Trials, Tribulations & Escapades (mostly funny)

Home again, home again

/ lintqueen / 2 Comments

I’ve just gotten home from five days at DeBordieu with my roommate from high school, her husband, their two children, a good friend from high school, his wife (artykim), their two children, and another couple (who have also become friends) and their (single) child (1).

Kudos to all you parent-people.  They (the littles) are VERY energy consuming (and I think I might be a wee bit lazy).

The weather couldn’t have been nicer and I got more than my share of lounging-on-the-beach-time (without, for a change, getting completely lobsterfied).  Read two grown-up books, two People magazines, one O magazine and several children’s books (and think I’m going to buy the Lemony Snicket series for myself).  Frolicked in the ocean and in the pool (2).  Walked many miles on the beach.  Got a blister the size of a dime on the bottom of my foot (3).

Rode nine (!!) miles on a bike.  One of those was with a flat tire.  Yes, that wasn’t very bright, but honestly I didn’t know the thing’d gone flat.  The thinking went something like “Well, Gina, of course it’s getting harder to pedal. You just rode more than six miles, three of which were on a fire road/carriage path, on an old-skool, gearless (and somewhat rusty) bike.  You can do it!  Keep pedaling!”  Eventually, though, my pep talk failed and I climbed off, only to find that the rear tire was as flat as the proverbial pancake.

Whoops.  I suppose that would be the problem.  Mr. Nice Security Man came by just a minute or so afterwards, fortunately, and he was kind enough to load the bike in the back of his pickup truck and take me the last two blocks home.

Napped.  A lot.  Also was able to sleep significantly later than all the parental units (see above, re: Hard Work Involved In Child Raising).

We also ate far better than I’m accustomed to eating, as generally I eat whatever’s leftover from the last time I ate dinner out (which I also do far too often).  At the beach we had lasagna (veggie — and delicious!), baked chicken, panzanella, fresh vegetables, etc. etc.  Well balanced — and tasty — meals.

The strange thing (and the only part of this post that’s even a tiny bit profound) was the juxtaposition of remembering these sort of trips from my childhood — when I thought “Ah, someday that’ll be me” — and actually *being me* in one of these sort of trips.  A bunch of families at the beach with their kids…everyone playing in the ocean…and I’m one of the adults (chronologically speaking, anyway)!

(1) Whew.  For anyone counting that’s 5 children, all under the age of 7.  Though they all were pretty darn well-behaved, that’s still 5 children more than I’m used to dealing with for more than an hour or two at a time.

(2) I am part dolphin, I think.  I float beautifully (no comments from the peanut gallery, please).  I love swimming underwater and flipping over waves.

The sand and salt I like less well.  Basically I want a wave pool the size of the Atlantic.

(3) From *sand*!!  I know I say I’m a Delicate Southern Flower (from a ease-of-skin-damage POV at any rate), but this is ridiculous.

Finally — I pull my weight

/ lintqueen / 2 Comments

I’m pretty much deadweight in trivia (which I play most every Tuesday)… anything I know is usually science (and those questions are *stupid easy*!) or it’s pop culture (and it’s the sort that anyone our age knows) or it’s ..well, I guess those are the only ones I usually know.  I’m hopeless at history or geography or sports (except for the fact that I know Naismith invented basketball…that’s my lone sports-related trivia [Jerry, that was for you, as I believe you were at that game].  Trivium?)

Tonight the Trivia Gods smiled upon me!  The “picture round” was shoe types!!!  10 out of 10 for Gina! (For the whole team really, but I answered them all — normally I’m lucky if I get one per round).  I can’t even begin to tell you how thrilling it was to be able to *know* something for a change.

FYI, they were:

  1. Slingback sandal
  2. Thong
  3. Espadrille
  4. moccasins
  5. slingback pump
  6. hiking boots
  7. oxford
  8. chukka boots
  9. ballet flats
  10. t-strap

What’s in a Name?

/ lintqueen / 20 Comments

Or, more accurately, what’s your name in?

