artykins

So I feel like I'm some kind of military operation.  I've gone quiet for a while, but now I'm coming back onto the radar and breaking silence.

I'm breaking silence because I got a new toy yesterday.  Yesterday I went with Jeff and D'Auria (one of Jeff's good friends, whom I love and adore) to the AT&T Store.  I know, I know.  AT&T stores are places where evil is born, but considering all the pieces of the puzzle, something pure and right came from this one.

On Saturday I went with my mother to meet up with Jessica and Anita (another mother/daughter duo from church) to see a movie.  Jessica was one of my bridesmaids.  We went to see the film and then went to grab a bite to eat.  After that, we parted ways and my mother and I wandered over to the Apple Store.  Yay Apple Store!

I needed to buy a new computer power adapter because my monster of a sofa severed on of the cables and I was tired of sharing Matt's power cable all the time.  So I bought a new one, but while I was there, I assualted the Apple man (who just happened to be from London!) with questions regarding the iPhone.  Now, all of my questions were regarding the payment plan more than the actual phone itself, so London Apple Man pointed me in the direction of the AT&T store just down the road.

While I was still with London Apple Man, however, he asked if I would like to order an iPhone to be shipped and held for me at the store.  He said it would take seven to ten business days to get there.  I answered that I'd rather talk to the AT&T people first to see whether or not I really wanted one.

So we left the glorious brightness of the Apple Store and went to the abyss known as AT&T.  I asked my questions there, got my answers and was asked if I wanted an iPhone to be ordered for me.  I was told it would be there in three days.  And I thought 'wow, these guys have it together' and I ordered one!

So I'm the happy owner of a brand new 16gig iPhone 3G.  It's white (as opposed to the other ones, which are black) and I've named it Magda because that's what Alf calls me.  I also bought Magda some clothing, so to speak.  I got a rubber case that goes around the outside of the phone to protect it.  It's pink with stripes and looks rather like a pink zebra, which pleases me immensely.  

I'm still faffing with it.  Last night I customized ringtones for people who call me all the time.  The rest of you can all have a boring default ringtone.  Here's who has what:

My mom - Sherry (by Frankie Vallie and the Four Seasons)

My dad - I Left My Heart in San Francisco (by Tony Bennet)

Jeff - Sweet Child O' Mine (Guns & Roses)

Jeremy - Awakening (Switchfoot)

Grandma - South of the Border (Luis Villegas)

Uncle Arnie - End Creditoullies (from Ratatoullie)

Uncle Benny - Popular (Wicked, although his ringtone is gonna change as soon I find a suitable one for him)

Matt - A Little Less Conversation (Elvis Presley)

I still have to add music to my phone, I have to finish switching out the numbers I have on my SIM card and I have to add some photos.  I also have to add some applications that I like, but I have to browse through those first to see what I want.

By the way, Uncle Benny was the first one to call me on my new iPhone.  Woo!

Right, kids, I need to go away.  I have to run some errands for work.  More later, or perhaps tomorrow on my day off!

Later Days,
Arty

So today is the last day of summer school here at work.  Needless to say, teachers, staff and students alike are all beside themselves with happiness.  Even though everyone except myself and Pat has the month of August off, I'm still pretty chuffed with things. 

During the month of August I'm working Monday through Thursday and I have every Friday off.  The even better part of that news is that I'll be working my required number of hours so my Fridays are mine without having to take any of my paid time off.  Woo! 

Also, I'm going this weekend to fix up my bike with my dad so I can bike to work, so all in all, things are going good.

Also, there's a staff party this afternoon, which I'm very excited about.  Margaritas, Mexican food and good company.  It's gonna be great.

Then later tonight, Uncle Benny is coming over to watch Batman Begins because he's never seen it and I'm of the opinion that you have to see the first one in order to see the second one.  Some would argue, but I'm right.  So the plan is to watch Batman Begins tonight and then next weekend, see The Dark Knight with dinner at the newly opened BurgerMeister on Central.  That should also be fun.

As for tonight, I told Uncle Benny that we were having tacos, which is kind of a lie.  I had every intention of doing tacos, but then I saw some gorgeous lettuce at Trader Joe's and decided to do taco salad instead.  He'll live with it.  It's all the components of a taco, but easier and in some ways more enjoyable.

In other news, the last two mornings, there have been ants invading our flat.  I don't know what they're after, but I hate them.  I absolutely HATE ants.  I want to find some borax to dust along the back door deck area, so I'll be stopping by a drug store later today to see if I can find some.  I whole-heartedly dislike the idea of using manufactured chemicals around my house, even if it's outside.  Because in order to go inside, you have to first walk past the outside and that's where the chemicals are and I don't want those nasties tracked into my home. 

