LolaGeek

The other morning I noticed this was printed in red on the back of my tube of toothpaste:

For best results, squeeze tube from the bottom and flatten as you go up.

Seriously? This is what we’ve come to? We need instructions on how to work a tube of toothpaste?!

Since it’s official and it’s been announced and everything, I can now say, I accepted a new job! It’s actually very similar to my old job, and I’ll be in the same department, the main difference is that now I’m not getting laid off at the end of the year, yippee! Also, my title is no longer Associate but Manager (not that I am managing anyone). So I’m moving up in the world…

Oh, and television! I haven’t written about it lately, and was actually enjoying not having my nights monopolized by watching scheduled shows, but things are starting to come back on the air so I have to watch. Right now I’m watching Work of Art (on OnDemand, I don’t actually know when it comes on), Project Runway season 8 (90 minutes is a bit too long for my taste, but I am loving that Tim Gunn gets talking heads! Also check out Tim’s Take for episode 1: “Just wait, the crack pipe gets bigger and bigger as the season progresses.”), and of course the Duggars are back with more 19 Kids and Counting (and they took 500 pairs of pants with them to Little Rock, apparently – that’s 50 pairs per pants-wearer!).

We had a fun and busy weekend. On Saturday we spent the day cleaning the house – really cleaning. Later, we went to New Hope and met J and S for dinner. That was really nice, except it was like 100 degrees with 99% humidity or something crazy, so it was basically like sitting in a sauna. And we were eating outdoors on a deck by the river. Then we walked around a while, and J and S got the full GG experience, how he looks at every item in a store and talks the shopkeeper’s ear off, even if you’re on your way somewhere (to get ice cream, in this case). However, they got to see his mural, and we went to the Jerry Garcia gallery, which we’d never been to before. And then we went to an ice cream shop (well, it’s a hot dog place but they sell ice cream) where we’d never been, and had a delicious treat – in the air conditioning!

On Sunday GG and I went out for lunch, and then went to see Inception. It was really good! I’ll put my thoughts at the end of this post so you won’t be spoiled if you haven’t seen it yet. Afterward, we went to Home Depot to get supplies to fix up a couple things around the house we’ve been meaning to take care of. And then we relaxed at home. I’m now all caught up on Work of Art, which I just started watching on OnDemand this weekend. It’s like Project Runway but with artists. I love it because it reminds me so much of college! The dumb projects, the lame explanations, and the characters: the old lady “real artist,” the guy who draws everything like comic books, the girl who uses naked pictures of herself for every assignment…

Speaking of dreams (or, I will be, in a minute), I had a dream last night that I had to stop somewhere before work, and then there was a road that would take me from there to the town I work in, so I figured I’d just follow it. So I was driving and driving along this road, and it was getting later and later, and before I knew it, the day was half over and I was still not at work and didn’t know how much longer I’d take. I ended up stopping at some office and calling in to say I was just going to take the day off, and then I had to figure out how to get home from there anyway. If I had to interpret this dream, I’d say it’s telling me that I shouldn’t just continue following a road and hope I eventually end up where I want; instead, I need to take charge of my own map and make sure I’m going where I want to go, getting there when I want to get there. Or, you know, something like that.

SPOILER ALERT: Okay, my thoughts on Inception… The theory I like most is that the whole movie was basically one giant inception of the audience. The tagline is, “Your mind is the scene of the crime” (“your” = you, the audience?); the film starts without a title or credits (do you remember how we got here?); the last scene in the airport is the same as what is about to happen as the audience leaves the theater, strangers sitting next to each other and having the same dream. However, if you’re looking for resolution to Cobb’s story, the point isn’t whether he’s still dreaming or not, or even whether the entire thing was a dream (even though I hope it wasn’t that lame – I think there were some scenes in “real life”). The point is that in the end he chooses to stay with his kids, rather than with the memory of his wife, or on the run and working his “extraction” business. Also, there are two sets of actors playing his kids (and they are listed specifically with their ages in the credits), so some people are taking that to mean that the kids at the end of the movie are older, and therefore real. But I think maybe the older set of kids are just heard, and not seen. The kids he talked to on the phone from Paris sounded older than the little kids playing that he remembered – especially the girl. So maybe that part was real, but the end scene was still a dream. Even though it sounded like it was wobbling, we never saw the top fall, so we’ll never know! As soon as the movie ended and the screen went black, someone in the theater went, “What?!”

