Overly Verbal

Sure, there are other excuses for my behavior, but I really do think I’m getting old. All day today I have had Roger Miller’s “You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd” stuck in my head. This is not okay on several levels.

First, no one knows what the hell I’m talking about. (Okay, maybe a couple of people do, but none of them live here, and it’s not like you can call someone on the phone and say, “Hey, here’s the song stuck in my head - could you please acknowledge its existence so I don’t feel so alone in the world?”)

Second, I have long kept my deep and abiding love for country music to myself, because people already think I’m weird, and now here I am writing about it on my blog.

Third, I have no Roger Miller songs in my personal music collection,* and this makes me sad. So I want the box set. And you can download the whole box set for $27.09, or you can buy the actual CDs for $49.98. So I’m going to go ahead and spring for the CDs, even though that does not fit in with my desire to be immediately gratified - I’m not all that familiar with this whole “lossy data compression” thing, but I do think that perhaps if I bought MP3s and then copied them to a CD, some sort of loss would occur. Doesn’t that mean I’m getting old, that I care about the audio quality of the backup copies of my country music?

In related news, I bought a new coffeepot today. (Actually, I bought a new coffeepot the other day, but I had to return it, because it sucked, so if you were thinking about buying a Black & Decker coffeepot, don’t. They suck.) And I have an extremely small kitchen, but I really did start out thinking I needed to replace my full-sized coffeepot with a similarly-sized coffeepot, in case someone stays the night and needs coffee in the morning. Then I realized that the littler coffeepots were much cuter, wouldn’t take up so much counter space, and could simply be used more than once in succession if I somehow wound up needing more than 20 ounces of coffee all at once,** and when the hell is that likely to happen anyway?***

So I bought a four-cup coffeepot, and it’s cute and programmable and using it makes me feel as if I am staying in a hotel. And I think that when I said earlier that I think I’m getting old, what I really meant was I’m getting just that much more resigned to my fate. A four-cup coffeepot will fit nicely in my doublewide trailer, and if none of my neighbors in the trailer park are already familiar with Roger Miller, think how happy they’ll be when they first encounter the real “Me and Bobbie McGee” streaming through my kitchen curtains (that I sewed myself)!

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* Although for a while after I quit my job, my MySpace profile song was “King of the Road”. At least people know what I’m talking about in that case.

** Speaking of which, who decided that a “cup” of coffee is 5 ounces? A “cup” of water is 8 ounces. God that bugs me.

*** Before you start feeling sorry for me, let me remind you that, um, I don’t really tell the entire World Wide Web everything that actually happens to me, and it may or may not be the case that sometimes someone does stay over and that that someone sometimes may or may not need coffee, but I’m not telling one way or the other, because I am discreet.

Dear Holiday Shoppers,

I really don’t think Jesus would have wanted you to cut down a perfectly good tree, tie it to the top of your SUV, and then drive it home and put shiny crap on it so you can keep it in your living room for several weeks just because it was his birthday.

If you have to get a Christmas tree, why not buy a live one, and then plant it somewhere when you’re done with it? Better for the environment, don’t you think?

That is all.

So I went to New Jersey and came back. That was fine, although I do not believe I will be taking a $20 bus from DC to NY again, because that was not the most enjoyable part of my trip. It takes a really long time to get to New York on a bus, and there’s nowhere to plug in your laptop, or get a cup of coffee. (And there was allegedly going to be wireless Internet, but there was not. Sad-making.) I sure do complain about Amtrak a lot, but now I can put the whole thing in a little more perspective. Compared to the $20 bus, Amtrak is like the Concorde. (And, when I did finally get to New York City I had a really hard time remembering why I ever left, so I think I’ll redouble my efforts to find a rich man who wants to keep me, and who lives in New York.)

As for the hot water, it was back late Tuesday night, and I had hot water when I returned home Friday night, but then I didn’t have hot water all day yesterday, which was not fine, because I braved the post-Thanksgiving crowds yesterday to buy new dishes, in my seemingly never-ending quest to improve the inside of my home so that I never have to leave it again, and I couldn’t wash my new dishes because all of my water was cold. I hope that the fact that I have not had hot water for (at least) two of the last five days is not a sign of how frequently I will have hot water in the future. I’m not sure how many concurrent “accidents” there are going to be in the boiler room, but I am sure that no one even started working on the problem Saturday until well after dark (because I have a lovely view of the boiler room out my bedroom window). I imagine there are a limited number of people who even know what a boiler room is, let alone can fix one, and I’m really hoping that none of those people are injured in any of these “accidents” or their “repair”.

