Best. Art. Ever.

Today my friend Breonna and I wandered around Old Town Scottsdale and made nuisances of ourselves at various galleries.

Most of the galleries there seem to be run by rather crabby looking gray-haired men who seem intent on forcing you to buy something just because you looked at it.

One gallery was different, and it was awesome. Their website is here and inside the gallery was the coolest piece of art I have ever seen. Here's a picture:


from http://xanadugallery.com/Art/Detail.asp?InvID=7961

It is this gigantic metal thingy with a ton of little silver ball bearings that go through a sort of roller coaster of little tubes and tracks and cups and it is, in my humble opinion, the best art ever. Because it is noisy, and because it does something.

It also costs more than a BMW. But it is awesome.

The lady at the gallery was super nice. She told us we could touch anything we wanted (I had fun poking at various sculptures to see how heavy they were).

I think that's about it. I just had to share.

Just don't ask me what the heck it looks like

If you enter a date on Wolfram Alpha it will give you a list of information about that date.

I was bored, so I looked up the birthdays of everyone in my immediate family. Apparently, all of my mother's children were born during a waning gibbous moon. So was she. My father was born during a waxing crescent moon.

I just thought that was odd - 5 of the 6 of us being born during the same kind of moon.

And I'm bored.

I think that's it.

Paint, Part Two

It took me three days, but I finally finished painting the living room. Then, of course, it took me another three days to put all the furniture back. But here it is, all pretty and clean and HGTV-ish.



And that's all I'm going to show you until I get the rest of the room cleaned up.

As Seen On TV

I am a sucker for infomercials. I watch them when I can't sleep, or when I am bored, or when I am channel surfing.

That in itself is bad enough. But I get sucked in to the claims made and start thinking that I need whatever it is that is being advertised. Which is why yesterday morning, two of these suckers were delivered to my house (you can't get only one).



I tried one of them out last night. I wasn't blown away. I won't tell you how much I paid for the privilege of burning a one-inch patch of my forehead. I will say that, although my flat-iron straightens a bit better, the InStyler is much faster. I straightened half of my hair in about seven minutes. I would have done the rest but as I said, I burned myself, and because I was hormonal and had sort of an emotional day, I ended up crying after that and sort of gave up.

So if you've been sucked in by one of the amazing infomercials for the InStyler, and you thought to yourself that it looked simply too good to be true, don't bother ordering. Because it is too good to be true, and because I have an extra one I can give you.

Paint

This color is called Rain Washed (Behr Premium Plus Ultra). I got a tester from Home Depot because, since I've watched so much HGTV these past few months I am dying to paint something.

My mother has agreed to "help" me paint the living room/dining room. I say "help" because she does not like painting and will mostly contribute by buying paint and rollers. I don't mind.

I had fun painting a patch with the tester. I wanted to keep going, but the whole wall isn't washed off, I had only a tiny brush, nothing was covered or out of the way, I was wearing normal clothing, and I have decided to go with semi-gloss instead of matte.

I painted my name because I was bored.

I think that's it for now.

Cleaning house

I haven't updated this blog in months. I could say that I haven't had time, but that would be a lie. I've had chances. I just haven't felt that I had anything I want to say. That's the problem with having nearly a dozen blogs. I run out of material.

I've updated Up To No Good plenty. That's my whining-things suck-snarky sort of blog. It's not terribly personal, except when I talk about my grief at my father's death. This blog was supposed to be the traditional, story-of-my-life sort of blog. The problem was that nothing was really happening in my life for a while. I was pregnant, unemployed, and bored. What was I supposed to write about? Playing video games? Feeding the birds in my backyard? My swollen feet?

But I've had a number of things happen lately and I feel like I need to write about them - or rather, the result of them.

I am cleaning house. Physically, mentally, digitally. I un-followed people on Twitter who aren't important to me. I went through my Facebook profile and deleted friend requests I was never going to approve, applications I no longer use, groups I don't care about, things I am a fan of that aren't important. I streamlined my profile. I changed my profile picture.

