Friday, March 02, 2007

Sewmouse and the Blustery Night

Well, as the saying goes, March has come in like a rabid wildebeast. It was massively windy last night. Still blustering today as well. While this is good in a "The weather is finally acting normal again for a bit" kind of way, it makes sleeping difficult because the neighbor has an exhaust hood - thingy - on his roof that rotates like a tazmanian devil on crack, and the windows all rattle because they go <---> instead of up and down.

And it's cold in here! Seriously, if the appliances and health will ever let me get ahead a bit, I do need to get the AC fixed and probably get the entire house HVAC system balanced properly.

Right now, however, I am going in search of toast and coffee. Have a good day.

709 days

Thursday, March 01, 2007

An interesting thought

15 minutes really isn't all that long. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, 15 minutes is nothing, really.

Sure, it's "Something" if you're 15 min. late to work, or if you get to the movie 15 min. after it starts (although these days you'd probably just miss only 5 or 6 really pathetic trailers for pathetic other films).

But in general, 15 minutes is something you can "spare" in your day-to-day life.

And so, with this in mind, I've been giving the "fish quilt" 15 minutes of undivided and quality time attention. And to my surprise, I'm making some significant progress. Now, granted, I don't have even an entire square done yet, as I've only been doing this for 2 days now, but it's progress non-the-less, and at this rate sometime next winter I'll have yet another turquoise-based quilt in my repetoire. I'm thinking of putting it on the bed in that room, as the current bright orange spread does not go even slightly with the pastel blue walls.

If only I could organize the rest of my world this easily - and I know I should be able to do it, but I'm not quite ready to go there yet, I'm afraid. There are too many other bits of mental baggage to get past before I can actually do that.

710 days.

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Why?

Why does my "French Vanilla" cappuccino taste like cinnamon?

Why can oranges sit for weeks in bags on a heap in the middle of the produce dept. in the market, but as soon as I bring them home, 2 days on the countertop and they look all bruised and sad?

Why does every community around mine have mass transit - EXCEPT mine?

Why is it that every time I get within a stone's throw of having enough money to fix my air conditioning, something goes wrong and I have to use the funds for car repairs or health issues?

Why do I feel like my last name should be "Murphy"?

711 days

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

WooWOooWoooWoooHOOOONNNKKKK - Hey Kal?

So I'm driving home from work tonight and I hear sirens.

Now, unlike in Scotland where the emergency vehicles go "MeeMaw" according to my dearest Scots friend Kal, who should know, since he drives an ambulance and all that, our sirens all go WoooWoooWOOOWooo and then when they get to where there's someone in front of them, they honk like 30 times louder than a regular honking horn honks.

Now, when one is travelling at 45 mph down a busy street and hears sirens in the distance, if one is me, one looks first in front to see if there are flashing lights. Secondly to the rear - to know if one is coming behind me. Next to the left side, then to the right. If one cannot see the flashing lights, it is often exceptionally difficult to tell from which direction the sirens are blaring, even driving as I do without radio or other distractions.

What one also cannot do is see flashing lights THROUGH buildings and large piles of snow. I'm sooooooo sorry about that.

What had happened is that an ambulance was coming from a small, almost visually invisible side-street, which has buildings and snow-piles blocking visuals until one is almost directly on top of it. At 45 mph, this happens very quickly. To be 100% honest, I never even SAW the farking ambulance until it was HONKINGHONKINGHONKING in my right ear.

JEZUS PETE. I pulled over and stopped as quick as I could. I wasn't the ONLY one who couldn't see the bloody bastard, however, as another 4 cars behind me got past the intersection before the ambulance could pull out.

Now, I'm sure they teach something about this kind of crap in Ambulance Driver School, seeing as Kal had to go through all kinds of odd driving things and get a special license and all and even though he's in Scotland, I'm sure it's fairly similar here because they ARE just huge fucking trucks and all that, but you would think, being a rational individual as I'm sure you all are, that said Ambulance Driver Guy (and I am sexist-ly assuming this PERSON was a guy, since I don't know any Ambulance Driver Girls from Scotland or from here either) would have noticed on his way INTO the side-street that it had limited visual access and perhaps have gone ONE BLOODY FUCKING BLOCK TO THE EAST where there is, in fact, a HUGELY VISUALLY LOVELY AND OPEN intersection with a stoplight...

Then again, perhaps I should have just jammed on my brakes and caused a 4-car pileup in the intersection, thereby delaying the asshat even longer maybe?

712 days