December Looming

So last night we went to see Jim Gaffigan with friends and that man is frickin' hilarious. When I was younger I adored stand up comedy. I thought Elaine Boosler and Steven Wright were gods. But, the thing about stand up comedy is that these people are not machines, and so there's a serious law of diminishing returns. The more you like them, the more you watch and listen to them, and the more you notice that they're telling the same jokes they were four years ago.

Then came Comic Relief. It was genius. Every year there was a new special and a new album and you could fast forward past the infuriating comics and voila - relatively new material from funny people every year. But still, the acts take on a familiar pattern. Seinfeld took things in a different direction which was cool for a while. Then there was Dave Chappelle - suddenly my faith in human's ability to be funny was renewed. But then he checked out for a while.

And along came Jim "Hot Pocket" Gaffigan. Ha! He is pale. He sort of screams "Minnesota". He joked that he could be the poster boy for Mormonism. He has pretty seamless transitions. He is indoorsy. He's a special brand of uncool that isn't trying too hard. Mmmmm.

Luckily we won't have to go long without another hit of comedy - Netflix tells me we have a Demitri Martin special on the way to our house today. Demitri Martin has something too. He's smart, and I tend to think in five years he'll be genius.

And now it's Friday and we get to have a weekend... hopefully.

Always a Meme

Borrowed from Knitting 40 Shades of Green :

Here are the rules:

1. If you decide to answer, please leave a comment with a link to your blog.

2. You have to post these rules before you answer the questions.

1. What is your favorite word?

That should be obvious by now, magniferous.

2. What is your least favorite word?

I think it is entrepreneur. Because I don't seem to like them and because an inordinate number of people say ent e pen oar in complete denial of the existence of phonics.

3. What turns you on (creatively, spiritually or emotionally)?

People who let you know "whatever, it's cool".

4. What turns you off?

If you cannot speak or write, I have a hard time hearing you.

5. What sound or noise do you love?

My dog barking, my cats purring, the sound of my work laptop shutting down.

6. What sound or noise do you hate?

There are far too many to note here, but a sample: Billy Mays' voice, my cell phone ring tone (all of them after time), whatever noise my alarm clock is making that day

7. What is your favorite curse word?

I really find curse words a little ineffectual these days and have resorted to creating my own running streams of curses to adequately convey the level of frustration I'm experiencing. Any of those curse streams could get me banned from blogging.

8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

Philanthropist

9. What profession would you like not to do?

Professional clown.

10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say at the Pearly Gates?

We have no calories here and all the yarn is free.

Tardy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving - it's a day late in our household and so it is on magniferous. Right now the turkey is roasting, and nearly all of the side dishes are ready to go into the oven for a warm up before serving. There are only two Pilgrims at this Thanksgiving dinner, but we have every possible trimming. I have a silly Christmas movie lined up for post-dinner viewing. It will probably make me cry.

We are just thankful to be together this Thanksgiving, sometimes it really is that simple.

St. Dishwashcus

When it's 10:40 on a Sunday night and you hear your husband unloading the dishwasher without being asked, there can be no other thought in your head other than:

That man is a saint.

A Perfectly Ordinary Weekend

When you find yourself grateful for a perfectly ordinary weekend, you know you've had a hectic few months. We tried three times before this to have a quiet little weekend and the fourth time was the charm.

Last weekend was attempt #3. That's when I woke up feeling a little achy Saturday and ended up in the ER with a kidney stone. Since then I have had further validation that hospitals are the third to last place on Earth I want to be (the first two being funeral parlor as the guest of honor and nursing home). I had to go back to the hospital to a doctor for a follow up on Thursday. I passed through the gate into the garage and slooowly edged down the corridors behind seemingly every elder vehicle as people with limited peripheral vision and dexterity tried to find illusive parking spaces AND plow their giant landcruisers into them.

Also, here is a thing about hospitals that I do not understand: Why the slow elevators? Would you not think that hospitals are a place where fast elevators would be helpful? 

