Spearmint

Tried an experiment this weekend and stayed off the internets. Yes, I know it looks like I am on the internets, but really I am not; I am using an LJ client to post. What I'm saying is, I left my browser alone all weekend (except for checking my bank balance and downloading a crucial piece of software, natch).

In one weekend of internet-freedom (even with email and IM), I did almost two years' worth of filing, prepped almost two years' worth of taxes, paid bills, did laundry, watched an entire season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (yeah, I didn't say it was all serious, productive stuff, okay?), did three loads of laundry, went to a dinner party, had a friend over, saw two movies, set up my new-to-me Palm and iPod with help from charming partner, got packages ready to mail, and coded about fifteen recipes to go up as soon as Himself releases the new version of his website.

I should definitely do this more often. I'm going to take Tuesday off, too, I think. From there? We'll see.

Nailbiting

Email from my mother about the typhoon headed for Samoa:

Hi Folks,

Just a note to let you know that there is a typhoon headed for Samoa, with the worst being at about 4 p.m. our time today. Right now, it's rated as a "cyclonic storm" but will go to typhoon (what we in the northern hemisphere call a hurricane) shortly. [My brother] E's island is right in the path.

The school evacuated their beach-side location yesterday and moved everyone up to a safe (and dry) location in the mountains, but E will definitely have an experience we never have had of being in the midst of a tropical storm on an island in the middle of the ocean and of being involved in the post-disaster clean-up and re-building. However, he'll be very safe and far away from the 43 ft. waves expected.

---

Safe is good. But damn it, far away is just not. Experience exshmerience, I wish I could swoop down and snatch him up off those islands and take him far away from typhoons and other scary natural forces.

There are two kinds of people in this world...

You know the old saw, that there are two kinds of people in this world, those who feel the need to divide everyone up into two kinds of people, and everyone else?

Realistically speaking, it's not a proper division whenever it is made (even gender is not strictly binary), but certain things do seem to fall to either one side of an issue or another. I've met people who loved Tolstoy and people who loved Dostoyevsky, but rarely someone who was truly passionate about both. And there are people who take The New Yorker and people who take Harper's, but rarely do you see both subscriptions in the same home.

Of course, I've always been a bit of a fence-sitter. And so, despite the fact that both my parents and I have been loyal New Yorker subscribers for years, there are things that I long for that only Harper's can provide. Luckily, one can subscribe to the Weekly Review via email and have it sent to you each Tuesday. The best of both worlds!

The Weekly Review is Harpers' wonderful round-up of the week's news, where the deadly serious is juxtaposed with the utterly ridiculous to expose the inherent ludicrousness of pretty much everything. It makes me laugh, it occasionally makes me cry, and it's an absolute must-read for anyone who can't keep up with more than one newspaper and NPR.

However, this week they missed my favorite story, about how the White House granted press credentials to a far-right conservative shill who was moonlighting as a gay male prostitute. Gannongate, man. I mean sure, Lewinsky was tawdry, but this is so very, very much worse. is doing great summaries of the ongoing scandal and the coverage in the politiblog world.

In other news, it is pouring rain and Himself is sick and I have to go to an "Appropriate Administrators" training tomorrow. Howya like them apples? Man, if these people think a four-hour training is going to make me in any way shape or form appropriate, they don't have a good picture of who they're dealing with, now do they?

Consistency is all I ask / Give us this day our daily mask...

I am not a consistent person. This makes me a terrible gardener (plants like to be watered and pruned and fed on some kind of regular schedule), an absentminded pet owner (I need pets that are large and self-willed enough to bug me when they need something, lest I forget them) and an indifferent and occasionally catastrophic bill-payer and landlord.

The world loves consistent people. Consistent people excercise regularly, instead of going running once in a blue moon and then laying around for days with aches and pains. Consistent people do their work on an ongoing basis, rather than faffing about some days and doing extra-long hours others. Consistent people pay their bills on time, make their appointments on time, respond to correspondence on a reasonable timeline, and have gardens that do not die. I want to be a consistent person.

Instead, I am currently dragging myself by the figurative bootstraps out of a period of not-unprecedented-but-surely-unholy unproductiveness and attempting to bodily shove myself into regular, productive action. As with all self-improvement, it is painful and has only a limited amount of success. But goddamnit, I'm happier when I am consistent, so you'd think it wouldn't be so difficult to get there.

Knowing self, I predict a long, painful struggle to arrive at a place of reasonable effectiveness, a brief plateau, and then a gradual devolution to the norm, at which point the cycle will begin again. I try to comfort myself by arguing that the cycle gets shorter/less egregious each time. Sometimes I believe that that is true. Those are the better days.

Even I, Queen Of Social Missteps, know this one.

Dear person two cubicles behind me,

In case it had escaped your notice, this is an office. As in, a professional space in which people attempt to work. With cubicles. This means that when you get the urge to HUM INCESSANTLY or WHISTLE or SING TO YOURSELF or TAP THINGS RHYTHMICALLY you should just — refrain. Really. I mean, thank God you're at least not off-key, but that does not stop me from wanting to kill you with my bare hands.

No love,
Me.