Crazy Bob’s House of Random Thoughts

Current Mood: Mischievous

OK, I haven’t updated in awhile I realize.  Honestly there hasn’t been much going on.

I’m taking a class - as of Monday I will be exactly half way through it, which makes me happy.  I’ve had one piece workshopped already and people really liked it.  I have another one being workshopped on the 16th, I think it is and I THINK I have to revise one of those two for the "final".

Today is Independence Day and we haven’t done really anything.  We went to bed late, we slept late.  There are no fireworks this year due to something about almost burning down the Capitol last year.  (picky! Picky!)

Um… my cats are still insane.  I have made it through 1 season of Gilmore Girls on DVD in an effort to go back and watch all 7 seasons again.  I’d forgotten what an awesome show it was.

I never got contacted by the police or anyone for my brilliant act of heroism.  I’m crushed.  I should have gotten a medal or something.

My parents are coming to visit soon.  Should be exciting.

To make up for my lack of interestingness I leave you with the following video which made me laugh and maybe tear up a little, ’cause its pretty funny and cool and kind of touching in a way.

Tags: random, youtube

Current Mood: Shocked

I had my normal Tuesday in the city yesterday, and after I stopped in the Harvard Bookstore to wait for Ken who also had a meeting thing he had to be at.

When I walked in I happened to notice this weird/creepy looking guy rifling through the tshirts. The only reason I noticed him really, is because frankly the tshirts are not THAT great, and he was pulling out a large pile of them.

A few mins later I was sitting in a chair toward the back and I noticed this same guy putting said pile of tshirts into a shopping bag. He didn’t look around or really seem nervous or anything, but for some reason the situation made my Spidey Sense tingle. I think it may have been because one of the store workers was kind of hovering in the area, which made me think something was up.

After he put the shirts in the bag, he put another bag on top of them and started casually walking toward the door. I was pretty certain at that point that he had not paid for them so I quietly mentioned something to the front desk and went back to doing my own thing.

A few mins later the worker who had previously been hovering came up and tapped me on the shoulder to ask me if I had actually seen him put the shirts in the bag. I told her I had, and she asked me if I would be willing to come talk to the police. I agreed and walked up to the front where there were four cops trying to talk to the guy who was yelling out "I didn’t do nothing! My bag was empty! You got nothin on me!" I’m all thinking "dude, you didn’t even TRY to be discreet about it!"

So I gave a brief statement to the police and then repeated it to both the owner and the manager. They took down my address and phone number and said they’d be in touch.

Meanwhile the guy saw me giving a statement and starts yelling "I’m gonna sue you! Better get a laywer bitch ’cause your ass is going down!" This freaked me out a little and I’m thinking "OMG I’m gonna have to go to court and be cross examined and all!" I had this sudden Perry Mason mental image thing going on. It was later explained to me it’s unlikely I’ll have to do anything and even if I do, they’ll probably just have me come to the station and record a brief statement. That was mildly dissapointing, as Perry Mason was kind of hot for an old guy.

Anyway, so this guy starts yelling and trying to get away. Next thing I know he’s being pinned against the wall by four cops who are trying to hold him down long enough to cuff him. He was resisting like crazy, but for all the horror stories you hear about cops, they were actually trying to be fairly nice to him. The funny part is in the middle of all this the guy starts yelling "BRUTALITY! BRUTALITY!" I’m thinking "HUH!? WTF?! Dude that is SOO not brutality!"

So that was my big adventure of the day. I admit I was a little shaken up after. I’ve never been in a situation quite like that before and y’know I get nervous leaving voice mail for people, much less talking to a bunch of people wearing uniforms and guns.

I feel bad for the store because they said they’ve been getting hit regularly for over a week now, but I’m glad that I was able to help catch the guy, even if there’s not going to be any Perry Mason action.

Tags: bookstores, random, shopping

Current Mood: Annoyed

On the list of things I will never understand is WHY my cat decides that the food bowl area is where he MOST wants to be at just the point when I decide it needs cleaning/sweeping.

