I have two readers

A week ago I posted a quiz on here for fun... was trying new features and here's the results:

(The question:) Is anybody reading this?

Of course. You are my idol: 2 (100%)

Wait a minute, this isn't google!: 0 (0%)

I never learned to read: 0 (0%)

I like cheese: 0 (0%)

Votes so far: 2
Poll closed

So, for those of you that voted, thanks! Maybe I was going too far with getting people to idolize me. Maybe the answer should have been, "well I guess so, this is better than watching paint peel." I'd like to think I'm more entertaining than peeling paint.
Maybe next time I'll have a better quiz.

Fuck Snow

That is all.

Oops

I'm going to Vegas. I'm turning 30 (in July) and March sucks and I'm tired of it and I want heat and water and sunshine. But mostly, heat.
So today I help husband book flights and hotel (hello travel agent discount!) because I will never get away with being uninvolved with travel plans. I must accept this fate.
Then husband says... hey, we're leaving July 2, aren't you coming back from Wimbledon July 1?
Oops.
Well, technically, not yet...
We have people booked on the trip June 22 - 29.
We are holding 14 places for a trip June 24 - July 1.
I'm supposed to go and take care of both.
No air tickets have yet been issued for myself.
Also, nobody has yet signed up for the June 24 - July 1 trip. Nobody.
We have 50% non-refundable deposits out and final payment due April 14. Thousands of dollars.
And nobody is interested.
What to do? Fret? Worry? Stress? Give up? All of the above?
I've made it through fretting, worrying and stressing and am moving on to giving up.
If people sign up for June 24 - July 1, so be it. If they don't - I tried my best. There isn't much more I can do.
I'm going to Vegas July 2. I may end up going to London and coming home June 29.
I may end up going to London and coming home July 1, then going to Vegas July 2.
That will suck.
However, I'm going to Vegas July 2.
I'm getting out of here.
I'm looking forward to the fireworks July 4.
I'm looking forward to watching the fountains at the Bellagio.
I'm looking forward to eating unhealthy delicious food with my awesome friends.
It isn't always easy to get my friends together, they're a varied lot... and I love them all.
I'm looking forward to Vegas.
I don't know shit about tennis.

Step-Mother Nature

I don't know why we call her Mother Nature. She has all the fairytale personality traits of a wicked stepmother.
It took me *only* an hour and twenty-five minutes to get home from this recent spring-like onslaught of garbage.
Step-mother nature is an evil vindictive insufferable wretched angry bitch.

It's Easter?

I'm on the phone today talking to this nice lady and she finishes the phone call with, "Have a blessed Easter," and I pause and then thank her and hang up.
Two minutes later she calls back and apologizes to me. She said I had paused and she thought that was strange and then she saw my last name and called back to say sorry.
I said, oh yeah, no. I do Easter... (well, sort of. I eat chocolate rabbits, Cadbury eggs and jellybeans... does that count?) I told her I just paused because I have been living in a cave or something. I just had no idea this Sunday was Easter.
We laughed about it and she thanked me and hung up but now I'm confused.
Who doesn't celebrate Easter? Wait, I think the Jewish don't. Is my last name Jewish?
It's like the German version of Smith. From what I know about World War II, I'm pretty sure German's are not Jewish.
Why was she apologizing?
Hm.
Maybe I should have taken a religious studies course in college or something. This all lies in a big realm of a vague foggy area called "I never really learned much about that..."

Steak.

So, to end the computer crisis story... I fixed it.
The boring version is I reinstalled the OS and then used a handy new program called time machine to put my things back together again. Yay, go me.

Next task:
I bought parts for our grill for Christmas which had turned rusty and crusty. (The grill, not Christmas.)
The place where fire comes out was all a crumbling mess, and the bottom of the grill was filled with carcasses of hamburgers gone astray, meat ashes, and other things only described as downright nasty.
So, husband bought nice steaks with the idea it would motivate to replace old rotting grill parts with shiny new grill parts still in plastic bag.
Indeed.
I scraped and cleaned and pulled and twisted and tossed and scraped and brushed and dusted. Put in the new parts and dragged the grill back to its rightful spot near the deck. Stellar. Next to make fire.
Now, being the "tough" girl I am, I've done lots of stuff. I can change a bumper, change my oil, roof my house, put in a new window, mow the lawn, dismantle a desk with a sledgehammer, etc, etc... I ain't no girly girl.
But yet, for some odd reason, I've never lit the grill. I've never grilled meat outdoors. Man operates grill. Grunt.
I turn the gas tank on and then the upper burner, hit the sparker and... nothing. Sparker must be toast, I didn't replace that.
Easy enough. I go inside and get a nice long match, light it up, turn on the gas, hold it next to the burner and poof - voila! Fire!
Woman has made fire!
Now... husband isn't home yet. I'm hungry. I want steak.
I'm going all out brave today. I get the steaks and slap em on the grill.
Now what to add? I decide good meat is fine enough and just add some salt & pepper.
Husband comes home and approves of my meat cooking. All is well.
I did good. Fixed the grill and made steak all by myself.
I'd have a picture but I ate the hell out of that steak. Oh yum.
Time for leftovers...

