Bed Head

One of the disadvantages of having short hair is that every morning I wake up looking like I had a fight with the bed and the bed won.

Free Rice

Here's a nifty little website that tests your vocabulary. Every correct answer donated 20 grains of rice to the United Nations.

Not to brag, but I got to level 46, out of a possible 50. My vocabulary rocks.

Shiny

I want the new Kindle from Amazon. It's shiny. However, at $400, I'll wait for the price to drop and some actual users to write reviews. Right now, there's 200 negative reviews by people who have never even used the device.

Still, it is awful shiny.

November

SO, I had this little blog all planned and written about how I was going to do a "mini NaNoWriMo" this year because I just missed NaNo so darn much.

Then I was in a car accident Thursday night.

I was on my way to campus and some guy in a black car ran a stop side and just plowed into the passenger side of my car. I'm fine. Bruised and stiff, but fine. Actually, my boob is bruised from the seat belt, which is weird and uncomfortable.

I got out of the car. The guys on the corner (read: drug dealers) are all shouting at me to call 911 and I never even saw the guy that hit me. So I call 911 and Andy and wait.

This is in North Philly on a desolate stretch of road between two housing projects near Temple campus. It was scary.

Then this guy comes up (three teeth in his head) and asks if I can "help a brother out." I'm so confused I asked him what he means. Money. Couple of bucks. I tell him to fuck off. The fact that I was taller than him and starred him down was probably the only thing that prevented me from being mugged.

After he left, I went all weak in the knees. This was really scary. Then Andy showed up (thankfully, he was off work and nearby) so it wasn't so scary.

30 minutes later I call 911 again to check if the police are coming. They will, I'm told. I'm thinking, "Yeah, right." Half the force is looking for a cop killer. No one is coming to my little hit and run.

It gets near six and the sun is going down. The drug dealers tell me that even they go home after dark and the police are never going to come to this neighborhood. I have my phone out and am about to call 911 again to tell them never mine, when the police show up. It's a miracle!

Half and hour later, I'm on my way home by my nerves are still shaky.

The damage to my car is $5,000 and the frame might be bent, so there's still a chance it will be a total loss. The guys at the body shop told me it was amazing I could drive the car home considering the damage. The front passenger door is so badly bent, there is a two inch gap between the door and the roof. It's bad.

I was told it will take approx. 20 days to repair my car. Basically, it's getting an new right side. Everything was bent or rippled. The doors won't even open.

I went to the hospital and had x-rays taken. My chest hurts. It hurts to take a deep breathe, but that might be muscle bruising and not a broken bone. I'll find out on Monday. I'm taking a muscle relaxer that makes me sleepy. So I'm stiff during the day but fine at night.

At the end of this, Andy said, "Good thing you're not doing NaNo this year. Think how far down on your word count you'd be."

Yeah, this would have been a major setback. As it is, I've got just enough energy to do my homework.

If I Had a Billion Dollars

Tonight, discussing oue normal Saturday night topics, I announced that if I had a $120 billion dollars I'd build a space elevator. It would be the 3rd thing I would do with my money.

As little bit later I said that the 4th thing I would do with my $120 billion dollars would be to hire Natalie as my full time chef.

Del said, "Out of curiosity, what would be the first and second thing?"

Without hesitation I said, "I'd kidnapped authors and create a 'nature preserve' of a writer's natural habitat. You know, tiny drafty apartments with leaky roofs. And they would write for me."

Del looked horrified.

"Oh, I'd be evil. Whatever I did to get a 120 billion dollars made me evil."

"So the space elevator would be your liar?"

"Apparently."

As a side note, the second thing is less evil: be Ian Wright's sidekick on his travel show, Globe Trekker. It'd be awesome.

Grade Grubbing

Last night I got back my second paper from my Tuesday night class (Social Welfare and Policy) and the teacher wrote "Excellent. Sorry I can't think of a more critical comment."

Excellent! My work is excellent!

I'm so pleased. Really. Last night, despite having a cold and being exhausted, I could not stop smiling.

