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February 27, 2006
Things you'd only hear me say
[15:28] jodikins: i think i've discovered the secret to salisbury steak flavor
Posted by jodikins at 3:26 PM | Comments (0)
February 26, 2006
Seasons and changes
After a long hiatus, puppy and I took a naturewalk down the trail that I took so many pictures of when we first came here. Now I knew that several trees had come down -- we've had a couple of nasty windstorms here over the winter, and you could hear the trees snapping. What I wasn't prepared for was the encroachment of man. Apparently someone thought the path wasn't wide enough, and went down it with one of those gigantic riding lawnmowers. Lots of ferns are gone, and because of the myriad of downed trees, there's tons more light on the path in general. I'm expecting the blackberries to take over come summertime. I wish I knew if they were spraying anything down there -- if not, that would certainly be something to look forward to :) Weather permitting, I think it's a good time to start up the walks again. Puppy's getting a little on the tubby side, and god knows I could use the exercise, too.
In other news, I took some time yesterday and last night to prep the billing run for Tuesday night. Being ahead of that game is a huge load off my back as the week starts tomorrow, and I think I'll be able to enjoy today better knowing that I'm not going to be scrambling come the 1st.
Posted by jodikins at 2:58 PM | Comments (0)
February 23, 2006
The road ahead
Richard's birthday gave me pause to think about where I'm at in life. These days I'm basically content, which is certainly a luxury and a blessing given the past few years of location disharmony. Several friends and acquaintances have either just given birth or are expecting, and I've done a lot of hard thinking in that area. Biological clock be damned, but I think I'd like to wait a bit before getting back on the baby train. Not forever, but probably at least the rest of this year. I could say that I wanted to be sure that Richard was ready, but really, I want to be sure that I'm ready.
Kids have always been an ambivalent point for me. Although I love animals and do a fairly good job with the menagerie, human babies have never made my heartstrings flutter. Heather coming along at the point she did in my youth did not help matters. At 10 and almost 11, I was fully cognizant of what a messy, uncomfortable, tiring, and generally icky thing that pregnancy and birth are. I was spared the actual birth, but I was subjected to Lamaze classes and all the accompanying literature. One word comes to mind: Ew. It didn't help that every one of the other couples in my parents Lamaze class were first timers -- they were all nauseatingly gungho about the miracle of life and the joy and beauty that only 14 hours of drug-free labor could bring. It was amusing seeing the group a few months later after the blessed event -- all still espousing how wonderful it was, but now in the way that you tell a child, "No, the shot won't hurt at all."
So, while I do wonder what Richard and I would be like as parents, I'm still not quite ready to find out :) I'd like to get our work lives settled, and into a house, and have some roots down before getting into all of that.
Posted by jodikins at 1:01 AM | Comments (0)
February 21, 2006
Housewifery!
The highlight of the past few days has been grocery shopping. There were some amazing deals, so over three shopping trips, I spent $256.78 (lots of stocking up), and saved a whopping $172.38. I have enough meat to feed an army, but it will all freeze well. Today I made an excellent beef stew, and tomorrow we're going to have pulled pork. Thank you Safeway for putting whole boneless pork loins on sale for $1.69/lb. That beats Costco by quite a bit, and keeps us in pork for the foreseeable future.
I baked a carrot cake tonight -- Richard's birthday is tomorrow (technically today, I suppose), and I wasn't sure what we were going to do for it. I'd been looking for a carrot cake that didn't use oil, and I just happened to be glancing through this old Mr. Food cookbook I got from my mom. Lo and behold, he has a recipe which uses butter (and only 1c. -- most carrot cakes call for 1.5c. of oil), a full pound of carrots, 20oz of pineapple, raisins and ginger. It will be interesting to see how that tastes.
In other news, I'm still getting used to my hair. The layers are a tiny bit long, which I knew, but it's still tons better than it was. The color I'm not so sure about. It's a little orangey in some lights, so I don't know if I'll keep it this color. Not sure what my options will be if I want to grow it back out to my natural color. Yes, I should have listened to Liz when she suggested going with the semi-permanent color. :)
Posted by jodikins at 1:28 AM | Comments (0)
February 15, 2006
OMG! I LOVE MY HAIR!
