Okay, so I have had this really slowly-draining bathtub for a few weeks now. I started out by trying to plunge and snake out the drain with no success. Then I tried a variety of drain cleaners, starting out with an environmentally-friendly enzyme, and then trying a couple of more poisonous drain openers (with apologies to Mother Earth, I was desperate). No luck. So I finally called "Roto-Rooter" and this very nice man came out with his larger, electric snake thing that in my experience, usually clears even the worst clogs.
He went down into my basement to look at the pipes and said, "You have the worst trap setup imaginable." Oh, joy. He said that he had about 50% success in clearing this type of pipe but he'd give it a try. So he went in with his electric snake and, well, had absolutely no success.
The estimate for replacing the pipes wasn't as bad as I thought, but I can think of a million more entertaining things that I could do with that money.
The irony of it is that just a few days after putting an inordinate amount of money on my Visa card for the Robert Plant Alison Krauss concert, I will end up putting another huge bill on it for the new drain pipes.
As one of my friends who lives in a very large, beautiful, and high maintenance older home said, "It's never just a leaky faucet. You end up having to re-plumb the whole house."
On a more exciting note, I will be seeing the Dalai Lama tomorrow. Maybe afterward I'll actually have something interesting to say.
I am also doing very badly at both my accounting class and National Poetry Writing Month. It seems that both the logical and the creative parts of my mind decided to run off for a vacation somewhere. It's weird: usually I am either very creative, very logical (handy in an MBA program), or both. I don't normally hit a mental roadblock in both areas of my brain. This is exceedingly strange to me.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Forgive the shouting, but....
I AM FINALLY GOING TO THE ROBERT PLANT/ALLISON KRAUSE CONCERT!!!!!!!!!!!
I got another email from the website, offering more VIP packages, and by some miracle, I was able to get a ticket!! My apologies to those of you who I tried to bring along. The price of the ticket was such that no one but the most dedicated fan would pay for it, and with my lack of success in getting even one ticket in the past, I had to grab this one!!!
I am lucky: the concert venue is very close to where I work so I won't even need to battle traffic to get there.
Now, of course, is the Eternal Question: What do I wear to my first Robert Plant concert EVER!???????
Still hyperventilating,
Willow
I got another email from the website, offering more VIP packages, and by some miracle, I was able to get a ticket!! My apologies to those of you who I tried to bring along. The price of the ticket was such that no one but the most dedicated fan would pay for it, and with my lack of success in getting even one ticket in the past, I had to grab this one!!!
I am lucky: the concert venue is very close to where I work so I won't even need to battle traffic to get there.
Now, of course, is the Eternal Question: What do I wear to my first Robert Plant concert EVER!???????
Still hyperventilating,
Willow
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Logic applied to Lord of the Rings
Okay, I wrote this last week, but since I am doing the same thing with "Star Wars" at the moment, I thought I'd post it now.
I stumbled upon "The Fellowship of the Ring" tonight and have been watching it on and off. I haven't seen it in quite awhile, which may account for some skeptical questions that popped into my head during different scenes:
Okay, if you were sitting on the porch in the evening, and some creature (Ringwraith) comes up to your door, looking like the Angel of Death, and scares your watchdog into the house, would you give him directions?
Why does it take Gandalf so long to figure out that The One Ring was really The One Ring? As far as I could see, Middle-Earth didn't have a huge inventory of rings that made people (hobbits, elves, whatever Gollum was, etc.) invisible. Unless I missed the scene with the Invisible Ring Emporium.
Finally, if you did finally figure out what the One Ring was, and you went to your boss (Saruman), and your boss looked like he hadn't slept in about three months, and his place looked like a Middle Earth version of a meth lab, wouldn't you think something was up??
Or am I just jaded??
I stumbled upon "The Fellowship of the Ring" tonight and have been watching it on and off. I haven't seen it in quite awhile, which may account for some skeptical questions that popped into my head during different scenes:
Okay, if you were sitting on the porch in the evening, and some creature (Ringwraith) comes up to your door, looking like the Angel of Death, and scares your watchdog into the house, would you give him directions?
Why does it take Gandalf so long to figure out that The One Ring was really The One Ring? As far as I could see, Middle-Earth didn't have a huge inventory of rings that made people (hobbits, elves, whatever Gollum was, etc.) invisible. Unless I missed the scene with the Invisible Ring Emporium.
Finally, if you did finally figure out what the One Ring was, and you went to your boss (Saruman), and your boss looked like he hadn't slept in about three months, and his place looked like a Middle Earth version of a meth lab, wouldn't you think something was up??
Or am I just jaded??
Guess Who Wins...
Let's see: Sunday night, what should I do: Financial Accounting homework or watch "Return of the Jedi" for about the thousandth time?
