OmegaMom

Yesterday was OmegaBro, SIL, niece (with a newly fractured ankle) and nephew.

And…

Step-SIL and her hubby.  We got the call shortly after I posted my last post.

So we had six adults and three children and a dawg and our two cats and a guest cat.

Did I get any packing or cleaning done?  No.

Was I uptight?  Yes.

Today was end of fiscal year at work.  That was fun, too.

And a lunch for a good buddy whose last day was today.

And a conference call with the relocation company representative that lasted an hour.  By the end of the call, my mind was a total blank, and all I could say was, “Okay…okay…okay…”  I’m hoping she didn’t ask us to hand over any pound of flesh or eldest child or anything like that; I suspect I’d just have nodded with x’s in my eyes and said, “Okay…”

Oh, yeah, and OmegaDad had to get home early to remove the dawg because someone wanted to see the house (already!  Yay!).

Y’all gave me lots of good suggestions about staging, and that’s on the list for this weekend, in and around FIL and Step-MIL’s visit.  All those helpful comments!  Rather than my normal omnibus response in the comments section, I will respond here…

Julie–I should remove all books??  That makes me gasp and makes my heart break.  A house doesn’t look like a home without books!

D.–The storage place rental is on my agenda tomorrow.  I’d like to thank you for the suggestion, but it was already seeming like a Good Idea to us!  ;) 

AtomicMama–Dayum…the timing was just a few weeks off!  It would have been cool to see you!  Have I mentioned that I never considered the acronym for Small Mountain University Town until you started calling it S.M.U.T.?

SBird–You do realize that two years ago, while I was returning from a visit to OmegaDad in Taos, we had four inches of rain in one day which flooded the road into Hippy Dippy Enclave in the Woods??  We have something called Pumphouse Wash, which turns into Big Creek, which is what goes tumbling down Really Cool Canyon to Swanky Southwest Tourist Town?  There were RVs that got swept away in that flood.

Mamasan (and everyone else)–I could have sworn I told everyone just how quickly we were going, but looking back over my posts there’s not a word.  Har.  Yes, we were given about 5 weeks to get all this in gear and done with.

Noreen–Hah!  I love the empty good whiskey bottle idea!  I have been contemplating all the lovely wildflowers as a source of nice floral foci in the living room.

Elaine–Hi!  I hope you get a buyer, too.  Indonesia, eh?  Wow.  That’s even more impressive than Alaska!  As for the USCIS, I think you should call your senator in.  Having the passport app denied because of a lack of a U.S. birth certificate is ludicrous.  You may actually need that passport to go to Indonesia!

Sara–We have the appliances up on top of the kitchen cupboards.  What we have on the counters is bunches of spice jars and jars of pastas and rice.  Hm.  The new bath towel sets is something I was considering; thanks for the advice!

Theresa–10 days?!  Wow!  That’s impressive!  The problem with having friends over is that (a) everyone’s out of town and (b) I’d rather have them watching the dotter so she wasn’t underfoot!  The amphetamines might be a good idea. 

Thanks again, everyone!

We have a “For Sale” sign out front.  I am now on call for house showing at an hour’s notice.  This is because we have a Bad Dawg, and have to clear him out of the house before strangers can come in.

Our listing is up.  The house is going for about $14,000 more than twice what we paid for it, which is okay.  The listing is incorrect; it says we’re on propane, but we’re actually on natural gas.

My bro, SIL, niece and nephew are showing up tomorrow night for a night’s stay.

The day after that, FIL and Step-MIL are arriving, and they are staying through Sunday a.m.

In the midst of all this, we are trying to keep the house somewhat (for us) clean.  Our realtor told us we had to de-clutter; OmegaDad and I looked at each other with deer-in-the-headlights looks, because, to us, it already was de-cluttered.  So I’m going through and removing things left and right, trying to figure out whether we should keep whatever it is, or just toss it.  I’m doing a lot of tossing.

The dotter is coming home dead tired every night, which, in the normal run of things would be a Good Thing.  However, whenever she’s dead tired, she turns into a cranky, whiny pill.

To top it all off, like Jess, we have managed to lose the important part of the dotter’s adoption records.  Like, the copies of her estimated birth certificate, her abandonment certificate, the translation of our adoption certificate, and her Chinese passport with the all-important IR3 visa.  We do, however, have the Chinese version of her adoption certificate, in all its red-leather-clad and red-chop-stamped glory.  The missing documents pose some problems when it comes to, say, driving across the border into Canada, and then across the border into Alaska.  We don’t need a passport (I think; it’s difficult to really tell), but we do need proof of application for a passport.

There’s this absolutely gorgeous house in our future area of AK that we’d love to buy, but we have no idea just how much money we’re going to have, because we haven’t heard who our relocation company is, or who the “approved” appraisers are, so we can’t get our two appraisals so we know the absolute price we’re going to get out of the reloco.  (Not to mention that there were horrendous floods in that area last year, and this gorgeous house is real close to the banks of one of the rivers that flooded, so I’m wondering about flood plains and stuff like that…)

I am a wreck.  I am likely to become even more of a wreck as the days go on.  You all are my whiny outlet.  If you don’t want to hear rants, whines, screeches, and vicariously watch me (read me?) pulling my hair out by the roots, I advise you to stay clear of OmegaMom’s blog for, oh, four more weeks.

