Thanks for frost keeping thieves away!

Last night we got a christmas tree.  (It fell down today.  Grr.)

Our tiny car doesn't have a rack, so we roll down the windows and close the doors to tie it to the roof.  I climbed inside the window rather than try to squeeze through an almost closed door.

This morning the driver's side window was still rolled down.  The lock was locked, but that didn't matter.  Luckily, it was cold last night.  All the other windows had a thick coat of frost.  And the hoodlums who previously stole our car radio didn't take it last night.  When it would have been slightly easier than last time.

Temporarily free from the cell phone shackle

I forgot my phone at home today.  It's kind of great.  I actually watch where I'm walking and enjoy the view instead of trying to catch up on email.  I have to look at clocks to know what time it is and instead of killing boredom with a quick game at any dull moment, I took opportunities to try to think deeply.

I should probably have a phone sabbath every once in a while.  Like once a month.  Once a week seems crazy.

Quark - German sour cream

In german class, I learned about Quark, a dairy product. Our teacher couldn't explain what it is. Is it cheese? No. Is it yogurt? No.

My lovely wife got me some for my birthday. It's sort of like sour cream, and sort of like ricotta cheese. Tangy, sour and granular.

Another mystery solved. Now if only I can taste some marsh mallow. Apparently the Egyptians used it as a tea.

Meta media

I'm a very meta kind of guy. I have a BS in philosophy. Now I'm taking education classes where I think about metacognition and talk about talking about learning. Most of my news sources are meta - while I do read the paper and listen to NPR, I listen most faithfully to Wait Wait Don't Tell Me and On The Media, and I religiously watch The Daily Show and Colbert, all programs that operate by analyzing the news and the media structure, not just being participants but being reflective participants.

And my musical tastes run meta. I'm mostly a fan of They Might Be Giants, Weird Al and Jonathan Coulton. All very clever songwriters. In particular there are many pieces of music who I know best through parodies. A week ago I heard the original Rocket Man, and I realized I knew Shatner's corruption of that song better than the original (and maybe the Family Guy parody of Shatner's parody even better). I like my universe highly processed, but sentient and clever. Seems to be working for me so far.

Don Quijote - Asian Grocer

In Hawaii recently, I discovered the Japanese grocery chain Don Quijote.

They were pretty awesome, well stocked with American and Asian foods. But it got me thinking what other literary figures you could name retail establishments after.

• Ebenezer Scrooge - basically Wal-Mart, but with a Victorian mascot.
• Fallstaff's nursery - specializing in fruit trees and vegetable gardens.
• Mrs. Dalloway's. No joke, I just think it's a charming name.
  

but maybe we should appropriate a Japanese cultural icon for a Mexican grocery.

• Rashomon - every time you ask for a price, you get a different answer.
• Kaguya-hime - No refunds or we'll send you back to the moon!
• Taira no Kiyomori - clearly the perfect mascot for a delicatessen.

Doored!

I got my garage door opener to work at last! So, stalker/thieves, figure out my encryption code and come on in and take our stuff! (Although hopefully it will be more difficult than robbing our car was.)

Best break-in ever

Someone stole the stereo from our car last night.

It's kind of lame, and a bunch of work for us now. But on the up side: they didn't break any windows. They were courteous enough to only damage the parts of the car that hold the stereo in. Door's fine, steering column's fine.

And we still have our car.

They did dump the glove box out on the seat, and rummage through that. Too bad for them that our garage door opener doesn't work. It's been annoying me for weeks, and I'd been planning on trying to fix it today. Now I'm in less of a hurry.

Although a friend pointed out how awesome it would have been if we'd left the not working opener in the car. I think I would enjoy wiring up another opener to a super loud alarm bell. (We have 3 remote controls, and a receiver that ignores all of them.) Then if someone breaks into our car again, they'll let us know about it. We can come yell at them, and give a precise time on the police report, instead of "between 9 PM and 9 AM".

Jury Duty Adventures

I was almost on a jury this week. That's not that interesting. But seeing the top front page headline in the paper be the trial I almost sat on?

