Pizza for Dinner
Saturday, November 29, 2003
It's good to have some time off
So I went to Connecticut for a few days for Thanksgiving. The trip was pretty normal. I had a good time with my dad and brother and ate lots of food. As one of my birthday presents my dad gave me a huge box of tools for my car or whatever else would require a wrench or ratchet. He said "Oh, look it's the size of a carry on, you can just take it on the plane." This made sense so I checked my bag and took the case of metal tools on the plane. I got bored partway through the flight so I started chucking the smaller pieces from the kit at the flight attendants. What can I say, they didn't get me my cranberry juice and granola bar fast enough. I bored of this pretty quickly too. What can I say, I'm easily distra
When I finally got off the plane it took me a couple hours to find my ride. Turns out Ashley had been traveling herself and got the days mixed up. Since she and Kate are the only 2 people on this campus without cell phones I couldn't get ahold of her and was worried she was circling the airport or roaming the lobby searching for me. It's fine, it's not the first time someone forgot to get me at the airport. The only problem was that while I was waiting these Swedish guys grabbed me and drove away in their car. They kept saying something about how I was a hot red-headed Irish girl. Ja, ja, this is correct. Unfortunately, they were not as hot as the fabled women's volleyball team. Besides, Ashley was in hot pursuit, having gotten to the airport just as I was abducted! She chased them down in her car and spun them off the road with that trick they always use on Cops. The guys had handcuffed me in the back but I used the distraction to use this trick I learned in high school for getting out of cuffs and leapt out of the car just as it crashed. There we were, me and Ashley against the 4 ugly Swedes. What's a girl to do but strip off her jeans and sweatshirt to reveal a skin-tight leather outfit and knee-high 4" heeled boots. That's right, we kicked their asses right on the side of 94. It was a quick fight, I mean, our hands (and boots) are pretty deadly weapons. Not a nail was broken, we're that good. The cops got there a few minutes later to arrest the unconscious kidnappers and we went to lunch. A note to the Swedes---when you want a date, make sure you clear it with Ashley first.
(This isn't all fake---guess how much!)
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
Holy low budget, batman
I think I just watched the first Star Trek TNG. Complete with melodramatic cuts to angry stares from all the main characters. The women wore knee high boots and short skirts, heavy eye make up and poufy hair. Generally whorey. It was great. There were awkward looks between Will and Diana and giant space squids touching tentacles like a couple holding hands. If I've seen this before it's been years but I'm sure it's much better to see it as an adult. I half expected to see William Shatner show up. As an aside The Family Guy does the funniest Shatner impression I've ever seen. He ... has ... the ... weirdspeechpattern we all know and love along with the animated Kirk jumping all over the bridge and posing in awkward positions. He wears boxers labeled "Captain's log." That's almost as good as the critic's veggie commercial with Orson Welles touting the greatness of their green pea-ness. Ok, I'm not going to bother making this flow well, I had a long day. Time for some PS2 perhaps.
Monday, November 24, 2003
Dress you up in my love
All over.
So this is a little embarassing, I think I just have a better memory than most people alive in the 80s. And yet I heard an 80s song on the radio yesterday that I repeatedly forget the lyrics to by the time I can search for the song. Forever leaving my 80s collection incomplete. C'est la vie. At least I have the leg warmers.
Like, Totally
Here's a quick link for you. I haven't taken a very close look at it yet but it's both fun and evil. The hard part is not knowing the tune while you're trying to get the words. Also, having to filter through so many different kinds of 80s songs at once. I find I get an ego boost when I know a lot of the lyrics, which also scares me a bit, some of them are rather difficult. Oh well, I am a child of the 80s.
Sunday, November 23, 2003
It's My Birthday
Worship me if you want to.
It's been a good birthday weekend. On Friday we played some arcade games and then watched some of my West Wing DVD after happy hour. I still have a lot left to watch but that's fine because it rocks. It's such a great show, I highly recommend it. Bravo is showing old episodes weeknights at 11 and ABC also has some syndication rights. They show it against SNL.
