It’s been another year.  One post per year is an atrocious average for any blogger.  But - at least I’m doing it!  A few questions for the (one, two) few of you reading this from a feed reader.

1.  If I move this blog into a different direction, should I remove the really old posts about pizza crusts and Subway sandwiches?

2.  What do you think of the blog theme (color scheme, do-dads, etc.)?

3.  If I become a content provider, what sort of content would you like to see?

Amazing video from a RC airplane

My brother is quite inventive sometimes. He’s rigged a radio controlled airplane with a digital video camera. The footage has dubbed with some rare old tunes and is montaged quite delightfully in the following YouTube video. Please see!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcp58M86KDc

Snow day, Part III

Today is Wednesday, January 17 and the office is closed for the third day in a row thanks to “significant” winter weather. It’s icy. Very, very icy. However (again) it’s been five days now since I left the house and I’m wishing I had somewhere to be just so I could get in the car and go. Stir Crazy!!

The Snow is HERE

For those of you who don’t believe it snows south of Arkansas, here it is - THE REAL DEAL! Fat, juicy, white flakes of snowy precipitation. The accumulating kind, not the melty kind. My fingers are crossed for another snow day tomorrow!

Update: This snow only lasted a few hours. We did not get the four-five inches of accumulation they were predicting for the metro area.

My video uploaded to YouTube here (press play):

Still pictures here (Click the pic for more):

SNOW & ICE in Texas

Snow day, Part II

For the second day, the office is closed (whooopeee!) for inclement weather. This is a snow day, Texas-style. However, most everything is closed. Most roads are iced, and some are closed altogether. The weather this weekend was cold, wet and floody. The precipitation continued through Monday and today but with the added bonus of freezing temps. So I’ve been home four days in a row now, and cabin fever is starting to set in. Yikes!

What I Did Today

My car has become quite grody over the last four years. No amount of car wash vacuuming was getting the carpet free of all the dirt. There was a collection of dust in the areas around the console unreachable due to the seats. Then last week I had a Aha! moment. THE SEATS! Take out the seats.

After some investigation under the passenger seat and a short brainstorming session, my plan was in place. Today I implemented that plan. I took out the passenger seat and did a massive detail job on the carpeting, console, back seat, and headliner. From last-bolt-out to last-bolt-in this took three hours. Pics of what this looked like are attached.

The passenger seat was ridiculously easy to get out and back in without help. The driver seat will be a little more complicated to get out, if at all. It is a six-way power-adjustable seat, which makes me suspect there is a motor under there. It may be too complicated to just unbolt. Maybe I can do it next weekend.

Oh, by the way…
“Stephanie - Free and Healing for Six Days, 19 Hours and 33 Minutes, while extending my life expectancy 8 Hours, by avoiding the use of 102 nicotine delivery devices that would have cost me $18.87.”

[Pics from my Picasa web album - click on the pic for more]

Car detailing project

Somewhere in the Life Story

My apartment’s property owners caved on the 15% rent increase and gave me the 6% rate increase I requested by letter December 20. It was a low-ball offer I never thought they would take. Tonight I will go home and sign the lease renewal for 12 months — if they actually have their stuff together and the lease is written as agreed. Otherwise, I’m back on track to find a new apartment.

Meanwhile, I’m staring down the barrel of four classes this semester. One of which must be finished by April 25 or I suffer an “Incomplete” on my record.

In other news, my cell phone took a swim on New Year’s Eve and is non-functioning right now. I was heartened to read story after story on the internet yesterday about people who were able to revive their dunked phones with a little TLC. The preferred method is to remove the battery and completely disassemble the handset and rub/scrub/dunk the bits into 90+ percent isopropyl alcohol to clean off any potential residue and drive off the water. I did this last night. These happy-story people also subsequently baked or hair-dried their units to remove any traces of water and alcohol. I did this too. They then went on to reassemble the bits and reinstall the battery to find their cell phones in perfect working order. This step did not work for me. My phone is still non-functioning. But there were fewer happy stories about people who left their handsets alone in a warm place to dry for several days up to a few weeks and were able to revive by installing a new battery. This is my next and last step, scheduled for Saturday or Sunday (currently the handset is sitting on the hot water heater). If this step doesn’t work, my only recourse is to plunk down a couple more hundred dollars for a new/refurb handset. Fart.