Wow. I'm glad I'm not on the jury, but mostly because that means I'm allowed to talk about it, and blog about it, and read the newspaper. I'm almost tempted to go sit in the courtroom and listen in on parts of the trial, just because it's so lurid and interesting. The same reasons it's the top story in the paper.

I'm bored

I'm at a conference for libraries and museums about how to use the web.

It's mostly librarians and art and history museums - organizations with large collections of artifacts and information.

Imagine, if you can, a place where the most obsessive qualities in a librarian for organizing, sorting and cataloging can come together to talk with computer people about the picky, fussy nitty gritty details that computers can be very demanding about.

It's nerd-squared. And not in a good way. (Although that's this instant. Just after lunch a friend of mine and two others presented a rock star panel about cool things they're doing.)

I fell down one time

I got hit by a car in the snowstorm: Snowpocalypse 2009.

It was going 15 miles an hour, and the only injury is a bruised knee from falling over when it hit me, but it's still startling. Especially given that my instinct was to push against it to slow it down. I should have dodged. Although using my arms to break my "fall" did help. But I wish I'd reacted smarter.

Again: I'm fine. Worst thing was I got wet.

Mice

I've been killing mice lately.

There have been several mice living near my office. I found a bunch of their poop on my desk. That was gross.

Emptying traps into the garbage - disposing of dead mice - is also gross. I'm sad that they had to die. Definitely sad that glue traps were how they were caught. It's sad to imagine them stuck on the glue, dying slowly. A snap trap that breaks their neck seems much more humane. But they haven't set off any of the half-dozen of those that I set. Even the ones baited with peanut butter.

I had little choice. I tried removing the food supply (not that there was much) and they didn't go away. I realize it's cold and wintry. But I draw the line at things that poop on my desk.

Yes, if you poop on my desk I might have to kill you.

Holy crap, I'm selling my house

After one day on the market, I accepted an offer on my home.

Holy crap. That's insanely fast. My neighbors have had homes for sale for months, even up to a year.

The standard offer/inspection/close cycle takes a month, but I could be moving that soon! Wow.

I hate tile.

In the last month, I have come to hate tile and grout. My respect for tileworkers and their brother the bricklayer has grown immensely. I see why the Masons are a mysterious and powerful organization. The amount of talent, knowledge and experience it takes to work with cement is huge.

Nothing I seem to do makes my new grout work. However I mix it, it dries into a crappy powder that doesn't do the job. If you use too much water, grout fails. If you use too little water, it fails. If the surface is too wet, it fails. If it's not wet enough, it fails. That, or Home Depot sells crappy grout.

The first time I was prepared to accept user error. The second time, I was disappointed, but willing to accept that I don't know what I'm doing. But now I'm just done. I wish we'd never started this project to begin with. (Which I wanted to do.) Trying to make our house prettier and better for sale has totally backfired and blown up in our faces. We should have just left the old tile the way it was and let the new owner deal with it if they wanted.

Good thing my wife never reads my blog.

Update: Home Depot does not sell crappy grout. I was just REALLY bad at mixing it. We have finally successfully put in new grout on most of our countertops. But God, that took too long.

Fishkill

I saw some roadkill on my way home the other day that was very odd. It was a dead animal, lying in the side of the road, crushed and smashed.

Except it was a fish.

I've seen birds and mammals that were hit by cars, but I've never before seen a fish. It has been raining a lot here lately, but not that much.

Pennsylvania journal

Two other anecdotes from my trip to Philly:

First, I played Scrabble with my grandmother twice. Both times our total score combined was over 500. I even won the second game, but she did start that game with 5 N's in her tray, which is a significant handicap. And I made pancakes Sunday evening, reenacting a family tradition back in the day when my grandfather would cook pancakes or scrambled eggs or barbecue on Sunday evenings.