Not quite Arthur, but MUCH better than the Mia and Max crap. Liz at Paule Attar did a fabulous job on the color and the cut! It's a pretty light auburn and has all of my natural highlights and and and and it looks good flat, but also can go foofy. Next time I'll have Liz really aggressively go back and hack at it, but it looks so nice now. No more friggin hairband of hell and doom. YAY!
Posted by jodikins at 6:21 PM | Comments (0)
Brrr!
Have I mentioned how much I love the weather here? I took the dog out this morning and witnessed the dazzling effects of the cold snap -- gorgeous clear blue skies and frost everywhere! Even our little sidewalk puddle was frozen. It's currently sunny and 27 degrees :)
Richard returns late tonight and I'll admit that I didn't get as much cleaning done as I'd hoped to. Definite progress was made, but there's still a long way to go. Today is the Jodi-overhaul, woo hoo! Leslie and I are going to do lunch and hang out a bit before heading to Paule Attar for saloning.
Posted by jodikins at 8:56 AM | Comments (0)
February 14, 2006
oooooh, pretty
YAY! Pretty pretty pink pearl bracelet with three infinity symbols in silver arrived, and it is an awesome valentine's day prezzie :)
Posted by jodikins at 10:59 AM | Comments (0)
A nap would be nice
Last night, I ended up cleaning the landing at the bottom of the stairs, the hallway, Richard's side of the bed, and got through the stack of boxes in the bathroom that had been sitting on the counter for the past 6 months for no particular reason. None of the boxes had bathroom items in them... So, books went where they were supposed to go, I still have to sort through one box at a later date, but at least things look different in there :)
Now I am stuck awaiting packages and hoping that they both get delivered early this morning so I can go back to sleep.
Posted by jodikins at 9:10 AM | Comments (0)
My first gift
to you on Valentine's Day... I cleaned off the landing of the stairs, put the two boxes that were reusable in the garage, took the laundry items upstairs, sorted through junk mail, and hung up jackets.
Posted by jodikins at 12:02 AM | Comments (0)
February 13, 2006
Ahh parents
So, my parents have their house on the market -- the one I grew up in. They have a new house waiting for them, and my mom is getting panicky because they've had their house on the market for two months. Long story on this, but today they got an absolutely insulting offer from someone, and my parents counteroffered something lower than they originally wanted to go. And the pigfuckers took my parents offer, pending home inspection. Here's how bad my parents' realtor is. I asked my mom if she had kick out on the offer. She did not know what this was. I had to try to explain contingency with and without kick out. Lordy. I love them, but they drive me insane :)
The cold snap is coming through, but I went ahead and ran some errands today. I also got some pictures of the sunbreaks this afternoon -- I'll upload later, but it was beautiful :) I need to make more progress on cleaning. I really only have tomorrow to work on things since I'm going to be busy most of the day Wednesday. What gets done, gets done, and some progress is better than no progress at all.
Tonight I'm going to pick through beans -- I think I'll have enough time to bake beans after I get back from getting my hair done on Wednesday, and before Richard gets home. Beanpot and cornbread, yay!
Posted by jodikins at 7:33 PM | Comments (0)
February 12, 2006
The frenzy
.. of Cleaning began yesterday. 6 loads of laundry (mainly towels), baked chicken, chicken stock, prepared stuffed french toast for this morning, etc. I watched some of the pairs skating Olympics last night -- I'm highly disappointed that they have done away with the 6 point system. Yes, the new system is fair and counteracts any political biases, but damn it, that's the only reason to watch figure skating!
I actually went upstairs at 11pm, changed the cat litter and then watched MadTV. A repeat and still hit-or-miss, but better than SNL as of late. I wasn't quite tired at midnight, so I surfed around and settled on QVC, where some woman in positively scary makeup was trying to pretend that she ever cooks. I knew it was time to go to sleep when one of the items they were hawking, the Lock-n-Lock container system, started to sound like a good idea. I pretty much slept through the night.
