I'm positively giddy. It's like Christmas, my birthday, and Halloween all rolled up into one. Serenity premeries today, and I'm blowing off work to go to the 12:30 showing. (I'm not technically blowing it off, today is our last official half-day Friday, so the office is closed. But since I would have been staying anyway to work on audits, it's blowing off work.) I've got my change of clothes, including my Joss Whedon is My Master Now t-shirt. I'll probably take off around 11:30 or so. "No power in the 'verse can stop me!

I'm debating buying another ticket for the 9:30 showing, so I can go again after Testing, especially if that's when Kristen and Todd are going. I don't think there's another time I can go again, unless it's Sunday afternoon. But Chelsea and Josh are going then, I think. Hmmmm. Wonder if I can fit in three showings in a weekend? Just doing my part!

"There's no place I can be, since I found Serenity...You can't take the sky from me!"

Pink: It´s my new obsession

Or rather, the obsession of Univerity of Iowa adjunct law lecturer Erin Buzuvis. Ms. Buzuvis is offendend. She's offended by pink locker rooms.

Yup, you heard me right. The gist of her argument, as I understand it, is that pink is associated with girls and homosexuals, and by decorating the visitor's football locker room in pink, it is equivalent to calling the opposing teams "sissies". Ms. Buzuvis finds that offensive, and is taking the issue before the NCAA.

In my opinion, by making such a fuss over a pink locker room, Ms. Buzuvis has done more to perpetuate this stereotype than to end it. How many women and gays even thought to be offended by the decorating scheme before she said anything? I know I wasn't.

Maybe people who actually remember what things were like before the sexual revolution can hold on to their prejudices about the color, but for the rest of us, especially the college students who will be occupying these rooms for a few hours six times a year, it's not that big a deal.

Just ask Steven Tyler.

I've been watching too much CSI or something. I dreamt last night that we found an emaciated body in the garden. Lew and I were doing some gardening in our parents' garden, which was basically a swamp. Part of it was like the marsh where we fished in Alaska, but part of it was mucky and gunky and deep. That's where we found the body. I yelled at Lew to call 911, but he wouldn't do it for some reason, so I had to swim out of the swamp and run to the house to call. Ugh.

I did some long-neglected chores yesterday that felt good to have done. I organized and swept out the garage, and swept all the cobwebs and bug bodies and accumulated dust from the basement. Both look much better, and weren't as bad as I'd procrastinated them out to be. Of course, the stink of the garage is still pretty bad, as that's where I keep my garbage before I set it out to be picked up. Sometimes I'd think it would be better if I generated more garbage, so it wouldn't sit outside for so long until I had enough accumulated to make a full bag. It's not so bad in the winter, since it freezes, but when it sits in an unventilated garage during 100 degree+ heat, it can start smelling pretty bad. Even my truck is starting to pick it up. Fortunately, tomorrow is garbage day. Hope I remember to go buy garbage stickers.

I got a letter Saturday from my aunt, and it started out "Thank you so much for agreeing to be servers for Rachael's (my cousin) wedding!" And I'm thinking: I don't remember being asked to be a server. I'm about ready to chalk it up to my poor memory, although I don't know how I'd forget that, when I notice that the letter is also addressed to Emily, who is not coming to the wedding. Why would Emily be on this letter if she had been asked and said she's not going to be able to come? Maybe I hadn't been asked after all. But before I get all up in arms about assuming I'll be serving at this wedding, I'll have to find out if I've actually been asked to do it.

Living so close to tailgate central, I'm used to the trash. After every game, I have to pick crap out of my yard that people are so careless as to drop. I don't mind bottles and cans, since there are people who come around to pick them up for the deposit. But the crap like paper plates, beer cases, cups...all that stuff I have to pick up after the game. Usually, I'm in the front yard and can yell at those people who think they're anonymous: "Do I look like your mother? Pick that shit up!"

It's the back yard that I worry about sometimes. I was in the kitchen last Saturday, putting on sunblock, when this guy walks into my backyard, looks around, and starts to drop trou. He musta completely zoned out on the window, because I was right there. I knocked on the window, gave him a 'what-the-hell-do-you-think-you're-doing-my-back-yard-is-not-a-public-toilet' gesture. He looked at me like I was the one who wasn't where I was supposed to be.

