Thursday, January 29, 2009

no seriously we are actually working

today's conversation brought to you by SouthPark:
I'm not your friend, buddy!
He's not your buddy, guy!
Well, I'm not your guy, friend!
I'm not your Buddy Guy Friend.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

this is why i watch this show

just a sampling of their full interview:

CNN: How confident are you both in your abilities as musicians?

McKenzie: 24 to 27 percent.

Clement: I'm 24. He's 27.

McKenzie: Combined we're mediocre.

CNN: How are you enjoying the fame that's come from the success?

McKenzie: Oh it's lovely. You get free desserts.

CNN: Just free desserts?

McKenzie: Free drinks. Sometimes some free shoes.

Clement: Sometimes people invade your privacy.

McKenzie: Strangers talk to you.

Clement: But balanced against the free desserts, it evens out.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

good times!

this has been perhaps the most useful site for work in a long time. i can't tell you how many times we've used it in the last 2 weeks. it's been the most useful as we've all been reading our performance review questions out loud!

Monday, January 26, 2009

pac man fever

oh god i am dying on this one! possibly NSFW....depending on where you work! the gold is in the comments!

inheritance

my mom had this thing for kitchen knives. by thing i mean she was constantly inflicting injury on herself by using them. i recall numerous ER visits resulting from her dexterity with said cutlery. among many other things i have inherited from her, tall and skinny not being one of them, this is "my favorite". my finesse is not confined to the kitchen though. i have been known to shoot a simple staple gun into my hand because i neglected to look at where the staple was going to exit. well, this weekend, i managed to lob off the tip of my ring finger. not bad enough, in my opinion, to warrant an ER visit, but nacho would disagree (and he did). you never realize how much you use each and every digit until you can't. and i realize that cutting off my ring finger to spite my marriage probably wasn't the way to go but it was a way!

end of the world as i know it

well, i knew it couldn't last. i read about it 3 weeks ago, but it finally happened. my first advertisement interruption in Pandora. is there no sacred ground? i guess it's on to LastFM.

Monday, January 19, 2009

inaugural observation

so i've been hesitant to say this, but if not here, where? nacho and i had a brief conversation about this on the drive into work and the conversation has continued here at work.

this has been one hot (not in the Paris Hilton way) election year. like many people i know, i'm still trying to make sense of all the political mumbo jumbo. i can remember the first time i ever voted, many elections ago. i had skipped at least one election before, and under the pressure of relentless friends, i finally did vote. admittedly, it was because i got tired of hearing "you should vote! it's your right! if you don't vote, you shouldn't complain!" all valid arguments. so i voted. and when someone asked me who i voted for, i told them. this was met with "you voted for him? why'd you vote for him? are you crazy? etc." so i learned either (a) voting only really mattered if you voted for the person that those questioning you agreed with or (b) keep yer pie-hole shut! i've since opted for b. i'm also guilty of having the attention span of a gnat, so i can only follow politics in 18 second sound bites and then i'm distracted by something shiny. i committed myself to a handful of political feeds this year to better educate myself. i'm still lost but i've tried. this has been complicated further by many conversations i've been witness to this year pre and post-election.

so i go home in Oct to hang with the family and friends. being so close to the election, it was impossible to attend any get together without politics coming up. i knew this and braced for it. what surprised me the most was the racist rhetoric that i encountered. i know i'm taking a HUGE chance even saying anything here cuz i know family and friends that read this. few though they may be, i know they do. and some of those same family and friends were the ones expressing those opinions. let me make one thing crystal clear though: i think i was even more shocked when i heard some of the same commentary right here in my adopted home town. when i first moved up here, some 15 years ago, i was teaching as part of my graduate assistantship. since it was a communication class, i allowed my students to ask just about anything as long as it was relevant to the topic at hand. every semester, and i'm not exaggerating, i'd have one student who, upon finding out i was from the South, would ask if racism was alive and well. to which i would say yes. i wasn't so naive to think it wasn't and i'd been exposed on a regular basis. sometimes it was a cultural holdover from those who grew up before and after the turn of the century. sometimes it was from those that lived segregation and desegregation first hand. sometimes it was just a typical day at school. and it went both ways people. it's not a one-sided street. so i had mentally confined it to some small town southern thing. my naivete again!

