Beth's Contradictory Brain

If I Were...

We've been to all levels of baseball games, from college to pro. One of the cool things is how sometimes (maybe more in college and semi-pro) the batters have theme songs that are played when they come up to bat.

So...

If I were a baseball player - my theme song would be AC/DC's Have A Drink On Me - and every time I hit a home run everyone in the stadium would get a free beer!

I'd be the.most.popular.player.ever.

Lonely Nights

My poor Nerdstar is about two hours into a 14 hour flight. I don't envy her at all. Plus, she didn't have time between flights to get a good meal. I did make sure we packed her up with some snacks, but my poor girl needs her food!

The timing didn't work out so that I could go with her - and really that's ok. When it comes to her family it's usually better if she deals with them on her own.

I spent my evening watching the new Ani Difranco dvd Live At Babeville. It's pretty good.

Well. I'm 40 now. Seems strange. 30 was a tumultuous time and seems like so long ago - mostly. This just might actually be the year the house and baby happen. If so I won't feel so bad about 40.

Whirlwind!!

Life just keeps coming. And while that's a good thing, really, it can be kind of exhausting.

Yes, it's 1:30 a.m. and Nerdstar is packing for her flight to Taiwan tomorrow at 11:30 a.m.

We had planned to go down to Asheville, NC and visit some friends, hang out, do some shopping for our birthdays. (The coolest part of having birthdays two days apart is taking trips to celebrate them!)

Those plans fell through and I thought, what the heck, let's go lose a few hundred bucks in Atlantic City. IF we had left for Asheville Wednesday night as I'd thought would be good, it would have ended up being bad.

Early Thursday morning before we left for AC, Nerdstar checked her email and found out that they were planning on cremating her father on Tuesday in Taiwan - which is 12 or 13 hours ahead of us. (If we'd been on our way to Asheville she might have gotten those emails too late to book a flight out.) Then after a phone call or two, she found out that it's actually on Monday.

Amazingly, she was able to make some phone calls while I was driving and arranged her flights from DC to Taiwan and back - and will get there Sunday night.

It wasn't the best of timing for us for a few reasons. She had thought it'd be at least another week or two before she had to fly over there. But that's how it goes. The important thing is her and her sister (who flew over today) will get to do these last things for their father.

And We're Off

It's been a crazy week around here. Plans and situations have been pretty fluid.

Today we're off to Atlantic City for a couple of days to do some eating and gambling. Then we'll see what next week brings.

Happy Birthday!!

To my Nerdstar!! It's kinda sucky having a birthday while dealing with death, but that's how life is sometimes.

Here's to more belly rubs, good food, fun trips, and NST this year!!

Still Sad

It's so hard to process and grieve the sudden loss of a parent. And I can only be of so much help to my poor Nerdstar because both of my parents are still living.

Here's a second post of hers about the death of her father.

Sad Day

Nerdstar found out her father passed away today. Here's her post about it.

Slow

I guess I should have blogged this earlier, when I got the comic and first read it, but I neglected to do so.

I'm not sure how many of my regular readers are Buffy fans, it's taking me forever to get Nerdstar even a little interested in the series.

In case you didn't know, Joss and team created a comic book series that is the 8th season that didn't happen for tv. It's been really fun reading it and seeing where things went post Sunndydale.

Things got really fun in episode 12 when Buffy has a great night of sex with one of her fellow young slayers.

Fortunately over at AfterEllen they've done a good post on it and even put up the relevant pages from the comic book. There's also a link to a great article with Joss from the NYT. Go check it out!

Subversive

Ok, so it's not really all that subversive - but it's still kinda fun, and cute. This is our little family. Except Nerdstar doesn't look like Nerdstar - they didn't have any ethnic characters.

More License Plates

I saw this one on the way to work this morning and it confused me for a while: DA NATZ

I thought why the hell would someone want to be "the nazi"?? Then I remembered the baseball team here is The Nationals = Nats = Da Natz.

One the way home this one amused me: WANKAH

Weekend Update

Another quiet, lonely weekend around here for me and the pets. Nerdstar's over in Utah playing soldier again this weekend. Some sort of conference about things she's not involved in. I just keep telling her I have no sympathy for her boring, dreary, sleep deprived weekend.