Yep, I'm sitting in front of the television, posting on my blog. I promised myself that I would only watch that scene on Tatooine where Luke and friends escape from Jabba the Hutt, but suddenly I find myself Applying Logic to Star Wars:
Why is it that the bad guys are always ugly/slimy/look like they haven't washed??
How does a disembodied mouth evolve in the desert?
Why do the ugly bad guys take Luke's handcuffs off just before pushing him into the giant mouth, thus making it so much easier for Luke to grab the lightsaber that R2 threw to him?
What, um, did Jabba the Hutt (who as far as I could see has an anatomy akin to a giant slug) have in mind to do with Leia?? (if anyone has specific ideas about this, please keep them to yourselves. Heh.)
Is it my imagination or does Yoda look a bit like Gollum?
That's about it. I'd better shut this off and get back to accounting homework.
May the Force be with you!
Yep, I'm sitting in front of the television, posting on my blog. I promised myself that I would only watch that scene on Tatooine where Luke and friends escape from Jabba the Hutt, but suddenly I find myself Applying Logic to Star Wars:
Why is it that the bad guys are always ugly/slimy/look like they haven't washed??
How does a disembodied mouth evolve in the desert?
Why do the ugly bad guys take Luke's handcuffs off just before pushing him into the giant mouth, thus making it so much easier for Luke to grab the lightsaber that R2 threw to him?
What, um, did Jabba the Hutt (who as far as I could see has an anatomy akin to a giant slug) have in mind to do with Leia?? (if anyone has specific ideas about this, please keep them to yourselves. Heh.)
Is it my imagination or does Yoda look a bit like Gollum?
That's about it. I'd better shut this off and get back to accounting homework.
May the Force be with you!
Interesting personality quiz
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
What is Your World View? created with QuizFarm.com | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| You scored as Cultural Creative Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational.
|
Monday, April 7, 2008
"Dexter" revisited and Metallica whispering
Okay, I have now watched several episodes of "Dexter," and, I have to admit, am in the process of downloading the entire first season from Amazon.
Anyway, my initial fascination with this show has eroded somewhat, possibly because I had a really bad case of insomnia last night and began to apply logic to the ideas in the show. So I ask my occasional reader:
If you rescued a child from a crime scene, adopted him, and he began to display some, err, unusual traits even as a young child, would you a: get his butt into therapy or b: teach him how to stalk and kill. Apparently Dexter's foster father thought "b" was the more useful course of action.
Okay, Dexter is an admitted serial killer of other serial killers. He lives in Miami. The show has been on since 2006. Let's say Showtime does about 26 episodes/year, and Dexter offs one serial killer per episode, all in his immediate vicinity. That would equal about 52 serial killers for Miami that the police department hadn't either caught or suspected, as Dexter basically leaves no tracks. Either Miami is some sort of gathering place for serial killers or this show is seriously running on "Improbability Drive." I wonder what the Miami Tourist Bureau thinks of this show.
Finally, his foster sister, a homicide detective, is currently dating--you guessed it--a serial killer. Now, I have about as much training in investigation as a gnat, and the minute this guy came on screen and the audience was made aware of his profession (prosthetic/orthotic maker), I said to myself, yep, that's the serial killer they've been looking for. This is in addition to the serial killers that Dexter has been after, and Dexter himself, which brings the count up to about...54 serial killers in Miami, and I'm not even counting the ones that I may not have noticed or forgotten about.
I have to admit, this only partially diminishes my fascination with this show. I really love the psychology. I almost went to graduate school for psych, but I realized that there is a huge difference between my fascination with the collective and individual psyches that make up the human race and sitting in an office all day listening to people talk about their problems. Not that I am against therapy--I have certainly used it myself in many different situations. But I was an ER/ICU nurse and still am at heart: I don't have the patience to become a therapist. This, however, does not diminish one bit my fascination with why people do what they do.
But I digress. I still will watch "Dexter," especially the episodes that I paid for (heh). Certainly the scripting and acting (especially the acting of the man who plays Dexter--Michael C. Hall, if I am not mistaken, for some reason I keep forgetting his name), are still very compelling. And there is plenty of the kind of one-liner humor in this show that I love. My favorite lines out of the last couple of weeks:
Dexter's really naive girlfriend texts him: "What are you doing right now?" Dexter mutters to himself, "Breaking and entering."
And on a completely different note (heh), I have discovered a really strange talent: I know when a song by Metallica is going to be played on the radio, and can tune into a radio station right about the time the song starts. I have no idea why. I like Metallica, but I have never felt a huge passion for them the way I have for, say, Robert Plant or Peter Gabriel.
Hopefully one of these days my talent will evolve into "Lottery Number Whispering."