Box by box, book by book, I am cleaning up. Going through every single item I own. I intend to get rid of at least half of my belongings. I feel tied down by them. I have so many things I don't want, that I don't use, that I don't even remember that I have.

I think it's going to be terribly therapeutic. I've been watching HGTV a lot lately, and I want a pretty, simple home like the ones I've seen. And when a house is being staged or designed on HGTV, the first thing they do is clean out clutter. That will be me.

I am going to free myself of the physical, in the hopes that it will free me up mentally and emotionally and spiritually. I don't know how long it is going to take, but I'm not going to quit until I'm done.

I hear you knocking, but you can't come in

I was home alone all day yesterday because it was election day in Gilbert and my mother works the polls. I don't have a problem being alone usually. But yesterday something odd happened that made me glad I've got my daddy's old Ruger under the bed.

I voted in the afternoon and went to IKEA to check out some furniture in person that I'd looked at on-line. I didn't stay too long because I was hungry, and because I detest rush-hour traffic. I got myself a cinnamon bun on the way out and battled the traffic home. I don't know where so many people were going before 5 o'clock on a Tuesday, but there you are.

I got home a few minutes before 5:00, but I DVR Jeopardy! every day so I can watch it at my leisure. I'd settled on the couch with some cold water and it was a few questions into single Jeopardy when the doorbell rang. I hit pause.

I never know who's going to be on the other side of the door - solicitors, Jehovah's Witnesses, kids raising funds, etc - so I'm careful to sneak up on the door quietly so that if I don't want to answer the door, the person on the other side won't have heard me galumphing up to the door. I checked the peephole. I didn't see anyone at first so I thought that the UPS man had probably left a package and gone back to his truck. I was reaching up to undo the latch at the top of the door when I felt a little funny. Neither my mother or I had anything coming in the mail. I looked out the peephole again and there was a strange-looking, dirt-covered older man outside. He looked a little like William H Macy in the face, only this man was sunbaked like the homeless around here usually are. He had stringy grayish hair to his shoulders and a scraggly gray beard. I've seen a lot of "Law & Order" so I made note of his height and build, his gray pocket t-shirt and the tattoo on his left arm.

He seemed agitated. He was muttering under his breath and sort of swaying nervously. I was frozen at the peephole. He lunged forward suddenly and banged loudly, almost angrily on the door. I didn't breathe. I stood there a moment. So did the man. Then he shouted something unintelligible at the door and left.

I didn't see which way he went. I was too afraid to check the side window to see in case he could see me moving through the curtains.

The first thing I did was run upstairs and grab the Ruger. I keep it in the plastic case it came in. I took the lock off but kept it in the case and set it on the table. I sat down in front of the paused TV for a few moments, then called my mother. She suggested I call the police, which I did. I told them what had happened, and described the man in detail. The dispatcher said a car was on its way.

A while later (I kept looking out the peephole), a police car stopped across the street. I could only see the back of it so I don't know if the officers got out or anything. They never came to my door to talk to me so I have no idea what happened.

When my mother got home later that night, I told her all about it again. She asked if I'd ever seen our neighbor's ex-husband (who sometimes hangs around), a man my father once described as Joe Dirt. I haven't ever seen him so I don't know what he looks like. My mother wondered if maybe that's who the stranger was.

And now I wonder, too, because a few minutes ago the doorbell rang. "Wouldn't it be funny," I thought to myself, "if it was the same guy as yesterday evening?"

And it was. His hair was in a ponytail today and his t-shirt was dark blue. Again, I froze at the peephole. The man said something I couldn't make out as he stood there, again swaying. Then he exhaled sharply and said something like, "Must be snoozing" and turned and walked away.

So I'm left to wonder. Was it Joe Dirt from next door? What on earth does he want? My mother has talked to our neighbor (Jana) and said that the woman has our phone number if she needs anything, so there's no reason to open the door.

I wonder if it was Joe Dirt. If it was I feel a little foolish for calling the police. But I'm a single woman, at home alone, and I was frightened. A strange man shouted at my door. Why shouldn't I have called the police?