And of course yesterday. The team came through and kicked Ohio State's ass. It was a great game. I had the hiccups when we started the game and in the third quarter when we were sucking, but as soon as we started scoring they went away. I think there's a high degree of correlation there. It was a lot of fun. My voice is totally scratchy today but that's more than fine. We are the victors and champions of the Big 10. Also, I rushed the field. Well, more like sauntered the field. Row 69 doesn't get there quickly. But I did get to touch the astroturf. I wanted to get all the way to the M but that wasn't going to happen. Unfortunately my camera battery ran out, but I got a sweet photo of the score board in the second quarter before it did. I need to figure out how to get my UofM webpage up to link photos to. I also got a photo of a huge squirrel at our tailgate. (Mmm beer and meat in the morning.) He had cleavage, it was funny. I realized later yesterday I have a lot of squirrel photos. There was the one outside my apartment standing guard and of course the albino squirrel at RPI. If you don't believe me go here. I think the girl who put up this page was in my german class, she was dating my original stalker. It's a small world.
Anyway, I need to make a pie for the Thanksgiving potluck tonight and then go to (hopefully) lunch!
Thursday, November 20, 2003
Amazon Woman
I'm rapidly accumulating a collection of boxes from Amazon.com. This is partly due to ordering and partly due to not throwing away most boxes. I'm a pack rat, but at least I'm neat about it. I just can't throw away a good box. Anyway, so I just received the first season of The West Wing, complete with deleted scenes and episodes with commentary. I preordered Pirates of the Caribbean as well, so that'll be here in a couple of weeks. I'm trying to be selective with my DVD purchasing, partly to save money and partly to avoid the shame of owning crappy movies. The collection currently consists of the above, along with Best in Show, Big Lebowski, Casablanca (yes, it is as good as the hype), Cruel Intentions (I'm allowed one crappy indulgence, plus it's so evil it's fun), Dangerous Beauty, Fellowship of the Ring 4 disc set, The Two Towers 2 disc set (I hope to get the 4 disc set for my birthday or Christmas), High Fidelity, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Ocean's Eleven, Office Space, PCU (everyone should own these two, really), The Princess Bride, Real Genius (if you haven't seen this yet you should or I'll never speak to you again, it's that funny), Spy Game, Star Wars Episode 2 (this was a gift, it also contains the Yoda fight scene which is the main reason I watch it, certainly not for the barely contained passion between Anakin and Amidala---wait I mean forced indifference), Tenacious D, the Complete Master Works, and The Usual Suspects. I'd say it's pretty representative of me, but there are always more movies to buy.
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
Feminism gone wrong
So I saw a Sudafed commercial (fyi you can make meth from sudafed) in which a wife gives her husband, sleeping on the couch, sudafed to help with his horrible cold. Why, you ask, does this bother me? Well, the woman, seeing her true love in agony, does the little that she can to appease the virus throwing a party in his sinuses. So he can shovel the snow out of the drive way. Yup, he's sick and she gives him medicine so he can do chores. She appears to have control of all of her limbs, so I'm not sure why she isn't doing it. And you know when she's sick he has to do everything. (If this were my life, I'd be making my man soup after I gave him the medicine and shoveled the damn snow myself.)
This is a disturbing trend in our culture today. Much like the obesity craze (seriously, how do you think McDonalds isn't junk food? It's your fault your kid is fat.) this type of thinking has gotten out of hand. Were you to watch commercials or daytime TV (targeted to women) you'd think American men are lost without their women counterparts. Doomed to live in their dirty underwear eating raw hot dogs and running after their naked children who are drawing on the walls in permanent marker.
Oprah and Dr. Phil have contributed to this, as well my personal hell. They have instilled a me-first attitude in people that don't know what to do with it. This gives some women the idea that compromise is "I clean the bathroom and you buy me a Jetta" and that nothing is ever their fault.
And people wonder why the divorce rate is so high. Not to say that men are angels, but I didn't just see a commercial about them.
Monday, November 17, 2003
Arrested Development
This is the new show by Ron Howard on Fox Sunday nights. It's really funny. Basically a well-to-do family is coping with the loss of their money as the feds catch up to their less-than-ethical ways. The father is in jail, so the business goes to the only really normal person in the family, Michael (Jason Bateman). Portia di Rossi plays his spoiled twin sister Lindsay. It's best to learn the family dynamics by watching so I won't go into a who's who here. It's a great show though and is a testament to the theory that all Ron Howard touches turns to gold, if not critically then financially. (ie it either does well with critics and/or fans) This reminds me of a story about how Burt Reynolds (I like him only for the vaseline scene in Strip Tease) once met Ron Howard's parents while his mom was pregnant with him. He said something to the effect of 'if I had known what the kid was going to turn out to be I would have offered to buy him on the spot.' Yeah, I'm pretty sure Ron is successful because his early childhood did not involve being purchased by Burt Reynolds. Although Clint Howard is inexplicable. Peak at Gentle Ben anyone?
