LolaGeek

As predicted, it started snowing on Friday night and continued until Saturday. The final total in Philadelphia was 28 inches. I estimate we got 20-22 inches at our house, because I measured 16 when we went out in the morning to shovel, and then there were probably 4-6 inches that fell after that. (We shoveled twice because I didn’t want to end up doing three feet at once.) We’re getting a little spoiled, because the last few times it’s snowed, the town has taken care of the sidewalk in front of our house. They own the property on either side of us now, so they just do our sidewalk, too. The main problem with our house is that we have a long driveway and a lot of sidewalk, but only a tiny square of grass! So everything got piled into one giant snow mountain. And the more you shovel, the higer you have to lift it to add to the pile. So it was tiring, and I am definitely still sore today.

After our 9 AM shoveling session, GG and I went to Wawa and got breakfast hoagies (”Start your day on a roll…”), then crashed at home for a few hours. I think we watched something on TV, or watched a movie? I don’t remember, because I was also drifting off to sleep. Eventually, GG and I both got phone calls from friends, which woke me up, and we got back into our snow gear and went out to shovel one last time, since it had finished snowing. That went much faster than the first round, and we were back inside within an hour, doing our little chores or whatever. Later I made dinner, and then we passed out within the first few minutes of Saturday Night Live.

On Sunday I did all the chores I was too tired for on Saturday, and then we went to Julie and Brad’s to watch the Superbowl. There was a lot of good food there, I ate way too much. GG behaved himself pretty well, considering he had a bunch of rum and a couple beers. I was worried about driving back home once things had iced over, but the roads were actually okay. Then when we got out of the car and were walking to our house, GG hit a giant patch of ice and did this really cool arms-flailing move out of the Matrix, and managed not to fall.

Today and tomorrow should be fine, weather-wise, but they’re predicting another big snowstorm Tuesday night into Wednesday. That’s actually fine with me, because 1) I work from home on Wednesdays anyway, and 2) if the schools close Wednesday we won’t have band practice, and we’re supposed to have sectionals this week (which I hate), so I’m happy for any excuse to avoid that.

Before shoveling Saturday / After shoveling Saturday

Okay, I am ready to be snowed in overnight! We have food, plenty of toilet paper, shovels and salt… Hopefully it won’t be as bad as they’re predicting. Originally they were saying we’d get about a foot of snow, but now the storm is veering to the north, and we might get more like two feet! I went to the supermarket yesterday (unrelated to the blizzard) and it was crowded and they were out of a lot of things already. I can’t imagine how it would be today.

I watched a lot of TV this week, and of course I saw the Lost premiere! I think what I’ll have to do on Tuesdays is watch Lost and then catch the repeats of the Duggars. It’ll be a late night, but at least I generally work from home on Wednesdays, so I can sleep in a little bit. Of course I’m totally confused by Lost already, but I do have one theory that people seem to like, which is that the Man in Black can take the form of any dead person on the island. Obviously he’s Locke right now. I think he was probably also Christian. And all the other dead people who’ve reappeared in the past, maybe he was posing as them as well. It’s not a “posession” thing, because Locke’s actual body is still there (MIB/Locke walked right past it)! But I do think there is some sort of posession going on with Sayid (and apparently Damon Lindeloff and Carlton Cuse said on Jimmy Kimmel that something is “inhabiting” his body).

Things are picking up a bit at work, and I’ve been working on some things that will give me some exposure to the new people, so that’s good, hopefully I make a good impression on them. (Speaking of work, and TV shows, how about The Office last night? Once again, hitting a little too close to home, haha!) I have all these unresolved things going on, though. I really hate having open issues, but I’m waiting to hear back from various people about things, and it’s kind of stressing me out! Also, we’re moving to a totally different system for e-mail this month, with lots of limits and stuff, so everyone’s going to have to pretty much change the way they handle all e-mail. I can’t believe that in this modern age of super-cheap memory (i.e. it’s cheaper to buy more memory than to pay someone for the work time it will take to clean up and delete files) and cloud and network computing, we would move toward massive restrictions on file storage and storing everything locally. Oh well. We’ll roll with it, I guess.

