niicelaady

To paraphrase the Capital One commercial: What's in YOUR head? What's in mine is here: always personal, occasionally political, sometimes a rant on language or pop culture, or a heads-up on an interesting link I've found. I hope that all my friends will visit and comment and gain some insights into the workings of my twisted little mind.

Monday, April 24, 2006

Welcome home, Speshul Ed!



I heard someone meowing in the yard last night, and there were a couple of the neighborhood cats conversing with Ed, who was under the neighbor's truck! I grabbed him, brought him inside and gave him and his sisters people tuna to celebrate.

It had been eight days since he escaped and I was on the verge of giving up. Thanks, Guardian Angel Mindy, for bringing him home.

What, NEFFA?



Re NEFFA (New England Folk Festival):

The Good:

1. Dancing in the rain and the threat thereof. Bampton Trunkles = Wet Baldrick Contest.
2. Watching other teams, including NiiceDuudette I's team and its rapper debut.
3. Helen Schneyer tribute.
4. Jammers by the courtyard window committing random acts of familiar folk (e.g. Dylan and Stephen Foster) for practically the whole weekend.
5. GREAT BIG SEA! Not part of NEFFA but part of the weekend as we went to their concert Friday night in Northampton, MA before proceeding to NEFFA. For the uninitiated, this is a band from Newfoundland that takes traditional songs and rocks them out. If you get a chance to see them live, DO!
6. SPEEN! (tm Twinkletoze, aka Niiceduudette II).
7. Got much done on a certain baby gift.

The Bad:

1. Fucking Massachusetts divided highways in which EVERYTHING you need to get to is on the other side and getting over there is a massive fustercluck.
2. Mass. blue laws which restrict beer sales to liquor stores. Very much a pain for those of us accustomed to picking up brewskis at supermarkets, gas stations, drug stores, etc. at all hours.
3. Parking at NEFFA, which makes parking at the Dance Flurry look like a walk in the park.
4. Twink left a bag behind containing Very Important Stuff -- all replaceable, but what a pain.

The Ugly:

My whites after dancing in the rain.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

On your Mark...

As a public service for those of you who don't read Twinkletoze's blog, allow me to introduce you to someone to whom she turned me on: San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford.

This guy is like Dave Barry if Dave took a shot of serious serum and started writing about Vital Social Issues 'n' Stuff (tm Kelly Bundy). He's clever and cheeky and often hysterical but writes about things of more substance than exploding cows and boogers -- not that there's anything wrong with exploding cows and boogers.

Two of my personal favorites are his most recent one about Bush and one from earlier this month about the Canadian seal hunt. A quote from the latter:

Let us all agree right now: Baby harp seals -- those doe-eyed sausagelike bundles of puffy white blubber -- are just phenomenally, face-meltingly cute. So adorable and so helpless and so sweet-looking it's like God took Bambi and sawed off all his legs and put him in a white fluffy parka and crossbred him with a puppy and a cherub and a Marshmallow Peep and tossed him out onto the Arctic ice to pose for Polar Baby Gap. I mean, *cute.*

Seriously, check this dude out.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Good news, bad news, TOTALLY AWESOME NEWS!!!!

The bad news first: My Eddie escaped Saturday and I have not seen him since. It's his first escape since we moved into the village, and I can't imagine he'd go far. Last time he escaped, he wasn't gone long, but there is a lot more to explore here. I'm not giving up hope; I've asked his guardian angel kitties, Mindy and Pumpernickel, to look out for him and guide him home. They haven't failed me yet.

The good news: The company where I've been working as a temp for the past 18 months (and was a regular employee from 1995-2001) has finally offered me a permanent position. With bennies, paid sick and vacation time, opportunities for raises and all that good stuff.

Speaking of raises, THAT is the awesome news. My change in status comes with an ENORMOUS pay increase! I won't divulge the amount here, but let's just say it is a number well into the four figures.

Allow me to do what I couldn't do at work because it would be unprofessional:

WOO-FUCKING-HOO! MO' MONEY! MO' MONEY! MO' MONEY!

OK, I'm over it (grin).

Monday, April 17, 2006

All Hail Jake, the Great White Hunter!

OK, I decided it's kind of silly to keep calling him by his initials here, since he uses his real first name in his own blog, which I have a link to.