Housekeeping

Today I posted a large group of older entries from May, June, July and August. Just lettin’ ya’ know.

Pics from Office Machine

The Untitled Post

[[[ From my other, usually more entertaining blog "Something Else" ]]]

What part of “NO” is unclear to you?!

She was screaming at me! What is her problem? All I did was ask her if she wanted to get some lunch. Is that a crime? Then I asked, Are you sure? Well, Everybody, duck and cover RIGHT now because that is the one illegal question disallowed in the presence of HRH (Her Royal Highness). When this little tirade ended, an observer was sure to see the black, wooly cloud hanging over our cubicles. The mood must have been tangible.

Today started out so well, too. It has always amazed me how quickly a day can go from good to bad. In a heartbeat, or the time it takes to ask a question.

Not a moment later, a door slams down the hall followed by the sharp “clickety, click” of the boss’s three-inch heels. Oh, crap! Here she comes. And around the corner she sails straight into the cubicle of HRH. “Get your ass into my office, right now.” You know it’s more sinister when words like that are spoken in a near-whisper. “Clickety, click” off she goes, and “clumpety, clump” HRH trails sullenly behind her.

Their meeting lasted more than forty minutes and in that time the entire office was deathly quiet. Upon her return, HRH began packing her personal belongings. Although I stared at her through the entire process, and she must have felt my eyes bore into the side of her head, not a word was exchanged between us. She finished packing and stood up straight to proudly address no one in particular. “This is not over. Just because I’m leaving here today does not mean my career with this company is over. You people will be hearing from me again soon.” From across the office I heard “Shut up, Bitch! You just got canned!”

And as quickly as it turned from good to bad, the day just as suddenly looked a lot brighter.

Writing

Writing

Is it possible to write 3,000 words in the morning? How fast would you need to type? What kind of product do you get for writing like that. Something good, or something cheap and forced and crappy. I suspect the latter, but before dismissing this method entirely, I shall try it! Who knows, maybe something worthwhile will surface.

I didn’t realize Edgar Allan Poe was a short story writer more than anything. I picked up the complete works yesterday at Border’s and it appears a lot of his stories are between five and ten pages. Although the collection says it includes his “poems” I haven’t been able to find any. I vaguely remember that Poe wrote as many essays and criticisms as he did actual fiction. Maybe this is a direction I could go in — short prose and essays. With my short attention span lately, it would make more sense. I don’t know if I have the stamina or the vision to draft and complete a novel or something equally grandiose. I can’t even imagine where to begin with something like that.

I would like to be the modern queen of short stories. There are TONS of ideas in my head, mostly people-to-people interactions. Mostly drawn from my own life history and experience (of course). I would like to incorporate my life story into a series of short stories. This would allow me to embellish to my little heart’s desire. Originally, my intention was to just write my life story as if it WERE a novel. But that would be so boring, I don’t think even I would want to read it. But later it occurred to me I could use my life’s story as fodder for many other stories. Because — really — my life up until a few years ago has been pretty interesting. It has been quite stagnant since January 2004. Except for the skydiving in July 2004. But that’s it. Stagnant.

I’m going to try to force myself to write more than 424 words every day. If I wanted to write 3,000 words per day, then at 45wpm I would be typing non-stop for a period of 66 minutes. This isn’t so bad, but would put some serious cramps in my wrist, and may just end up wringing my brain dray. What do you say for 66 straight minutes per day, everyday? I have never been a really big talker (unlike some people I know whose name I won’t mention, but starts with Y and ends in vonne).

Yet another dream…

Sometime, either last night or early this morning, I had a dream that I was out and about with high school friends on some adventure and we were given a ride back to our parents’ houses on a blue bird school bus. As we approached my parents’ house, I was excited to see a 1969 Mustang in their side drive. ATD!! Haven’t seen that bugger for a very long time so I was naturally excited. When I went inside, I heard people talking in the kitchen (their old kitchen, not the renovated one). But as I walked in, I noticed it wasn’t ATD, it was that guy who works here and reminds me of MCR. Creepy, and eeewwwww. I have no idea why he was there, or why my parents were so interested in him. He walked away to use the bathroom and I noticed what he had written on the cover of his notebook, something trite about not wanting to write with his new pen because it was running out of ink. Whatever. Weird!

