Time Flies like an Arrow

“I love Thanksgiving turkey… it’s the only time in Los Angeles that you see natural breasts.”
~Arnold Schwarzenegger

Another year has almost come and gone and we arrive at one of my favorite holidays: Thanksgiving. I love this holiday, despite its rather shady/awkward historical beginnings. The modern meaning is what matters to me. Screw what the pilgrims thought – they were a bunch of weirdo religious extremists anyway. I’d have been the person who stayed back in England.

Thanksgiving is wonderful because we celebrate three joyful things in life: a bountiful life, a bountiful harvest, and American football. One cannot really be happy, I think, without a full heart, a full stomach and a full mind. Thus, the trinity of “all things good” comes to pass on this most auspicious day. Also, and this is somewhat of a side note, I do love autumn colors, which is frequently used for Thanksgiving decor.

As a child, I enjoyed Thanksgiving because of the artwork – the turkey/hand montage – and the charming pilgrim/Indian propaganda. In some sense, it is sad when that propaganda gets smashed to bits – almost as a coming of age as an American nowadays – the innocence of the first “American dinner party” is ruined.

“I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.”
~Jon Stewart

As a teenager, I couldn’t have cared less about the holiday because I was an extremely picky eater back then, and Thanksgiving brought no presents. It did bring annoying or hated relatives, all of which are gone in some fashion now.

As a young adult, I had moved off to college and could pick and choose which holidays I returned home. Later, I got a job at a retail record store which was open 365 days a year. At that point, I could not choose what holidays I went home for – I found I was working on most holidays, including Thanksgiving and Christmas. Working in retail made me realize what I really liked about Thanksgiving: the lack of presents – which was what I didn’t like about it years prior.

It’s hard to commercialize a holiday where you’re supposed to give thanks instead of get stuff like Christmas. As Americans, Thanksgiving is one of our only true United States holidays, yet it’s one of the holidays we’re the most disinclined to enjoy. We hate making the effort to see others, and we hate the idea of having to appreciate what we have and be content. Almost everyone, myself included, so very often thinks of what they don’t have instead of what they do. Is it human nature, or is it part of our cultural paradigm? I am wont to think the latter. We are so busy trying to gain, achieve, get, and amass that it becomes a problem when we take our minds off of the idea of being thankful.

“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.”
~Thornton Wilder

With this economic crunch on many of us, I wonder if people will be more thankful for what they have this year or less?

I have a loving, wonderful husband who puts up with my constant stream of lolcat links on AIM. My relatives, friends and cats are well and healthy. We have money in the bank. We have a safe residence and our landlady did not raise the rent on us for next year’s lease. My football team is 10-1. Our favorite sushi restaurant is open today and we shall be able to eat there instead of having to attempt to make Thanksgiving dinner for two.

Also my husband just informed me that Tennessee is beating Detroit 38-10. For that, Lord, we are truly thankful.

Amen.

“Stand up, on this Thanksgiving Day, stand upon your feet. Believe in man. Soberly and with clear eyes, believe in your own time and place. There is not, and there never has been a better time, or a better place to live in.”
~Phillips Brooks

Better late than never, says I.

Jesse’s almost fully-recovered. I can’t seem to get my sleeping hours in order. I have a dentist appointment tomorrow at 9 a.m.

For Monty Python fans, this YouTube change is a breath of fresh air. Or maybe it’s more like a fresh loaf of bread. Or a clean pile of clothes.

Good night.

“I have the world’s largest collection of seashells. I keep it on all the beaches of the world…perhaps you’ve seen it.”
~Steven Wright

Jesse and I have had an unusual week, to say the least. On my end, you never know what exactly you have forgotten to backup until you see it being deleted during your reformat. Specifically, I forgot to backup several hundred fonts and my birthday reminder list on my Firefox. Hopefully, both will not be too painful to reconstruct.

