annearchy, posts by tag: nablopomo - LiveJournal

1. Well, here it is, November 30th, and I'm posting publicly for the 30th day in a row. Yay! I did it! Do I get a gold star or what? *scratches head* It's been interesting. I can't swear I'll post every day from now on, but I'm glad I made the effort.

2. It's snowing again, and I'm betting the city will finally bring the snow plows out for this one (with my luck, probably at 3 a.m., though our little street will likely be among the last to be plowed, as usual). The weather forecast is for 2-4 inches of snow in our immediate area, with more to the south and east of us. I'm probably going to take the bus to work on Monday, just to avoid all the people who have forgotten how to drive in snow in the past week. Interestingly enough, it's been cold enough the past week that the snow we got last Monday hasn't all melted yet. Oy. So totally NOT ready for winter :(

3. Speaking of not being ready, DD was all atwitter today, and not happily so. A boy at church (14 and in 8th grade) asked her out. On a real date. Supposedly he wanted to take her to "dinner" this coming Friday, though she insisted that this meant fast-food. She actually likes this boy a lot, but she said, "I'm not ready to go out with anyone. I don't want to go on dates; I just want to hang out." Not to mention that we think she is much too young to be going ANYWHERE alone with a boy. She's anxious about telling him that she doesn't want to go on a date with him, so assuming he actually calls her about doing this, she will tell him (correctly) that her parents won't let her go out on dates yet. She's tall and big for her age, but she is still only 12. That seems too young, to us, to be doing anything other than hanging out very casually and/or going out to events with a group of other kids. Or are we total old fogies? I'm actually thrilled that she knows herself well enough to have this sort of realization :)

Okay, I'm off to collect my NaBloPoMo ribbon or whatever:D

1. Was up waaay too late (almost 1:30 a.m.) RPing at road_ahead last night *stares at worldsapart76:)* Didn't get up until, oh, 9:30 a.m., which I guess makes up for being awakened yesterday at 6:30 by a cellphone alarm that was not mine. Didn't even get into the shower today until maybe 11:30 a.m. All I really did today was buy groceries this afternoon. As I said, a very lazy day. Even with the traveling on Thursday and yesterday, this has still been a pretty lazy, relaxing weekend. It's supposed to snow 2-3 inches tomorrow, though, so that will be a lot less relaxing. Meh. At least there's no choir practice tomorrow so I can sleep until at least 8 a.m. Yay.

2. Have ya'll seen the TV commercials for the blanket-robe-thing called Snuggie? Seriously, look at the commercial if you haven't seen it yet. I swear, DD and I crack up every time we watch this. I can imagine maybe getting one to use in the house, but no way I'd ever wear this outside. And, er, guys seem to look like monks when they wear this. *shrugs* But hey, you get a free booklight! :P

3. Last night Mr. Annearchy and I watched "Adaptation", the rather wonderfully insane movie written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze. We are big fans of Being John Malkovich, so we were not disappointed by Adaptation. One thing about Charlie Kaufman's movies, you can't really predict where they're going. I was worried that Nicolas Cage wouldn't be neurotic enough as Charlie but he was great, and I really liked Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper too. Now I need to update my Netflix queue. I was thinking of adding Moulin Rouge and Prince Caspian. Any other suggestions?