Lots of fun stuff coming up! Superbowl with Julie and Brad, if we’re not all still snowed in on Sunday. Next weekend GG and I are going out for Valentine’s Dinner. The following weekend is a “girls’ night” with some ladies from work, we’re basically going to a super fancy Mexican restaurant - should be awesome. And in a month I’m taking an overnight trip with some friends that includes a spa day! I still have to use up a few more vacation days before the end of March, so if anyone has any ideas…

Last night, GG and his friend and I went to a concert at the Trocadero. (I’d never been to the Troc before.) I’m not sure what genre I’d put the whole event into… I guess “progressive metal.” I would say the audience was like 98% male metal fans. The nerdy kind who are into all that technical stuff, not the violent kind. Then the other 2% of the audience was made up of more heavy metal fans and girls. I didn’t really belong there at all.

There were four bands, two of which GG wanted to see, and one I wanted to see. First up was Scale the Summit. I guess they were okay, but they do instrumental music, and as GG pointed out, if you’re not going to have lyrics, you need some sort of “hook” or catchy melody. They did not have this. Each song was mostly just a couple chords. I mean, they did it well, but I would never remember or recognize their music.

Next was the Devin Townsend Project. GG was very excited about this guy, and he’s been trying to get me to watch his videos on YouTube and stuff, but I’m just not into it. Not surprisingly, I was not into it live, either. But I have to say, that freaky looking bald guy can sing! (He really looks just like the guy who plays Frex in Wicked, and I was thinking, if he ever wanted to give up his various bands for a while, he could definitely hold his own on Broadway!)

Finally, Cynic took the stage. You may remember that their album “Traced in Air” was on my Best of 2009 list (but only got an Honorable Mention, since you can’t really sing along with it). They were so good! They ended up playing pretty much everything on “Traced in Air,” as well as an older song and a new one (new album coming out?!). GG mentioned later that Paul Masvidal was so quiet and nerdy, and I was like, “Really? Um, he was performing with his death metal band in front of a sold-out audience! I don’t think he’s shy or nerdy.” (He also agreed with me that Masvidal is a handsome man, and said he’d understand if I left him for the Cynic frontman, but he should remember his real competition is my imaginary boyfriend John Mulaney.) Anyway, they were really great and they played “King of Those Who Know,” the prettiest death metal song ever, so that made my night.

Believe it or not, this is the better of two pictures I took of Cynic.

We walked out on the last band - the headliner! - Between the Buried and Me. I’d never even heard of them, and GG was offended that they were “bigger” than Cynic (Cynic is pretty much the granddaddy of technical death metal). I think the people behind us were glad to see us go, GG was really annoying. But there were other people annoying us (smoking in the non-smoking theater, etc.), so it all evens out. The three of us, plus two more friends we met up with at the show, went to a nearby Vietnamese restaurant for a late dinner. I am definitely a fan of their fried spring rolls, but so far I’ve never had better than at Little Saigon.

Oh, and I have to add, GG is such a music geek! Listening to him talk to his friends and everyone about equipment and bands and stuff, wow. He knows a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff. (I’ve always been impressed by how he can participate in any converstaion on anything: music; movies; politics; sports, even!)

I finally saw The Story of Stuff tonight, after wanting to watch it for a while. Wow, so short and simple, and really I knew a lot of this already, but it was eye-opening. Even though I try to recycle or give away whatever I can, I can see that “need to replace” mentality acting on myself. And I’ve felt for a long time that I have too much “stuff.” (This is why I love Freecycle - I can get rid of things I don’t want or need in my life, without feeling like it’s going to waste or to a landfill.)

Anyway, I’m already taking reusable bags with me almost every time I go shopping (not just food shopping), including reusable produce bags. I recycle whatever I can, including things that can’t go in the regular recycling (I have stashes of batteries, CFL bulbs, and #5 plastics sitting around to be dropped off at certain locations). And even regular recycling is kind of an inconvenience for us, because our town doesn’t recycle, so we collect everything and take it to our families’ houses when we go over. I just feel like I could be doing so much more. Something to work on, I guess. Maybe I will make “use less stuff” a 2010 resolution.

I was stopped at a traffic light on my way to work this morning, when I heard a kind of whistle sound behind me. I turned around, and in the lane next to me there was a gross old car with a gross old man hanging out the window waving at me. I rolled down my window, and he yelled over, “Do you know where Greaterford Prison is?!” “No I don’t, sorry,” I said, trying to look apologetic. I mean, I’d heard of it and knew it was nearby, but I didn’t even know what town it’s in. I rolled my window back up and faced forward and wished for the light to turn green so I could get away from this creepy situation. (I hope he found his way there, turns out we were only about 10 miles away.)