Did I mention we’re clearing out of here on July 21?  Which just happens to be all of three-and-a-half weeks from now?!

ACK!

EEK!

For fuck’s sake!

A year ago, I began keeping track of house prices around here.  Things just seemed really out of whack.  Prices kept leaping and bounding, gazelle-like, and OmegaDad and I watched with jaws agape at the prices itty bitty houses here in Hippy Dippy Enclave in the Woods were fetching.

At the same time, I did some blogsearching on “housing bubble”.  The results were a bunch of regular visits of mine for quite a few months, the various bubble blogs.  Which were, of course, filled with doom and gloom, predicting the whole house of cards was due to collapse at any moment, with a horrible recession to follow (if not a depression).  The basic idea was that the fed policy of relaxing interest rates down to the bare bones, right after the dot-com bust, was that the US (and other countries) had gone on a spending spree not matched since, say, tulip mania a few hundred years ago.  That the economic bust–the real economic bust, the one that should have hit when the dot-coms busted–was merely being postponed.  That the spending spree of Joe Homeowner, who hocked his illusory equity to pay for new cars, vacations, remodels, and more, would end up forcing hundreds of thousands of people out of their homes and ruining their finances.

All of which sounded pretty damned convincing to me.

Lo and behold, come November of 2006, the housing market stopped on a dime.  WHAM!  Sales came to a standstill, people started cancelling their contracts on newly constructed homes, banks began foreclosing, and prices began dropping.

Which was academic to us, right?  I mean, my spreadsheet showing a drop in average asking prices here in HDEW, was merely an exercise.

Right?

Sigh.  So here we are, putting the house on the market so we can move to the final frontier. 

We met with the realtor today.  She was nice.  She hinted that we might get a lot less than we expected.  She seemed relieved to know that we knew the housing market was tanking.  And even with the tanking, we are expecting to be able to clear as much as we paid for the house to begin with (on top of what we still owe on our mortgage).  But, still…I had been secretly hoping that “things are different here”, as so many realtors were saying in late summer/early fall last year about every single housing market out there.  I was secretly hoping she’d walk into our house, gasp, and make us an offer of three times our current outstanding mortgage right then and there.

Go ahead.  Laugh at me.

She gives us a researched asking price tomorrow.

It’s not as bad as all that, because we are lucky enough to have the feds moving us, which means a relocation company, and there’s this itty bitty clause about the relocation company buying our house at appraised value.  So we don’t have the relentless stress of having to sell it ourselves, carry two mortgages, blah de blah de blah.

Another good thing is that housing is noticeably cheaper where we are moving, so we’ll be able to put a good chunk-o-change down on a one-acre parcel with a new home, and still owe less than we currently owe.  Yay.  (Maybe not a lot less, but less, I’m pretty sure.)

But I’m still wisting after that “things are different here” daydream.  No, OmegaMom, sorry, they ain’t.

Returning from the China Buffet, where we had gorged on gingery jiaozi (potstickers) and lovely California-style sushi and other wondrous foods, I had OmegaGranny, the dotter, and Niece K and Nephew I in the car.

And Bear.

Nephew I had very carefully tucked Bear into the seatbelt with him at the dotter’s behest.

Suddenly, an outcry arose.

“Aunt Kate!  K hit Bear!”

“What?!”

“K hit Bear!”

“K–go into time-out!”

(K, I must be quick to add, is turning 14 in a few weeks, and I is 12.  They were extremely patient and goodnatured with the dotter, who followed them around like a dog most of the time, including being a dog, named Monkey, who had to be led around by a leash made of Louisiana Mardi Gras beads.)

“I did not!  We have a miscommunication!  I didn’t hit Bear!”

“She did too!” quoth Nephew I.

“Did not!” quoth K.

“Hm.  What we need is a trial,” I announced.

“Okay!  Who is what?”

OmegaGranny volunteered to be the jury.

Nephew I was named the judge.  I didn’t say anything about potential conflicts of interest.

K wanted to be both the prosecutor and defender.

I was the narrator.

“Oyez, oyez, court is now in session.  The Honorable Judge I.W. presiding.  Before the court is K.W., charged with assaulting Bear.  How plead you, K.W.?”

“Not guilty, your honor!”

“Okay, now you have to do an opening statement as the prosecutor.”

“What does an opening statement sound like?”

Here’s where I switched from being the narrator to being the prosecutor:

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, in this case, I will demonstrate to you that K.W., sitting over there, did violently and wilfully cause extreme physical and emotional distress to the victim, Mr. Bear-y Bear.  Witnesses will describe the assault, and you will be called upon to judge K.W. to the best of your ability.”

“(Now it’s your turn, K.)”