That said, borax is on the short list of things to use.  Also on the list are lemon water, Pyrethrum (which is a naturally occuring chemical compound found in chrysanthemums),  tumeric, citrus oils and vinegar.  Now, I still need to decide if I just want to deter the little buggers or if I want to kill them.  Somehow I have ths feeling that if I let them live, they'll repay my kindness by finding another way into my house, so I'm leaning towards the killing them side.

In order to do that, that means the list gets chopped down to borax, lemon water or vinegar.  The others are just deterrents.

Perhaps, though, I'll just use both to err on the side of caution.  I freaking HATE ants!!  You better believe I squeezed straight lemon juice onto the kitchen floor this morning!  And then I made my toast and went on my way.

On a happier note, I'm planning on taking off to the city one of these Fridays with my mom, brothers and grandmother to spend some time at the deYoung Museum at Golden Gate Park.  The Chihuly glass exhibit is there and I hear it's fantastic.  So I'm excited about that.  It's also a chance to bum around the park in general!

Golden Gate Park as a fascinating history.  It served as a make-shift camp in 1906 for everyone who had lost their homes in the earthquake or the fires that destoryed a large part of the city afterwards.  Believe it or not, the fire was actually spreading faster because the earthquake had borken natural gas lines under the city, but people were trying to cook in their homes without thinking that a small explosion might occur. 

The park has some interesting personal history for me as well.  I've gone there with Matt a couple times for different things, but every time we go, we end up being hungry and not being able to find food, two things that make me very cranky.  So that said, Golden Gate Park isn't exactly the kind of place I jump at to go to.  Still, it should be fun.

We'll drive over to the city, go the Chihuly exhibit, bum around the park, head over to Ocean Beach, maybe go see the old Cliff House and the ruins of the Sutro Baths.  Seal Rock might also be there with seals making lots of noise.  One of my professors in college actually published a book about all those places right after the 1906 earthquake.

Anyway, afterwards we'll probably meet up with my dad and Matt and have some fun.  After all, it is a Friday night in the city!

Anyway, it's a short day today and we're shutting things down at noon, so I need to get going.

Later Days,
Arty

Screw you
In fact, you can put any other expletive you want in the place of 'screw'
Any would apply to you

You coward

You're a fake
You're a phony
You're a bastard

Who is she that I should be made invisible?

But it was part of the agreement, wasn't it?

You agreed to pretend I didn't exist for her
So that she could come back
Feel smug
Feel superior

It was your displaced nobility
You thought you were doing something noble for her
Even if it hurt someone else
Perhaps you even reasoned with yourself it was so
To make yourself feel better
To justify the means with the outcome

Well, wars might be judged by the outcome
But history judges the means by which the outcome is obtained
And history never forgets

You chief of cowards!

How dare you not stand up for yourself
But worse
How dare you not stand up against her in the name of doing what's right!

How do you live with yourself?

Goodness knows I couldn't

As it is I have a husband
He's not afraid to stand up to me
He's not afraid to tell me I'm wrong
He's not afraid to tell me to get over things

And so I shall

I'm over you
Completely

I'm over you and what she makes you become

So enjoy the time you have with her
Because this light
This small joy in your miserable life

She's moving on towards better things
And a far better life

All without you pulling at her skirts

Hey!  Well, as the title warns, this is going to be a pseudo-rant, which I know some of my more sadistic readers will enjoy.  My portions of the rant will be separated for your reading enjoyments.

1) 2001: A Space Odyssey

Oh my freaking goodness!!  I know some of you out there are hard core sci-fi fans and I fully embrace that kind of fanaticism.  From a very long distance.  But for the love of everything good and/or holy, why did this film become a classic?!

Matt has been wanting to see it for a while now, so last night we both sat down after dinner and watched it.  Well, that's not strictly true.  We sat down and watched it after I awoke from my post-dinner food coma nap, during which Matt had cleaned the kitchen.  I wanted to watch Planet Earth.

Anyway, the movie came to us via our Netflix account, which Matt still hasn't given me the username and password for so all of the movies he wants are coming to us first.  What kind of douche-baggery is this, I ask you?!

So in went the movie.  The sofa was put into a reclining position and the movie started...and I lost brain cells and got stupider as it progressed.  The first half hour was snippets of monkeys having territorial gang wars with each other until one mob discovers that it can detroy things with blunt objects.  So they kill the leader of the other group.