There does seem to be some good news about her eventually getting out of the Army. She, rightly, decided the best way might be a medical discharge for her bad lower back. She's spent the past month or two seeings docs, getting an MRI and filling out forms. She finally submitted all of it and things seem to be progressing in the right direction. I'm not saying it's progressing very quickly - but it's progressing.

I haven't written about work lately, although I've been meaning to.

I'm really much, much happier at work now. Shifting the hours to 7:30 to 4 has relieved so much of the stress I was putting myself under. Now, the people who have to handle the last two hours of the day are mostly the people who were slacking off. Heh. The supervisor who's so useless is still utterly useless - complaining that they can't handle those two hours - when I've been handling them for months. But instead of making her step up, our manager is actually staying late himself some days to help her out. I think that's hysterical. Anyway, the point is none of it affects me any longer and that makes my days at work much better.

I do feel slight guilt when I'm not there Tuesday/Thursday. And I'm totally aware I've given up all rights to complain about anything at work - which can be hard when all everyone does it sit around and complain about everything. I can't say how much I wish it was Friday already, or that I didn't get any sleep and I'm tired, or anything like that.

The one thing that helps quiet that guilt is knowing that I'm still doing more registrations in 3 days than some people are doing in 5. I work hard when I'm there. I'm sure my coworkers have mixed feelings about my new schedule. On the upside I'm a lot more relaxed and upbeat. I guess the downside would be if they think it's selfish or unfair. Oh well...

Old Fogey

Saturday afternoon we stopped at Walmart to get some stuff, but, due to high winds they had a brief power outage and we didn't want to stick around and see how long it took to get the registers up and running and how long the lines were when they did.

Fortunately the trip wasn't a total waste, there were girl scouts selling cookies outside!

We got a couple of boxes and were paying when one of the girls, about 8 or so, complained about it being cold outside. I laughed. Then I had to explain that I was laughing because all I could think was about that year when my best friend and I went house to house IN THE SNOW selling girl scout cookies and didn't have the luxury of selling so many boxes in front of Walmart.

Penny Idea

Every so often the idea of discontinuing pennies is floated. I think it's a great idea. Here's how I think it could be done.

Announce on January 1 that in exactly one year no more pennies will be made or circulated. In that one year period everyone can take their pennies to any bank and get the equivalent of 2 for 1 - that will encourage everyone to actually turn in all the pennies out there. Then the govt. can sell them as scrap metal to whoever wants it and probably make a profit. (I'm pretty sure the metals in the pennies are worth more than 1 cent.)

Pretty Funny

On the off chance you haven't seen this elsewhere...

A spoof of a Hillary Campaign video about Obama being black.

An Example

This is an example of the sort of thing my mother will not find at all amusing - when she finally conquers this internet thingy. (I get my sense of humor from my dad.)

More brilliance from Improv Everywhere, this time in the food court of a California mall.

Taking A Chance

Well, it's now entirely possible that some day my mother will find and read this site. Although for the time being I'm not terribly worried.

I think I mentioned back in Dec. that I bought my parents a computer for Christmas. Unfortunately, there wasn't time while we were there for me to get them up and running on the internet. Thankfully, for them anyways, they can use dial-up and Netzero - since they don't have cable or anything that would make it easy and cheap for them to get DSL.

Now, why I'm not worried is I just got off the phone with my mother and it was a pretty funny convo. She won't open her email box at all because she doesn't want to break anything and no one has her email address anyway. Which is true, I certainly don't have her email address! I told her that she really should go in at least once a week and delete all the spam. She asked what it was like - heh - and I told her a mailbox, he he he.

Somehow, she has actually ended up on Google. But, she had no idea what a hyperlink was, that they even existed, or how she ended up on some random blog. (She's taking a computer class at the local elementary school my nephew goes to - so I guess she's at least learned some lingo and that email can evidently be deadly.)

It's two months until we go down there for my nephew's birthday. I've already told her we'll hire GeekSquad for them if we need to. Evidently between Vista and IE they're already having problems. I told her to go download Firefox and never, ever open IE again. She had at least heard of Firefox - maybe they use it up at the class or something.

Anyway. Welcome to the wide, wide world of the web, Mom - in case you ever read this...