Sylvia was mrowing that his water bowl was low. I noticed it looked kinda skank, so I decide to rinse both bowls out and refill them. I figured that while I was at it, I might as well shake out the towels that sit underneath them and sweep up the dropped bits of dry food, dust bunnies etc that gather there.

The very second I decided to do this, Sylvia ran over in record speed (which I will never understand since he hobbles the entire rest of the time due to arthritic back legs) and smushed himself against the wall in the very area I’m trying to clean out.

I tried to shoo him away with the broom and he flattened himself on the floor refusing to budge. I tried gently pushing him off to the side with my foot. He dug his claws into the floor and would not be swayed. I fussed at him to move and he looked at me and went "MROW!" which I think is to say "Hell No, We Won’t Go!" (I suspect I have the only politically motivated cat on the planet) Finally I picked him up by the scruff of the neck and set him over to the side. Of course as soon as I picked him up, he managed to make every fiber of his being go completely limp so that when I set him down he stumbled backward letting out a pitiful whimper as if to convey the worst agony that could ever befall a cat was nothing compared to the agony he had just suffered.

FINALLY I got the area cleaned up and everything back in its proper place at which point he gave me a scolding I would not soon forget, and walked away without a second glance.

Sigh.

Tags: cats

Current Mood: Mellow

I have long heard nasty rumors that state things like "Six o’clock actually comes twice a day", "The big fireball up in the sky won’t kill you," etc, etc.

I didn’t REALLY believe that any of the afforementioned activities would do me grave harm, but I thought it best not to take the risk. Apparently however, I was out voted or someone didn’t take into account the fact that I simply do not do mornings, because yesterday we were up at 6am to get ready to take The Teen to the airport.

It was quite amusing actually. The Kid is very much like me in that she’s not a morning person and can easily stay up till 2 or 3 am without really realizing she’s done so. So when 6 am came after all of us getting to be around 1:30 the night before, she was NOT a happy camper. She stumbled out groggily, got dressed, fumbled to the car where she slept the entire way to the airport. She staggered into the terminal and headed in the wrong direction. Thankfully I was feeling somewhat alert by this point, so I was able to direct her to the ticket counter so she could check her bag.

We then got her over to security and watched till she made it through. Finally, I called her about 15 mins before her plane was scheduled to take off to make sure she actually made it onto the flight.

One amusing moment came when we were standing in line for security, and Ken asked her "So where do you fly through?" She shrugged and said "I dunno." He then said "And you have your boarding pass right?" and she’s all "Um… I think so." We shook our heads and rummaged through till we found it, at which point Ken asks her "So, did you take your medicine this morning?" She stared down at her feet and muttered "I forgot." He’s all "Well, where is it, maybe you can take it at the gate." She looked sheepish and pointed back to the bag check counter and said "In my checked bag." Thankfully, my husband is used to dealing with teenagers, and after almost 14 years of marriage, with people with ADD, so he just shook his head and laughed.

All in all we had a good time. She took tours of Harvard, Brown and RISD (Rhode Island School of Design). She’s decided that Brown is her favorite of all the schools she’s looking at, much to the chagrin of her parent’s pocket book.

After we dropped her off at the airport, we went down to Wakefield I think it was, to a little place called Blue Bird Cafe. We just discovered it exists and I am very excited about it! Namely because Blue Bird is my favorite breakfast place in New Orleans. As it turns out, the owners sold the one in New Orleans or franchised it out or something, and moved up here and opened the same thing! Finding a tiny slice of home up here is great, especially when I’ve been feeling more homesick lately.

The apartment seems rather quiet now. And though I’m happy to have my bed back, I had no idea teenagers could be so talkative!!

But we survived, and apparently if all goes according to plan, we are going to be surrogate parents for a college student in a little over a year. God help us all.

