It's 9:30 and the house sure is quiet. ChinchillaBoy is downtown trick-or-treating with his friend and his friend's cousins. They went last year and had a blast.
What will they bring home in their loot, I wonder. Last year, it was religious tracts. Yes, people actually pass these things out on Halloween. But wait, it gets better. My old blogbuddy Mango (who has since pulled down his blog) followed the link I'd given, and found out that there are also three different kinds of tipping tracts available! Wow. Think about how much cash you'll save if you buy a 25-pack of those babies for $2.25 and use them in lieu of a tip each time you eat out.
I have to end my post here because my phone just rang. ChinchillaBoy is back at his friend's house, and needs to be picked up. What will he bring home today? Don't know. Could be live ammo, could be a ticket to Heaven. Anything is possible in the inner city.
On an unrelated note, did you notice how awesome and blue my blog has become? Dawn did it. She can do yours, too. Do you still have that boring Blogger template? Then hurry, email her.
ChinchillaBoy is trying to sleep over at his friend. I have to go now.
When I was young, I used to drink a lot of coffee. But later in life, I quit.
As I found, coffee irritates my stomach and triggers my migraine headaches. So I stopped drinking it altogether. In fact, these days, even the smell of coffee makes me queasy. I do not have the facts yet, but I am sure there has to be scientific proof that smelling coffee is bad for my health.
With that in mind, I propose a law to ban all brewing and drinking of coffee in all public places, including but not limited to: places of employment, bars, restaurants, bowling alleys, and, naturally, coffee shops. (Starbucks may continue brewing whatever it is they sell, as it is clearly not coffee.)
Of course, I realize that many people have been coffee-drinkers all their lives, and are addicted to caffeine. It will be difficult for them to quit. There are also many people who are not heavy users, but enjoy a cup of coffee every now and then. By instituting a coffee ban, I will stop them from enjoying their beverage of choice.
It is not my call, some say, to tell these people what to drink and when to quit drinking it. I say, baloney. It is obvious to anyone with more than two working brain cells that coffee-drinkers are morons, incapable of deciding what's good for them. Somebody needs to step in and make that decision on their behalf. I will be more than happy to be that person. To further help them, I'm going to make coffee-drinking a criminal offense, punishable by law. They'll thank me later for saving them from the dangers of yellow-stained teeth and coffee high.
If you think I am being ridiculous here, then vote for issue 4 and against issue 5.
Sometimes I wonder if dogs can talk Sometimes I wonder what they would say Sometimes I wonder if paws were meant to be hands, They just didn't turn out that way.
I had interests that it was hard for normal kids to share; I read a lot; I spent three summers at a math camp, and I loved it. Plus, I was apparently beaten with the ugly stick a lot as a teenager.
In my late teens and early twenties, I finally got over the adolescent phase and started looking more like a human being. I dated, I partied, I drank. But the inner geek in me was hard to kill. I usually ended up with the same kind of people that I was. At parties, we talked about philosophy and the meaning of life. When we got really wasted, we'd recite symbolist poetry to each other. That's how I roll.
When we came to America, it only took me a couple of years to find my new circle of friends. Some of my friends here are Russian immigrants like myself; some still live in the same city where they were born and raised and went to school. But there is one thing we all share – our inner geekdom. It does not matter that my new friends grew up in a different country. We still had largely the same interests growing up.
Now at my new job, I've run into a bit of a challenge, because most people in my office look like this.
I have no idea how to relate. These people didn't just grow up in a different country than I did – it was more like on a different planet. They spent their free time doing whatever it is that beautiful people do for fun – I have no idea what that is, but I'm pretty sure I cannot relate to that. When they paid attention to the likes of me, it was only to make fun of our uncool looks and weird behavior.
It's like a different species.
I am really and truly puzzled. How do you interact with them? I have no idea how to even start a conversation.
ChinchillaBoy is relatively popular, so he may have some experience with the BPs in the future, but I cannot wait that long. I need it figured out now.
So, if any of you has ever belonged to the Beautiful People, or had a friend or a sibling who is one, please feel free to share.
For the last few months, LilProgrammer has been into polyphasic sleep. This is basically when you sleep for only a couple of hours a day. Apparently the trick is to sleep for short intervals several times a day, and stick to a very strict sleeping schedule.
On his first try, during summer break, LilProgrammer slept for forty-five minutes every four hours. That had been a royal disaster. Everything I'd planned for him interfered with his new sleeping schedule. I'd bring him to doctor appointments and he would pass out in the middle of them, because his naptime had started. I told him that, if it continued after the start of school year, I'd strangle him with my bare hands. So he switched to a five-hour schedule - three hours from 3 till 6 AM, an hour right after school, and another hour around midnight. That worked well.