Anyway, my initial fascination with this show has eroded somewhat, possibly because I had a really bad case of insomnia last night and began to apply logic to the ideas in the show. So I ask my occasional reader:
If you rescued a child from a crime scene, adopted him, and he began to display some, err, unusual traits even as a young child, would you a: get his butt into therapy or b: teach him how to stalk and kill. Apparently Dexter's foster father thought "b" was the more useful course of action.
Okay, Dexter is an admitted serial killer of other serial killers. He lives in Miami. The show has been on since 2006. Let's say Showtime does about 26 episodes/year, and Dexter offs one serial killer per episode, all in his immediate vicinity. That would equal about 52 serial killers for Miami that the police department hadn't either caught or suspected, as Dexter basically leaves no tracks. Either Miami is some sort of gathering place for serial killers or this show is seriously running on "Improbability Drive." I wonder what the Miami Tourist Bureau thinks of this show.
Finally, his foster sister, a homicide detective, is currently dating--you guessed it--a serial killer. Now, I have about as much training in investigation as a gnat, and the minute this guy came on screen and the audience was made aware of his profession (prosthetic/orthotic maker), I said to myself, yep, that's the serial killer they've been looking for. This is in addition to the serial killers that Dexter has been after, and Dexter himself, which brings the count up to about...54 serial killers in Miami, and I'm not even counting the ones that I may not have noticed or forgotten about.
I have to admit, this only partially diminishes my fascination with this show. I really love the psychology. I almost went to graduate school for psych, but I realized that there is a huge difference between my fascination with the collective and individual psyches that make up the human race and sitting in an office all day listening to people talk about their problems. Not that I am against therapy--I have certainly used it myself in many different situations. But I was an ER/ICU nurse and still am at heart: I don't have the patience to become a therapist. This, however, does not diminish one bit my fascination with why people do what they do.
But I digress. I still will watch "Dexter," especially the episodes that I paid for (heh). Certainly the scripting and acting (especially the acting of the man who plays Dexter--Michael C. Hall, if I am not mistaken, for some reason I keep forgetting his name), are still very compelling. And there is plenty of the kind of one-liner humor in this show that I love. My favorite lines out of the last couple of weeks:
Dexter's really naive girlfriend texts him: "What are you doing right now?" Dexter mutters to himself, "Breaking and entering."
And on a completely different note (heh), I have discovered a really strange talent: I know when a song by Metallica is going to be played on the radio, and can tune into a radio station right about the time the song starts. I have no idea why. I like Metallica, but I have never felt a huge passion for them the way I have for, say, Robert Plant or Peter Gabriel.
Hopefully one of these days my talent will evolve into "Lottery Number Whispering."
Thursday, April 3, 2008
From serial killer humor to karma....
Besides being a place that is almost devoid of humor, my workplace has a number of very fundamentalist Christians--both patients and staff. So I keep my "Vision Quests," crystals, and sweatlodges to myself, needless to say.
Anyway, the other day I was talking with a very nice patient who gave me some information on her religion: Jehovah's Witness. It was (to me) a rather morbid treatise on whether or not we are living in the "Last Days." Rather than trying to explain that I follow my own spiritual practice, and am very happy with it, I accepted this pamphlet with thanks.
To make matters a bit more surreal, this patient thought I was Jewish, either in spirituality or by descent. Which is odd because the heritage I am aware of is as follows: Swedish, German, Norwegian, and possibly Irish (I do have some mystery in my background due to adoptions on both sides of my family, but I am going with what I know or can be reasonably sure of).
Which brought me to thinking about all of my friends and patients, and who they all said I looked like: Bette Midler (a long time ago), Frodo Baggins, Winona Ryder, Jodie Foster, and now someone of Jewish descent. But I digress...
The problem that I have been having is what to do with this pamphlet full of information that I do not want. Although it is not a part of my sacred teachings, it is sacred to someone, so I feel a bit uncomfortable just throwing it away. There it is, sitting on my kitchen counter, with the "Are We In The Last Days" cover staring up at me every time I pass it.
Is it bad karma to throw someone else's gift of their spirituality away, no matter whether I agree with it or not? Or am I just as usual over thinking a simple situation???
The best solution I have come up with so far is to recycle the pamphlet. That way, it will be going back to the Earth, and I will have at least done something constructive with it.
Does anyone else in my small circle of readers wonder about such things???
Anyway, the other day I was talking with a very nice patient who gave me some information on her religion: Jehovah's Witness. It was (to me) a rather morbid treatise on whether or not we are living in the "Last Days." Rather than trying to explain that I follow my own spiritual practice, and am very happy with it, I accepted this pamphlet with thanks.
