Beth's Contradictory Brain

Early New Year's

We're either having an old married couple's New Year's Eve, or a small town one - not sure what the difference would be.

Actually. I had made us dinner reservations at PF Chang's in Pittsburgh for this evening. Then Nerdstar suggested that we check out the Pittsburgh zoo while we were over that way. Well, I got to looking at the weather and yesterday had much better weather, so we kinda had our New Year's Eve last night.

We drove through some really cool neighborhoods in Pitts last night. We saw several orthodox Jews headed to evening services, and lots not white people. (After a couple of years in small, white towns, we're always happy to see not whites.) I love the old houses in the old neighborhoods and the fun little stores and shops and restaurants.

But, alas. We also discovered we simply can't live in Pitts, or most PA cities for that matter. For some reason known only to God, or maybe Satan, this state hates to invest in street and highway signs. It's not bad enough that two out of three streets change names sometime while you're driving along. You're lucky if the cross street has a street sign, but you can give up on the street your on having any sort of sign. Now, add the rivers and mountains going through Pitts, and the resulting den of snakes like road layout, and well, it was almost more than we could handle.

Give me back my nice, flat, well-lit, well labled, wide, straight Texas roads, with restaurants all along them!!

Nada

Not much going on around here these days.

I was telling Nerdstar last night that if for the past several years on New Year's Eve we had both written down what we anticipated for the upcoming year, put them in sealed envelopes, and then read them the following New Year's Eve - it would have given us much, much laughter!

On to the New Year

This might have been my least stressful Christmas ever. And not nearly as depressing as I might have anticipated. I love my family, but we all know it's not always easy to spend extended time with them. We're both a little sad to not be with The Kid when he open presents, but he's at his mother's this week and won't get to open presents with my family until this coming weekend.

Nerdstar and I just got each other little gifts. She took me out to look at lcd tv's, but I just can't bring myself to spend over $1000 for something I don't really need. Even if we got a HD lcd, I'm not ready to upgrade our cable package to the HD channels, I feel we're spending too much as it is. So I come home and take a good look at the picture of our current tv and figure it's good enough for a while longer.

I sent my family a few gifts, The Kid got the Gamera dvd collection and his new favorite Godzilla movie, and a dinosaur book. He'll be thrilled.

Nerdstar and I both realized yesterday, after her sister bitched and moaned about getting crappy presents (except from Nerdstar) that neither of us got anything from our families. Nice. My folks said they'd take us out to a good dinner whenever we do make it down there.

We spend Sunday making our Christmas dinner of turkey and cornbread dressing and rolls and sweet potato pie because Monday one of Nerdstar's co-workers took pity on us and invited us over for lunch. We figured two Christmas dinners was better than one! Tonight we took the turkey carcass and such out of the roasting pan, added some water and made the best broth ever. Nerdstar was drinking it like a good wine!

Oh, and Christmas Eve I drug her to a church service. I really wanted to sing some Christmas carols this year. I think they're amazing. Her boss had invited her and her co-workers to their service, so we went there.

It wasn't that great. Not nearly enough Christmas carols. And the message was one of those super evangalistic types that I never understand. I know what the preacher is trying to do, I just can't imagine it ever working. If you go on the premise he was preaching to people who come to church maybe once or twice a year, or were there for the first time to appease some family member, then why the hell did he try to "preach the entire Bible" and make it all about reference the intended audience won't get. It's right up there with preaching to the choir every Sunday - pointless.

I did catch a glimpse of the type of worship I used to participate in when I went to church in Austin, and I can't express how much I miss it. But all the bullshit that goes with it, I just don't want to deal with. I always hold some hope in my heart that one day I'll find a church that's completely different.

Oh Holy Night

Oh Holy Night

Oh holy night!
The stars are brightly shining
It is the night of the dear Savior's birth!
Long lay the world in sin and error pining
Till he appear'd and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!