“Ahem.  Ladies and gentlemen, in the interests of freedom and civil rights, I will show you that what occurred was simply a miscommunication, and that no assault took place!”  (I can’t convey the wonderfully ringing and pompous voice that K. used in this pronouncement.)

“Call the first witness!”

“(Psst!  Who’s going to be a witness?!)”

“I will!” volunteers K.

“K.W., will you please describe to the people of the jury the events that took place at approximately 8 p.m. on Saturday the 23rd of June, 2007?”

“Bear-y Bear was reaching out a paw.  I thought he was asking for a high five, so I high-fived him.  I never meant to hit him!”

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, what say you?”

At this point, alas, I drove the car up in front of OmegaGranny’s house, and the trial was adjourned.  We will never know whether K. was found guilty or innocent.

There are some folks who pooh-pooh graduation from pre-school or kindergarten.  It’s sort of the Incredibles Effect:  If every little thing gets celebrated, it devalues the celebration, as it were.  And some people get all blustery about how “It didn’t used to be like that in my day!”…with an implied harrumph.

OmegaMom is here to tell you that she is forty-(mumble) and still remembers her very own graduation from kindergarten from thirty-five-and-(mumble) years ago.

Or, more to the point, she remembers, very clearly, watching the other kids walk down the church aisle, carrying crepe paper streamers, while she did not.

Too young, they said.  Which was the reason why I was removed from the nice Episcopalian kindergarten and inserted into the Whitman School, a private school (WS would allow kids into first grade who were deemed “too young”).

I may be remembering the details wrong, but I really really do remember the other kids walking and not me, with those pretty crepe paper streamers.

So littlies “graduating” is nothing new.  And for anyone who thinks the littlies can’t remember, I just want to mention that this is one of my earliest memories, and I was about five at the time.

Today was OmegaDotter’s graduation from pre-school.  Miss S., the pre-school administrator, goes all out.  She rents a cap-and-gown and has all the kiddos photographed by a pro.  Then, she and the others get together and choreograph songs with movements (soft Christian pop songs).  She arranges for party goods to be donated.  She ropes the pastor into the whole affair.  Including a printed program!  And pennants!  And, to top it all off, she purchased autograph books for all the kiddos.  (The pic to the left is OmegaDotter smiling at One and Only True Love.)

Miss S. is really into graduation.  To the right is Miss S. with her heap of  diplomas for the kiddos.

Y’know what?  I am too.  I didn’t snurfle or weep this time, for some reason. (Perhaps the rather over-the-top preaching of the new pastor distracted me.  I really didn’t want to hear another verse of the Bible exhorting me to lead my children on the straight-and-narrow and bring them to church.  Again.  New Pastor did this about four or five times throughout the talk.  Most of which was aimed at the parents, rather than the kiddos.  Harrumph.)

OmegaDotter was thrilled to see everyone from school again…particularly OAOTL.  The two were practically glued together.  OmegaDad tells a tale about how he was teasing her about her new crush, Ted, a counselor at camp…he asked, “So is Ted your boyfriend?”  OmegaDotter rolled her eyes and said, “Really, Daddy!  Everyone knows C. is my boyfriend!”

Anyway, the kiddies sang, the pastor preached, the kids were handed their diplomas, and then we all hied off to the party room to partake of pizza and cake.  The “signing of autograph books” was an interesting affair; the kids just aren’t quite hip to how one does this.  (One kid, however, figured out that one could get phone numbers, and that, in some way, phone numbers were important, so he wandered around making sure most of the other kiddos added their phone numbers.)

And, thanks to the versatility of modern digicams, I have a sideways video of the dotter actually receiving her “diploma”.

Now all we have to do is ensure that all of this memorabilia somehow stays unsquished and locatable after the move.  We’re not going to discuss all the things that OmegaDad and I are suddenly (urgently) looking for and not finding.  The kind of things that you know you held in your hand and said to your spouse, “I’m going to put this somewhere where I’ll remember.”

Hah.  Famous last words.

How about Mars?!?!

Okay, not really.

But the European Space Agency is looking for 12 people with the Right Stuff to volunteer for an experimental faux Mars mission.  The article says “volunteers”, but later on, it mentions that the people selected for the various experiments would be paid a stipend of 120 Euros per day.

It makes me think of Biosphere II, which was a grand idea that flopped grandly.

If I were single and didn’t smoke, I think I’d be sending in my app.

Of course, 500 days in 550 cubic meters with five other people does sound a bit…cramped.  If those were all sixes in that sentence, I’d be spooked to the max. 

“See what happens when you start going to the gym and exercising and stuff like that?  I don’t do stuff like that, and you don’t see me getting injured!”

The shit.

I have thrown out my back.  Or pulled a muscle.  Or it’s hysterical hypochondria.  Or something. 

I was off at the wreck center yesterday, and did half an hour on the recumbent bike.  Recumbent bikes are supposed to be ergonomic, aren’t they?!  But the difference between Level 2 and Level 3 on this bike was…um…excessive.  Really.  I start to wonder if the damned thing isn’t broken or something.