On Saturday we spoiled ourselves with a little yarn and comic books. My yarn has not yet pleased me yet. I ripped it out 6 times last night. I sort of have a vision for the scarf I want to create, but when I followed the pattern I got on the web I got a whole lotta nothin' special. 

When a client called today, (seriously, it's Sunday all across the country) the relaxation of the weekend could have come crashing down, but I had a clear mind and plowed through the thing I'd cheerfully said I'd do over the weekend on Friday. I zipped it off to the client and dared to peek at my email and was actually thrilled to see spam and listserv posts and nothing stress-inducing.

Fit Meet Shan

Ultimately it all comes out in the wash. Eventually the tide will turn. S-- runs down hill...and further platitudes.

In the last week I have been diagnosed with four medical conditions. Most of them totally commonplace, the worst of which is a kidney stone attack I had this weekend. The bizarre irony is that things are sort of looking up.

You can have an inordinate amount of shit going on in life and it still must be tolerated, but if something that by its very mention happens to you, not only does everything else seem insignificant, but amazingly needy people can actually suddenly become borderline self-sufficient. I should have thought of this years ago.

Thirsty Thursday

"You see things other people don't." Is that a come-on or did you say "pee"? That pretty much sums up my week Monday through Thursday. One can only wonder what Friday can hold. 

At My Howard's End

I went to the store tonight in pursuit of 300 glossy white folders. We have a client who wants custom folders by Friday. That is somewhat crazy, but we have a solution and it involves me driving all over Northern Virginia to acquire 300 folders.

So I went to Staples. That's where I met Howard. Hmm, this is the part where I wonder about people Googling themselves and finding me chronicling them in my blog. Let's call him Barry, just to be on the safe side. So Barry is Staples' version of the Geek Squad. Barry schmoozed up to me and another chick in the label aisle and asked us if we needed any help. I brushed him off out of habit before realizing - Hey! I need 300 folders!

Barry is a man who likes a challenge, that's why he became a professional Staples technical advisor. We located the folders they had on hand and went to the front of the store to find the rest available in the state. Barry said Oxon Hill (not IN the state) had 48 packages of the luscious glossy folders. He placed a call to the store and explained that he has considerable sway with the sales staff and that he'd get the Manager on Duty to help us out. He then explained he wasn't bragging, that's just the way it is when you are a mobile, regional tech guy like him.

While we were on hold, Barry told me about the tech gear he wears on his person. Barry used to have a Jabra headset but it broke inexplicably and now he thinks they are crap. He likes the wired one he has now. He wears two Blackberrys. One for work, one personal. He used to use his personal one, but the company won't reimburse him for work calls anymore, so now he's got the two. He said, "I feel like such a geek." He recently sent out his new cell number (the work one) to everyone in the district so they can reach him, but the Oxon Hill manager, we learned, hadn't gotten the email.

Oxon Hill was all about helping their man Barry. They agreed to put up their stock for me to pick it up in the morning. This is about the time I realized that Barry had called another state instead of the next town - right when he asked for my phone number. This is also right about the time I realized my whole night was going to be devoted to reaching Barry's saturation level - the point where I could politely leave and haul ass to the other store. 

Thin Line

It's amazing how fast a thing can go from good to bad, or great to DearJesusSeriously? When Still Standing premiered a couple of years ago, Jac and I were instant fans. It was one of the few shows, things even, that falls squarely in the "Both Like Equally" column. It had the Sopranos effect on us - the one where we'd look up in astonishment that the whole show had flown by and now it's over and we can't get more until next week.

Then, Still Standing was inexplicably stolen from us by a foolish network that invested six years in Yes, Dear (forgodssake). But, there was light, Still Standing was picked up for syndication (ohboywasit). And now, Still Standing is on no fewer than four times an afternoon. I dare say it could be six. Or more. And suddenly Bill & Judy's refreshing patter and their foibles are everywhere. How can a show actually jump the shark AFTER it's been cancelled?

