I have been rendered immobile.

No time to chat. Right now, I face a more serious crisis... Christmas cards.

The trouble is not the cost of postage or even the fact that if I have to write one more long UK address my hand may simply fall off. Nor is it the fact that every year at some point I think it'd have been worth getting some return address labels but I never do because I think I'll never need them, then four weeks before Christmas having written my own address 83 times I wonder why I don't have them.

No, problem is the dangerous nature of the cards. All the 'good' cards (and by 'good' I mean ones I find aesthetically pleasing or amusing in some way) seem to have glitter on them some where. I actually bought some this year thinking they didn't and upon opening them discovered they did in fact have glitter. It was hidden apparently. Glitter gets EVERYWHERE. It's like sand to Nth power. I've washed my hands three times and I still have glitter on me. I vacuumed around the card-writing area and still I see sparkles when I walk by. Perhaps most disturbing though is the fact that glitter can turn your own hands into deadly weapons. Having rubbed my face, I somehow got glitter in my eye. This caused me to writhe in agony and smash my knee against the table leg. Okay, so not deadly per se but on par with assaulting yourself.

All I'm saying is if you've got glitter on your Christmas cards- be careful! Wear gloves...or a haz-mat suit (you know, if you've got one lying around). If you get a glitter card from me, it's not that I'm trying to hurt you, it's just that they're too dangerous to have lying around my house since I live alone at the moment and don't have one of those medical emergency cally-button things.

From Teeny Bopper to Hardened Criminal

In my general observations about society I've discovered that there are three basic principles which all children must learn. It hit me today whilst I was grocery shopping, checking out to be specific. There was a tiny girl bagging all my bits and she was, by teenage grocery-bagger standards, inordinately polite. "How are you today, ma'am?", "would plastic be alright ma'am?", "would you like to hold on to your gum, ma'am?" [My immense discomfort with being referred to as 'ma'am' every five seconds is a whole other blog that will probably start with the words "You can't call me ma'am, I'm wearing a Sex Pistols belt and have tattoos damn it! I am not your respectable old Auntie!" Note: If T&J are reading this I'm totally capable of being a respectable Auntie when I have your munchkins in tow.]

Anyway, I'm standing there thinking how proud her parents must be at the having raised such a happy, polite, if somewhat overly smiley, child in this day and age. Then I get to my car and start putting things in the back. As I unload my swag from shopping cart to car, I suddenly find myself wondering why the head of lettuce is on top of the bread, why someone would try to fit three obviously over sized boxes into the same obviously ill-equipped-to-handle-those-sort-of-dimensions plastic bag and what sort of idiot imagines that a sheer plastic bag can be moved between any two locations further than six inches a part when it has a gallon of milk, bottle of wine and medium size jug of laundry detergent in it?

I began, at this juncture, to question the judgment of the parents of overly-polite-smiley-bagging-girl. Surely, anyone, who was raised properly and has parents who themselves have common sense must be able to put different size objects into bags in an orderly fashion? Am I expecting too much from today's youth? I mean its not a dastardly complex mental test is it?   We're not talking Mensa exam.  The teeny bopper IQ should not be directly proportional to my chances of making it to my front door with my groceries intact should it?

This led me to the conclusion that there are in fact three distinct skills which every child should have before they are allowed out of the house unsupervised.

First, they must be able to tie their own shoe laces. This is a fairly simple one and exists mostly because I can't bear the thought of children falling over every few feet. Also, because this saves me having to stop what I'm doing all the time to pick one up.

Second, they must be able to cross the road without getting killed. And I don't mean the run for it and hope for the best type of road crossing some kids engage in, nor do I mean the alternate format which involves brazenly stepping into the road, bringing traffic to a complete stop and then casually strolling across the road at a snail's pace at an angle which will ensure it takes as long as possible to reach the other side. This last version makes me want to commit cold blooded murder in my car. No, what I'm referring to is proper training given to STOP, LOOK and LISTEN prior to putting even a toe into oncoming traffic. Lack of proper training in conjunction with all traffic being required to stop for school buses is making children think they have the right of way against a ton of metal headed in their direction. Calm down! I'm not suggesting seven year olds be forced into playing Frogger: The Home Game after school but when we're stopping for teenagers who will be driving themselves in the next couple of years, well, I think it gets silly. If you can't cross the road properly, you're a liability to our species and unlikely to be either helpful (or even involved) in our future evolution.

Finally, all kiddies must know how to put things into a grocery bag in an orderly fashion. All parents should offer hands on training at home if necessary. This will prepare their children for a variety of difficulties that life has to throw at them, not the least of which will be a part time job bagging groceries so they can save for a car and finally discover first hand how maddening it is when people amble across the road at a five degree angle.

So consider this a warning. All children should have the upbringing which allows them to capably put things of different shapes, sizes, weights and compositions into bags without compromising the the things or the bags themselves. If they don't have the mental capacity to handle this, they will never be successful in a world which requires them to exercise common sense and throws all manner of hurdles at them... like knowing how much furniture will fit into their living room, or parking which requires you to judge space and what will fit where.

Without these necessary skills, they will be unemployable, likely to fail their exams, people will make fun of them for repeatedly trying to put their books, calculator, gym shoes and a small classmate into their edgy-emo messenger bag. Eventually, they will feel like an outcast and turn to a life of petty crime to subsidize their new drug habit since they can't get a job.

