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Gone to the Dark Side, BRB

Shelly

I finally got fed up with Thunderbird. The way it displays quoted text drives me batshit crazy. Since I’ve got Office 2007 installed on Cracktop, and since I have to use Outlook for work, I figured I may as well use it at home. As much as it hurts to say it, it’s a huge improvement over Thunderbird. For one thing, you can control how incoming messages are displayed, even to the extent that it’ll strip out HTML. This is good.

Plus, the integrated calendar is helpful. And the good lord knows, after spending three hours in a ridiculous workshop learning the dark secrets of the Outlook calendar, I should probably put that evil knowledge to use.

[Addendum: I found a utility to convert Thunderbird mailboxes to Outlook-readable files. It involved converting, then dumping into Outlook Express, then importing into Outlook, but it worked flawlessly. The whole process took about 15 minutes, and that includes searching for the converter, downloading and installing it, and time spent hunting around on my hard drive for the stupid TB files.]

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Spring Cleaning: Phase 3

Shelly

Today, I put two coats of willow green paint on the dining room chairs. They’re oak, but boring to the point of ugliness, so paint was a huge improvement. I also covered the seats with blue denim. One more coat tomorrow, and they’ll be done.

After painting the chairs, I decided to do some work in the bedroom. I hauled my bed frame out of the closet and put it together. I haven’t used it in years, because it’s old and needs slats. The side rails can be installed two different ways, one of which allows the box spring to sit on top of the rails. This works fine and is nice and sturdy, but there is nothing to keep the box spring from sliding right off the rails. That sounds a little too exciting to me. This afternoon, though, it occurred to me that I could wrap the side rails in non-skid shelf liner, to keep the box spring from sliding. It worked beautifully!

So now, for the first time in years, I’ll be sleeping in a grown-up bed, instead of on the floor, like a poor college student. Miss Brown approves, too. As soon as the mattress was in place, she boinged up on the bed and flopped around like a trout.

The third thing I did was swap out coffee tables. I’ve been using an old desk with the legs removed. It works great, but it’s really big and bulky, and the top is warped. The replacement coffee table is tiny in comparison and will take some getting used to, but I’ll be glad to take the behemoth to the trash tomorrow.

And now to go find a tasty adult beverage.

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Cheer-io-ios

Shelly

My mom never bought junk cereal, so we always had stuff like Cheerios and Grape Nuts and Shredded Wheat. If we wanted junk cereal, we had to buy it ourselves.

One of my favorite food commercials from that time period is for Cheerios. I love the little yodeling stick figures.


Cheerios Animated Blackboard Stick Figure Commercial #1 (1978)


Cheerios Animated Blackboard Stick Figure Commercial #2 (1978)

It’s as cute as I remember it. And the packaging hasn’t changed, has it?

I don’t buy cereal very often, and when I do, it’s almost always Cheerios. With milk and a little sugar, it’s a tasty sweet treat. If you want something savory, it works for that, too. When I was a kid, we made buttered Cheerios. You drizzle melted butter over Cheerios, then toast them over medium-low heat until golden brown. We used a sauce pan, but a wok or even a skillet would work. I add a little soy sauce, worcestershire sauce, a little garlic and onion powder, and a pinch of ground celery seed to the butter. It ends up tasting like Chex mix. Mmmm. (I often add the same seasoning medley to my popcorn butter, too.)

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Apple Pie

Shelly

I don’t think I’ve ever made one before. I love to bake, but I’m more of a cake-and-bread-and-brownie baker, not a pie baker. When I was in the grocery store last week, though, I was suddenly overcome by the granny smith apples and had to have them. I’ve been really disappointed in apples the past few years, but these were damnfine tasty. So tasty that, after sharing one with Miss Brown, I had to make the rest into a pie.

It was good. And easy peasy. The crust even turned out decent, considering I’m a novice crust maker. And did I mention easy? Why did I think making pie crust was hard?

Mmmm. Pie.

