Quiz Time!

Kim stole these quizzes from someone else, so now I'm stealing them from her.


Forrest Gump!
What movie Do you Belong in?(many different outcomes!)
brought to you by Quizilla

Ouch. I know I'm not the smartest person on earth or anything, but I did at least think I was smarter than Forrest Gump.


you're fuck.
What swear word are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Fuckin' right I'm fuck. Shit, every fourth fuckin' word I say is some variation of the word fuck.

I'm not looking to marry a male celebrity, so I decided to poke through Quizilla and find a couple more fun quizzes. To wit:


You're goin' down! FOR STALKING!
What Would You Go to Jail For? (Many outcomes)
brought to you by Quizilla

Now if only I had someone to stalk. Sigh.


You are Spearmint.
You are quick-witted and sharp. You pay close
attention to details and you can tell what your
friends are feeling. You are always the first
to understand a joke and you are valued for
your insight and advice. However, you
sometimes isolate yourself from other people,
afraid to share your own feelings.
Most Compatible With: Cinnamon
Which Tic-Tac Flavor Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Score! I love the green ones. I don't think I actually knew what flavor they were until this though.

All right, that's it for now. Back to playing with my new computer.

Mmm...Apple...(drool)...

My new computer has arrived!

You've all heard me bitching about how much my computer's been driving me batshit for the last six months, so I finally broke down over the holidays.

I had to tap into some money my late uncle Harry left me, but I kind of felt like it was appropriate to use the money he left me on a computer.

Harry was a great guy, but he was a serious geek. He was a comptuer engineer, and the running joke was that he failed out of college the first time he went because he majored in Bridge.

He was so obsessed with technology that when his doctors told him he had cancer that would likely kill him in six months, one of the first things he did was go out and buy a the best computer made by man at the time.

I figured it would be a fitting tribute to him to go out and get a really souped-up computer with the money he left me. I'm sure he's shaking his head and laughing somewhere.

For the geekly among you, I got a 15" powerbook with a 1.25ghz procecessor, a gig of RAM, and a superdrive. For the non-geekly, expensive but totally fucking worth it.

It showed up Wednesday morning, after quite possibly the most roundabout journey possible, made really confusing by time changes.

Allow me to copy down the tracking results from FedEx:

January 6th:
1:28pm - Taiwan - Package Picked Up
2:27pm - Anchorage, AK - Left Fedex Sort Facility
8:26pm - Taiwan - Left Fedex Sort Facility
January 7th:
3:04am - Indianapolis, IN - Arrived Sort Facility
4:42am - Indianapolis, IN - Left Sort Facility
5:48am - Los Angeles, CA - Arrived Sort Facility
8:12am - Marina Del Rey, CA - On Vehicle for Delivery
8:58am - Delivered

So first of all, it looks like it took off from Alaska before it took off from Taiwan, which is only slightly impossible, but since there's about a 20 hour difference, that's why.

Then it looks like despite the fact it went from Taiwan to Alaska to Indianapolis to Los Angeles, it only took 20 hours to get to me.

It was all very random, especially since the initial estimate was that it wasn't going to get to me until Friday, which made sense, since I noted that it had been shipped from Taiwan.

So now I've gone ahead and started setting things up, and I've got it to the point that I'm sitting on my couch using my little AirPort and watching TV.

It's supremely weird to be sitting here, with nothing attached to my computer, and still having it work properly. For someone who's had a desktop for the last few years, it's liberating.

The only problem is, I'm having problems because this is a New Toy, and whenever I get a New Toy, I have a tendency to get completely absorbed by it (see: TiVo)

So I'm getting nothing else done besides setting this thing up and going to work, and (occasionally) sleeping. Fortunately, I couldn't be happier about it.

Hollywood Glamour

I will admit, there's a lot of cool shit about my job. However, sometimes there's just...well, shit.

We had a bunch of animals on yesterday with an animal trainer, and I ended up sort of herding them and their various handlers around.

It was really fun, hanging out with a sloth, a giant monitor lizard, and an owl. That sounds like the beginning of a joke, but that's actually what I ended up doing for half of wednesday.

The unfortunate thing about hanging out with animals all day is that they occasionally have a minor tendency to make a bit of a mess.

There really is nothing like cleaning up owl shit to bring you down to earth about your job.

Huzzah!

For two things, the first far better than the second, but the second still deserving a huzzah:

- Mark got a job! Working for the American Psychological Association, no less. Champagne all around!...on him, now that he's making money. Just kidding, buddy, congratulations!

- My new computer has shipped! The time to cast this old box back into the hellmouth from whence it came approacheth...mwahahahaha!

Football Poll

The 'Skins are apparently in serious talks to bring Joe Gibbs back as head coach. Is this a fantastic idea, or the worst idea ever? I'm undecided.

I grew up in D.C. a rabid Redskins fan during Gibbs' glory days, and even though I was pretty young I very clearly remember when we won Superbowls XXII and XXV (I think we're now on XXXVIII).

My fandom stretches back to when I was just under 2, and my mom made the mistake of leaving me with my dad on game day while she went grocery shopping.