I now have a black gel case for my new phone. It mitigates the pink pretty well - though as I’d suspected, a case on a slide phone is not really perfect. But I’ll deal with it. I have 7 more days to make up my mind, but I guess I’m going to stick with this phone. For all its minor faults, it’s still pretty good, and an improvement over my old phone in many ways. Also, I recently saw that this is T-Mobile’s most popular non-smartphone.

GG and I went out to Kohls early Saturday morning to get him some clothes. I have a couple friends who are absolutely obsessed with the place, but I don’t think I had ever been there. Actually, I usually forget that we have one so close to us, since it’s to the north and we almost never drive north unless we’re going up to New Hope. A lot of people recommended it as a good place to get men’s clothes, though, and it seems like they’re always having a sale, so off we went - early, so it wouldn’t be crowded.

He mostly needed pants and sweaters, but we did also find him a very cool black and gray striped button-down shirt. Then he got four pairs of pants (black, gray, brown, and khaki), and two zip-up sweaters. Besides the shirt, I think everything was on clearance or was buy one, get one 1/2 off. So we did well.

Coming home, we stopped at Chick-fil-A for an early lunch. Here’s a fun trick: their employees are required to respond to “thank you” with “my pleasure,” instead of “you’re welcome.” Try it sometime, by saying “thank you” as many times as you can. GG and I kept saying it, but our cashier was just like, “sure, sure,” until the very last time we said thank you as we were walking away and he said, “sure, my pleasure” and GG and I were both like, AH-HA!

I pretty much napped the afternoon away while GG went to work on his mural. It was lovely.

GG left early on Sunday morning to go paint, too. I hadn’t seen the mural in a while, so I made a surprise visit to see him working. I think he thought there was some emergency when I showed up, but I just wanted to see him and see the painting. It looks awesome! (Well it should, the slowpoke has taken nearly two months working on it by now, and he’s still not finished!)

When I got home, I made up for all my napping the day before by cleaning the kitchen, sweeping and vacuuming all the floors downstairs, and taking out the trash. Then I got all caught up with Fringe - I don’t even know when it comes on anymore, and I keep forgetting to watch it. Then I set myself up in the living room with my laptop, a big blanket, and a cat, to watch TLC’s Sunday Night Freakshow. That little Charlotte from “The Tiniest Girl in the World” might give Kenadie some competition in the “cutest primordial dwarf” category!

Oh, and I saw last week’s Project Runway and I have to say, I totally disagreed with the judges. In my opinion, Amy should have won, for doing something that was beautiful and flattering, while not hiding the burlap of the challenge. Ben and Anthony were my choices for runners-up. And Ping should have gone home. Sorry, I’m sure she’s nice and she does interesting work, but the dress was not remotely good looking and wasn’t even made well. What happened to the “carved” necklace she was going to do? That sounded interesting. And did they ever go to that “industry party?” Don’t tell me it happened in the Models of the Runway show, because I’m not watching that. But usually when they have to design dresses for the models to wear to an event, they then go to that event.

Last night I made stuffed smashed potatoes for dinner (and lunch today… and dinner tonight… and lunch tomorrow… it was a lot of potatoes). I just stayed up long enough to watch Heroes, and then went to bed a little after 10. But we didn’t go to sleep until closer to 11 because we were watching YouTube videos on my phone (!!!).

I got my new phone last night, and I think I’m going to like it (but I have two weeks to make up my mind). Last night, things were a little iffy, but after just being able to (easily!) pay for an eBay item through PayPal on the phone, I think I’m sold. Also, I got the red and pink one, but the item I just bought is actually a black gel skin for it, and then I don’t think it’ll look so… pink.

Something else I just did: applied for a job. That I might actually have a good chance of getting. Eep!

Tomorrow morning we’re going out early to go clothes shopping for GG. I think he wants some more sweaters. On Wednesday he wore khaki pants, tan Sketchers, and a brown sweater over a white button-down and he looked so cute! I couldn’t stand it!

