Tuesday, January 31, 2006

So the nominations were announced today.

I couldn’t care less about any of them. And I doubt that I’ll watch the awards show in March.

I’m over Hollowood and the Cult of Celebrity. No, this statement does not include TV.

Update your virus checker software.

*Welcome Google pervs!

Click the link below for my 2 cents on last night’s episode…

We get the occasional kook caller at the office. Usually they’re quite amusing and a little sad. The call I just endured was aggravating because the lady refused to listen to me or to stop talking long enough for me to be able to end the call without just hanging up. So I let her ramble on about her “case” and her depression and her bank account and her conspiracy theories for a few minutes in silence. When she started to repeat her mantra, I cut in.

“Ma’am, you need to stop talking now.” She paused so I continued, “We cannot help you. I’m sorry for your suffering, but I’m ending this phone call right now, OK? I cannot allow you to go on with this any longer.”

“OK, thank you.” Click.

*sigh*

LATER (1:30pm): I was eating lunch with My Boss when one of the security guys wandered by and poked his head in the conference room doorway. “She called you again today,” he said to My Boss. “I tried to head her off, but she wouldn’t let me...”

“She got me!” I blurted out.

My Boss then informed me that this kook is a longtime regular, except that she normally calls one of our suboffices. She called the other suboffice last week a couple of times. Apparently, she knows half of the one office by name and has been locked up in that cellblock on a couple of the occasions that she ventured out to pay them a visit.

She mentioned that she could come in to our office if that would help. Uh oh…

LATERER (1:50pm): I just listened to a voicemail on My Boss’ phone. His kook is not the same lady that I talked to this morning. It looks like we each have our own special kook today.

LATERERER (4:30pm): My kook called back a little before 4pm. Amazingly, I recognized the phone number and then her voice when I answered the phone. This time I cut her off almost immediately when she asked to speak to “a marshal.” She was reluctant to specify her question for “a marshal” to which I told her that unless she gave an indication of why she was calling I was going to hang up. At that she rambled something about post traumatic stress disorder so I let her know that she needed to talk to a counselor. The she got weirder when she asked if I knew what a board room was and then turned irate when I didn’t define it properly, informed me that I do not really work for the federal government after all since I can’t identify a board room, and hung up on me. Go figure.

I wouldn’t call it a relapse so much as a migration from the common cold to sinusitis, of which I began to display the classic recognizable symptoms yesterday. Very pleasant. Add the low barometric pressure with the rain we have in your Nation’s Capital this morning and I feel like my head is going to implode.

Given that I just completed a round of antibiotics for my prior infection, I’m pretty sure that the variety I have is not bacterial but viral. But I’ll see where I am with this in a week or so before I call my doctor, as recommended by numerous websites.

Light blogging today since I don’t feel like sharing much except my complaints and I also have financial close out.

Oh, and it’s my one month anniversary today. Woo!

Monday, January 30, 2006

So we have a bit of a wedding gift dilemma. Because everyone was incredibly generous, the gift management got a little out of control. I did well keeping up with the thank you notes for the gifts we received before Christmas, but since then it became a hodge-podge of invoices/notes for things shipped to us that I keep in my daily tote bag and the neat list that my mother wrote when we opened the gifts received at the wedding itself after we got back from the honeymoon. I thought all gifts were accounted for, but they are not. Fortunately, I think we’ll be able to sort it out but here’s the confusion:

1. One lovely gift at the wedding that either had no card or got separated from its card.

2. Two cards with no gifts attached at the wedding.

3. An email notification of a gift purchased from a registry. We never really knew if that gift arrived because…

4. Several gifts were shipped to us that had no gift enclosure cards or any other indication from whom they came.

From that list we’ve only got 2 or 3 unreconciled things - the lovely gift with no card at the wedding and the two cards with no gifts at the wedding. However, I just nailed down a gift with one of those cards, which was part of item #3 - a phone call to that registry to inquire about that notification verified that we did indeed receive that gift. But it opened another question about the quantity received of that particular item because I know we received some of that item from more than allows for what we have. Are you confused yet? Anyhow, the mystery of item #1 is now clarified some because I’m pretty sure the other lone card from the wedding actually goes with item #1.

And we have so many thank you notes to write. If there is one piece of advice I can give to engaged couples and brides especially it is to keep up with your thank you notes as you receive gifts - don’t let more than a couple of weeks pass before you get them out because it won’t take long before you get behind and it seems overwhelming. You do not want to have to do all of your thank you notes after you’re married - you’ll be dealing with adjusting to your new home routine, which is fun but a huge time waster. But that’s another post for another day.

Funny related note: We attended a wedding in August and just received the thank you note from that couple last week. So I’m feeling pretty good that we may be able to get our notes out a little quicker than that.

Anyone else started to get inordinate amounts of spam recently in your Gmail accounts? For almost a year I got maybe a dozen spam total. Then in the past couple of months I’ve started getting about a dozen a week and now it’s getting to the dozen a day point. Weird.

