I was chatting with my friend Amy today and she mentioned in passing that she doesn’t have any bean bags for her son, Jack, to play indoor hopscotch with. Well. That kind of deprivation just won’t stand, I said. Allow me to don my safety helmet and get cracking. So the boys and I put our protective gear on and got sewing. Here are the results.
My go-to time-wasting web site: ask.metafilter.com/human-relations. When my knitting has stalled, my camera’s batteries are dead, there’s nothing new on on TV and the husband is planning lessons, I like to lose myself in other geeks’ problems.
oh! and then this was funny: duty calls.
Dudes! We’re officially in the new house. It’s fabulous. Mostly. I mean, there are a LOT of boxes around here, and we keep finding little nuggets of wtf (“tub diverter? who needs a rusty corroded tub diverter?”). But it’s mostly fabulous.
However, it’s also a tiny bit unfabulous. Yesterday’s wtf nugget was this: when we tried to plug the TV in so Owen could watch some Saturday morning “Toon-age Mutant Ninja Turtles,” we discovered that we get zero reception here. I’m talking Nothing. I’m talking the snowiest snow that ever snowed, on every single station. We fussed with the rabbit ears, we moved the TV around, we tried our digital tuner. Nothing.
“Oh crap,” I said.
“But the [redacted] Steelers game is going to be on,” said Iain. “I have labored long hours to make this house a castle for you, my queen. And this is how I am rewarded? I am bereft, too long deprived of that noble sport which makes Sundays worth getting up for.”
“I know, darling,” I said. “This cannot stand.”
“But wait,” he said. “Perhaps this indicates we should purchase a premium cable package? I do so enjoy the Discovery Channel. Also the National Geographic Channel. Also, the Steelers are supposed to be playing the Giants, if I haven’t mentioned that.”
“No, my sweet. We have no need of a premium cable package, even if the DVR service is included, which would seriously be cool. It’s far too dear. I will solve this problem for you. I will conquer the constraints of geography, distance to the transmitting station, and something about magnetic … curvature … dipole … rotational … something something, for you, my love, to bring you the football and other local programming you so richly deserve,” I said, indicating the lowly rabbit ears perched atop our mantel.
As you might have surmised, by this time I had skimmed Google’s offerings (mute before clicking) on the subject. The pickings were slim, and also kind of a lot too technical. But our heroine persevered, as she does when the topic might involve entertainment or the spending of lots of money on gadgets.
We went to Wal-Mart. (On a Sunday. Doy.) Instead of buying the 42” HDTV and looking up the number for DirecTV and dusting our hands of the matter, we bought a Phillips flat-panel array UHF/VHF indoor antenna with amplifier. Once home, tension mounted as we carefully unpacked the box, and lifted with gentle hands our possible $30 savior.
We hooked it up. Nothing. Twiddled the dials. Nothing. Moved the antenna as far as the coax would allow. Nothing. Hauled the whole setup upstairs. Nothing. Brought it back down. Nothing.
“We are at the mercy of the valley in which our new house apparently sits,” I said.
“Might as well return this dumb ol’ thing,” said he, boxing up our disappointment and hunting for the receipt.
“I refuse to concede defeat,” I said.
“Get the tinfoil,” he replied.
Our old rabbit ears were whisked back atop the mantel, nudged into a corner, and all the curtains thrown open. Iain carefully fashioned a sort of wing thing from foil, calculated the distance and compass location of the nearest Fox affiliate, adjusted accordingly, and crossed his fingers mightily.
He was rewarded. Not only did channel 66 come in, miraculously and replete with a subtitled telecast of a religious ceremony … but so did the local Fox affiliate. Every other channel was a blizzard of snowflakes, but that Madden guy’s face beamed out from our television. Victory was ours. Well, mostly Iain’s. But still ours.
There was much rejoicing. The Steelers played poorly and lost to New York, but at least they were on.
Later in the evening, after the kids had gone to bed, we surveyed the room for other ways of watching television, television that was not Fox. I gathered my iPod-compatible mini home stereo system and one of those cables with the red, white and yellow things on the end. Iain unpacked the digital projector he uses to show Keynote presentations at school and his MacBook Air. We hooked the Air to the projector and the projector to the home stereo speakers and pointed the whole setup at the big blank wall over our couch. We surfed to hulu.com. Thanks to the miracle of high-speed internet, office equipment, and the brainchild of a new media genius, we were able to watch Thursday night’s episode of the Office larger than life and three days late. As the theme song played and the credits rolled and Michael Scott said more hilariously inappropriate things on my living room wall, I drank a cup of tea, smiling at our ingenuity and not really mourning that HDTV/premium cable package thing all that much, I swear.
But later, defeated after all (woman cannot live on hulu alone) I ordered Comcast’s basic cable online ($11/month for a dozen local channels) (beware the tedious chat-room step) and sighed. Now I just have to return that antenna to Wal-Mart and wait for the installation technician next Monday so I can watch 30 Rock on Thursday nights, as it was meant to be seen (though the season premiere is on hulu right now, I’m saving myself for Liz Lemon Thursdays). Geography and distance to the transmitting staion and unwillingness to figure out how to set up an outoor aerial may have bested me in the end, at least as far as over-the-air signals are concerned, but finding a cool use for that blank wall space was worth it.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but over the last two weeks or so I’ve been documenting my outfits over at Flickr on a daily basis. I kept going until I ran out of outfits. It took a surprisingly short time. And when it happened, I was tempted to just start photographing myself in various modes of ridiculous dress — bridal gown, bikini, three piece suit, monkey costume — but in the end, sanity and modesty won out. As it typically does with me. (Iain says the last one should have been me in a barrel with a sign saying “Laundry Day.” Only he didn’t say “barrel,” he said naked. But I left that bit out for your sensitive ears.)