To make matters a bit more surreal, this patient thought I was Jewish, either in spirituality or by descent. Which is odd because the heritage I am aware of is as follows: Swedish, German, Norwegian, and possibly Irish (I do have some mystery in my background due to adoptions on both sides of my family, but I am going with what I know or can be reasonably sure of).
Which brought me to thinking about all of my friends and patients, and who they all said I looked like: Bette Midler (a long time ago), Frodo Baggins, Winona Ryder, Jodie Foster, and now someone of Jewish descent. But I digress...
The problem that I have been having is what to do with this pamphlet full of information that I do not want. Although it is not a part of my sacred teachings, it is sacred to someone, so I feel a bit uncomfortable just throwing it away. There it is, sitting on my kitchen counter, with the "Are We In The Last Days" cover staring up at me every time I pass it.
Is it bad karma to throw someone else's gift of their spirituality away, no matter whether I agree with it or not? Or am I just as usual over thinking a simple situation???
The best solution I have come up with so far is to recycle the pamphlet. That way, it will be going back to the Earth, and I will have at least done something constructive with it.
Does anyone else in my small circle of readers wonder about such things???
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
An unlikely "ally"
I am lying in the dark, posting to my blog as much by feel as by sight, and hoping the battery in my laptop lasts longer than my musings.
I was speaking to a co-worker today. We agreed there was a distinct lack of humor in the department in which I am working. To be more specific, there is a distinct lack of the kind of oddball, off-the-wall, ironic humor that I thrive on. I have delivered one-liners that would have my friends belly-laughing, only to meet with blank stares at work. If I make any kind of joke, only the most pedestrian and bland joke will go over with most of my co-workers (except the one who hired on at about the same time I did...she at least appreciates one-liners and the occasional "Far Side" cartoon).
Anyone who has wanted to make a comment about the "Ministry of Silly Walks," or "Put an SEP field around it" but knows that no one in their general vicinity is either familiar with Monty Python or the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" can understand my feeling of creative claustorphobia.
Enter my newest favorite show: Dexter. I'll be honest: I tuned into this show for the first time out of morbid curiosity about how the writers would handle a main character who was a serial killer. Anyone familiar with the show knows that Dexter is a serial killer...of bad guys.
I am completely hooked on this show. Not only does it have a fascinating psychological theme to it, it also has some very (possibly unintentionally) funny moments. Dexter, at one point thinking he was going to be caught, said of his girlfriend (yep he has one): "First she marries a drug dealer and then she finds out her boyfriend is a serial killer. At some point you have to start taking this kind of thing personally." May not be an exact quote, but you get the idea.
It's late and I am tired--and some idiot in my neighborhood is blasting music that the whole county can hear, so I am probably not really expressing myself very eloquently--although the warped part of my mind is wondering if it is worth the trouble to go disconnect the rude neighbor's electrical circuits.
But anyway, if there is anyone among my friends and readers (all two or three of you) who is into this show, I would love to hear from you. I have found it to be just the escapist remedy for my really boring, staid, middle of the road work situation.
I was speaking to a co-worker today. We agreed there was a distinct lack of humor in the department in which I am working. To be more specific, there is a distinct lack of the kind of oddball, off-the-wall, ironic humor that I thrive on. I have delivered one-liners that would have my friends belly-laughing, only to meet with blank stares at work. If I make any kind of joke, only the most pedestrian and bland joke will go over with most of my co-workers (except the one who hired on at about the same time I did...she at least appreciates one-liners and the occasional "Far Side" cartoon).
Anyone who has wanted to make a comment about the "Ministry of Silly Walks," or "Put an SEP field around it" but knows that no one in their general vicinity is either familiar with Monty Python or the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" can understand my feeling of creative claustorphobia.
Enter my newest favorite show: Dexter. I'll be honest: I tuned into this show for the first time out of morbid curiosity about how the writers would handle a main character who was a serial killer. Anyone familiar with the show knows that Dexter is a serial killer...of bad guys.
I am completely hooked on this show. Not only does it have a fascinating psychological theme to it, it also has some very (possibly unintentionally) funny moments. Dexter, at one point thinking he was going to be caught, said of his girlfriend (yep he has one): "First she marries a drug dealer and then she finds out her boyfriend is a serial killer. At some point you have to start taking this kind of thing personally." May not be an exact quote, but you get the idea.
It's late and I am tired--and some idiot in my neighborhood is blasting music that the whole county can hear, so I am probably not really expressing myself very eloquently--although the warped part of my mind is wondering if it is worth the trouble to go disconnect the rude neighbor's electrical circuits.
But anyway, if there is anyone among my friends and readers (all two or three of you) who is into this show, I would love to hear from you. I have found it to be just the escapist remedy for my really boring, staid, middle of the road work situation.
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