Last night, I experienced something for the first time that is probably “old hat” to almost everyone else…

In the movie Waitress (1), the main character’s name is “Jenna” — spelled incorrectly, but pronounced the same as mine.

Now, normally, if someone’s saying Jenna, they’re meaning me (2), so during the first thirty minutes of the movie every time another character said “Jenna, you really need to …” or “Hurry up now, Jenna” or “Jenna, where’s that pie?” (3) I did a little cartoon double-take (4).

For those of you with more popular names (Mike, John, Anne, Jennifer, etc.), do you still do this (the little double-take thing)?  Did you ever?  If you did once, but you don’t anymore, do you remember what movie/show/party/school classmade made you stop?

(1) Good movie.  Highly recommended.
(2) If they’re saying “Geena” they’re probably also meaning me, but they probably don’t know me all that well and I might ignore them.
(3) Which they did *a lot* in the movie.  Or maybe I was oversensitive?  Sanity check on that one?
(4) It probably didn’t help that the movie was set in the (unspecified) South, so they sounded like people I’d know too.

Stories & truths

/ lintqueen / 3 Comments

There are a lot of things that I say about myself that — in my head, over a long, long span of time — have become somewhat apocryphal.  The allergies thing was a good example of that … I’d spent so long telling people that I had atrocious allergies that I’d started to believe I was exaggerating.  Going back to the allergist and hearing him say that I really do have some of the worst allergies he’s seen reminded me that things I’ve said about my allergies were’t exaggerated for the point of good story-telling (not that I don’t do that too), but were, in fact, grounded in reality.  (Oh, the shock).

I had another one of those things happen last night.  I tell people I have a distinctive laugh (in fact, I think it’s been part of my personals ads), but again, over time I’d come to think of that as an overstatement … based on comments people had made, sure, but not necessarily “reality.”

There do exist some old recordings of shows (in very tiny venues) where there’s lots of back and forth banter and audience participation and whatnot and you *can* hear my laugh in those.  But in the past several years I’d written that off as bad data, in that the people who were telling me this were good friends who, of course, would recognize my laugh… I could recognize theirs in the same sessions, so no biggie, right?

One of those shows was by Tim Easton, perhaps my most favorite singer/songerwriter ever.  I had a chance to go see him last night (for the first time in three years, probably?), and I was surprised, amazed and pleased as punch when, post-show, Tim came out to talk to folks, spotted me, smiled and said:  “There you are!  I could hear you laugh and was so glad you were here!”

Questions Meme, by the kindness of Jerry

/ lintqueen / 7 Comments

Jerry posted this interview meme, which seemed fun (and I knew Jerry’s questions would be marvvy), so here are Jerry’s questions and my answers.

1: Do you know where you’re going to?
After much consideration, I don’t really think I’m going anywhere:  the truth is that I like it here (RTP-ish area) too much (1).  I used to think I “should” live somewhere else for a while (like I “should” eat more brussels sprouts (2)), but I’ve never found a compelling reason (in either case, actually) to do so (3).  I have traveled all over (admittedly mostly Western Europe and the states), and love visiting new places (anyone want to go to Japan?), but it seems the equations always balance in favor of “here”. (4)

I feel fortunate that my childhood home has grown in ways that are compatible with my growth… we now have many varieties of unusual food, somewhere I can get dried persimmons and places that carry Urban Decay makeup.  By contrast, when I was 10ish, there were only a few Chinese restaurants in all of Raleigh! (5)

2: Do you believe in magic?
I believe that the “edges” of science are fundamentally indistinguishable from the beginnings of faith or the appearance of magic (6).  I think that there are multiple (valid) ways of viewing the universe… as I said to someone the other day “The only thing I that I’m OK being closed-minded about is being open-minded.”  (FWIW, for me the answer to the often-rat-holed debate of “if you’re open-minded, do you have to think it’s ok for people to be closed-minded?” is “people can be as close-minded as they want, as long as they’re not hurting anyone else.”)