Gbic got me up at 7am, so I got up, baked the french toast, and called my mom. Ate some of the nummy french toast, and decided I might as well go back to sleep for a while. Leslie called me at noon with a tempting offer of lunch at Pallino's, but I had to decline. I should have just forced myself to get up because I only ended up sleeping for another half hour or so. But then, I decided to watch tv in bed for a while -- Falling Down was on A&E and I just love that movie.
I walked the dog, broiled the kalbi steak I put in the fridge yesterday morning (again, yummy), and now I need to start cleaning again. Yay!
Posted by jodikins at 2:28 PM | Comments (0)
February 11, 2006
NANOG aka All Alone Again, Naturally
Well, as much as I miss Richard when he's gone, it's always a good feeling getting him packed and out the door. We're getting better with the coordination and timing -- it took a couple trips to adjust to no longer being 10 minutes away from the airport like we were in Ashburn. He'll be in Dallas through late Wednesday night, which leaves lots of time to do girly and alone things. Like clean, woo!
For now, all the windows are open, my music is playing, and laundry is spinning :) Meat is marinating and life is good.
Posted by jodikins at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)
February 10, 2006
A new low.
I just filed a dispute with American Express for... $6.75. I think I just had bad karma for all the orders I placed at the beginning of December. First it was Quilt in a Day which finally got resolved a few weeks ago. This time it is Surfas Restaurant Supply. Now, I've ordered from Surfas before and had an overall pleasant experience. At the beginning of December, I placed a $50 order for baking supplies for the Christmas cookies that I made and sent out. One of the items was "chocolate vermicelli" which was supposed to be a higher quality, better tasting chocolate sprinkle. I thought this would be great on my cookies, but alas, when the order arrived... no chocolate sprinkles.
I got an email from Marc Lamaze at Surfas on 12/3/2005 stating that the chocolate sprinkles had been backordered and would be in the following week. Okay, I go on with my baking, decide on a different recipe that doesn't use the chocolate sprinkles, and pretty much forget about it in the holiday rush. Then while I'm digging through emails on the Quilt In A Day debacle in January, I find Marc's email again, and realize I've not received this item. I doublechecked their website and my credit card statement, and found that I had been charged for the item already.
On 1/14/2006, I responded to Marc's email and explained that I'd not received this item, I'd been charged for it, and it had been well over a month now. Marc does not favor me with a reply until 1/20/2006. This is a bad sign. Marc replies that "We should have it back in stock by early next week. Sorry for the delay." Okay. So I wait. And wait. And wait.
Finally on 2/6/2006 I email Marc again, and cc their general customer service address in the vague hope that they've fired Marc for his crappy customer service skills. I asked them to respond within 48 hours as to why I had not received my shipment, and stated in the past when things have been backordered, someone would call me and ask if I wanted to wait on the item, or if I wanted to cancel the ordering of that item.
No response. So this morning, I tried calling Surfas to see about getting my money back. The chick who answered the phone said that their shipping guy Mitch was out today, it's his day off, and no one has access to his records but him, and if I call back at this time tomorrow, I can talk to him.... Yeah. Okay. I think I'll just call American Express and they can call Mitch.
So. That's what I did. I called American Express, and opened a dispute over $6.75. Might as well have them earn the yearly membership fee by annoying people who won't give me back... six dollars and seventy five freaking cents.
And on a completely different topic: bootcut jeans in average length on petite legs = instant raver pants. Those are getting returned immediately :)
Posted by jodikins at 10:11 AM | Comments (0)
February 9, 2006
Hair overhaul scheduled
After feeling crappy this morning, I managed to kick it into gear and start getting things ready for Richard's trip on Saturday. I've got a list of things to get done before he goes (including getting his hair cut tonight, getting gbic groomed tomorrow, grocery shopping, and laundry), but I'm also starting to schedule things for when he's gone. The number one priority is fixing my hair. The horrible cut that I got when we first moved here has grown out, and all that Lush crap that I tried to use to bring out some red highlights has worked its way out of my hair. On Wednesday, the kind folks at Paule Attar are hopefully going to fix my hair finally. Leslie's getting her hair permed again at the same time, so it will be a fun girly day.
