Beth's Contradictory Brain

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Nerdstar wrote a really great entry about her trip to Taiwan for her father's funeral over there.

Another Lazy Weekend

Much lazier than I had intended. Oh well.

We did manage to go see the new Harold and Kumar movie. It was irreverent and funny!

Other than that it was mostly sleeping or eating. The weather was really nice yesterday, then it rained and the cold came back. I think we're supposed to be in the 60s most of this week. But that's ok with me. The longer it takes to get hot, the better.

I'm kinda working on watching less news and such because lately I'm just fed up with the whole world. The fear mongering by the media pissed me off. So I'm going to tune it out. Nerdstar will be happy to hear less of me yelling at the tv!

9000 Years

Ok, so it's only been 9 years - but we both swear it feels like 9000. Is that a good thing?

Today is our 9th anniversary and we're headed out to a nice dinner at Les Halles. We figure traffic and such shouldn't be too bad on a Wednesday night. We both kinda need new rings since our fingers have gotten fatter over the years. Maybe we'll finally pick something this weekend. I'm sentimental and hate to change mine. She still just wants a simple gold band. Maybe we'll look into sizing the ones we have.

So... 9 years. We still joke about and miss our days and nights in my little "ghetto" apartment back in Austin. The tough nights her cute butt hung over the edge of my little twin bed before she was so nice and bought me/us a full sized bed.

We've lived in four cities and I honestly couldn't tell you how many thousands of miles we've driven/traveled in these nine years.

She's made me into a food snob, which has also led to me being fat.

Everything is all her fault - and I think she's become ok with that :-)

It certainly hasn't been an easy nine years. But I do know life wouldn't be the same without my Nerdstar, Dorj, Snuggle Bunny, SnackMaster, Cutie Pie.

Happy Anniversary, Baby!!

Tax Freedom Day!!

Here's an amusing video explaining it.

Weekend Update

Nerdstar had to journey to NJ for the last funeral for her father. I wish for her sake that her family was nicer, more supportive, but they're just not that kind of people.

Me, well, I'm just hangin with the pets this weekend. The weather was too nice to not take Ramen dog to the park. Plus, it tires him out for the day and the cats get a break from being chased. It's suppose to rain the next few days - ugh.

Other than that I'm watching basketball and taking long naps.

I watched part of the coverage of the Pope being here in DC and then in NY. I've been a Christian all of my life, but I've never really understood Catholicism. (I understand what all the Catholic church believes and it's history, I guess I just don't "get" why.) Anyway. His visit still seemed like a good/cool thing.

We decided to renew our lease for another year. Nerdstar was fantastic and got them to not raise our rent! If we're still here in six or seven months and aren't moving in the foreseeable future, we'll start looking at houses. But when Nerdstar gets job offers almost every other week or so, it's hard to say what's going to happen. Ninety percent of the those jobs are here in the DC area, but we can always hope for somewhere in Texas or the North West. As long as the $$ keeps going up :-)

Little Update and Reading About Stalin

Not much going on really. We had a totally lazy weekend, which was just fine after all the ickiness of the previous one.

I got my car back from repairs today. I must say Progressive rocks. The car looks new - they cleaned it inside and out and everything. Nice.

I finally finished reading a really long book about Stalin. In spite of having a college education, I've learned a lot more about fascism and the "mood" of the world in the 30s and 40s. I'll never understand why it seems to be ok for leaders to kill millions of their own people, as long as they don't start killing people in other countries.

Too bad my library doesn't carry this book of letters between Stalin and Roosevelt. Roosevelt and Churchill had to have known Stalin was killing millions of his own people through starvation, and so many other through relocation and camps, and mass shootings - yet they worked with him against Hitler. What a mess it all was.

Along those lines, let me say something I'm sure is totally not PC. But why don't South Koreans do more to free their friends and family members in North Korea? It's a sincere question. Has so much time passed since the country was cut in half that now "it's just the way it is"? I know so many people were suddenly cut off from family members caught on the wrong side... wouldn't it be worth the effort to free North Korea?

Eventually I'll do some reading on Chiang Kai-Shek and Mao.

Poor Nerdstar has had to listen to me try to come to any understanding of all that history.

Other than that I'm worn out by the news and politics and really should pay less attention to it all.

Florida Girls

Man, the video of those teenage girls in Florida beating the hell out of that other girl is whack. I don't necessarily find it shocking, I think most girls/women know girls can be brutal physically as well as mentally and emotionally.

Nerdstar thinks they should get six years in jail.

I think they should be made to join the Marines for an 8 year enlistment, four of which they cannot be promoted. If they were boys this might be more likely. I think it would do them a world of good. I think jail would/will only make things worse.

Ideas

I really wish I had media skills - you know, I could pull videos up and edit and dub and soundtrack them. I don't know how, but I sometimes have ideas that I think would be fun.

Tonight watching AI and seeing Paula's poor squashed boobies I immediately had Rage Against The Machine's Bulls On Parade in my head. Wouldn't it be fun to insert boobs for bulls and have a steady video stream of boob/cleavage shots for the duration of the song.

I'd also love to do all the out takes from The View of them being totally gay. Those small moments alone make it worth DVRing every day.

Couples Meme

Found over at SassyFemme

1. How long have you been together? It will be 9 years the 23rd of this month.

2. Who pursued who? I guess I'd have to say I pursued her - I made her drive from Houston to Austin to "come and see me."