Tags: family, new orleans, random

Current Mood: Busy

So we have company coming early next week. The daughter of some friends of ours is going to be a senior in high school next year and is coming up for a few days to look at colleges. Now I won’t get into the fact that I’ve known this child since she was about 2 or 3 years old, and the fact that Ken and I had just gotten engaged when I met her technically means we (Ken and I) are of an age that we could have a kid getting ready for college. No, that’s not going to be explored at all, because that would mean I’m old and that just isn’t the case.

Anyway, so, this very young, and exceptionally bright and advanced child who is of an extremely tender age, (because hello 17 today is WAAAAAAAAY younger than 17 was when I was 17, which was only about 5 years ago, right, internet?) is coming to take tours of Brown and Harvard and RISD. Essentially what all this means is that we’re frantically cleaning the house to make it look less like a tornado came roaring through and more like someone who is not necessarily the tidiest person in the world, but also certainly not tornado like lives in it.

So Ken and I were in the bedroom a few mins ago. He was hanging stuff up in the closet, I was alternately tackling the decades old laundry pile and re-organizing my tshirt drawers because whenever I go to find a tshirt to wear, I invariably decide I don’t want to wear the one I pulled out, but instead want the one that’s on the bottom of the pile. This means all the other tshirts get pulled out and unfolded and unceremoniously wadded up and dumped back in.

Anyway, back to the point. I was folding, Ken was hanging, and then he mentioned that the washer needed swapping. So he walked out and I hear "Stop looking at me like that!" I saunter out to check if he’s talking to the cat or having those hallucinations again. And there sitting in the middle of the floor staring into the bedroom is the cat looking almost agape as if to say "WTF are you doing?!" I made the comment to him that he should stop staring because really its not like our cleaning sprees are THAT infrequent. He looked over at his brother who was asleep on the couch and I swear he meowed, and I think what that meow said was "Gizmo, I need your help. Mom and Dad have gone nuts, we don’t have oposeable thumbs but somehow we need to call the psych ward!" Only the meow sounded more like well, mrow, because that’s how cats talk.

But for now, the bedroom is looking almost like someone who actually folds and puts away their laundry sleeps there and less like someone simply dumps the clean laundry on the table and rifles through it when they need something to wear, because of course well all know that’s not the case.

Oh, and pay no mind to the cat in the corner.

Tags: cats, family, random

Current Mood: Determined

I’ve been giving it some thought, and I have gained a new mission in life: I am going to radically alter my TV viewership.

See up till now I’ve been a big fan of the "underdog" shows. Things that are sort of on the sci-fi edge, and that make the viewer think a bit. This is apparently not what your Everyman wants to see when they turn on the tube, and so every season I am forced with the invetibly dissapointing moment of waiting to see if my favorite show is going to be renewed. This year was, I believe, an all time high with five - count them - FIVE of my top shows being cancelled.

First there was New Amsterdam. I tried not to get invested too deeply in this show. I had a feeeling it wouldn’t make it. But then the more the episodes revealed the more I grew to like it and then bam, a few weeks after the final episode aired, word trickled down the rumor mill that it was not being renewed.

Then there was Men in Trees. I did not realize this one was having trouble until I was hit with the devestating news of cancellation. I shouldn’t be surprised really. It took a sudden and long haitus mid season, it was moved around about 2 or 3 times to different time slots with no warning. The reality is that if your fans can’t find it, they can’t watch.

And finally, with all the networks announcing their fall schedules there was the last word on Journeyman, October Road, and Moonlight. I had given up hope on Journeyman even before it finished airing. It was too intellectual - sort of a Quantum Leap meets 24. Just not a network winner.

October Road was lucky to get a second season, so that fact that it did not get a third is not terribly surprising, but I would have liked it if they had at least wrapped up some loose ends.

Moonlight however. That one is the shocker. Just about all the TV column writing gurus thought it stood a decent chance of renewal, it was doing decently in it’s time slot, and it had a rabid following that donated over 3,000 pints of blood in a Save our Show campaign.