Because, when I got off, my hip was killing me.

And as I dressed, it was killing me more.

And as I went to meetings and stuff that afternoon, if I twisted ever so slightly the wrong way, it was like someone was sticking a dagger into my lower back and upper butt.

So I spent today trying to baby myself.  Hah.  An hour in bed with the ice pack left me feeling stiff as a board.  There’s a Spot, a very distinct Spot, that is somewhat swollen.  Ibuprofen ain’t doing a thing.  Naproxen ain’t doing a thing. 

Off to the doc tomorrow a.m.

Grr.

Oh, yes, and the dotter is obviously All Shook Up.  We have had tantrums and scenes in the morning and evening every day this week.  Our suspicion is that there’s just Too Much Going On for her–end of preschool, camp, the move (which we told her about this weekend), the hair…life is tough for a five-year-old.

Pity me.  Wah.

She is shorn.  Wah!  I watched the locks of hair falling to the floor and winced–four and a half years of hair growing gone *poof*.

This is the end result.  It’s very cute.  Luckily, the majority of her co-campers are also featuring bobs, so she fits right in.

The morning was horrid.  At first, I was thinking we were actually going to get out of the house at a decent time…but noooooo.

First there was to-ing and fro-ing.

Then, as I started combing her hair, was the dreadful discovery of The Gum.  Oh, not a great wad, nothing so visible.  But enough to create a couple of huge gluey tangled messes, one at shoulder length, on one side of the face, and the other at chin length, on the other side of her face.  After a really grumpy attempt to actually comb the stuff out, I snarled, dashed off for our hair scissors, and whacked the two spots out.

Then there was a scene about the shoes.

Then there was mom’s edict:  No Gum At Camp.

By the time we arrived at camp, I was a raving maniac, and she was a mess.  She still hadn’t put her shoes on.  She wanted me to carry her.  After more of a scene (great mommy moments here, folks), we finally ended up sitting on the curb in front of SMU’s recreation center, with her in my lap, weeping.

And mumchance.

Not a word.  So we played Twenty Questions:  “OmegaDotter, is it your shoes?”  Head shakes.  “Is it your socks?  Do you not like your horsie socks any more?”  Head shakes.  “Is it your little fingernail itching?”  Head shakes.

Finally, light dawns.

“Sweetie, is it your hair?”

Head nods and tears pour.

Oh, dear.  So I assured her we would talk with daddy and see what his thoughts were, but we could cut it in a Really Cute Cut and wouldn’t that be okay?

So I finally delivered a soggy child to camp, adorned with oddly chopped hanks of hair.

And right after the end of camp, we went off to the local hair salon and had the haircut so that it’s all the same length and she has decided it looks very nice.

But, oh, she looks so different.

This is a very bad equation.

Off to the hair-stylist this afternoon, sigh.

I remembered Father’s Day about halfway through our visit to the rodeo.  The announcer was saying something about Father’s Day, and I gasped, turned to OmegaDad, and whimpered, “I’m sorry!  I forgot!  Happy Father’s Day!”

He grinned.

He spent the morning painting.  I took the dotter off swimming to keep her out of his hair.  Then, when we returned, we all loaded into the car and headed off to the rodeo.

My first.

So we saw calf-roping:

Barrel racing (some of those horses were damned fast!):

Bucking broncos:

And bucking steers (only three of the competitors stayed on for the requisite eight seconds!):

I had a grand time–I think I had a better time than OmegaDotter.  She did like the rodeo clowns, though.  The problem was that she didn’t get to see the horsies up close and personal.

However, there were the concession stands.  One of which was selling pink cowboy hats.  Which, of course, the dotter wanted.  Which was mommy’s “yes”.  So now the dotter is a completely outfitted cowgirl–she has the pink cowboy boots, the pink roping rope, and the pink cowboy hat.

Ahem.

Anyway, we had to have her dress up in the entire outfit once we got home, so we could take some pics.  (You may or may not notice in that picture of her and me on the porch combing her hair, but that right arm?  See that hint of muscle?  I am so proud of that hint of muscle!  Let me note, however, contrary to how super-duper it all sounded in my previous post, there is still plenty of flab, it’s just that there’s a small knot of muscle underneath the flab.  I figure about eight more weeks, and the flab may have tightened up to a mere nothing.  Perhaps.  Let’s not bank on it, and I’m not going to post another thing about exercise until four more weeks have passed.)

Anyway, so here is the dotter in all her glory, the pink cowgirl par excellence:

And here she is, with her “horse”, roping her “calf”:

I hope everyone’s had a grand weekend.  My next post is going to be “All Boxed In” or something similar.  Grrr.

Technorati: Rodeo, cowgirl

(Okay.  I promise, promise that I will get to the controversy.  But, folks, I’m sorry–my brain is filled with Lists, and any attempt to actually write something substantive will make my head explode.  Really.)

Right around the time that I was succumbing to vanity and dyeing my hair, the dotter took to waggling the turkey flaps under my arms, and then laughing uproariously.

