Category Archives: Randonymity

Knitting, Randonymity, Tales of the Neighborhood

Potholes, potholes, everywhere potholes. Potholes, potholes, fill them up, please!

38 Comments
  • We had about eight inches of snow from Sunday night through Tuesday morning.
  • Nothing compared to the East Coast, true (hope you’re all battened down for Round Two out there!).
  • But still… Enough for a Snow Emergency and maybe a switch to Winter Parking Restrictions until April 1.
  • When Winter Parking Restrictions go into effect, you can only park on the odd side of the street because the streets have gotten too narrow for vehicles to pass each other or for emergency vehicles to make it through.
  • The title of this post would be my plea to the City of Minneapolis. O_o
  • I don’t know what happened over the last week (well, beyond the snowfall), but southbound Lyndale Avenue by the Walker Art Center is barely passable now.
  • Five miles per hour is a reasonable speed there, unless you’re trying to break an axle.
  • No clue what’s up with spam blog comments this week. (You never see them because Akismet holds them, then I run Worst Offenders to delete the high volume stuff. I have Worst Offenders set to delete three or more comments from the same IP address, which is why I recommend only leaving one comment at a time until after your first comment has been approved!)
  • Anyway, I’ll have ten or 15 spam comments for hours and hours… and then I’ll have 500. 😮
  • Um, I might’ve won a couple more contests this week. Many thanks to LB and to Smart Bitches!
  • There’s a reason I’m limiting myself to the number of contests I enter these days! 🙂
  • If you get an error message when you try to comment, will you please send me an email about it? I’ve been trying a couple different things to help things run more smoothly around here, but it’s hard to tell if they work without feedback. Thanks!

“You can only dream of being this beautiful. It’s the burden of a Panther Princess.” -Mayhem

Knitting, Randonymity, Those Cats

Scandal of the butt-enhancing box

39 Comments
  • Knitters who’ve given up in despair of me ever giving away a knitting-related book (even though there is knitting in Keeping Promise Rock – Amy reports that all of her books, except her short story, If I Must, include knitting)… Wait, where was I? Oh yeah, knitters who’ve given up in despair of me ever giving away a knitting-related book, hang in there a few more weeks! On February 25, Crazy Aunt Purl (aka Laurie Perry… or is it the other way around?) will be visiting SoC, plus I’ll kick off a giveaway of her new book, Home Is Where the Wine Is.
  • Yay! It’s warm again here.
  • Warm being in the mid-20s (F) during the day.
  • No need to even zip my jacket.
  • Of course, that also means it’s snowing quite regularly.
  • And apparently all the weather changes are triggering sinus migraines. (Thanks for helping me put together the puzzle pieces, Debby!)
  • On the plus side, while this is my pager/on-call week, I have yet to see the pager.
  • The guy handing off the pager had some complicated vehicular crisis, so hasn’t been to work this week.
  • This guy has so much bad vehicular luck that I sort of hate to park in the same ramp he does…
  • Rumor has it my no-pager luck ends today.
  • Still, as Jeanne pointed out, any missed pager time during pager week is good!

“Hee hee! No one will ever find me. Best. Hiding. Spot. Ever.” -Chaos

“Hey, how’s it going under there, big kitty?” -Mayhem

“What?! How did she find me??” -Chaos

“Oh, and that box makes your butt look big.” -Mayhem

“…” -Chaos

Randonymity

Thursday bull(et)ish post

30 Comments
  • Eeep!
  • Eeep!
  • It explains so very, very much, doesn’t it?
  • His/their posture most especially. 🙂
  • Dear Mozilla – Iz kinda hatez Firefox 3.6 on Windows 7 (64-bit). Shiny, but oh, the memory leak…
  • In order to keep my number of computers under four, I gave the oldest laptop to my brother and SIL.
  • A lot.
  • And then rained for several days, causing numerous roof leaks.
  • And then got cold.
  • And started to snow.
  • And then got colder.
  • Which brings us back to the last time I whined about the weather!

Doctor Mayhem cares deeply about all of our problems. Can’t you tell just by looking at her?

