my highly scientific experiment, phase 3

phase 1 = 55 mph, no a/c, windows down
43 miles per gallon

phase 2 = 55 mph, windows up with a/c on
36 miles per gallon

I'm now in phase 3 of my highly scientific experiment which is 55 mph, windows up, no a/c (fan only...a/c only when I begin to hallucinate in the heat).

There's not that much difference between 36 mpg and 43, although I posit that windows down does indeed trump windows up. I firmly believe the real kicker is slowing the f@#k down. It isn't easy and I piss off innumerable people each and everyday as they rush along the interstate on their way. I've developed some definite steel in my spine watching the grill of an 18 wheeler barrel down on my tiny car and swerve (angrily) over at the VERY last minute. The whoosh of air this causes requires a two handed grip on the wheel and firm mental hand to quell the image of that 18 wheeler stalling on a blind curve on a set of heavily used train tracks...but that's a matter for another blog post I'm sure.

Happy driving! Slow down everybody!

another photo mashup

At 4pm it was a dark and stormy day in Birmingham yesterday...

This morning in B@rn3s & N0bl3 crafty coworker ML discovers the epic battle of the apples...C.S. Lewis v the vampires!

photo mashup

I took my dad and stepmom out to lunch on Father's Day, then we went to see the new Indiana Jones movie. I'd already seen it once but it was just as good the second time around. Daddy and N liked it alot too. As you can see, my dad is always up for some foolishness! :)

I wanted to call this one shleepy kitteh, but she's got a bit of evilness going on. Too bad I couldn't get the ginormous lion yawn that took place immediately after this photo was taken. Her eyes are really green and pretty. My goal is to one day get a photo where she doesn't look like she's about to morph into one of the X-Men characters...

I took this photo yesterday evening on my way home from work. If you look in at the treeline you can just barely see the rainbow. It was much bigger in person, I was just trying not to wreck on the interstate and this was the best I could do. I could see people in other cars looking at it too. Shooting stars and rainbows still have the power to make us stare in wonder and I find that comforting in this techno world.

:(

I got paid today and just did all my balancing and paying of bills and am now $90 overdrawn. How shitty is that, with 2 more weeks to go until payday rolls around again? Yay for credit cards.

inconvenient, but necessary

sorry guys but I got some comment spam on the last post and it isn't the first time for this blog so I've enabled the word/letter verification (or whatever it's called).

en fuego

which means "on fire" for those not in the know...



I have been encouraged by several people to post this story here. I have only told 2 people because it still makes me so AnGrY when I think about it...



Last week a woman approached me at the desk.



[PATRON] - I have a question.



[ME] - Yes, ma'am. (BTW, this is one of my pet peeves. I am at the question answering desk. I know you have a question when you get there. That's what I do for a living, genius)



[PATRON] - You know when you look something up, like in Pubm3d or something, and it says "returning results 1 through about (she stressed this word) 100? What does that mean?



[ME] - *blink, blink* I'm not sure that I know.



[PATRON] - Is there anyone else here who would?



[ME] - No, but I can take a stab at it. You know sometimes when you look things up on Google...



[PATRON INTERRUPTS]



[PATRON] - That's not what I'm talking about. (she sighs) This is really a librarian (again, she emphasizes) question...



[Now, I'm not normally a really excitable person but I feel like she's just insulted me tremendously because it says librarian RIGHT ON MY NAMETAG. I am paying off about $12,000 dollars in student loan debt, not to mention additional credit card debt for all the other stuff that $12,000 failed to cover, because I AM a f*&^ing librarian!]

[ME] - I am a librarian. (now I stress the word)

[PATRON] - Well, you know what I mean! (no, I really don't) I need someone who specializes (I'm sure I don't need to tell you what the italics mean) in research questions!

[ME] - (I tap my name tag, which says, in block letters, REFERENCE LIBRARIAN) Like a reference librarian?

[She looks at me, I look at her. Silence reins. Finally I say...]

[ME] - I believe that search engines usually base their result page rankings on some kind of mathematical algorithim. If your search in Google is too specific, it will sometimes ask if you would like to perform the same search without those...