Fall on your knees
Oh hear the angel voices
Oh night divine
Oh night when Christ was born
Oh night divine
Oh night divine

Led by the light of Faith serenely beaming
With glowing hearts by His cradle we stand
So led by light of a star sweetly gleaming
Here come the wise men from Orient land
The King of Kings lay thus in lowly manger
In all our trials born to be our friend.
Truly He taught us to love one another
His law is love and His gospel is peace
Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother
And in His name all oppression shall cease
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
Let all within us praise His holy name.

Merry Christmas

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Let your heart be light
From now on,
our troubles will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Make the Yule-tide gay,
From now on,
our troubles will be miles away.

Here we are as in olden days,
Happy golden days of yore.
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more.

Through the years
We all will be together,
If the Fates allow
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.
And have yourself A merry little Christmas now.

Sweet

I'm having trouble getting Flickr to work.

Here's a link to the beautiful flowers Nerdstar sent me today. Such a sweet surprise!!!

Low Key

Things are just really low key around here these days. I finished my Christmas shopping a while back, mostly online. In fact, my family in Texas got their package back on Monday.

So, it's just Nerdstar and I around here for the holidays. We decided to go ahead and cook a little turkey and some dressing and a couple of other dishes.

We might head out to a Christmas Eve service, I've been wanting to go sing some Christmas carols.

See, very low key.

TV Watching

I finally watched the ending of Sleeper Cell this morning. If you have Showtime and didn't watch it, I highly recommend it. I didn't watch the first series last year, but caught enough of the promos to get interested for this season. It was a really well done series. I really appreciated their efforts to show the "good" and "bad" Muslims as humans. I don't want to talk too much about actual plots in case some of you decide to check it out.

The Survivor finale was decent. I think Ozzy should have won. Although I guess you can argue that the social engineering Yul did is as impressive as Ozzy's challenge performances. I hope the producers realized that sending 3 to the final for the jury to choose from was useless. Although, I guess I do appreciate them still trying to change things up and keep it interesting.

I also watched the Sci-Fi mini-series The Lost Room. It was ok, but not great. The objects were cool. How someone figured out how some of them worked would have been interesting to know - like when the dude finally showed swallowing the quarter to make memories real. I guess I think it could have been written a little tighter.

I'm looking forward to the new game show Identity. I think it's the kind of thing I'd be good at, but who knows.

Speaking of game shows, Deal or No Deal makes me nervous every time I watch it!

Really Wrong

How funny. I found the link to this LibraryThing Unsuggester over over at Poppy's site. (I happened to read her before reading Neil - where she found it - today.)

So, I decided to try one of my favorite books, The River Why by David James Duncan. In fact, I just read it for at least the third time while flying home from Thanksgiving. The results were really off.

Here are the firt ten unsuggestions:

1 Howl's moving castle by Diana Wynne Jones (expected 8.2, found 0; unsuggestions)
2 No logo : taking aim at the brand bullies by Naomi Klein (expected 11.2, found 1; unsuggestions)
3 Eric by Terry Pratchett (expected 11, found 1; unsuggestions)
4 The colour of magic by Terry Pratchett (expected 24.5, found 3; unsuggestions)
5 The salmon of doubt : hitchhiking the galaxy one last time by Douglas Adams (expected 10.2, found 1; unsuggestions)
6 Blood and gold, or, The story of Marius by Anne Rice (expected 6.7, found 0; unsuggestions)
7 Good omens : the nice and accurate prophecies of Agnes Nutter, witch by Terry Pratchett (expected 6.3, found 0; unsuggestions)
8 Good in bed : a novel by Jennifer Weiner (expected 9.4, found 1; unsuggestions)
9 Blood of the fold by Terry Goodkind (expected 6, found 0; unsuggestions)
10 Wizard's first rule by Terry Goodkind (expected 8.9, found 1; unsuggestions)

I haven't read Howl's Moving Castle, but we own the dvd. Good Omens is the book that got me into reading everything by Neil Gaiman. Of course I have Salmon Of Doubt by Douglas Adams, as well as all of his others. I don't own Terry Pratchett, but I've read of few of his while sitting in Barnes and Noble. Same with Good In Bed.