We went to Illinois yesterday and had dinner and spent the night with Mr. Annearchy's aunt, his cousin, J; his wife, D; their daughter, K; their son, C, his wife and baby son; and couple other relatives. I guess there were 12 of us altogether. We didn't leave our house until almost 11:30 a.m.; we drove almost 200 miles, stopping only once (at a rest area near the windmills at Paw Paw, IL) for a leak and a snack, and got to cousins' house a little before 3:00. Dinner was at 4:30, and sometime shortly before 4:00 I must have leaned sideways to pick up my can of diet orange soda from where it sat on the floor next to my chair. Well, I guess I should have turned first, then leaned down; whatever, I did something REALLY wrong, and I could tell that I'd pinched a nerve or pulled a muscle or something in my back, just to the left of my right shoulder blade. OMG did that hurt. I convinced my darling daughter to massage my back for a few minutes, and I sat with an ice pack on that area several times during the evening. Dinner was excellent: Turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes (mine!), green bean casserole, corn, crescent rolls, homemade cranberry sauce, stuffing, and "fluff". If that wasn't enough to put us into comas, about 2 hours later we had dessert - for 12 people there were five (count them, 5) desserts. I had a thin slice of ice-cream cake and some sort of chocolate-oatmeal bar thing. I managed to call my dad at my sister's house around 7:30 and talked with some of my family for about 1/2 hour. The other guests were gone by about 9 p.m. and after that we just sat around and talked for a couple hours. Mr. A and I went to bed around 11:30 and I was hoping to sleep in, but we were in K's room (she lives in Sarasota, FL, and is just visiting for the holiday) and she'd left her cellphone on and in the room - and her phone rang, like an alarm clock, at 6:30 a.m. about 6 inches from my head. Then I couldn't get back to sleep (damn furnace was making banging sounds) so I was up by 7:00 a.m. Cousin D made cinnamon rolls and a delish breakfast casserole for which I MUST get the recipe. We were on the road by about 10:30 but due to a couple of stops we didn't get home until about 2:30 p.m. Mr. A's aunt is almost 88 and she's really slowing down a lot lately, so we were very glad we got to spend some time with her.

Hope everyone else who celebrates Thanksgiving had a great day. I'm thankful for:
My various families (born into, married into and created, meaning DH and DD);
Having a nice home and enough money to pay for it;
Having enough to eat;
Having a good job, even if I complain about it too much;
Having a good health care plan, which I know isn't the case for many people;
Being relatively healthy for my age;
My co-workers;
All of my friends, both in real life and on the Internet (including all of you);
and a lot more things that would probably take a long time for me to think of.

Just a quick shout-out before we drive off to Illinois...

http://www.GlitterMaker.com/

Back sometime tomorrow afternoon. Have a great day, my cheeky monkeys! Try not to O.D. on turkey :D

1. I took DD to the orthodontist this morning because she needed to get a broken bracket and a loose/poking her cheek wire fixed. When we got home, Mr. Annearchy asked me, "What's this $189 debit to eBay on our credit union account from November 24th?" My mouth sort of flapped open, because I hadn't done anything on eBay since late September, when I sold a CD. Which I told him. He said his only recent eBay purchase was a reconditioned toner cartridge, which didn't cost anywhere near $189. We went into my eBay account, which showed no recent activity, and my PayPal account, which showed that I can alternate my charges between a VISA card and a MasterCard, but there's no debit card involved. So this was apparently some sort of weird debit-card activity on our credit union account. Hmmm. I went to work and about an hour later, Mr. A called and gave me the skinny. He said he'd spent a long time on the phone with PayPal support, and apparently his middle-aged eyes missed the fact that there were no zeros on the $189 charge and that there was a decimal point between the 1 and the 8. Yes, the actual charge was $1.89, not $189. So we're happy that it was only $1.89 but we can't figure out where it came from. We do know Mr. A lost his ATM/debit card recently :( So he called the credit union and cancelled our debit cards and ordered new ones. SIGH. I need to run over to the CU (fortunately only a block away) and get some cash for the long weekend. Still, WTF - who uses a debit card for $1.89?

2. The DVD that just arrived from Netflix is ADAPTATION. I'm a fan of Charlie Kaufman's writing so I hope I enjoy it. Probably won't have time to watch until Friday night. *shrugs*

3. Well, this is a crude but effective way to deter a carjacker, I guess. o__O

4. I'm looking forward to a LOOOONG weekend. I have to make sweet potatoes tonight, then tomorrow around 10:30 or 11 a.m. we'll drive down to Illinois to visit Mr. A's relatives (we always bring the sweet potatoes). They live about 190 miles from us so we'll spend the night and come back on Friday, probably early-mid afternoon. CAN I LEAVE WORK YET? *stares at clock* Hmmm. Not for another 2 hours :(

So, U.S.-ians, what are y'all doing for Thanksgiving?