what i found disheartening this election was the jump to race and how awful this election has turned out. weather or not i was rooting for our president elect before, it would certainly be enough for me to root for him now if i wasn't. but as i told nach, 2 things: first, i simply cannot bear to hear the N word one more time. please keep in mind, (1) i was raised in the Rural South so i've heard it before (in derogation and cultural ignorance) and (2) i was raised by a black woman (not African American, just ask her and she'll tell you) who taught me the significance and appropriateness or impropriety of the N word. i used to say she taught me when you could/should use it or not. but because of what i've heard come out of people in response to this election, i've learned there is no okay use. second, in response to one comment in particular i heard multiple times: do you really think that just because your president elect is black/African American, thatHE'S gonna take your guns away? i think that's a party issue, not a racial issue. so ultimately i'd love to know, for those same people pulling the race card, what would you say had a black Republican been elected? would you still be hiding your guns? i'm dying to know!

Friday, January 16, 2009

bringing home baby

this is our new baby. delivered yesterday weighing 2.2lbs and 8.9" wide. baby, mom, & dad are doing fine. baby even posted this entry! all Xandros! that's a regular size can of compressed air and my Passport beside the Eee. i think we'll call her ZooEeey!

and this is what you can get on a 8.9" screen. this is my digital camera contents along with the Passport and a browser in the back. not bad!

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

NachoHeston

i think this is what he was going for

psst Brian - done in GIMP on Fedora7 hehehe!

Monday, January 12, 2009

WWBD?

yeah yeah i've been lax the last week for posting. but i have a valid excuse. i had The Black Lung. well, i'm much better now. in that time, the flood has come and sorta gone. the beach is still under ice/water and nacho is enjoying pond hockey once again this year. but what would a flood be without one of us doing something stupid? lucky for me, no one was around with a camera to witness me throwing minnows back into the river as it was receding this past fall. BUT, i was around to witness this feat of futility!

here's nacho trying to hold back the river. keep in mind this was after he'd decided enough had come through to create a hockey rink in the field behind us. he couldn't help but ask himself What Would Beaver Do? and apparently the beavers approved because we caught them several times at night cruising by to check out nacho's work!

and this People is what he was trying to keep back! yeah, he was about as successful as you think he was. let the head shaking commence!

two words: Taken Ladies!

let's settle this!

i have had more than one person in the last 2+ months say "you know who i realized nacho looks like? doogie howser!" agree? disagree?

Thursday, January 1, 2009

new year's day traditions

my mom always said, "never spend new year's day doing anything that you don't want to be doing all year long". i think that was her way of deflecting any responsibility for 1 day of the year. smart woman. so i try to do very little new year's day. i did mess up with one thing this year, i did a load of laundry. but not the Dawson type of laundry - aka getting loaded. real laundry. we did do our usual hike. and i hope this is not a sign of what our year will become, but we are flooded again. the water did make it over the yard and is now filling up the field behind us. i have a really hard time explaining it to people who have never seen it before, so here's a panoramic that i hope covers it.

so the water comes over the yard, over the driveway, fills up the field, and, eventually, if the flood is bad enough, heads back towards the house and river and enters the garage. nacho assures me we won't have any in the garage this time. i hope he's right. but if all goes well, it's neighborhood hockey every afternoon. Barry picked a great time to move in just up the street!

this year's theme??

anyone who knows me knows i don't do resolutions. i'm short attention span and/or change my mind too often. instead, i like to think of a general theme. i don't always have one of those each year either so i'm not really consistent in anything am i? that's my consistency so suck it! so without further adieu, i declare 2009 the year of .....

so what do you bring to the party?

i know 2 people that will get this right away and yes, that's exactly what i plan to do!

Happy 09!


how was yours? mine was excellent thanks! we had Cake for new years. 2+ hours of nothing but Cake. that is we spent the evening at the Riverside Theatre watching Cake and an interesting collection of opening acts - LOVED the Polka guys! i'd say that their choice of opening acts was as interesting as i've always thought them to be. i was surprised at how much of their music i knew. okay maybe i don't KNOW all the lyrics but i knew the songs. i think all night there was only 1 song that i can say i don't think i'd ever heard. it made me painfully aware of how often i listen to them. so it was really cool to recognize every song.

as usual, nacho did really well with tickets. we were 6 rows from the stage. had i bothered to ask before we headed out, i would have brought the camera (the good one) to get some pics cuz we had prime real estate. i will not make that mistake again. but what a show. check out cjfoeckler's flikr stream - we were as close as he was.

next up? Madeleine Peroux
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