A personal adventure...

You know, I used to be quite the book worm.  I devoured books.  I kept telling myself in college that the reason I didn't do that anymore is because I was reading all these academic texts and I was, but what's my excuse now?  I don't have one.  And there are an awful lot of books I should have read that I just didn't ever get to.  This week and the next month, I'm turning off my television and going to get some things read.  Here is my list so far and I welcome some recommendations!


Danse Macabre - Gerald Elias
Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury (Thanks, Daniel!)
Turn of the Screw and Other Stories - Henry James
The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Long Days Journey Into Night - Eugene O'Neill
Bhagavadgita
Moll Flanders - Daniel Defoe
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - John Berendt
The Student Conductor - Robert Ford

Things I Do at Work OR The Adventures of Bob the Space Cowboy Pt. 1

My job, at times, does not require a great deal of brain power.  I mean, really I'm meant to sit around and wait for people to ask me questions along the lines of "Where's the 'print' button in Microsoft Word?" and "How do I delete something in my email?"  Not exactly rocket science considering I've been working in IT for about five or six years now.  (Note: My degree is in education, but I'm becoming increasingly aware that my technology skills are much more marketable.  Go figure.  *sigh*)  Anyway, when boredom strikes, I am often looking for something to make the time go much much faster.  Luckily my friend Carrie is often able to supply me with such a distraction.  We were chatting in gchat and she tells me to tell her a story about Bob, the space cowboy from Neptune.  I was more than willing to oblige.  The resulting is this: Pt. 1 of The Adventures of Bob the Space Cowboy.  (There's not much.  I did still have to help people during this time, after all...)

Once there was a three arm gephlot named Bob.  And he was a space cowboy, boy howdy.  But not the kind that wrangled alien wildlife, was rugged and strapping, or generally particpated in the romantic stereotypical definition of what you and I know to be a cowboy, mind you...  No, no. Bob, he liked hats. Specifically of the wide brimmed variety.  And to him, this qualified him as a cowboy.  He was a recent transplant to the planet Neptune from his home planet, Atlepraxis II.  Sadly, Atlepraxis II's leader, Mimzy, decided to outlaw the wearing of wide-brimmed hats and Bob was having none of that, no sir!  So he shipped out to new environs.  Now, Neptune was nice enough.  Lots of gas clouds...reasonably freezing...crooked rings, not like that unartistic planet, Saturn.  Pish with your fancy colours!  You're not artsy at all!  You just found a box of crayons you unwashed miscreant planet!  Yeah.  Bob, he liked Neptune allright.  But after three and a half Neptunian years on the planet (which was only equal to an Atlepraxian week), Bob was beginning to feel just a twinge of homesickness.  "I miss the carnivorous sloop-margles that used to bound in and out of the dunes in the Atlepraxian desert," sayeth Bob.  "I miss the infinite convenience of the three suns that kept my Atlepraxian homeworld in eternal day!  What the hell is this nighttime business, anyway?  How does anyone get anything done when it's so dark?  And what's with all these random points of light in the sky?  They don't do anything.  They don't shed any sort of light on the planet's surface, they don't make any pictures, you can't find your way around with them.  Pish, I say!  Pish!"  So, Bob, he says to his friend, Ed, "Ed, my man, I miss my home.  I miss cave surving in the audial hwho-bangs on the Eastern mleldelnop."  Ed, who's just about had it with his friend's incessant belly-aching, says to Bob, "Really man?  Your planet, Ablebab the Fifth or whatever, sounds like a drag.  Everything sounds like this ridiculous amount of danger and thoroughly unfun.  Furthermore," says Ed, "You had to leave your planet because they outlawed wide-brimmed hats.  I mean, really?  That's your reason for packing up and changing your entire life?  And who wastes their time making stupid laws like outlawing certain kinds of hats?  You, sir, are an idiot and you planetary leader is a bitch."

So endeth Pt. 1 because, you see, work had ended and I went home to watch Fry and Laurie.

Bits and Pieces

My brain is just beyond scattered at work and over the past week I've collected an odd mix of thoughts and events and I just need to write them down to get them out of my head. 

I have a great deal of trouble making eye contact with someone in an involved conversation.  I really hope people don't think I'm bored or ignoring them - most of the time, I am listening intently - but I think I'm focusing so damn hard that my multitasking brain short circuits or something.  It's like trying to block out all of the minor distractions just makes them worse. 

I've been thinking a lot about shoes lately.  Yes, shoes.  Spurred mainly by a conversation about how children don't wear loafers ever under any circumstances.  Anyway, shoes really can say an awful lot about a person.  My favourite pair of shoes are special edition fair trade green chuck taylors with silhouettes of trees printed on the side that I bought from a thrift store.  If that doesn't say something about me, I don't know what does. 

There's a lady who comes into the lab who likes to talk to herself...a lot.  She's generally pretty harmless, but today, after loitering at the scanner for about half an hour, she walked by my desk and gave me a mean, threating, contemptuous sort of look.  I have this bad habit of looking up from my desk and smiling at people, which only made things worse.  As she started to walk off, I heard her mutter to her imaginary friend, "...probably accused of murder too."  o.O

My addiction to sour cherry flavoured candies is likely a bad thing.