So, I come to my new goal, or resolve is perhaps more accurate. I have decided that I am going to start religiously watching things like Survivor, Real World, American Idol, um… American Gladiators….. basically all the dumb reality type shows that clog up the airwaves. I figure that since I have this terrific track record for watching shows that inevitibly get cancelled, if I start watching the afformentioned shows, they’ll get cancelled and then there will be more room for the shows I REALLY like!

Personally, I think it’s a stellar plan. Whose with me?

Tags: television

Current Mood: Tired

I suck at keeping up with this regularly.

In all honesty it’s primarily because I don’t have much going on to report and the stuff I DO have going on, I don’t feel like talking about…..

I’m somewhat overwhelmed with work stuff. It’s going well, and I actually like my job a lot, I’m just feeling behind and frustrated with myself over that.

I can’t seem to wake up today no matter what I do. I don’t know if I have any caffiene around. I should investigate that.

My excitement in the last couple days has been that the new Buffy comic and the new Angel comic came out yesterday. I haven’t had a chance to sit down and read them yet.

I decided to keep my headphones.

I’m almost caught up on The Tudors. Man, that Henry VIII was sort of a dick. (no offense to the current royal family)

In other news I reformatted my old desktop. It had sort of mostly died several months ago so I got my laptop which I am currently using. In reality I could have probably squeezed more life out of it and gotten a Macbook, but oh well, now I’m lusting after the new iMac’s so y’know……

Anyway, I finished clearing off the rest of my files and reformatted it. The wireless is giving me some fits on my laptop now due to the fact that I had to swap the external USB adaptors on the desktop and laptop because the extra one I had did NOT want to work with the desktop.

I tried putting XP Pro on it last night instead of the Windows Media Center that is pre-installed but that did not go so well. I wound up in this infinite loop of supposedly installing the OS over and over. For a split second there I was REALLY tempted to try the hack of installing OS X on it. I’ve got a new computer that I use for my primary useage, the warranty is expired, what’s the worse that could happen?

I knew it was not exactly kosher, but I did not know that Apple has somewhat agressively gone after people they find out have done it. Poo. If I could be guaranteed not to get screwed, I’d totally try it just to see if I could actually do it.

So it looks like I’m stuck with Media Center unless/until I can figure something else out. I actually did find an old laptop lying around that I didn’t even know we still had. Its too old to be any good to anyone, and can’t be upgraded anymore than it is. (How did we function on computers that only had a 512 MB RAM max?!) Its got a bunch of MP3’s I want to clean off it and than I’m thinking I’ll put Linux on it. I’m not sure which distro. Ubuntu, maybe?

In the meanwhile this blog entry has taken me most of the day to write because I keep getting distracted. But I did find an awesome Pearls Before Swine cartoon that I feel I need to share:

Bloggers
 
OH! I know what’s exciting. We got a Wii! (Isn’t that all cute and punny? - we/wii - yeah, never mind) The thing is AWESOME! I love it! I suck at golf though big time. Oh and I went to Build A Bear awhile back and made a 9th Doctor Bear. I should post pictures of that eventually. It’s clever. Truly. I want a 10th Doctor Bear.

What’s happening in your corner of the blog-o-sphere?

Tags: blogging, random

Current Mood: Dorky

D’oh! moment of the day:

If you press the "restart firefox" short cut in your browser, it y’know, actually restarts firefox.

D’oh!!!

Tags: computers, random postings

Current Mood: Geeky

For the last week or so, I have been on a quest.

Not to slay dragons or save the princess or anything nearly so exciting as that, but a quest nonetheless.  A quest for good headphones.

For the last yearish or so, I’ve been using these cheapo regular Sony headphones that I think I picked up at Target or Borders or something.  I was reasonably satisfied with them until they pretty much literally fell apart last week.  I would simply buy another pair - they were a whopping 10 bucks to begin with - but they don’t make exactly those anymore and the ones they have marketed as a "replacement" model hurt my head when I wear them.