I wonder about something else, though. He came by two days in a row. Will he come by tomorrow as well? The next day? What on earth does this man want? Whatever it is, he's not getting it, unless it's a bar of soap. If he comes by tomorrow, maybe I'll answer the door. But I'm going it with my Ruger on the table, and I'm going to ask him politely to leave me alone. Even if it is just Joe Dirt, I'm a little too freaked out to just leave the house right now. If I do, he'll know someone was home.

Honestly, I felt better yesterday when I thought it was just a drifter or someone like that, and I knew the police had an eye out. The thought that this creepy man is next door isn't a very reassuring one.

Star Trek exhibit

I went to the Star Trek exhibit today - the one at the AZ Science Center. I'd never been to the Science Center before. It's neat because it's very hands-on. The place was crawling with kids there on field trips. They seemed to be having fun. I know I would have loved it as a kid. My dad hated taking me places because I always had to touch everything.

The Star Trek exhibit was amazing. They had costumes from the movies and shows, and props, and busts of alien species so you could see the makeup details. There were little models of all the starships, too, and they had the actual bridge from the Enterprise in TNG. I got to sit in the captain's chair. My inner nerd went crazy.

The props were really cheesy up close, but a sign on the wall explained that the camera only captures so many details, so they only made really nice looking props if there needed to be a close-up. That way the nice phasers and tricorders didn't break or anything.

I'd never really thought about Star Trek from a costume design perspective, but the outfits really were amazing. All of Deanna Troi's outfits are very well made, tailored perfectly with these teeny-tiny stitches on all the seams. That actress has to be a toothpick, because her clothes are TINY. I liked seeing Captain Kirk's outfits from the original series - there were four or five of them and the details are amazing.

There were a few odd pieces, too - like the Robin Hood costume Captain Picard wore in one of the Q episodes. Either Patrick Stewart has thin legs, or the costumes were a lot tighter on him than on the mannequin. There were a few of Data's costumes as well, and it looks like Brent Spiner must have bulked up a little between seasons because one of the jackets had much wider shoulders than the other.

I got two pictures - one of me and my mom being beamed down onto the ship, and one of me on the captain's chair. They weren't cheap but it was all so freaking cool!

Baseball and grief

I went to a Spring Training game today with my big brother, Scooter. Dodgers - Giants. It was a good game - the score was tied for a lot of the time and the Giants made loads of errors. Scott and I were sitting near a few very vocal Dodger fans, too, so that was fun. It was a beautiful day for baseball, if a bit on the windy side. We had seats in the shade. It was nice.

It felt good to get up at a decent hour and get out of the house for a few hours. I hadn't been to a game since last year. My dad took me to an Angels game at Diablo stadium. We'd talked for years about going to a Spring Training game and finally I told him, look, you've got brain cancer, it's now or never. I was joking at the time but I'm so glad he got tickets because that was the last game we went to together. Scott got my dad D-backs tickets for his birthday but they were for a game on September 1st and on that day my father was unconscious in the hospital. He died eight days later.

I've been thinking about my dad a lot lately. I've heard that it's common for a fresh wave of grief to hit about six months after the fact and it's been true for me, and for my mother. It's terribly frustrating. I feel like I'm making progress in my grief and then something will happen that sets me off again and I feel like I did when my dad was in the hospital and we didn't know what had happened to him.

I am so tired of grieving. I'm tired of everything reminding me of my dad. At the same time though I don't want it to stop because I need to be reminded of him. I need those memories. They're all I have.

I'm having trouble coming up with clever and/or relevant titles

I still haven't had the patience to sit down and figure out why my serger isn't working properly, so I've abandoned sewing in favor of cross-stitching for a while. I found a fairly simple (I thought) kit at Jo-Ann last week and I've gotten a huge part of it done already. I hit a snag, though, because the chart tells me that this symbol is that color, but it gives me the color *number* instead of the color name. Nowhere does it say that 716 is turquoise or anything like that. So I've spent a lot of time scrutinizing the picture on the front and trying to figure out which parts are lavender and which parts are lilac, and why anyone would do such a crappy job at making a symbol key.