After Conan, the rest of my week seemed pretty lame, I guess that’s why I didn’t blog about it. Starting next week, my whole (former, I guess) department at work is going to be sitting in two different buildings, so everyone was packing this week and the office was just a weird and depressing place to be. On Wednesday I worked from home and I don’t know what happened, but I just felt yuckier and yuckier as the day went on. By the end of the day, I was definitely sick. Luckily, the weather was cooler and I could drink some hot tea with honey. We had our first band concert of the summer Wednesday night – it was actually kind of bad, but I don’t think the retirement home audience noticed. On Thursday morning I seriously considered staying home sick, but I actually had to go into the office, so I stayed as long as I could but left after half a day. This was the first sick time I’ve taken since probably sometime in 2008. I spent the rest of Thursday on the sofa, trying unsuccessfully to nap (it’s hard to sleep when you can’t breathe). On Friday I again had to be in the office, but I already had planned to take the afternoon off, so I knew I only had to deal with sitting there for four hours, and I managed to get through it. Then I came home to nap the day away again.

Saturday was a really nice day. GG and I went out early to do some errands, including going to the new farmers’ market by our house. When we went on opening day, it was crowded and insane. Now, a few weeks later, there was hardly anyone there! It was fantastic! Also, now that we’re a little further into the growing season, there was a bit more of a selection from the produce vendors. We got a bunch of good stuff: asparagus, strawberries, lettuce, sugar snap peas, a couple kinds of goat cheese, and cherries from this really cool guy who’s farm we might have to visit this fall because they have apple picking! When we got home, GG helped me build this hall tree hook bench thing I got to put in the laundry room to hang our coats and put our boots in the winter. It looks really good! Then I went out to take my grandmother to dinner and see this year’s Savoy Company show, Ruddigore, at Longwood Gardens. The show was outdoors and there was a chance of thunderstorms – it actually started spitting rain at one point – but the bad weather held off and we got to see the whole show, which was fantastic! Ruddigore is definitely my second-favorite Gilbert & Sullivan operetta (nothing will beat Pirates). Also, I was feeling better, health-wise, and then when we sat outside in the humidity it was like my nose filled up again, and then halfway through the first act (which was like 90 minutes long) I had a horrible cough and felt so bad for bothering everyone around me, but I couldn’t help it. If it had continued I would have gotten up (there were drinking fountains at the back of the theater area), but luckily I got over it and then I was fine for the rest of the show.

Today I went out looking for a few things and found none of them. Then I went food shopping, came home and did some chores, and took a nap. GG came home from work, and we went out to Petsmart to use up my coupon that was about to expire today. While we were there we were just checking out the new cat toy technology, and this woman who works there as a dog trainer came over and told us she got this certain mouse toy for her cats and they liked it, so we got one too (they were on sale). When you hit it, it makes a real mouse-like squeaking sound! Sacha went nuts over it when we brought it home – Ivan and Katrina were a little more skeptical. Then we went to Panera for dinner, and GG and I made friends with a couple guys working there, we had a nice little chat while they took our orders and mixed up our iced lemonade drinks. It was pretty funny.

Not much in the way of freak shows on TLC tonight – just “Extreme Poodles: Exploring the world of competitive poodle grooming.” Actually, that does sound a bit like a freak show, I may watch.

