TP or not TP. That is the question.

Are you a tp innie or outie? I'm an outie. That means that when I replace the toilet paper roll, I have it roll from the top and hang over the front.

My best friend is an innie. She has the tp roll from the back.

I don't do that because I don't think it should touch the wall. She does it because she thinks it looks tidier.

For the past 8 years, we've always switched each other's tp around when we're at each other's houses. Yes, I recognize how infantile that is. Yes, I'm going to keep doing it.

There is an entire pro and con argument out there on the web - and it's pretty divided. How do you hang your tp?

Squirrels with Pants and Stupid Boys

I haven't decided if I care about Ultrasonic Squirrels.

But, it does remind me suddenly of an ex-boyfriend (way ex, I mean like highschool ex). I wrote him a note (do adolecents still do that?) and mentioned this squirrel that was wearing trousers (you've seen them! In the spring, when they're not done shedding) and this guy, this ASSHOLE (boys are so stupid) focused on the fact that I had misspelled the word squirrel and wrote me a three-page note in which he mocked my spelling of the word! I was so humiliated. He didn't get it when I broke up with him, either. Stupid, stupid boys. (Oh, except you, Arthur).

The Many Faces of Ted

As a woman, I can't help but admire Keanu Reeves, not because he's a good actor (which, obviously he isn't), but because he's so darn lovely. I do admit, however, that once I watched Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, I cannot picture him as anyone other than Ted Theodore Logan. So, I've come to think of every movie he's in (or at least every one that I've seen) as a new adventure for Ted. Let me show you:

Ted Goes to Pre-Revolutionary France
Ted Knocks Up Diane Weist's Daughter
Ted Kills a Dude, Well, Kinda
Surfer Ted
Ted in Transylvania
Ted Tries Public Transportation
Ted Talks to Dolphins
Ted Messes with Atoms
Legally Ted
Ted vs. Agent Smith I
Ted vs. Agent Smith II
Ted vs. Agent Smith III
Ted Makes Quarterback
Rich Ted Finds Love
Ted Dates a Cougar

Blow Hard

You know how you hear about how an advertiser has hidden some sexual message in their magazine ad somewhere, but it's always really vague, and difficult to tell if it's really there? Not in this case.

Strange Things Are Afoot at the Circle K

First of all, 10 points to whoever can place the origin of this post title.

Second, something strange is going on at the big city library today. I went there to get The Salmon of Doubt - the last book by Douglas Adams. The library apparently had two copies. Imagine my surprise when I found that not only were those books not there, but there were no DNA books on the shelves at all! Not in hard cover, not in large print, not in paperback, and not in the books on tape section.

Clearly, I thought, something is amiss. I asked the librarians, helpful souls that they are, and they gave me that patronizing, motherly look that says "You poor troglodyte, let me enlighten you." Until they got to the shelves and realized that I. Was. Right.

Since the almighty system showed that the books were in, I can only assume that some selfish patron was collapsing under the weight of carrying all those Douglas Adams books in their arms somewhere within the confines of the library. I considered hunting them down, but then realized I didn't have enough time, as I had to get back to the office. People need me here. Yeah.

I settled for an early novel by John Irving - a good writer, albeit, but obviously a bit more weighty in his topics of choice than good old DNA.

This is certainly a mystery for the ages. OK, not the ages, but certainly for the week. I think I'll pop in tomorrow and see if they've found out where the stuff went. My daughter thinks that when you put books in the return chute, they go to another world. Maybe she's right.

This is my life...

I'm reduced to ironing name labels on socks in preparation for my son going to summer camp. Socks!

I'm not sure why I'm even sending him with a fresh pair for every day of the week - they'll all still be as I sent them when he comes back. Hmmm, a week without brushing his teeth or changing his underwear. It's every 8-year-old boys' dream.

HGTTG Movie

Wondering who's going to be in the upcoming Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie? Here you go.

That's all I've got today. I'm in the throes of final preparation for my husband's family reunion (it's this coming weekend) and it's causing me great personal angst. It's sucked the clever clean out of my psyche.