This, of course, sent the vanity-o-meter surging through the roof. 

So I started researching exercise programs.  I had encountered an article somewhere recently that talked about walking off the weight in six weeks, so I started there with Mr. Google.

I ended up at Body For Life.

Filled to the gills with before-and-after photos!  (Dumpy frumpy wimmen being transformed into sleek and muscular–and tanned–bods in 12 weeks!)

Filled to the gills with exercise information, demos, videos, and A Program!

Filled to the gills with nutrition information, sample recipes, and menus!

And, of course, filled to the gills with you-should-buy-this! supplements!

Now, I have a very bad history when it comes to starting and sticking to an exercise program.  Very bad.  So, when I started this thing, I decided not to mention a word to anyone about it (except the OmegaFamily) until I had been doing it for a few weeks and it looked like I was actually going to continue it.

I schlepped down to Small Mountain University’s recreation center and signed up for a year’s worth of rec center membership, plus a locker.

Then I started following the program.  Not so much with the diet stuff, but with the “eat five to six small meals a day” and the “go low carb except after exercise” and the exercise advice.  The exercise advice is to do weight lifting on MWF, aerobics on TThS, and “rest” on Sunday.  The weight-lifting instructions are fairly precise:  do 12 reps on a low-level of weight, add some weight and do 10 reps, add some weight and do 8 reps, add yet more weight and do 6 reps, then return to the base weight and do 12 more reps, then immediately do 12 reps of a similar exercise.  The aerobics instructions are similar:  start slow, build up to a huff-and-puff level by minute 5, do a minute at H&P level, then go back to the slow and build up for another 5, etc., for 20 minutes.

I have been semi-religious about this, and have just ended my fourth week (well, okay, I have the aerobic thingummy to do tomorrow).  I have lost a bit of weight–6 pounds in 4 weeks–which is just about right.  I’m not really worried about losing weight, because, amongst other things, this program is about putting on muscle and ditching fat, because muscle burns more calories even when you’re at rest.

But, the thing that is amazing is that…I am putting on muscle!  Not “mushel”, as my dearly loved fuddy-duddy bro likes to put it.  And all that muscle is behaving…well…like solid flesh, rather than flab.

To put it bluntly, flab squishes around.  Muscle doesn’t.  So lots of flab fits better into some of my pants than a little less muscle.

Har.

Well, at least for the last week and a half.  Things are beginning, I think, to slender down a bit more, and some of the tight pants are becoming less tight.  Woohoo!

But it is somewhat odd to have my arms feel…solid.  I have bumps (small as yet) that bump against my torso, so rather than my arms squishing nicely against the torso, they kind of…bounce.

It’s all very interesting.  I was never one for lifting weights before.  But this is really cool and intriguing to experience.  To top it all off, I can go off to the rec center, see my dotter at lunchtime (woohoo!), and then zone out for an hour and not think about Alaska or moving or Lists. 

This is a Good Thing.

(And I promise I haven’t succumbed to the supplementation thing.)

Technorati: Exercise, pumping iron

Wella wella wella

I am officially, really and truly, freaking out now.

What’s going on with Alaska?

We’re moving there.

It’s official.

Holy moly.

The story:  OmegaDad has been wanting to change jobs for quite a while, and has been applying left and right for the past two years.  Last year, some of my readers may recall, OmegaDad applied to a job in Alaska.  He made the grade for the interviews, but came in second for this position to a real live IT person (OmegaDad is not an IT person, but is an ag person who has been doing databases and GIS in his work for 10 years now).

About six weeks ago, OmegaDad got a call from the guy who interviewed him, Bob.  “Hey, OmegaDad, our IT guy flew the coop.  The job’s re-opening.  Just a heads-up.”

Well.  That was interesting, of course.  So OmegaDad fired up the computer, re-did his resume for the umpteenth time, and sent it off.

The job closed last Friday.  Alaska HR person assured OmegaDad that she had “hand-delivered” the application packet as of Tuesday.  (This sounds really impressive until you realize that Alaska HR person has an office down the hall from Bob.)  Bob called yesterday and said, “You want it?”  OmegaDad said yes.

Which, in normal life, would mean, “YES.”  As in, we’ve offered you the job and you’ve accepted our job.

But, in the federal world, things work a wee tad differently.  See, Bob had to talk to John–Alaska state muckity-muck–who had to talk to George–our state muckity-muck and ask permission to take OmegaDad away from them.  Just one of those things.  Anyway, Bob did talk to John, and John called George, only to be referred to Jill, who is Acting State Muckity-Muck.  Jill called OmegaDad and said, “You want it?” and OmegaDad said yes.  So Jill then called John, to say OmegaDad said yes.  And John then called Bob to say the same thing.

Dontcha love bureaucracy?

But let me tell you, this thing has moved with the speed of light in federal terms.  We were expecting to wait a few weeks for Bob to call OmegaDad for the “interview”…and then wait a few weeks for a decision to be made and things to go from muckity-muck to muckity-muck, etc.