When she came back, my dad had taught me a new trick.

Dad: Who's that? (points to Joe Theismann on the screen)
2-year-old me: Joe!
Dad: And who's that? (points to John Riggins)
2-year-old me: Riggo!

My dad could not understand why my mother was so upset. He thought it was the coolest thing ever. Both parents, tell this story often. Dad with pride, mom with chagrin.

But I'm undecided on whether bringing back Joe Gibbs will be the cure-all Dan Snyder (who's also a dyed-in-the-wool 'Skins fan) might think it'd be.

Sports fans, your thoughts?

Edited this morning to add that the poll is now semi-moot since the 'Skins went ahead and hired Gibbs, but I'm still not sure it's a good idea.

Connecticut

I'm afraid because of my laziness and assorted computer crashes, this has been built up so that most are expecting something far more interesting than what follows. Be ye forewarned.

I went to Connecticut for a week at Christmas. This is the Irish Catholic side of my family (although I was raised Jewish), so it was a Christmas and not a Hanukkah vacation.

Originally, the plan was that I was going to stay at my grandmother's for a couple of nights and then move over to my aunt Louise's, to a) give my grandmother some room and b) give me some room.

My grandmother is 85 and mentally doing quite well, but her back is wrecked by arthritis. She still lives in the 2-story townhouse she has lived in since before I was born.

The problem is, she still feels, despite the fact that she's in constant pain, that she's being a Bad Host if she doesn't keep her guests (especially grandchildren) constantly entertained.

This is part of the reason I don't like staying there: Every time she tries to be a Good Host, she ends up overdoing it and in serious pain.

The other parts are that the sofabed is so painful that I've discovered it's more comfortable to just put the cushions on the floor and just sleep on those, and also that it can get kind of dull. But never mind.

The master plan, however, was all screwed up by the fact that my aunt came down with Bronchitis From Hell, and her husband caught the Death Flu that's been going around.

Seeing as how it probably was not going to be a good idea to violate the quarantine zone around their house, I ended up staying at grandma's for six days.

And when I say staying at grandma's, I mean staying at grandma's. I left the house four times in six days. Grandma no longer has a car, and there's not much within walking distance of her house.

The consequence? I got to listen to several very, very long conversations about needlepoint between my mother and grandmother, and I ended up reading most of The Rise And Fall of the Third Reich, an 1150 page history text.

Christmas itself was good. The food was great. My mom cooked, and she really can't cook much, but she can cook a damn good turkey dinner.

Christmas dinner was actually not all that different from Thanksgiving dinner, the main difference being the dessert: cookies at Christmas vs. pies at Thanksgiving.

I got a few "What the fuck?" gifts:

- A doorknob hanger that says "Let it snow!"
- A t-shirt that says "Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most!" (which is true, but still kind of an odd gift)
- A 12 months of Cute Kittens calendar
- A little thing to wipe the interior fog off the windshield of your car, which is so much more useful in California than it would have been in Chicago...oh, wait...
- A tray, painted blue, with stickers of Washington landmarks shellacked onto it.

This last item was made and given to me by my mother. Mark, who had seen its creation, advised her: "She'll hate it." Thanks, buddy.

I didn't so much hate it as I was utterly baffled by it. My mother is (or at least should be) well aware of my hatred of my hometown, and I don't know why she thought I needed a tray. The gift puzzles me, but I'll find some use for it.

I also got some cool stuff, mostly in the form of gift certificates (an Old Navy one coming right in time, since my last pair of pants that fit got a hole in them during the trip) and a set of Dick Van Dyke Show DVDs (fuck you, that show is hysterical).

The times I got out were good too, as when we took a priest friend of my grandma's, Father Will, out to lunch for his birthday the day after christmas. Food that wasn't turkey is always a plus.

Other Ellen also managed to bust me out and take me down to Waterbury where we played pool at a pool hall with quite possibly the Sketchiest Entrance Ever.

She and her friend then forced me to watch Clue at the friend's house, since I'm a bad film major and had never seen it. I thought it was really cracked out, but was amused.

I was also amused that my grandmother was positively horrified when I told her I had gone to a pool hall in Waterbury. She apparently grew up there when it was a bit rougher than it currently is, and was amazed I made it back alive.

I also went out with my cousin Mark for pho, which is a sort of vietnamese soup he really likes. Alas, his favorite pho place had run out of soup at 4:30pm, about 4 hours before they normally did, but we went someplace else and it was still good.

Anyway, that's really about it, it was a tremendously boring trip, but it was nice to see my family. Oh wait, there was one more thing....

The shower at my grandmother's house broke while we were there. I hate taking baths, because I can't shake the feeling that I'm just sitting in my own filth, so I decided to try and fix it.

Fortunately, the reason it broke was because a couple of plastic things fell out, and it took me five minutes to put them back together and rig it so it would at least work until a plumber could fix it right.

My mom, who has a tendency to make odd statements, particularly to me, upon seeing this, said "Isn't it nice to have a lesbian in the house so things can get fixed?"

I just smiled and shook my head.