3. Do you wear any type of wedding/commitment ring? We've both had rings for a long time now, but we need new ones due to fingers getting fatter - just haven't found a cool jeweler yet. It's harder for her to wear hers being in the Army. I feel a little naked when I don't wear mine.

4. What was the hardest thing about learning to live together? Hmmm... I'm really not sure it was hard - maybe it was harder for her.

5. Who takes longer to get ready in the morning? OMG - she takes forever! At least twice as long as me. She tells me it's all about the moisturizing.

6. Do you usually eat breakfast together? Only on weekends.

7. Do you ever share clothes? Yes, and we could share more if I lost a few pounds.

8. Who does most of the cooking? We mostly eat out, but when we do cook we both cook, or I supervise and give instructions and she cooks.

9. Who usually takes out the trash? Nerdstar

10. If you have pets who usually does litter box or poop patrol? Nerdstar

11. Which one of you is more likely to answer the phone when it rings? We only have our cellphones, no landline.

12. Who's in charge of the remote if you're watching TV together? I am, but I try to share sometimes. But I tend to land on C-Span on the weekends, and she lands on VH1.

13. Who usually drives when you go out together? She prefers that I do, especially if it's dark, but it's probably close to 50/50. Although, we've found (the hard way) that when we're using the Garmin, it's better if she drives and I navigate.

14. Which one of you takes care of spiders and bugs that get into the house? I think that's pretty shared.

15. Facing the bed, who sleeps on which side? I'm on the right, she's on the left. I'm closer to the bathroom, but also get ran over by our boy cat more when he jumps on the bed.

16. Who usually checks the (postal) mailbox? Whoever gets home from work earliest that day.

17. If something breaks or goes wrong in the house, which one of you is more likely to either fix it or call someone to fix it? I pretty much fix everything - my girl's not so handy.

18. Who is generally the neater of you? Me, she's a total slob.

19. Who handles the checkbook/pays the bills? I do. We handle money completely different from each other - it's an issue sometimes.

20. What was your last fight/disagreement about? Me bugging her about getting offline and getting things done.

21. When you slow dance together, who leads? She can't dance at all, so we never have.

22. What do you love the most about your other half? Her cute little butt. Her love for family and pets. How she works hard to take care of me. Her absolute, undying, consistent love of food.

I'm never sure her answers would match mine.

Insult to Injury

It all started with not getting much sleep Friday night and then having to get up early Saturday to go to work. Work wasn't too bad, but I was really tired. Driving home I was just trying to relax and make it home for a nap. Then, BOOM - this lady rear-ended me at a poorly designed entrance ramp. I had thought about going, probably took my foot off the brake, saw a car coming and decided to go ahead and be safe and wait for it to pass. I'm sure she thought I was going to go, so she went.

I'm not hurt, which is a good thing. My poor little new car has a busted butt. :-( She's got decent insurance, so I'm going to drop it off for repairs Tuesday and get a rental car.

Could have been worse.

Then we met up with some friends to go see Run, Fat Boy, Run. It was really fun.

Warning: gross info on being sick.

When the movie ended I was feeling a little icky. I didn't even make it to the car and I had to puke. Ugh. That was bad enough, but once we got home it got worse. I had diarrhea every 30 minutes for the first three hours, then every hour and a half for the next six hours.

My best guess is I picked up some sort of bug at work.

I'm feeling weak but better. It all just felt like adding insult to injury yesterday. Thankfully we didn't have anything planned for today.

Rainy Day

For the record... Rice Krispy treats are crack.

My girl is finally stateside and has made it from Seattle to DFW. Now if she can make the final trip home she'll get here about 1:30 in the morning. Fun. At least she can sleep all day tomorrow while I work.

Carry You Around

I've had some Ani spinning away in my cd player the last few days. While I'll probably never agree with her politics, or understand how someone so fiercely independent can come so close to being a socialist, I admire her tons.

I've often thought how cool it would be to do a line of greeting cards with her lyrics.

Anyway. The one I'm sharing today probably works better heard than read, but oh well.

Carry You Around

cuz i carry you, baby
i carry you around
(this repeats for at least a minute/minute and a half)

There are so, so many people I "carry around" with me. My best friend throughout school - Theresa. My ex boyfriends Pat and Pat. Some college friends. Several people I used to go to church with in both Waco and Austin, Velvet and Dori, Laura and Rhonda. My ex girlfriend Jenn. People I used to work with, Angela and Dawn. Caroline - who shared so much Ani with me. And so many others.

I always wonder if the amount of time and thoughts of mine that go to people I used to know is normal.

Who do you carry around with you?

A Year Ago

One thing I said during Nerdstar's Iraq adventures was that I could only hope time continued to move so slowly once life got back to normal.

Well, a year ago we moved here to DC (start at the bottom), and it does seem to have been a long year. That first month was so terrible. We could never get internet access in the ghetto apartment, so we'd go to a diner with our laptops and try to get stuff done. One night when it was becoming apparent we couldn't stay at that apartment and were going to have to pack up everything AGAIN and find another place and all that hassle, we were sitting in the car at the diner and I pretty much just lost it. We discussed me actually just moving back to Austin and Nerdstar staying in DC. Not good.

Life in DC isn't our ideal life. But it's not a bad place to be. I've kinda gotten used to it taking forever to get somewhere and all the hassles of parking. We're about to renew our lease for another year. This time next year with any luck we'll be moving into a house.

But, there's just no telling where things will be this time next year.