Nope.  One day.

And I?  Am freaking out.  Like “OHMIGOD!” freaking out.  Yes, it’s absolutely wonderful that OmegaDad has finally gotten a GS increase.  Yes it’s a faboo adventure to move to Alaska.  Yes, we’ll be able to drive to  Denali.  (Yes!)

But I am frozen as a deer in headlights right now.

ACK!

Ahem.  Excuse me.

EEEEEEKKKK!!!!

ALASKA?!?!

More later.  Give it a week or so.  Mamasan, I’m updating via email.

In the meantime, it looks like my voters are overwhelmingly in favor of the shit hitting the fan (aka “con-TRA-versy”).  Tomorrow.  Let me pull my thoughts together.  This is very difficult right now, because…

EEEEEEKKKK!!!!

ALASKA?!?!

I’m freaking out.

I have three possible topics noodling around in my head right now:

1. A con-TRA-versy.  If I post on this particular issue, the shit will hit the fan.  I am a wuss.  But I have had a few readers email me about this question…So that means that I’ve got at least a few others who are interested, not enough to email, but enough to find it an interesting (or controversial) post.  Others of my readers won’t give a shit.  It’s adoption related.
2. Exercise.  Specifically, an exercise program.  More specifically, lifting weights, eating better, and discovering that solid flesh doesn’t squish into big jeans as well as flab does.
3. Micro$oft’s new coffee-table PC and “intuitive” operating system and my dubes about it, compared to the reely kewl roll-em-up computer monitor that’s just been proof-of-concepted.  (Proofed-of-concept?)

Vote!

Technorati: Blogging

OmegaDad has found a site called Scrabulous.

You can play Scrabbleâ„¢ for free, against other people or against robots or against yourself.  (They do, of course, ask for donations.)

So here I am today, doing laundry, and waiting for OmegaDad and OmegaDotter to return from whatever jaunt they are on.  I grab a load from the dryer, swap the wets into the dryer, add another load, fold the dry clothes, then come into the office, set the timer, and…

…play a “quick” game. 

It’s addicting.

If you happen to sign up and see me there, ask for a game, eh?

Technorati: Games, time wasters

Kent Newsome says that Andrew Keen, author of the newly released “The Cult of the Amateur: How today’s Internet is killing our culture“, is a troll and people shouldn’t be writing about him.

I’m sorry, Kent.  I can’t resist. 

Publisher’s Weekly had this to say:

Keen’s relentless “polemic” is on target about how a sea of amateur content threatens to swamp the most vital information and how blogs often reinforce one’s own views rather than expand horizons. But his jeremiad about the death of “our cultural standards and moral values” heads swiftly downhill. Keen became somewhat notorious for a 2006 Weekly Standard essay equating Web 2.0 with Marxism; like Karl Marx, he offers a convincing overall critique but runs into trouble with the details. Readers will nod in recognition at Keen’s general arguments—sure, the Web is full of “user-generated nonsense”!—but many will frown at his specific examples, which pretty uniformly miss the point. It’s simply not a given, as Keen assumes, that Britannica is superior to Wikipedia, or that record-store clerks offer sounder advice than online friends with similar musical tastes, or that YouTube contains only “one or two blogs or songs or videos with real value.” And Keen’s fears that genuine talent will go unnourished are overstated: writers penned novels before there were publishers and copyright law; bands recorded songs before they had major-label deals. In its last third, the book runs off the rails completely, blaming Web 2.0 for online poker, child pornography, identity theft and betraying “Judeo-Christian ethics.”

Keen’s thrust is that we need gatekeepers, and those gatekeepers are what keep “culture” alive. 

He participated in a “salon” back in March, 2006, in which he presented these ideas; then he wrote an article that expanded on them.  Then, realizing he had hit a vein of gold by the uproar these generated, he decided to expand even further and product this book.

I haven’t read it–sorry.  I may borrow it from the library.  I’m not feeling generous enough to spend my dollars on my own copy, because when I read the quotes, the interviews, I just feel like gnashing my teeth.

Contrary to Keen’s opinion, there are musicians who are making not by having any involvement in the established music industry, but by heading out on their own, using the internet.

Contrary to Keen’s opinion, not every message board that features anonymity turns into “abuse and cretinism”.  Oh, no doubt many do–but if one isn’t interested in “abuse and cretinism”, one stops frequenting the sites that foment that attitude (such as the message boards on MSNBC).

Keen thinks that the only way to keep beauty and culture alive is for some select group to act as the arbiters.  He sneers at Wikipedia and cheers the online Brittanica–yet, when the tsunami hit, Wikipedia was a great resource, and same when the Virginia Tech shootings were going down.

Thank you very much, Andrew, but I don’t need a gatekeeper.  I’m perfectly capable of finding things on the Internet that appeal to me, and I do find, quite often, that the articles that are most linked to tend to interest me.  I find that the blogs that are linked to by other bloggers whose writing I respect tend to interest me.  I may be low-brow, but I find that the videos of people playing with mints and soda pop tend to interest me.  (And how different are the mint/soda pop videos from Rube Goldberg’s intricate cartoons?)