Anyway, most of you know that I am afraid of spiders. I can deal with the little ones -- I just squish them -- and even the big ones are cool if they are not (a) on my person or (b) in my house. But if I find one larger than an inch in diameter in either of the above locations, I freak out.

So ... last night I reach into a dresser drawer for a sweatshirt, and something CRAWLS on me. I grab the shirt and run screaming from the room. It's dark so I don't actually see what it is until the next morning, when I find the VERY LARGE SPIDER CORPSE on the floor by the dresser. OK, so she's dead. But what if she left her FAMILY in there? Don't spiders die after they lay mass quantities of eggs?

NiiceDuude is out of state. I am afraid to open my freakin' dresser. In case you're wondering, I did manage to open one drawer far enough to get underwear; the rest of my clothes for the day were in the closet.

So even though he spent many hours here yesterday feeding me a delicious Easter dinner, I summon Jake back here tonight. We hit a couple of plastic bags with Raid, stuff all the clothes from the dresser into them for laundering later, take the drawers outside, spray the bejabbers out of them, do same with the dresser itself. By the way, we did not find any more spiders or egg sacs, but I did not want to be alone if there had been any to find.

Yes, I am a big wuss. But a big wuss with friends who are willing to indulge my wussiness.

And for anyone comparing creepy-crawly bug posts, I am not trying to compete with Twinkletoze, whose bug story is a LOT ickier. Just giving GWH Jake his due.

Saturday, April 15, 2006

On a roll

For some reason I have been feeling unusually optimistic and energetic the past week or so. It may be the beautiful weather, may be my raging premenopausal hormones -- which can just as easily set me off on a crying jag -- but I'm not going to analyze it too much, just run with it.

Half past noon and I've already:

Taken out trash.
Cleaned cat boxes.
Done dishes.
Hooked up new VCR and put out Freecycle post on old one.
Done duct-tape repair job on computer chair.
Collected up empties to return to beverage store.
Secured window screens (an urgent job since Eddie knocked one out and escaped. I'm not too worried; he is an indoor kitty but last time he escaped he didn't stray far).

Still to be done:
Pack away winter clothes.
Vacuum.
Wash kitchen and bathroom floors.
Clean bathroom fixtures.
Return empties, buy fullies (maybe Fuller's? JB coming for Easter!).
Put away dishes.
Give cats flea drops (dreading this, as Rozita HATES having foreign substances applied. Giving her hairball ointment is hella traumatizing).
Shower, do assorted personal-care things I never get to during the week (leg shaving, etc.)
Clean dead leaves out of flower bed.

But now I'm on a lunch break. Yay lunch breaks!

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Be he bronze or be he pewter

So for work today, I was doing some research into Buddhism. Had to do with a blurb I was writing about a bad Steven Seagal movie. He is a student of Buddhism, and I wanted to say something about how inflicting bad movies on us was bad for his karma or blocking his path to nirvana, or some such snark.

I ended up not making the joke, but ended up learning a lot about Buddhism and wanting to learn more. I've told people that I have no interest in organized religion but if I had to join one, I would probably become a Unitarian, a Quaker or maybe a Wiccan. Now I'll add Buddhist to that list.

From an excellent Web site:

The Four Noble Truths

The first sermon that the Buddha preached after his enlightenment was about the four noble truths. The first noble truth is that life is frustrating and painful. In fact, if we are honest with ourselves, there are times when it is downright miserable. Things may be fine with us, at the moment, but, if we look around, we see other people in the most appalling condition, children starving, terrorism, hatred, wars, intolerance, people being tortured and we get a sort of queasy feeling whenever we think about the world situation in even the most casual way. We, ourselves, will some day grow old, get sick and eventually die. No matter how we try to avoid it, some day we are going to die. Even though we try to avoid thinking about it, there are constant reminders that it is true.

The second noble truth is that suffering has a cause. We suffer because we are constantly struggling to survive. We are constantly trying to prove our existence. We may be extremely humble and self-deprecating, but even that is an attempt to define ourselves. We are defined by our humility. The harder we struggle to establish ourselves and our relationships, the more painful our experience becomes.

The third noble truth is that the cause of suffering can be ended. Our struggle to survive, our effort to prove ourselves and solidify our relationships is unnecessary. We, and the world, can get along quite comfortably without all our unnecessary posturing. We could just be a simple, direct and straight-forward person. We could form a simple relationship with our world, our coffee, spouse and friend. We do this by abandoning our expectations about how we think things should be.