Also - sorry for the complete lack of posts lately (see above). I will be back in action soon.

Go Ken Jennings!

You know Ken Jennings is going places when he gets his own Top 10 list from Letterman.

Hypochondriacs Unite

Curse the internet! I make my living from researching stuff off the internet, but curse it! It's making me a hypochondriac.
 
Frankie Mouse has been doing some weird stuff with his eyes this week. For no apparent reason he opens his eyes really wide, looks up, then opens his mouth really wide. He does this about every 1/2 hour or so. We asked him why, and he says it's because his lower eyes are "sticking" and he has to open them.
 
He's going to see the eye doctor on Friday, but of course, I had to check things out on some health sites. Clearly he has Tourettes and not allergies or an eye infection as I had earlier thought. Hmmmm.

Frankie's In Love, Benjy's Exploring Her Options

As a former little person, I know I would hate it if my mother ever wrote about my social life on her blog (and I would be confused as well, because the Internet, much less blogging, did not exist when I was a little person), but as a mother, I find it all very cute and quite within my sphere of rights to air his laundry to the world for my amusement.

Frankie Mouse (aka my 8-year old son) is having a major battle of wits with this nasty little girl in his karate class. They hate each other. Can't be in the same room together, in fact. Obviously, they're in love - or at least in the kind of love where you push the girl you like into a snow bank.

Chloe is home-schooled and quite well-spoken. Frankie announced that "his feet were killing him" one day and she replied "I hope they succeed." If I were her mother, I'd be really impressed with her quick wit. As Frankie's mother, I'm officially appalled. Frankie is a smart kid, but he's not quick with the come-backs (he's like George Kastanza - he thinks of a great reply much too late). He's been rehearsing, though, and now his standard reply is, "Whatever, doll!" which infuriates her to no end.

Yesterday, though, he crossed the line. As soon as everyone was in formation on the dojo, Frankie put up his hand and proclaimed, "I have an announcement!" The dojo quieted, "Chole annoys me." He went on to say that even though she's mean and nasty, he feels sorry for her because she doesn't have any friends, whereas he has lots....He was cut off by Sensei before he got any further. (In my parental defense, I wasn't there when this went down - I heard about it later, and he's been grounded).

Needless to say, Sensei spent a better part of the class lecturing the two of them on the seven principles of the black belt and how they're not living by them. They've been warned and threatened to be civil or risk being thrown out. Ahhh, love...

In other news, Benjy Mouse (aka my 4-year old daughter) announced that both Curtis and Katie (at day care) want to marry her. She hasn't made a decision, but thinks it would be better to marry a boy. I agree, but I don't want to pigeon-hole her. I also pointed out that I didn't meet my husband until Senior year of university, so she might want to give it some time.

Parenting in the new millenium is such a treat.

Happy Girl

Got the books on tape from the big city library, so I'm much happier today. Also, Arthur let me spend several hundred dollars at Ikea and Rona yesterday, so I'm feeling very, very happy now.

Steamed like a Clam

Not the happiest morning today. 

I like to listen to books on tape on my way to work - it's a long drive and it passes the time nicely. I would listen to books on CD, but the hick-town library to which I am a slave has not progressed to CD's as of yet. I think they're just getting rid of their record collection (yes, that's right vinyl), so I shouldn't expect too much. 

Anyhoo, I was on the last side of the last tape of The World Below when all of a sudden it just ended mid-paragraph. I looked for another tape, rewound and fast forwarded the tape a few times and came to the conclusion that there must be more tapes that are not in the box. But, there are only 4 cassette-holding spots in the box, and it says very clearly on the catalog information that there are 4 cassettes in all. 

I work in a big city. So, I checked the big-city library's online catalog this morning - there are supposed to be 6 cassettes (unless the one I had was abridged and this other one is full-length, but then that's some really pathetic abridgment to end mid-paragraph without any wrapping up or closure, and really, not making sense at all....). My conclusion is that they've always been missing these other cassettes, and the library just doesn't know it. 

