Funniest Quote

I was watching a clip from Hillary Clinton's speech she gave in Iowa the other day. I have never laughed so hard. She actually said, "We face a lot of evil men. You know, people like Osama bin Laden comes to mind. And what in my background equips me to deal with evil and bad men?" What makes it even funnier is that she paused right as she was about to say the end of that because she knew she had made a mistake. Painted herself right into a corner.
No Hillary, what does equip you to deal with those types of evil and bad men? (Note: she didn't answer her own question.)

Pony Farm

I couldn't resist. This made me laugh and laugh when I saw it today.

Fixed the one below

Okay, sorry about that, everyone. Blogger was showing the images just fine for a day or two; they just stopped showing up altogether so I hosted them. (Thanks ImageShack!) The terrible jokes should make a little more sense now.

At the moment I'm engaged in a wonderful American pastime-I am procrastinating. I have homework to do for my Safety class (it's the safety cla-a-a-a-a-ass!!) and I really think I can find better things to do than answer questions about product liability. The class is half engineering, half law, and it's pretty interesting, but apparently not quite interesting enough.

Today we had another of those delightful weekend fun days that people with small children apparently aren't able to have (sorry Maury) so we have to enjoy them now. We went across town to see Pan's Labyrinth, because there was only one theater in town that was willing to show it. (Apparently reading while watching a movie isn't a popular thing in the South, The Passion of Christ notwithstanding.) There were only two showings of it during the day, and considering the rarity of theaters in town that were even showing the film, we figured it would be pretty empty, but it was packed. Those of you who know me know how much I hate people who talk in theaters, so crowded houses always make me a little apprehensive, but it was whisper-quiet in there. (Maybe your average ticketholder to a lush foreign film is a little bit more civilized than someone watching, say, Stomp the Yard or something.) Anyway, it was a good movie, not quite like anything we'd seen before. The director, Guillermo del Toro, also made another movie a few years ago, set in the same time period, called The Devil's Backbone. That one's recommended, too, if you've not seen it. Those of you who have fancy new Netflix subscriptions, for instance--there's one for you.

The theater just happened to be about a block from the dealership where I take my car for service (they wash it for you) so I dropped it off for an oil change. We walked to Macaroni Grill for lunch, bought our movie tickets, and then came back to get the car. (Oh, and I saw a Rolls-Royce parked in the parking lot of the Kinko's (!) next door to Macaroni Grill. Who drives a Rolls-Royce to Kinko's??) We drove over to the theater and had a little time before the movie started, so we stopped in at the video game store and finally had a chance to play with a Nintendo Wii! Neither of us had played on one of those yet, so we took some time to do so. It's fun! Then we saw the movie, hit Sam's Club and the grocery store and came home. (There was a gorgeous Dodge Viper parked in the handicap spot at Sam's. What are the odds of a person actually being able to contort his or her body to be able to fit into such a small car actually being handicapped in some way? Something seems fishy here.) After a brief but whirlwind cleanup effort of the house, we ate dinner and now here we are!

I want ice cream. While at the grocery store, I bought stuff to make a couple of batches of chocolate ice cream, but I forgot that it needs to be cooked first, and then you leave it in the fridge for a little while to cool before it's made into actual ice cream. So...even if I made the base right now, I couldn't have ice cream until tomorrow, at the earliest. Dang it. I want some ice cream...

Hunting Magazine...?

We get a lot of hunting and shooting magazines at work. They get placed in our department, so there's always something new. Yesterday I saw one called "American Waterfowl" or something, and while I'm pretty sure it's a hunting magazine, this headline led me to question that:

Is this a hunting magazine, or a British men's magazine? Is this article written by Austin Powers? Then I looked inside, at the table of contents, and became even more confused:

I don't know what this means, and I don't want to know what it means. (Sorry for the B&W scans; we don't have a color scanner at work.)