Also, in that list of 74 are Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters (I have all of hers), Harry Potter books, Lost Souls by Poppy, Stardust - which I also re-read over Thanksgiving and Flowers In the Attic, which I read the series in high school.

You try your favorite book and see if it's any more accurate.

Say Hi

Back when Nerdstar was in Iraq and after I'd quit my job and couldn't/didn't find much to do other than worry, it was a very lonely time. I finally started playing free tournament poker and was getting to know some people when Nerdstar got the job in KC.

Then, after a time of being unemployed in KC, one of the things I was happy about was my job and finally becomming friendly with some of my co-workers. It was so nice to get out of the house every day and interact with other humans!

So now I'm back to sitting around the house most days not really interacting with anyone.

Nerdstar's getting to know some of her co-workers. We've hung out with one couple a few times, but they're in their very early 20s.

I'm not writing about this as well as I wanted to while thinking about it last night before falling asleep.

Anyway. One point is to say that if you didn't know I'm on Google Chat most days - I am, so feel free to say Hi anytime.

Huh?

Apparently, just a few weeks in a cold climate has turned Nerdstar and I into total GUYS! We've taken to watching Ultimate Fighting and now we're watching and laughing at the Video Game Awards. We don't even own a single gaming system. (Although we might check into them after Christmas) Add that to our MXC and Ninja Warrior viewings... what's next?? Bring on the beer and girls on trampolines!

Heroes Director's Blog

You've all probably found this already, but if not it's a great little blog about making the tv show Heroes.

Decisions

Along with supposedly simple things like what the hell to do for Christmas or New Years; Nerdstar and I have a terrible time trying to make bigger decisions.

(Christmas I think we're going to stay put and cook a decent meal. New Year's I made reservations at PF Chang's in Pittsburgh and we'll see if we do anything after that.)

There are tons of nice little houses around here under $100,000. And we would love to own a nice little house. But... we just don't know how long we're going to stay here. Her job is decent, but not her dream job. Between it possibly leading to better civilian jobs, or her currently unknown military career, it's just hard to say where we'll end up next, or when.

Then there's the whole issue of me getting a job. There's nothing to be had within a fifty mile radius. So today I actually applied online for a couple of jobs about 100 miles from here. One of them is only two or so night shifts a week - which would be sufficient to keep up my skills until we know more about the future and wouldn't be hell driving that far every day.

I think it'd be much easier for me to be unemployed for a while if I hadn't been unemployed so much in the past few years. But I'm out of dvds, and books, and such. And as I've written in the past, I'm terrible at self motivation. It's not like I can even get myself to use this down time (that I know won't last forever) to get into shape.

We've only been here two months. It feels a little longer.

Nerdstar has her own dislikes of living here - mostly having to do with a real lack of good food and diversity.

Bleh

The lethargy, depression, and frustration all increase just a little bit every day.

Fun With Names

The sun was finally shining through the window yesterday morning when we were waking up, so naturally I sang the line "Sunshine on my should makes me happy". Then we both agreed I probably know way too many John Denver songs.

This led to our re-occuring discussion of naming any future baby girl we might have Sunshine Joy. (yes, my idea!)

Then we agreed that Cocoa Vanilla would be a very funny name for a kid with mixed - black and white - parents, but that Banana Vanilla wouldn't be as funny for mixed - Asian and white - parents. Of course, this led to the idea that Skittles would be a hysterical name for a kid of gay parents - you know - "taste the rainbow" and all.

Keep in mind we have a dog named Ramen.

Funny?

I love Christopher Hitchens. He'd be in any top 5 of mine of people to have dinner with. I also love humor. So when he takes to writing about why women aren't funny, well, I had to give it a good read. It's a long read, and the first part is just ok - but you should take the time to read the whole thing.