In other news, well, there is no other news. I’m just about ready to hibernate for the winter: each of my minor home improvements makes me want to stay inside even more than the last did, only I’ve kicked it up a notch and started knitting a sweater too. Now all I need is 46 more cats.

And I need to do the laundry, and I’m hoping I can do it before it turns dark (because I’m afraid to go to the laundry room after dark in case there are any drunk guys in there*). (And also before the hot water goes out again. I’ve never lived in a country where electricity or water were rationed, but I imagine it must feel much like I feel now – when I actually have hot water I use it: better take advantage of this luxury before it disappears again. Who knows when it will come back?)

I didn’t have to write this at all, did I? You could have just imagined that I was vacuuming. Maybe I’ll have some job-related news next week. That might be interesting, but don’t hold your breath.
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* I’m not afraid of the drunk guys, I’m just a little afraid of having to write another entry to my blog about my having to call the police.**

** Speaking of which, I finally got renter’s insurance. You should get some too, if you rent. It’s cheap, and you never know when the boiler room that is uncomfortably close to your bedroom windows might just up and explode.

You know how you have hot water inside your home? I do not. I’m kind of fond of hot water, because it comes in handy for things I enjoy doing - bathing, washing the dishes, etc.

This morning when I had no hot water I was not very alarmed. These things happen, and surely it would be restored by the time I returned home from work. When I did return home from work, however, early enough to visit the charming and effective management office, I was told there was a “big accident in the boiler room this morning” and they’ve been “working on it all day.” When I asked what the timeline was for restoring the hot water I was told, “I hope later.”

I have so much in common with the people who manage this complex - I hope I have hot water later too. (Well, that, and I often describe things that will likely turn out to be catastrophic infrastructure failure due to head-in-the-sand planning and lack of routine maintenance and oversight as “accidents”.)

I had already been planning to get my hair cut later - normally I avoid having someone else wash my hair, but I guess I’ll let them do it this time, on account of heating water on the stove to wash my own hair is not something I had planned on doing this evening.

This is going to be character-building or something, I’m sure, but in the meantime, it’s like living in a third world country. Now I think I’ll call my landlord and see if he knows where the nearest pay-by-the-hour hotel is, so I can take a shower in the morning if the water is still running cold. (I’m sure there’s one nearby - I live in a ghetto.)
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* And BC? You don’t have to say it, because I already know: I should have moved into your apartment when I had the chance. Let’s just chalk that one up to head-in-the-sand planning, eh? It seems to be a prevalent problem around here, and I think that instead of making my neighbors more like me, I’m only starting to become more like them.

So get a load of this - I’m in bed, writing a blog entry!

Granted, my new laptop really sucks. Okay, it’s not the machine, it’s Windows Vista, but I am not going to turn my blog into a series of rants about why I hate Windows Vista. At any rate, it’s exhibiting a number of odd behaviors, at least one of which is going to require a phone call to some sort of technical support personnel, but for now, at least, I can type and connect to the Internet, and that’s all I really need to do to be able to write pithy entries to my blog from the road. This is gonna be awesome!*

And I’d write more now, but I’ve gotta watch a movie. Instantly!
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* And typo-ridden. I can’t type on a laptop to save my life!

Upgrading my operating system didn’t work.

Well, it may yet work, but it will require a level of patience and cool-headedness that I am lacking at the moment. First I decided the backing up was going to take too long, so I went to Radio Shack this morning and bought a really cheap external hard drive. One could say I needed an external hard drive anyway (if one were using a very broad definition of the word “need”). Then there was a virus, and then my power supply failed but I took it apart and then it worked again,* and then there were a series of errors related to acronyms that I didn’t want to be bothered with, and then I gave up and bought a new laptop. Again, one could argue that I needed a laptop, particularly given that I finally settled on Thanksgiving plans, and I’m going to New Jersey by way of New York, which will require a large amount of traveling time that does not require my driving, so maybe I can write the great American novel on the train (or at least make it a little further into my Netflix queue).**

Okay, so I didn’t need a laptop. But I really wanted one, and this was a good excuse to buy one. And this laptop is little and cute, and it works, but I’ve decided after a few short hours that I really hate Windows Vista. Ah well.

