April 29, 2008 | Filed under: Is She Still Talking?

I go to a co-worker’s office for a quick chat at the end of the day. Music is blaring from his computer.
Co-worker: We can have this conversation while I choose work-out music, right?
Me: Yeah, sure. This is work-out music?
Him: No, way too mellow. But I like it.
Me: Definitely not up-tempo enough. Wait! I know this song!
Him: It’s Colin Hay.
Me: ?
Him: From Men at Work.
Me: Hm.
Him: It’s on the Scrubs soundtrack.
Me: That’s it! I mean, I don’t have the soundtrack, but that’s where I know the song from — my Scrubs habit!

* * * * *

Me, on the phone with my father: So, can I install cabinet knobs myself?
Dad: Sure, all you need is a screwdriver.
Me: Oh no, not changing the cabinet knobs — I’m sure I am capable of CHANGING the knobs, jeez. There are no knobs, I have to put in brand new ones, like by drilling holes and everything. I have a drill. My question was really, does it take some special skill and will it drive me nuts if all the knobs don’t line up perfectly?
Dad: Well of course it will, cuz you’re just as anal as I am!
Me: Great.
Dad: Why don’t you just wait until we visit.
Me: OK, then you and I can install cabinet knobs and Mom will go for a nice loooooong walk, somewhere far, far away.

* * * * *

Different male co-worker: Oh! Your name came up in conversation over the weekend.
Me: Um, do I really want to know?
Him: We were talking about people who look like Republicans.
Me: Yeah, I get that a lot.

* * * * *

On the phone with Lori, where we’ve just spent a good ten minutes discussing an apparently local murderer.
Me: blah blah blah
Lori: Oh dear, I just –
*strange clicking noises coming from phone*
Me: Um, hello?
*call clearly disconnected*

The conversation resumed,
Me: Were you being attacked by a knife-wielding stranger? All I heard was, “Oh dear,” then the line went dead.
Lori: I hope, if that were the case, that the first words out of my mouth would not be, “Oh dear.”
Me: Good point. But you can’t really say, “I’m being attacked by a knife-wielding stranger! Call the police!” without fearing that you’ll further provoke him. We should have some sort of signal.
Lori: We need a code word.
Me: Yes!
Lori: I know — [redacted]!

(What, you think I’m going to tell the entire internet our code word?? Think again.)

April 24, 2008 | Filed under: Is She Still Talking?

This is my hair:

 

This is my hair on humidity:

 

Any questions?

April 22, 2008 | Filed under: Boys Are Dumb, I Write About My Feelings

I like to be right. And I like to win.

(I know, this revelation shocks you.)

I want to tell him he’s wrong, wrong, wrong, point out all the ways in which he’s wrong, all the places where things could have gone differently, if we had but made other choices, all the ways in which what did happen was a direct result of the choices we, individually, made. And I desperately want to correct the assertions — explicit and implicit — from that last conversation and his subsequent e-mail. (Which is still unresponded-to, I might add.) Heck, I’d probably even tell him that he’s right about a few things, though it’s clear he doesn’t understand why those things are they way they are.

But I won’t. Because in this scenario, winning is defined entirely by my ability to not speak to him. And even more than being right, I like to win.

April 20, 2008 | Filed under: Is She Still Talking?

A How-To Guide to Changing Out Your Overhead Light Fixture

1. Electricity is dangerous, you know. Go to the box in the kitchen and disconnect the circuit to your bedroom.

2. Read diagram on inside of box. Discover that most circuits are not identified, and those that are are incorrectly identified. Fail to cut power to the bedroom, as evidenced by the light still shining and the radio still playing.

3. Curse.

4. Decide, eh, no big deal. Turn off the light switch and hope for the best.

5. Climb up on ladder to remove existing light fixture. Turn the fixture, as you expect it to unscrew.

6. Fail to remove the light fixture.

7. Curse.

8. Pull straight down on the fixture, because if it doesn’t screw on, how else would it be attached? Nearly fall off ladder as the fixture springs off the ceiling.

9. Regain balance.  Curse.

10. Discover light fixture works in a completely different way than you expected, making removal much more challenging.

11. Realize you need to reattach the fixture to the ceiling so you can get a screwdriver.

12. Spend 10 minutes trying to jam the fixture back onto the screws protruding from the ceiling. Fail countless times. Curse each time.

13. Finally get the fixture half up. Hope for the best as you scramble down the ladder and dash to your toolbox and grab every screwdriver you own because you didn’t take the time to look at the screws before you left the room.

14. Climb back up the ladder, remove light fixture from ceiling again, and balance fixture in your left hand. With your right hand, remove screws protruding from ceiling onto which fixture cover attaches. Unscrew metal bracket from ceiling which is the last remaining connection from fixture to ceiling.

15. Discover the bracket is not, in fact, the last remaining connection from fixture to ceiling.

16. Curse.

17. Realize two wires — one white, one black – run from the fixture to the power source in the ceiling.

18. Decide you really should turn off the electricity at this point.

19. Realize there is no way to reattach fixture to ceiling. Also realize you’ve been holding the damn fixture in your left hand for about 15 minutes now and it’s no longer fun.

