2005-09-30

 

I generally don't participate in these... not because I have some sort of meme-snobbery, but honestly they don't come my way that often, and when they do I'm usually slammin' busy. But not this morning. This morning, I will follow the tagging I got from Ms. Cheryl and run through it.

10 years ago, I was planning my wedding, or rather deciding NOT to plan it and take the easy way out.
5 years ago, I was living in a house full of women. It was a full house then, and while it drove me crazy at times, I miss it sometimes. I made arroz last night, and now I'm all nostalgic. Mol will get that.
1 year ago, I think I finally started to get the hang of this "not living in Texas" thing.

5 snacks

• Red Vines
• Cashews
• Raw green beans
• Seedless grapes
• REALLY good chocolate

5 songs I know all the words to
I'm just going to go off what rolls around on my iPod next. Because it's hard to pick 5 any other way.

• Positively Fourth Street - Bob Dylan
• Stand on your own head - TMBG
• We only come out at night - Smashing Pumpkins
• Pea - Red Hot Chili Peppers
• Suite: Judy Blue Eyes - Crosby, Stills, & Nash

Ah, now we're back to STP. I think I might need to go back to album shuffle here. Song shuffle is pretty abrupt.

5 things I'd do with 100 million USD

• Take care of my family. Schooling for nieces and nephews, that sort of thing.
• Get a house in the Bay Area. A winning lottery ticket might be the only way we COULD do that, actually.
• Never travel coach again. Or commercial flights. Charters all the way!
• Start a charitable foundation to support public broadcasting, sex education, HIV awareness and research, turtle conservation, preservation of historical sites... that sort of thing. I could just give money away to do that, I guess, but a foundation would set up the infrastructure to provide into the future.
• Give myself free reign to totally absorb myself in learning something new, then getting bored with that and move onto the next thing.

Now it's David Bowie. Less abrupt than the last transition.

5 places to run away to
I'm not very good at running away...

• Books. I like to run away into a book. No joke.
• The Carribean was nice.
• The aquarium. Even though Sheila's not there anymore.
• my bed
• a long lazy seaside vacation with the boy

5 things I'd never wear
This is a hard one, actually.

• ANY of those horrible fun-fur intarsia concoctions we saw at the fiber fair
• Skorts
• A ring through the septum of my nose
• An ewok costume
• Genuine tortoiseshell -- unless it's REALLY REALLY vintage, like over 100 years old

5 favorite tv shows

• The X Files when it didn't suck
• Harvey Birdman
• King of the Hill. It feels homey.
• NEW Battlestar Galactica. Even with the icky-hardcore season finale.
• Connections. Yeah, it was a long time ago. And I still love it.

And of course The Simpsons. But that goes without saying...

5 biggest joys

• My boy
• Our family. The parts I like.
• Hot showers
• Sleep
• Cooking and baking

5 favorite toys

• Our teeny PowerBook
• Immersion blender. It's just fun to use.
• Tivo
• PS2
• The yardstick we use to poke the cats. That's entertainment!!

5 people to pass this on to
Puh-leeze. Like I know 5 people?

posted by bethanye 8:16:00 AM   

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I can't bee-lieve you didn't list lame under things you wouldn't wear!

# posted by MollyB : 9/30/2005 2:44 PM

 

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2005-09-29

 

I don't think that you could engineer a better story for me. A man who walks his sulcata in the warm evenings... What a cutie!!! I am in love...

posted by bethanye 8:15:00 AM    More Info

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2005-09-23

 

News, news. First, all family seems to be safe and accounted for and out of Houston. Second, Stevie got a job working as an apprentice carpenter this week. In many ways, it seems like an ideal job for him. We'll see how it works out, but I will miss having a house-husband. However, the extra fundage will be a boon. What else, what else? Work has been busy and crazy, and I took the afternoon for errands and mental health today. Oh, and a little blogging, too. Does that count as an errand or mental health? No links to that article about blogging as therapy are necessary...
MIL liked the tea cozy, so that went over well.
I'm working on Christmas knitting now, which isn't terribly engaging, unfortunately. I'm thinking about making Samus from the new Knitty, but maybe in black microfiber ribbon? I have some from Tess's Designer Yarns I picked up at the fiber fair a few months ago, and I think it should show the cables really well. So, that's on the "maybe" list. As is the Elann Cables and Lace cardigan. I guess I'm not sure if I'm willing to embark on a black sweater (which both would be) when I still have the Molly Lopi sweater floating around unfinished.
What else, what else? Oh, we're going to The City to check out all the ships during Fleet Weekend. That should make the boy happy. And if I can get it together, I might even blog about it. <grin>

posted by bethanye 3:16:00 PM   

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2005-09-15

 

Probably too "emo" for my cousin. And not in the "emo" I know. So, Matt, on the off-chance you're reading this, you should really just close the window and move on. I mean it. Skip this post.

