Appreciate your hot shower
May 3, 2010
It was brought to my attention a week ago just how for granted I take things like water, both potable and, as it applies here, hot.
I don???t ask for style from my person hygiene routine, only cleanliness. In February, I stopped combing and blow drying my hair after my daily shower because I discovered that as my hair gets ever longer, the absence of those two actions allows the natural curl to flourish. I did not stop taking the shower itself, though.
However, due to my own laziness and fiscal irresponsibility, I ignored paying my natural gas bill to the point where my service was cut off. Since it was the end of April (and now the first weekend in May), that wasn???t too much of a problem from the heat standpoint. But from the morning shower standpoint, it was nearly devastating.
The gas company doesn???t let you off easy. They freak you out. Their website says things like, ???Please allow two to five business days for your payment to be processed. After that, please allow five to ten business days for your service to be reconnected.???
It was on Thursday that I came home to find the disconnection noticed stuffed between my doors. It was too late to make a payment yet that day. I freaked out. I love my shower. I had plans to go out Friday night.
I have this Pavlovian routine with my hot water heater which is fueled by gas. At some time in the evening after about 8:00, I run the hot water for a minute or a few, until I hear the burner poof on. That way, I know I???ll have water as hot as I desire for my shower the following morning. When I don???t do that, the water is warm, but not satisfyingly hot hot.
So when I read the disconnection notice, I didn???t think about the dishes to do on the kitchen counter or the loads of laundry that I still haven???t done. No, my only thought was please let the water be lukewarm enough to be tolerable for a shower Friday morning.
It was. Barely. But enough. It was like when you were a kid and went to the swimming pool in August. The water had been sun-warmed all summer and it felt a little cool when you first jumped in, but after a few minutes you were used to it. Only difference was, I wasn???t out in the high summer sunshine.
I called the utility company to make payment arrangements and was thrilled to find out that the gas guy could come over Saturday morning to reconnect the gas and relight the pilot lights on my furnace and hot water heater. He said to give the water forty-five minutes to heat up.
I did, and it was my most enjoyable shower in some time.
April 27
I love to sleep
April 29, 2010
Don???t most people? I would think so. But I know one person, @aaronh, who seems to have superhuman abilities to exist on subhuman amounts of sleep. Four or five hours a night for weeks on end? Come on. I???m tanked if I have two nights in a row of seven or fewer.
I know other people who keep vampire hours and don???t go to bed until the wee hours of the morning. But that???s a little different, because @someToast doesn???t seem to knock himself out getting up in the morning, so the quantity of hours is probably still there.
I, on the other hand, neither stay up late nor scrimp on hours.??
That doesn’t mean that I don’t often feel like I wished I had slept more. In reality I get seven to nine hours of sleep most nights. The exception is Thursday nights when I stay out late after bowling, whooping it up at karaoke. I get to bed between 1:00 and 2:30, depending on how much I???m singing.
But most of the time I go to bed between, say, 11:00 and 12:30 and actually get up at 8:00. Since I???ve been writing this blog, bedtime has crept later. I sit down for some quick writing and the next thing I know, what I thought I???d dash off in thirty to forty minutes has taken me an hour and a half,??????????1` (cat landing on laptop) and it???s an hour later than I had in mind. That lateness is facilitated as well, I believe, by my afternoon coffee habit, which I am seeking to get out of this week. Caffeine has a marked effect on me and even if it???s only mid-afternoon when I have some, it???s enough to keep me feeling peppy later than I should at night.
Sleeping more than is practical isn???t helped by the fact that I have a nice bed, and give myself a sleeping environment that is low on temperature and high on covers. When you???re that comfortable, can fault be found that you just want to stay there? And if you???re laying down you might as well stay asleep. Plus, for me anyway, when I???m half-sleeping in the morning because my subconscious knows that I should really get up so it doesn???t let me fall fully back to sleep, my other subconscious is going to town giving me absolutely wacky dreams. I like those dreams a lot and I treasure the experience. It???s especially fun when the dream involves people you see frequently in life and is so vivid that the next time you that person, you have to wonder for a few seconds whether that actually happened or not. Sometimes in those dreams, I even do fictional work work, such as writing It???s a Baby Armadillo, and hang out with people I???ve never met.
There???s nothing not good about sleeping. Plus, you get to snuggle with critters.
I have the hots for Anthony Bourdain
April 21, 2010
Maybe that???s overstating it a bit. But he does give the impression that he???d be a blast to hang out with. And I have dreamed about him. So I bought the opportunity to see him in person on Friday.
