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This was posted in my journal yesterday, but I figured since it was our first adventure in a while together, that it should go here too.
Before I go into the adventure that P and I had on Monday night, first I'll provide some background.
( Background - clever name huh? )
( So THIS is Military Intelligence??? )
( The USO Tour Begins )Current Mood:  groggy What I'm listening to: none |
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You know nowadays I don't know whether to laugh or cry about the whole issue with the local geocachers. For those of you who've missed it:
( backstory )
Anyway, we decided to just ignore them, do what good we could, and hopefully attract some folks. The group's been growing slowly and things have been good insofar as we weren't hearing anymore from the bitter folks. We set up a couple of events inviting all cachers who wanted to attend. None of them showed up. Oh well. We were trying. They were cool ideas and we were openly inviting them even by putting in the title of the first one "open to all!!!!!!"
Then for June the plan was to do some good by rehabbing a really cool cache in the area which is about the only really challenging one insofar as it needs "special equipment" to do it. Unfortunately it had been a nasty mess for a long time and the owner hadn't disabled it or fixed it and we thought that was a shame. One of the group sent a couple of messages to the owner saying hey we'd really like to do you a favor and fix it up so others can enjoy doing this cache. He never got a reply from the owner. We shrugged and decided to fix it for him anyway and even some of the guys went to the extra effort of making a really kickass, much better container that without a doubt was going to last a long time.
Here's my entry from a couple of weeks ago about the fix.
Well today I went downtown to catch the parade of the Spurs NBA winners and with all the screaming and stuff I didn't hear my cellphone ring. I get home and there was a message on our answering machine, a message on my cell, and a couple of emails in my inbox that were NOT good news.
Turns out around 430 our time today, 15 days AFTER we fix it up and log it, the owner realizes that the cache has been done and fixed and decides, hmm, I'm going to delete some of their logs. Note that I said SOME. He deleted our log, the log of the guy who attempted to contact him several times, and possibly that of others. But not the logs of 3 others who did the cache at the same time we did, while standing there with us! The logs, btw, are the way we get credit for having completed a cache. No log, no credit. Nevermind my rowing out to the middle of the lake despite my "handicaps" and not to mention the random bites of something on my legs which are still red 2 weeks later!!!
Then he posted this note to the cache page:
( owner's log )
I don't know exactly how this person expects to make friends with people on whom he's spit on after we did a random act of kindness for his cache so the community is able to enjoy it.
When I heard that there had been an email sent to the owner way back whenever in May or something, my first thought was "aw crap. Now he has advance notice to try and ruin a good thing" then my second thought was "well, it was the right thing to do and hopefully he'll be happy to have his cache fixed without having to go out there himself."
I was way too optimistic. Apparently some of these people are more than happy to cast about insinuations. I don't know whether to laugh or cry about how predictable, actually, they can be!
At the moment I'm pretty sure ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) brain_o_shaner doesn't know about this because he was going to be live broadcasting for over 5 ½ hrs, so he wasn't going to have time to check his email. He is going to go ballistic.... :*(
_Current Mood:  aggravated |
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Sesame street can kiss my chocolate chips!
Hmph.
PCurrent Mood: cranky |
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So, here I am sitting at work where it's really dull and boring. Not only that, but I'm stuck airing the Ten Commandments tonight. Please, would someone tell me what in the bloody hell the Ten Commandments has to do with Easter? Not to mention that it's going to run more than FOUR AND A HALF HOURS!!!!
Anyway, while I'm stuck here working yet another weekend afternoon, my wife, Paulina gets to spend the day in Austin at a big, huge, massive, tons-of-fun Geocaching Event. See, this one cacher from there whom we've met a few times and is super cool in my books is throwing a party to celebrate her finding (get this) her 2000th cache! How insane is that? Paulina and I have been at it for a year now, and are closing in on two HUNDRED. Unfortunately because I work every damn weekend afternoon till midnight, I can't go. I really would have loved to have gone. Sadly, we didn't even KNOW about the event until Wednesday. Not exactly much time to try and work a shift switch with anyone. And I know damn well nobody would be nice enough around here to cover a Saturday afternoon for me, but if I'd known a week ago it MIGHT have been do-able.