The competitive sport of restoration

I have been working on my project for a few days now and I ran into a little problem. I needed a copy of a restoration plan from another theater so that I can use it as a reference. My mentor suggested I posted a call for info on several different listserves (email lists), bulletin boards and websites. I only managed to get the info off to two listserves so far and already I have gotten 30 contacts from all over the country from people who used to attend USC. Pretty amazing.
I also had to join a couple of professional organizations to get some info and help, so now I can say I belong too.
Today I was asked by the owners to give a presentation next week to some of the potential financial contributors for the theater. I am really excited to share the information I have found so far. I only wish I could find the answer to a question I have been trying to decipher since last semester. See, I found this picture of the building dating back to 1905, but the building looks nothing like it does now, and neither does the adjoining building. As far as I can figure out it must have been demolished in the two years it was empty and rebuilt. The problem is that I can't find any proof. Most city government documents are stored at the archives, but my city for some reason is not and so far the particular agency that does have them is elusive at best. (I am starting to think it is all a government conspiracy and that I should call Mulder and Scully.)
In class today, one of my classmates who had also done some preliminary research on the theater, asked if he could see my research. But he made the unfortunate mistake of asking to "see my crap about the theater." Oh no sir. My research is not crap. He thought I was joking with him, but I was very offended by that statement. He also mentioned that he would like to do the nomination to the NRHP (using my research), which I have already done and am just waiting for the building to be eligible after the restoration project. That really bothered me. I would be happy to work with him jointly on the nomination, but the research is already done and the nomination is written so there is nothing for him to do. Now I am worried that he is going to try to get the nomination through under his name. I never thought my work would be competitive.

School Night!

Today was the first day of the last semester of the rest of my life. In just four more months, I'll have finished my master's degree in mechanical engineering. Yay, me! As you all know, I do a distance learning program thing, where all my class lectures are stored in video format (Windows Media) online, so I can watch them after I get home from work. It's worked very well, and, now that we have this laptop, I'm excited about the prospect of not having to be tethered to my desk to watch class.

I know, I know; rough, huh? Tell all the people who have to slog through the ice and snow, uphill both ways, to class; see how much sympathy I get. But it's nice. I watched my class tonight from my comfy recliner chair, which, I'll tell you, beats my desk chair.

But last night was nice, too. Wife got some movie gift certificates for a Secret Santa present (and a few more when she quit her job, I might add) so we decided to go see a movie last night (Children of Men, which was fantastic). Then, before the movie, we decided to go all out and go get dinner, too, turning it into a full date night. We can't do that stuff now that school is back in! And now I'm listening to Isis and posting this, also from my recliner chair.

I think I'll go get my book and read upstairs in the Reading Room while Wife finishes her movie.

Last day, new "job" and changing attitudes

Friday was my last day at hospice. I was rushing to get all sorts of last minute things done, and ended up leaving about 20 minutes later than I intended. (Oh well.) I was very sad to not see some every day, but glad not to see some others. It was also hard to leave my comfort zone of college job, but good that I will be moving toward my career. This last year has been an eye opener for me since I realized that I am about to be done with my bachelors degrees and moving onward and upward. I also realized that I DO have skills as a preservationist and that I can start working in my field now, rather than later when I finish my masters.
It is nice to move onto the next chapter of my life, and I am really looking forward to the many things that I hope will happen in the next few years. I am not starting to get the "fever" as my friends are saying, but I, and the hubby, are looking forward to having children in the next few years. (Still going to finish my masters first though.) It is funny though that as soon as you even HINT that you are interested in having kids people start planning your baby shower and such. Apparently it also leads to the incessant questioning, "Are you pregnant?"I had just stopped getting that question weekly and then I had to open my mouth.
So before any of you smart alecks start questioning, No I am not! And I will tell you when that day comes.

Textbooks

This weekend I purchased my textbooks for the upcoming semester--my last before receiving my Master's degree. That makes this, quite possibly, the last time I will ever have to purchase textbooks for myself. There is a chance that I will continue and get a Ph. D. at some point, but for the foreseeable future, I've been gouged by a bookstore for the last time.

Of course, when the Wife starts grad school this fall, she'll still be buying textbooks, so this isn't the last set of textbooks we'll ever buy. But then it'll only be one set, rather than two.

Also this weekend we went to Target to get a new bookshelf--our literary collection (if you can call Stephen King books, fantasy novels, and Harry Potter books that (no, that's not all we have; there are some legitimate works of literature in there, too; some of which I've actually read (and enjoyed))) continues to grow, and we want to take the DVDs off the big bookshelf in the front room and put books there instead. Thrilling, I know. So Target had a nice display for a CD/DVD display shelf thing that would have been perfect--real wood, good price--but they, of course, had none in stock. Nice. So we've ordered them online and they'll be coming shortly, along with our new laptop, and the aforementioned textbooks.

Maybe the mailman deserves a bonus.

Superman Returns

We watched Superman Returns last night. This, of course, is the new Superman movie that X-men director Bryan Singer made instead of doing the third X-men movie (which then turned out to be pretty poor). Anyway. The movie itself was pretty good, but one line of dialogue stuck in my craw a little bit.

When Superman finally returns to Metropolis, Daily Planet editor Perry White is rallying his reporters to inspire them to go find out about Superman and write some good articles. "Fashion-is he wearing a new cape? Health & Fitness-has he lost weight?" that kind of thing. He then asks,

"Does he still stand for truth, justice...all that stuff?"