I don???t have any idea what his ???show??? might consist of. Is he hawking a new book? Does he tell stories about the making of ???No Reservations???? Is he going to editorialize for an hour? Does he have a stand-up routine? Dunno.??
Tickets were mostly sold out by the time I got around to making my purchase. See, I originally didn???t make an effort because for a number of weeks I was under the impression that he was appearing on the same evening as Craig Ferguson, whom I also adore and who, when push came to shove, was the one I chose. But as I was leaving the box office, I just happened to pause at the Anthony Bourdain poster to sigh at it and be sad that I had had to make a choice. Then it jumped out at me. The date on the poster was not the same as the Craig Ferguson ticket I was holding in my hot little hand. I could go! I turned around and marched right back to the nice young fellow at the box office window who probably already thought I was a loser for buying the first single ticket.
There were two choices on the seats???about halfway back on the main floor of the auditorium, or on the end of a couple of short rows in the orchestra pit. I went for it. I will be up close and personal (though slightly off to the side). I will sit there, attentive and steeled for the possibility that he might pick on people in front.??
Seeing this ad today in the Downtown Journal got me all excited again. Bring it on, Tony!
Mail a random person a cryptic letter
April 7, 2010
I had grand intentions of pointing to a name in the phone book and mailing a piece of paper through the USPS. (Phone book, huh? Does anybody even use a paper phone book any more?) But then as usual, I ran out of time and took the easy way out, doing it online. I did it twice, each time with the emphasis on one aspect over the other.
My first cryptic note was, I feel, the more cryptic of the two, as it was a response to the cryptic note that had been sent to me. The sender explained his selection process: “This message sent to a recipient I determined randomly from a list of people who were most likely to not reply “wtf” Fortunately, I did not wonder wtf and instead found a translator with which to craft my reply.
Later in the day, I received another cryptic note: “Zegabee-dash-coovran-dos-leek-va-ich-nop-hu-8797-hay-deek-dosh.” I initially thought it was a cryptogram like a few other notes had been, but it looked too much like actual language. I briefly though that maybe it was an elaborate anagram as the sender was British. I searched for the entire phrase and found nothing, so I searched in smaller and smaller chunks. Eventually (I don’t remember how, because I’m unable to recreate the search results now) I got to the lycaeum.org website. What I saw there looked very much like the cryptic note I received. When I entered any of the words in my message in the Search box, it seemed to generate a page based on that word. Weird, and interesting. Thanks, Jack!
The second cryptic note I sent was not so cryptic, but it was to a random person. A truly random person. I found an online name generator, entered the minimum parameters, and got a name: Ella J. Harrison. I performed a Google search for Ella Harrison (okay, you sticklers, my computer performed the actual search) and clicked on the first result. That took me to a seemingly regular person on Facebook with about a thousand friends, so I was hoping she’d be receptive to my overture.
I posted my not very cryptic note to Ms. Harrison: “I used a random name generator to make a name. Then I did a Google search on that name. Yours was the first result listed, so you’re the lucky one! If you’d like to know what I’m up to, please visit this link. It’s good, clean, creative fun!”
She has not responded.
March 12
Something borrowed, kept ???til tomorrow
March 7, 2010
’Fess up. Somebody, out of the kindness of their heart, loaned you something “for a few days.” Or you cat-sat for someone and took something home with you, fully intending to return it before they returned.
I fall into the latter catter-gory. Rob M, I confess. I have your Pantone swatch book. Let me refer back to old files on my computer. Nope, it’s been so long* that those files aren’t even on my current computer. No, I “borrowed” your swatch book when you entrusted the care of your feline companion to me for a longish Christmas trip to Green Bay, when I was still doing the quarterly catalog for cooking classes at Lund’s for my former freelance client. It was a one-color job and I got to pick the color. I used your swatch book to make the choice. Now you know. Obviously, you haven’t missed it much. Or else you’ve been just too nice to bring it up. You are a nice guy, but I suspect it’s more that you just haven’t needed it and so either didn’t even notice, or if you did, decided that it wasn’t important enough to mention. That’s because you went and became a fancy web designer guy at Yahoo!. The internet doesn’t care about the Pantone Matching System. If you ever need to use Pantone colors again, I’d be happy to return it to you. But may I note that it only goes up to PMS 587, with a few flourescents and metallics thrown in for good measure. The latest edition apparently features 2,058 colors. Your book is old news. The green featured in the call-out is 363, the color of the Pantone coffee mug that was part of the Christmas 2008 office gift to me. That color was carefully selected for me by our office manager who thought it reminded her of the color of the spinach soup that I sometimes make. She likes baby-shit-colored split pea soup, but for some reason, my green-greener spinach soup grosses her out. There’s no accounting for taste.
