Jul 282008
 

As of today, my husband and I have been married for eighteen years. Don’t that just blow your mind?

In honor of this occasion, I’ll treat you to a sample of what my husband has lived with for almost two decades. Picture the scene: it was his first night home after a week-long work trip. His first flight was at 5:00 a.m., he got bumped and held over at his connection point so he’d spent the day in an airport waiting for a flight home. He managed to stay awake long enough to talk to the kids a little before they went to bed. Finally we were in bed, and he had deducted from my sighs and fidgets that I was fretting about something. Groggily he asked what the problem is.

“Nothing.”

He sighed. “What?”

“You just didn’t seem like you were glad to see me when you got home.”

“I’m not a very demonstrative person.”

“You seemed glad to see the kids.”

“Well, I was glad to see you, too.”

“I couldn’t really tell.”

“That’s not my problem,” he grumbled.

“Well now I’m keeping you awake, so I guess it is your problem,” I snickered.

“Gah!” The strangled noise may have been his head exploding. “Go to sleep, ya psycho bitch!” He rolled over and tried to drift off to the sound of my giggles.

Eighteen years of this. The man has the patience of a saint, I tell you.

One More Week!

 Geek Wannabe, General  Comments Off
Jul 212008
 

One more week of summer classes. Then I’ll be done with my personal income tax class, and moving on to governmental income tax.

What I find funniest about today’s Penny Arcade is that I understand everything Gabe says in the second panel.

Jul 192008
 

The Artist’s seventeenth birthday was Friday. For his birthday, his parents and younger brother all chipped in to get him something he’s been wanting for four or five years:

An iPod.

Eight gigabytes, black, the damn thing can even play video.

He is a happy, happy boy.

Jul 182008
 

I do not like the alternative minimum tax.

I do not like the capital gains tax.

And I really, really do not like the depreciation recapture provisions. They make my head all splodey.

 

If you’re not into hand drumming you probably won’t be nearly as fascinated by this as I was.

New TV Season!

 Geek Wannabe, General  Comments Off
Jul 102008
 

New episodes of Burn Notice are starting tonight—they’re having a Burn Notice marathon on USA channel. If I didn’t have class this afternoon I’d spend the whole day watching Jeffrey Donovan and Bruce Campbell, two sexy, sexy men.

“Bruce Campbell is sexy?” said my husband in surprise. “He’s old and fat.”

“So? Remember L.A. Law? They had that short, balding lawyer that women across America were nuts over.”

Men and women really don’t understand what attracts the other gender. Not surprising, since it’s such an individual thing, and individuals often don’t understand it themselves. But yeah, Bruce Campbell definitely has that je ne sais quoi for me.

Jul 092008
 

*sniff*

Yeah, I’m a sucker for schmaltz. Especially when it involves kittehz.

This isn’t new—Christian’s reunion with John and Ace took place in 1974—but it’s apparently just recently made it to YouTube. There are dozens of versions of this video; in some of the longer ones you can see one of Christian’s lionesses who came over to see what was going on.

 

by
Emily Perl Kingsley

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability—to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It’s like this……

When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip—to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.”

“Holland?!?” you say. “What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.”

But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around…. and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills….and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy… and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.”

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away… because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But… if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things … about Holland.

 

Towards the end of last semester, Super Smart Guy mentioned that he was going to be leaving his part-time job once classes were over, and starting his own business.

Being the soul of tact, I immediately started asking about the job he was leaving—what it was like, whether the hours were flexible according to his class schedule, and who would be replacing him. He picked up on my subtle hint and told me to bring in a résumé and he’d pass it along to his boss.

Potential Boss and I have talked a few times since then; this afternoon I went out to meet him and discuss the job. We seemed to get along well, and the job sounds like a good fit: I’m looking for a part-time job that will let me learn the trade, and continue working part-time for a number of years until the kids move out. He’s looking for someone who can improve their knowledge and competence in the job and be a long-term employee, part-time or otherwise. We talked about the hours I could work with my class schedule in the fall, I gave him my little portfolio (thank you, English 114), and he said he’d be in touch.

It’s not official or anything, but I think I might be starting work in August. Wish me luck!

Jul 032008
 

Joss Whedon is releasing a brand-new movie—straight to the internet!

 

Cheap to operate.

Edmunds just completed a study that calculates the true cost to own and operate a number of 2008 vehicles. They didn’t just look at gas mileage, but included overall costs like depreciation, repairs, and insurance. (None of the hybrids made the top ten, in spite of their superior mileage; they just cost too much to buy in the first place.)

The Honda Fit ranks #3.

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