"All that stuff?" You mean, "the American way," as in, "truth, justice, and the American way?" Because that is the original catchphrase, of course. Superman is an absolutely quintessential American creation. He represents America's strength and can-do attitude. They chose to mangle his catchphrase in a most politically correct way...wonder why? Would adding the words "the American way" hurt the foreign box office take or something ridiculous like that? This movie was, on one level, an allegory of the beating America's reputation has taken worldwide in the last few years. (On another level, Superman represents a Christ-figure, and one could argue that the movie has a positive religious message, which is very unusual for a mainstream Hollywood film, but that's another essay.)

I guess my point is that, I know it's considered socially unacceptable in Hollywood to say positive things about the United States. This film, while coming off with a strong pro-America message ("we're still here and we're still needed"), was made by people who were unwilling to actually say so out loud. What a bunch of cowards.

Before and After

The hubby, and to a lesser extent myself, refinished my desk during the holiday. I also bought new hardware and now it looks amazing. It looks really dark in the photo, but it is actually a deep red mahagony now. And the best part is there are no more deep gouges or chunks missing. Now we just need to do the matching dresser and chair as you can tell from below.

Why Hello There New Faucet

This is our new faucet. Isn't it beautiful? Much better than the old one, and the sprayer works too. And I put it in all by myself with no help from the hubby. It did, however, take a Dremel tool in order to cut one of the bolts off the old one because it had rusted so badly that turning it caused it to break under the handle.

Old Lange Sign

New Year's Eve is a stupid holiday. Yeah, I said it. The wife and I both woke up feeling crummy today; I was obviously getting sick as early as yesterday, but today Wife woke up feeling yucky, too. So...I guess we'll be noting the New Year all by ourselves, right? Whatever. We played some games, just the two of us, which was fun, even though I lost all of them. Oh, well. Maybe I'll win more games next year.

Battle.net is garbage

My buddy called me the other night and asked how I felt about an Internet game of Diablo 2. This being Christmas vacation, and thus a low-workload time of year for me, I replied that I thought that would be just great. I logged into Battle.net, the online service designed to work for this very purpose, and started a game. My buddy called me a little while later to tell me that he couldn't log into the game--one of those super-helpful and informative error messages "Failed to Join Game" kept popping up.

After trying a couple of different tricks and getting nowhere, I Googled the text of the error message and found that a lot of different people have been having the same problem for several months now. "Yeah, it just doesn't even hardly work anymore. Sorry."

There is no fix for this problem yet; Blizzard understandably hasn't gotten around to dumping any money into fixing this problem on their (free) servers when World of Warcraft brings in 800 brazilion dollars every month due to all the paying addicts.

So after whining and moping about this, I played a little single-player game for a while, and I found a nifty piece of equipment for my character that I didn't have yet. My theory is that the game was trying to keep me from being angry at it. It kind of worked.

Congaree Swamp

Today the hubby, our friend, and I went down to the Congaree Swamp. It was a nice cool, but not cold, day with no mosquitoes. Every trail we went down sadly forced us to turn back because it has recently rained and the trails were flooded. (It is a swamp after all.) By the time we finished we had walked over ten miles and since we had gotten a late start we were all super hungry. Luckily our friend, who is a little larger fellow, knew of a great Italian sandwich place just down the road. We ate a huge strombolli and headed home to take a long nap. Not a bad way to spend the day.
We also got our new dining room chairs. They look great with our table, but one of the chairs is going to have to be replaced this weekend because it has a rip in the cushion and we couldn't catch the delivery guys fast enough. Nothing every happens easily when you get stuff delivered.

Christmas

Our first Christmas by ourselves was good, but very different from the usual hustle and bustle of years past. It did let us open all our presents on Christmas rather than having to open stuff before we left or finding some creative way of letting the recipient know what was waiting for them at home. It also meant I had a giant box sitting next to the tree tormenting me for a few weeks. Pure torture. We could also decorate the house outside for the first time since we moved. We had lights all across the eve of the front of the house and on most of the bushes up front. If we do it again next year we are going to need more lights because the holly bushes are enormous.
We had our friend and fellow orphan over for Christmas Eve dinner of ham and goodies and I forgot how much work it is without several other hands helping all day. I really could have used my sister-in-laws to help with the rolls especially.


On Christmas morning we took our time getting ready, eating breakfast, and opening presents. It took us several hours to do all of the above, but it still left us with a lot of day to waste away. Felt good to just be lazy on the couch with the Calvin and Hobbes book on my lap. Eventually we had to clean up this tremendous mess and then put all the decorations away. Soon we will also have to return to work. But luckily not today.