This discontinuation thing has been happening to me with increasing and disturbing frequency.  My favorite hairspray was discontinued about a year ago when the company who makes it decided to rebrand their product.  My favorite shampoo is no longer to be found anywhere.  My second favorite shampoo was redesigned with a new scent and I’m now allergic to it.  My favorite toothbrush?  Poof! Dissapeared to wherever dead toothbrushes go.  Basically it’s a safe bet that if I like something it will be discontinued or "improved" in some way that is totally NOT an improvement.

Ken says I’m being phased out and that soon there will be just a blank picture that once contained my image, hanging around the either.  I told him he’d been watching too much TV.

So, it was with great distress that I found myself looking for a new pair of headphones.  I had a pair of Shure’s that I’d been using for some time, but they would not stay in my ears and they kind of hurt.  So I picked up a slightly nicer pair of Sony over the ear ones.  YOUCH!  Those were way too tight.  Took them back.  Went to the Apple store and talked to a nice guy who suggested a pair of Bang & Olufsen (which honestly sounds a little kinky to me, but whatevers).  So I tried those, but they were too tight on the sides of my head.  Then I tried a pair of Bose earbuds which stayed inside my ears beautifully, but hurt like a mofo! Wound up taking those back as well.  Now I’m trying a pair of Bose on the ear, over the head.  So far I think they’re working.  I had tried them in the store some and liked em.  I think they need a certain break in period though because the ones in the store don’t press as much as these brand new ones.

I have 12 more days - give or take - to figure out if these work.  If not, I think I’m just going to pull a Van Gogh and cut off my ears.  I’ll be posting a lottery to pick that one special friend to be the chosen recipient, so if you want in on the action be sure to get your tickets early……

Oh and if you have any suggestions for good headphones that would work to, but I know you’re all secretly hoping for the ear.

Tags: headphones, music, random

Current Mood: Blah

As you, my intrepid readers can plainly see, it’s been a fair bit since I updated last. I’m sure many of you (well, OK, my sister in law maybe, who keeps pestering me on a daily basis to update) have been wondering what happened to me, or more to the point what has been going on in my life since my last update.

Well, the truth of it is, virtually nothing. We’ve been running errands, doing work related stuff, watching TV, reading other people’s blogs, marvelling at the photos of them drinking martini’s while gardening … um… I did go to Build a Bear a couple weeks ago.

I attempted to make a Ninth Doctor bear , simply because I am that big of a dork.

I also added a couple of action figures to my Doctor Who collection, namely the Tenth Doctor in his pinstripe suit and a Slitheen. Which actually prompted an existential conversation btwn Brie and I, which is why is the Slitheen packaged up with Ten and Rose, when in actuality it was Nine and Rose who encountered the Slitheen. I think someone should bring this gross showing of negligance to the attention of the BBC.

Oh and several people have asked me why I use Twitter, and what benefit I see it serving. Well, personally I use Twitter as it is a way of keeping abreast with the events of my friends lives. Friends who normally tend not to blog that much, or who are otherwise rather lax about keeping in touch.

Since I’ve started using it, I have subscribed to the Twitterings of several news organizations. Namely, NPR, BBC and CNN. I realized today that due to this, I’m more up to date on the events in the world. I actually look at the stories that interest me and I’m more aware of the things I should be like whether or not David Archuletta is advancing to the next round of American Idol, or if Fox has cancelled New Amsterdam as all the rumors say it is going to. Oh, and I’m of course more in tune with election coverage, and breaking news headlines.

Twitter apparently has some other, more practical uses as well, such as helping you get out of jail . (Something to keep in mind if you’re ever arrested by a foreign government, although I suspect its further usefullness is limited).

Plus, you can Twitter (Tweet?) from basically anywhere! There are a bajillion and one Twitter clients out there, several of them mobile. The Twitter web site also has its own mobile version. Someone even once proposed marriage to their girlfriend over Twitter! Which OK, potentially lame, but also kind of sweet in a way.

But, lest I sound like a paid advertisement or something, don’t take my word for it. Go, give it a spin, chronicle the minutae of your life event by event and don’t come crying to me when you can’t quit!

Tags: blogging, random, tech