Second Post of the Day: My weekend

I have been hearing a lot of complaints recently about the content of my blog. Specifically that it doesn't contain any details of how I spend my time, as opposed to other family members blogs. So here you go you haters, here is a description of my weekend, and I hope you choke on it!

This weekend I spent at the beach. A relaxing place most certainly. My family has a house just outside Bethany Beach, so thats where I have always gone. In fact, my first steps were in that house. But I digress. We arrived late Friday to make beds and collapse into them, and, incidentally, move pieces of furniture because some people are never satisfied. Saturday morning, after a leisurely breakfast and cartoons, we bundled up and prepared to spend a few scant minutes on, what we were sure would be a cold beach. Boy were we wrong! Once on the sand, the breeze we had felt from the porch of the house was actually a lot milder. The sun was warmer and the sand was sun warmed and lovely. SO! back into the car, back into the house to change into more appropriate clothes, grab our books, sunscreen, chairs and some towels, annnnd back to the beach!

after sitting on the sand for about an hour, the breeze really did start to get to me, so I went for a walk along the shore on the warm sand. Movement plus wading through the tide pools (which are really a god send on such a day, especially for parents. The pools are only a few feet deep and only a few feet away from the dry sand, so kiddies can splash and play without the fear of giant waves washing them out to sea, and they are only a few steps from mummy) equals warming up. Unfortunately, me plus no sunscreen equals a little pink action. especially on my face. It has since dulled, but I do look a bit rosey this morning. Not that I'm complaining. I actually think I look a lot nicer with a little color on my face.

However, Sunday was a rainy mess. And though we did go to the boardwalk for a little while, it was pretty clear that the ocean would have to wait for us to come back later. The little breeze from Saturday had developed into a full blown wind. That combined with the rain meant that we were chased away long before we wanted to be. oh well, the beach will be there in a few months when its warmer. Its not going anywhere.

A real life Bag End

I have been waiting for this ever since the first Lord of the Rings movies was released. Well, I guess I may have been waiting for it ever since my mother first read me "The Hobbit" back in the recesses of time (That's what Bilbo Baggins hates, So carefully, carefully with the plates!).

A family in Wales has decided to build their very own Bag End into a hill on their property. The details and pictures are here. They claim it took only 1000 to 1500 man hours over 4 months and only about $6000 to create. Of course I doubt I myself could ever build such a thing, putting together my bookcase with the instructions next to me took me the better part of an afternoon, but its COOL!

This is the sort of thing that one could make a mint with. If you built, say 10 of these houses around a central hall in some remote piece of land and called it Hobbiton, you could be raking in the cash from geeky hollidayers for the rest of your life. That goes on my list of what I would do if I won the lottery. Build Hobbiton and hire someone else to run it. Then I could go whenever I wanted.

This one is for everybody

see more song memes

OMG: Mika, this ones for you!

I can't. I don't even know. I. There are few words. So I'll type the few words that spring to mind.

Nickelodeon. Big Pete. Marc Summers. Ferguson. Salute your Shorts guy. Slime. Party. AWESOME!

Of Mice and Men

For those who came in late… I present, the mouse saga. Some time ago my mouse at work decided to have a conniption fit and move all over the screen on its own. Since it was a rather cheap-ish laser mouse, I assumed that the laser was dying and sensing movement when I was technically, in the bathroom. OK, no big. I’ll just call my good buddy Theodore in IT to come and replace it with a sparkly new mouse with a sparkly new laser. UM… yeah. Wanted: one optic mouse with scroll wheel. Received: one rollerball mouse without scroll wheel.

Complained after one day to Theodore. OK, so maybe I’m mouse spoiled. But really, the scroll wheel is essential to me. The one day I spent without it made me a little batty. My fingers kept reaching between the mouse buttons only to find… nothing. So I begged Theodore for a scroll wheel and after a healthy dose of teasing, he delivered. A rollerball with scroll wheel. Seems OK, except that my mouse pad is pretty much designed for optic (bought at the Globe theater in London with the quote “Though is Free” from the Tempest, end of mouse pad description). SO, rollerball doesn’t always recognize that its moving. So, flip mousepad over, use cushy side which roller ball recognizes but needs two hands to operate, one to move mouse, one to hold mousepad steady. Ugh.

Eventually I gave up and went to Target. Shelled out $7 and got an optical mouse with rollerball. But kept rollerball with scrollwheel in desk, Just In Case.

Fast forward to two days ago. I got an assignment from my Über-boss to work on a spreadsheet for the next month. No probs, in fact less probs since I could do it from home and save driving 60 miles a day. Niice. But remembered that I have a laptop at home, and the projects involves lots of mouse action. O….k. So, no extra mice at home (I know this because during the aforementioned mouse saga I tore my old computer stuff apart, but my old mouse seems to have run away to freedom). So email to mom, “can you score me an extra mouse from your overly well supplied office?” mom agrees begrudgingly. But, just to be on the safe side I grabbed the one from my desk (for those of you who are lost, the one on my desk two days ago was the $7 Target Optic scrollwheel). SO, work from home, everything is hunky dorey. Until this morning.

When I got to work, reach for the mouse to click on something, and hand scrabbles in midair. No mouse. Left it at home. BUT, still have rollerball scrollwheel hiding in desk, Just In Case. Well, Case.