Even better, the professor used my paper as an example of "what to do." Well, he didn't say, "Melissa did an excellent job and we all so do as well as her paper," but I could tell. Actually, he did say that one paper was 19 pages and that was "correct" length our papers should be at. Mine is 19 pages! And then he added that some people did not have enough references and that one student had nearly 25 references. I had 24! (Yes, I counted in class.)

So, I'm very happy. The other class is doing well, also. Last week our essays were returned and I had a 9 out of 10. Not "excellent" but I'm very happy with that. It's still an A. Woot!

Run Jule Run

Check out the interview Jule did on the run during the Baltimore Marathon. Du bist awesome!

Next Summer's Blockbuster

Name that poem

OK, I've got this half a line of poetry rattling around in my head and I can not think of where I read it. Help me identify it, please. "It is the meanest working, making one dollar do the work of five." Or something like that.

I'd like to use it in this paper I'm writing, but a Google search on those terms came up with nothing. I'm thinking it is Elliot, but what do I know?

Monkey is Watching You

Jule found this cat-cam site and now she and Natalie are determined to have a cat-cam for spying on Aethel. Or, as Jule called it, "Aethelcat-monkey-is-watching-you-cam." So we'll have photographic evidence of Aethel's badness.

Not my toe!

Suddenly my irrational fear of my feet being caught in an escalator does not seem so crazy.

I'm never wearing my Crocs again.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks

Andy is downstairs right now watching Bedknobs and Broomsticks, questioning me about it's influence on the Harry Potter universe.

First, I said, "You're awfully fixated on a book you've never read. And she's obviously a squib who learned magic late in life. Duh."

Week Two

So, here I am at the end of my second week of school and I just got back my first assignment. I saw the email from the professor but was a little frightened to open it. I was afraid the comments would say my analysis of the texts was amateur or something equally horrific.

The professor said it was "very good" and wanted to share my opinions with the class if there was time. Hooray! I don't suck!

As it turned out last night, she didn't read part of paper to the class but I'm really happy knowing she earmarked it as being good enough to share with the class.

Regrettable Food

Today the spoils of a meeting appeared in the conference room. Muffins and bagels. Nice. I picked up a harmless looking one from a tray labeled blueberry corn muffin.

Let me explain that corn muffins are delicious. Blueberry muffins are delicious. Together...not so much. It was regrettable.

Back to School

Something happens after the start of August and my internal clocks chimes and I know school is about to start. School is already in session back home and I woke up this morning from a panicky dream about showing up to class completely unprepared.

This morning Andy said, "What do you want to do today?"

"I think I'd like to go to the uni bookstore and get my books but I don't want to drive to Center City."

"Why don't you use the internets and order them?"

Then a weird though struck me. When I left uni, the internet still had a new sheen and was not very useful except for email and amazon.com. But now, just a scant seven years later, I filed my application on line, completed the financial aid application on line, registered on line, and now I can order text books on line. It's a different world.

Brilliant

Red Letter Day

Oh, it's a red letter day. I locked myself out of the bedroom.

It took a few moments for it to sink in, as I jiggled the handle and then eventually kicked the door. It was locked. What the? The door don't have locks, I thought.

I inspected the other bedroom door, conveniently unlocked. Yup, there was a button on the other side. It would just take a simple push to lock the door.

Then I got a sinking feeling. I did lock myself out of the bedroom. I need that room. My bed is in there.

Andy's clothes are in there. I really don't need to hear the whinging noise Andy makes when something doesn't go his way. Got to get this fixed.

So now I'm waiting for the locksmith. They gave me an estimate of about an hour. Luckily my clothes are in the other bedroom, in the big closet, so I'm no longer wearing pajamas.

Maybe we do have a ghost and it maliciously locks doors.

Dramatic Gopher

Oh, this makes me laugh every time.

And here's a Lost version. I also enjoyed the Kill Bill remix.

That's some whole in the wall

Cruising Slashdot, I found a posting that world's first ATM, installed in Enflield, London, forty years ago this month.

I was a little astounded, because I've seen that ATM. There's a little plaque. I remember Clare pointing it out when she gave us a tour of her hometown. Cool.

Another Andy Theory

Andy,who has not read a single Harry Potter book, yesterday morning told me he knew the location of the last horcrux.

Really?