Jesse, on the other hand, knows the meaning of the word “pain”. His facial infection, which the doctors suspect started as a clogged tear duct in his left eye, grew to be so painful and swelled, that we went to the emergency room on Wednesday. As per usual with all services in Nevada, we got seen pretty much right away. (This is a tourism-based state where service is king and you may not find the people exceedingly friendly but, by God, you’ll get served faster than corn dogs at a state fair.) We had a follow-up with our primary care physician on Thursday, who said his antibiotics would still take a while longer to work, and he would not be able to work Friday. Two positive notes: his MRI came back clear and his 100 deg F fever is gone.

Now that his fever is gone, his body can begin to recover. Since his MRI is clear, it means the infection is not moving to his brain. The scary part of a facial infection is this: when you have an infection in your body, it very often moves. In your face, it doesn’t have too many places to go. Me, I’d go to Vegas, or maybe a nice tropical resort. Anyway, Jesse is out of the worst of it. It’ll just take time for the infection to run its course. In the interim, I’ve rented several films for him to watch.

The most horrible part of the process now is the fact he’s been told he can’t be on the computer for more than 30 minutes at a time, else he will strain his bad eye. That went over like a plate of veal at a vegan banquet.

Okay, better topic. I’ve decided on a major: computer science. It’ll be a good fit with my previous degrees, especially my masters. There are a vast array of fields I can work in with a comp sci degree and I’ll have a free tutor at my beck and call every night. I’m not terribly stoked about being behind a desk for eight hours a day. On the other hand, Jesse has proposed getting us a pair of street bicycles, which would help us exercise and get out and about. So it probably wouldn’t be so bad.

There was something else I was going to mention. I can’t recall now and I need to go feed the cats. I leave you now with this:

“Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon.”
~Doug Larson

I’m off to do my reformat. I have all my ducks in a row, I think. And it’s a good a time as ever. Plus, Jesse’s absolutely miserable so I may as well join him in company.

Jesse’s got a 10:30 a.m. appointment with the doc tomorrow. Morning can’t come soon enough.

See you on the flip side.

“I like my coffee like I like my women…in a plastic cup.”
~Eddie Izzard

So tomorrow is the big day. The Great Reformat of 2008. A day that will live on in infamy, or not, depending on how well I backup my files. My computer has too many programs, files, and whatnot on it currently, and it’s become rather fussy as of late. As the adage says, it performs much in the same way as old people have sex: slow and sloppy. Sometimes it just locks up and says PISS OFF to me in not so many words. Plus, Jesse reformatted last week, so I might as well do it too. It’s good to reformat every so often, though most formats are forced rather than chosen.

I am going to the dentist tomorrow and Jesse will have a meeting of the minds with our medical provider sooner than he would like due to an irritating eye problem. I think – and hope – it is allergies. Sometimes my allergies do rather funny things, but it’s more in the “splitting headache plus nausea” kind of way.

If the dentist appointment is long and gruesome, then the reformat may be delayed. We shall see.

What else? Oh yes, World of Warcraft’s expansion: Wrath of the Lich King started up this past week. Well done there, although I hear the servers were not really prepared for the onslaught of users. I wasn’t surprised. The servers weren’t prepared when I was in the Beta testing. Lord of the Rings Online’s expansion: Mines of Moria starts Tuesday. Both Jesse and I got it but as neither of us are nowhere near 50 (the current level cap), it’ll be a while before we see the xpac content.

“I went to a restaurant that serves “breakfast at any time”. So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance.”
~Steven Wright

So…it turns out that every WordPress blog, not just mine, has an RSS feed built in. After researching this, and scrolling down to the very bottom o’ my web journal, sho’ nuff, they were right. I know I am pretty inconsistent (though I am working on getting down a schedule) in regard to my updating, so if you are an RSS-type person, like I am, try using my RSS Feed. It’ll let you know when I’ve updated and you won’t end up making a wasted trip to this webpage.