So here I sit, another day of holding the mouse pad with one hand whilst moving the mouse with the other. I’d better remember my real one on Monday, that’s all I gotta say. Plus the mouse annoyance adds to other current workplace annoyances to make today something of a downer.

Another Morbid Blog Entry.

I didn’t plan this, I swear! It just so happens that I was reading one of my green blogs today and found this article. It is extremely interesting, especially for those who are so organized as to have their own death planned and specific instructions left regarding their remains.

I will paraphrase so as not to bore you all, but for those so inclined, the whole article is here.

The greenest possible way to die is naked in a ditch so that wolverines can eat you and all of your bodily organs can ooze into the ground and fertilize plants. However, since most people haven’t lived as cavemen did, there are lots of toxins in your body, deceased or otherwise, so after the wolverines are done and you have oozed, those toxins go into the soil of the ditch. Also, it takes almost 12 years for a body left to its own devices to decompose. Nice if you've got the time, but what if you don't have the space? Green enough, but we can do better.

Enter Resomation. This is a process that reminds me of a little old lady burying her cat. In fact, veterinarians have been using this process for years. The body of your loved one is put in a tank filled with “a 1:21 solution of potash lye and water” (thats the part that reminds me of the little old lady. cooking up this concoction on the stove) where upon the magic of chemistry takes over. The body is essentially broken down into parts. A bit like taking a cake and breaking it down into sugar, flour, water and egg; except the body is broken down into salts, sugars, peptides, amino acids, and bone ash. The gooey stuff comes out as a “solution” that is great for soil, much like a VERY organic miracle-gro. The bone ash is similarly good for the ground, and is comparable to ashes left over from cremation, though without the other stuff that goes in the incinerator with the body. So, everything that comes out is everything that went in, in a different format. Pretty cool eh? Plus the whole thing looks very much like the standard funeral and body processing, except that everything is nice for the planet. The only addition to the coffin is a silk lining that becomes a silk bag inside the resomator. I wonder if you can rent a coffin, because you’d only really need it for whatever funeral or visitations are planned.

Another thing that the mention is that the process does no harm to prosthetics or implants. Meaning that once you are broken into goo and bone ash, all of the things that were put into you to keep you living can be sifted out, sterilized and used again to help someone else keep living. There has been talk of giving them to third world or developing countries where prosthetics are almost impossible to find and where they probably wouldn’t mind as much that it was originally in someone else.

All in all it sounds pretty cool. And when you’re dead, since you don’t care much at that point, your loved ones can feel better that your life ended, but your remains have fed a tree, or helped a garden.

” Myself, I've always had different plans for my burial, and it just so happens that this process fits my plans perfectly! I have been assured by Mr. Sullivan [the inventor and proprietor of this method] that if I were so inclined, I could preserve the structure of the bones rather than powdering them. I would have my skull reinforced and then filled with soil (fertilized with my own bio-gunk). In that soil, I'd have them plant a seed for what would grow up to become a huge tree bearing fruit! A hundred years later, the neighborhood kids would still be scared witless of that tree, where a crazy old fool was buried (Alive, the rumors say!) and then a tree grew out of his eye socket! The ghost tree would be the stuff of legends, I say! Legends!”

Question of the Day: Who the hell is buried with their Phone!?

Frank Jones is used to being molested by unfriendly spirits. A ghost that whipped back bedcovers, ransacked cupboards and left a lingering bad smell had already been exorcised from his house before he suffered the tragic deaths of his wife and son. But The Thing (which behaved like a particularly grumpy cat by the sound of things) was not quite as alarming as receiving text messages from no number containing words his wife, Sadie, "would say". Especially as she was buried with her phone...

[via The Register]

Best Blog Awards

I must say, the internet holds some strange and wonderful things! Such as:

1. Mindy Ephron. The Chick who plays Kelly Kapour on the American version of the office. Her blog is all about her shopping addiction and her need to spread it around. Much like someone with a cold deliberately sneezing all over someone. Definitely worth every moment (read "dollar") you spend.

2. What Claudia Wore. This. Is. Amazing. For anyone who ever whiled away their childhoods with The Babysitter's Club you MUST read this blog. Must. End of story. The authoress takes excerpts from the books and adds her own adult snarky comments.

"I'm going to wear these pajamas Nannie bought me that are so weird looking I never actually sleep in them,' Kristy said excitedly. 'They have pink bunnies all over them. They'd be perfect.' [Nannie also knits you sweaters with scottie dogs on the front, K-Thom. What's that about?]

Cubicle Bound

I am currently in the doldrums of book publishing. Sometimes this happens, there are weird lulls. And then at other times everyone has more work than they know what to do with. But, currently, the former applies. So I present things to do that look like you are working hard, when really you are wasting time/energy/company resources.

1. write a blog entry. In word, in letter format. So whilst you're typing thoughts on j-lo's butt, it looks like you are composing a letter to a client/author/celebrity and not slacking off.

2. make a funny graph/pie chart and post it here. Or just look at that site for a while and it'll look like you're analyzing charts of growth potential or whatever. I especially like the one labeled simply, "bono"

3. leave your work email up on your screen and braid your hair. several times. experiment. when someone like your boss walks by you look like you are reading an important email (possibly from him) and happen to be running your fingers through your hair.

4. Start a March Muppet Madness Tournament and follow the progress with something bordering on obsession. seriously.

5. Take a nap. but facing your computer and sitting upright. this may take some practice, and it helps if your hand is resting on the mouse so you appear to be in the middle of a vitally important project.