My friend James offered the simple solution of "just call in sick". Yeah, well, you know, I don't like doing stuff like that. It's selfish and lazy in my opinion, especially working in TV. It's not the kind of job where if you aren't there, you're just not there that day and things go on more or less the same with minor changes. If I call in sick, someone else either has to come in on their day off to take over my job, or someone gets stuck working a 16 hour shift, or someone already here slides into my chair and everyone else has to work short handed all shift. So if I act selfish and call in sick when I'm just going to head out to Austin and drink beer and do some caching, someone here gets screwed over. I can't do that in good conscience. It's just not who I am. Maybe if I knew that my taking a day off wasn't going to change the flow of the day here at the station, I might feel better about doing that, but it doesn't so I don't. I can count on one hand how many times I've EVER called in sick, whether for a "me day" or a legit sick day. I just don't do it.
Now, because of that, I'm stuck here while my wife and my friends have a really great day. It sucks, let me tell you. My wife and I always cache together as a team, but what can I do? Tell her she can't go? Tell her she can't do any caches while she's there? Of course not. No reason for her to miss out on a ton of fun just because I can't go.
I just hope they take lots of pictures and leave out no details when I ask how it went.Current Mood:  envious What I'm listening to: infomercial hell. |
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I've been so focused on trying so hard to make sure I post every day to my journal that I've been totally neglecting this journal. ARGH. Too many journals, too little time.
Anyway, our geocaching club has been mentioned in here a bit and today was finally the day of the big meeting. I must say that it went over really well. The members were quite impressed with the preparedness of my darling wife who dazzled them all with piles of information and cool ideas. And THANKFULLY there was a lot of positive feedback and also a number of good ideas from them as well. We knew that we needed to go to this meeting with a number of items to discuss as well as information to pass on because we dreaded that everyone would just be sitting there with nothing to say. Not so! YAY us!!!
There's plans in the works for the next meeting, and there were ideas passed around for an event to have in conjuction with the San Antonio Parks and Rec dept. which I think would be great!
I was mighty disappointed in how many established geocachers totally had no interest. This is shitty in my view. We had a room full of people with only a few weeks of geocaching under their belts and very few people that would be considered veterans on hand to help them out and answer questions. But we did the best we could. It was definitely a lot of fun though. The numbers turned out to be about half of what we'd counted on, but the lower numbers made it much easier for us to have some good conversations with all that attended which was great. Too often I find that people go to these things and talk only to the one or two people that they are friends with, and then the new people that don't know anyone are sort of left to sink or swim on their own because nobody bothers to talk to them. I'm happy to say that this wasn't the case at THIS cache event. AND we actually had geocaching discussions, something that most events SAY they're set up for but they just turn into a place to meet to go geocaching later. Setting up a geocaching event for the purposes of caching is a no-no, so most times these people come up with bogus "discussion topics" to circumvent it. Again, not so with OUR cache event.
I look forward to the next one, for sure!Current Mood:  awake What I'm listening to: Aladin. Not by choice. |
| » Blobitude |
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I was looking at the calendar for this journal and I realized that I've been the only one, for the most part, making entries to this journal. And it's usually not things related to both of us, the original intent of the journal.
I guess it's because we haven't been doing a whole lot or at least not as much together as we used to before Shane started working. Once the weekend rolled around, we were gone doing something or the other all over town.
So... over the holidays we didn't do much. We had a small turkey dinner for the U.S. Thanksgiving and I already mentioned what happened with the two weeks of my vacation around Christmas and New Year's. I did need that time away from the lab although me being lazy and anti-social I wish I'd spent a lot more of it not talking to anyone just holed up in the bedroom reading books!
Speaking of socializing, there is a club we and a couple of other people have been organizing for the geocaching people in town. Apparently this is going over better with new cachers than those that have been caching for 2-3 yrs or even just 3 months. We've encountered quite a bit of resistance or obtuseness or I'm not even sure what to call it... At any rate, there's a lot of folks that aren't as enthused about it as we'd hoped. Saturday will be the first, organizational meeting and we'll see how much (or, hopefully!, how little) high drama there will be.
