Monday, October 30, 2006

About walking.

I can't do it right now. No, seriously. I was probably 10 minutes away from work this morning when I tripped on the sidewalk and fell face down, spraining my ankle in the process.

Fuck.

Kevin is taking care of me, but I'm completely useless and occasionally in an assload of pain. This is so great. Every time I try to do something good for myself...

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Hugs as a bartering strategy and other tales of late October.

I've been in a bad-ish mood for the past couple weeks and not really feeling up to writing anything that wasn't whining about my lot in life (which would have consisted of things like, wah, why can't my boyfriend and I want to eat sushi at the same time, and stupid Oktoberfest meant the farmers' market was stupid cancelled, waaaah, although at the time these things felt like the weight of the world). But a few things are going on that may be noteworthy.

One: I have been walking to work. I walked on a Friday and continued walking every day last week. It takes about a half hour and I get very sweaty and upon returning home all I want to do is collapse, but I think it's good for me. The reasons for this can include my need to exercise and my hatred of driving, and that's all well and good, but they also include my reluctance to take my car to a mechanic to get the brakes or whatever it is that's making a scraping sound while the car is in motion fixed. (Mom, if you ask me about this, I swear I will stick my fingers in my ears and hum loudly and off-key like a five-year old. It WILL get taken care of, okay? I feel shitty enough about it without having to discuss it.)

Really, the best part of walking is that I am way less angry at stuff. Driving makes me an angerball, as even in my 10-minute commute I see no fewer than two traffic infractions that make me want to kill/flip off/honk/scream, so I get to work, teeth gnashing, snarling about some idiot who ran a yellow light or took too long to make a U-turn.

Two: I have been being a little better about actually cooking for myself. We went through a spat of eating out almost exclusively, and we both decided that was Bad, and I think my credit card statements are thus far a little less intimidating as a result. (Second note to mom: My finances are in perfectly fine shape.) The farmers' market is basically the highlight of my weekend, including today, when a friend from work also came to the Campbell market and we goaded each other into buying lots of things we probably didn't need. I usually don't take samples if I'm there on my own, because although I realize sampling does not imply intent to purchase, I feel like it should in my stupid little head, and so I try to avoid trying things that look delicious but are things I am highly unlikely to actually spend money on. Like toffee and cheese and cookies. I did give in today and try some cheese that is organic and locally produced, and ended up buying some spiced white cheddar that made me want to sing.

There's a dude who sells juice, mediocre guacamole, and organic avocados at one end of the market, and he's a little overly flirtatious. I asked him if his smaller 'cados were 4 for $5, and he took the sign away and said, "No, for you, they're 6 for $5." I bought the half dozen, and later brought my coworker by, warning her that he was a little on the creepy side. What followed was more flirtation in which he implied that he changed the price based on my negotiation skills that involved a hug. Which...they did not. But this gave my coworker an in to wrangle 4 for $2 out of him--via the hug negotiation tactic.

The bad thing that happened (or didn't, really) was that I have been wanting to get a pet, specifically a bunny, and I took Kevin to a house rabbit adoption fair last weekend to see how he'd react to the fluffbutts. There was one there who took a shine to him, sitting calmly on his lap for an hour and eating hay out of his hand (it sniffed me and stretched up to my shoulder, then got bored and hopped back to him), but after we left, he told me he was having an allergic reaction to it--itchy eyes, the whole bit. I'm allergic, too, truth be told, but I'm happily medicated and it isn't bad enough to bother me. Anyway, the no-bunny scenario has me pretty bummed out overall.

I'm sure there's more going on, but whatever.

Friday, October 13, 2006

I don't like Spam!

I know, stop the fucking presses. But really, my spam intake used to be manageable (probably 20 to 30 items a day per inbox--I use two accounts on this server), and as of this week, it's gotten to the point that I can't deal with it anymore. So I go ahead and have my trusty geek boyfriend check it out (he's so cute!), and he composes a nice email to my hosting company's support team regarding how he might get spam assassin activated or what some other solution to my woes might be.

The support folks are all, yeah, we don't...do server side filtering. Mucks up the system, and the like. How's about you go ahead and use some other mail client that will do nice filtering jibjab for ya, like ehhh... Thunderbird. That's what we recommend. This server side crap is unreliable!

Obviously I'm not directly quoting their email, just mocking it like the petulant snot I am.