People used to complain that the penny-dreadfuls were bringing down “culture”–yet Dickens’ works, now considered “classics”, were first brought to us by serialization in cheap tabloids.

What is thought of as “culture” changes as the world changes.  No doubt the folks who rhapsodize about the internet bringing democratization to the world are overstating things.  No doubt that the internet brings p0rn and sleaze and abusive behavior to new heights.  But…I still don’t want someone else telling me what to read, what to watch, what to think.

And I certainly don’t want Andrew Keen telling me, thankyewverramuch.

Technorati: Andrew Keen, internet

Okay, I have to say that I really don’t remember hearing the camp folks saying “No toys allowed”, especially since they had quite a discussion about taking video games away if kids overused them at lunch.

I also have to say that I told the dotter, multiple times this morning, that she had to put Calhoun (her favorite stuffed doggie) into her backpack whenever she was done playing with him.

I must add that I totally forgot that she took Calhoun with her this morning.

So, when OmegaDad and the dotter returned home from camp this evening, and the dotter was down in the mouth and sucking her thumb, and I asked her what was making her unhappy, I didn’t expect to get lectured myself.

Ahem.

Anyway, OmegaDad was very grumpy.  Apparently, he and the dotter were driving home from camp, and halfway home, the dotter asked if he had “remembered to get Calhoun”.  They got back to camp just in time, as the last camp counselor was walking out the door.  They found Calhoun.

Calhoun just happens to also be OmegaDad’s favorite of the dotter’s stuffed animals.

So I am in the doghouse for not remembering that camp doesn’t allow toys to be brought from home.  (Even though they specifically mentioned that they will confiscate video games if any kid “overuses” one.  Did I mention that before?)  The dotter is in the doghouse for taking a toy and for forgetting it.

Aside from that, camp is amazing.  The dotter loves it.  She sleeps like a log every night.  We love that.

But I am in disgrace.  Wah!

I wrote about Julie Amero’s case before, in Pop-Up Hell.  The gist:  a substitute school teacher clicks on an innocent link during before-class free time and immediately gets sent into pop-up hell.  Panicked, and previously told to never turn off the computer, she tries her best to keep the p0rn from being viewed by her students, and seeks out help.  No-one helps her, but the school fires her a few days later, and then she is put on trial for endangering children, convicted, and subject to up to 40 years in prison.

While discussing a similar case on a debate board just yesterday, I mentioned Julie Amero.  Reminded, I decided to see what was up with her case. 

Lo and behold, I discovered that, after sentencing was postponed twice, today was to be the day.

Today, the judge remanded her case to a new trial, saying that “erroneous information” may have been presented in her previous trial.  Really?  You think so?

In the decision, the judge made a passing swipe at bloggers, who she said “tried to improperly influence the court”.

Well, okay.  Fifty kazillion appalled IT support pros, who know what its like for newbies to be confronted by a porn pop-up loop, flooded her inbox and blog sites with detailed commentary describing what can happen in that case and blasting the prosecutors’ “expert” witnesses.  If you’re going to call that “trying to improperly influence the court”, then, judge, we’re guilty as charged.  Does anyone think that if those IT pros hadn’t done the writing and emailing and telephone calling that Julie Amero’s case would have ended the same way?  I don’t.

Mind you, I’m not defending any teacher (or other professional) who consciously decides to surf p0rn websites at school (or place of work).  But the situation this lady described has happened to me, and happened to people I work with, and happened to other people I know.  The thought of being potentially sentenced to 40 years in prison for accidentally opening a pop-up loop made my hair stand on end.

Technorati: Julie Amero, justice, pop-ups, malware

I love the piney woods.  The woods around here are filled with Ponderosa pines, lovely, tall, vanilla-scented evergreens with 4-inch needles.  The wind sighs through the pines…even one single pine can set the wind to sighing.

They are green and grand and stately.

They provide tasty morsels for the local squirrels to chow down upon; in the autumn, when wandering through the woods, one can encounter great heaps of stripped pinecones that have been nibbled to death and rendered oddly spiky-looking.

Of course, to grow those pinecones, the Ponderosas have to have (shhh!) sex.

Having sex, for vegetation, usually involves pollen.

A paper I found on the Ponderosa pine claims that in this area pine pollen production starts on June 10 and lasts until June 20.

May I just say:  Bwahahahaha!

Whew.  That felt good.

They’re lying through their teeth.  Or else gl0bal warm1ng is true.  Because we have been swimming in pine pollen now for weeks, and it is showing no sign of letting up.  Rather, it is increasing.

Every morning, as the Dotter and I pile into the Little Green Car, I have to run the windshield wipers.  Usually I also have to goose the washer button, because otherwise I have yellow streaks all over the windshield.

The (paved, ahhhh) streets now sport foot-wide streaks of yellow pollen wending down the hills.

The dashboard of our car is covered with yellow pine pollen.