As you know (read back, you do) I am all about adopting a new show years into its run and catching up on it with DVD mini-marathons. (Hello, Gilmore Girls.) And the latest infatuation is Boston Legal. But when you whip through the seasons faster than a girl can say "Denny Crane" you have to hang on tight because the cast changes and the cliches can pile up. I almost lost Boston Legal to the hate side last week when I had a particularly stressful day with a blonde barking orders and then I tuned in to see a brand new cast member - dominating the beginning of the season who matched the description to a tee. But I pushed through (fast forward is your friend) and now I can watch the character (especially since Google tells me she's outta there in Season 3 and that means I'm probably going to see her get fired).

Yet you never now quite when that thin line is suddenly going to fade and you'll find yourself right there in the middle of WTFisthiscrap? . That's what happened in an instant last week when someone I thought I was being effusively friendly to revealed a deep-seated loathing of me. It still kind of floors me when I discover I'm not eminently lovable. It also amazes me the energy people have for that kind of emotion. The saddest part of it was that the vehemence of the guy's emotion was only equalled by the paucity of thought I'd devoted to him. 

It's odd because the ill-will kind of makes me want to go out and do something ubergood. Not out of guilt or misplaced amends, but I think because I just sort of want to replace the vacuum of good caused by the spewing of pent up pffft.

So while Jac moans that the holiday season is here too early, for once I'm up for it. Yeah, it's more shopping mostly, but if there's any chance at a little more Peace on Earth or Good Will toward Man, I can take the Lowes commercial with the inflatable snow globe that jumped the shark the second time it aired last year.

Mastery and Meander

I remember that feeling in college when I did something grown up and I knew it. I'd pay my bills on time, or go to the doctor just because it was time for a check up. And that was a long time ago. Like more than a decade. So it amazes me now when I attempt a feat of grownuppery it falls far, far short. Or more accurately in this case, tall.

During the Time of Three Houses we allowed ourselves one indulgence - we bought a bed. The bed we retired was the one I got immediately after college. It's the one I got by calling the 1-800 number and asking for the cheapest queen bed I could get. The bed is, a Simmons Beautyrest. The kind with "unsurpassed motion separation". It has individually-wrapped coils. It has a pillowtop. A very plush pillowtop.

We got the bed delivered and got out our bed frame. We merrily put the bed on the frame. And then noticed that the bed top was something like 4 feet off the ground.

I damn well knew that you have to get a low-profile box spring when you get a gigantor mattress. I asked at the furniture store and they looked at me like I was crazy. And the pillow top was sooooo plush. I was drunk on resilient coils and I knew it.

So here we were in the house with the mice and the inadequate air conditioning and the flooding and the strange seasonal bath bugs and the pole vault bed. I have to put a sweater on, the atmosphere up here is a little thin and it's kind of chilly.

So, some 1.5 years ago we took the bed off the mount and just left it on the floor. And for quite awhile that was livable. There were just a whole armada of other things to think about and do. So we slept on the bed on the floor - the big "this is our one luxury" bed on the floor. 

And finally this weekend, work was at bay, family was fine, and I had a list. A list of little indulgences. Catching up on tv shows, a couple of simple meals at home instead of figuring out the next meal. And the words "bed frame". Jac trudged to the Mattress Haven and got us the "good" cheap bed frame. He lugged it home and set it up. We flopped the mattress on it and voila! - Pole vault bed.

Hellsafire! Seriously, wtf? What does a girl have to do to solve the Great Bed Crisis of 2005-2007? We needed a low-profile box spring. So this means the $100 he just spent was probably no better than the bed frame we'd carefully stalked out 5 years ago that caused Pole Vault Bed #1. Back to the Mattress Haven we went. More money than I'd care to admit later, a low-profile box spring is ordered and on it's way to our house on Wednesday. That means 2.5 more days of the towering slumber center, but we'll survive.