We've also been spending a lot of time with a couple who are also geocachers and they're really understanding about the fact that we don't have a car. Not to mention that our apt is barely liveable to us, much less company who'd probably have issues with sitting on our barely-cushioned futon and lack of any other places to sit or eat. The constant state of disaster from the randomly dropped packages of everything from food to toys (for geocaching) and all my paperwork and especially Avon paperwork really doesn't help me in wanting to invite anyone over. Hell at least half the time _I_ don't want to be in there. There's been two times that I've had vacation time and I've set to really straighten the apartment completely tiring myself out picking up and sweeping and mopping, it's dirty and strewn again within a couple of days! It drives me bananas! This past vacation I decided not to do that because damnit I was on vacation!
More later.... boss walked in... blah
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Jan. 18th, 2005 @ 03:15 pm
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| » Offshoring, Frankenfoods |
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As you might have noticed by now, I like the written outrage of Jim Hightower. Some of it is hollering and some of it is humorous, but the base subjects are usually at least headshaking-inducing or horrifying.
( Who Needs American Workers? )
( Your Tax Dollars at Work )
xpost: synergybc
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Jan. 18th, 2005 @ 03:09 pm
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| » One Last thing |
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One last thing before I go to bed. Every night or almost every night right before I shut down the computer I go to America On the Move and log my steps. Since Christmas day I've been wearing a pedometer from about the time I get up until the time I go to bed. This way I'm keeping track of how much walking I'm doing on a daily basis. If you sign up there and click on MoveMates, you can enter the email address with which I registered (not the one listed on my LJ profile, so ask me if you're interested) and you can see my progress. :)
So approximately 2000 steps are 1mi/1.61km. In the last 22 days I've logged 186,910 steps. That is, I've walked about 93.5mi/150.4km. Some of that has been 3 different outings geocaching and some of them have not been on flat terrain. Oh and sometimes if I don't place the pedometer in the right place on my pant it doesn't register my steps, but the site has a function where you can enter walking time in minutes instead and I've done that a couple of times, but not much.
Well, if I don't hit at least 7000 steps in a day I am not happy and have made a point a few nights to go out for a walk after dinner to make sure I get my walking up if I'm not at that point yet. In the first week or two I was having lower back pains and my soles were not happy with me. The other night when I went to bed my right knee was hurting just a little bit. Considering all the unnecessary weight I put on them, I'm not surprised. Happily, though, the lower back pain appears to be going away (although that might have also been a bra issue) and my feet don't get as tired. My knee, well, we'll see. It's not really serious or much at the moment.
Thursday morning I go in to do the monthly weigh-in for the diabetes-gingko study I'm in and we'll see if there's been any weight change in the last month (3wks). I've never been obsessive about my weight, so I don't own nor really ever want to own a weight scale...
P
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Jan. 16th, 2005 @ 02:47 am
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| » daily dose |
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LiveJournal went down yesterday just as I was going to dose myself with LJ. I've been so busy lately at work that I had a couple of days of catch-up to do. Not so. In the meantime...
Like I said, work's been busy. I seem to be doing a bit of the jobs of two people. Blah. The boss needs to stop being codo (cheap) and hire at least one more office person to handle the recruitment of subjects.
Speaking of the boss, last week he emails us that he'd like an email listing what we accomplished in 2004 and what we'd like to accomplish in 2005. This man, I swear, if he can find a way to add one more unnecessary admin email to my week he does it. I already think the weekly emails detailing what I did this week is a waste of my time since I see him every friggin day at least once! And I give an oral presentation every other Friday at the weekly meeting! (That reminds me, I need to write the stupid weekly email as soon as I post this! argh!)
ANYWAY. The purpose to said email was because it was that time again. Yes boys and girls it was "annual evaluation" time. Now I'd never had to do more than have a passing chat with a boss where he'd tell me he'd done it, he was fine with my work, please sign here that I told you that... This guy writes it up, wants us to write it up, and brought in each of us into his office on Friday. Hell I was getting nervous because he'd said that they needed to be done by the end of the week and by late Thursday he'd not mentioned it. Turns out he was just procrastinating. Since this story has already run long I'll cut it short by saying that thankfully we had a short "talk" and apparently all the criteria on said paperwork had me coming out as meeting expectations and exceeding in a couple. Yay me. Glad it's over with for the year!!!