In other news, Charlie and Sharon finally had their son yesterday -- much congrats and good wishes to them all :)
It's really sad but the only other things on my agenda while Richard is gone are cleaning and reading. I'd like to give the whole house a thorough cleaning without interruption. While it sucks that we won't be spending Valentine's Day together (fucking NANOG), I certainly hope that he will do the right thing and have something delivered ;)
Posted by jodikins at 10:19 PM | Comments (0)
February 8, 2006
Things I Hate.
#28.) People who lie about their affiliation when opening tickets.
Okay, you see what you think is a network problem. Fine. You somehow feel that if you call the network you think is having the problem, then things will get fixed. You google for information, and call the network support line. The network support line is answered by someone friendly and helpful, i.e. ME (play along here,folks -- I can still fake that well). You proceed to lie about who you are and what your interest is. 'Oh, hi, I'm an ADMINISTRATOR for (insert semi-well known site here), and I'm seeing massive latency on your two routers at x.x.x.x and x.x.x.x.'
I take down the information that's important to me, which consists of two things: source IP and destination IP, and I ask you to send in any traceroutes you have to noc@. The big tip off is when you have me spell out the email address... several times. Seems to me that an ADMINISTRATOR for a fairly large site would be familiar with that terminology, no?
I take a look at the problem, nothing on my network. Your email comes in.
"I am running a class in Toronto using (insert semi-well known site name here) as a class data repository.
Response time is very bad today. A TRACERT suggests a problem within your
network."
OHHHHHH. Apparently in Canada, ADMINISTRATOR means END USER. I really don't give a fuck about who you are. If you see a problem on my network, go ahead and ask me about it and I'll do my best to figure out why you're seeing that. But lying about who you are, what your affiliation is, etc, does not endear you to me.
Oh yeah, btw, the "massive latency" on my network that you are seeing, is really just a massive failure on the part of YOUR network provider. Did you try calling them to report that you were an ADMINISTRATOR too?
Posted by jodikins at 7:54 AM | Comments (1)
February 4, 2006
Taming Chaos
Spent most of today doing housework: tons of laundry, cleaning bathrooms and cooking. It was satisfying getting through some of the stuff that got ignored during the week. Tonight while I was cooking a gigantic batch of spaghetti and meatballs, the lifeforce sucker actually called me. I was fairly rude (by being extremely curt), but I didn't like it when she'd call me when we were "friends" -- no reason for me to like it any better now. She called to say that she'd opened the very expensive champagne that I gifted her for helping out when we moved. And that it was good. No shit. It's worth $150 a bottle, and it's a fabulous vintage. I'm saving my bottle for our first anniversary.
Anyway, I was expecting it to be a work phone call. I didn't recognize the number on caller ID. I was taken aback when she said who it was, but I could tell that it was a drunk dial situation.
Her: "Jodi? Hi, it's LifeforceSucker."
Me: "uhh, Hi."
Her: "I just wanted to let you know that we opened the bottle of champagne you gave me, and it was really good!"
Me: "Okay." *Click*
Not one of my shining moments as far as not being rude goes, but I really had stuff on the verge of burning on the stove. Oh yeah, and if I wanted to talk to you, I'd have responded to your emails.
Back to a recap of today. I made rice and peas again, and broiled the rest of the jerk pork from last week. Put most of that in the fridge. Then tonight I made a gigantic batch of spaghetti and meatballs. Richard will be happy with all of the pre-prepared food, and it will save us lots of money eating out. Tomorrow I'll make some sort of dessert, and try out the "fluffy whole wheat rolls" recipe I snagged from Chowhound.
Posted by jodikins at 10:45 PM | Comments (0)
February 1, 2006
Good food, good times
So, the moving was relatively painless... for me at least. I stayed at the new place and cooked and put dishes away and generally had a nice time. The food was great, and we had fun talking and stuff. Nice kids :)
Posted by jodikins at 1:24 AM | Comments (0)