“What?! No I don’t. I’m a cat! Your petty problems are of no interest to me.” -Mayhem

Condo Living, Randonymity, Those Cats

In which I ramble for a bit, then include a very cute picture of a sleeping princess with a cold nose

47 Comments
  • If you have suggestions for authors you’d like to see me contact for contests, please leave a comment!
  • Um, no, it’s very unlikely that Neil Gaiman, Nora Roberts, or Stephen King will respond.
  • I’m most interested in featuring authors who have a bit less reach (for now!) and who will interact with us in the comments.
  • I do promise to shamelessly exploit my friendship with Carolyn Crane when her book comes out. *shoots meaningful glance at CJ*
  • For my evil day job (EDJ), I work as a systems analyst and spend a lot of time looking for patterns in data.
  • Turns out that looking for overused stock photos? Just more patterns.
  • For the record? Looking for overused stock photos is a lot more amusing than what I do at the EDJ.
  • Probably I should admit that I’m not sending any more holiday cards for the 2009 holiday season and put all of that stuff away until next winter, huh?
  • I had a sinus-triggered migraine last Wednesday, so I took a shot (mmm… sumatr1ptan), napped for a few hours with the kitties, and woke up feeling great.
  • The kitties were very happy because they don’t get to sleep with me at night – there’s really only so many times I can handle having Chaos walk across my head at 2 am because he wants breakfast.
  • Anyway, ever since then, each evening when I go in to my bedroom to sleep, Mayhem’s sitting expectantly on my bed.
  • Sorry, May. Out you go.
  • Although she doesn’t walk across my head while I sleep, she does cover me with her furry toy mice, apparently bringing mouse after mouse, hoping to find the magical mouse that will inspire me to wake up and play fetch with her.
  • Shhhh… sleeping princess alert….

  • Awww.
Knitting, Randonymity

In which I discuss stories about black cats and include a knitting picture

39 Comments
  • I think I’m only going to have nightmares about one or two cases.
  • Forgot about that one! I actually have Catnap, the first book, which combines knitting and black cats.
  • Then I remembered another black cat book – a free ebook by Cat Johnson called Black Cat.

  • Mayhem’s definitely not old enough to read that one!
  • Speaking of knitting (I did! Really! Look back a few bullets and you’ll see!), some of you have expressed concern that I no longer knit.
  • Not true!
  • I do still knit, albeit very, very, very slowly.
  • I continue to have neck and back pain; knitting for more than very short periods definitely aggravates things.
  • So, allow me to present the Eternal Sock of Eternity that I’ve been working on for, um, six weeks or so.
  • I’ve started the cuff ribbing!
  • Why, yes, this is the first sock of a pair.
  • What’s your point?

“What the heck is that thing on the floor?!” -Chaos

“Oh, look, unattended yarn. My favorite!” -Mayhem

The yarn is Trekking 100 and the stitch pattern is Charade. I think. It’s been such a long time since I started it… 😉

Randonymity

In which I admit to being a desktop icon minimalist

51 Comments

Jeanne and I periodically talk about computer desktops and out-of-control icons – she has a family member whose entire desktop is covered with icons, and neither of us can figure out how that person can find anything.

I’ve always been sort of a desktop icon minimalist, as you can tell from this January 2007 post. (I actually don’t have the laptop in that post anymore; it was passed on to Jeanne’s icon junkie family member!)

Here’s my current desktop with its single icon (click picture to embiggen). Yup, still a Rurouni Kenshin wallpaper; this computer is also named Kenshin. Usually the bottom bar is hidden, too, but I found the artist and song title amusing enough to include in the screen shot. 🙂

Is your computer desktop cluttered or sparse? What do you use for wallpaper?

Tangent: I freshened up my blog’s sidebar over the weekend. The sidebar now has a tag cloud… and maybe I’ll actually get tags fixed on posts so that someone other than me can see them!

“Why aren’t you throwing my green mouse for me, Mom? I brought it back.” -Mayhem

Randonymity

“So this is the new year, and I have no resolutions.”

