moved, sorta

I’ve more or less moved over to livejournal, since that’s what I use as a reader as well.  Feel free to add me there – jagadiah.livejournal.com

Two syllables every homeowner loves to hear upon entering the door.

Now I’m wondering what two syllables are the most loved.  “Dog poop”?  “Past due”?  “Guess what?”  The syllables that really come to mind are bro-ken.

I remember fondly the days of apartment living, when I’d bitch about sharing walls with strangers, not being able to paint the walls any color I wanted, and wasting money every month when I could be building equity.

Earlier I mentioned that our heat went out and our roof leak returned worse than ever, all between Christmas and the second week in January.  Since that post, our new neighbors’ movers drove through our yard, digging out a chunk and leaving 8 inch deep tire tracks in the soft earth that will both have to filled and re-seeded.  During the painting of our bathroom trim (which was installed in 2003 and I have just never gotten to), the pipes behind our sink began leaking and apparently that particular size of pipe isn’t made anymore or something.  We’ve been through two replacements already, with SKUs matching those on the originals, and no dice.  Tonight I came home to find that our front spicket had exploded, coating everything in our front yard with icicles and apparently causing someone to call Metro to come turn off our water.

It’s not all that bad, really.  It could be worse and there will come times when it will be.  But days like this….I really wish I had a magical landlord that could swoop in on his unicorn, wave his wand and make all this stuff better without it taking a chunk out of my wallet.

It’s not going to last forever, all right? Earth is out there.

According to TV Guide (by way of ack attack, my personal mentor regarding all things Lost or BSG), tonight’s return to the Galactica will include the identity of the final skin job.

I’m DYING to talk about this with someone, but the two people who I both see regularly and who watch the show are not around or (horrors!) haven’t finished the first half of S4. So I’ll talk to you about it. So there.

SPOILERS THROUGH SEASON 4

Personal log, January 8, 2261

Haha, I’ve never even seen Babylon 5, but I did a quote search for the word January and that came up, with today’s date and everything.  Coincidence?  I think not.

But to the point….

Things I have learned so far in January of 2009:

1. I am a grown up.  I can tell you this with confidence because over the last two weeks, our heater has gone out (see below), my car threw up while driving 75 mph on I65 and then spent two days at the shop (see Twitter), and our roof leak has returned and has increased in both temperament and size since its last visit (see facebook).  Also, as we are on the cusp of likely starting to stock up on crib sheets and cloth diapers, our dryer has started making new noises.  Not good noises.  Gross, scraping, loud noises.  So much for things happening in threes.  But I am going to deal with one thing at a time.  The prospect of either spending thousands of dollars to repair my car or (ugh) financing a new one, installing a new roof, and having to buy a new dryer has not yet sent me into a torrent of tears or a nervous breakdown.  This proves that I am a grown up.  Officially.

I do reserve the right to rescind that title should the urge to cry and throw a tantrum becomes too strong to ignore.

2. Taking a picture every day is harder than it looks.  I’m eight days in and I’ve almost forgotten 7 times.  I think I’ll have a lot of ‘photo taken on blah blah date at 11:26 pm” notes on my flickr pages.

3. Having survived the last four weeks and the crummy weather we’ve had, I think I could actually live in Germany without losing my mind.

4. I’m equally relieved and disconcerted that I’m not experiencing most of the things my pregnant friends are experiencing.  I also look pregnant and I think I’m not supposed to this early, but the people that regularly see me naked back me up on this one (my harem, my body paint artists, the students in the Human Form sculpture class I teach and model for in my bedroom, and my husband).  It’s just that I’ve lost weight in certain places and gained it in my belly.  Maybe I’m retaining water, maybe it’s insulation, but I look like I’ve got a baby up in there.  And I kind of love it.  How far do you have to be before you’re allowed to start sticking that shit out and be proud of looking like you, and only you, keep Anheiser Busch in business?

5. That last one wasn’t really something I’d learned.  It’s just a thing.  Here’s something I have learned for real – how to use the word obsequious in a sentence.  ‘Obsequious’ just sounds better than ‘kiss ass’, doesn’t it?

The cold has now spread to my special part, so I’m gonna do the short version of this.

If for no other reason than being jealous when other people complete it, I’m going to give Project 365 a go.  I’m already slacking and using a picture that I put on Twitpic this morning to illustrate how awesome I look hanging out in our cold ass house.

We discovered on December 30 that our furnace wasn’t working, and by the time CB was able to diagnose the problem on December 31st, it was after 5 on New Years Eve, so we’re hoping against hope that someone will be able to come fix our gas valve thingamabob tomorrow.  Otherwise it’s going to be a long, cold weekend.  On the bright side, it’s hard to do laundry and paint with frozen fingers.  I’ll be on the couch under blankets if you need me.

Oh you just said a mouthful there sister

My mom got the Sex and the City movie DVD for Christmas this year. My brothers mentioned that they’d probably watch it, so I started telling them about the neighbor Dante’s full frontal shot. Then I had to reenact seeing the movie in the theater, sitting next to my mother not only through the girls’ sex scenes but then through a screen full of peen. Tramatic.