It's shame you know, about overly-polite-smiley-bagging girl, she had so much potential but now, sigh, one of us will probably be picking her out of a police line up before she turns 18.

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

I-Tunes: Disc burner or software missing...
Me: It's there, the same place its been the last 1,200 times you've burned something. There! In that folder between the programme files and drivers!


Before annoying I-Tunes error:



After annoying I-Tunes error:



Final stages of 'trouble shooting' completed:




I am now well hacked off and I'm going to bed. If ANYONE has heard of a way to fix the I-Tunes error that causes the message "Disc burner or software not found" on I-Tunes as well as the insanely annoying inability to suddenly burn ANYTHING, please let me know. Even Apple's tech support forum doesn't seem to have the answer.

If not, I'd appreciate someone lending me a blow torch so I can get some enjoyment out of my laptop...

With Regards to the Neighbours

You're a stay at home Mum. That's great, an admirable profession. What you're not is in the military. So, explain if you would please, why you feel it's necessary to drive a Hummer? A huge, honkin' H3 Hummer? 

The reason I ask is that while you may not have noticed, what with your busy schedule and chasing kiddies around the house and such, it's become quite evident to me that you're actually not invading a small country. You're just dropping your daughter off at figure skating practice and buying groceries. Would that assessment be accurate? That's a 'no' on invasion, then?

The Dreaded Lurgy

Well, it's a been a week now. And I'm still sick. ::cough::cough::inhale::cough::

I spent Wednesday in bed, with my laptop, instead of at work and essentially all day was spent practicing my moaning (death scene not sex scene variety in case there was any confusion in my neighbours minds).
On the bright side... is there a bright side? Er, ok, well the fever's gone. That's good news. I'm no longer forced to walk around my apartment wearing two layers topped off with a hooded sweatshirt and blanket while people ask meekly if they can put a fan on since I've refused to have the air conditioning on. So that's something I suppose.
I also no longer resemble this:

which is how I've spent most of the past 4 days feeling and more regrettably looking.

Alas, it's now turned into a cough in the chest over the weekend which I shall tell you now, from a seven-time bronchitis winner and three-time runner up, is not good news. Tomorrow, I will finally venture to a clinic for some sort of antibiotic. Since my voice is now back at least I'll be able to tell them what's wrong with me.
 

The War at Home

At precisely 8:48pm last night, an explosion rocked Pinellas county. The reverberations reached me all the way in my living room, shaking me to the core. Under normal circumstances, I would have been both astonished and horrified at the prospect of the blast originating in my own kitchen but my brother is staying with me so I wasn't quite as surprised as one might think.

"What," I cried, "in the hell was that?"

"Nothing," called back the voice in the kitchen.

'Nothing,' as it turns out, was actually an egg. A hard boiled egg to be exact, which having resided in the refrigerator until short moments before the incident, was being heated for the purposes of a quick nibbly.

My brother, it should be pointed out, is not a complete idiot. The egg heating began with 20 seconds in the microwave. I mean, how many seconds could it possibly take to heat a single cold hard boiled egg sans shell? I think 20 seconds was an alright start to be honest. Where the wheels fell off though, is when he discovered that 20 seconds did not, in fact, a warm egg make.

Enter a mild case of idiocy: rather than try half that again, he re-programmed the lone egg for another full dose and then some, 25 additional seconds. At no point did it enter his mind what might happen to a single egg micro-waved for a 45 full seconds on high.

To be fair, I hadn't exactly considered the ramifications of exploding eggs in much depth either, but then I wasn't the one programming the microwave. Fast forward.

BANG!

"What," I cried, "in the hell was that?"

"Nothing," called back the voice in the kitchen.

"That did not sound like nothing," I answered.

"Er, it was, ah, an egg…" came the trailing answer.

I ventured over to the kitchen, pleasantly surprised to note that the impact hadn't knocked frames off the wall or caused systematic damage throughout the entire area. It did, however, break plastic Tupperware with what I can only describe as 'considerable force.'

The heart of every funny story contains some element of exaggeration. The exploding egg and the Tupperware wreckage are a true story with very little exaggeration.

It would appear that the weapons of mass destruction have been hiding in my fridge this whole time.

A single egg and Tupperware lid were inadvertently harmed in the making of this blog.

A Short and Fairly Concise Rant

I just can't take it anymore. I have to say this before I spontaneously combust in public. I'm standing in line for my lunch Friday, watching everyone else for lack of anything better to do until it's my turn to order, when I spot another bloke wearing a stupid bluetooth earpiece whilst not having a conversation. I say 'another' because they're everywhere. I want to walk up to them one by one and tap them on the shoulder: "Pardon me, you do know you look like a complete prat walking around like that, right?"

I mean it's one thing if you're actually using the thing and having a phone conversation. It's another if you're talking to someone who's standing in front of you or just walking around wearing it IN CASE your phone happens to ring. If you're in an office on the phone all day using it, okay. But take it off when you're not working. I just can't stand it. It's akin to wearing a condom round all day just IN CASE you happen to meet someone you end up shagging.

It's alright to leave the condom in your pocket until the moment you need it. It is also perfectly acceptable to leave the bluetooth earpiece in your pocket UNTIL the phone rings, you pretentious bastard. Just because it doesn't have a wire attaching it to phone doesn't mean you don't look like some ridiculous Star Trek borg-defect wandering around blockbuster.