Category Archives: life

I’m not a morning person

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quickmemes.com
…and no talking!
My morning wake-up routine is not what most people would call typical. The clock radio turns on first, softly playing NPR’s Morning Edition for an hour before the earliest I would need to get up. The entire purpose of the hour of news is to ease me into the idea of waking up. Some mornings I lay there, half asleep, listening to the news. Most mornings I’m sleeping, but more lightly than if there wasn’t the radio going.

Then the first alarm goes off. Continue reading I’m not a morning person →

Lost in time

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blamcast.net
Why aren’t you up?
I wrote last year about how the time change was messing with me worse than usual. This year I can at least blame the frickin’ high pollen counts that have coincided with it. I prefer to blame the pollen, rather than think about the possibility that it might simply be because I’m getting old, and bouncing back from things, even a simple time change isn’t going to be as quick as it was when I was younger…

Continue reading Lost in time →

Why I hate hay fever reason #5867

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Cat needs to sneeze meme.
I hate that feeling!
I had a very different post queued up for today. But between the high pollen count all week, a deluge last night, and an inexplicable heat wave inside our house, things have been weird here.

Late Wednesday afternoon at the office I was looking out the window wistfully at the rain. I’d been out earlier in the day (a small group of us walked to a nearby restaurant to have lunch with a former co-worker). It had been really pleasant. No rain, overcast enough that I didn’t need sunglasses, and not cold or breezy. The rain that was coming down later just looked nice. Yes, I like the rain, so sue me.

Continue reading Why I hate hay fever reason #5867 →

March Fourth!

life,

http://icanhas.cheezburger.com
Since cats are notoriously hard to herd, what makes you think they can march?
I’ve written before about an acquaintance in college who was shocked that I’d never heard the pun about this day: March Forth! It’s a date and a command! Turns out some party poopers people have adopted March Fourth as a day to set goals to help you realize your dreams, and promise a bunch of people to get back together next March Fourth to check in. Hello? Have these people never heard about New Year’s Resolutions? We don’t need to do it twice a year. Really.

Much more amusing, there’s a musical group out there called the MarchFourth Marching Band (slogan: “A date. A command. A band!”) that appears to be a lot of fun.

However, last year, because of an article I read just before March 4 about homeless veterans, I decided to start my own March Forth tradition. So, I urge you all on this March Forth, to go please donate to The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.

March forth, and spread the word.

Thank you.

Confessions of an absent-minded whatchamacallit

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What?
What?
I lose my keys, all the time.

Not just my keys. I regularly misplace my wallet, my phone, my glasses, my hat… Almost every time I prepare to leave the house, I spend a few minutes trying to figure out where something that I need to take with me is. Several times every week my poor, long-suffering husband has to help me figure out where I left something.

And I hate it!

I have tried to fix this for pretty much my entire life. My mom used to tell the story of the day she found me wandering the house in tears, looking under papers, inside drawers, under the furniture, and so on, because I couldn’t find my glasses. I was seven or eight years old at the time. I told her I had looked everywhere. I was angry at myself for misplacing the glasses. I was afraid of what punishment my dad might mete out if they were broken or lost permanently. I was nearly hysterical. Continue reading Confessions of an absent-minded whatchamacallit →

I don’t mean to be grumpy

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Jimmy Tohill/National Geographic Contest
I’ve had better days.
I’d been looking forward to Sunday for weeks. A friend (who is a very talented artist and teacher) had suggested a meet up on Sunday afternoon at a restaurant/tavern several of us enjoy for the express purpose of drawing or otherwise arting together, while drinking with friends. Two of my New Year’s resolutions are to do more socializing that isn’t driven by specific projects, and to do more art and music. So this was a tangible way to do a bit of both. Then my favorite meteorology professor said, during his weekly science of weather segment on one of the local NPR stations, said that we had a probability of lowland snow this weekend, and the further north of Seattle one went, the higher the probability.

And specifically he said, “Bellingham will see it for sure.” Bellingham being where the host of the event lives, and the location of the event being a spot sort of midway between Seattle and Bellingham, therefore in the snow zone, there was a possibility the event would be canceled… Continue reading I don’t mean to be grumpy →

Which part of ‘no’ are you having trouble with?