In fact, it worked so well that, last week, LilProgrammer decided it was time to move on to the three-hour schedule - two hours in the morning and thirty minutes twice in the evening. According to him, it takes the body two weeks to adjust. We are on Week One.
This is what has happened so far.
Last week, for the first time this year, LilProgrammer missed the bus.
His school starts at 7:30. He has to be there at 7:15. ChinchillaBoy's school is in a different building and starts at 8:00, and anyway, ChinchillaBoy had just gotten out of bed. So, I took LilProgrammer to school, came back, and took ChinchillaBoy to his school. I didn't like it one bit. There are 1,600 students in LilProgrammer's high school. Turns out, most of them drive. I have never seen such traffic.
On Wednesday, LilProgrammer got up on time. Got dressed. Got downstairs. Pulled his hood over his head. Sat in front of the door facing the street so he could see when the bus arrived. And promptly passed out.
Five minutes later, our dog Sparky woke up. He looked down the stairs, saw a tall, hooded figure, and had one of his guard dog moments. There was a lot of barking and swearing from me and Sparky ("How DARE you bark at him! He FEEDS you!!!" - "ARF-ARF-ARF-ARF-ARF!!!"). LilProgrammer didn't say anything. He was speechless, frozen in place, frightened of his own dog.
But wait, it gets better.
Yesterday, LilProgrammer woke to the alarm, turned on the lights, got back into bed, and passed out. I thought he was up because the lights were on. Long story short, he missed the darn bus again. Quick as a lightning, I let the dog out, let him back in when he was done, wiped his muddy paws, explained to ChinchillaBoy how to make his own breakfast, and was off. Back to my favorite high school, fighting traffic.
I get back home at 7:25 and ChinchillaBoy hasn’t started breakfast yet. Turns out the dog had asked to go out again, and after he came back in, his paws were, of course, all muddy again, this being late fall and all. Poor ChinchillaBoy spent all the time I was gone wiping the dog's paws clean.
I go upstairs to get dressed for work and run into more presents from the dog. Apparently, before he asked ChinchillaBoy to be let out, he'd already had an accident. Or two.
I clean up the dog crap in the hallway, feed the dog who's starving by now, and drive ChinchillaBoy to his school. We arrive late, so I take him to the office. This makes me come in late to work, which in turn means I'm going to have to stay late at work. The day has just started and already I am not a happy camper.
I freaking hate polyphasic sleep.
Luckily, I have thought of a solution. Next time LilProgrammer misses the bus, I will of course drive him to school like the good mother I am. But, in the meantime, I am going to lock the dog in his room. Sadly, I won't have any time to clean up after the dog afterwards. LilProgrammer can deal with the results when he comes back home.
I have a question to the blogosphere. What do you say to a person whose idea of starting a conversation is poking their head into your cube, positioning it exactly two feet from your face, and announcing:
"Why, I do believe I'm coming down with something!!! I feel horrible!"
Every... freaking... day.
Sure enough, on the fourth or fifth try, Typhoid Mary finally managed to give me something. I spent all weekend fighting a budding cold. Then again, my methods of fighting a budding cold involve large amounts of glintwein, so it's not all bad. Seriously though, I'm afraid of passing the cold to my kids, or, worse, my parents.
This painting, called "Forgiven", was forwarded to me in an inspirational email. Apparently it is said to have inspired thousands of people. I showed it to my friends, family and a few acquaintances, and this is what they have to say about it:
"Wow this is sick!" "Disturbing." "Wrong on so many levels."
One person, my son ChinchillaBoy, was unable to comment, as he was laughing so hard he could not speak.
Here it is... the masterpiece.
Now I understand that some denominations do require that people leave their sense of humor and common sense at the door before joining their church; but that still wouldn't be enough to explain how one comes up with an idea to paint something like this one above.
Mrs. Goldie, the mom of two, She loves them and they love you, Therefore theoretically, she loves you, Even if she's a Jew!
(she is, she really is)
Long story short, I suspected that my new employer had been poking around my blog, so I did the smartest thing possible. I deleted my template.
Turns out, the latest backup I had is from March 2005. You're looking at it.
The blog will be rebuilt gradually and I will be contacting the experts to have my blog redesigned. Please be patient. And don't be alarmed that the blogroll is gone - I am reading you all through Bloglines. I will use it to restore the blogroll as soon as I can.
