I absolutely hate the word “blog”

Found this recipe card on my fridge this weekend, written in Jen’s handwriting. Very mysterious. Copied verbatim.

Recipe #1

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Stir for 2 minutes and move to blender. Blend on high for 2-3 minutes, and serve to whoever will eat it.

Grant’s stepmother has this fabulous Arco Lamp in her living room, which she got after her mother told her she could buy “one lamp” for her first apartment (or something like that).  So she went out and bought a MoMA-designed, $900 (at the time!) lamp with a marble base.  Her mother learned to be more specific, and she got a fabulous artistic conversation piece that really lights up any room.  And I LOVE that lamp.  And Grant hates it.

Lately, we’ve been seeing them pop up more and more — a furniture store around the corner has one in their window display, as does the local Design Within Reach shop.  And every time I see one out there, I of course point it out so Grant will realize that these items are beautiful and that other people enjoy them and that his opinion is very, very wrong.

The latest and greatest such occasion was this weekend.  We decided to re-watch Iron Man just for the heck of it.  And do you know what’s featured in that first breathtaking panorama shot of Tony Stark’s house?  (Aside from a half-naked blonde Vanity Fair reporter?)

That’s right, bitches.  It’s THE ARCO LAMP.  Eat that, Grant Roberts.

…Such threatening remarks kind of lose their potency when we’re talking about an item that we can neither afford nor fit in our apartment.  But still.  Someday, somehow, I will own one of these lamps, and I will force Grant to look at it every now and then just on principle.  I’m not yet sure what the principle is, but hey — I’m pleased to know that I have similar taste to Tony Stark.  Even though he’s fictional.  What do you say I end this post about a friggin’ lamp now, before it gets any more tangential and weird?  Okay then.

Today at Nintendo they changed all the lights in my department to these bright white more ‘natural’ ones, and and everyone has been alternately cringing or jumping for joy.  I don’t feel particularly strong about it, but I seem to be the only one.  One thing is for certain: It is a LOT brighter around here now.

The really creepy part is when you leave the department to run to the restroom or something, and then come back.  It’s almost blinding when you re-enter the Bright Zone — like some kind of freaky sci-fi setting.  I feel like mutants are going to bust in through the windows at any moment.  I wonder if crap like this is ever the inspiration for movies about zombies, etc.?  I could definitely see these lights causing mutations in certain individuals.

Last night, Trumpet came to bed along with Grant, a couple hours after I’d turned in.  Grant is usually very subtle and conscientious about not waking me up, but last night a weird acrid smell pricked in my nostrils and disturbed my slumber. Want to take bets as to what it was?

Our dear kitty, whom I’ve often maintained is very very cute but not very bright, managed to singe a patch of fur on his left rear haunch.  Apparently a candle I’d left burning was in the way of his butt at some point.  I’m freaked out now, because I’ve often burned candles and it’s never seemed to be a problem before.

Poor kitty!  Not only is he still missing a spot of fur from when we took him to the vet and they shaved a spot for injections, but now he’s all matted and burnt in back.  Maybe he’ll start a new trend.  (I’d take a picture, but it really doesn’t show at all — I think he may have chewed off the offending hair in a grooming fit or something.)

Man, I hate shopping — I love merchandise, don’t get me wrong.  I just hate lines, parking, fitting rooms, etc.  So I adore the Internet for such things, especially since my inner miser has forced me to become extremely savvy about how to get free shipping deals.  But sometimes, Internet shopping bites you in the ass.

We recently did some Christmas shopping at Ballard Designs, where we came across this really cool-seeming bone playing card deck.

Sadly, it turned out to kind of suck. Aside from the crappy pixelated printing that in no way fits the antique feel, and the total lack of the alleged storage box, we failed to realize that these cards come with two holders so players can set them like Scrabble tiles.  TWO. Who the frack plays a two-man game of poker?   You don’t buy HUNDRED DOLLAR BONE PLAYING CARDS to play a game of GO FISH, Ballard Designs.

Really, True Blood? REALLY?

Give me a break.

(And if you think this blog post is pissy, man, you should’ve seen my better half after viewing this. I think he laughed condescendingly for a good fifteen minutes straight before we could restart the episode.

It just so happened that I needed to update both my iTunes and my Adobe Reader this weekend.  I tend to be pretty lazy with these kinds of updates, so I just click YES and GO and MAKE IT HAPPEN as quickly as I can.

And when all was said and done and downloaded and installed, guess what I had?  Three brand-spanking-new desktop shortcuts… which I happen to hate. MOST good software developers nowadays include an installation screen that asks users whether they’d like shortcuts added anywhere, which was a welcome change when I first saw that trend.  But apparently, Apple and Adobe still think you might need a hand figuring out how to start your newly updated program.