I also like Penn & Teller (for some reason I really need to introduce some levity into an otherwise perfectly plodding and pedantic answer.  Go figure.  ;-)

3: Do you believe in love?
See above regarding magic and science  ;-)

No, really, I do believe in love, but much like Phil pointed out, I believe “love” is a verb, not a noun.  Love is a choice you make (or, more accurately, it’s a million large and small choices) over the course of time.  I also believe that to a large degree we choose how we see the world, and by choosing to see the “good bits” of people we love, we make it easier to continue to love them.

4: What’s going on?
I am wishing I didn’t have a 100-page requirements document to read.  I am trying to ignore the puppy (who reaches her “witching hour” every day around 4:30 when all-of-a-sudden she NEEDS ATTENTION NOW).  I am frustrated by the 3 GB of photos I’ve taken recently and my inability to get Photoshop working on my computer.  Wow, that’s a bunch of negative stuff.

Try again:  I am looking forward to dinner tomorrow with a dear friend whom I haven’t seen in years.  I am within a few weeks (crossing fingers) of launching a major project.  I have butternut squash soup to have for dinner.

That’s better.

5: Why are there so many songs about rainbows?
I think it’s the Gay Conspiracy.

If I’m correct, and it is the Gay Conspiracy, we should be soon witness the death of the “Kountry-with-a-K” style of decorating.  (7)HOORAY!.

If you want to play along and now be interviewed by me, please leave me a comment saying: “Interview me.”

  • I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
  • You will update your weblog with the answers to the questions.
  • You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
  • Then others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions…
  • And they tell two friends
  • And so on
  • And so on

1 This doesn’t preclude moving, but I’d have to have a darn good reason.  Like “wuv.  twue wuv”
2 I really don’t understand them.  They’re frightening baby mutant cabbages.  And they smell HORRID when they’re cooking.  How could someone smell that and think “hm… those could be food!”
3 In their defense, I have eaten Brussels sprouts only a few times (they *look* weird and *smell* funny!) and one of those times I liked them (thank you, Paul).
4 (for instance, though I love the Bay area, it’s way too expensive for me to buy a house).
5 In the 5th grade Jennifer Chambers had her birthday party at one of those few Chinese restaurants, thereby allowing me enabling my first Chinese restaurant experience.  When they brought out the little mounds sticky rice in individual bowls I was quite confused about why we were getting ice cream so early in the meal (remember that my rice prior to that point was pretty much Uncle Ben’s.)
6.  I’m also pretty sure someone else has said this better than I.
7 HOORAY!.

Perhaps a change is needed…

/ lintqueen / 3 Comments

So I’ve gotten in the habit of telling India “No!” when she’s barking and she shouldn’t be (…though I do wish I had to tell her less often…working on that).

I set Roo to cleaning this afternoon, and just now returned to the bedroom to find him beeping at me (the “I’m full” beep).  So I took the dustbin out and started to empty it in the trash… Roo continued to beep (’cause now he had no dustbin) and I’ll be darned if I didn’t tell *my Roomba* “No!”.

I am so very pleased with myself

/ lintqueen / 3 Comments

I have conquered the technology in my house.  Bearing in mind that I no longer have in-house tech support (and, in fact, that the same tech support designed the system and that I didn’t really know what was involved), this is a Big Deal.

Email from said ex-tech support were involved in order to explain the system, but still I had to reset the puppycam, the wireless bridges, the main router, and the Audiotron.  Then I reconfigured the Audiotron to use a local source for its internet radio stations (nice tool provided online here to create the necessary file — many thanks to Jon00 in the UK), ran all the scripts to change permissions, copied over all the files and restarted everything.  Thanks to thebroomecloset for helping me test.

It all works!  Everything works!  And I took a fresh backup in case everything ceases working again!  Yah me!

Note to self

/ lintqueen / 8 Comments

If you are tired, tired, plum tuckered out (having, say, been to see a Gourds show) and in your loginess you accidentally turn on the spinny-headed toothbrush *before* applying toothpaste, do not think for one moment that “it’ll probably be OK to just go ahead and put the paste on before turning the brush off.”

You will regret it.

License to use a light sabre?

/ lintqueen / 6 Comments

Great license plate I saw last night:

USEDA4S