I am sick of pine pollen.

OmegaDad is also sick of pine pollen; literally, in his case.  He has a pine pollen allergy, and it is going full force this year.  He hacks.  He coughs.  His nose is perpetually producing post-nasal drip.  He’s not a happy camper.

So, when you travel into the piney woods, soaking in the verdant green and admiring the stately straightness of the trunks and reveling in the coolth and the gentle eggnog-scent, remember this:  We people who live here?  We suffer for your joy.

Just lettin’ ya know.

(Later in the summer, I will happily share with you the trials and travails of dealing with Ponderosa-pine-as-invasive-weed.  All it takes is rain.)

Technorati: Pine trees, pine pollen, allergies

So this evening we had the “open house” for the dotter’s day camp which starts tomorrow.

Let’s see:

They’re going to have field trips to the local observatory, a choice of three national monuments, the local wild animal park, a scavenger hunt across Small Mountain University campus, the Humane Society.

Each day, there’ll be swimming and water fun.

Trips to parks.

Along with lots of playtime with kicking balls and jump ropes and stuff like that.

Can I go? It sounds like fun!

But, wah, I have to work.

I had heard that Figlet and Mrs. Figby were planning to revel in hedonistic, child-free bliss at a swanky southwestern resort.  Being a pushy sort, I emailed the Figsters and said, “Yo!  Can I come?!”

Separately, they each said, “Fo’ sher, girl!”

So I rented a vehicle (the little green car desperately needs new struts, and though it’s kind of fun for a 10-mile trip into town to watch my little coffee jiggle and shake and splatter about as the car vibrates wildly, the thought of 150+ highway miles in it just made me shudder [har]) and headed down to the Valley of Death to meet the gals.

It was grand.  We gabbed and gabbed and gabbed.  And ate.  And gabbed.  I was invited to join them on a trip to the nearby fashionista outlet, which I regretfully declined–all I’d be able to do would be to try things on and wist, which would make me think about the State of The Finances, which would make me grumpy…you know the routine.

At lunch, while carefully pulling apart and buttering a (scrumptious) roll with sun-dried tomatoes and a whiff of hot peppers, I stared carefully at it and wondered if now I could broach the subject of x, y, z, which I really wanted to talk about.  I opened my mouth to start asking…

And Figlet said, “So!  What’s your take on x, y, z?”

Girl, don’t do that!  That’s Twilight Zone-ish!

But that’s what the afternoon was like.  Lots of good talk, both substantive and frivolous, and great fun.

And anytime you want to howl with laughter, just call up Mrs. Figby and ask her to discuss the finer aspects of a1paca sex.

(L. to r.:  Me, Figlet, Mrs. Figby)

Technorati: Bloggers

…you try–very, very hard–to remember the last time you had a “date”.  Y’know, the two of you together, alone, at, say, a restaurant or theater or the movies.

I’m thinkin’ here.

…

Hold on, there, I’m still thinkin’.

…

Hm.

<crickets chirping>

(You also know you need a date when you address each other as “Mama” and “Daddy”.  That’s sad.)

I do remember an anniversary dinner at Chez Marc’s, before Chez Marc went out of business.  It was awesome.  It was dreadfully expensive, but well worth it.  A thirty-dollar bottle of wine.  An eight-dollar creme brulee.  A filet mignon with bleu cheese.  Yum.  I’m drooling just thinking of it.  I am not drooling at the memory of the check.

The problem is, I can’t place which anniversary it was.  It wasn’t this last one, or the one before–both of those were spent dealing with a sick child.

Ahah!  I remember when my last date with OmegaDad was!  It was two-and-a-half years ago!  On our anniversary!  We had dinner at the Bent Street Cafe in Taos, New Mexico.

Good lord.  That’s a long time.

Okay, wait a minute.  We’ve had at least two since then, because I distinctly remember contacting Miss Beth (one of OmegaDotter’s former teachers) and paying her so that OmegaDad and I could be alone.  But.  But.  Those “dates” consisted of OmegaDad and I looking at each other once we were alone in the house, saying, “We’re alone!” and then doing what any red-blooded, passionately loving partners would do in that situation:

We sat on the futon watching grown-up movies.

And not that kind of grown-up movies, either, alas.  Movies that aren’t cartoons.  Movies that don’t have princesses.  Movies that don’t feature horses, or barns burning down.

But that’s it.  I also think we took naps.  It was blissful.  It was quiet.  But these sure weren’t real “dates”.

Sigh.

Maybe this year we’ll finally check out the restaurant that replaced Chez Marc, years ago…

What brought all this up?  Julie, over at The Ravin’ Picture Maven, pointed out a CONTEST.  The prize of which is–get this!–MONEY!  For the sole and lone purpose of GOING ON A DATE with your spouse.  What a concept!

This contest is sponsored by marriage.eharmony.com and The Parent Bloggers Network.  Go check them out, enter yourself.  But I’m tellin’ ya, the OmegaSpouses need some alone time, so I’d better win!