A Blissfully Boring Day

I've been off work today and yesterday. It's been lovely. And today, I had the house to myself. One of the biggest challenges for me adjusting to having roommates again is that, with four people in the house, it's very hard to get alone time. Especially since none of us are particularly quiet.

But today I slept until I woke up, which was very nice. My sleep has been awful since my meds ran out and the VA is engaging in an epic East Coast/West Coast battle about who should fix that problem. I got up, made a cup of strong tea with honey, had a Dana Roll* with butter and honey, and caught up on Google Reader. It was a beautiful way to start the day, especially with a lot of the doors and windows opened in the house so the pretty day came in (it was in the 60s).

I then tackled my jewelry situation. My jewelry box has moved all over the place this year and, in the process, has become a disastrous mess. I put hooks on the wall and moved all the necklaces there, then properly cleaned out all the little jewelry bags and boxes that come with gifts but then sit empty, taking up space. Watches and pins moved into the small jewelry box I use for traveling. I have a metal jewelry tree that now holds the hoop and dangly earrings I wear most often along with the smaller bracelets. In the main, large jewelry box are the larger, chunkier bracelets (which will eventually get their own home on the wall), the stud and lesser-used dangly earrings, all my rings, costume pieces, broaches, cuff links, and a few delicate necklaces that would tangle terribly if hung on the wall. I can see most of what I wear daily and it's tidy. Huzzah!

Now I'm getting through the morning email while working on a knitting project for Christmas. All the knitting things can be found at ravelry.com for those who are fellow knitters and crocheters.

Such a nice day

Had lovely lunch today with Angel. It was so beautiful that we had our salads outside. She then took me shopping where we found some beautiful things for me and a few for Kyle. We then got an iced coffee from Starbucks. It was, in short, a wonderful afternoon.

Turkey is in the oven for dinner tonight. There will be dressing (at Kyle's request) and green beans - a mini Thanksgiving! I'm going to try to get the house cleaned up tonight so that I can spend all of tomorrow at the DMV if necessary. But, at the end of it, I should have Virginia plates and it will be one less thing to do when I move down.

Mom and Dad will get tomorrow night late and be here for the weekend. Sadly, Mom lost her dog Sasha, who they believe was eaten by a coyote. Heartbreaking. We're all sad but hopefully our dogs will do their part to cheer her up. We're looking forward to a fun weekend with them and introducing them to Va Beach and the family here. Very excited!

Bring it, Irene.

It's my first hurricane! I've been in tornadoes, earthquakes, monsoons and blizzards, but never a hurricane. Very excited!

I'm in Va Beach, since Irene plans to visit New York on her East Coast tour and I'd rather be where the people have experience and I have people. Slightly depressing concept, but it's only 9 more months. School has canceled move in and the first day of class. Right now we're scheduled to have class on Tuesday, so I should be back in NY for that. Hopefully I won't be going home to surprises.

We have groceries, water, candles and batteries. We're smoking a chicken and a pork butt now and I'm going to make some chili. Tonight's dinner is all the leftovers that won't keep if we lose electricity. We've got wine and liquor, board games and books. We are, in a word, set.

Mad at the World

It's one of those days. Nothing has gone right. I woke up and was having stomach problems that necessitate being near a bathroom. Makes going to work hard. So I got some work done at the house and tried to get other things done.

For example, I called Verizon. Last month was heinous for phone calls between the family remodel and other things, so my minutes went over. First time that's happened since I increased them. Turns out, if I had known I had a Friends and Family thing included in my plan, I wouldn't have had that problem. Yet when I asked them about it during my plan changeover (in September) they said I didn't. Angry.

I called the VA to ensure that my enrollment for Fall was submitted, which I assumed was submitted with summer. It hasn't been. Which means that my school has yet again failed to do what they need to do. I won't be getting paid September 1st and who knows how long it will take. Angry.

So I called my school to try to get that figured out. The woman who is supposed to be in charge of this didn't answer her phone (she never does). The Financial Aid office also doesn't answer their phone and you can't leave a message because their mailbox is full. Angry.

I still can't get into the Bio class I need to graduate on time. No one seems to be able to help me.

Basically, today has failed on every possible level.

A Weekend

Had a really awesome weekend. Several people met up for dinner on Friday night at Peaches HotHouse, a great soul food restaurant in Brooklyn (that just looks weird, but it's totally true!). It was a lot of fun after all the construction work and craziness.

Speaking of the construction - the house look amazing. My dad is truly a master at what he does and my uncle is in his class. The relater was impressed and the house should be listed in a week. Even at earliest possible sale date, I would have until about the end of September to worry about my next living arrangement, but we're just going with it at this point.

Saturday we did P90X yoga (exhausting) and Karina and I went to the Brew for tea and sushi for dinner. Today I had guests to the house for dinner and cooked turkey with gravy, masked potatoes and green beans. For desert we did peaches with cream and tea. Yummy, if I do say so myself. We watched Seven Brides for Seven Brothers in my continuing efforts to build Chris' ever-expanding musical repertoire, since I converted him from "I hate musicals" to something quite the opposite.

So overall, it was a good weekend. Not as much got done as I had hoped, but I got everything done that I needed to so I feel good about it.