And then we're in the year 2001, which looks strangely like a Walk Disney designed 60's astro lounge from Tomorrowland.  And we meet Russian doctors and yet another doctor who is going to the moon to research something that has been found, which turns out to be a monolith of some sort that can send transmissions to Jupiter, although we're really never sure why it would, let alone how it could.

Oh, and did I forget to mention that the same monolith showed up with the monkeys?  It just showed up in the middle of their digs one night and in the morning, the whole band came together to try and scare it away with noise and aggressive behavior.  But when they realized said stoney wasn't moving and wasn't scared, they simply gave up.  And then the monolith is gone.

It's disappears!!  WTH!?!?

So back on the moon, the monolith sends out a huge transmission to Jupiter and then we're propelled forward, against our wills, eighteen months into the future to a space ship that looks exactly like a cheerleader's baton.  Two guys are on board with a super computer called HAL and three other doctors that aren't awake, but rather in 'hibernation.'  

Long, painful story short, HAL malfunctions, kills one guy while he's fixing a satellite on the outside of the ship, locks out the other guy (who went after the one that was killed) and then proceeds to kill all the hibernating doctors.  And why?  because HAL didn't trust humans.  HAL, who believed it was invincible and who believed that it could do no wrong at all because it was programmed to be error-free, didn't believe human.

I don't think many of you understand.  It killed the very thing that built him while believing it was created flawless.  Yet HAL believed it was flawless while not seeming to understand that it was built by flawed beings.  How is it possible?!

GAH!

So anyway, guy 2 who went out to save guy one from the satellite ends up getting back in and shutting down HAL's memory.  In the meantime, a transmission is played and for some reason guy 2 is propelled through what I call an acid trip and he ends up in some white room with green furniture and paintings and he sees himself several times over getting progressivley older until the film ends with its climax of guy two as a giant ova, hovering above the green bed with Strauss playing in the background.

Strauss!

I still need a cookie after subjection to that.  A big, fat, cholate chunk cookie with walnuts in it.  Actually, make it two cookies. 

2)  Grammar sluts.

Don't get me wrong, I love those who leave comments.  What I hate are those who leave comments who don't understand the basic functions of proper grammar or spelling.  I decided not to call them grammar whores because a grammar whore would imply you know what you're doing and you get paid for it.  A slut is just someone who doesn't care who they sleep with and just does it because they can.  Those who occasionally have a hit and miss relationship with grammar are hereby declared 'slores' because they're a bit of both.  Not professionals, but not rookies either.

Case and point one:

"3 words: your the shit."

 Kudos to those of you who find the horrendous flaw in that.  It's"you're" and it always has been proper and it always WILL BE proper.  Learn the freaking difference between your and you're.

Case and point two:

"Great advise!"

*shakes head and sighs*  It's not, I repeat NOT, okay for verbs to masquerade as nouns. If they do, they should be quickly pointed, aprehended and slapped across the face.  So should those who use verbs in the place of nouns.

Case and point three:

"UR Gr8 at this and you're going 2 go far."

Text speak.  Oh, the bane of my existence.  I used this example because clearly this person knows the fine art of the difference between your and you're yet can't take the time to form real words.  It makes me crazy.

3) Gas prices falling for barrels but not for consumers.  'Nuff said.

4) Dry meat.  It's just not nice and it makes me angry.

And here ends my rant.

On to nicer things, I've been getting some questions as to how my knee is doing, which makes me smile because it reminds me that people care.  My knee is doing well.  It wasn't so much a scrape as it was a burn from the friction I got when I hit the ground.  I had a few cuts, but the majority of it was a burn. 

Well, cuts and burn are both doing really well.  I had that moment last weekend when the burn decided it was through with the old skin and I was like a snake for a day or so, shedding the outer layers of my skin to reveal regenerated, new stuff.  That said, I have a nice pink circle on my knee where the burn was.  It's healing nicely.  Really, the only remnant of the fall is the bruises, which are still pretty prominent.

The thing that gets me about falling is that it's a lot worse when you're an adult.  I mean, when you're a kid, you falls, scrape your knee and two days later you're all healed.  When you're an adult it takes longer.  And you're sore for three days afterwards.  And there's the simple fact of there's just a longer way to fall when you're grown up as opposed to when you're a kid.

The baseball game was awesome.  Our home team opened a can of whoop ass on the visiting team and although they got revenge the next day, I was there for the victory.  The fireworks were pretty good too and Jeff nearly wet himself when they started playing Carry On My Wayward Son along with the fireworks.  He likes that song.