After playing with it for a while, I changed my mind about the Samsung Comeback. It is pretty chunky and ugly, and the QWERTY keyboard inside was really small and hard to type on (even for me!). But I was checking out the Gravity, and I think that might be the way I go. I can’t believe I’m looking at phones with QWERTY keyboards! Next thing you know, I’ll be getting a smartphone or something with a touchscreen! I told the girl at the store I’d be back on Thursday (she’s helped me twice, so I promised I’d buy from her), so I need to make up my mind by then!

Oh but the real reason I was out tonight was because I was getting a haircut. Here’s my before, and here’s my after. Not as short as I usually go for my annual haircut - it’s just below my chin. The girl I like at Supercuts wasn’t there, but this other nice girl did my hair instead, and I like it. It definitely needed to be chopped, it was starting to get too long and was just hanging there.

And good news, AVG seems to have solved my computer problems! It found that Trojan that messed up McAfee, as well as a bunch of other stuff McAfee never found! So now my next mission: get some sort of refund for McAfee (I paid for two years on three computers, and I’m only going to end up using it on one).

A few places my money will probably be going in the near future:

• Vitamix: The most awesome blender ever. Nobody has anything bad to say about this machine. You can make smoothies, peanut butter, soup, even ice cream in this thing! But, it’s over $400. So I gave myself a couple weeks to think it over. I decided that if I had some cool-off time and I still wanted one, I’d order it. I still want it. So, probably this week I’ll place my order.
• Samsung Comeback: It’s time for a new cell phone, and I think I found it. It’s a little clunky looking, but otherwise seems perfect for me. (I’ll miss my nice sleek phone, but it’s a couple years old now, and it’s feeling a little loose when I slide it open. Plus, it randomly turns off sometimes. I’m worried one day it’ll just stop working.)
• AVG Anti-Virus: Actually, I already bought this one. I got another virus on my computer! I don’t know how this keeps happening, it’s not like I’m downloading stuff or surfing for p0rn or anything, I just go to the same few web sites all the time! Anyway, I seemed to get it all cleared up, but one little bit of something was left behind and McAfee wasn’t functioning correctly, so I tried to uninstall and reinstall it, but it wouldn’t reinstall. So I’m trying something new, since McAfee obviously doesn’t work anyway! I’ll report back on how it goes.
• Wedding Gift: We’re going to a wedding in a couple months, so a gift is needed. Plus, I’m sure there’ll be a shower. I’m not complaining, just listing something else I need to pay for.
• Vacation: I don’t have anything planned, but I have 3.5 more vacation days I have to use up by the end of March, so probably some money will be spent.

I enjoyed my extra-long weekend. I stayed up late on Thursday night, then slept in Friday morning. I cleaned a lot, then went out for a little while before coming home for an afternoon nap. Saturday I mostly waited around at home while GG was out at a funeral. That’s when I picked up the virus, so then the rest of my day was spent trying to take care of that. Saturday night we went to a party, which was fun, but everyone kind of crowded into the basement, where the hosts have a bar. It was loud and very cold down there. GG and I stayed upstairs where we could actually talk to people. On Sunday we went to an annual family lunch type event for GG’s family, at a Mexican restaurant. It was nice… especially since I’ve probably only met some of them twice. And today I had lunch with Jess (and met her new babysitter).

This week has been totally insane. Mostly because our boss is leaving this week and we’re having a surprise lunch for him today, which I was tasked with organizing, so I’ve been running around every day getting all the food and gifts we needed for him. I will be so happy after today when that’s all over! (But sad, because he’s a good guy and boss, and he’s been really great to me ever since I met him [he got me this job], so I’ll miss him!)

It’s only been two weeks, but I’m not super excited about this season of band. We’re playing all marches for our spring concert, and while they’re all different styles of music (no, it’s not just two hours of Sousa), I’m not really into much of it except for Marche Slave, which is an 11 minute monster of a piece. Also, I’m not really jazzed about the board this year. If this is how it’s going to be for the next two years, I might die.

Oh, and the Bearpaw boots I ordered finally arrived yesterday! I wore them to band last night and they are so comfy and very warm! The only complaint I have is that the sole isn’t really flexible, so I wouldn’t plan on walking long distances or anything. (And of course, it figures, the day they arrive is the day the temperature finally moves out of the freezing range!)