This is what I get for buying things marked down.

I had a coupon for the store, too, but I didn't use it. I had this idea in my head that I was going to go back on Friday or Saturday to get some more fabric and I wanted the coupon for that. Naturally, this did not happen. Last week's expired coupon is still in my purse.

On Saturday I went to the theater with Mum to see "Knowing," that new movie starring Nicolas Cage.

I'm not sure yet if I liked it or not. I strongly suspect that they switched screenwriters halfway through the movie. Or that one man, somewhere, said, "Look, I've got this great idea - there'll be these numbers that represent every major disaster for the past 50 years, and the number of casualties and the location, and this guy will find them, and there will be a few that haven't happened yet, and he'll try to stop them ... and, that's all I've got. See what you guys can do with it." Because the second half, the sort of turns the plot took, felt very incongruous.

The boy who played Nicolas Cage's son was cute, though. Cute kids make even the most convoluted plots more bearable.

I have an appointment with the eye doctor tomorrow. I'm considering new glasses. I've had trouble tolerating my contact lenses lately. I wonder if I could find cat-eye glasses.

I considered them a number of years ago when I tired of my Buddy Holly-style frames.

"Cat-eye glasses, Jill?" my father asked. "I don't know. Those make a rather strong statement."

"Yes," I said, "and that statement is that I'm in a fashion time warp. I'm okay with that." And I am. I own an alarming number of vintage dresses. Cute ones, though. Although I've committed a number of egregious fashion sins. I have, for example, worn a puffy vest every winter for the past thirteen years or so, and my sense of style stopped evolving when I was about fifteen. So I don't think cat-eye glasses would be a huge blow to my image or anything.

The problem, I imagine, would be finding them. That sort of dated style went out with the sixties. So I'll probably end up just ordering new contacts and toughing it out during allergy season. I do like the glasses I have now. They match my hair.

I wonder at times if this little bonus blog was such a good idea. It seems to serve mainly as a reminder of how dull my life really is. I need a hobby. Or a life. Either way.

If you're bored then you're boring

I mowed the lawn today.

It'd been two weeks since I did it last and darned if the bloody lawn didn't grow. I was more careful with the extension cord this time. Last time I mowed the lawn I accidentally mowed the cord and blew a fuse. I'm sure my father had some compelling reason for purchasing an electric lawn mower but darned if I can figure it out. It takes me twice as long as it should because I have to keep picking up the cord and dragging it out of the way.

A few weeks ago I bought a bird feeder and a few bags of seed. I used to have a feeder in the backyard but my dad took it down when bird flu was starting to be a problem - that was the reason he gave me, anyway. Personally I think he was tired of bits of seed and bird poo being scattered from one end of the paving stones to another.

Anyway. I got a new one and the birds have already eaten three or four bags of seeds. I have to fill it every day. I don't mind. It's sort of like the birds are my little pets, only I don't have to clean up after them or smell them or any of that.

I've seen a few hummingbirds as well, since the orange blossoms popped out last month. The backyard smells so nice ... as long as the guy who lives behind me isn't out smoking cigars, which he seems to do every time I go out to pull weeds.

I've been doing a bit of sewing to pass the time. My serger isn't working properly. I've checked the threading three times and everything looks OK but it won't stitch. It's VERY irritating and I hate even looking at it. Fortunately I've got some good pinking shears for neatening seams. I've used them a lot.

Jeeze, I'm boring. I have only recently started to realize what a dreadfully boring person I am. I guess I'll go back to my birds. They don't care if I'm boring as long as I feed them.

nothing whatever

I've been up to almost nothing lately. I seem to be having trouble finding any kind of motivation to be productive. I don't have it in me to read like I used to. I can't write worth a darn lately. Everything bores me these days.

I played a video game after a late breakfast, then spent a half-hour or so cutting out pattern pieces for something I'll probably never sew. I still haven't finished with the last thing I started sewing. I got to step 10 and the instructions stopped making sense. I can't figure out WHAT Simplicity wants me to do with that bias tape. So the item in question is sitting, half-sewn, on my sewing table, and there it'll stay until I work up some kind of enthusiasm for it again.