Every few weeks or so I go through one of these bizarre desperate-need-to-self-improve sort of phases that often involves changing how I react to things or what I think of people or what have you.  Recently, however, I came to the conclusion that there would be no need for me to change anything about myself if I could just learn to not say the thoughts in my head aloud. 

Somewhere, someone in the world, someone is listening to Sibelius and it's his fault the weather's like this. 

I spend a lot of time oblivious to social cues and such things, but man, the amount of people who have no sense of decorum or manners is just staggering.

As I am numbering the measures in my Rachmaninov Vespers, a patron asks, "What instrument do you play?"  "I sing."  "You know, some people say that the voice is the original instrument.  Do you believe that?  I would've thought it was the drum."  "Maybe, but I think people probably learned how to scream before they learned how to hit things."

Things are more impressive looking when they're in a different alphabet.

Having a ruptured eardrum is a lot like living inside a honkytonk piano; things echo at inappropriate times, everything is just slightly out of tune, and it's impossible to hear clearly anyone talking.

I very much need to go on a road trip.

Cleaning 2010

I clean often.  I clean when I'm angry.  I clean when I'm bored.  I clean when people are coming over.  I clean when I'm stressed.  Once a year, however, I clean because it's what I need to do to survive the coming year...also because I am rarely bored, angry, or stressed during the Summer and my living space has likely hit an interesting stage of disarray.  Anyway, it so happened that this evening was when my internal clock went off and I cleaned as though my life depended on it.  This time I feel like detailing it...because now I'm bored and everything's already clean.  I...

• swept the floor.
• fought with the dustpan for a good ten minutes before using a piece of paper to pick up the floor debris.
• swept the rest of the floor debris out into the hallway.
• swore at the bugs that managed to get into my house because they're wrecking all my fruit.
• got some pictures printed and put them into a collage frame on the wall as I was recently told my walls are too bare.  :P
• got it in my head that I would finally clean my car.
• wasted through half a can of green works wipes cleaning the windshield and dash.
• bought some armour all wipes because the others left streaks all over my windshield.
• took my car to a car wash.
• noticed that the car wash did nothing to clean the outside of my windshield.
• luckily, have armour all wipes!  
• cleaned the outside windshield with armour all wipes.
• decided to clean out my trunk.
• organized all of the fireworks.
• restocked the first aid kit.
• recalled where I got all the orange cones from and wondered why I did that.
• threw out all the trash in the trunk.
• took all the stuff in the trunk from three moves ago into the apartment.
• decided to machine wash all of my camping gear.
• threw the fabric chair and indian blanket in the washer with some random clothes I found in the trunk.
• looked up instructions on the internet for cleaning a sleeping bag.
• thought about doing the dishes, but thought better on it.
• cleaned the bathroom sink.
• put all the dirty clothes in the basket in my closet.
• organized my shoes.
• fabreezed EVERYTHING.
• started to do the dishes.
• realized that I still don't have hot water in my kitchen.
• dragged a couple large buckets of hot water from my bathroom into the kitchen.
• ignored the dishes for awhile because that water was scalding hot.
• put the previous load in the dryer and wrestled my sleeping bag into the washer.
• vacuumed the rug.
• picked at the rug.
• lint roller-ed the rug.
• tried to vacuum the couch.
• picked at the couch.
• wondered where all this straw-substance came from.
• panicked when the washer started spazzing out and went into the laundry room to hug it in order to keep it from tremoring during the rest of the spin cycle.
• lint roller-ed the couch.  
• fought with the couch cover.
• nailed the couch cover in place.
• noticed that, for some reason, my sink still smells like bad milk.
• cleaned the sink.
• poured lots of water down the sink.
• poured soap down the sink.
• poured vinegar down the sink.
• bought some drano and poured that down the sink.
• tore out the contact paper under the sink.
• cleaned the cabinet under the sink vigorously on the off chance that that's where the smell's coming from.
• replaced the contact paper under the sink.
• fabreezed the contact paper under the sink.
• swore angrily at the sink.
• in a fit of rage, poured an odd concoction of hand sanitizer, fabreeze, lemon juice, and baking soda down the sink.  
• ignored the sink.
• put the sleeping bag in the dryer.  
• tried, in vain, to close the window again.  Why not?
• cleaned out the fridge.
• threw out the fruit that the stupid bugs ruined.
• contemplated bacon.
• realized that making bacon means contending with the sink again.
• ate a piece of string cheese.
• watered the plants.
• fed Ralph.
• had the living daylights scared out of me after coming face to face with a neighborhood cat that had been standing outside my window watching me clean.  
• more fabreeze.  This time the kind for the air.  They're different, you see.
• found a medical bracelet stuck to the wall and wondered why I made that decision.
• wondered if fabreeze could be bad for a person at some point.
• ran out of things to clean.
• wrote this ridiculous thing while waiting to take the sleeping bag out of the dryer.

Yeah.  I may or may not need a life.  N'night!