*Omg, it was SO long ago that I was still working in QuarkXPress. What?
Stacks and piles
February 10, 2010
I like to say that I never finished moving in four years ago. I suppose it’s more accurate to say that I never finished unpacking. It’s entirely true that I simply have too much crap.
Meet my kitchen table. I used to eat meals on it, back when it was in my former apartment. But ever since it moved into my condo, it has pretty much been in this state. I have yet to sit at it and eat a meal. There is plenty of room to put all that stuff elsewhere.
It just hasn’t seemed very important to liberate it. It is in a disadvantaged location. I informally envision that I would sit at the near end in this photo, which is out of eyeshot of my main television. If I sat at the other end, I’d be able to see my small, auxiliary TV. I have never though that I’d sit at the long side, because who wants to face a blank wall?
That I live alone also instills no sense of urgency about the project. I have a quite large desk that is in eyeshot of the big TV and that makes a very nice dinner table. Even the cats eat there (though that’s because my desk is the only stable, easy-to-get-to location for their food that is inaccessible to my mountain goat of a rabbit).
It becomes inconvenient when my parents visit, but we have gotten used to gathering at the coffee table in the front room for those group meals. On their last visit, though, my mom brought a little TV table because she had gotten tired of bending over to her plate on the low coffee table. (We were never plate-in-the-lap eaters.)
The kitchen table isn’t the only location that suffers from piles of stuff. Even the high-traffic front corner of my desk is always fighting off a stack. This one developed over the course of a 24-hour stretch when I thought I was going to get to some writing, which I do on my laptop. There was the envelope of related work materials, a catalog from our main client, a new book that I’m trying to get to reading, and the TV and stereo remotes and my iPhone, which always live on that corner. Then I grew the stack by adding nearby items, just for fun.
I have been trying to gear up to follow along with the Fly Lady, who gets you to declutter by tackling it 15 minutes at a time. Seems pretty reasonable, if I’d only actually do it. Maybe tomorrow. Probably not.
The Stuff of Thought
February 9, 2010
I don???t read many books because television and the computer got in the way, but my friend kept referring to this book and it sounded pretty interesting. His last mention of it was the straw that broke the camel???s back. I was just going to check it out of the library, but the library that???s in the next block from my office wasn???t one of the branches that had it available. So to get my instant gratification, I instead trotted down to Barnes & Noble, where I was prepared to pay about $16 for the softcover copy they said they had. When I got to the store, I discovered that the hardcover edition was on the bargain table for $6.
Steven Pinker is the author, and the subtitle is Language as a Window into Human Nature. The summary on the cover flap is pretty dry; a reader review on the B&N website says, ???This combination results in a curious reading experience: Pinker’s lively style, many anecdotes and extreme lucidity pull you forward in the text, but the difficulty of the questions he raises could stump you for some time.???
That sort of sums up my impression of the book so far, now that I???m a whole 18 pages in. The first ponder that he presents is to think about how many events happened in the 9/11 terrorist attack(s) in New York City. Was there one event, a terrorist attack on America? Were there two events, two different airplanes hitting two different buildings. Were there more, including the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania field. You never really thought about that before, did you? Insurance payouts hinge on the answer.
I think this will be a pretty fascinating read.
Connect the dots
February 3, 2010
Quick! What did you think of? I’ve been pondering all day about what I could connect with what, and I haven’t come up with anything profound. As for the non-earthshattering I give you the following.