My brother asked me if I’d seen Eastern Promises, where apparently Viggo Mortensen drops trou and has a fight scene in the buff. No, I hadn’t seen it, but I sure will be seeing it now. Anyway, his point was that the nakedness was apparently pretty gratuitous and turned into what he called a sausage fest, though as I understand it there was only one sausage, albeit a lot of it.

So I’d never even heard of Eastern Promises until Thursday, and here Jorge Garcia is talking about the same thing. Nobody has ever warned me about too many boobies or cootch being in a movie. I think the message is clear – it is our duty to help Viggo change the world and even out the male/female nudity ratio in film. It is our duty to see this work of art. And hell, weiner aside, it’s Viggo Mortensen. It’s gotta be pretty good even without his naked bod. The naked bod is probably just a bonus for those of us who have been extra good this year.

If you scratch his belly, Clark, he will love you till the day you die.

The dog patiently posing with my favorite present.  There’s some carnage next to his leg from his earlier attack on the gingerbread man toy Santa put in his stocking.  He kicked that gingerbread man’s cotton ass.  Who’s the boss now, gingerbread man?

Merry Christmas, y’all!

That’s all part of the experience, honey.

We actually aren’t experiencing the crunch like we usually do, running insanely around trying to complete last minute shopping, wrapping, cleaning, and cooking.  I’ve got to work a half day this fine Christmas Eve, while CB will be starting the preparations for dinner and finishing up a little gift wrapping.  There’s one stop to make on my way home to grab a couple Mick Wright cards, but after that, I’m done.  Done done done.  Other than cooking, but I enjoy that.

This is the second year that we’re hosting Christmas Eve dinner at our house.  We’ll get Christmas morning with just us and the dogs, and then head to my Mom & Dad’s for dinner.  Then it’s three straight days of blissful nothing.  Oh, and CB getting to hear the baby’s heartbeat on Friday.  Other than that, nothing but asses on the couch and Bondathon on the tv.

I’m very thankful this Christmas that we are both still employed, that my brother is here on leave, and that we all have our health.  We’re thinking about CB’s best friend, who is in his third week in Afghanistan, and another good friend who is close to finishing out his year there.  My brother will be heading over to Iraq next month.  We’ll not take him being here over Christmas for granted.

I hope all of you have a wonderful Christmas, that you can spend it with loved ones and and fondly think of the ones not with us this year.  I was going to make this all snarky, but now I’m feeling a little weepy.  Christmas puts a hurtin on hormones.

So Merry Christmas, y’all.  Hope yours is perfect.

Oh, look at the time, sweetie. I should be in the office!

Allow me to introduce you to a few of the people I see every morning.

There’s the douchebag who has to merge over three lanes of traffic the very moment 40 and 24 merge into one by Metro News and NovaCopy.  Never mind that there are people coming up in the lane from the east side of the loop that are just trying to move forward, and never mind that there’s a least a mile ahead of you where you will be able to merge effortlessly as traffic disperses.  He has to come in RIGHT. NOW.

Then there’s the jackhole that comes off of 440, slips across four lanes and firmly plants himself in the fast lane where he proceeds to drive at a constant speed of 64 mph, completely oblivious to the ten vehicles lined up behind him and the wide open expanse of emptiness in front him and in every lane to his right.

Often, that same jackhole is the one that stays in the far left lane until we get to exit 74, where he slams on his brakes in order to get all the way to the right and somehow finagle himself in front of me on the off ramp.

The Off Ramp in Brentwood is a different world.  On any given day, I see women putting on makeup in their rearview, people reading the paper behind the wheel, eating breakfast, and generally being clueless, all with their foot on the accelerator.  The Off Ramp Idiots the worst offenders, because they clearly think that the green light at the top of the ramp will stay green forever and ever, and therefore they shouldn’t have to worry about actually moving forward when the cars in front of them drive onto OHB and therefore delaying my ETA by three minutes every time they miss the light.

I can’t even comment on the people I encounter during the afternoon commute.  I’m not without blame either, only I’m on the other end of the spectrum.  These drivers piss me off, and I get aggressive.  I can’t believe that some of these morons have drivers licenses.  I honk when people cut me off without a turn signal, cuss and scream and pound my steering wheel when they’re driving ten under the speed limit and pacing the person in the lane next to them so nobody can get around, and I get home a blithering mess because I can’t let go of the madness of just trying to drive twenty miles without somebody being an asshole.

I am taking the week after Christmas off, and will absolutely refuse to drive anywhere during the hours of 8-9:30 AM and 4:30-6 PM.  I don’t need a break from work near as much as I need a break from rush hour.  My sanity and these drivers’ lives may depend on it.

You eat the food, drink the water, lick a local, you get the parasite.

Lady bloggers in East Nashville beware.  There is something in the water over here.  First Rachel, then Christy, then Laura, and now me. I don’t know what they’ve fortified our Cumberland Punch with, but this is serious.

I’ve got a parasite.  The big kind.  The kind that, once extracted, you still have to feed and clothe.  If you’ve got the stomach for it, you can see what it looks like here. That was a month ago.  It’s multiplied in size by about a million percent by now.  Freaky.

Just wanted to warn my friends and neighbors – be careful when you eat and drink locally.  It could change your life.

PS to Stef – you were totally right