Now, I wasn't the first person to get out these tapes - there are about 8 earlier due date stamps before mine on the library check-out sticker (yes, my library has not progressed to the computer receipt thing yet - like I said, it's hick-town). This, of course, begs the question - why didn't anybody else notice???? Or did they notice and just not say anything? Or did they tell the library staff, and they didn't check into the issue? 

To top things off, once I'd admitted defeat on my hour-trek to work, I decided to pop the first tape of another book in. Guess what? It starts mid-tape. I've tried rewinding it and fast forwarding it, but it won't budge. I was thinking that maybe there was something wrong with my cassette player, but alas, no - that's not it. I'm fairly angry now. 

I decided to check out the 6 tape version of the book at lunch from the big-city library, but then Arthur called. He was in town and finished with an appointment early, so would I like to go to lunch? How could I turn down lunch with Arthur? I hate to be so uncynical, but really - I love meeting him for lunch. 

So - off we went, and now I don't have time to go to the library. I will try to go tomorrow. In the mean time, the suspense is killing me (ok, not really, but I don't like listening to the radio when I drive). I wonder if I'll bother telling the library staff about the books on tape, or if I'll just throw them in the return chute.
 
[Sigh]

You Always Have Time for Tim Hortons

Went through the Tim Horton's drive thru today and got a still-warm chocolate chip muffin. Mmmmmmm. Love the Tim's.

Canadian cities have one on every block (we have two in our hick town) but many Americans have never had the pleasure of a large with cream, double-cupped. So sad.

The Importance of Being Emailed

Do you ever have one of those days when you can see the threads between disparate pieces of information? I'm having one of those days.
 
I was listening to the audiotape of The World Below by Sue Miller in my car today and she was talking about how email snippets kept over time act like a diary for us now, meaning that anyone who went to the trouble of going through our various email correspondances might get an idea of who we were and what we were all about. Very interesting, I thought.
 
Then, I ran into Jason Clarke's Bigger Boat post today that starts off on the email as a waste of paper rant, but turns into a discussion of how email is really a repository of ourselves over time. He also discusses Salon.com's Too Much of a Good Thing on how email is inefficient and needs to be replaced, which brought me to Carmi Levy's recent article in Processor.com called Turn it all Off which makes basically the same point.
 
I, personally am addicted to email in about the same way I am blogging, so it was all very interesting. I like when I can make all of those connections. I wonder if it was because I finally rented Signs last night?

Canada Rocks

According to the latest UN development ratings, Canada is the 4th best place in the world to live. And, yes, we beat the U.S. by a longshot.

Not surprising, but really cool.

I'm an apathetic loser, but I don't care

It's recently come to my attention that I'm an apathetic loser. I've suspected as much for some time, but I've confirmed it now. I came to this realization while I was listing out the things I'm "in charge of" at home.

I don't cook. It's not that I can't cook (which I can't), it's that Arthur likes cooking, so I never bothered to learn, and now I expect him to do the cooking.

I don't garden. It's not that I don't like to garden, just that I didn't really know how, and Arthur seems to enjoy it, so I don't bother with that either.

I don't take care of our finances. OK - in this case, Arthur is a financial advisor, so it would seem kind of silly if I took care of it. I'm not sure on which days of the month I even get paid - but Arthur knows.

I don't buy groceries. I usually come along for the ride, but I don't make the purchasing decisions. My rationale is that Arthur is the one who cooks, so he should decide what we buy.

So, what do I do, you might ask? That's a reasonable question. I've figured out that, basically, I do all the things that Arthur doesn't like doing. Not because I like doing them, just because there's a void there that needed to be filled, and since I have extra time, what with not having to cook, garden, shop, or pay the bills, it falls to me to complete them.