Computer issues

Here we go again. I've not had good luck with computers this year.
I go to start my computer today and no, it won't do that. It goes from the apple screen
to the blue screen to the home screen and just before it finishes it returns to the blue screen
then the home screen, then the blue screen then the home screen in this endless rebooting loop.
So, I tried starting from the install cd, ran disk repair, the disk is fine.
Then I tried starting from safe mode... and it starts, so then I used carbon copy cloner to make an identical copy of the hard drive. But my external hard drive didn't have enough space, so I deleted and then made the copy.
So, now I'm making a second copy on a different hard drive (I ain't takin no chances...)
and then I don't know what to do.
Reinstall the operating system?
System restore?
Even though I have backups it's a pain in the ass to rebuild everything.
Why can't it just work without problems?
What is the deal?
Well, at least the current backup will take three hours so I've got time to kill.
I think it's time to order pizza and watch a movie.
Silly computer.
(oh, and I'm sure you were wondering how I wrote this, I'm using husbands happy machine right now... his works fine...)

If only...

I've just returned from the UK and remembered a little fact that I found to be quite lovely.

Jude Law and Ewan McGregor once shared a flat together in London.

Now let me just say...

Hottest.
Apartment.
Ever.



Would have liked to have made a nice brit-american-brit sandwich if you know what I mean... heh. Yum.

If I had to design my own personal hell

I just got back from a trip and found myself with lots of free time, several hours of it spent on planes.
And in the spirit of going to the UK - known to be in medieval times the most gruesome torturous people - I thought about what my own personal hell would be like. These are the things my little brain piddles about when faced with hours upon hours on planes and in airports....

So, I give you my own personal hell:

Would of course, be on an airplane. The seats would be tiny and awful. I'd have a middle seat.
The flight would be from Detroit to somewhere in Ohio with a 7-hour delay. On the runway.
Everyone would have a personal TV monitor but mine would be broken. The person in front of me would have a broken seat so it leans back all the way all the time. And most of the flight the tray won't stay up, so it falls open constantly.
My seat would be in front of the exit row so it doesn't lean back. The person on my left is a fat, chatty old smelly woman with lots and lots of bags. The person on my right is someone's horrid child. The plane would be filled with crying babies and obnoxious self-important people.
The only in-flight entertainment would be Norbit and Fat Albert and re-runs of Just Shoot Me.
The in-flight music would be Karen Carpenter (the sound of her voice breeds ax-murderers) and Three Dog Night's "Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog" (worst song EVER.)
The meal would be yellow and white iceberg lettuce with celery, dried up lasagna with no cheese and barely any sauce and something really nasty like yogurt with tons of sugar in it. And only tomato juice to drink.
And it would be freezing, and I'd only have a pathetic little blue blanket.
And everything would be ridiculously dry and static electricity would be rampant.
And all but one restroom would be out of service.
And the flight attendants would all be raging bitches.
And the PA system would "ping" on really loudly every few minutes the entire time, with no actual announcement.
And when they do make announcements, it's really loud and pointless. Something like, please put on your seat belts.


Yeah.... I'm pretty sure it would be something like that.

What's your own personal hell?

UK OK

So, had to fly to the UK again. I think it's the 7th time to the UK, but I couldn't really tell without my old list of trips to refer to.
I'm getting really tired of red-eye flights to Europe.
I hate them with the hot firey seething hate of 1,000 angry menstruating lesbian hornets. The tiny seats, the crappy food, the dry air, the traveling companions. Blah.
The hotel is your standard new business hotel. Clean. Modern. Shiny. Boring. Cold.
It has one of those evil showers that doesn't consistently pull from hot and cold at the same time so you get two seconds where the temperature is perfect, two seconds where it's too hot (ouch!) and two seconds where it's too cold (eek!) and then repeat.
The dogs are crazy. 23,000 dogs. There are dogs everywhere. Literally (mind you I'm using the word literally properly here - let me get on that tangent later) dogs everywhere. I'm going to steal a beagle. They are so cute.
Some of this stuff really walks the fine line between amazing/funny and totally batshit crazy. Who thinks of this crap? Dancing with your dog? Is that amazing and funny or ridiculously batshit crazy. I have video. You may judge later.
I'm getting too used to traveling with people I know, because after three days alone I find myself a bit lonely and bored. How much horrid British TV can one watch? There are some good shows, but some are just bad. There was a show on where women put on super strength bras and jumped on trampolines to test the bra. Then the two hosts talked about the support and the design. I'm sure you dudes think it would be exciting but it wasn't. It was ordinary women (not Man show models) and support bras.

Not sexy.
Mostly just eating alone in restaurants makes me lonely. Nothing to do but sit and wait for my food. Nobody to talk to. Twiddle my thumbs. Sip my wine. Look around. Repeat.
Used to do this a lot and it didn't much bother me.
Oh well. Time go go eat some Indian food, if I have to go alone at least it's tasty.

Newark

I'm squatting on the floor in Newark airport after having taken a couple of pictures out these great floor-to-ceiling windows. I'm just putting my camera away as an older balding man approaches me.
"Are you praying?" he asks me.
"No," I reply. "I was just taking a couple of pictures."
"What is your secret to being so beautiful?" he then asks.
I smile at him and blush at the idea and say, "Um, good genes I guess?"
I'm caught off guard by his question, but appreciate his kindness.
"Where are you from?" he asks.
"Michigan," I reply.
"Aaah, I'm from Florida. If I invited you to Florida would you come?"
I stood up as I had finished putting my camera away and said, "No... I don't think so." I hate saying no to people - rejecting them - but I felt it was best to not let this go anywhere.
He says, "You know what I love about Michigan?" Without waiting for an answer he says, "The four seasons." I agree with him. It is what I love as well.
We walk our own ways and depart with a wave & a smile as we go find our flights.
Sorry guy, I can't hang out with someone who says things like that to me, it might go to my head!
However, you can't blame a guy for trying.