Yes, I made a cup of coffee and stayed up late last night to watch the finale of Lost with the rest of the country. Even though I joined the party a little late (I started watching at the beginning of season 4), I feel like I was pretty invested in the story and characters. It seems like the first few seasons were just filler while they figured out where they were going with everything, anyway. When the show ended, I was just left with a headache (from the coffee, and possibly from crying so much) and a dissatisfied, confused feeling. However, having had some time to think it over, I’m feeling a little better about it now. I still wish some more questions had been answered, but in the end it was really about the people – what they did and what happened to them after the “island” part of the show that we saw doesn’t really matter. I’m not fully in the “OMG I loved it” camp, though.

Just a couple of links:

• ‘Lost’ Possibly Still Airing In Parallel Dimension, Desperate Fans Report – There’s always hope…
• Project Rungay’s “Lost: The End” – I totally agree with their interpretation of what actually happened.
• In the spirit of Vincent laying down next to Jack at the end, here’s other sad dog stories that may or may not have made me cry: Futurama’s “Jurassic Bark,” and the story of Hachiko.

Speaking of TV shows! I also just caught the finale of Fringe, and wow. Kind of cheesed off about Olivia/Bolivia, but it gives us something to focus on for next season, I guess. I’m mostly happy that she and Peter got together (if briefly). Also curious to see what happens when Bolivia meets up with her sister and the niece she never knew (because you know it’s coming).

And Heroes has been cancelled! You might recall, I mentioned after the season 4 finale that I would have been happy if that were the series finale, considering how it wrapped up everyone’s stories and brought things full circle. And now it is! So I’m actually kind of glad they won’t mess up the overall story by trying to tack more onto it.

Just one more season finale to go this week, and then I’m off for the summer!

I’ve been operating on such a sleep deficit for the past few days. My main project this week has been repairing the wall in our front bedroom. Remember during the snowpocalypse when we had the leak? The wallpaper in that room was still wet. So I pulled all the wet wallpaper off the wall. There were at least five layers of different wallpaper on there, so it was sort of neat to see all the historic patterns. It reminded GG and I of Strawberry Banke. Then I had to figure out what to do with it, so I’ve been doing one step each day. I washed the walls with detergent and bleach, per some instructions I found online. The wall wasn’t really moldy, but I think it did have a combination of a little mold and 100 years’ worth of wallpaper crud. Then I filled in all the major cracks and holes with spackle, and sanded. Then I covered the whole thing with joint compound, to even it out, and sanded that last night (what a horrible mess). Now all I have left to do is paint over the area with Drylok (even though the roof is fixed, I want to make sure there’s no more leaks!), and then with my green paint.

Before / After:


On Saturday my brother finally graduated from college! Only took him five years, but we were there to see him lope across the stage and collect… nothing. They don’t even give you your diploma folder until after the ceremony. And the diploma comes in the mail later. Then we all went out to lunch with the faculty head of the radio station, which he’s been on since he was a freshman (this year he was Program Director!). I’m so proud of my “little” (ha ha) brother!

I tried my hardest to stay up Saturday night to see Betty White on SNL, and considering the long day I had, I did pretty well. (I caught the rest online the next day.) She was great! I think everyone wanted for her to do well. I saw a few interviews with her about it, and she really was so nervous, but she didn’t need to be. I just wish they didn’t make her do that one sketch where she had to dance (the Mexican talk show), because that was a little sad. But hey, I hope I’m moving that well when I’m almost 90! Also, the episode just confirmed that it’s always hilarious when you can make an old lady say something dirty.

Mother’s Day was kind of busy. I went to see my grandmother in the morning, and my mom also came over, so they both got their gifts. (I got my mom a cast-iron frying pan and the whole time I was worried that she was going to hate it, but actually she was really excited about it! Hooray!) Then I went food shopping and did laundry. Then I went to my mom’s place for a late lunch with her and my brother, which was nice.

I forgot it was on and had to catch the 11 PM repeat, but I saw the Duggars’ Mother’s Day/Josie homecoming special last night. Yes, I have many problems and complaints about this show, but I just wanted to mention one thing. A week or two ago, I suggested on TWoP that maybe Josie shouldn’t have come home when she did (considering she was back in the hospital within less than 48 hours, and is still there, weeks later), but they somehow convinced the doctors to let her go early so they could have homecoming footage in the can for a Mother’s Day special. A couple people thought it was a possability, but most disagreed, saying doctors wouldn’t do that. Well guess what – after last night’s episode, and seeing the events surrounding her release from the hospital, a lot of people have been commenting that maybe they did send her home early just for the show!