Blowing Up Duckies

I have a dear friend who says that I like to put things in order, blow them up, and then put them in order again. She calls it blowing up duckies. I can point to instances of exactly that many times in my life. Very rarely do I get upset about the consequences of such explosions, since I know I do them and I am usually very cognizant of what's happening. And today...

KABOOOOM!

Nothing serious, I assure you. Right now, I'm sitting back and watching with a giggle.

Wedding Weekend

This weekend, friends of ours got married. The wedding was supposed to be outside and the setup was really lovely. Everything was running on schedule...

...until 6pm when the sky opened.

The wedding was subsequently moved inside, as was the reception, and it all worked out. The food was good, the drinks were aplenty and the party continued until all hours off the morning, well after the bride and groom had left. I had the pleasure of meeting the groom's family, who were lovely. They invited me to come visit since they're not far from Dallas and I fly through there on the way to OK, so we might be able to do that.

All in all, it was a fun, if very busy weekend. The wedding was about exactly what it should have been - the couple joining their lives together. There wasn't any drama and everyone was on best behavior. A good weekend and a lot of fun.

Random Compliments

I was at Walgreen's buying spumante to get me through the evening, which is going to be long and exhausting. Sometimes, you need something sweet and bubbly. Anyway, the cashier had to see my ID because they card everyone, and she commented that I don't look my age. I thanked her and joked a little about the preventative cost of wrinkle creams, and moved on with my evening. A few weeks ago a man approached me in the grocery store and told me I was beautiful, before shyly returning to his shopping without another word.

Compliments are awesome. Compliments from a stranger are doubly awesome. They don't stand to gain anything out of it. My boyfriend is very good about the compliments and I know they're utterly sincere. He does them very well (one of his favorites is to call me a rocket scientist, which is the best because being pretty is fine, but knowing he thinks I'm brilliant is the best). But they are part of the fabric of our relationship - reminding each other that we think the other is smart/funny/attractive etc is just good relationship habits.

Strangers don't have that. I didn't compliment her and thus she was returning it. Nope, she just said it. I try really hard to give compliments to people when I believe them. I tell women I don't know when I like their hair/shoes/bag all the time. As a gender, we've been told that it's normal to look at every other woman as competition. I don't believe that and have been on the receiving end of such treatment and can tell you that it's no fun. But as nice as a compliment from a man is, a compliment from another woman will make your whole day better. Add a spring in your step. If women could stop looking at each other as competition, imagine how much more civil a world we would live in. Then we could turn out competitive sights where they belong - to men, who still make 20 cents on the dollar more than we do.

Random compliments to strangers today => pay raises in the future.

Nature Does Her Thing

"You've never seen it miss this house, and miss that house, and come after you!" - Jo from Twister

I've been watching the tornadoes hitting the south with an understanding of what they're going through though certainly not the scale. I remember very clearly dealing with tornadoes while living in Oklahoma, especially the one in 1999 that restructured OKC as we know it.

What's been interesting to me is listening to NPR's coverage here in NY. NY isn't used to tornadoes and had an apoplectic fit when a tiny little one hit Brooklyn. What seems to amaze people is the random nature of it. With hurricanes, an entire area is devastated. But tornadoes hit one house and skip another and it's entirely random. One house will have wind damage, another will be gone. The NY commentators seem especially devastated by this.

I've lived through earthquakes, tornadoes, monsoons and a blizzard. Of all of them, I think the uncertainty of the tornado is the hardest to grasp, though there's a sense of calm around it. You can literally sit outside and watch it coming, as long as you duck into an interior closet or cellar before it gets to you. You can't see an earthquake coming, but they're over quickly. Hurricanes are tracked and can be prepared for. Blizzards usually have indicators. And you kinda know when a tornado is coming - you can feel it in the air. The sky turns green and gets calm. There's not usually rain. Then a black funnel drops out the sky or comes along the horizon. If it doesn't drop on you, it's kinda awesome in the sheer power of it. But it's like watching through glass until it gets close. It's so hard to believe. But that's nature, in all her beautiful and destructive glory.

Spring Cleaning

I am a cleaner. I love to clean because I like the process and the finished product. In the Spring, the desire to purge also comes into play. I've gone through my books and other entertainment to ensure that I don't have repeats or anything that's no longer of interest to me. I go through my clothes every season, so that I'm not so worried out.

However, in this house, I have more than my own things. My former roommate (2 ago) has just taken the last of his things from the house, though the garage still has quite a lot. And it's made me want to clean more of it out. The problem when it's not all yours is that you can't just be rid of it. Consensus and process has to be observed.

I've moved several times as an adult, and each time I've moved I've done a very strict inventory of my things. In a year, I'll move again and I'll be moving out of the house I've been in the longest and that is the largest, so I have the most stuff I've ever had. I'm starting to prepare now. For example, most of my photos which sit in boxes are getting digitally scanned and disposed of. They're just sitting in boxes anyway, but this way they're stored and I don't need space for them. Document which I no longer need originals of are getting similar treatment. Slowly yet surely, I'm clearing out things I no longer want or need, or don't want to take into the next iteration of my life. This should make it easier to move next summer. And it fulfills my need to clean and organize.

Victorian Manners Test

This is fun!

http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/en/keys/games/game_0/

I took it as the female and got a perfect score - I'll try it as the male when it's not 2:30 in the morning. Take it and see how you do!