Author: Shelly

Crankypantsing

Operation Shelving

Shelly

I repeat: We have achieved shelving!

I finally had time and sufficient hardware to slap together three sets of bookshelves on Sunday. Between building the shelves and unpacking and sorting books, Operation Shelving took me damned near 12 hours to finish. Yes, 12 hours. Trying to force screws through rock-hard cedar is no picnic. Please, don’t try this at home unless you have a drill. Otherwise, your hands may turn to hamburger. Actually, the hamburger is partially due to the fact that some dog who shall remain nameless chewed the hell out of the handles of a couple of my screwdrivers. About halfway through Operation Shelving, it occurred to me that maybe I should wrap the chewed bits with duct tape, but by then the hamburger was made.

But, it’s done, done, done. Hallelujah! I still have a couple of boxes of art books to unpack, but those will go in the studio, so I’m not worrying about them just now. Besides, the bookcase they go in needs a coat of paint before I can put anything in it. I should have taken care of that a couple of weekends ago, when it was 75F and sunny outside. Now, I’m going to have to paint it indoors, which will probably end in tears when the inevitable paint-on-carpet tragedy occurs.

In any event, this means that I can finally focus on getting the studio unpacked. I’m not sure yet what Ms. Lea’s weekend packing and moving plans are, but I suspect I’ll have at least one day to work on the studio, which makes me happy.

And, speaking of things that make me happy, I have found perhaps the world’s most perfect carpet stain remover. I may have mentioned it before, but it bears repeating: Woolite Oxy Deep. It’s damned good stuff. It even removed dried blood stains from the carpet at the old place [1]. I had tried just about everything I could think of and had just about given up on finding something that would work. This stuff removed it quickly and with a minimum of elbow grease.

And now for the crankypantsing. I was busy all weekend and didn’t get much sleep, so I was looking forward to sleeping in on Monday and spending pretty much the whole damned day sitting on my ass. The only problem was, I didn’t account for Milton and His Spectacularly Loud Television. Holy crap! I woke up at 7am to the morning news, blaring away from upstairs. That went on pretty much all day, then through the night, he plunked on his bass guitar. He must be learning to play, because when I first moved in, he was working on simple scales. Now, he’s graduated to adding halftone decreases to the up progression and halftone increases to the down progression. Only, he fucks up about every third note. This went on all freaking night. The man must not ever sleep!

Then, when I got home yesterday, I noticed that his television was on, but for once, it was at a sane volume. Hmmm. That’s the first time he hasn’t had it on full-blast since I moved in in late September. I wonder if someone complained? The folks who share a wall with him can’t be any more thrilled than I am with the noise.

Alas, the bass playing went on last night as scheduled, from about midnight until I left this morning at 5:45. Which really makes the mind boggle, when you think about it. That’s six solid hours spent doing nothing but playing scales–and badly, at that. It makes no sense from the standpoint of learning to play an instrument, which makes me wonder if it’s an OCD sort of thing, wherein he just cannot put the instrument down until he completes the given scale perfectly.

I dunno. I do wish he’d turn the damned amplifier off, though. What kind of jackass thinks it’s reasonable to play electric bass all night in an apartment complex? It is sure to make the Baby Jeebus weep.

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[1] The body was buried in the front yard. And, no, I’m not kidding.

News & Politics, Pets

IM IN UR HOUSE PACKIN UR STUFF

Shelly

I and a bunch of other folks were at Ms. Lea’s last weekend, helping her pack up her life. She’s not finished, but we made a pretty impressive dent. It was hard work, but lots of breaks and giggle fests helped make the time go quickly and enjoyably. Who knew packing other people’s stuff could be so entertaining?

So, I thought I’d share more cats, in order to brighten an otherwise hideously dreary day.

One and Two.

Also,

Nancy Pelosi: I’m in ur house, impeachin ur doodz.

Crankypantsing, News & Politics

Mr. Pants on Fire

Shelly

I think anyone with half a brain stem and a functioning logic lobe knows that our Chimperor is a big, fat liar. However, it somehow manages to boggle my mind that he would actually come right out and admit it. At the recent presidential press conference, though, he did just that.

When asked why, only last week, he’d claimed that Rumsfeld would not be resigning, Bush answered:

Right. No, you and Hunt and Keil came in the Oval Office, and Hunt asked me the question one week before the campaign, and basically it was, are you going to do something about Rumsfeld and the Vice President? And my answer was, they’re going to stay on. And the reason why is I didn’t want to inject a major decision about this war in the final days of a campaign. And so the only way to answer that question and to get you on to another question was to give you that answer.