We went out caching today with a new cacher. Indoctrinating I suppose by spoiling him with taking him to the GOOD caches in town and giving him a high standard to compare all that he does on his own to the ones we handpicked. bwahahahaha OK, so next week won't be fun with the first meeting of the geocaching club we're trying to organize (if you're on his f-list, see brain_o_shaner's LJ for some details on the joy it's been so far, or click here and at the bottom of the page click "view all on one page" and read some of the choice comments)(UPDATE: Apparently maybe somewhere in a message I deleted from my email inbox possibly someone mentioned that they were going to edit or delete their comments. I'm sure it's more grist for the mill and something else on which to pass judgement on us. :p As shaner said earlier today, can't win for losing.). I hear a friend of our's isn't able to attend but has charged someone else with taking a recorder so they can at least hear the drama, fist fights, etc. ;) I swear, you'd think we were trying to start a Koresh-like cult, not a group of like-minded grown-up cachers who like to find boxes in the woods to be on good terms with the local Parks and Recreation Dept. *sigh*
So I just finished entering most orders for Avon and I'm just waiting on any late-comers before I finalize my order. I hope business picks up once the Christmas mire is over and people start getting tax refunds...
So now I'm caught up on my LJ and these are two quizzes I gleaned from my f-list:
( social status and h.s. stereotypes )
P
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Jan. 16th, 2005 @ 01:31 am
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| » SUV drivers, pay attention |
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This was linked in the article I lj-cut earlier, but I finally got to read the whole massive article and wow. It's a very very good one and I just have to post that one separately in case you didn't link to it. Sorry about the chart stats lower down in there. I'd format, but I'm not in the mood...
( Big and bad )
Jan. 9th, 2005 @ 03:16 pm
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| » Long week |
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It was my first week back at work. Ugh. Really, I didn't want to go back. The week just dragged and I kept thinking of something more interesting to do than count mice and euthanize mice and try to remember math from middle school or high school for doing best fit lines and linear regression.... (yes, that was english. bear with me.)
So a lot of the evenings for the last few days have been spent sitting near the computer expectantly waiting for b.s. to hit the fan or, we could only hope, to receive words of encouragement. What's that about? Well Shane and James are still waging the battle of starting up a local geocachers club, but resistance remains with (one person) snide comments being sent and everyone else just staying silent. We created a page at the geocaching site to advertise for it (since the site doesn't allow for getting a listing of people based on where they live) and got criticized for making an event that will garner people a stat. (That comes from Shane aggressively criticizing people late in November who go to these events for the easy stat and doing that every month.) Of course I was happy to have been armed with an email from someone of the site stating that the page could be used over and over and you'd only be able to get ONE stat, if you're checking out the club for the first time. So much for their monthly easy stat! So, yeah, not a lot of people have so far signed up stating they'll attend the first meeting. *sigh*
A new cacher last night says to me, "I wouldn't ask this on the mailing list, but are all local cachers so aggressive and territorial?" I think his understanding is skewed thanks to some stuff that started about 6 weeks ago (and is still going) which bred animosity between people splitting them into different "ideology" camps and which makes people just sh*! all over anything anyone from another camp has to say regardless of whether it's a good idea or not. I just hope more people get over it and start to consider the possibility of what a good idea it is. It would be nice to get more recognition as our own city of cachers and not get lumped in with the cachers of Austin, 80 miles up the road.
In other news....the news feed I get on my friends list every week had a link to Dave Barry as their chosen humor columnist, but now that he's not writing anymore they're scouting around for a new one. Today they posted a link to the column of a guy in San Francisco which I thought had it's sparks of funny while imparting some serious truths.
( speaking of people acting in irrational ways.... )
xpost to my individual journal synergybc
Jan. 9th, 2005 @ 12:02 pm
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| » (No Subject) |
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Seems Paulina posted this here as well as on her personal journal. I figure I'll even the score and post my version of it too.....
Happy New Year!!!!!! I wish nothing but the best for everyone this year. 2004 was a really tough year on this planet. I just hope that it's 1000 times better in not just our own personal spheres of life, but in this giant sphere we all live on as a whole. Please let this year be better...
I found this on a few LJ's, so I figured I'd steal it. I'm sure it'll be making the rounds in the next few days. But I thought it was interesting and figured I'd share. Besides, it's Saturday night/Sunday morning and I'm in infomercial hell again. So here we go.....