Now, some family crap.
It seems that my estranged mother (EM) has come back onto the scene, and is pissed that she wasn't notified when my dear aunt, her sister, passed away. Apparently, EM called my uncle (her brother) and tore him a new one over it. I don't know how precisely she discovered that this had all occurred, and frankly I really don't care. However, during the time I spent in Houston, in Doreen's final weeks, I did talk to her about this very topic. Specifically, I remember the day after I got in town, I told Doreen that the last time she had been gravely ill, and we weren't sure how long she had left, MoMo and I had talked about (a) whether or not we should contact EM; and (b) if so, which one of us should do it. We decided after some agony that it was not appropriate for us to bring her into it, and that we would do nothing. But in the end, it was a non-issue. Doreen recovered, again, for the nth time, and we all breathed a sigh of relief and went about our lives. At any rate, I related it all to Doreen when I was visiting her.
She said, "No, you did the right thing."
I said, "You know, if it comes up again, we can do it. We can call her."
And she took my hand and said, "No. I have everything I need right here."
The next day, or maybe that evening (hard to be sure), Doreen had a stroke that limited her movement and she took to bed. Though several people asked me (and MoMo, at different times) whether or not we had/should contact our mother, we politely declined. It would have been against Doreen's wishes. Doreen passed away surrounded by people who loved her and spent their time thinking about how to make her comfortable, undistracted by the drama queen factor introducing EM would have certainly caused.
Now that EM is screaming and having a fit (again, based on third-party reports) about her exclusion from Doreen's final days, I don't really understand what ground she thinks she has to stand on. Stop blaming everyone else and take some damn responsibility, fer chrissakes! And I'm not the first person to say this:

Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2004 13:58:17 -0800 (PST)
From: Doreen
Subject: WHY
To: email address omitted

you know anne when you called i did not hesitate to give you joe's correct phone number. i did not dream you would want to start up more crap. abviously joe does not remember taking the picture of jacob and sending it to you, i had him sign a note stating he would take full responsibility for it and he only did it because you were so upset. he thought that would help you not make you angry. and who gets the crapy e-mail - ME, telling me how i am an vindictive little bitch who never forgave you for oprah. i don't give a shit about oprah. if you felt that was the truth than whatever....... i am just sorry you blame me for all of your problems with your daughters. you acted no better than our own mother to them and if you wanted to be part of their life you could have but you can't take the blame for anything. it was always someone else's problem. i seem to have taken the time to get to know them, no matter what horrible things you said about me and i happy to say that i speak to them at least once a month. you have to give a little to get a little. you forget how you used them as pawns against pat & i when ever we did not play your games.
i'm over all of that no matter what you think. you did not even ask or care to see how i have been these last few years. i know you don't care and that is the sad thing, i am the only one that actually cares about you and wonders how you and dave are, i know he was having heart problems and i hope that he is better. i want you to be happy but not at the expense of doging me. i tried my best to keep up with you but you see black and i see white when it comes to life.
doreen

Email posted with permission of family who received it as a forward from Doreen. I wouldn't have posted it if I thought she would object.
I don't know why precisely I'm so torqued about the rant EM gave to my uncle. I wasn't at all surprised. I guess it boils down to the fact that even when Doug lost his wife, and the boys lost their mother, and Doreen lost the chance to see them grow fully into men, all I can hear EM screaming about is "how could you do this to ME?" It's all I've ever heard from her, and I can't imagine that this situation was any different.

posted by bethanye 2:19:00 PM   

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2005-09-14

 

Am I the last one to hear about this?

1. Go to Google.
2. Type in "failure".
3. Select "I'm Feeling Lucky."

Heh.
On an unrelated note, I'm still nursing this pinched neck, so I skipped knitting last night. I should have just gone and had a drink, in retrospect, even if I couldn't stitch.

posted by bethanye 8:51:00 AM   

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2005-09-13

 

Many of my co-workers seem to be afflicted with a strange disorder. This disorder prevents them from loading the dishwasher in any reasonable way, allowing for soap and water to actually hit all surfaces of the dishes. It's strange, because I work with some pretty amazingly smart people -- people utterly unable to load the dishwasher with any sense of logic or order. I think I should name this disorder. Any ideas?

posted by bethanye 3:11:00 PM   

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2005-09-06

 

So much to say. Or maybe not that much. Back in the Bay Area, where they air-condition the outdoors. The return flight was calm and uneventful. I finished a hat and a scarf on this trip, not as a set, and have already given the hat to its recipient. Cheryl really REALLY loves alpaca, and Karrie does too, but the stuff I was using seemed determined to split every other stitch. Grr... I have enough left to make another, smaller hat for Jake, so maybe I'll do that.
I really don't think there's anything I can say that will matter in the wake of the horrors in NOLA, but the tragedy that has played out has led me to love Robert Siegel and Keith Olbermann. They're now both thoroughly on my non-enemies list, like Daniel Schorr.
The DMB show in Dallas was much much MUCH better than the one in SF. Maybe it was the weather, or maybe just the circumstances. But it was a good show, unlike the disappointing one here.
Lots of craziness to catch up on now that I'm back in the office. Geez! Three days away and all hell breaks loose.

posted by bethanye 6:08:00 PM   

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2005-09-01

 

Pet peeve. I just read one of those "humorous anecdotes" about a woman doing her own bikini wax. And I guess it was funny, except that I lost the ability to empathize with the writer early on when she said she laid a strip of wax to the left side of her vagina. Look, lady, it's your labia, or your vulva maybe, but NOT your vagina. Unless your build varies wildly from standard issue.
I know, it's not a typical pet peeve.
I'm in DFW, sitting in Molly's living room, looking up how to get through this level of Metroid Zero Mission. Yeah, I'm stuck. I'm just not the superior gamer, I guess.

posted by bethanye 3:11:00 PM   

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