So - I do the laundry (sometimes Arthur will help wash the laundry, but I generally fold it, and ALWAYS put it away), I clean the toilets (ah - the glamour), I help the kids with homework, I empty the dishwasher, and I talk to our mothers on the phone. I'm sure there's other things, but I'm noticing that the list isn't very interesting, and doesn't promise to get better if I really think about it.

If I wasn't such an apathetic loser, I could have claimed the more interesting household tasks, but I didn't really care. So now I do all the mundane chores. I could fight for my right to garden, but (and this is how I'm sure I'm an apathetic loser), it doesn't make that big of a difference to me...

So why am I even ranting? I don't know - just something to write about...guess I'll get back to scrubing toilets.

Jesus Remains Hidden

Well, we survived our trip to the cottage (OK - it was more like a "summer home" than a cottage - realistically, if the place is nicer than your primary residence, it should be upgraded from cottage to summer home. I'm pretty adamant on this topic).

We wimped out on the whole Jesus thing, though. Sigh.

I almost pushed their 8-year old kid off the boat, though, when he started correcting my definitions. Frankie wanted to know what a wake was, and I said it was the splashy stuff behind the boat, so as to keep it simple. Of course, the little annoyance had to say, "That's not what it is, Trillian, it's...(and here I stopped listening to him because his defination wasn't that of a wake).

I wanted to say: "See! Right there. That's why no one likes you!" but I sensed that this might upset his parents (In retrospect, I guess I should have, given my last post on this topic). Frankie Mouse doesn't like him either, he calls him a "know it all". My husband calls him an "ass" which I think is more to the point. Not really his fault though, I think it's a lack of good parenting. Nonetheless, we were fairly leisurely in commanding Frankie Mouse to stop pushing him off the dock. (Oh, stop gasping - he was fine! And really, any true boy would have pushed Frankie back).

Before we left for the (ahem) cottage, I demanded that Arthur stop at his office and pick up hisnotebook computer so that I could do some writing on the way up (it's a four hour drive). Good thing, too. I wrote for at least 10 minutes before I put the laptop away and didn't touch it again until I unpacked it from the car when we got home last night. Sigh.

Anyhoo - I promise to write more this week. And I envision it being very entertaining (well, at least for me)...

Old People and Cars Don't Mix

This is what happens when you don't administer driving tests to the elderly early enough. This was taken from a Dayton Ohio police red-light enforecement camera. (Don't worry - the old lady and the Subaru driver escaped with minor injuries and the pedestrian lived). You can read the whole account at Snopes.

I can certainly understand why she was driving so fast - if you've only got a few years left on this earth, you'd likely be in a hurry to get everything done. It makes more sense than the blue hairs driving at the speed of snail in their white Cadillacs...But who am I? I'll see when I'm 75 I guess.

Have you found Jesus?

My slightly annoying friend (you know, the one that loves the mobile) invited us up to their cottage (a modest $1M shack) so far in advance that we couldn't come up with an excuse not to go. As the date approaches, Arthur and I are becoming more apprehensive. He has pointed out that the 2 days we'll be spending there comprise 20% of my total annual vacation allotment.

We are determined to make them despise us so as not to seek our company for future outings. After much musing, we've decided to pretend that we've found God and attempt to convert them over the vacation. This is better than my original plan of just pickling myself in an alcoholic stupor.

I am determined. I will prevail.

Chicks and Cars

I saw my second Crossfire today. Both in the same neighbourhood (and before you get smart, they were two different colors). Nice car. Chrysler is finally grabbing some style.

But, the MINI will always be my true love. [Sigh]. Some day.

Welcome New Readers (Mom)

Hoo. Very good long weekend. We had a great last minute Canada day BBQ on Thursday and I got a little (heh heh, understatement) tipsy and told my family about my blog. Hi Mom! (I guess I'll have to watch my language). It was bound to happen sooner or later. At least I'll have one for-sure reader now...

Welcome Baby Dylan!

My best friend had her baby yesterday - a sweet little boy named Dylan. Their third boy in the litter. Hope mom is feeling ok.

HAPPY CANADA DAY!

A big happy birthday to Canada today!