That’s right, folks. He just makes up shit when he wants people to get off his back or if he thinks it will negatively affect people’s opinions of his political party. Ironically, he later stated that he thought voters had elected Democrats because “People want their Congress — congressmen to be honest and ethical.” Gee, d’ya think?  Also, he repeated an earlier assertion that “stay the course” does not, in fact, mean “stay the course.” Apparently, those three words mean something entirely different in Bush’s Bizarro World.

Crankypantsing

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Shelly

Just for what it’s worth, if you find that you are so sleep deprived that you can’t remember whether or not you really did just wash your hair, then you should probably just go back to bed. Trying to fight it will only end in tears.  I think I washed it.  I’d say I’m about, oh, 90% positive I did.  But maybe I didn’t?  For the life of me, I couldn’t remember.  I considered washing it again(?) to be on the safe side, but I was already late for work, so I decided to chance it.

Photography

Mr. Groundhog

Shelly

There is a surprising amount of wildlife in my “backyard.” I know that most of the residents are normal city dwellers, but considering the high density of dogs and free roaming cats, I didn’t expect quite so many wild critters.

Mr. Groundhog seems to live underneath the sprawling bramble thicket on the western edge of the back field. He likes to come out in the late mornings and graze and sun himself. Miss Brown disapproves, of course. Mr. Groundhog couldn’t care less, it seems, because even though Harriet was whining and barking and boxing at the window, he carried on as if she didn’t exist. He’s a brazen little cuss.

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I took this photo early this afternoon. Mr. Groundhog refused to oblige me with a head shot, so all you get to see is his lard ass, which is still pretty darned cute.

Crankypantsing, Pets

Note to Self

Shelly

On the next move, do not lose the dog’s nail clippers.  Also, her leash.  Also, too, her rubber curry comb.  I finally found the nail clippers this morning.  I still haven’t found her leash, so I’ve been using Elliott’s old one.  I have no idea where to even begin looking for her curry comb, though, and there’s really nothing that will substitute for it.  Hrmf.

Crankypantsing

no Cones

Shelly

FYI, when it finally gets cold enough to well and truly frost, make sure the windshield wiper fluid in your car contains anti-freezy stuff.  Otherwise, if you are lazy like me, and opt for washing away the frost layer instead of scraping it, you’ll end up with blue sno cone guts smeared all across your windshield.  Which was totally not the effect I was going for.

Crankypantsing, Pets, Photography

Rain, rain, go away

Shelly

Indiana has a rainy season. If you don’t live here, I bet you didn’t know that. Every fall, we seem to go through weeks-long spates of seemingly endless rain. It makes the baby Shelly cry, it does, all that unrelieved grey and cold and wet. Miss Brown does not like it, either. Nope, not one little bit.

Last week, it rained pretty much every day. Because Harriet will melt and freeze in the cold rain, she decided she’d rather not go outside to play. She spent one entire afternoon sitting on the couch, looking wistfully out the patio window at the constant drizzle. I was reminded of a bored and grumpy child, wishing the rain would end so she could go outside and play. After several loud, dramatic sighs from Harriet, I decided she needed to have her picture taken.

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The subject of photography came up in another forum. I’m not any sort of photographer, but Harriet is an excellent subject, so it’s fairly easy to get decent pictures of her. Still, the majority of photos I take of her are not fit for public consumption. Sometimes, they’re just plain awful, and other times, the difference between a keeper and a junker is more subtle.

For example, I prefer the top photo over the second one. In the first photo, Harriet’s eyes are softer and more relaxed. Also, the photo was taken from a higher angle, so more of Harriet’s face is visible, giving her head more “weight” on the pillow.

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This is an illustration of why flash sucks. Sure, Harriet’s butt is nice and shiny, but if you look carefully, you’ll see that the shadows between the different layers are stark and far too crisp. The result looks like a bunch of elements cut out of paper and stacked on top of each other. It’s a flat and ugly photo.

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This one, too, was taken with flash, but the results are a little more pleasing than the above photo. Harriet still has Shiny Butt, but the shadows are less harsh.

So, in my world, only one of these images is a real keeper. Ain’t she the cutest thing EVAR?

Meta

Firefox 2 and Maxthon Web Browsers

Shelly

If you are a fan of Firefox, version 2 is here. I downloaded it the day it came out and have been extremely happy with the updates. First and foremost, it has a new, elegant spell-checker for forms. This is important for blogging, because it allows you to spell-check as you go, instead of C&Ping text into a word processor or using a clunky interface like the one Blogger provides (ptoui!). Or, not spell-checking at all, which is what I normally do. My laziness knows no bounds, apparently.

Or, if you’re an Internet Explorer fan, the Maxthon add-on allows for all sorts of tweaks (including tabbed browsing!), in addition to making it more secure and private. I’ve been using it at work, and it’s pretty nice.