[PATRON INTERRUPTS] - Never mind! [and she stomps off]

If I could think someone into a maimed condition, the fire department would have carted her off on a stretcher. How rude!

my highly scientific experiment

I took it upon myself to increase my good stewardship of our nation's resources by attempting to become somewhat of a hypermiler. My commute is around 47 miles one way and, in the past, I have had to refuel about every 2.5 days. I stopped using my air conditioner and rolled down the windows and now refuel every 4 days. Various of my friends and family have asked me what my actual gas mileage is and I haven't had an answer so with my last fillup (previous to this morning's) I undertook finding out. At my fillup this morning I got 9.1 gallons of gas and had traveled 387.6 miles on that, which equates to about 42.5 miles per gallon and I rounded up to 43 miles per gallon.

Not bad for my little Kia Rio. The old saw about the drag created by traveling with rolled down windows is my next experiment. With this tank of gas I will leave the windows rolled up and use the A/C when necessary. I didn't this morning because it is in the upper 60's and it feels really nice with the cool air blowing through windows. I will keep you informed.

Not that too many people are interested but when has that ever stopped me? :)

The Wonderful World of Medicine, with T

T, a switchboard operator with a local large medical facility, received a call from someone in need of information about gasket bypass surgery....perhaps Autozone could better serve your needs...maybe Pep Boys?

update

My aunt has uterine cancer which her primary doctor feels confident can be gotten rid of with a hysterectomy but she has not yet spoken to the gynecological oncologist her doctor has referred her to. Everyone is very, very confident that this has been caught early and can be handled efficiently at this point.

She has tapped me to take care of paying her bills while she is recovering and my grandmother will go into a rehab facility for at least 10 weeks during that time as well. She is bedridden and not a little senile. My aunt has been her primary caretaker (with occasional help from a home help nurse) for several years. My aunt has been upset because my grandmother didn't care when she told her she had cancer, she just cried and screamed accusations at my aunt about her (my grandmother's) imminent homelessness. Senility is hard on both sides of the issue. I really felt sorry for my aunt because she tends to take those things personally and not be quite able to consider that she is now the parent and my grandmother is the acting-out child. I will be interested to see how this situation pans out.

I'll keep you updated.

yep, it's wednesday

I haven't heard anything on my aunt yet and probably won't until after work when I can catch up with mom.

On the toe front, it'll be a miracle if I don't lose the nail. I have to soak my foot in warm epsom salts twice a day, keep it tightly wrapped and stay on the lookout for any telltale signs of infection since so much of my nail bed was ripped away exposed. He said to expect a 6-8 week wait for the new nail to make it's presence known.


:)


. . .is it time to leave for the beach yet, KT???????

are you sure it's not monday?

So my aunt has just been diagnosed with cancer and she's going to see a specialist at UAB tomorrow. Mom is not taking it well and it makes me upset when she's upset so we're all upset together.

also, about 3 hours ago I stubbed my little toe on a book truck and tore my toenail almost completely off. I'm going to the doctor in the morning. I'm scared it will get infected after so much air has roamed around under the nailbed. Sorry, that's gross I know. It hurt(s).

________________________

Last night I went over to KT's house, her sister came over also, and we watched El Orfanato. I cannot begin to explain how good this movie was. The perfect blend of scary and sophistication that I've come to associate with everything Guillermo del Toro touches. He was not the director on this one, but he helped. And you'll never BeLiEvE what went down at KT's house last night! It was a ressurection of this! Bring on the Wal-Mart vacuum cleaners! Neither KT nor her DH fell for it although the estimated "30 to 45 minutes" they claimed it would take to clean the rug drug on from 6:30 until after 9pm. We finally just went in the room where they were, turned off the lights, turned on El Orfanato, and pretended they didn't exist (despite the fact that she was still trying to start up a conversation with KT while we were watching the movie!).

A word of advice to budding D2D salesmen (or women) out there. Don't knock on my door with your schpiel in hand while gas is $4 a gallon. Pedal that on up the street.

still here

still alive and kickin', just REAL busy! I hope to get some real blogging time in tomorrow morning but we will just have to see how it goes.

that was a really sucky update and I do apologize but it just can't be helped at the moment

:(

ta da!

Look at hu puppeh footses!

Look at hu puppeh wiskahs!