20. Consider letting fixture dangle from ceiling connected only by two wires.

21. Discard as a terrible idea.

22. Use Jedi mind trick to turn off electricity. Fail. Curse.

23. Climb down the ladder, leaving fixture dangling from the ceiling. Hope for the best.

24. Dash to the kitchen and start flipping circuit breakers. Discover the breaker to your bedroom is labeled LR A/C. Of course.

25. Climb back up the ladder and balance fixture in your left hand. With your right hand, attempt to unscrew the little yellow cap that connects the red wire coming from the ceiling with the white and black wires coming from the fixture.

26. Manage to disconnect the black wire without much effort.

26. Try in vain to unscrew the cap, thus freeing the last connection — the white wire. Succeed only in tangling the red and white wires together more.

27. Curse.

28. Consider just cutting the wire and being done with it. Wonder if you even own wire cutters. Decide maybe scissors will work in lieu of wire cutters.

29. Discard as a terrible idea.

30. Continue trying to unscrew the yellow cap. Fail repeatedly.

31. Curse repeatedly.

32. Run out of other ideas, patience, and any feeling in your left arm. Decide cutting the wire is the only way to go.

33. Climb down the ladder, leaving fixture dangling from the ceiling by a single wire. Hope for the best.

34. Discover the toolbox is wire-cutter-free. Curse. Opt for kitchen scissors instead.

35. Climb back up the ladder and balance fixture in your left hand. Debate over which wire to cut — the red or the white? Decide that, in the event this is a terrible idea, it’s better to ruin the light fixture than the power source coming from the ceiling. With your right hand, cut the remaining white wire.

36. Breathe a sigh of relief over the fact that the scissors did the trick and that you weren’t electrocuted.

37. Climb down the ladder, with freed light fixture in hand. Thank god you won’t have to do this again. Until you tackle the living room.

38. Casually mention to your father that he gets to help install your new light fixture when he visits over the summer.

39. Spend the next two months living with no overhead light and a capped-off wire sticking out of your ceiling where the light fixture should be.

40. Revel in the knowledge that it could be worse — you could still be holding that damn fixture in your left hand.

April 17, 2008 | Filed under: Is She Still Talking?

Oh, ha!  Wasn’t that funny how I wrote a post about not being dead and then my site died?  Hilarious, I thought.  My comedic timing is impeccable.

Actually what happened is much less interesting, but I’m going to tell you about it anyway.  So back in March my lovely hosts sent me (and all their customers) an e-mail saying, we’re doing something fancy to the server, you’ll need to make some changes, but don’t touch anything yet.  Being the rules-follower that I am, I didn’t touch anything.  Aaand then promptly forgot that I needed to do anything until like a month later when I tried to leave a comment on Emily’s blog and her anti-spambot software was all “That’s not a valid web address” and I was all, “Is too!” and the software was all, “Is not!” and then I opened a new tab and typed in my web address and found that my precious blog was dead. DEAD!

But, as we say in my family, Better now! (Must be said in a falsetto, sing-songy voice. It’s from a commercial, but I couldn’t find it quickly enough on YouTube, so you’re just going to have to trust me on this one.)

And then! Tonight I finally set up my mainline heroin drip internet connection at home.  Which Verizon had activated a whole 24 hours ago, but I have a good excuse for not setting things up last night, and that can be summed up in one word: WHISKY.  (Yes, really. Trust me, the lack of an “e” was a hot topic of conversation as we sat around drinking the whisk(e)y.)

In the midst of setting up my internet crap, Verizon wants to know — no, strike that, Verizon REQUIRES ME TO TELL IT IN A REQUIRED FIELD my gender and birthday so it can “customize my user experience.” To which I say, Pffffft. I put in a birthdate of January 1 (it took the least amount of effort to select the first item on the drop-down menus) but then the year box was wide open, and you have to type numbers in. Well. Four keystrokes is four keystrokes, no matter what year one chooses, so I weighed my options carefully and went with 1984.  It was only fitting.

At any rate, the internet — it’s all around us — only, it really wasn’t.  The wireless router wasn’t configured and I could only get online by being hardwired to the modem which, when you have a laptop and no living room furniture and your modem/router can only be located near the front door because that’s where the phone jack is, it really doesn’t make much sense to be hard-wired. Blogging from bed is much better. So I contacted the online help chat person, who I suspect is located in India because it took at least as long as the commuter flight between here and JFK for my messages to reach him and his replies to come back to me.  (Also, his last name was Gupta.) It was about this time that I cracked open a beer because I really didn’t know how else to make the experience less painful and I don’t have any whisk(e)y in the house.

Mr. Gupta was overly polite and attempting to be helpful, right up until he asked to basically hack into my computer and take control of the mouse and keyboard.  (There’s a fancy computer term for this and my IT guys used to do it all the time, but I don’t remember what it’s called.)  Here my Privacy Act alarm bells start going off again (forgot to wear my tinfoil hat today — it usually keeps those noises at bay) and I declined to let him into my computer.  I don’t care what you say, I’m just not cool with it unless there is no other way to achive the mission at hand. At work I allow it because (1) it’s work’s computer and (2) I don’t have much choice. But at home? To configure a wireless router which I’m sure I can handle on my own? No thank you. You will teach me how to hack into Verizon’s system to reconfigure what I need instead. It’s the American way.

Wow. This post was nothing but meaningless drivel. Aren’t you glad I’m back?