So here's the thing, guys. I am annoyed that you don't support any server side filtering whatsoever, and let me tell you why. Part of the reason I chose your damn hosting in the first place, oh so many years ago, was the multiple email access methods, including my bizarrely beloved pine. I use the webmail at work and while traveling, and I use pine on my home machine, and I really, deeply appreciate the ability to have them both at the ready. For example, if I'm back in the PacNW, using my mom's laptop, I don't want to have to use the goddamn touchpad to mark 75 messages for deletion before I can read the messages from my friends regarding the logistics of our meeting up. I know, really, suck it up, but fuck. I shouldn't have to be dealing with a barrage of spam, and neither should anyone else, and why the fuck can't they do ANY, even unrecommended, server side filtering?

Anyone have actually useful suggestions for me? These can include changing hosting companies, by the way. If they won't work with me on this, I might not be able to work with them, but it's only the first volley so far. My turn to hit it back.

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Seen recently...

Wednesday night I saw Jonathan Richman an Tommy Larkins at a tiny club in SF's Mission district. Tickets were only $11 and we stood right up in front of a seeminly full house. It was really great--they were unamplified but for a simple mic he sang into, and Jonathan played a classical acoustic guitar. I am not extremely familiar with the man's back catalogue, but I knew a few of the songs and enjoyed the entire set.

Yesterday I went back up to the city to go to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, which is unique in that it's free and has zero corporate sponsorship. Also, if you're into anything resembling "bluegrass," it's got some big named attached to it. Or from what I can tell, they're big names--I like bluegrass/americana/whathaveyou, but again, I'm not super into it. But I enjoyed Bragg's performance, certainly, as well as his impassioned speechifying. I'm definitely not one of those people who believes music and politics should be separate, and as such, his words were rousing. At least as much as Steve Earle's flipping off the Blue Angels was hilarious.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

My friends are ridiculous.


graylan is inappropriate, originally uploaded by emily ca..

But that doesn't mean you don't get to see pictures of them from this weekend's wedding.

LIttle ditty about Jack and Christine.

I could not make the song "Jack and Diane" leave my head during the wedding. Isn't that ridiculous?

Anyway, so, the wedding happened and now I'm back in San Jose. Well, Campbell, but to most of y'all, same diff. I have seen half of everyone I know in the past few days, including a most unexpected but extremely useful visit with the Editor, who picked me up from the airport when some dumbass parked in front of our driveway so Kevin couldn't come get me himself. I think I had a pretty good visit with all the people I don't usually get to see and meet some I've never seen but heard plenty about. I stayed with my aunt up in Mukilteo, which was comfortable and nice because she really seems to enjoy having company, and I enjoy not having to pay for hotel rooms or sleep on couches. My mom drove me around to a lot of places, but I also got rides from friends (including the very generous Lauren, who drove me all the way from Wallingford to Mukilteo one night). I saw just about every Haremite who still lives in the Seattle area (including a really lovely visit with Jen), I got a bunch of reading material from Bulldog News, and I brought vegan Thai takeout up to my mom and aunt (the latter of whom is allergic to shrimp and typically can't eat Thai food at all).

Ohhh, yeah, and I was in Christine and Jack's wedding. (It's...not Danger anymore, it's Jack. Long story, sorta, but not worth telling if you don't already know the guy, I'd wager. Besides, making the guy change his name to get married if she is changing hers seems fair enough to me.) It was my first bridesmaid gig, so that was interesting. Christine was a slightly frazzled but absolutely radiant bride. Jack very sweetly needed the handkerchief to wipe his teary eyes as much as she did when they said their vows. Instead of a wedding cake, they had a huge, cascading pile of chocolate chip cookies. I got to give a toast, which I made far too big a deal of, but I think those concerned found it amusing enough.

After lamenting that we seem able to have Harem reunions only for the purposes of watching other people get hitched, we started trying to figure out who is "next." Jana was absolutely certain would be me, since Kevin and I have been together almost 4 years now (forget the whole 3 months of being broken up! Hell, I think we have), but I told her to bite her damn tongue. Then Christine went ahead and did a bouquet toss (a tradition I kind of despise, and she agreed, but went ahead with it at the other bridesmaids' request anyway), and guess who caught the damn thing? That's right, Jana. So I won't say anything else if you won't, lady.