But I have to say the most interesting thing I've found so far, I found earlier this evening as I was mowing my lawn. As I was walking along, something shiny caught my eye: it was a pair of handcuffs. Saturday, right after a cop car with its sirens on (which I have never seen during a football game) tried to speed its way through drunk pedestrians, a bike cop raced from behind my house, assumedly because he had cut through the backyards. My guess is that he dropped them then.

Me, being the good samaritan that I am, dropped them off at the cop shop at the end of my street on my way to tae kwon do this evening. I was tempted to keep them, especially after the cop said that he hadn't heard of any reported missing, but then I thought, 'Where might these have been?' and the idea wasn't so appealing anymore.

Especially without keys.

My mother has done an evil thing. Anyone who knows me knows I hate to be in suspense. If you're going to suprise me, don't tell me there will be a surprise. I will agonize and obsess the entire time.

I get a voice mail on Friday: Would you be available on an early Sunday afternoon in early April? I know that's your busy season, and it wouldn't be evening, just late morning/early afternoon.

Okaaay. I call, leave a message: we've slowed down by early April, and I try and take Sundays off during tax season anyway. What on earth are you planning eight months in advance?

When I finally actually get to talk to her and ask the question, I get: "Christmas present? A suprise."

I hate suprises! What on earth do you have to plan eight months ahead of time besides a wedding? And it's not a wedding. Can you help me come up with some ideas? If I have something to latch onto, even if it's not right, I can make it eight months. Help!

I haven't done a quiz in ages.

The One True Slayer
91 Bites of Slayage

Damn. Not only have you died twice doing what you do, but no one understands your burden and you find yourself disturbingly attracted to vampires. You are the ultimate repository of what it takes to be the Slayer, and no one can tell you otherwise. If you don't own all seven seasons on DVD, it's cause they haven't been released in your country yet. I am in total awe of you, and maybe just the tiniest bit creeped out.


The Ultimate Buffy Test

Mish-mash day, because I've been lax about blogging:

I smell like marshmallows. I bought St. Ives Swiss Vanilla moisturizer until I can find some Cetaphil, and now I smell like marshmallows.

I'm getting new contacts. Someone screwed up along the way, and they wouldn't tell me who. But they're making me a new pair and I don't have to pay any extra.

I'm a little miffed that I have to be out in the field this week of all weeks. I was dying to listen to the Roberts hearings, but I'm working in a concrete warehouse and can't get radio reception. Plus, no air conditioning. Yesterday was so humid, I had to come home and take a shower. The audit isn't going very well, either. This is only the second time they've ever had an audit, so it's at least going better than last year, but they still don't have their shit together and can't find things when we ask for them. We're for sure going to have to leave at the end of the week with a huge list of things for them to get to us, and that's just a recipe for disaster.

So I've been downloading the podcast summaries from NPR. That's pretty cool. I download, and then I can listen the next day, though the summaries are only an hour long. This iShuffle was the best present ever! Well, not ever, but it's up there.

Things with the tenant have been better since I called and asked her to turn it down. I'm thinking email wasn't the best communication method in that situation. :) I avoid conflict.

I am so freakin' pissed. I got my new contacts in the mail yesterday, and I was so excited. The first new pair I've had in eleven years, and my vision is completely fuzzy. All right, I think, I'll call, I'll send them home with Mom and she can take them to the Vision Center and they can get them fixed.

First of all, I get hooked up with a woman who thinks I'm a moron. I called, left a message, spelled my name so they could pull my file and take a look to see if they ordered it wrong. The woman calls back, "You have a problem with your contacts?" Yes, that's what I said in my message. "Yes, I got my new contacts in the mail yesterday, and the prescription is wrong." "Do you have them in the wrong eyes?" If you had pulled my file, you would know I've been wearing contacts for almost twenty years, and that the prescription between my eyes isn't different enough to make a whit of difference. Plus, there's a black dot on the right eye for new contacts, so you can't mix them up. But I know people in general are stupid, so I'll supress the fact that you think I am. "Yeah, I tried that. Plus, there's the black dot on the right eye." "Well, let me pull your file, and I'll call you back."

"It looks like your left eye is only a quarter of a point different than your right, so that wouldn't make that much of a difference." Yep, thanks for letting me know. "Yes, I'm wearing my old contacts, because the prescription is so bad with these I can't see to drive. The prescription is wrong." "The prescription can't be wrong. I think we'll have to have you come in and see the doctor with them in."