( A look back at 2004 )
Jan. 2nd, 2005 @ 03:47 am
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| » 2004 Meme |
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Apparently this made the rounds on LJ. I'm a little slow what with the sleeping and geocaching thing, but here it is:
( 2004 meme )
cross-posted to my individual LJ: synergybc
Jan. 2nd, 2005 @ 03:17 am
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| » Vacation time thus far, weight loss |
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It seems like my two weeks of vacation are flying by just waaay too fast! And with Shane not getting any time off for the holidays, it's sucked on that front so far. We were busy like crazy though that first weekend I had off because we had a rented car and went up to Austin (~80mi/125km N) through New Braunfels and San Marcos and back. Whenever we get a rental we dash around doing so many things while we have it that I think a lot of the time I don't enjoy that time. I think it's mostly because Shane doesn't have a driver's license and has never bothered to learn how to drive, so I get stuck doing all of the driving. Also, since I don't drive more than, say, 3 or 4 times a year I'm stressed over it most of the time I'm driving.
In the last 10 days, though, we did get in a lot of geocaching. We found some 40 caches and although that's more Shane's thing to be running around outside on rocks like a goat, it is good for me since otherwise I'm much too sedentary. It's just that between the way-too-much-extra weight I carry around together with my too-short legs about the length of your average 10 or 11 year old, it makes it very tiring to do.
Speaking of weight though, I've been meaning to work on getting back on the weight-loss wagon and once again drop the 25 pounds I'd lost year before last before I had to go through poverty and the necessity of plasma "donation." It's not like it's a New Year's resolution or one of those things. I just kept forgetting to do it, then later I was waiting and waiting around for a pedometer I ordered from a site called americanonthemove.org. Now yes I could've just gone to a local store and got one, but I figured it wouldn't take long to come in, it would cost the same, I wouldn't have to make a special trip for it on the bus (because anything outside of work and home are special trips on the bus that take hours), and part of the profit from their sales goes to a program in schools that are forcing kids to, you know, actually do something in their gyms and learn to not always sit in front of the t.v./monitor.
What ended up happening was that for some reason my order didn't go through and I waited 10 days for nothing until I emailed them and asked them what was going on. Then it took another forever to actually arrive. But anyway it's finally here and compared to what I remember from the stats given during the PBS program of which I first heard of this site, I already walk more than the average american does. Which is fairly sad since I consider my sedentary lifestyle pretty bad. The goal is to get americans to take 10,000 steps or more each day so we'll stop being the lardasses of the western world. From the three days I'm using as my "baseline" or daily average I walk maybe 3 miles a day, but to lose weight I'll have to probably double that.
What was funny though is that I went in for my monthly weigh-in for a study I'm taking part in as a normal control (effects of gingko biloba on diabetics) and the nurse was astonished to find that I'd lost 3 pounds since the previous month and she exclaimed that she didn't think that was possible during the holiday season. lol Then again she wasn't mounting hills in New Braunfels and pretty much going on one meal a day for 3 days! I figure that was just water weight...
SO! I haven't decided whether I just want to stick with JUST this step-counting thing or if I want to start going to the exercise/weight room again at work (which is free to all employees) OR whether I want to use an offer Avon has for its reps for 2 weeks free to try out that exercise (?) place, Curves (it would've been a month free in Dec. but I kept putting it off until it was way late in the month).
Suggestions? Has anyone been to these "Curves" businesses? What did you think of them? I could probably use some help on the recipe front, too. We eat much too much food with pastas, cheese, and gravies/sauces and rarely if ever eat vegetables. We never did anything with them in my household so I haven't a clue how to cook with them and most of them are just gross raw and I don't know about in Shane's home but he has a serious aversion to most vegetables. If we buy any salad or vegetables at all (and it's rare and not much) it tends to rot quickly and without us ever having touched them or they come in a can or box (if you count corn in a can or potato flakes as vegetables).
It's time I got serious of losing the 60-70 extra pounds I'm carting around and could use all the help, suggestions, and plain ol' encouragement I can get...
P.S. Check out my new happy bunny userpic for my own LiveJournal heh heh.
xpost to my own LJ: synergybc
Dec. 28th, 2004 @ 02:46 pm
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| » Random |
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Ya know... I don't post to this journal nearly as much as I do to my own (synergybc), so I thought that rather than post randomness as I usually do to that one, I'd do it over here:
( Tribal values stymie developers )
And now for "Science for Dimwits."