Last Wednesday I woke up in the morning with some mild head congestion. I did not go to bed any earlier than usual. Thursday I felt about the same when I got up, but by early afternoon I was dragging and teetering on the edge of finding a substitute to bowl for me. But after a while and two and a half cups of coffee, I was feeling much better. I went bowling. I drank orange juice. My first game was less than stellar, only 169; my timing on the approach was all messed up. I added vodka to the orange juice. Was it due to the “aiming fluid” or the sage advice from my teammate? We fixed my timing problem and my second game was 243 and my third was 251. That’s a 663 series after starting with a 169. Not too shabby. So then, feeling good about my bowling after all and still fairly peppy, I decided to pop over to karaoke. When I leave the bowling alley, I have half a mile to drive before I have to make the decision. That’s plenty of time to find a song on the car radio that you know and can sing along with a little to determine what kind of a karaoke voice you have that evening, even though you’re likely coming down with a cold. Verdict: good enough. At karaoke I drank tomato juice and grapefruit juice (okay, with another vodka or two, but hey, I was making an effort on vitamin C and not overdoing the booze), and sang Robbie Williams “Millennium” and Carole King “Jazzman.” Although I couldn’t say it was early, I did leave about an hour sooner than I usually do, if I go. Friday morning? Train wreck. Unfortunately, I could not choose to totally call in sick that day, as I had to finish the 60th birthday party invitation for my boss’ sister WHICH HAD TO GET DONE. That’s fine, it was a take-off on one of the American tabloids, and something like that is always a fun diversion to work on. I went in, hacked to the other boss that I was only there long enough to finish the invitation, finished the invitation, and left around noon or so. After a brief stop for some comforting tomato soup and grilled cheese (creamy tomato basil and caprese panini), I headed home. There was some sneezing. Would it have felt like my neck was trying to expel my throat if I hadn’t warbled like a songbird the night before? Once home, I went to bed at 2, woke up at 7, managed to stay up until 11 on account of some good movies on the classic movie channel, and slept through until about 11 on Saturday morning. I still felt like death warmed over, so unfurled my futon chair and made a daybed in front of the TV out of it and several pillows. The movie channel took good care of me with such classics as “Elmer Gantry,” “National Velvet,” and “Wuthering Heights.” As Saturday evening wore on, I began to feel noticeably better (I recorded “The Sea Hawk” because though I’ve never seen it, I just couldn’t stay up for it. I’ve had the soundtrack for 20 years on the recommendation of public radio for Eric Korngold’s scoring skills). I went back to bed around 11 again, and again slept until a little before 11. I was very much better on Sunday—I have always said that sleep is my best medicine. Sunday night I went to bed at the usual time which is not early or late, or just right. Monday I felt pretty good, except for the nose-blowing.The verdict on the dot connexions? I wonder if I would have felt so crappy on Friday if I had just come home Thursday night and gotten two, maybe three, more hours of sleep. Hard to know.
Still, I certainly see a lot of related actions and outcomes between Wednesday and Sunday.
Houseplant assassination
January 28, 2010
This is the tale of three houseplants. Two have been around for a long time and the third was traumatized by Robbin Rabbit a couple of years ago.
Robbin is a free-range rabbit, and he’s highly motivated by food and also very athletic. Maybe it’s because he grew up with two cats that he feels it’s only natural to scale piles of boxes and get where he really oughtn’t be. The combination of hunger and fearlessness led to his assassination of a perfectly lovely spider plant on the windowsill next to my desk. How can I be sure it was Robbin? Because not long after I got home, I caught him going back for seconds. I’m thankful that the irresistible allure of some fresh greens before I dispensed his legitimate supper didn’t lead to any dire consequences. For the rabbit, at least. I put the sawed-off plant in my sunny front window and it eventually made a valiant effort at recovery. The leaves are now about twice as leggy as before, but it’s once again a reasonably respectable houseplant. Only now it must contend with being the favored gnashing subject of my cats, particularly Dasie. I don’t think they set out to eat it, exactly, but in the course of their teething on it, some of it disappears. But it perseveres under adversity. All of my philodendrons (four at my office and six at home) can trace their roots, so to speak, back to a handful of cuttings that I snipped from my former employer’s office over 15 years ago when Jim, Rob, and I worked together. Those things kind of grow like weeds and they don’t mind at all medium-strength, diffuse light. I keep mine trimmed so that they can put their energy into being full and bushy rather than sending out long runners of leaves. My oldest plants, though, are the pointy ones. I have no idea what they’re call. But I do know that the original shoots came from plants that our nextdoor neighbors the Dawsons had. My mom started some new plants before we moved in 1978, and all six of my plants are descended from the first offshoot she gave me way back when. These, too, grow prolifically and are tolerant of varying conditions. Several of mine are in need of dividing and replanting. If anybody knows what they’re called, please leave a comment below.
I miss Heidi Collins
January 26, 2010
And I watch too much TV. My friends will be used to my saying periodically that I should just ditch Comcast, watch what I need to online or with Netflix, and generally spend more time doing things other than watching shows.
However, I have yet to quite work up enough courage to actually go through with it. I tried once about five years ago, but then the gal on the other end offered to give me my service for half price for six months. How could I refuse? Then about a year ago I called again to cancel the TV part, but the gal on the other end reminded me that my TV and internet were bundled and that if I dropped the TV the price of the internet would go up, but if I kept the TV, it would only be $15 a month more than with internet alone. How could I refuse, when the TV package was supposedly worth $40? Bastards.
Kelly’s Unnecessary Blog 