But I’ve made a little penance. On my way to Thanksgiving I am taking one of those crazy $20 buses that I’ve always meant to take but have also always been secretly afraid of. (On the way back I bought a regular train ticket, because I’m not a martyr or anything.) Anyway, get this - free wireless internet on the bus! It would be silly to pass that up, wouldn’t it?

And one of the things I can research on the Internet while I’m on a bus with people who can’t afford to take a train to New York*** is how to make my desktop work. Maybe by Wednesday I’ll be less aggravated about it. (Actually, I have a very good idea what’s happened, I just don’t know yet how to fix it. Manuelo might, but I’m not going to ask him until I really, really can’t figure out myself, and not when I’ve just thrown up my hands in frustration.)

So there’s that, and otherwise there’s not much else, except that I spent a lot of time in stores today, and I think there should be a goddamned law that says no Christmas music in public until the day after Thanksgiving. More on that later, I’m sure.

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* Have you ever really looked inside your computer? Mine lives on a carpeted floor in a house with a cat. Good God was it dusty in there.

** And if you live in New York and are reading this and I have yet to send you an e-mail asking whether you’ll be in town on Wednesday and/or Friday, it’s not because I’m not thinking of you, it’s because I have to re-install oodles of software and junk. I’m hoping to catch up tomorrow, because today was hopeless.

*** I’m not judging, I’m just stating a fact.

So it’s Friday night, and I have nothing whatsoever to report, except that this evening I returned home from my delightful temping* with a six-pack of beer and a new copy of Windows Vista, and I am going to have a new operating system when next I write (or a new laptop with an operating system already installed, depending how this goes). I would say “Wish me luck”, save that I don’t need any luck, I need to just not get irritated in the middle and decide to knit a hat instead. (I need a new hat almost as much as I need a new operating system: good God is it cold, and none of my existing winter hats look quite as adorable with my short hair as they did when I had long hair.)

Actually, that’s not true. I need to not get more irritated.

First of all, I imagine it is going to take a very long time to back up everything on my hard drive. I learned earlier that there is more than five days worth of music on my computer (and then I bought a new CD,** but had the foresight not to copy it to my hard drive yet), and there’s a whole bunch of other stuff on there too. (Knowing me, one would think that I would carefully delete all the extraneous stuff and organize all the rest of the stuff before backing it up, but then I might never get a new operating system, because there’s a lot of good stuff to read on my hard drive. I’d get distracted.)

Secondly, when I got my current hard drive I moved everything to it from my old hard drive by installing my old hard drive as a second drive. Then I took the old one out. I literally cannot think of one good reason for having removed it. It’s perfectly functional, yet it’s been sitting in a box for several years, and it took me forever just to find the damned thing, and now I’ve got to open up my machine and put it back in, and that is going to make me sneeze. Sometimes I just don’t make any sense. (And, perhaps contrary to popular belief, I am in fact aware that I am not the only one irritated by this fact.)

Seriously, though, if this doesn’t work*** I might give in to the pressure and just try Linux or something. Then the boys would really think I was cool.

“Speaking of boys thinking you’re cool, Jen, why aren’t you going out on a Friday night?”

I know it’s surprising, but I’m a little tired of going out. I just keep seeing the same people over and over again, and I am continually being told to have another drink, with promises that it will be more fun if I’m closer to inebriation, and that never works, it just costs money. (My general dislike of the human race (present company excepted, of course) notwithstanding, I might go out tomorrow night, but only if it’s not really, really cold, and only if I have a functional computer by then.)

Anyway, that’s the story. Here’s hoping your Friday night is just the tiniest bit more exciting.
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* Proximity of McDonald’s notwithstanding, I might just try to finagle my way into making this temp job permanent. I’m going to have to think on that some.

** Barry Manilow’s “Because It’s Christmas”, if you must know. It came out in 1990, so I only had a cassette tape.

*** Why I am hedging so much? Of course it’s going to work.

No news is good news, or so they say. Nothing is new at all. I’m still loving the temping, I’m still trying to figure out why I don’t live in California, and I’m still staying in my home instead of going out and interacting with humanity, although I did bump into someone unexpected on the Metro today (and that just made me think, “Aargh. I’ve gotta move.”)