It turns out that I’ll have to take some math in the entrance examination for the community college I want to attend. At first I was like, “Pfft entrance examination – why can’t I just use my old SAT scores or my graduate school GPA or my good looks?” But then I realized all of the above-mentioned things were more than two years old, and TMCC doesn’t take anything past that. Then I realized, when I persued the sample exam, that I’d have to answer questions on *shudder* Algebra 2, Pre-Calculus and Trigonometry. Egad, my math past has caught up with me!

It is somewhat of a mystery how I finagled my way into a four-year university with only, well, one year of high school math. Some say it was my “Minority Background” (¿Dónde está la biblioteca?). Others say it was the fact that California lets people slip through the cracks in the school system. Still others say “screw it – let’s have a beer”. Really, it was all three. I was determined to avoid taking Algebra 2 back in high school, not because I couldn’t pass the class but because I refused to take a math course at 7:10 a.m., on the grounds it was inhumane. I am a free-range chicken. Let’s be fair.

I did fairly well on my SAT and ACT college exams. Most people only take one or the other but I took both just to see which would give me the best score (the ACT did). Once at the university, I did not take the normal courses of mathematics that many students pursue because I was a psychology major. Fortunately for us we got to take a series of statistics courses, which TO THIS DAY, I think were more practical. I live in Reno. When we go to the blackjack table, which would you rather have? Someone who can tell you the odds of getting that face card to come up on the next hand or someone who can find the area underneath the parabola?

I thought as much.

As per usual, my internet research has lead me on a string of wild goose chases to find good, solid math tutorial sources for me. Ones, you know, that I’ll respond to as opposed to falling asleep to or tossing out after ten minutes’ use. It’s a hard road to hoe. On a side note, I think I’ve been on the internet too long; my spelling’s getting much worse. I had to look at the word “hoe” and think hard on the fact if I spelled it right.

“Typos are very important to all written form. It gives the reader something to look for so they aren’t distracted by the total lack of content in your writing.”
~Randy K. Milholland

Today I went to the doctor and got a new prescription for Flonase. It is a nasal steroid that literally can change your life. I remember the first week I was on it. I was blown away by the sensation of being able to breathe through both nostrils fully and completely; I almost choked on air. It then dawned on me that was what other people were breathing like all the time. To quoth Master Keanu, “Whoa.”

I went into Costco for the first time in many, many years. Jesse and I got a new family membership, despite my years of hesitation. He assured me the Sparks/Spanish Springs location would be a reasonable, low-key venue at which to shop. I ordered our cards online but one must trade them in when one receives them in the mail for photo IDs at the store proper. I made it in the store and took a fairly decent photo – mind you, it was a tiny black-and-white shot. But I did notice that even though the store’s parking lot was full, the store seemed to be relatively calm, and not…chaotic. I think that’s the best way one could describe a Los Angeles-area Costco. You give a battery of “over-40″ housewives some super-wide grocery carts and add to that sales on just about anything in bulk packaging. In a matter of minutes, they will be converted into a pack of wild, heaving savages, careening down aisles with no caution or care for others. It is truly a sight to behold.

I happened to walk through our Costco with no cart. This was done for a couple of reasons. One, quickness of movement. When I want to go through an entire store in a matter of a couple of minutes, it is best not to be slogging along a rolling skeleton of metal. Two, there is an old phrase that I’m sure still rings true today, “You can’t go into Costo and leave with less than $300 worth of stuff.” No cart prevents that. Three, if I was going to be dodging bullets, Viet Cong, and Martha Stewart communist vampires, I was going to travel light and fast. Last and most importantly, I just plain forgot a cart.

I have picked my Spanish lessons back up. I will go into that in a future update. I have several reasons for this and some interesting things to share from this past week. See if you can spot the particularly unusual thing that I noticed about the two speakers from this podcast series.

Oh heck, it’s 10:25. Time to clean the litter box and be off to bed. Some days you rock and roll. Other days, you clean up the rocks others leave behind.

“I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.”
~Mark Twain

I have a bit of a head cold. Back tomorrow. Feel free to roam about the place. Just don’t break nuthin’.