No photos, alas. Maybe next time. And there will be a next time.

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Today’s Cataloging Puzzle

Shelly

I’m currently cataloging a set of books on the economy of Argentina. Easy peasy, right? Except, when looking for a call number, I noticed that “economic history and conditions, Argentina” is not just broken up by general time periods, but specifically into “early” and “later,” with “early” including “Medieval.” WTF?

Yes, there were people in Argentina during what most folks would recognize as the Medieval period, but Medieval in this sense refers to a European cultural construct. Meaning, there really wasn’t any such thing as a Medieval period in Argentina. And, anyway, colonization of Argentina by Europeans roughly coincided with the end of the European Medieval period, so why include Medieval in the “early” time range. Wouldn’t Precolumbian make more sense?

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Introducing Cracktop!

Shelly

Sorry for the dearth of posts, but I have spent the last few days setting up the new laptop. I still am not finished migrating my music (that might take until approximately Labor Day, at the rate I’m going). But, I’ve finally got all the Adobe stuff loaded, as well as WordPerfect Office X4 (yay, no more MS Office!). I’m a die-hard WP person, so this is a Very Good Thing, because using Word makes the Baby Shelly cry.

Anyway, Cracktop is a thing of beauty. Alas, he is not bright red, like I’d wanted, but a shimmery, metallic bronze color. I am not complaining! He has a super springy keyboard, complete with keypad. I sacrificed some portability for larger screen size, since I won’t be carrying him around with me every day. He’s going to be my only computer, so I wanted a nice, big screen. I also sacrificed a better wireless card for more RAM. The wireless card he came with is only B/G, which is kind of worthless. Since I don’t have a wireless router (yet), and since USB N cards are super cheap, I thought it was a decent trade-off.

All this, I was able to figure out for myself, by shopping around online and reading user reviews. I ended up going to Best Buy, because they actually had the best prices I found. I figured, no shipping fees, plus instant gratification, would be a good thing, right? I did not, alas, factor in the annoyance factor of having a salesdroid give me the 3rd degree and the hard sell on buying one of their in-store warranty plans. Also, she tried to get me to pay them $40 to create a restore disc for me and clean off all the crapware. IDTS! I can do that myself, thankyewverymuch.

And that’s about all I have to say. I’ll be over here in the corner, transferring music files, if anyone needs me!

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Good Neighbors

Shelly

The guys who moved into the apartment above me are just night-and-day to the asswagon who lived there before them. They’re quiet, they say “Hi,” when you see them outside, and bless their hearts, they came down to warn me that they’re going to be shoveling their balcony, and which side did I prefer them to chuck the snow off? Huh? Dudes, ya’ll can chuck the snow anywhere you want! And thank you for even thinking to ask!

The old Mr. Upstairs used to throw trash and empty his vacuum off the balcony, which drove me nuts. And then there was the dirty mop water, with God only knows what sorts of chemicals in it. But snow? That they even thought to ask was awfully sweet. I hope they stick around for a long, long time, because they are awesome neighbors.

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More Lost

Shelly

I can’t believe I was able to stay awake through the end of Lost. I was worried that I’d get tired half-way through and fall asleep, but the two-hour episode seemed to last about 20 minutes. (Kind of appropriate, given the subject matter.)

Anyway, I adores me some Hurley, now more than ever. I laughed out loud when he told Sayid, “Maybe if you ate more comfort food, you wouldn’t have to go around shooting people.” Yeah, what he said. And when Hurley was telling his mom what really happened, and you could see him begin to realize just how crazy it all sounded, but he kept going anyway. And his mom told him she believed him. Didn’t understand him, but believed him. That’s some damnfinegood teevee right there.

A lot happened in this episode, which is to be expected. I may have to watch it again online.

Alsotoo, because I was up so late, I’m dragging my ass this morning. I had to go get a caffeinated, carbonated beverage, and while I was in the lounge, I got a couple photos of another beautiful sunrise. Not as crazy as yesterday’s, but very pretty.