( pic of cartoon panel )
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Dec. 16th, 2004 @ 04:25 pm
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| » Pictures! |
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I've been remiss for some 6 weeks on transferring pics from our camera to the computer. Since I can only do it at work I keep forgetting the camera at home or I'm busy or the boss is hanging around a lot when I'm not busy and I can't do some quick resizing and such. I'm tired and have a headache, but I brought the camera today and the boss is out of town, so I had a chance to do some quick work. Here's a sampling of the ones I have done so far:
( Pictures from Halloween through today )
Dec. 14th, 2004 @ 06:04 pm
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| » Shane is from Jupiter |
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Unlike me, Shane is able to sit cross-legged. He does so as one of the few ways he can sit for extended periods of time on the futon. When he does so, Anna, our cat, has taken to climbing into the hollow made by his thighs and shins. We don't keep heaters going all the time and I guess she finds it cold in here.
Anyway, they were in this pose last night when Shane uh cut the cheese. At this point the poor cat's left eye starts watering. I kid you not! Shane starts going on about maybe something's wrong with her but I wipe it up and it's not sticky, mostly just watery.
Now I think we all know that cats have a stronger sense of smell than we do. So if my nose and eyes are offended...well, I just feel plain sorry for Anna. LOL Oh and it wasn't something else because it didn't water anymore after a while and hasn't done so again anymore. I guess not again until the next time she's too close to Shane when he drops a bomb. LMAO
To Shane's claims that I'm from Neptune, he's from the biggest gas giant in the solar system, Jupiter, and to be sure...I don't make the cat cry! *giggles* There's a reason why last June I realized who they were talking about when the phrase "Killer of Worlds" was coined! teehee!
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Nov. 14th, 2004 @ 10:32 pm
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| » Today in history |
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This morning I got up at the eye-popping hour of 645AM and swayed out of the house so I could do the 5K (3.1mi) America's Walk for Diabetes. Yeah. I think it was about 49ºF/9ºC when I ran out to catch a bus at 730. 50ºF is about my tolerance level for going without a sweater and with the way the wind was picking up, I'm pretty sure the windchill was lower.
( I'm walking, yes indeed... )
Another reason to love my husband is that he donated enough money to put me over the top on my goal of raising more than A$150/C$180. A lot of what I raised was also thanks to my best friend who grandly donated A$50/C$60. I didn't remember until I was turning in my money that she works for Microsoft and they're a "matching company." That is, whatever one of their employees donates to a charity the company donates an equal amount. So in fact I ended up raising A$202/C$242 in 2 weeks. Not bad! Many many many thanks to those of you who donated. It is truly appreciated!!!
( The ugly brown pullout couch saga continues )
Finally, I'm happy to report that Shane has taken over the rent for the apt! ( Good news on the economic front )
I leave you with this link which, considering what's taught in history classes, this may astound many Americans:
The politics of doubt, skepticism (Mississippi's "The Clarion-Ledger")
A GREAT book that barely touches the breadth and depth of all the history not taught to us is Lies My Teacher Told Me : Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen. Another of his books which is good, but not as good is Lies Across America : What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong. Excellent reading! I tracked down the author's/professor's email address and he was really nice about replying to my gushing email. I could've badgered him ad infinitum about sooo many topics, but I figured he probably has enough to do without me pestering him. lol
P.S.: It started raining/misting/fogging/uh around 4PM and it's still at it. I'm not envying Shane having to go out in it a while ago and having to put up with it again in the morning. *shudder*
Nov. 14th, 2004 @ 12:13 am
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| » Random Thoughts |
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You know, I'm rarely the one who posts to this journal. For the most part, I don't know who reads this if anyone at all. I know strawberrygrl23 does and her husband, but that's all I know. No one else replies if they are reading...
Anyway, I thought I'd make random sentences about stuff we've been doing that I didn't feel like writing novels about, but will write short bits about.