Look at hu puppeh belleh after a bottle! (doing what you do after you get a full tummy)

Look at her pit bull muzzle already in full effect! She got puppy formula all over A's shirt in the process of being fed.

T and her mom got Bella and Isabeaux at about 10 days old from a local pit bull rescue after the mother was brought in to receive emergency care from their local vet. The mother was bad off enough to be unable to care for the puppies. Unfortunately Izzy was not strong enough to stay with us and she died unexpectedly last Thursday. As you can see, Bella is eating everything not nailed down and gnawing on the things that are (as long as it comes in a bottle). She is the cutest, sweetes thing you'd ever want to see and I look forward to watching her grow up!

small world?

not really.

click through the Frontal Cortex site to check out photos from the discovery of an uncontacted tribe in Brazil. I'm sad because I know someone will feel duty-bound to now head out into the jungle and contact them. Just leave them alone and let them live. They don't want cell phones and indoor plumbing.

cinematical hodgepodge

I can't say I'm a fan of John Wayne overall, but I do count two of his movies among my favorites (it's a loooooong list though), The Quiet Man and True Grit. I don't know what it is about these two films that captured my imagination but it happened. With The Quiet Man it was more than likely because it was a film set in Ireland, PLUS it's just plain fun. Maureen O'Hara plays a fiery Irish maiden who tames the brooding American former boxer played by John Wayne. What's not to like? Oh yeah, it's based on a short story of the same name penned by Maurice Walsh.

True Grit is a western tale adapted from Charles Portis' book of the same name and follows Rooster Cogburn on his begrudging journey to help a young girl avenge a death in her family. Cogburn is mean to her, makes fun of her but when tragedy strikes (no pun intended) Cogburn rides a horse into the ground and carries her the rest of the way into town for help. Wayne's crotchety old man character being softened by his association with the naive city girl hell bent on revenge is just one of my favorite stories. I'm slightly embarrassed to say that I have not yet read the book to see if I like the story pre-Hollywood, but it's on my list. What brought this to mind was some excellent commentary on the book and movie over at Cinematical (as usual).

_____________________

Vikings fighting space monsters in the 6th century A.D.? Bring it on! Unfortunately there is no scheduled American release date at this time :(

_____________________

Finally, someone with a healthy sense of humor! I have new-found respect for Deepak Chopra. In the face of protests over the parodies of Hinduism (and just about everything else) present in Mike Myer's new comedy, The Love Guru, Deepak Chopra has posted the following response on his blog:
As viewers will find out when the movie is released this summer, no one is more thoroughly skewered in it than I am --- you could even say that I am made to seem preposterous. If I don't take offense and some Hindus do, that doesn't make me superior or more mature or even innately tolerant. I just know the difference between a belly laugh and a diatribe."

How refreshing in our ultra-PC environment.

_____________________

KT and I have watched The Strangers and thought it was capital S-C-A-R-Y! There was a preview for a movie called Quarantine and I had not heard of it before then but it looked capital F#*%ing S-C-A-R-Y! I should have known that my beloved Cinematical would be able to deliver the skinny on this horrific delight. I'm going to have to see the original Spanish film before we see Quarantine! Enjoy the trailer for the original!


_____________________

Thank you, Eugene Novikov! I personally can hardly wait to see The Happening!

_____________________

Yes, I still harbor some unmistakebly warm feelings for Vin. I admit it freely. I'll also be seeing Babylon A.D. when it hits theaters.

_____________________

that is all (for today!)

tuesday ruminations

so I decided that Mondays are going to be my Vegetarian Day. Yesterday was my first effort and I am proud to report that it was 100% successful!

I had cereal and soy milk for breakfast, white bean & corn chili for lunch, and bean burritos with fresh cilantro and green onions for dinner. I was amazed at how hard it was at each meal to avoid thinking about the fact that there was no meat involved. I combated the feeling that my meal was not complete. While I have no interest in becoming a dedicated vegetarian, one day a week (maybe more if it get's easier and I learn to enjoy it) is not outside my grasp.