In case you missed it last night, my imaginary boyfriend John Mulaney made an appearance on Saturday Night Live! His rant about Girl Scout cookies was definitely the highlight of an otherwise awkward episode :o) And his favorite flavors are my favorites!

(And yes, in case you’re wondering, I’ve kind of been trying to Googlebomb him with the “imaginary boyfriend” stuff.)

This was one of the laziest weekends I’ve had in a while. Besides laundry, food shopping, and a little cleaning, I had no other plans or anywhere to be. I didn’t even go to Target for one of my unnecessary shopping trips. Of course, GG has been very busy with alumni activities all weekend at his school, so it’s not like I’ve gotten to spend much time with him, but it’s been nice just reading, napping, and relaxing at home. Now I don’t have another free weekend until probably July..!

I went to the dermatologist today for my regular mole check-up. I have many weird and frightening moles all over me, they run in my family. But we have no history of skin cancer or anything, and though she’s pointed out a couple on me that she wants to keep an eye on, my dermatologist has never shown great concern over anything on me. So I was surprised today when she circled a tiny freckle on my back that was kind of an irregular shape. They took a little scrape of it to test, and I’ll get my results in two weeks. I’m sure it’s fine. But man, either the test site or the bandage over it is really itchy. And it’s right in the middle of my back where I can’t reach!

I also have to compliment my dermatologist. She is fantastic (as evidenced by the three-month wait to get an appointment)! She is just super fast and calm, like she doesn’t want to stress patients out by going, “Oh, that’s a weird one!” For a regular mole check, she just goes over your whole body while her assistant writes down the numbers she’s calling out as she comes across moles. And then she just came back after the fact and was like, “Okay, now this one we’re going to take a sample.” Boom, boom, done.

I had wanted to write a separate entry about the latest episodes of Fringe and Heroes, but I don’t think I am now. Suffice to say, I found last week’s episode of Fringe, Jacksonville, totally amazing. And I think I’m falling in love with Peter Bishop. (Yes, I know he is a fictional character.) Totally rooting for him and Olivia getting together (though what happened to him and her sister – they were pretty close last season). I cannot wait to see how they wrap up this season! And speaking of season wrap ups, the Heroes season finale, Brave New World, was great. I wasn’t really liking this volume, but it redeemed itself in the finale. Lots of nice callbacks to Season 1, such as Claire’s “attempts,” and all the heroes converging on NYC to avert a disaster. Also a nice wrap-up to the Hiro and Charlie story. I guess the show is coming back, but really I would have been happy with that as a series finale!

We’re getting snowed in again, fantastic. We could get another two feet, on top of the two feet we had from this weekend. Even with the melting that’s happened in the past couple days, that’s… a lot of snow. We don’t have anywhere to put it when we shovel, I don’t know what we’re going to do! At least I work from home tomorrow and band practice is canceled, so I don’t have to go anywhere. Neither will GG, probably. And I could stay home Thursday too, if I needed to (since they’re saying it might not stop until late tomorrow night). I would really like to be able to go to work on Thursday, though… Oh well, if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen.

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…

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 (!!!).

These are not necessarily things that were released this year (in the case of the TV shows and books and such), just things I experienced this year that had an effect on me.

Movie: District 9
I saw a lot of movies this year, but this was the one that really got everyone thinking and talking. It had gore, action, and social commentary, plus we learned that aliens love cat food!
Runner Up: Star Trek – pretty awesome, not to mention it featured ZQ and his awesome eyebrows! And because J.J. Abrams has now created an alternate timeline, he can pretty much do whatever he wants in sequels.