Black Cat takes a hit

My car was damaged last night. This man was backing his behemoth Uhaul van (twenty feet? twenty-five feet?) to find a better place to put it when he smacked into the back of my car. He must have been going at a pretty good clip based on the scatter of the tail light plastic. It appeared the plastic bits were scattered about six feet or more from the car. And the hole in the bumper looks like it was gashed, then ripped. There’s a thumb-sized chunk of fiberglass poking 90 degrees away from the surface, and another thumb-sized piece just missing completely.

Monday, June 12, 2006

Last night/this morning I had the most bizarre dreams.

In the first one, I dreamed that someone on the internet was offering to surgically disassemble your arm with diamond encrusted band saw. I was very excited about having this done. The price was either really reasonable or very free, because in the dream it wasn’t an issue. While it was happening, there was no pain involved, just a little pressure/discomfort. When it was over, I was very, very worried that my arm would fall apart into a myriad of pieces. So I put my arm into a sling to help hold it all together. There was no blood, no bleeding whatsoever. After my arm was in the sling, it occurred to me they didn’t offer to surgically close up the open wound on the stump and I didn’t know how the blood vessels would knit themselves together on their own, so I decided to leave my arm in the sling and let it all heal back together. The offer included deep frying your bodily bits in hot oil. I didn’t do this because my arm was sawed whole bits in the sling, but someone else did and I helped them fry their bodily bits. It was like frying ravioli, just till hot and crispy. But while I was doing that, it seemed like it was my own arm even though I was looking at my arm. Weird!

Then in another part I was a new home owner. I had just moved into this two story house and was having people stay over in one of the three extra bedrooms. The three extra bedrooms each had their own bathroom. The pink bathroom was really shabby — water stains on the walls and ceilings, walls were peeling, lights were dim, linoleum was scratched and dingy, fixtures were scratched and yucky, it was the worst looking bathroom I had ever seen and was embarrassed to have it in my nice new house. None of the rest of the house reflected the nastiness of that bathroom. There was a fireplace on a pointy (outtie) corner in the living room but it didn’t point into the room, but pointed out toward an external wall of the living room. You had to walk by it to get into and out of the front door. Don’t remember too much about the master suite.

Another part of the dream we were on a shopping trip on a river. We had come from a river island where we were hanging out, rode a boat over to the shore where Wal-Mart had a ton of crap set up for sale. We bought so much stuff I lost track of where everything was. Women I was with also bought a ton of crap. We were all in the middle of moving our purchases from off the racks and laying them onto a trailer to take back across the river when Wal-Mart began switching the merchandise racks and adding new things. We were so slow in getting our things off the racks that our stuff was getting lost in the midst of the merchandise transfer.

Then there we were waiting for a boat to take us back to the island, there were quite a few of us women. We were getting hit on by some guys, we were getting split up as a group, some were inside a tour bus. I looked inside and walked back out again but don’t remember why. It was dark through this whole experience. I looked out from where we were waiting and noticed how many cars were parked there for shopping and mingling?

…..

This morning what I saw was not a dream. I was in the middle lane approaching the Lamar exit. I was just about to pass it and was making moves toward the right lane. At the VERY last second, just as I was completing my move into the right lane, a black Nissan veers across from the left lane through the middle and across my bow to make the Lamar exit. He was going so fast that when he finally made the exit, he was still moving in a right-ish direction. When he came too close to hitting the far wall of the exit ramp, he over-corrected and spun out to hit the left wall of the exit ramp with his front end. DEBRIS EVERYWHERE! I actually ducked when I saw bits of car coming at me even though my windows were closed. I called 911 and told the woman exactly what happened, but she seemed so casual and unconcerned. I hope that dickhead is not hurt too badly. Surely his car won’t be driving away from that accident.

Repression obsession:

What type of person do you think of when you hear the word “repressed”? Do you think about the bookish woman, bun too tight, who slavishly follows her husband’s every wish? Or do you think about the mousy, milquetoast man unable to respond when asked for an opinion? Are these people repressed? Are you? If your immediate, knee-jerk reaction is “Of course I’m not repressed!” then let’s take a look at you objectively.