Monday, January 28, 2013

Oh, just coughing up a lung lobe or 2. And you?




Question: What’s the very best kind of sick to be, if you had to be sick?  Like, 'sick enough to be home from work'-type sick.  I prefer anything without nausea.  Nausea makes me miserable and sad.

So, naturally, this cold or whatever it is I have makes me cough so hard I not only feel like I might barf, but actually DO at times barf.  Sexy, right?  That watery-eyed look and bright red face and dripping nose aren’t enough, but that some urping needs to up the ugly ante.

Apparently I’m one of about a zillion people currently sick with this germ or some close variant.  The FB feed is full of ‘we’re at the urgent care’ and ‘all of us are going to the doctor today’ posts.  I feel bad for each and every one of those folks who post those things, because dang, sickness, way to ruin everybody’s day!

There is an upside, though. This particular ick has conveyed upon me an awesome basso profundo voice.  Particularly in the morning, the voice is a good 2 octaves lower that it was the night before.  Sludge buildup, perhaps?  Nothing really works to strip it off, either; not coffee, not tea, not copious amounts of water.  It’s just a matter of waiting it out and using the ‘sick’ voice’ to my benefit (eg – garnering sympathy from my coworkers and family).  People do tend to notice an abrupt change in someone’s voice, and are almost universally sympathetic.  I like that, the sympathy.   It validates my suffering.  Don’t judge.

On the plus side, the clothes I ordered online from Target are excellent and comfortable beyond my expectations, so yay!  Along those lines, did you know that the online stores carry clothing that the brick-and-mortar ones don’t?  REVELATION!  This is wonderful on many levels, among them 1) it’s nice to have more choices from which to pick than what’s normally carried in my size at the local store (obvious), 2) the online trouser selection is fabulous and the reviews are really helpful (less obvious, but a nice surprise), and 3) I don’t need to go be out with people to clothes shop (should be obvious, but maybe you don’t know about my deep loathing for clothes shopping people at stores.  Deep loathing, children, real deep).  I recommend the armchair shopping, is what I’m saying.

I should tell you about our weekend visitors sometime, probably.  But not right now.  I feel a coughing conniption coming on and need to prepare...

Tiff out.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

For someone smarter than me

Y'all know my blog is written in Sanskrit on a clay tablet, right?  The design was done FOREVER ago and it's not exactly user-friendly.  When Haloscan, my preferred and much-loved commenting widget, went belly up and Echo took over, the comments portion of this blog stayed reasonably useable, but once Echo went and I was left on my own I managed to bork up the comments beyond anything I thought possible but for having no comments at all.

For example, LL leaves comments that only he can see, and Ron and Kenju leave comments some OTHER way.  Also, the most recent post on the main page seems to roll up comments from some distant past time, while if you click on 'old blogger comments' at the bottom of the most recent post (bringing up just the most recent post alone) a whole different set of comments show up.

Is this not amusing?

No.  It is not amusing.

Less amusing: I can't figure out how to fix it.

So, being a modern woman who is not afraid to delegate, I'm asking YOU to fix it.  One of you has to have the smarts to look at this page source and tell me what in the blue blazes is going on with my stupid template or be able to suggest another commenting dealio so that we're not orbiting around one another in parallel blogly commenting universes. 

IT'S MAKING ME CRAZY that I can't get it to work properly, and I need your help so very much.

Don't make me beg.  Get in the guts of this code and just fix it for me, mmkay? 

I promise I'll be suitably impressed.

Tiff out.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Seatbelt not optional

Whoopsie!
My mom goes to Florida every winter, has done for about as long as she's known my stepdad.  They have a lovely condo right on the beach, a 2-bedroom affair that he's had for years and years, and they live in a building where they have gobs of friends.  As you can imagine (condo, Florida, all winter), the building is full of 'people of a certain age,' which I think is great because it keeps the screaming kid factor down and nobody wants to krunk at the dances they occasionally hold.  This is background for what I'm about to tell you next.

Yesterday, Mom was emailing me about a recent incident. and cause for much excitement, in which someone at their building drove through the front gate of the condo.  The 8-foot tall front gate.  Made of steel.  That LOCKS.

How fast does one have to be going to drive though an 8-foot tall locked steel gate, anyhow?  Don't older people have a reputation for driving super-slowly?  When I lived in Florida I know they did, and rightfully so.  This person couldn't have been going that fast on purpose,right?  I'm thinking the driver just got horribly confused, floored it when they thought they were stomping on the brakes, and WHAM!  Gate gone in an instant.  Does anybody know enough physics to do a quick calculation regarding speed of an average car vs a stout steel gate?  I'm very curious, but lazy.  And know nothing about physics.

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Also, does anybody know when it might be OK to talk with an older person about surrendering their driver's licenses (No, I'm not looking at YOU, Mom)?  Or has anyone given theirs up because they are aware enough to know they're becoming a hazard on the road?

Just trying to prepare for the future here, y'all.  It's coming faster than any of us think.  Seriously - 20 years ago the smartphone would have seemed impossible, and yet here were are with our noses pointed at the floor most of the time, constantly checking for emails and updates.  In 20 more years, what will be the tech du jour?  I hope it's something to do with anti-aging that will at least let me keep driving without being a danger to other people.  Shoot, I already hate driving at night in the rain, in 20 years I bet I'll only be venturing out when it's dry and sunny, like Nature intended.

Thank heavens I married a younger man.  He'll be able to cart my carcass around for several years after I declare incompetence.  Then it'll be the kids' turn.  Yep - I have my game plan ALL worked out.

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Speaking of driving, I need to crank up the heat in the buggy and get to work.  It's beyond time and  I still need to put gas in the tank.  Everybody have a great day and don't forget to feed the squirrels.

Tiff out.

Thursday, January 03, 2013

It's becoming a regular thing

The third of January rolls around once again, and once again the Biffster and I celebrate another anniversary.  This is our fourth (FOURTH!), which seems impossible, but the calendar does not lie.  Hard to believe that 4 years ago we were looking forward to welcoming friends and family into our home to help us celebrate gittin' hitched.  It wasn't a big crowd, but it filled the Tiny House and we were so grateful to all who were in attendance.  Four years already - amazing.

I love you, Biff, buns and tounches.  You are one of the shining lights of my life and have been a wide open door to more happiness than I thought existed.

The only thing that could make it better would have been waffles for breakfast.  :)

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Once again I have made some New Year's resolutions.  Some are slow-goers, with a long road ahead to achieve full compliance, others are more immediate and can be practiced in full right away.  Daily gratitude falls into the second bucket, as does not offing the annoying cat.  Well, wait.  The cat thing might fall into the first bucket, if her long-term survival is the end goal. 

Anybody want a cat?

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It's back to work in full swing this week, after having 11 days off during which I thought not about work at all and work didn't much think about me.  I came back expecting a barrage of emails and was delighted to have received a mere trickle, 95% of which was junk or unimportant and was immediately deleted.

The parking lot is nearly empty, even today.  That however has not stopped the timelines that were set before the break from coming just as fast as if it was full of highly-motivated professionals, so I'm relearning how to type and set priorities and establish lines of communication and methods of mollifying anxious teammates in order to be in total full swing when everyone and their admins are on deck next week.

*cracks fingers, rolls eyes*

Here we go!

Tiff out.