TV Show: Fringe
I loved season 1 of this show and was so excited for the second season, which started this fall, but unfortunately it aired opposite some other shows I watch, so I chose to catch up with Fringe online. Every time I went to watch it I would think, “Maybe I should just skip this, I watch enough TV shows,” but by the end of the episode I was totally hooked again, and all I could think was, “I love this show!” Like Lost, it seems to have a lot of mysteries that are carried throughout the series, which still haven’t been answered. But unlike Lost, it doesn’t make me angry. At the end of each episode, I can’t wait to see what they have in store next.
Runner Up: Parks and Recreation – I didn’t want to like this show, and I didn’t at first, but I stuck with it and by the end of the first season I was really into it. Season 2 had me from the start, and routinely has me laughing out loud.
Honorable Mention: The Office – only for the hour-long Jim and Pam wedding episode, which brought a tear to my eye for sure. The rest of this season (and actually, last season too) has been so depressing and weird. What happened to the goofy awkwardness?

Book: The Fortune Cookie Chronicles
After taking a long break from book reading, I finally got a library card and got back into the habit late last year. I found myself reading mostly nonfiction, and out of all the books I read, I feel like this is the one I actually learned the most from. Now I know the origin of fortune cookies, the Chinatown bus, Americanized Chinese food, and why every town in America seems to have its own Chinese restaurant, and why they’re all so similar.
Runner Up: A Mercy – I’m not a huge Toni Morrison fan, but this was quick, interesting, and came together at the end in a pretty awesome way.

Album: Tally Hall, Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum
I discovered this band in the most random way, ordered their CD right away, and I am totally hooked. Their CD was in my car for most of 2009, and I never got sick of listening and singing along. (In my opinion, a good CD is one where you can sing along with almost every song in the car.) Seriously, I like every song on that disc – even the ones I don’t love, I can tolerate. If I had to have one CD stuck in my car radio forever, it could be that one. (And not to make this about the band over the album, but those guys all seem super great, their Internet Show is hilarious, and they’re fantastic live – even when they’re tired and sick!)
Runner Up: The Lonely Island, Incredibad – Okay, there’s a bit more cursing than I’m comfortable with, but how can you listen to something like “Sax Man” without at least chuckling? I think I know all the words to “Santana DVX,” which amuses my friends. And GG and I have gotten a lot of mileage out of the phrase “big ol’ bag of trash” from “Dreamgirl.”
Honorable Mentions: Traced in Air by Cynic and The Ladder by Yes both came to me via GG and I became obsessed with both of them this year, but they lose points for not really lending themselves to singing along.

Restaurant: Amada
GG and I had wanted to try this place for a couple years, and we finally got to go for dinner on our anniversary. It. Was. Amazing. We were still talking about some of the things we tried there months later. I even tried to re-create a couple of the dishes. And maybe it was just that we didn’t order anything crazy and extravagant, but the total bill was not as high as we’d feared it might be. If I went again, I’d make reservations well in advance so we could get a better seat, but actually sitting at the bar by the kitchen was really interesting because we got to watch all the food being prepared.
Runner Up: Tastebuds – We stumbled upon this New Hope restaurant kind of by accident, and it’s now totally our favorite place in town. I’d go there four times a year just to try all their seasonal menus. (And I still haven’t given up trying to make my own version of that asparagus ravioli.)

Vacation: Portland, ME
I went on more overnight trips this year than I think I ever have, so I had a bunch to choose from, but without a doubt our “big trip” to Maine was the best vacation I took this year. We planned it well in advance and by the time we left I’d made up an itinerary that really mapped out our schedule for each day. Some would say that’s insane, but it was tremendously helpful because we made sure we got to do the things we wanted to do while we were there. And of course we could break from the itinerary if we wanted! Portland itself is a great town, and despite my worry that there wouldn’t be enough to do there to keep us busy for a week, we ended up with a lot of stuff we didn’t have time to do! I’d definitely go back (if only it weren’t so far away)!
Runner Up: OCMD long weekend with my Brothers – I was on the beach longer than I had been in probably the last 10-15 years, total. And we just had a lot of fun and ate a lot of stuff and had a good time together.