I made falafel last night just to see if I could make it.  Boy, can I make it.  There are very few things I'll admit I'm really good at making, but that's one of them.  It was super yummy.  

I'm gonna be going later to get stuff for an eggplant melanzane for tomorrow night.  It's been a while since we had one and that's another thing I know I'm good at.

My dad has been telling me he misses me lately.  I chock it down to the fact that now he has no one to argue with. 

Work has been going by quickly this month.  I can't say it's busy, but it's going by, which pleases me.  It just means that I'm that much closer to October, which is when we're all going down south to visit Craig and Julia for a weekend.  I already have a day off for it.

I also am going down south for my birthday in April.  My birthday happens to fall on a Saturday this year, so things will be good.  The uncles want to take me to Club 33 for my 25th, so I think I'll agree to it. 

Because I'll be going down in October and April, I'm considering an annual pass for Disneyland, which would give me great benefits all around.  The only thing is that it's kind of cost prohibitive.  But then again, factoring in full price meals on park property, parking fees and general ticket admission, I'm thinking it might be worth the annual pass charge.  Not to mention an AP will give me park hopping abilities to my heart's content.  Mmm...park hopping for things sounds great.

Matt and I also might sneak away one night in April to go for dinner at Napa Rose, but that's still a highly unstable idea. 

Um...let's see...what else...?

We might go to the lake on Saturday and rent a boat for a few hours.  Maybe find a small corner of an island in the middle that we can call our own for a picnic.  Then again, we might go to the zoo so I can feed an elephant a piece of watermelon.  The zoo is doing a promotional thing to advocate a healthy diet by allowing the public to come in and feed the animals, but on one condition: that they buy fruits and vegetables to bring with them to feed the animals.

It's a campaign to show children (not just tell them) that fruits and veggies are good for us and that some of the Earth's largest land mammals survive entirely off of vegetation.

So I want to buy a watermelon to feed to an elephant.

Then again, we might head up to Mission San Rafael towards Mt. Tam for some fun.  I dunno.  The possibilities are endless!

Well, I should get going.  Work and all that.

Later Days,
Arty

So, I've written a few blogs since the 'I Pinch' one, but they've all just stayed in the storyboard mode.  They haven't made it to the publishing block yet for one reason or another, but this one I've decided is going to go straight to publishing.  It's an attempt to keep my every adoring viewers happy and coming back for more.

It's been a heck of a month so far.  Wildfires are still blazing all over the state, the three largest still only just 30% contained as of yesterday.  Bertha is raging through the Atlantic Ocean.  She was a category 2 storm on Monday morning when I read the news and then later that night as I was reading some more, more recent, articles, she had strengthened to a category 3 hurricane.  Yesterday, she was back down to a category 2 storm, but the wind speeds were still topping 105mph with some gusts even stronger than that.  I don't know about you, but that sounds like a pretty freaking strong weather front to me, even if it did weaken back down to a '2.'  As it is, Bertha is set to re-strengthen before nightfall.

The Bay Area is enduring another heat wave.  Perhaps I've just never paid much attention to them before, but it seems like we're having more heat waves more frequently this year than in previous years.  Cooler bayside places are supposed to top out at 93 degrees today, which means the inland empire is going to top out in the mid to high 100s.  It's at moments like these that I believe the federal government should step in and declare an emergency condition and send the military to Siberia to bring back snow for us.  Or perhaps they could engineer a modern marvel in a tunnel that will channel cold air from Siberia to us.

My boss is out today.  She went out last night to dinner with a couple of friends and got really sick, so she's staying home today, close to her own plumbing (which are her words, not mine).

I'm still nursing an injured knee.  I'd like to tell you that I injured it playing soccer, that I hurt myself playing in a left forward position, fearlessly running at a member of the opposing team to steal the ball from them, but I can't.  I'd even settle for telling you that I twisted it funny whilst dancing the night away at the Carnelian Room, but again I can't.  In truth, I injured my knee by slipping, falling and scraping my knee up pretty badly.

In addition to the scrape itself (which I'll get to in a moment) I'm also pretty bruised up.  I'm like my grandmother in that I bruise easily and because I'm fair like my father, you see them all.  The scrape itself isn't that bad.  I had far worse when I was a kid.  What's odd about the scrape, however, is that the majority of it is more like a burn.  You know the kind, the ones where you rub your skin against the wood floor a little too long and it leaves a small burn on your skin.  It's like that, only larger.

