They're heeeeeere!

Yay! Our new cabinets have finally arrived. They look great in their cardboard boxes, all 30 or so of them. Now we need to get on the stick and get ready for installation. This is kind of complicated and involves moving electric outlets around, checking the floor height to see if the cabinets need to be raised vis-a-vis the new flooring, having the new appliances here so the cabinets can be fit to them, and removing the old cabinets and appliances. Oh, and finding a place for all of our kitchen crap. That last one could be tricky.

So where are we in this giant to-do list? Um, well, I did some of the dishes this morning. And Dave the Handyman is coming by either today or Friday to do some outlet moving and miscellany. The appliances are ordered and arrive on Friday allegedly. And that's it so far.

As an aside, isn't it funny how cats will do whatever they can to get your attention? While I've been typing, Nutmeg was in my lap trying to bite my hands (a charming habit). Then she got up on the desk and placed her little furry body in between the keyboard and monitor, directly in front of the screen. She just stood there and looked at me until I moved her out of the way. Pest. I love this cat, despite her annoying faults (like biting, trying to get into my dinner plate, and rubbing her gums on everything including beer and water bottles). Last night she ate a moth and I let her lick my face anyway.

An evening with David Sedaris

Tonight PB and I went to see David Sedaris at Bend High School. The best part about going to see him is his voice -- you really don't expect a voice like that to come out of his body. He read stories I hadn't heard before (except for one) and had some fun commentary and audience q&a. There's really no way to describe him except "hilarious."

It's been a busy week. The kitchen remodel is about to happen. Cabinets and appliances and flooring have all been ordered and get delivered this week (well, the flooring? who knows at this point). Then it's a whirlwind few days without a kitchen. Hopefully just a few days.

Work is completely insane, but my coworker returns in a week. I just have to make it a few more days, then my job goes back to its normal level of crappiness. As opposed to the insane craptasticness it has been for the past month.

Iditahazard

Here's a cool picture that PB forwarded to me. It appeared in a newspaper story recently in the Juneau Empire.

According to the story, a young woman training for the Junior Iditarod was out running her dog team on the road just outside of Nome when they came upon a herd of musk ox crossing the road. As you can see, the oxen were annoyed and at least one ox charged some of the dogs. A couple dogs had minor injuries, but the woman and her friend the photographer were able to get the dogs back and away safely. As part of the training, the dogs were pulling her truck, so the women jumped out and put all of these dogs in the truck bed and drove off. Never a dull moment in Nome!

Lazy

Wow, what a week it's been! Work has been super-crazy. Did I mention my co-worker is away in France for a month? She deserves the vacation, but that leaves me all alone covering the office. I have twice the caseload I normally have. I also have several people in jail -- meaning I have to drop everything I can to try to resolve their cases quickly. Oh well. I knew it was going to be like this.

So now that it's the weekend, I am totally unmotivated to do anything. PB is happy and healthy. We had an ultrasound on Wednesday. Only one baby! Yay!!! The doctor said he refers to embryos at this stage as "Uncle Bens" because they're about the size of a grain of rice. According to one of our books, by this weekend it's about the size of a chocolate chip. Always food. Anyway, very exciting.

I got disk 1 of the first season of Heroes from Netflix. Good show, so far. Hiro is my current favorite character (this is probably intentional on the writers' part -- his name after all is Hiro). Speaking of names, do you think this is a reference to Hiro Protaganist, the character from Snow Crash? I love Neal Stephenson's books, though I burned out on his Baroque Cycle and stopped right in the middle of the second volume (the Confusion). I was too exhausted to continue.

Lunch break

So I've indulged my bad fast food habit, and here I sit at my desk, wolfing a quarter pounder with cheese and surfing the internet. My pants are getting tighter -- but maybe that's my imagination?

I didn't realize it, but McDonald's is having their annual (?) Monopoly promotion. So I'm sipping my dr. pepper and staring at the game pieces stuck to the side of the cup. A woman on the other side of the cup pronounces that she won $50,000 and that even small town girls can win big. Along the top of the cup, cleverly concealed by the lid, is some smudged fine print that I can't read.

I'm going to see if I can get through the day without unpeeling the game pieces to see if I won. Take that! I wonder how long I can last before curiosity kills me. There, I just threw the cup away.

Oblivion: first impressions

Along with my new xbox 360, I purchased the fourth Elder Scrolls (aka "Lizardface") game -- Oblivion. My first impression is twofold -- the graphics are an incredibly major improvement over Morrowind, and I feel a little overwhelmed at the scale of the game. There's a lot to take in and the first several hours of gameplay I spent exploring around and experimenting.

I'm impressed and sucked in to the gameworld already. Oblivion seems more polished than Morrowind -- more thought-out, somehow. I admit to "gaming" my character a little bit. I get OCD when I play games like this -- I strive to complete every quest and collect every knick-knack and gee-gaw. I can't help myself. So, when I created a character, I have deliberately made it so that I will gain levels slowly. The enemies in the game are supposed to "level" as the main character levels, meaning their toughness increases and their equipment gets better to track with the main character. Right now I would prefer to explore without getting my ass kicked too severely.

So I've made a character that levels up whenever I get skill increases in block, blades, heavy armor, destruction, and restoration (a spellsword -- fighting mage type character). However, I am actually playing the game as a sneaky, back-stabbing, fast-talking, light-armor-wearing, blunt-weapon-using rogue type character. This will ensure a slow level-up process while I explore the world and get my feet wet.

Is this "power gaming"? Or am I playing the game within the game -- the inevitable stat-tweaking and inventory shuffling that occurs in every computer rpg. The fact is, after the introductory dungeon at the beginning, the game recommended that my class be Acrobat, but I chose Spellsword. Why? It sounds cooler.