"It's Nevil Longbottom Rememberall."

"That the dumbest thing I ever heard," I said.

However, at the end of the day, I changed my mind.

One, we know that Nevil's Rememberall doesn't particulary help him, suggsting it's not really a Rememberall, much like Scabbers wasn't really a rat but Peter Petigrew.

Two, Rowling said it last horcrux was something a "careful reader" would spot.

Three, Nevil's parents were aurors and could very well have gotten the horcrux like Dumbledor or the mysterious R.A.B.

Four, if the Rememberal was something Nevil's parent's had, his Gran would make Nevil use it, as she made Nevil his father's wand. Gran Longbottom seems to be at once a frugal woman and always making Nevil live in the shadow of his parents.

But the clincher is on the back cover of the British edition. On the back is a crystal like orb with a snake inside. A Rememberall containing a snake?

So, as much as I hate to admit it, Andy is probably right. Hasn't read a damn book and pulls good theory out of the aether. I hate it.

This morning Andy wanted to know if I posted his theory yet. "No, not yet," I said.

"Did you ever notice that Longbottom's name is an anagram of 'I killed Harry Potter'?"

"Shut up! That's not funny."

My vote for the last horcrux: the wand on the faded pillow in the window of Ollivanders.

Last One to the Party

Well, my sister has informed me that blogs are so 2006 and all the cool kids have My Space pages. I should get one. I won't. I like my passe blog. My Space strikes me as style over substance, but that's just me being snotty. But one nice thing is my sister has pictures of the kids posted, which is sweet. I know I'm rotten to the core, but the photo of Brandon with his pirate-like eye patch after his surgery is hilarious! Yes, I'm a bad aunt, laughing at my nephew. But come on, he looks like a pirate, which is my third favorite thing, after time travel and mummies.

Lol cats

Once again, six months behind on the greatest new thing. Check out the cats. The cheezebuger cat reminds me of Hrothgar.

Graduate

I'm going to grad school!

I got word yesterday from Temple that was admitted to the School of Social Administration for the degree of Master of Social Work.

I'm still giddy.

Of course, the admissions process has left a lot to be desired. Last fall I scrambled and submitted my application (3 letters of references, a "goals" essay, transcripts and a $50 application fee.) As of November 6, the university cashed my check. I assumed everything was hunky dorey.

But time moved on and i hadn't heard anything after the New Year. But the deadline was February, so I didn't worry about it.

In March I finally called only to find that Temple "lost" my application. It "fell between the cracks." They did find my application but not the proof that they took my money, so I supplied a copy of the cashed check.

Then I waited. And waited.

I checked on the uni's nifty intranet site for graduate school admission status. Every time it said my status was "undecided."

So I waited some more.

This week I decided I had waited enough and called the admission office. Yesterday they left a message on my machine saying that I was accepted in March and they hadn't heard from me if I was still planning on attending classes in the fall. Was I still interested? They don't know why an acceptance letter was never mailed to me.

My god. Temple has about the worst admission office ever. I swear to you, as of Thursday night, my little Temple intranet site still said I was "undecided." It's changed today.

I guess my accepted "fell between the cracks" too. If the school didn't have a really good reputation, I'd have second thoughts about attending. However, every Temple graduate I've spoken too has told me that the administration leaves a lot to be desired. They're not joking.

On the bright side, Andy called me at work yesterday to play me the message on the answering machine. I was so excited I just shouted out in the office, "I'm going to grad school!!!"

Allergies

Despite my carefully thought out plan for coping with allergies this year, after the slaughter last year, I devised a defensive scheme I lovely thought of as "Operation Allergen Avoidance." Not the snazziest title, but what you going do?

So my plan was a two prong defensive maneuver: allergy medication and constant dusting/vacuuming.

I had some drippy nose issues, but it was working.

As it turned out, the plan did not work.

I woke up in the wee hours of Sunday sneezing. I woke up sneezing. That's never happened before. And it's been a constant barrage of sneezes ever since. I walked around the office yesterday with a box of tissues.

This morning I slowly got out of bed and sneezed. I felt like I was hit by a truck. I took a shower and sneezed, which is the worst thing in my opinion. Once mid shower and needing to sneeze, what do you do? You're wet, tissues are useless.