Needless to say, I received first aid from some friends and I've been keeping it clean and cared for since Sunday when it happened (I failed to mention that I slipped, fell and scraped my knee at church).  I generally tend to leave my knee uncovered at home (that's to say, I take showers in the evenings and just leave my knee uncovered), but I keep a bandage on it around work.  I move around quite a bit at work and I don't want to get something in it.  Of course, that didn't stop me from banging my knee on the corner of my desk yesterday.  Yeah.  It sucked big time.

Matt and I will have been married for three months this coming Saturday.  It doesn't seem possible in some ways, by which I mean that time has gone by pretty quickly.  Time didn't go by this fast when we were waiting for his visa.  At least I don't feel it went by this quickly.  The past three months really have been some of the happiest in my life, all said and done.  I thoroughly enjoy living with Matt and I thoroughly enjoy being near, but not too near, the rest of my family.

Speaking of family, Jeff is coming over tonight for dinner.  On Monday, armed with knowledge of an impending heat wave, I got home after work and cooked up a storm.  I made two pasta salads, both very different in taste, roasted vegetables with some couscous, spinach salad with an orange vinaigrette and some crispy prosciutto and some jambalaya.  The idea was that if we had everything cooked already, it would just be a matter of nuking it in the microwave if need be.  As it is, the only thing I've made that needs to be re-heated is the jambalaya.

We haven't broken into the second pasta salad or the jambalaya yet.  Hopefully Jeff will help us finish off some leftovers.  I reckon he'll help, but he's got his sights set on jambalaya.  Apparently it completes him.

We'll be seeing Jeff again on Friday.  He was given three tickets to the A's game (the A's are a local baseball team and the A stands for Athletics) by some friends that couldn't use them.  He thought about taking a couple of his friends, but when he remembered that Matt has never been to a baseball game, he immediately offered to take us.  So the three of us are going to the A's game on Friday night.  

I excite for the game for several reasons.  

1) It's been years (quite literally!) since I've been to a game.  We used to go all the time, but then the players went out on strike back in the 90s and there wasn't any baseball for a while and the strike was because the players didn't think they were getting paid enough while the average fan was saying, 'are you freaking kidding me?!'  All said and told, the strike was nasty, ugly and it killed the spirit of the game.  I'm looking forward to going, though.

2) I'm taking whole peanuts.  Whole peanuts are one of those things I associate specifically with a baseball stadium because that's one of the only places we had them in the shell.  Baseball stadiums are also one of the only places where you can eat whole peanuts and throw the shells on the ground.  There's nothing quite so wonderful as stepping on the shells you've taken off and hearing them crunch.

3) Baseball stadium hotdogs!  I'm not a hotdog person, most of the time, but whenever I go to a game, I splurge on a ballpark hotdog.  Of course, I make sure it's an all beef hotdog, but there isn't anything like a ballpark hotdog.

4) Ice cream.  They serve it in a little cup with a wooden spoon that's totally flat.  It's fantastic.  Jeff is more excited about the Dippin'Dots that will be there, but for me, the cup with the wooden spoon is classic ballpark food.

5) Seven inning stretch.  We get up, we stretch, we sing and sometimes we even do the wave.  The whole stadium does it.

6) I forgot to mention earlier that Friday night's game is a fireworks game, which is pretty much what the name suggests.  After the game, the entire stadium is brought down to the field and we all sit and watch as fireworks explode overhead.

I made risotto the other week.  It was red wine and cauliflower risotto and just for the records, I want it known that I've always thought, continue to think and always will think cauliflower nothing more than an vile albeit edible weed.  I had never made risotto before and although it's pretty tasty, I can honestly say that risotto is hot work.  You pretty much live in front of the stove for half an hour while you stir liquid into the rice in small portions.

I'm going to try a more 'traditional' risotto sometime so I can make some arancinis, which are risotto balls with a cube of cheese in the middle of it before it's breaded and fried up.  Matt and I had those when we went around Napa with Steve when he was here in March.  We had them at V. Sattui along with the best pasta pesto I've ever had and a pretty freaking amazing black forest ham sandwich with sweet onion marmalade.

In other news, Gus (the head boss of the place) was accusing me earlier of stealing and hiding his coffee mug.  I laughed for a minute before going in search of it.  I found it at the back of a cabinet, hidden by tea, so I laughed again to myself, washed it out for him and put it in his hands.  It should be noted that Gus is notorious for pouring and fixing his cup of coffee and then leaving it in random places only to come back into the office to ask us if we remember where he put it.

I love Gus.  He's like a big camp counselor.  He genuinely cares about his staff and he doesn't hide that he cares.  He truly is one awesome man.

 

And now, I have to get going to meet up with my mom and brother to go to a late lunch. Later Days, Arty