Sunday, November 16, 2003
Weekend Update
So is everything a sponsor of Cat in the Hat? Now McDonalds has decided in all of its sinisterness to offer Cat in the Hat christmas tree decorations. Mmm, shameless exploitation. Aaaaarrgh.
So the duck dinner was great. Food, liquor, games, fire---you can't go wrong really. Well, maybe with the fire. It's great to have friends that you can connect with like you've synchchronized your brains. Also to have friends that get all your references to the Simpsons and Friends. I also saw The Matrix this afternoon. I liked it more than the second but not as much as the first. The ending was satisfying to me, and I hope they follow up on it despite. Although it fits with the story to not reveal everything. Somethings you just have to find your own answers for. It definitely wasn't as bad as some people thought it was. And the fight scenes were great. I won't say anything else in case someone hasn't seen it yet.
On a bad note, the power failure on Thursday produced some casualties in my home. The TV has lost TLC and for a while the up and down channel buttons went to 1 and 2 only. I fixed the remote control problem but still have no Trading Spaces. I'll have to call the company if it doesn't fix itself.
The biggest problem though was my computer. The flickering of the power before I could turn it off has messed up the hard drive. I have to copy all my files to a disk and reinstall an operating system. Oh, it gets worse. A message to Dell tech support: Fuck you, fuck you right in the ass. With a 12' dildo. Seriously. For an hour and a half I was shuffled between two extensions each saying they were for laptops and that they would connect me to the right place. I said I already talked to those people, try something else. No help there. To make it worse 3 of the 4 guys I talked to had accents and between each I was on hold for like 20 minutes. This means I was on hold for an hour and a half before I got help. Then this guy tells me to take out my ethernet card and try booting again. Nope, same error message. He also told me that my video card was memory and not to take it out. I did anyway since this was what he initially thought would solve my problem. Nope. Luckily I have a spare hard drive installed. It's a huge pain in my ass though. I don't know why Dell supposedly gets great tech support reviews. It was a Saturday night when I called, despite the few people working at that late hour I didn't expect the call volume to be that big. I kept talking to the same useless people though.
Yeah, so back to laundry and computer fixing.
How Hip am I?
You are the Low-Fidelity All-Star. You were born
with your cool, and it's totally natural. You
run the gamut from Hipster Supreme (only they
can ingest as much coffee as you) to the geeky
hipster (Mario Kart, anyone?).
What Kind of Hipster Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
You bet your ass I am.
Friday, November 14, 2003
It's a beautiful mornin
So I woke up this morning without hitting the snooze or needing coffee. I slept 7 hours, about, so a good night's sleep but not like my 12 hour marathons. I thought that because yesterday was so long (lab all day w/chloroform, lots of driving and getting lost in SE Michigan) although good, I'd be tired today. Hell, I was so tired last night I was acting goofy without even drinking. I don't know what put me in such a good mood. It must be because Sanjay's here. :-p He's great, once he's your friend he's always your friend. I can't wait for roast duck and Nashville shot glasses. Be sure to check for the update on drunken board games and pie. We bought lots of mixers yesterday, with the duck, for that ghetto fabulous look in the grocery store. And to top it off, yes, we did do whipped cream shots in the parking lot. Honestly, if you put me, Sanjay and a can of whipped cream together you know there's trouble.
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
Mkay
So, there's this potluck whiteboard that someone set up for our summer potlucks. It's being revived for Thanksgiving which we're celebrating the Sunday before. I signed up early for pumpkin pie. Someone else signed up a day or two later to also bring pumpkin pie. I then noted that there was a small chance I wouldn't be there (it's on my birthday but I likely won't have anything else come up, I was thinking mostly whether I wanted to do a free Ann Arbor dinner or a potluck. I decided to go with the potluck since most of my friends will be there) so redundancy was fine. Plus, it's pie. You can't have too much. So I also later signed up for egg nog if no one else wanted it since egg nog is essential. I was thinking someone new might want to bring it if they don't have the skills/kitchen space to really cook something. This person erased me and signed up for egg nog. I realize that the small chance of me not being there would encourage someone to bring egg nog, but it's just creeping me out a bit. Is he going to go home to change to match me too? Harmless, yet weird.
On another note, I got a package from my Dad today. He sends me odd assortments of things. They're all really great just sorta random as a whole. Here's what today's box held (first of all, the inside of the box said hooker wht/yel, no idea why): A hoodie from Cape Cod, a newsletter from FIFA, a cookbook, lavendar chapstick, lavendar soap, a teaspoon magnet, a bookmark with Egyptian hieroglyphs on it, a cow cookie cutter, holiday cookie cutters (including a squirrel, I can make albino squirrel cookies if I return to RPI at any point), dinosaur cookie cutters, assorted unlabeled soaps and a pop up Monet book. He's a generous wacko, I know.