1. The New Yorker has an interesting article, The Child Trap: The rise of overparenting, that talks about "hothouse parents". While DD has her issues, I don't think we can be accused of the sort of 'overparenting' detailed in this article. I'm talking "going off the deep end" enmeshment in the kid's life. Oy.

2. I see some irony here: A warning to all: Driving and text-messaging don't mix. On the same web page, near the bottom: A place to sign up to have breaking news texted to your cell phone.

3. A scientist at the University of Maine has discovered a sea slug that is apparently the first plant-animal hybrid found in nature. o___O

4. My 6 sisters and I were thinking of buying a smaller HDTV for our dad for Christmas this year. But he knew about our plans, and yesterday one of my sisters emailed all of us to say that Dad doesn't want us to spend a lot of money on him this year due to the recession. Instead he wants gift cards, either to Dillard's or to restaurants. Does anyone know if I can buy a Dillard's gift card on line? Otherwise I'll send him a gift card for Applebee's or some other national restaurant chain.

5. Stolen from rosina_alcona:

You Are a Gingerbread House

A little spicy and a little sweet, anyone would like to be lost in the woods with you.

Mmmm, Gingerbread. Nom nom nom.

6. Upskirting? Downblousing? I am waaay behind the times.

1. Okay, I am not crazy enough to attemp NaNoWriMo this year. Just not going to happen. I still haven't finished the story I started in 2004, when I wrote more than 50,000 words but wasn't anywhere near done with the story. Then my mom was terminally ill (post-Katrina) the next year so I wasn't going to attempt it. And to be honest, I can't plot my way out of a paper bag. So no NaNoWriMo for me, at least not now. But I think I'll try NaBloPoMo - National Blog Posting Month. I should be able to post SOMETHING every day for 30 days, right? I haven't done this before so I'm wondering if it has to be a public post or do friends-locked posts count too? Anyway, here I am, posting. Ta da :P I'm also doing a micro-NaNo that involves writing at least 100 words a day. That I can do. So if nothing else I should have written at least 3,000 words (besides blogging) this month. Wish me luck:)

2. Halloween was sort of a bust. I bought a 3 1/2 lb. bag of mixed candy (though really? It was about 90% mini- and micro-Tootsie Rolls and TR Pops). We maybe had 6 kids come to the door last night, so we had a ton of candy left over, and we stuffed ourselves on Tootsie Rolls last night (and still today). DD has a double ear infection, so she wasn't feeling well enough to wander around the neighborhood looking for candy. We did take a walk around 6:30 to see if her former 2nd grade teacher, Ms. H, was home; DD has visited her every year for the past 5 years. As we walked to her house, about 3 blocks away, we noticed that only maybe 1 out of 4 houses had the traditional light on in front of the house as a signal that the occupants were giving out candy. Dunno why so many people were not participating. DD stopped at the house next door, said trick or treat and got some candy, and asked if Mr. & Ms. H still lived next door. She was assured that yes, they still do, though the house was mostly dark so maybe they were out for the evening. At any rate, after we got back from there, DD played on the computer while I watched a couple of movies with Mr. Annearchy. Resident Evil was a lot better than I had expected it would be, and really, who doesn't want to watch James Purefoy?:) Then we watched Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It was worth seeing though I'm glad we rented it on Netflix rather than paying $17.50 to see it; it follows the typical Indiana Jones formula, so lots of things were fairly predictable. Still, it was fun to watch, and it was nice to see Karen Allen again, as I haven't seen her in anything in years.

3. DD is going to "Fall Frolic", the youth group fall fun thing. They're starting out at a corn maze and then will get rides back to the church building. She doesn't feel well enough to stay overnight, which is a good thing. So I'll be bringing her to the corn maze and then, once the group is there, coming home and going out to dinner with Mr. Annearchy. I'll pick DD up at the church before 10 p.m. - because I have to be home by 10:30 to watch Saturday Night Live. MUST. WATCh. DAVID. COOK. ON. HDTV!! :D

Hope y'all had a great day.