I played the piano for a few minutes, too, which only served to remind me that bad things happen when I don't play for three months.

Then this evening I thought, hey, I've DONE my taxes, maybe I ought to mail them. So I put my federal form in the envelope. I'd have mailed state as well but I owe them money and I can't find my checkbook. I'll have to do that tomorrow ... or the next day. Not only can I not find my checkbook, I find I am sadly lacking the $100 I owe the state of Arizona. Good thing I've still got a month left on that. I was much more concerned with mailing my federal taxes in since I'm expecting a tidy little refund.

I voted on Tuesday. I guess that's something.

And tomorrow, I'll ... discuss my lack of motivation with my therapist, I suppose. It's what I pay him for.

Car talk

I think my car knows my dad died.

I don't have the greatest car in the world. It's a '97 Chevy Cavalier and it was 10 grand brand-new. It's never been a great car and in fact it loses value by the second. It's like those car commercials where money flies out the tailpipe as the car goes down the road. It's got I think barely 80,000 miles on it and it's worth about $1200.

I digress. Despite not being the best car in the world, it really hasn't given me much trouble in the seven years it's been mine. A few years back I had a new A/C put in, and I think a few other fairly important things have been replaced, but it's usually good about starting up when I turn the key and the gears shift properly and it gets me from here to there with very little fuss. Also, I can make a U-turn in a lane and a half in that little car, no mean feat I assure you.

So despite its shortcomings, I dearly love my little car. I try my best to take care of it. And when my dad was alive, he kept it maintained and changed the oil and rotated the tires and that sort of thing. And my little car was happy.

Since my father died in September, I have had my car towed to the shop three times, and this evening marked my second flat tire in six months. I'm on my second battery in four months, and I have reason to believe that the alternator isn't going to last much longer. This car has given me nothing but trouble for the past six months.

In all fairness, some of the trouble started while my dad was still alive strictly speaking. The first flat tire, for instance, happened in the parking garage on third and I discovered it while driving myself and my mother home from St. Joe's on a Saturday night when we thought he might still wake up at some point. But it's like my car just knew. It knew that it was up to me to maintain it. And I am crap at maintaining cars.

As luck would have it, my brother has referred my mother and me to one of the last honest mechanics in the state, so we haven't had to pay an unreasonable amount of money to keep it going. But it's times like these that I miss my dad. The auto shop is, incidentally, right across the street from the cemetery. So every time I'm down there, I sort of glance across Main street and think, oh, Dad. If only you were here.

But he's not, and he won't be again. I like to think that my car knows this, and that it's not breaking down to be difficult. I think it misses him, too.

So ...

I haven't updated this blog in a while. I think the problem is that I'm a very boring person and that I don't really do a whole heck of a lot.

The biggest and most exciting thing that's happened to me lately is that I got my hands on a few boxes of Girl Scout cookies a few days ago. I've been waiting a year for those suckers. They are like crack. I especially needed good cookie news since I just recently discovered that back in October Mother's Cookies went out of business. No more English Tea cookies for me. And I loved those cookies. I loved them dearly.

That's about it. Cookies, I think. And I've done a bit of sewing and, by extension, cursing at my sewing machine.

Baby you can wash my car ...

I had another unusually productive day.

I got up early because my therapy appointment got moved to today at 11am. I woke up at 9:30 and had a little breakfast and played a little Animal Crossing before I left. I got home a little past noon and had all kinds of energy so I decided to wash my mother's car.

None of our cars have been washed since before my dad died. The cars were his thing - cleaning, maintenance, all that stuff. All 3 cars look so sad. I think they miss my dad too. My car certainly knows he's dead, because it never gave me a lick of trouble seven or eight months ago but it's not started three different times since September.