In other non-news, the past four days have been a medley of misery inside my head. Saturday I had “And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda” stuck in there,* Sunday I heard Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up” while I was shopping and it nearly did me in, Monday was pretty much the entire “Purple Rain” soundtrack, and today I have been humming 10,000 Maniacs’ “These Are Days” since pretty much the moment I woke up.** I really sometimes do need drugs.

Well, and I guess this is news: Captain Ghettolord has “tagged” me to complete a “meme”. That would be lovely if I was part of a community of people with blogs, but I am not. I am a rock, a veritable island, and therefore cannot participate in memes, because I don’t actually know anyone to “tag” save the person who sent me the “meme”, and another person he’s already tagged (and Goethe, who keeps starting and then stopping blogs so that it’s hard to keep track of him).*** At the risk of offending the Internet gods and my very own landlord, I’m just not doing it.

Well, okay, it’ll be a first, but I’ll go ahead answer the questions, and if anyone who happens to read this wants to continue the whole damned thing, consider yourself tagged (but then let me know, because that would be curious). Or do it in the comments or something. Maybe that’s okay - I don’t know from memes.

Oh, let’s just add another “first” to the whole mix. I know in the Internet world they call it a “jump”, but because I remain convinced that the only reason I have a blog is because I have neither a photostat machine nor a printing press, I’m going to call it a “fold”. (I’ve never done that before here because everything I’ve written here before belongs “above the fold”, if you ask me.) You’ll find the answers to the goofy questions “below the fold”.

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* That is neither a happy nor a short song, and I wish I did not know each and every one of the words to it. (Or at least on Saturday I did. Other times, when it impresses cute drunken Irish boys? Then I’m glad I do.)

** Well, okay, the second time I woke up. The first time I woke up today was about 4 AM, when Mouse found it necessary to sit on the edge of the bathtub inconsolably meowing at the top of his lungs. I wish I better understood the inner life of my cat. (And I hope he woke up the neighbors too. They deserve it.)

** Sure, some people I know keep a “blog” on MySpace. I even know some people who “LiveJournal”. But those aren’t real blogs, because both forums allow you to decide who can and cannot read your entries. If you don’t want everyone (and potentially your mother) to read what you’re writing, don’t publish it on the Internet - send a goddamned e-mail to your “friends”.

[Pretend this is a fold.]

Have you ever seen a happier cat?

If you own a cat and you’re not growing grass indoors, or allowing your cat to go outside to eat grass, you’re doing your cat a disservice.

So I went to the grocery store earlier, as people do, and I checked myself out, because I like to limit my interactions with grocery store clerks, and when I got to my zucchini, I found that there was no zucchini listed in the handy dictionary of fruits and vegetables that require codes to be punched into the system. And so I ask the clerk for assistance, and she somehow knows that the zucchini is listed under “squash, pipian”, and points out to me that the pictures are the same. Now, I might have thought to look under “squash, zucchini”, if I had stood in front of the checkout long enough without assistance, but I would not have known that pipian squash is a type of zucchini popular in Central America. Nor do I think that that is a thing that I need to know in order to purchase groceries in the United States of America, particularly given that the sign in front of the display of zucchini read “zucchini”, and not “pipian squash”. Nor do I think that I should have to resort to buying my vegetables based on their appearance rather than based on their English names. Sure, it’s always nice to learn something new, but I think it’s time to return to buying all of my groceries online, and having them delivered.

In other important squash news, eggplant is not a squash, it’s a fruit.*

News entirely unrelated to squash will appear later, maybe even later today. I’ve got a whole whirlwind of activity going on in the kitchen right now, because a trip to the grocery store means chopping, and cooking, and baking, and I have so firmly committed myself to the idea of never leaving my house again (unless I’ll earn money while I’m out there) that it’s somewhat frightening, really.

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* And the French word for eggplant is “aubergine”, and that’s a fine name for a color, but if you describe something as “aubergine” you’re going to sound like an ass. Just say, “Oh, you know, it’s like the color of an eggplant”, and you’ll be fine.