Two very different things to share:

1. Dr. Sanity was the NASA crew surgeon for Mission 51-L 20 years ago. I neglected to mention the sad anniversary on Saturday, but her first hand memory of that tragic day is better late than never. [via Dean]

2. LOTR: The Musical - previews begin. [via Lawren]

We had a good weekend despite my cold. The coughing was the tough thing that kept me up each night, but it’s much better today. I’m thankful and tired. The amazing thing is that Beau says the coughing didn’t bother him at all. Weird.

We had planned a trip to H’burg for church yesterday, but decided against it because of my cold. So we met up with Dad at the early service at our church (Mom was up north babysitting CootieGirl and CootieBoy while their parents were exploring and closing on their new land in South Carolina). After church, Dad came over to our house for a lunch of leftovers from the turkey dinner on Saturday night, which was fabulous.

After Dad left, we cleaned up and I started a pot of turkey stock with the carcass and leftover veggies (onions, carrots, celery) that I had roasted in the pan with the bird. From the stock, I made a pot of turkey soup and then split the rest of the stock into three quart-sized ziplock bags for freezing.

While the stock was simmering we watched the last disc of the Firefly DVDs. I am officially a Whedonerd. I ended up watching Serenity later, too. It was as much fun as when we saw it in the theater, but I caught more of the insider things this time from having watched the Firefly DVDs.

So now it’s another work week. Joy.

Saturday, January 28, 2006

I just noticed that my 9/11 ticker says that we were attacked 1600 days ago.

Doesn’t seem like that many days. Then again it seems like eons ago.

We must never forget.

UPDATED to add the pictures and another vendor that I forgot to include. Check the links in the post.

I thought I’d give a plug to a few of the vendors we used for the wedding/reception. All were excellent:

1. Groom’s Cake - Allie’s Cakes - I plan to post a picture soon. This cake turned out much better than my wedding cake, to be honest. Although my wedding cake was delicious. I was very pleased with how this one looked and tasted. Allie took my design desire as well as my request for a black forest cake and made it happen.

2. Celtic Band - Celtic Wedding Music - these folks were fantastic and I’ve gotten a lot of good feedback from guests that they enjoyed the band a lot. Since I missed most of my own reception, I only got a small bit of their talents while we did the receiving line. We had the bodhran, guitar, flute (and I think she played the tin whistle, too, which was a bonus), hammered dulcimer, and fiddle.

3. Limo - Prime Transportation - I will post Here is a picture of the car we had, too. It was not the normal limo, but rather what they call the London Executive Sedan. Very fun.

4. Photography - A Click in Time (no website) - ECD’s friend (and her fabulous father) outdid herself with the photography. From the engagement photo shoot to the candids they got at the rehearsal dinner to the final shots of the happy guests as Beau and I departed (more pics to come - there’s a great one of our mothers celebrating), each picture tells the story of our wedding day. Because of my friendship with ECD, she got us some extras that the average bridal couple do not get and I am exceedingly grateful. If you’re in the Charleston, SC, area, you should look them up for your wedding photography.

5. Chocolate Fountains - The Chocolate Chick - Mom found this vendor early in our engagement and since Beau and I are such chocolate addicts this was a must have for the reception. Judging from the table when we eventually got to it, which was picked clean, it was a hit. We had dark chocolate (his favorite) and white chocolate (my favorite).

I’m feeling much better today, so Beau and I are going to work on cleaning up the house today. I want to get more boxes unpacked, too. Plus I have a huge pile of clothes that need to be put away.

Then I need to make some jewelry for Joan so that I can get it to her for Valentine’s Day shoppers.

We plan to roast a turkey with all the trimmings for dinner - practice for Thanksgiving at our house this year? Maybe. Depends on whether or not we head west to visit his family for that holiday.

Light blogging this weekend, as is now the norm.

Have a great day!

UPDATE: I’ve faded and I’m done with heavy work for the rest of the day. I did manage to unpack a few more boxes and we rearranged the living room now that a wall was freed up. Beau cleaned the kitchen floor and the bathrooms while I vacuumed. Now I’m headed for a shower and a nap.

It’s a good day.

Friday, January 27, 2006

Via the comments, Denis linked to this article from CNET.com:

Annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime.

It’s no joke. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity.

In other words, it’s OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a blog as long as you do it under your real name.

Interesting and I’ll be interested to see how this plays out in the b-g-sphere since “annoy” is pretty loosely defined by most people.

The Trinity.

I haven’t shared the linky-luv in quite a while, so I thought I would plug a few of the blogs that have posted interesting things of late.

1. The Llama Butchers - Robert and Steve are always good. They have such differing writing styles, with Rob’s intellectual wit and Steve’s channeling of Dennis Miller’s style of pop culture laden rants.

2. The Thinklings - theology, pop culture, monkey pics, and Gatorade. What more does anyone need?

3. The Fire Ant Gazette - content free, as admitted to by Eric, but strangely addicting nonetheless.

4. Dilbert Blog - speaks for itself, no?

5. Out of the Bloo - Thinkling Bill’s solo blog is a great devotional read that blesses me daily.