Anyway. I washed my mom's Highlander. I got a Mr. Clean Auto Dry a while back and darned if the bloody thing didn't leak in about six places. I got a lot more water on my clothes than on the car. Eventually I gave up on Mr. Clean, got out a bucket, and did things the old-fashioned way.

I didn't get the top washed off, just hosed off, on account of I'm about 5'3 and I can't reach that high. But the car is 90% clean and pretty and that's good enough for me.

My car, parked next to the Highlander in the driveway, got all kinds of funky water spots on it. I felt bad; it looked all dirty and sad and lonely. I was just going to clean the outside of the windows with my Windex but I wiped at a muddy spot on the door and the next thing I knew I was wiping the whole car down with Windex. It looked better when I was done. Now it's just the Camry that looks dusty and sad.

I was going to wash it too, after the Highlander, but I underestimated the effort that goes into washing a car and I was tired and slightly sunbaked so it didn't happen. Maybe tomorrow. I'll have to check the weather. The Highlander stays in the garage most of the time so it's not big deal if it rains soon as far as that goes, but the Camry's parked in the street so if I were to wash it and two days later there's rain, I'd be irked.

I was kind of tired after that so I had a little lunch and went to the bookstore. I read "Inkheart" after I saw the movie and both book and movie are fantastic. I bought the sequel in paperback ("Inkspell") and I swear, that was all I was going to get. I was going to leave right after that. What was I thinking? I can't go into a bookstore and get ONE THING. I bought four books and a discounted Magnetic Poetry box.

I ended up having dinner at Oregano's with a friend of mine and darned if that wasn't a good meal. I heart Italian food, especially a good bowl of pasta. So that was fun.

Wednesday is a big TV night for me so that's how I ended my day. How awesome is "Lost," seriously? One twist after another. I love it. I've also been watching "Lie To Me" which is a kick.

I didn't sleep enough so I'm tired despite the fact that it's before midnight. I think I'm going to turn in early tonight. Who knows what I'll get done tomorrow?

Well, probably nothing. But you never know.

Yay, me!

I had an unusually productive day.

I got my W2 in the mail - CC4K was cutting it a bit fine, if you ask me, considering employers are required by law to provide you with a W2 by February 2nd - which is to say, today. They're lucky the mailman wasn't slacking off.

I got my EZ-File booklets in the mail weeks ago and I got them out today. I did my federal taxes first because I thought they would be trickier. I was wrong. My Arizona 104 form was like an English comprehension exam of the worst sort. There were about a dozen worksheets and tables and I had to try to figure out three times whether I qualified for some exemption or credit or another (and in one case, I earned exactly sixteen dollars too much to qualify - Grr). The upside is the feds owe me nearly $600. The downside is that I owe the state a hundred.

I wanted to do something sort of boring and repetitive after that to ease my brain so I decided to tackle my latest project, which was my mother's office curtains. I measured fifty-six inches from the top in about twenty different places and made a mark, then connected the dots. I did this on the curtain and attached lining on both panels. Then I cut on the line.

Over to the serger, then, to finish the cut edges on four pieces of fabric. Then back to the cutting table with my seam gauge to pin the edges. Then back to the sewing table to finish up. I made my mother iron them but she didn't mind - they were her curtains after all.

Then I took some fabric scraps, measured out two long rectangles and serged the edges for tiebacks. Time for my last project - a pillow cover. I took a few quick measurements, marked my fabric, and cut. Once more to the serger, then a quick stitch on the edges. I shoved the pillow into the case and stitched it closed.

So my mother's office is pretty much complete now - or at least, my part of it is done. After the curtains were ironed I climbed onto the desktop and hung them up. I took a few pictures for my mom's Facebook page since everyone wants to see her pretty new office.

In retrospect it wasn't a whole heck of a lot but compared to my usual routine I got a lot done.

Which is sort of sad. Oh well. Here's to progress.

Achy breaky head

I have a migraine.

This is nothing new; I pretty much always have a migraine. I'm getting tired of it. I don't just get headaches. I get massive, mutant headaches that last entire weeks. Excruciating headaches.

My dad had a horrible headache before he died. I think about that sometimes.