I don't know that I can disagree with him. I'm always watching all the stupid/funny/crazy thing young men are always doing and wondering what the hell the young women are up to. Maybe he's right, young men are trying to be funny to get the attention of women - but the young women all seem to be at home trying to "get pretty" to get the attention of the young men. It's a wonder they ever end up in the same places to meet.

View

View

It was nice and clear this morning. We're supposed to get more of this today and tomorrow, then warmer for the weekend. Nice!

UPDATE: Between taking that pic and the time Nerdstar had to drive home from work it snowed at least 5 inches. While it's really pretty - there are two or three steep hills in our neighborhood. We were on the cell phones most of her way home, then about two long blocks from home she finally got stuck. I had to try to rescue her! A couple of neighborhood ladies came out and helped us try to push. Then the snow truck finally came through the neighborhood and we finally made it home. I'd say it took about an hour or so. My car is a 97 Buick which is heavy enough to get around on bad roads. Her little Toyota Matrix - not so heavy. Guess we'll have to get her some snow tires or something! Our land lady has the same type of car - so we're going to get her advice!

Nothing like your first winter in a place that really has winter. Thankfully it's going to warm up this weekend and it'll all melt away - this time...

Suggestions?

Nerdstar and I are having a hell of a time trying to figure out plans for Christmas and New Year's.

We decided we didn't have the time and money to go visit both families down in Texas. Part of the problem was timing when The Kid would be at my parents' house.

We've looked into going to NYC for a couple of days for Christmas - but with hotel rooms running around $200 a night, we'd end up spending as much as it would have cost to fly down to Texas, and that just doesn't seem right. Although it would have been totally neat to go do some of the traditional Christmas stuff in NYC.

Now we're trying to figure out what to do for New Year's Eve. We're with a decent drive of Pittsburgh, Philly, and D.C. We're just not sure we want to drive just to end up at some club where we don't really know anyone.

You know us, it's really all about the food.

So - any suggestions for good places to be for either holiday?

Odd and Ends

These days I'm pretty much stuck in house wife role. What's sad is both Nerdstar and I would prefer it was me bringing home the bacon and her frying it up in a pan. I just don't really enjoy house work.

I've emailed a resume and cover letter to all the appropriate people I can find around here. It still amazes me that for a town of 20K they seem to have an over abundance of phlebotomists. How does that happen? Unfortunately, if something doesn't open up by the first of the year, I'm going to have to go back to doing something else. Yuck.

Today there are snow flurries and sunshine - a nice mix.

It's not going to get out of the 20s this week. The poor pets are not at all happy about it either. I feel kinda bad for them. I keep it pretty darn cold over night because Nerdstar and I generate lots of body heat under the flannel sheets and down comforter. The cats come and go throughtout the night and snuggle up to us. The poor dog has a bed, but you can tell he's not too happy about any of it. If he didn't constantly make the cats think he was going to eat them, they might let him on the bed, too - but that's never going to happen.

At least we're not in St. Louis - those poor people there without power all this time!

I do wish we had a fireplace. I can't understand why they're not standard in every house around here, but there seem to be lots without one.

And one final note - thermostats are crazy liars. I've got it set on 60 - there's not a chance in hell the temp in this house is 60. I know 60. 60 means you don't have to wear multiple layers of clothes.

Lazy Weekend

We had a fantastically lazy weekend. Nerdstar was mostly looking forward to sleeping late. I'm not sure I let her sleep late enough, but I tried.

We spent Saturday watching Japanese game shows. First up was a marathon of Ninja Warrior. What I like about it is that there's not necessarily a winner. Most of the time no one finished stage three, much less makes it to stage four. Set your dvr and check out an episode... it's really cool.

Later we had a dvd of MXC to watch. It was cool to hear the commentary on how they developed it and see part of the original show it was based on.

That was about it really.

Brrrr

Nerdstar's college friend Cindy went back to work in Antartica for a longer season this time. She's sporadically keeping up her blog there - check it out for the penguin pics if nothing else.