Anyway, by the time I got out of the shower, it was 7. Seven! I managed to spend 45 minutes in the shower this morning. That has never happened. I think I actually fell asleep. Anyway, I took the missing half hour as a sign that I should stay home. I wasn't fit enough to manage my time and I certainly wasn't fit enough to drive into work in crazy Philly rush hour traffic.


So my day has been sneezing and napping. It's nice. I've closed the windows and turned on the air conditioning, which I hate to do when it's not warm outside and it makes me feel like I'm personally causing global warming, but the AC filters the air and reduces tree pollen.

Stupid trees. Why does there have to be so many trees in Pennsylvania? In Kansas I knew exactly what tree pollen I'm allergic too (cottonwood) but here...Who knows? The damn state is wall to wall trees.

Happy Birthday Athene!

Whoo! Happy Birthday, Athene.

And I just learned from Omouse's blog that Athene's getting married! Double Whoo! Oh hell, let's make it a full-on Woot!

Woot!

Halt! What manner of beast be ye?

Before you write that grand, sweeping fantasy sage, you have to take the test.

Season of Perpetual Vacuuming

Now that the weather is starting to get a bit warm, the cats have begun to shed. I brush Hrothgar and Aethel every day, to minimize fur, just like all those pet-care website suggests. I still find myself having to run the vacuum nearly every day. I don't know where or how the cats produce so much fur.

Last night I brushed Hrothgar, and the pile of fur on the floor was nearly as big as him. I could have knitted another cat.


But what trully amazes me is that this morning, I went in to the kitchen to find the floor covered in a fine dusting of gray fur. At the epicenter of the fur was a strange, calm space of cleanliness. It was almost as if a cat had stood in the middle of the kitchen and willed all the fur to explode off of his body. That's what it was: a cat shedding explosion.

Andy's wrong!

So Andy's been watching all the Harry Potter DVDs this week and now he thinks he's an expert. In anticipation of the final book, I'm re-reading the series, but that's something else.

So this morning Andy announces, "Neville Longbottom will kill Harry Potter."

"Um, no."

"Yes. Voldemort will take over Harry and Neville will kill them."

"No! You're wrong!"

"But we already know that Neville can stand up to his friends."

"NO! NO! Harry Potter is not killed by Longbottom!"

"Just you wait and see."

So there, now it's on record, just in case the crazy idea pans out, even though he's totally wrong. Totally.

Kurt Vonnegut

I couldn't believe it when I heard it.

Vonnegut it one of my favorite authors. Especially Slaughterhouse Five. And Cat's Cradle.

When I was in high school, Vonnegut gave a lecture at KU entitled, "How to Have My Job." My English teacher arranged a field trip for the top English students. It was awesome.

I was only 17 at the time and hadn't read any of his works. I've read most of them now.

Here's Vonnegut's "How to Write With Style."

Flame it up, baby!

It's been a while since my last post but it took something amazing to break my silence. What could it be? Flame decal for my Kitchen Aid stand mixer, affectionally known as the "Kitchen Ninja."

Buy posting it in my bog, I get a 10% coupon. Sweet.

And my Kitchen Ninja is one step closer to the diviness of Alton Brown. (Who has flames on his stand mixer. There. I added that as a post script because the first version sounded completely crazy.)

Cabbits and the Bozone Layer

I'm sitting in a house this afternoon and the lady has seven (7!) animals: 3 dogs, 4 cats. One the cats jumps up on a table near me and I notice it has a deformed little stump of a table and large back haunches. I say, "Is your cat a Manx? I have a Manx."

The woman then proceeds to tell me that her cat is actually a cat-rabbit hybrid. According to her, back in the 60s, scientists combined rabbit sperm with a cat's egg an implanted the petri dish baby in a cat and two months later..Viola! A cabbit was born.

I didn't believe a word of this. I really struggled to find a way to tell the woman that she was full of shit. But she believed it so much and the cat did look funny. It's legs looks kind of rabbity. She pointed out that dogs and wolves can mate.

"But they're both in the same family, both canines," I said.

"Horses and mules have donkeys."