My father never had any brain tumor symptoms - headaches, blurred vision with occasional flashes of light, that sort of thing. That was always me. I've been seeing a neurologist for years. I've had CAT scans and MRIs and that sort of thing before.

I had an MRI about six weeks after my dad died. Just as a precaution. Brain tumors aren't hereditary that we know of. That's the thing about them - there's very little that researchers have managed to figure out about them. No one knows what causes them.

My October MRI was clean; I knew it would be. I wanted one anyway for peace of mind. Dr. Kapoor said that was pretty common for people who have lost someone to brain cancer. She said she had no problem signing off on one for me.

I don't have a tumor. I don't think I ever will. But I think about it a lot. Every time I get a headache.

Insert power tool sounds here

Everyone, a round of applause please. I didn't completely screw up.

Allow me to explain (not that you could stop me as I'm the one typing). Last week my mother picked out some hardware for her curtains - just a little something from Target. But Mom isn't the handiest person in the world, and I know my way around a driver drill. So it fell to me to install the curtain rod brackets.

I needed a 3/16" drill bit. I didn't have a 3/16" drill bit. I went to Home Depot (motto: "You can do it; we can't help) and found a set of drill bits for cheap. I figure I'm going to be doing more drilling around the house so it was worth getting.

I climbed on top of the desk. Level and tape measure in hand (and pencil in the other hand), I carefully marked where to drill pilot holes. I loosened the drill chuck and inserted the drill bit. I tightened the chuck. I moved to start drilling. The drill bit fell out.

This happened twice.

I tightened the hell out of the chuck and the bit stayed put. The drill wasn't making much progress at first but for once I was patient. It went in. I double-checked with my level before drilling the other two holes on either side of the first one. I held up a bracket and marked where to drill the second set of holes. I drilled said holes.

I moved to screw the brackets in. Apparently, in my clumsy attempts to drill a decent pilot hole, I drilled too deep. There was nothing for the screws to grab on to. Two of the three brackets came halfway out when I touched them.

I spent a moment fuming and cursing. Then I found the plastic wall anchors. I tried to slide one in. It would not fit. I took a hammer and made it fit. I'm sure the neighbors suspected at this point that our home had been invaded by a number of particularly vindictive woodpeckers, but given the auto-repair sounds that emanate from their garage at 3am, I wasn't particularly concerned about that.

I screwed in a bracket. The screw was tight but that was good - I didn't want the bloody thing falling out of the wall once the curtains were up. One wall anchor ended up in there a little wonky so the screw wouldn't go in properly. It's mostly in now - I think I stripped it in my attempts to get it in.

I inhaled a large quantity of sawdust and very nearly messed up the bloody wall.

But I didn't. I didn't completely screw up after all. Yay, me!

Yawn.

I'm tired.

I don't know why I'm so tired; I didn't do anything all day. I spent most of it playing video games, snacking, and trying to work up the energy to do something productive.

I suppose the fact that I slept poorly last night can't help much. But I'm used to sleeping poorly, so I'm not sure that's it. I'm still not convinced I'm not getting sick. My throat's been kind of funny for a week or so and I've had a perpetual sinus headache.

I reckon it's time. I haven't been sick since ... November, I think. I usually get sick every few months.

I'm just ounces of fun today.

TV gives so much and asks so little

I've spent this Sunday night doing exactly what I did last Sunday night, which is to say, I've been watching "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" for the past, oh, five hours or so. They'll show three episodes and then repeat them, so if I've missed the first half hour of the first episode, I can see it after the third episode. I miss very little, however, so I end up watching each episode twice.

Which is just as well, as I find that I don't pay very much attention to it the first time. I'm usually going through magazines or working the NY Times crossword puzzle or messing about on the computer. I get restless if I just sit there and watch TV. I do best when I'm doing several things at once, even if that means I'm not doing any one thing very well.

I've had a headache all this week. I've been getting migraines since I was eleven or so. I've taken just about every drug made for them but nothing works particularly well. The only thing that's happened is that now I can't stand peppermint.