This is the fourth noble truth: the way, or path to end the cause of suffering. The central theme of this way is meditation. Meditation, here, means the practice of mindfulness/awareness, shamata/vipashyana in Sanskrit. We practice being mindful of all the things that we use to torture ourselves with. We become mindful by abandoning our expectations about the way we think things should be and, out of our mindfulness, we begin to develop awareness about the way things really are. We begin to develop the insight that things are really quite simple, that we can handle ourselves, and our relationships, very well as soon as we stop being so manipulative and complex.

This sparked two thoughts in my brain:

Now I understand what Digigal meant when she said I should take a Zen approach to my lingering anger and bitterness toward JR. I haven't studied enough to know the particulars of Zen Buddhism vs. any other variation, but what she said was very much in keeping with what I have learned so far.

NiiceDuude, who claims not to believe in anything and considers all religions bullshit, is actually a Buddhist at heart. Who might be shocked to hear this.

Something else I learned: Despite the alternative "Old Time Religion" verse, Buddha is not considered a god. When people bow before his image, they are not worshiping him, but thanking him for his wisdom. I like this.

No, I'm not planning to convert, but these teachings make sense to me.

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Things that rock

NiiceDuude.

McEwan's Scotch Ale, which NiiceDuude brought over last night.

Weird lady in Cumberland Farms this morning who called me Agnes. At least she didn't call me Shirley. ;-)

Time Warner Cable, which had a tech here within an hour this morning to check out my spotty Internet connection.

"Brokeback Mountain." I had to watch it twice to get the full impact, as when I watched it Friday I was tired and not tracking well. Watched it again Saturday and ... Ang Lee was robbed at the Oscars!

George Dubya owes me 97 bucks. George P. owes me almost $400. Woohoo! This is the first time in years that I haven't owed, so I expected I'd owe a couple of hundred again this year. Had I known I had refunds coming I'd have filed in January and probably have the $$$ by now. Oh well....

Things that don't rock but it's all good:

I need a new VCR. Turns out the problem I was having with the remote isn't in the remote (I bought a universal and that didn't work either) but with the remote sensor in the unit itself. I'll be going shopping on Tuesday, after I get paid.

"Good Night, and Good Luck." Of all the movies in the last Oscar race, this was the one NiiceDuude really wanted to see. We were so bored we turned it off about halfway through and watched something that makes a political statement but is actually entertaining: "South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut." Yes, NiiceDuude is no longer a "South Park" virgin. Which actually belongs under "things that rock."

And to all a good weekend!

Sunday, April 02, 2006

Crappy birthday, J.R. Gach!

He's 54 today! That would be fifty-four (54). Did I mention he's 54? Fat Bastard is vain about his age, so I feel compelled to spread the word. I'm referring to the fat bastard who is 54 today.

J.R. Gach is one of a handful of people I do not afford the luxury of pseudonyms on my blog, because he sucks.

Another whom I will name directly, but NOT because she sucks, is Paddy Kilrain.

Girlfriend is an awesome young singer-songwriter who was injured in a hit-and-run with a drunken driver on Friday night. Please send her prayers, or if you are not the praying kind, good thoughts. She will be OK, thank Deity.

I feel good today despite having just come from a memorial. The deceased is the mother of a friend. I never met her. I am not especially tight with the daughter, although I like her. NiiceDuude and I sat outside with friends, traded bullshit, had fun. I felt like the old, pre-J.R. me at last. Spring weather may have had something to do with this.

Last night we parked cars for a Gordon Bok concert. Gordon is audio Prozac, although he forgot a LOT of words. OldTimer's disease? I certainly hope not. I have moments like that too, and I don't think I have the big A.

May the road rise to meet you ...

Saturday, April 01, 2006

What kind of beer am I?

Sounds like a song, doesn't it? I was thinking I'd be Guinness; maybe I should have answered "Dublin" to the "which city would you most enjoy a pub crawl in?" question. But it's all good; I love Sammy!

You Are Samuel Adams

You're fairly easy to please when it comes to beer - as long as it's not too cheap.
You tend to change favorite beers frequently, and you're the type most likely to take a "beers of the world" tour.
When you get drunk, you're fearless. You lose all your inhibitions.
You're just as likely to party with a group of strangers as you are to wake up in a very foreign place.