Second, at the SEPTA station, catching the train out to grandma's house, I heard the PA crash and reboot. It made the Windows shutting down sound. This was hilarious to me. The PA system in a major transit station is a random computer playing sound files plugged into the speaker system. It reminded me of this.

A minute later, all the various automated announcements of trains arriving and at which platforms were being made normally. But to hear the usually quiet whimper of Windows shutting down made forcefully across an entire cavernous room was quite a thing to behold. At least they're running a fairly recent operating system version.

Historic

We have a new president. And it's super historic.

My special personal experience was being at my grandmother's in Pennsylvania, watching the MLK Day events and the inauguration preliminaries with my 95 year old grandmother, while light snow fell outside and a female cardinal flew in the shrubbery. The holly and the bare trees looked very pretty with the snow on the leaves and branches.

Philadelphia

For my recent trip, I stayed in a hotel with very 1970s architecture. Weirdly reminiscent of my college dorm the last 2 years of school.

Except the rooms are suites nearly the size of my home. Maybe a bit smaller, one room smaller (well two rooms, but I never use the spare room) but way bigger than what I expected from a hotel room.

Although I expected not to pay extra for internet. But I can live without it. But I'd rather not.

It's not an addiction. I could stop any time I wanted to. Although it'd be easier if I weren't alone in a hotel room with my sweetie a continent away.

The human mind

So last night the layoff at work finally hit me. I was already disappointed, and sad to see many of my friends go. But I didn't cry until the evening before my 3 day vacation. Not until I had time to. I was too busy to deal with, or even have, feelings about the catastrophe.

I'm still angry that half the floor educators were fired, after 6 months of attrition - not letting any educator who left be replaced. They fired 8 people this week on top of not replacing 5 others. You've got to fire a lot of people if you're going to decimate a museum to not go bankrupt. But this layoff was not done fairly. One team was cut in half, others were barely touched.

I have some survivor's guilt; my job is funded by grants, so it doesn't save any money to fire me. And I know these are tough times. But I am angry that the suffering isn't being shared equally. It's hard to get a job done without enough people to do it. But why should serving our customers be the only job that we stop doing? It seems like if our product gets really crappy, people might stop coming even more drastically than they are now.

I'm not a lawyer, but...

Last week I successfully acted like a lawyer. And not on stage.

My sweetie got a bill for last month's rent at her old apartment. Despite the fact she'd already paid it. Twice. (They lost the first check, and then demanded a late fee.)

I wrote up a simple letter, full of legal jargon: "In accordance with the Fair Debt Collection Act of 1971, I demand you cease and desist all further attempts to collect payment." She mailed it off, certified mail, return receipt requested, with a copy of the canceled check.

A few days later, we got the evidence the letter had been received, and then she got a letter saying her account has been updated to reflect a balance of zero, and her credit report will be updated to accurately reflect payment.

I win! It's all about the paperwork, baby.

Air Travel

My first time in North Carolina. Boy are they proud of their high wind. Although their airport police use Segways, so that's pretty cool. And I entertained a child at the baggage claim with my juggling, which I was doing just because I was bored and stiff. Bored stiff, even.

A little turbulence today, but nothing major. What was major was the line at the airport. Boy, Sunday morning at 5 AM is rush hour for United in Portland. Flights to each of their hubs every few minutes, and a massive crowd of people. Security went well - I was able to use a TSA-compatible bag to speed through the line. What with the work laptop I'm typing this on and everything.

Update: I forgot to mention the most aggravating part of the long lines at the beginning. United, in their grasping at dollars, wouldn't give me a boarding pass at checkin, because they wanted me to pay extra for an exit row. Since I refused to give them money, they gave me a pass that got me into the secure area, but not onto the plane, and then I had to wait in another line for my actual seat assignment.

Makes me think Southwest's totally random seating is the way to go. Charge everyone the same price, don't nickel and dime, just make us pay what it costs. If only the internet worked that way. Alas, since the cost of the "ticket" is what we see on flight search engines, added fees are the wave of the future. Maybe I should suck it up and get a bunch of 3 oz bottles and a 1 quart bag.