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June 29, 2005

Quote

"The prospect of a long day at the beach makes me panic. There is no harder work I can think of than taking myself off to somewhere pleasant, where I am forced to stay for hours and 'have fun'." - Phillip Lopate

Posted by me, of course!

June 28, 2005

Squippering at the Gym

Y'all may recall my blog post last month titled Doing a Squipper. If you have a memory lapse or ignored my adorable blog post, the title is your link to it. I gently suggest that if you didn't read it, you do so now and then return here.

Meanwhile back at the funny farm, mucho thanks to LeAnn @ the cheese stands alone for the kick in the ass to write something here. (wink, wink, shake your booty in that gym LeAnn!) She fired off the following email to me yesterday, and since sometimes I possess good blogging manners, I asked her if I could post the email. She said, "Well for Pete's sake! I NEVER!" (No she didn't, I made that up. She said sure.) So here it is along with my response.

I've recently joined a new gym, which has a very convoluted ladies' locker room... all angles and turns and entirely mirrored walls. You see where this is going, don't you? I "squippered" no less than four times in there yesterday.... twice with witnesses. Just thought you'd like to know. :)
LeeAnn
the cheesemistress

I responded:
There will be no squippering at the gym, unless you devise a new workout routine and they pay you tons of money to teach everyone else.

LeeAnn replied:
I'm totally serious, that locker room is going to be the death of me. I'm noseprinting almost every mirror so far. And at one point I got stuck in this loop... changing room to toilet stalls to sauna room to changing room.... just could NOT find the door. I had to wait and follow some woman on her way out. I think I scared her, chanting "Out out out out out.... "
LeeAnn

What have I done!? I think I've created little squippering squippies... or something. Please tell me that none of the rest of you are bumping into walls and tripping on your feet and doing anything else that makes you say ouch! or duh!

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It's No Fun Being a Perfectionist

A week or so ago I was off to my mom's to keep the promise I'd made to paint her patio furniture. Luckily for me the temperatures 'round that neck 'o the woods was much cooler than here in the city. There was a lovely breeze also and it was just right for outdoor painting. My assignment was to revitalize four metal patio chairs that chipped and faded over the years. Mom and I had selected the new color weeks before and I had all my supplies at the ready. All I had to do was mix the colorizer (or whatever you call it) to the white paint and I'd get the color we chose.

NOT.

I mixed, after carefully reading the instructions, and the result was NOT the shade it was supposed to be. It was much lighter. I let that dry for a day and returned to the paint store -- more colorizer, more paint, more brushes. I did it again, it came out EXACTLY the same shade -- lighter than planned. To say I was extremely distressed is putting it mildly. My mom was out of town and I was concerned... no, I'd go so far as to say I was pulling my hair out over the result of the paint job and mom's subsequent and expected disappointment. The thing is, when she returned home, she absolutely LOVED the unplanned color of the chairs.

Lesson learned. When one is a perfectionist, one can work one's self up into a frothy lather over things like this that really don't matter in the big picture of life. In my next life I plan to NOT be a perfectionist. :-)

Posted by me, of course!

June 22, 2005

Dear Al:

alles Gute zum Geburtstag
joyeux anniversaire
buon compleanno
feliz cumpleaños
happy birthday!
translations via babelfish :-)

Posted by me, of course! | Comments (3)

June 16, 2005

No Guard on Duty

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June 15, 2005

Virginia is for Kat

Kat @ Kat's Stuff will be moving to Virginia soon, and well hey, I offered to blab about that fact here on my blog because she's looking for a job there. She can provide the specifics as to what exactly it is she wants to do and the town where she'll be living. If there's any chance you can help her I know she'd be much obliged and grateful. Her email address is katsstuff at gmail dot com.

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Dusting My Brain Photo Gallery

I received a phone call last evening from someone (ahem!) in Houston, Texas inquiring about my photo gallery. Seems that this lovely Southern belle would like me to mention my photo gallery more often on this blog. I pointed out to her that the image on the right side of my blog (in the sidebar) changes once a week and, if you click on the image, it takes you directly to the photo gallery. So, if you're ever looking for more photos that I've taken, that's the way to find them or just bookmark the page, which is at http://dustingmybrain.com/photoblog/ Thanks for the nudge to mention the gallery more often, Kat. :-)

Note: I disabled the comments function over at the photo gallery due to an inordinate amount of comment spam received recently, but my email address is there just in case anyone wants to send me a love note or three.

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June 14, 2005

Quote

For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press 3.
- Alice Kahn

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Steve Jobs, Calligrapher

Steve Jobs told Stanford University graduates Sunday that dropping out of college was one of the best decisions he ever made because it forced him to be innovative.[snip] During the commencement speech, Apple Computer's CEO Jobs, 50, said he attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon but dropped out after only eight months because it was too expensive for his working-class family. He said his real education started when he "dropped in" on whatever classes interested him -- including calligraphy. [snip] He told the graduates that few friends could see the value of learning calligraphy at the time but that painstaking attention to detail -- including mastering different "fonts" -- was what set Macintosh apart from its competitors. "If I had never dropped out I might never have dropped in on that calligraphy," Jobs said. - Wired News

As a calligrapher, I can't help but wonder what his favored style was (Italic, Copperplate, etc.) Inquiring minds want to know. :-)

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June 13, 2005

Quiet Like a...

... church mouse? Are church mice quiet? Who knows, who cares, I couldn't come up with a better one, so feel free to fill in the quiet like a _________ blank. I'm about to digress. There I go. Yup. Next paragraph.

For those of you who read this and haven't seen the weather report for my neck o' the woods, temperatures have been in the 90s with high humidity. Did I tell you I need a new air conditioner? Right. Forgot. Who knew it would be THIS HOT so soon? Not I. I've been experiencing a nightly headache, though I wish I could attribute it to, oh, too much alcohol or laughing too hard, but nope. It's one of those dull freakish (there's that word again) headaches - you know your head isn't supposed to feel like that but it isn't painful. Hmm. Maybe I need a good weep or two. Or, maybe there's been way too much dust accumulating in my adorable brain. Just don't preach to me about going to see a doctor, as I'm one of those [insert stupid jackass remark here] people who doesn't visit a doctor unless I'm, well, you know, really ill. Besides, I've got an appointment later this week with the dentist (see, I've been great about visiting Mr. Teeth Man.) One type of doctor visit per week is all I can deal with. Bleh.

So as I wasn't saying, quiet like a... ?

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June 4, 2005

A Nerd in a Pretty Dress

A few weeks ago I ran into someone who had been in my class in high school. In those days I was busy playing all sorts of sports, and he was usually in a bit of a drug-induced stupor. Needless to say, we didn't have much in common nor did we chat at all. All we knew about each other was, well, nothing. It was an absolute surprise to me when I ran into him one day, one of those weird, freakish things that tend to occur in my life. We chatted about a number of different things, and somehow the topic of the Web came up (gee, what a surprise.) Anyway, he said something to me about not knowing HTML all that well. When I told him I did, that I could sling the HTML and that I've maintained a presence on the Web since 1993, he exclaimed, "Oh my GOD! You're a NERD!!!"

... and then...

I blushed with pride. I actually *LOVED* being called a nerd. Go figure.

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