(and your sensitive eyes.)
Anyway, here’s the set. You may marvel at my monochromity, my apparent devotion to Gap Inc., and my increasingly haphazard attitude toward footwear. You may also marvel at my credenza. And maybe my size 9 feet.
So last week I left the kids with Iain and wandered off to the library, as I love to do. I picked up a copy of Miranda July’s short stories (No one belongs here more than you) and ran out of ideas. As I was browsing the posted list of New York Times bestsellers for ideas …
A DINOSAUR CAME OUT OF THE MEN’S RESTROOM AND ATE UP ALL THE PATRONS! OMG
Just kidding. Duh.
… PAT ROBERTSON BEGAN SINGING KARAOKE UPSTAIRS BY THE DISPLAY OF GOSSIP GIRL NOVELS!
Hee hee. As if.
… A HIGHLY LOCALIZED WEATHER SYSTEM SOAKED EVERYONE IN THE BIOGRAPHY SECTION WTF!
Whatevs, that would never happen.
No, what happened was that a lovely woman named Paula, a librarian, recognized me from my blog. From my blog! A real reader out in the real world. Even better was that she sent me home with an armful of good picks to last me a couple weeks.
Without further ado, last week’s haul:
In order of reading, from the bottom:
Not pictured: yet another issue of Entertainment Weekly
So last Tuesday our friendly neighborhood telephone repair technician came out to our house and fixed our staticky phone line. That was the good news. The bad news is that he made the DSL juju go away. Perhaps it leaked out. There was some cable splicing, that’s all I know. So for the last (omfg hectic but that’s another post) week, I have had no internet. It was a bad scene. And that’s why I couldn’t tell you about the launch of the Mobtown Wire, formerly known as Blog Baltimore, which was my pet project circa 2004.
Obviously, having a child or two kind of saps your energy, as does dealing with the bizarrely difficult-to-use RingSurf web site that I was using to manage the participants, which is why my leadership of that ring dwindled and dwindled to pathetic, barely-comatose levels. So I finally gave up Blog Baltimore’s ghost, handing it over to Brian Tomasette and stepping out of his way. Please give him a hand for taking up the reins.
For its next incarnation:
the Mobtown Wire is a collection of Blogs and Independent writers of Baltimore, Maryland. Previously Blog Baltimore, the Mobtown Wire will be aggregating blog writers and providing a central news source written by and for residents of charm city.
*and Supa exits stage left*
Twitter took me back! I love how it’s all like, “Yes, Ma’am, I’ve deleted your account,” but when you go back, hat in hand, to beg for another chance, it winks at you and says, “Of course, Ma’am. I’ve just been saving your username behind the counter right here, in case you came back,” and hands it over to you with a bow.
Lovely Twitter. I still don’t have enough time to Tweet and blog, but I’ve been feeling kind of weirdly out of the loop since it’s been gone. So I thought it couldn’t hurt to get back on that particular horse, see what’s the haps, you know. Plus, I was still thinking in 140-character phrases. Tweets would still come to mind throughout the day. Now I have somewhere to put them.
I think I’m going to quit Twitter. I barely come up with enough time or blodder to post here, I’m not going to waste it on Twittering.
Though if I WERE going to twitter right now it’d be this:
Am reading Bridget Jones’s Diary again (Moby Dick too whaley, gross). Keep thinking: Stop complaining, B. Look at all your free time. Am jealous.
Just need a character-counter — think that was under 140?
Morning update: I opened my feedreader to see whoorl and schnozz talking similar things. That schnozz post — man, do I get it. And I am not even as on as often as i used to be. I’m totally behind on blog posts and comments and Flickr friends and now Twitter but you know what? MEH. It’s OK because then I can, say, take my kids to the zoo and finish the laundry.
After a hard day wrangling two children at the beleaguered Baltimore Zoo, there’s nothing I like better than to unwind by backing up my MySQL databases and upgrading to WordPress 2.5.
If things are wonky on this site, it’s because I’m drunk. No, wait, it’s because I’m elbow-deep in chmod’ing/deleting files/scratching my head/alcohol.
Update: Success. Patting self on back. Things I like about 2.5: superly-duper easy to use the widgets now, even for me, who had a pretty customized sidebar and hated the last widget iteration. Also the admin design has been improved. Also the automatic upgrade option for plugins. So easy. Also the new toolbox on the post page.
But where’s my post preview?
Update: My post preview is right there in the big blue box on the right side of the edit-post page. On an edit page for an already-published post it says ‘View This Post’, and on a blank post page it’s an empty blue box until you start writing, then you can choose to preview. It opens in a new window, which I find annoying, though. But anyway, glad it’s still around. I find it insanely useful.
Also, am not really drunk, unless you count a high blood-casein-level as being drunk on cheese.