- Still can't sell that stupid queen-sized couch taking up room in the living room. One person emailed me about it and she was going out of town and when I reminded her about it a couple of days ago (now that I think she's back in town) I got no replies. *shrug*
- Shane got me a 4-drawer filing cabinet he dragged from who knows where. It's his not so subtle hint that I have lots of papers and don't organize them. Bah! Still haven't done it. I'm such a sloth.
- I finally got some curtains for a few of the living room windows. Yeah. They weren't exactly what I thought they were although they're still nice... The curtain rods I got the first time also were too wide. Bah!
- Shane and I went geocaching randomly with some other geocaching couple Thursday evening. Nice I suppose of them to drive us around to their own caches and drive us home. I just feel uncomfortable about getting all these different people driving us around to places. I think I hardly know any of them. And not being the most social of people, can't say I'd be heartbroken if I didn't get to know them any better, though. :-p
- Oh yeah. That voting thing. Yeah. It sucked. Oh well. I've unsubscribed from my news. I'm pretty sure I like to keep all the hair on my head and I'm also pretty sure about where this is going to go from here. Thanks, I don't need to know about what I can't change. I can't be that rabid and I don't want to be. I don't want to become that.
- I started to volunteer at the Children's Shelter last Sunday. I wonder what makes some of the 3 or 4 year olds have nightmares as I pat them to sleep for their midday nap. Shane put it best: "Children that young shouldn't have such nightmares." Alas, they are away from their parents and family for some reason or another that's ugly in this ugly world. Today an 11 y.o. girl burst into tears while coloring saying she missed her mom. To which the caregiver made a reply that meant the girl's mother was dead. The girl also complained? that she had a stack of letters she'd written to her father, but she didn't know how to get them to him. Made me wonder how her mother had died and why exactly her father wouldn't have custody of her...
- November 7th is the anniversary of my dad's death. I usually try not to think about it too hard. So not to think about it too hard I decided I wanted to see the new movie "The Incredibles" from Pixar. Very well done, and because I don't go to see a movie for the look, I say it was well done because it had an excellent storyline. It was VERY well written. And surprisingly the movie was 2 hours long. Go see it. We recommend it.
I think I'm all out of random stuff. Joy to the world.
Oh yeah. That reminds me, ingrates that pretend Thanksgiving (the american one anyway) doesn't exist and skip right over it to Christmas... Come on! Why am I seeing Christmas stuff in September and October! Gimme a friggen break! ARGH!
P
Nov. 8th, 2004 @ 01:10 am
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| » These are the people in your neighbourhood...... |
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Today was a pretty low key day for Paulina and myself. But once I got up (around noon cause working midnight shift sucks on weekends)I decided that we'd go and support the local "mom and pop" operations in the neighbourhood and go for a little walk. I love this time of year in Texas because the weather finally comes down far enough that I'm comfortable and walking across the street doesn't cause me to sweat a few pints.
There's this little wee place just a few blocks away that sells the awesomest smoothies with real fruit and lots of it. They also sell nachos, hot dogs and all that kind of stuff. I go by that stand every other day pretty much and yet as close as it is to our house, we have only gone once in the past year or so. So, today was the day because I'd told myself earlier in the week that I'd take Paulina there for treats.
So we walked over there only to find that there was a sign on the window saying they were closed until March 5, 2005. *pout* Talk about a crappy turn of events. Just when we finally get around to going over to this guys shop, it's closed for the winter. I don't recall it being closed for the winter last year though. *shrug* oh well.
So, the backup plan was to go to this Mexican restaurant about a block closer to our place from the other shop. We also always plan on going there to eat, but it's one of those places that opens at 5am and closes by 2pm. And well.....we never seem to make it over there while they're open. Partially because we usually eat breakfast at home, and we're never in a "let's go out and eat" mood till late afternoon. But we went in there and the food was pretty good!
We've always felt that the best food is always at the local mom and pop places, and there's several around our apartment.
But it was nice to go for a bit of a walk around our neighbourhood. I get really pissed off when people we know express unease about being in the neighbourhoods around the downtown core. It's so stupid. There's nothing wrong with how things are down here. And I'm sorry, I like neighbourhoods with character over cookie cutter crappy houses that all look the same, no sidewalks, no stores for miles and if you don't look like you live there, you're eyed with suspicion. No thanks, you can have that life. I like where I am right now.
Nov. 7th, 2004 @ 03:27 am
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