Basically, it pissed me off that it was hard to do and I obssessed about it so much. That, if nothing else, will keep me motivated to continue with the habit. I don't enjoy it when I feel like something has the better of me. I've always been a sore loser :)

I hate that I haven't been blogging more often but the summer madness here at la biblioteca just seems to swallow me up and too busy to get any posting done at work and too tired to even get on the computer at home. I save all these little scraps of paper with notes to myself about things I'd like to blog about and either I've lost interest in the topic by the time I get the time or I didn't write enough down and I have no idea what the little scrap of paper is talking about. That makes me feel old, let me tell you.

So, here's to a better day! I still won't be blogging when I get home (at least, I don't think so) because tonight KT and I are continuing our Foreign Horror Fest with a Thai flick, Sick Nurses!

From Amazon:

In a neglected hospital seven young nurses and a respected doctor have been selling body parts of dead patients on the black market. When one of the nurses falls in love with the doctor she urges them all to get out of the scam. Threatening to go to the police she is viciously murdered and dies uttering a vengeful curse. Seven days later her tormented soul longing to find its love returns. Preying on each of the women s obsessions and weaknesses she exacts her horrifying revenge.

BWAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA!

! ! ! this just in ! ! !

a young teenage boy and I just had a very embarrassing encounter in which I heard him say, "Do you have the book Tell Him He's Gay?".

The young boy subsequently looked like the carpet had just severed his legs and nearly yelled, "No! Ptolemy's Gate!".

I'm certain the you, dear reader, are empathizing with the same chagrin as I.

that is all.

pastoral reflections

BEFORE

AFTER

I wish I could say it still looked this nice but alas, that was about 2 weeks ago so it's getting ragged. It will be cut every 3 weeks 'cause that's what I can barely afford. I love my yard though, it's nice and flat and I have some nice St. Augustine in the front but some kind of fescu from hell in the back (which you can see swaying in the breeze in the first photo)!

just for comparison

Here is my first Sips-n-Strokes effort (that's mine on the right), which I affectionately refer to as The Wound!

And here is the second! From left to right, T, KT, and me. Our muse was Monet's Water Lilies but I still think mine looks like a UFO invasion gone awry...with three of the unfortunate crafts engulfed in flame. I was pretty proud of my plant on the bottom right, but it was not in Monet's unfortunately. I could just see the way this was heading and decided that corner is where I would make my mark! KT's and T's look more like water lilies to me but all three paintings photographed pretty well!

brand spankin' new little boy!

Welcome to the world Mathias! Isn't he handsome? You should have seen his dad changing a MASSIVE "duece" for the first time. I think he used an entire pouch of wipes :)

He loves his momma already!




The happy family!

Mrs. Roomie delivers!

Mrs. Roomie's husband just called to say that Mrs. Roomie had the baby today. They chose not to learn the sex of the baby before it was born so there was tremendous excitement today I'm certain. I just got off the phone with MRH and I now realize I forgot to ask his name! However, this not-so-little bundle was 9lb4oz and 20.5 inches long!

Yay for Mrs. Roomie and DH! I'm going over to the hospital after work so I'll have more later.

uber jealous

ah, to be a bookseller in LA during Book Expo....

*nerd alert klaxon pealing madly*

I cannot begin to tell you how much I would LURVE to go here!

The hills are alive.....!!!! (and no, I'm not talking about Silent Hill or The Hills Have Eyes)

cause and effect

So I did go to the pool this morning and stayed for about an hour and a half. Earlier in the morning (since the dogs wanted up at 6am), I watered flowers in the front and back yards because the owner asked me to. I don't charge an extra fee for plant care simply because I don't mind watering plants. I get to be a temp gardener, then forget about it a week later :) But, since I spent so much time making sure the little delicates were thoroughly soaked this morning, OF COURSE it has been one line of thunderstorms (the first of which had me highsteppin' away from that pool let me tell you, nothing like a little cloud to ground lightning to get you moving) after another all afternoon.

I'm somewhat ashamed to say that I slept all afternoon while it thundered and rained outside and now I've started George R.R. Martin's fourth in the epic Song of Ice and Fire series, A Feast for Crows. Thanks to KT and KP for getting me started on this series. I AM ENCHANTED!.....well, with the series but not personally enchanted. A Dance With Dragons is due out in September!

I hope everyone had a great weekend even if it has been quite soggy!