In Apple’s case, it sort of makes sense, because they STILL haven’t figured out how to make iTunes use the old shortcut when an update is installed.  (And don’t get me started about how they constantly try to bundle the unrelated Safari in with your iTunes updates — I finally just gave up, cleared out the necessary hard drive space, and accepted the Safari download, just so I’d have one less box to uncheck during every iTunes update.  Just so you know, Apple, I’m boycotting your parasitic Safari install to teach you a lesson.

But the real kicker is Adobe’s shortcut.  Have you EVER, in your ENTIRE LIFE, used a SHORTCUT to Adobe Reader to open a .PDF document, instead of just OPENING THE DAMN DOCUMENT DIRECTLY?

Here’s hoping this Facebook email thread needs no real intro:

—–Original Message to Facebook—–
From: Virginia Culler
To: xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: PRIVACY-BUGS: “Wallster” app — spam/worm

User id: xxxxxxxxx
Description of problem: I received a message from an alleged Facebook app called “Wallmaster”, informing me that a picture from my profile had been used on xxxxxxx.com.  This appears to be a very sketchy site.  The friend who allegedly sent me this message did not in fact send it (I have informed her of this fact), and the app does not appear to actually exist.  I’d like to forward you the email, but you don’t seem to up-front about providing an email address (understandably).  If you’d like to provide me with an address to which I could send the email in question, you’d probably be able to crack down on this a bit better.  As it stands, I can only paste it in:

2008/11/10 Facebook <wallmaster+m1mh~hdm@facebookmail.com>

Lauren wrote on your Wall:

“has anyone emailed you to let you know your faceboook pic was just featured on dinascript.com”

To see your Wall or to write on Lauren’s Wall, follow the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/xxxxxxxxx

Thanks,
The Facebook Team

___
Want to control which emails you receive from Facebook? Go to:
http://www.facebook.com/editaccount.php?xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Thanks and let me know if I can be of additional help!

–Virginia

Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008092417 Firefox/3.0.3

_____

Hi Virginia,

As part of the new site design we have updated the “Friends” box to offer more customization options.  To edit these settings, simply navigate to your profile page and then click on the pencil icon in the upper right hand corner of the “Friends” box.

The Edit Box that appears will allow you to specify how many friends are displayed and which friends you always want to show.  If you want to ensure that friends from certain networks appear, you can select those networks in the “Include friends from” section.  Finally, checking the “Show Networks Section” will display a list of all of the networks your friends are in.

We hope that you enjoy these changes and welcome any feedback.  Let me know if you have any further questions.

Thanks for contacting Facebook,

Daisy
User Operations
Facebook

_____

Me again.  So what just happened?  Did you actually READ my message, “Daisy”?  Taking bets as to whether or not this is yet another Facebook virus — ten bucks says “Daisy” doesn’t really exist (unless it’s like a subtle nod to Kubrick, and Facebook is actually powered by HAL?).  Ah well, now I know all about the new Facebook (TM) customization options.  So there’s that!

Every time I’ve had to spell something over the phone using words to clarify each letter, I’ve failed miserably.  Not at the spelling part, mind you — at the clarification part.  I never learned the NATO Phonetic Alphabet or any other useful and easily memorizable way of doing things, so I always panic and make up the weirdest words on the spot.  Here are some actual examples that I recall having used, much to the amusement and/or confusion of the person on the other end of the line:

A as in Alfred (always used in conjunction with H, below)
B as in Bat (because NOTHING else sounds like “bat”, right?  Totally safe choice)
C as in chlamydia (I kid you not, it was the first thing that popped into my mind.  I think I’d just watched a CSI rerun or something.); also C as in clavicle
D as in Delphi; D as in dingo
E as in Euclid (total failure — of COURSE they put a U when I did this.  Also, who the foxtrot remembers geometry names and also works at a call center?)
F as in frog
G as in gorilla (sensing a theme); also G as in guano (see B, above)
H as in Hitchcock (see A)
I as in Iggy Pop (and I don’t even listen to his music)
N as in Nigeria
R as in roulette; R as in red (another smashingly clear choice)
U as in Uganda
X as in xylophone
Z as in Zimbabwe

…and so on and so forth.  So the other day, when a post-ROTC coworker of mine exclaimed “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!” over something on my computer screen, I immediately hijacked him from his actual work and made him teach me the entire NATO alphabet thingy and force me to repeat it back to him until I had it down pat.  So now I’m theoretically able to communicate the spelling of awkward names much more easily (except for ones containing the letter K — I always forget that one, because “kilo” is NOT A WHOLE WORD, people!  Sheesh!).

Never been prouder.  Victor Alpha out.

I was running errands in Redmond the other day on my lunch break, and I drove by what has to be the most pathetically-named city park in the history of pathetically-named city parks:

(To be fair, there are indeed grass lawns throughout this park.)

Coming next month: “Wet Water Lake”. Should be a friggin’ riot.