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– Death Cab for Cutie, “The New Year”

  • I had this grand plan of having a 2009 in review post all ready to go for today.
    • I even worked on it at Spyhouse Coffee Friday!
    • Well, sort of worked and sort of hung out with CJ while she sort of worked, too (click on the comic to embiggen):


    (idea totally glommed from Paperback Writer)

    • Anyway, that was before I worked a full day Sunday and my schedule got all messed up.
    • My work week is Monday through Friday, barring a crisis.
    • There was a crisis.
    • The Y2010 Crisis, to be exact.
    • Or would that be Y2K10?
    • It was caused, for my company, by programmers (at two separate external vendors) who apparently dealt with Y2K very sloppily.
    • Thus instead of 2009 rolling smoothly over into 2010, it rolled over into… 2000.
    • My quickie fix to get us back up and running will only work until 2019, but hey, at least we know there’s a problem this time and that we have nine years to fix it!
    • Anyone want to take bets what we’ll be working on December 31, 2018? 😉
    • Chaos puked on a library book with deckle-edged pages (thanks for that bit of book trivia, Marji!).
    • It looks like something far, far worse happened to the book.
    • I believe that I have just purchased Visions in White by Nora Roberts.
    • No way am I taking the book in to the library. I’m just going to tell them it was lost.
    • They don’t need to see what it looks like. Trust me on this one.
    • Let’s see, what else has been going on? Oh! It’s been bitterly cold here.
    • Saturday morning it was -17F/-27.2C (not counting windchill) at 9:30 am when I went out to make sure my car would start so I could drive to a family gathering 60 miles away.
    • It started. Go, car!
    • Some of you from colder climes will already know this, but at -17F, when you drop into your car seat? It has no give whatsoever.
    • Your face starts to stiffen up moments after being outside, too.
    • And your home tends to make alarming booming sounds as it contracts. O_o
    • Good thing our family gathering turned out to be a lot of fun, eh?
    • My stepmom made gluten-free lasagna!
    • And my SIL made chocolate-covered gluten-free pretzels for me to bring home!
    • How has the New Year been treating all of you?

    “Whoa. Who spiked the ‘nip on New Year’s?!” -Chaos

    Condo Living, Randonymity

    The weekend (more or less) in bullets

    34 Comments
    • Did everyone have a good holiday?
    • My Christmas Eve looked a bit dicey at first, since we got a foot of snow from December 23 through 24!
    • My car is rear-wheel drive (i.e., handles poorly in snow, even with 120 pounds of sand and 40 pounds of kitty litter in the trunk) and is only about three inches off the ground.
    • Did I mention that we got a foot of snow?
    • And that Minneapolis was mostly just plowing major streets until the snow finished?
    • And that I don’t live on a major street; I park my car in a parking lot off of a narrow neglected alley?
    • Oh oh.
    • But! My brother to the rescue! He picked me up in his big ol’ four-wheel drive pickup and saved Christmas.
    • Whew!
    • When my brother dropped me off at home on the morning of the 25th, the snow had changed to rain.
    • I’m sure driving got really exciting at that point.
    • I wouldn’t know, since I hunkered down in my condo and didn’t go anywhere else all weekend.
    • When I drove to work Monday morning, my car looked more like a small portable snow bank than a vehicle.
    • As I got home from work Monday evening, two guys left our building.
    • They were carrying a bathtub…
    • …which had been sawed in half.
    • *blink blink*
    • There was soymilk every flippin’ where.
    • ARGH!
    • Bad kitty.

    “I’ll give you one chance to recant that ‘bad kitty’ business, Mom.” -Chaos

    Meta, Randonymity, Tales of the Neighborhood

    Shhhh… Sleeping Princess Alert!