Top Five Signs I'm a Grad Student/Geek
1. I sometimes forget to eat
2. I have an emotional/chemical dependency on coffee (I can only get through this class with some type of stimulant)
3. I make science jokes out of normal situations (the muS of my pen is smaller than yours)
4. I have protracted conversations about video games/web comics/blogs/adult swim
5. What day is it again? Still Wednesday?
Monday, November 10, 2003
Family Guy
So Adult Swim showed an episode that Fox found too risque. Let that sink in a moment. First of all, Family Guy is pretty awful and has offended almost every possible type of person. Second of all, Fox is as trashy as the WB is ghetto. The episode is pretty bad and saturated with jewish stereotypes but I didn't think it was over the Line of Murdoch. Maybe it's just me but I didn't think it strayed too far from the Family Guy mean.
Saturday, November 08, 2003
How did they ...
It's been a long couple of weeks. I did the sleep for 12 hours on a Friday night thing again. It was good. I bought some DVDs on Amazon when I woke up though (Tenacious D---The Complete Master Works, PCU and Best in Show). The funny thing was when I looked in my gold box, the very first item was a bread machine. I don't know how they knew about my compulsive baking. I think I've only purchased DVDs from Amazon so it's not like there's a history of purchasing kitchen appliances. And I'm not exactly in the key demographic for bread machines either. It must just be the chip in my head.
I just heard some screaming. The interesting thing was that it wasn't psycho next door, although I've heard her again the past few days. Some girl is on her front stoop talking on the phone, except she's yelling into it and it's echoing nicely off the other apartments. Something about never having anything for herself, the guy doesn't care about her, pregnant at the wedding (her or someone else), blah blah blah. I'm glad I don't have that kind of drama in my life.
Now to do stuff.
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
What you talkin' 'bout?
So, a conversation last night after The Princess Bride decided that that movie was one of the top five things to come out of the 80s. We were unable to fill out the top five though, unless you count all the Indiana Jones movies separately. Then add Ferris Bueller. At any rate, there really isn't a lot that came out of the 80s that's good that's not a movie or me and my friends. Don't get me wrong, I love a lot of 80s music, but it's not really good, now is it? In that vein, here is a top ten (yes, I needed to expand that much) list a little more suitable to the decade. And I haven't even been watching VH1.
Top Ten Worst Things to Come out of the 80s
In no particular order
1. Leather ties
2. Mohawks, especially those dyed
3. Fluorescent clothing
4. Michael Jackson, well, this is at least when he started getting scary. At the moment his face is enough to scare the bejesus out of me, if I'm not prepared.
5. "A very special episode"
6. The Olsen Twins
7. That Madonna like a virgin look with the vinyl bracelets and poufy skirt
8. Teased bangs with a perm, you know what I'm talking about, the David Lee Roth look
9. Tremors
10. Fanny packs
Saturday, November 01, 2003
Trick! (Not Treat)
So I got this e-mail this morning:
Hi All,
I was told that our lab was covered with water this morning. The
water is from upstair. A lot of stuff in our lab are soaked. I remove
all soaked stuff to the dry palce. The persons from campus help to clean
the water on the floor. So our lab is in mess now. Please come here to
check your stuff if you are available. Have a good weekend folks.
Jinlu
Luckily my stuff was fine. It looks like most or all of our equipment is fine too, which is great. No one lost samples or cells like in the power outage. I was worried for a bit though, there's no way to back up a lot of my data, most isn't on a computer. It looks like the lab upstairs had a problem with a sink because most of the damage is around one of ours. Makes me wonder what we'd do if the flood were worse though, some of our equipment costs tens of thousands of dollars. Not to mention supplies and samples.
Yeah, so Jinlu is a fun guy. He's always been nice to me, as far as I know. He's hard to understand sometimes. He also asks Lauren really odd questions and makes grunting sex sounds all day, really loudly. He asked Lauren once what a transvestite was while they were in the mouse room, just out of no where. I think he also asked her about her birth control method. It makes for a really funny conversation with us afterward. It can be fun dealing with other cultures, questions like "What does parmesan cheese taste like?" and "Oh, you had a date last night, are you going to marry him?" come up all the time. The cheese one was really hard to answer. It must be really interesting to come to America from a much different culture.