Jesse is under the weather tonight and I will be turning in shortly myself. Yet I feel I need to post something.

“People who hate cats, will come back as mice in their next life.”
~Faith Resnick

“No amount of time can erase the memory of a good cat, and no amount of masking tape can ever totally remove his fur from your couch.”
~Leo Dworken

“Thousands of years ago, cats were worshipped as gods. Cats have never forgotten this.”
~Anonymous

“There is, incidentally, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person.”
~Dan Greenberg

“Cats are smarter than dogs. You can’t get eight cats to pull a sled through snow.”
~Jeff Valdez

So it has been a few days since I wrote last. A few things have happened, not least of which is the whole “new prez” gig. I even voted this time ’round, having not voted since California (e.g. Los Angeleans) chose to oust Gray Davis in exchange for Ahnold back in 2003. (Fun fact: I voted for Schwarzenegger.)

All of the Nevada propositions were all terribly boring in comparison to the flashy gay marriage/medical marijuana/euthenasia propositions bouncing around the rest of the nation. Example: one of ours talked about getting rid of the six-month Nevada residency requirement before being able to become a registered voter in Nevada. Something about it’s actually supposed to be one-month residency requirement and that it was going to go that way no matter what or go to the Supreme Court or Congress or not and that a vote for it was to repeal it or a vote against it was to get rid of the limit and I can’t recall what I put. I think it was Yes to get rid of it, but really, if you live someplace for less than six months, are you that inclined to vote in local politics? I can’t remember what people voted for either.

One must remember, though, that Nevada is a state with legal prostitution. Not much fazes the inhabitants of a land where it can snow and wildfire and one can lose one’s entire life fortune in the same day. It will probably be a very long time before we get an exciting proposition on the ballot.

It being Jesse’s birthday yesterday I was busy for two days straight getting preparations ready. After a talk with Krakatoa, I felt a lot more confident about venturing back into the Congo (a.k.a the kitchen), machete and whip in hand. I made a yellow cake with chocolate icing in the day, which was “okay” as I forgot a critical point in baking: always follow a recipe exactly. My mistakes: not having a standing mixer, using regular baking flour instead of the cake flour I bought ESPECIALLY for that recipe. Anyway a hand mixer doesn’t cut it when dealing with cake. You must bring out the big guns.

I am surprised we have survived this long without a food processor and a standing mixer. Add to that list a a bread maker but fortunately I am getting that from my in-laws for XMAS. I have wanted one for years. Jesse always contended that we had a bread machine already: the oven. Hrmph. He does agree with me on the mixer and the food processor, however.

But I digress…for dinner, we had baby greens, lobster bisque and marinated grilled shrimp. I also got us a bottle of merlot and yes I know I should have gone with the white because it’s a seafood dinner and blah blah blah. Call me a barbarian but I find most white wines to be incredibly bitter.

The dinner, unlike the cake, was a rousing success. My shrimp got an 11 on a scale of 1-10. My cake got a 6. The taste was better than the appearance for the cake but it was my first. It really was “the thought that counts”. I ask Jesse for honest judging because that’s how I can tell how I’m progressing. Now with the cake, I knew it wasn’t going to score terribly high because I couldn’t stop laughing at it after I made it. I kept imagining the cake on this website and it made me cackle every single time.

Fun baking learning experience: Put on sprinkles before you put a cake into the fridge. Once a cake’s frosting is cold, the surface is too hard for traction. Sprinkles will go simply EVERYWHERE when the birthday recipient goes to blow out the candles.

Jesse’s brother, David, called while I was grilling the shrimp (on the cast iron grill, no less.) His brother was envious that Jesse was getting such a nice dinner for his birthday. David’s wife (who as I’ve said before is even less of a cook than I am) made him pancakes for his birthday. She cooked them on a surface that was too hot and burned the outsides black while keeping the insides mushy. He described them as “Oreos”.

“The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.”
~Calvin Trillin