    31 Comments
    • My poor brother – he celebrated his birthday Friday with stomach flu… exactly how he celebrated his birthday last year.
    • I’m trying to work up support for celebrating his birthday in July instead.
    • Yup, we picked those stores because they’re within walking distance.
    • We each got catnip slugs at Twin City Green (hmm, they’re $1.50 cheaper in the store and don’t have packaging).
    • The catnip slug has easily the most potent catnip ever in it.
    • The kitties love it with much bunny kicking and rubbing over their heads.
    • It was a day of strange conversations, with random strangers oversharing in Kowalski’s.
    • CJ and I also took a short walk through the neighborhood, but we got chilled pretty fast.
    • Before we wimped out (it was +19F/-7.2C) and walked to Spyhouse for hot cider, we saw this very interesting bus:

    • Here’s a closer look at the front:

    • Goth band? Punk rock band? Parking in a sedate residential neighborhood near Lake of the Isles? Huh.
    • Last Saturday I went over to Jeanne’s for dinner and took a really crappy picture (with my phone) of the Christmas spectacle next to her house.

    • Please note that this picture missed at least a half dozen glowing inflated snowpeople off to the left, plus the display that wrapped around the house, plus the loud Christmas music.
    • It’s much easier for Jeanne to give directions to her place in December: “Head toward the unearthly glow on the horizon…”
    • Recently, I was asked how to get avatars to show up in the comments. My blog uses gravatars (globally recognized avatars). You can register at Gravatar to create or upload your own gravatar and associate it with your email address(es). That’s it. After that, blogs that have gravatar support, such as many WordPress blogs, will display your gravatar next to your comments.
    • Wish me luck finishing my Christmas shopping over lunch today…
    • And try not to get too rowdy while you’re reading, ok? Mayhem’s catching up on her sleep.

    “…..zzzzzzz…..” -Mayhem

    Condo Living, Gluten Free, Randonymity

    Bullet Post: The Auto and Home Repair Edition, with Some GF Bullets, Too

    37 Comments
    • You might’ve heard that we had some snow (5-8″) last Wednesday.
    • Followed by some cold – it was -5F/-20.6C when I got in my car Thursday morning.
    • Brrr!
    • My drive was particularly exciting Thursday morning, since I had to drive to the car dealer to get the ASC repaired.
    • What’s ASC? Automatic Stabilization Control – the thing that kicks in when your car starts to slide on slippery roads.
    • Yup, roads are pretty slippery after a bunch of snow.
    • The drive was… memorable, in a white-knuckled sort of way.
    • Sure is nice to have ASC again.
    • Friday afternoon, my car got stuck while I was trying to get into the parking lot behind my building.
    • Many thanks to the two neighbors who helped push and got the car unstuck!
    • Sunday morning we woke up to no heat in the condo – turns out one of the pumps on the boiler went out.
    • Fortunately, it only took a few hours for a repair guy to get the heat going again.
    • Good thing, since the cats were holding me personally responsible for how cold it was: “If you loved us, Mom, it wouldn’t be cold like this.”
    • Do you wish you lived in Minneapolis yet? 😉
    • Sunday afternoon I learned how to use a drain auger and spent a nasty hour or so cleaning out a massive clog under the kitchen sink.
    • Said clog seemed to have been formed by the unholy union of cat hair (note to self – try to keep Mayhem from sleeping in the kitchen sink), coffee grounds from rinsing off the espresso maker, and primordial ooze.
    • Ewww.
    • I am actually knitting!
    • However, it’s for a present, so I’m not sure I’ll post about it until after Christmas.
    • One of the things that’s been sad for me since going gluten-free is not having good bread for sandwiches.
    • Most gf bread has an unfortunate texture or crumbles into bits when used for sandwiches unless it’s toasted.
    • Only eating sandwiches on toast gets old really fast.
    • If you require a gluten-free diet (or know someone who does), I highly recommend the magazine Gluten-Free Living, which I’ve been reading since it was a newsletter.
    • Are you confused by the conflicting gluten-free diet information provided by various organizations? Gluten-Free Living examines such information scientifically to support or debunk it.
    • The current issue is especially good, as it’s a “best of” issue.
    • Make sure you stop back tomorrow, when I’ll kick off an ebook (by a Twin Cities author) giveaway to celebrate its release!

    Can you figure out this picture? (Nope, you are right, she’s not in the kitchen sink… at the moment.)

    “…..zzzzzzzzzzzz…..” -Mayhem