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Creepy stalker face
That smile…
One night last week I was doing my thing—reading news online, occassionally checking my twitter feed—when a message pops up on IM. Honestly, I’d forgotten that my instant messaging client was up. I’d run it earlier in the day because it was a work-from-home day, and just forgot to log out of all the accounts. Anyway, the message that pops up says, “I liked what you wrote.” I didn’t recognize the name, but sometimes that’s just because I forget all the handles some of my friends use (and let’s not even get into the friends who have a habit of changing the name and user picture on their accounts all the frikkin’ time…).

So I type back, “Thanks. Which thing, specifically, did you like?”

I write a lot of things, and have them posted/published lots of places, so this seemed like a reasonable question… Continue reading Which part of ‘no’ are you having trouble with? →

Martian flu trumps Writers’ Night

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Kitten in a blanket.
I just want to stay under the covers.
My friend, Barb, referred to the weird lingering cold, maybe flu, maybe multiple colds that seems to be hitting a lot of people as “the Martian flu,” and I’ve decided it’s a great name. I want to mention that said friend lives 1400 miles away, in Arizona. Another friend who reports a similar phenomenon in his community in January, lives 2200 miles away, in Texas. And another friend who reported it in her area lives 2800 miles away, in North Carolina. I mention this because I’ve had a couple of conversations with other long distance acquaintances where I mention the illness running around my office, where they’ve said, “I’m glad I’m not in Seattle!”

The thing is that I’ve been sick nearly continuously since the end of December, and so have a lot of people I know. We’ll be really sick with a certain constellation of symptoms for a few days, start to get better for a few days. Then we’ll have a couple days where we don’t feel completely, 100% healthy, but definitely nearly well. And then a slightly different constellation of symptoms will hit is full bore, and the cycle will begin again.

So, when I was up all night with symptoms that you do not want me to describe Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, I felt an awful lot like that bowl of flowers in the Hitchhiker’s Guide books: “Oh, no. Not again!”… Continue reading Martian flu trumps Writers’ Night →

Ponies are forever (at Zorkfox’s party)

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The birthday boy gabbing before opening a present.
The birthday boy gabbing before opening a present. Scotty on the left.
We celebrated Jared’s birthday last night at AFK Tavern. Friday is my usual work from home day, and my husband came home from his work early because he’s sick (he handed me a beautiful bouquet and said, “I got you some plant sex organs.” I love him so!). I had taken a sick day earlier in the week, and come home early myself on Thursday (though I took a short nap, logged in and worked from home for a couple more hours, took a longer nap, then worked some more, then went to bed). So I hadn’t been certain I would go to the party until just before leaving. Michael stayed home, sleeping.

But, a fun time was had by those of us there… Continue reading Ponies are forever (at Zorkfox’s party) →

What’s the big deal about Valentine’s Day?

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dailyotter.org
Together forever.
We’ve never made a super big deal out of Valentines Day. I think we’ve both had more fun, the last couple of years, meeting up with friends to celebrate Jared’s birthday, instead of doing the Valentine’s thing. Nor have we ever been really over the top on any of our anniversaries. In fact, both of us frequently forget them altogether. It could be argued that it’s because we have too many. One reason we have so many is because for the longest time, we couldn’t agree on what constituted our anniversary, since we weren’t able to legally marry until very recently. I favored February 7, as the anniversary of our first date. Michael leaned toward Easter, because we first met (nearly three years before that first date) at the NorthWest Science Fiction Convention on an Easter weekend. There was also a strong argument to be made for the date we signed and notarized the domestic partnership papers and had a party with friends, of course.

Now that we are finally legally hitched (and given what a struggle it has been to get it legal here), shouldn’t our wedding anniversary be the one we observe?

Or course, it’s impossible to forget about Valentine’s Day. I know this because I have been told many, many, many times by various people how the way our society deals with Valentine’s Day amounts to oppression or even abuse of people who are not in a relationship… Continue reading What’s the big deal about Valentine’s Day? →