Curious

Because the majority of my readers are Dems, I thought I'd ask you all about this Florida and Michigan delegate/primaries fiasco... Do you think they should stick to their original ruling and no FL/MI. Do you think there should be a redo? Do you count the votes as already cast?

And does it all embarrass you?

I don't think there's a good answer or graceful way out of this mess, but I'm not invested in the answer really.

Readings

I love the library for the same reason I love Netflix - they allow you to read/watch things you wouldn't normally invest in.

I only got three books yesterday, but as a result I'm building a new reading list. Things I'm kinda interested in, but wouldn't buy.

Also, yesterday I did something I haven't done in a long time - I read a book in one day. A long ago friend of mine was/is a Martin Amis fan. I never could get into his stuff. But one of his caught my eye yesterday, so I checked it out - House of Meetings. It was really good. And I guess having seen The Lives of Others recently, helped it resonate with me. So now I've got three books about Russia on my new reading list.

The other two books I got were a bio of Nixon and Reagan's letters.

One book I did buy a little while back is the complete works of Flannery O'Connor. Man are they hard reading. None of them have anything happy happen in them. A few of them I don't even begin to understand. I've never been big on deep analysis of written works. I tend to think that an author wants you to know what the point is and therefore doesn't hide it too deeply. But her stuff... man...

Not In My Heart

All the official things would point to me being a Virginian - but I'll always be a Texan in my heart and soul.

My car has Virginia license plates. I finally got a Virginia driver's license (only because my Texas one expired this month.) But I've also got a local Voter Registration Card. And today I got a local library card.

Sigh. I sure miss home.

Misc.

Heh. I see mostly suburbans and minivans with these stickers that show family members and pets. So, I decided to get a set with stickers for me and Nerdstar (not that they have Asian people...) and 1 dog and 2 cats. I did it partly because I think it's cute - and partly because it'll piss off the people who normally have these stickers.

Also - note to self. Next time clean the bathroom AFTER bathing the dog in it, not before.

Flashback

It was a little weird getting stamps this morning. I totally flashed back to all my trips to the post office when Nerdstar was in Iraq and I'd send her packages.

Strange what can set off which memories.

Weekend Update

Just a semi-lazy day around the house for me today. Nerdstar's got Army drill this weekend, so I'm waiting for her to get home so we can go eat tonight!

I've spent the day so far cleaning the bathroom, doing laundry and buying stamps. Such major accomplishments!

Things at work should be better. It took my manager a week, but he finally talked to me about what I'd decided and we agreed to me working three days a week, 7:30 to 4 and staying in our every 3rd Saturday rotation. I told him it didn't matter to me if it was MTW or MWF, but it's mostly going to be MWF. I'm not sure how long I'll keep that schedule. Maybe in a while I'll go back to full time. I heard one of my co-workers is transferring to a different department, and another one got accepted to school and will be leaving in Mid-May. So with the change in hours, which takes a lot of stress off me, and if our manager actually hires some decent folks, it might not be such a bad place to be every day. We'll see.

I've talked about how I've spent almost all day every day doing the computer side of our job instead of the blood drawing side of our job for quite a while now. The same people who bitch that I don't draw blood HATE doing the computer part, and also, they SUCK at doing the computer part. But the computer side is important because it's what keeps the patients moving through the process.

So when the bitching people decide they're going to do the computer part I say great and I get to draw blood. And inevitably the room comes to a complete standstill. For reasons beyond my comprehension they just can't get it done. In the past, that meant that I had to pick up a lot of slack and keep things moving because the end of the day was closing in. Now these folks will be responsible for it all without me the last two hours of the day. Heh. Our manager even had to admit I was right that they can't seem to get it done. Not that he's doing anything about it.

Anyway. One cool thing about getting back to drawing blood yesterday afternoon was what an ego boost it was. For whatever reason, patients really don't appreciate how efficiently I get their computer registration part done - ok, fine. But I'm also good with a needle and people always comment on that.

Yesterday I told a lady "have a nice weekend" and she said, "You, too." I said, "It's hard to have a bad weekend." she said, "Well, the weather might be cold and rainy." I said, "Even better - it'll be nice to sleep in." She laughed and said "What a positive outlook on life you have." ... That cracked Nerdstar and I up for a long time!