One of the drugs I took was this tablet that melts on the tongue. As the tongue is where the taste buds are, the tablet was flavored - peppermint flavored. I took it for months even though it did very little, and now every time I smell peppermint I get a headache and nausea. Thanks, drug companies!

I wonder how many times now I've seen this ad for "Top Chef." It's got to be ... like, twenty. I think I have it memorized now. Not that I need to see a commercial twenty times to memorize it. I've got one of those brains that remembers annoying things fairly easily (if you ever want to hear the Charmin toilet paper jingle, just ask).

Hmm ... I didn't like the third episode. I don't think I want to watch it again. Off to bed then.

Too much of a good thing ... or a bad thing

I think I have a blogging addiction. I've got four or five already and here I go with one more.

Up To No Good is of course my main blog, but it's more of a humorous rant sort of place, and I feel odd doing daily/weekly/monthly/whatever updates because it takes away from the general snark of the site, which is irritating. So, because Blogger has yet to limit me, I've started one more blog, this one where I can detail my very busy and exciting (not) life so that people don't have to call my mother and ask, "How's Jill doing?"

I hate it when people do that. If they want to know how I'm doing, why not call me? Talk to me personally. My mother is not my keeper. There's plenty she either does not know or has forgotten.

I digress.

On with the show ...

I'm getting tired of the internet. More specifically, of my internet routine. As recently as four days ago I had a set-in-stone, two-plus hour routine I followed when I powered up my computer. I'd start with one website, move to the second on my mental list, then the third, and so on. I frequented a few message boards as well.

But I was tired and crabby the other day so I neglected my routine. It felt good. So I neglected it again and again. I checked the message boards and no one's missed me yet. Always assuming they will miss me eventually, which I'm not counting on. Apparently I'm not terribly memorable in any meaningful sense and I've been wasting time with my 200+ posts a week. No one has said a word, not so much as a "Hey, Jill hasn't posted in four days. How strange," or something like that.

I expect entirely too much. I always have. That's my problem. One of my problems, I should say; I've got several.

Sigh.

I can be funny, I know that. Every so often I'll have this burst of snarky brilliance and come up with something terribly clever. But you know something? It's exhausting. I hate it when people tell me, "Oh, your status updates/blogs are so funny!" Because then I feel like I have to keep it up, and I don't know if I have it in me. Confession time: I actually have a five-page list of funny status updates to use because I am generally incapable of being spontaneously clever. Every night when I go to update my status, I click on statusupdates.doc and see what fits my mood or the day.

I do the same thing with blogs, by the way. I don't just sit down and have a flash of an idea and type it all out and end up being funny or clever. I have to be in the mood, I have to have a full belly, I have to be well-rested, and I have to be a certain type of bored. When I'm on, I'm on, and I'll churn out six or seven blogs at a time and, every two or three days or so, pick one to post. And the top vote-getter in my Pathetic Blog Poll #3 (child beauty pageants) is something I've yet to come up with something mind-blowingly funny about.

Dammit. I just ended a sentence in a proposition. I hate it when I do that. Which reminds me of a joke ... a Southern woman is talking to a stuffy Englishwoman at the store, and asks her cheerfully, "So, where are you from?"
The Englishwoman replies, "I'm from a place where it is considered improper to end a sentence with a proposition."
The Southern woman thinks about this for a second, then says, "So, where are you from, B---h?"

But I'm just that way. I judge others on their command of the English language. And I'm completely unapologetic about it. I value intelligence more than education, and there an alarming number of college graduates who are unable to diagram a simple sentence.

Where was I?

Beauty Pageants. Right. In any case, I had a few fairly intelligent thoughts about them after watching a program on TLC called "Toddlers & Tiaras." So I used them as a possible topic on my blog poll, and promptly forgot said intelligent thoughts. I meant to watch the Miss America pageant on TV tonight, but at the very beginning as the contestants introduced themselves, all Miss Arizona had to say about our great state was that the Cardinals are going to the Super Bowl.

Click.

I have a terrific migraine. I think I'm going to bed.