WTF???? "The prescription can't be wrong"???? Then why the hell can't I see out of these contacts? Someone fucked something up along the way, and now I have to take out a Saturday morning and spend $20 on gas for a trip to Muscatine because someone is incompetent. I'm raving pissed. "The prescription can't be wrong" my ass.

When Uncle Dan dropped mom off at my house yesterday, he got to see my floors. I'd finished the quarter-round job over the long weekend. He said my corners looked really good; he was impressed. That was one of the best compliments I could have received. A mechanical engineer who restores houses as a hobby was impressed.

I've only been lurking on the WD lately, but I made a post yesterday on Hurricane Katrina. Cindy made a post asking who is to blame for the debacle, and I finally answered this:

I've been listening to the (non-stop) coverage of Hurricane Katrina on NPR, and my conclusion is this:

I feel really cold saying this, but people rely too much on the government to tell them what to do. It's my impression that people didn't take the warnings seriously and didn't prepare well enough. I think that if every single person in New Orleans had had an evacuation plan, things wouldn't have been as bad as they were. Seriously, if water is coming in the first floor of your house, it's time to leave. Take your extra water and food supplies and that stuff you gathered when you knew a hurricane was coming and head for the hurricane shelter.

I'm just as guilty. I've paid attention to tornado sirens exactly once in my life. My evacuation plan is basically that my parents will come and get me. Maybe a severity system on evacuation recommendations would have helped. You feel pretty stupid spending all that time and money evacuting when you don't need to, but it certainly paid off this time. One guy phoned in whose employees thought he was absoultely crazy after he formed a disaster recovery plan in response to the Times Picune's series on the effects of a severe hurricane, and they executed it several times to no end for other hurricanes. But those employees sure are glad now that they still have jobs.

I suppose it's just human nature to be optimistic, to think that it's not going to happen to them. But that's why we have life insurance, living wills, disability insurance, etc. It just makes me cringe to hear people basically say "The government should have saved me from myself." The government shouldn't have to make you excercise common sense. It should recommend that you have an evacuation plan, and should provide resources for you to form one and serve as a tool in executing it. But at some point, people have to be responsible for themselves.

Understand I'm not completely absolving government and government agencies of guilt. There are things that could have been done better. I just think it's a little unrealistic to expect the government to the be the be-all save-all.

It's like a slumber party! I cooked supper and we watched Grosse Pointe Blank. With many interruptions from phone calls. Mostly people asking about how Mom's first day of chemo went, but also a call from Lew asking how long a paper clip is. Yes, I had to unbend and measure a paper clip. What kind of homework do they give this boy? I got a hug and kiss goodnight. Company for breakfast and the commute to work. Sometimes I miss living with someone. Too bad it has to be under the circumstances.

I think I'm just gonna have to break down and buy myself a circular saw.

I woke up around six o'clock this morning. Not from the tailgaters in line for the lot, but from a nightmare. I dreamt I was parking cars, but not at my house. I was parking them at my parents' house, and evidently, Dad had died and I had inherited the house, which was in the same place as my house, because the Olive Ct. lot was "down that way". At any rate, I woke up (in my dream) on game day, with tailgaters already parked in the circular drive and in the yard. I started going 'round to collect money. People kept bitching at me for having to pay $20, and I was like, then you shouldn't have parked in my yard, and then someone tried to pay me in foreign currency, and I was trying to figure out if it would cover the fee, since they didn't have any other money. That's when I woke up for real.

Trust an accountant to have a nightmare about translating foreign currency.

The excitement is palpable. The first clue is the traffic. There's more than usual, and more than the usual share of RVs. Cars run up and down my dead end street. People are out in their yards, mowing, weeding, trimming. Tents go up on the main drag, and a police officer directs traffic around vendors' vehicles while they set up. The construction workers put up barriers around the areas where they didn't quite finish landscaping. People laugh and shout and strike up conversations with total strangers. There's one thing everyone can talk about.

It's the day before the season football opener.

It took me forever to find a pair of shoes to wear this morning. My left foot and ankle is so swollen. Christie, in her semi-professional opinion, thinks it's a side-effect from shin-spints. My ankle/shin has been sensitive for about a week, and last night as I was stretching before tae kwon do, I noticed my ankle was quite a bit bigger than the other one.

After icing and wrapping the evening before, I woke up this morning with a huge foot. So big, it was a bit numb. Moving it around helped, better circulation, I suspect. It feels better now, but my foot still looks like a balloon.

What a development.