has given me the ability to -

Play games: Sudoku and Chess - fun nerd games that I love

Read whole books in store: sure it's only for an hour but still, if the book's that great I can either buy it instantly or just find the physical book and lounge on one of their stinky chairs for the rest of the day.

Improved speed and touch screen behaviour - wheeeee! It finally can just barely keep up with me :)

Web browser - the thing is slow and cumbersome and I can honestly say I will never use it BUT I can say I have it. After all, aren't bragging rights a huge part of the accrural of 'stuff'? :D

Oh and some other stuff that wasn't at all interesting so I completely ignored it and decided to read a free copy of 'Venus in Furs' instead.

Sent from my iPhone (altho I still had to edit the thing in Firefox because apparently formatting and pictures aren't important to the post-from-e-mail function)

Motivation Thru Fear of Embarassment

I figure it would be best to use my overwhelming fear of making an ass of myself in front of others as a motivator instead of a hindrance, so I give you this set of entries which will have a corresponding audio set as soon as I can figure out how to do it. (Hopefully this won't become like the cooking one that sadly had to end because I officially have no oven. I have a stove and a broiler; just no oven...)


November, 2009 - Let the mid-life crisis begin!

It was the nicest looking cheap violin on Overstock. It was good for a start and to see if I actually might follow though on it but it was a cheap POS that would have ended up costing me more to fix it than I -ever- paid for it.




When in doubt, head for the Dummies books. This was the second book I bought but it has helped me more than all of the others. It's just a pain to keep it open to play any of the songs so... (see following photo of the child-friendly books that keep second graders entertained and 30 something wannabes confused)





DVDs, CDs and lots of cute little animals to murder (Mary's little lamb, noisy stingy black sheep, exploding weasels, sensory-challenged rodents). In the past 5 months and the handful of times I've been able to really practice, they've been my only source of instruction.




February 4th, 2010 - My new baby (complete with helpful little note markers, or what I like to call Idiot Strips)








April 25th - I haven't practiced since the end of February. Bye-bye nails. They look so sad and stubby :-(

If I only had a brain...

I'm losing my mind. Seriously. It's as if my body has absorbed as much
stress and bullshit it can contain and has gone into shock.

This is the year of the shite luck. Considering that my luck and life
have pretty much sucked for a very, very long time, this is a scary
concept.

A "normal"/reasonably sane person doesn't sit around contemplating how
much easier her life would be if she just let herself go completely
fucking apeshit nuts, right? Then again, all the fucked up people I
know have it pretty damn easy. Someone takes care of them and they
rarely have to do anything for themselves. They can mooch off others
or the government and not contribute or make sense or pretend like
they enjoy dealing with anyone and everything.

Then again, how sad is it that that's a suitable existence? I think
I'd rather be unhappy then a parasite.

Sent from my iPhone

iPhone app:Zombie Farm

All the fun of planting onions and corpses with none of the smell!



Sent from my iPhone

What the hell is wrong with me?

I checked the evil calorie counter BEFORE eating lunch. :( What a way to ruin the afternoon.

Sent from my iPhone

There is Such a Thing as Too Much Information

I've finally found an iPhone app that does not make my life more fun
or easier or more like a carefully planned commercial full of happy-go-
lucky teenagers.

MyFitnessPal is a calorie-counting kill-joy. Lunch was a lot more fun
when I didn't know just how many calories were crammed into a
Whataburger Jr w/ Cheese. :(

Sent from my iPhone

Juan Lennon Live!!

... At the Taco Cabana

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IagXIqm1R_8&feature=youtube_gdata

Sent from my iPhone

Can't Sleep

This already seems like a bad idea just because of how easy it is to mindlessly search and goof off on the web. Before when I couldn't sleep, I would atleast try and read or do a crossword. Now I can check in on my zombies and collect random Farmville crap.

There is such a thing as too much freedom and too much fun. Go to sleep, Lin. Ok, fine... Just let me check on my virtual fishtank first.

Sent from my iPhone

Testing Out Mobile Blogging

Sent from my iPhone

Thank you

How do you say thank you to someone you meet by chance maybe once a year if you're company is nice enough to send you to training? You post it on your blog that no one ever reads and send it out into the aether. Maybe somehow it will land where it's meant to be. So -

Thank you for your cryptic remarks and passing, fleeting friendship.

They've done more than stir up shy giggles and confused blushes;

they've helped me realize I am more than I have become.

You look like the perfect fit for a girl in need of a tourniquet. But can you save me... from the ranks of the freaks who suspect they can never love anyone? Because I can tell you know what it's like, the long farewell of a hunger strike. But can you save me? Come on and save me. If you could save me from the ranks of the freaks who suspect they can never love anyone... but the freaks who suspect they can never love anyone.

Aimee Mann, "Save Me"

Adventures in Dish-Washing - Pt 1

I have never owned a dishwasher. Growing up,I was the dishwasher. (I was also the remote control, but that's another story all about the fine art of scooting and paths rubbed in carpeting.) I have only used one dishwasher without the assistance of someone else and that resulted in a flooded hotel room, so getting one for Christmas was a both thrill and a terrifying chance for soggy disaster.

In the last 2 weeks since it was installed, I have used it three times. That's not saying there weren't that many dishes in 2 weeks; there were plenty. It's been a learning process for both me and my 63 year old mother who has also never had and never used a dishwasher.

1. Because we never had to worry about things being dishwasher-safe, very few of our dishes are. Fate and my own clumsiness seem to be remedying this, however, because in the past 2 weeks I have broken 3 of our dinner dishes and cracked a couple glasses. Seems like sign enough to go dish shopping, don't you think? :)

2. You cannot test the dishwasher if there are no dirty dishes. My mother was taking dishes out of the dishwasher to wash them by hand. I have no idea why. There are plenty of other dishes she could have been using, but apparently she only wanted to use the survivors of of the set that I had been systematically dispatching.

3. Duncan is not afraid of dishwashers... or being locked inside them :-(

4. I don't care if you can steam a fish in one; you will not steam a fish in mine!

5. MY GOOD COOKWARE DOES NOT GO IN THE DISHWASHER!!! Feel free to toss in the crap sauce pans but leave my wooden handled wok, chefs knives and the set of saute' pans OUT.

6. Loading a dishwasher is an art unto itself. Much like Refrigerator-Tetris and Linen-Closet-Jenga.

7. Dishwasher-cleaned glasses are so shiny. I thought our glasses were spot-patterned. Turns out I was just shite at cleaning them.