Prime Suspect - The Final Act

We watched Prime Suspect season 7 this week and it is Teh Shit! It was so good. Helen Mirren's emmy or whatever it is that she won for this was richly deserved. The best part about season 7 is that it incorporates characters and storylines from earlier seasons. It's a very rewarding experience for viewers who have watched all of the previous episodes. I would highly recommend watching the earlier seasons (even the first one, on the grainy no-frills dvd) first, if you are new to the series.

It had a great story, with fantastic acting and tons of twists and turns. This season brings Inspector Jane's alcohol problem to a head. Jane finally retires after one last twisty case. It was a fabulous way to end this series, although I was sad to see it go. Amazing that the first season was 15 years ago.

So cute!!

There's a post at Boingboing today about some unusual, yet super-cute baby Halloween costumes. Here's the link:

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/10/11/tree-air-freshener-a.html

You owe it to yourself to look at the "Peep" costume. There's also a little infant chili pepper costume and one shaped like a hot dog. Adorable!

Edit: Figured out how to post the peep picture. yay!

Mystery solved

The mysterious skin problem I developed recently has been diagnosed by my nurse practitioner as pityriasis rosea, a common harmless noncontagious skin infection. What causes it? Nobody knows, but apparently it could be viral. Also, it's extremely common, though I've never known anyone else who had it. For more info, check out the link (no, the picture doesn't look like what I have, although the nurse said I had a "textbook case" of it).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pityriasis_rosea

PB has started calling me "specky." It doesn't hurt or itch, but it's highly annoying that I will be covered in spots for the next 4-6 weeks.

The going rate...

A couple days ago I was appointed to the first prostitution-related case I've ever had. It would probably surprise you to learn that the going rate for hetero intercourse in Troutdale is $100. Interesting, in a kinda gross way.

We can get civil unionized!!!

Today's big news is about the failed effort by a group (lightly labelled "anti-gay") to get a referendum on the ballot regarding the civil union bill recently signed into law. This means the law will go into effect on Jan.1, 2008, as planned. If someone wants to vote on it, the petition drive will have to start over again next year. By that time, it will be too late. Bwa-hahaha!!

Here's a link:
http://blog.oregonlive.com/breakingnews/2007/10/domestic_parternship_opponents.html

To say I'm surprised that the petition drive failed is an understatement. Oregonians like to have ballot initiatives about every freakin' thing.

In other news, I had to get a flat tire fixed. This involved the folks at Les Schwab breaking off one of my highly annoying (because I don't have the key) wheel locks. Cost of this enterprise? $20 for a replacement socket. I love Les Schwab.

In yet other news, I have a strange, possibly fungal-derived rash all over me. It looks like chicken pox spots. Oh goody.

w00t!

Today I broke down and bought an xbox 360. PB and I were out shopping for appliances, but we heard from the helpful salesgirl that there's going to be a bigger sale in a few days. So we decided to wait. To ease our spirits, PB said we should get an xbox. I feel guilty about dropping such a chunk of change on something so frivolous, but on the flip side it is something I enjoy and will probably suck up a good bit of my future life.

Yesterday we got a new water heater. Not too exciting, I know, but when your water heater breaks, you are damn glad to see a new one. It was a painless installation with friendly plumbers.

Top songs about lost women

I was thinking during my commute this morning about songs that have to do with women who live their lives boozing down at the bar. I came up with these great songs that have to do with that subject. Typically, they are all country songs. I'm sure there's some rock and roll songs that have the same topic, but I couldn't think of any. Rock songs about alcohol usually have a celebratory or encouraging tone, but the songs I'm thinking of are more cautionary. Also, it's hard to find songs about alcohol (or drugs) that focus on women.

So here's my list:

1) Queen of the Silver Dollar -- Emmylou Harris
2) Dim Lights, Thick Smoke -- performed by Ricky Skaggs
3) She's More to be Pitied than Scolded -- performed by Ralph Stanley & friends

The song She's More to be Pitied is actually an old folk ballad, probably dating at least to the turn of the 19th century. I found some old-fashioned lyrics online that are pretty amusing, but would be hard to sing in a modern style. The Stanley version is much better.

I would have posted a top five if I could have come up with five songs. Any suggestions?

EDIT: PB suggested "Little Maggie," a great bluegrass song. "Yonder stands Little Maggie, with a dram glass in her hand." I'm not sure whether this is a cautionary tale -- I'll have to think about it.

Loooooonnng day

So it's 1:40 pm. I just finished lunch. I've been up working since 4 am, and I've been in court from 9 am until 1 pm. Now I have to go back to court for some more bullshit. I'm not sure that I get paid enough to do this.

Rome season 2

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Guitar class again

I did in fact make it to the second installment of my guitar-making class. A few people in the class were like me -- not really sure if they were going to continue with the class. My expectations were pitched pretty low for today's class, and I actually had a lot of fun. We did nothing except bullshit about random guitar stuff for three hours. We also looked at some design plans a few of us actually completed, and we looked over some wood samples. There was a cool wood called cocobolo (spelling?) -- very hard and dense, heavy as a gold bar and probably costs as much.

I got a guitarmaking book over the weekend -- strictly steel-string and classical-style acoustic guitar-making. I think I want to make a little parlor steel-string guitar. Parlor guitars are tiny compared to a typical acoustic. It seems like a complicated process, but also fun. We'll see.

In other news, it looks like we need to get a new hot water heater. The one we have started to leak a little bit just a few days ago. The beginning of the end. So maybe we'll get a solar heater, or maybe one of those tankless ones.

finally

Yes, it's true. PB is finally pregnant, after about 18 months of trying (well, only 12 of those months were with a doctor's help, so the other months don't really count). This is very exciting, and does not yet seem quite real. I just hope everything goes well and that mom and baby stay healthy. Yeah!