"Same family. I don't know if rabbits and cats are the same family." (They're not. It's impossible. The cabbit is myth. Her "cabbit" was actually a Manx with a spine and leg deformity.)

Apparently if a "scientist" is involved, genetically impossible things are possible. Point in fact, I'm always telling Andy that he can say anything and get away with it if he prefaced bizarre statements with "as a scientist, I can tell you..."

Which leads me to the next item. Andy announced this weekend, "As a scientist, I can tell you that the Bozone Layer is mostly composed of 1950s television clowns."

I just like to picture Bozo floating in space.

Pithy Book Review Time

Time for another Liarbyrd's Pithy Book Review. Today's subject: Newton's Wake: A Space Opera by Ken Macloed.

The title had a lot of promise. (Space opera!) And the premise is cool (singularity, post-human technology, a lost "colony" on a distant planet.) But add all these elements together and the whole thing falls flat.

It's bad. Simply a terrible book. First problem: too many characters. As a reader, I find it had to care deeply about the problems of a dozen main characters. Too much is a bad thing. Pick a narrator and stick with it. The one character who might be considered the "central" character is Lucinda Carlyle. Apparently her family is some sort of space mobster outfit. Fine. She's a criminal. I can tolerate that. But she is dumb. Not just dumb, but intolerably dumb. Dumb. Dumb. For example, she buys a spaceship from Political Faction X. It's a good ship, despite their different politcal beliefs. While planet side, another Political Faction X ship appears and steals her ship.

Lucinda's conclusion? P.F. X stole her ship.

The reader shouldn't be smarter than the narrator and the reader should not be giving more information than the narrator has. It just makes the rest of the plot kind of tedious and lacking suspense. I knew who stole her damn ship immediately it took her another chapter of being told by other characters before she got it.

Second problem: half of the characters are Scottish and the dialog is written in a fucking dialect. What the fuck?! I hate dialects written phonetically in fiction. Nothing is more jarring than having the eye stumble over "dae na" and trying to decipher it. What the hell did the characters say? It tears the reader away from the act of reading and makes them conscious of reading. Breaks the magic, if you will.

And might I add, that lots of writers think that dialect is okay because Mark Twain did it. Well, they're wrong and Mark Twain was wrong. This does not add "color" or make the characters vivid. It makes reading work and drains the story it's power to hold the reader's attention.

And the third problem is that due to the crowded narrative with all the characters, the action and "political intrigue" is just plain confusing. I honestly have no idea what happened in the last fifty pages, I just know it's over. Thankfully.

Brilliant

So here's a site where you can make a French presidential canidate dance. It's awesome.

If he's so great...

Last night I'm reading Alfred Bester's Demolished Man in bed. Andy says, "What are you reading?"

"Only one of the greatest sci-fi writers in the 20th century."

"Oh yea? If he's so great, did he write Batman?"

I flip to the biogrpahy blurb at the front of the book and I read, "He then embarked on a career as a scripter for comic, radio, and television, where he worked on such classics characters Superman, Batman, Nick Carter, Charlie Chan, Tom Corbett and the Shadow."

Andy looked confussed. "You're making that up!"

"No, he rocked."

Here's a podcast from StarShipSofa discussing the qualities of Alfred Bester's work.

Aethel the Bad - Slipper Hunter

Andy woke me up this morning. "Mel, you got to see this."

I climb out of bed, groggy and cold.

In the living room Aethel is wrestling with one of my pink slippers. She hisses and pounces and they tumble. Then, triumphant, she bites down on the slipper and carries it away. The slipper is as big as her. Her little cat legs are straddling the slipper as she draggs it under her body and she waddles away. Hallarious.

Great News!

Great News, everyone! Defense Secretary Robert Gates submitted to Congress a manual for trials for detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The manual allows for heresay evidence and coerced testimony. However, it does provide a prohibition for evidence obtain by torture after December 30, 2005.

Fantastic. My government just admitted in a back handed way that it tortures. Not just "intense questing"...torture.

And it doesn't say the military will stop torturing. Just can't use it as evidence.

And it doesn't seem to be in the news. I found this articel buried on CNN.com.

I want to be Canadian.