friday, oh glorious day

You'll be glad to know that today was better than yesterday. Fridays are usually either productive or worthless, and today was productive, and I had a total "Eureka!" moment while driving back from lunch. I just love those moments of figuring out a problem that come just out of the blue. I love the way your brain works at things even when you're not. Anyway, thank you to everone who commented with support on my very bad day. Except for geeklibrarian, because she is mean and laughed at my TRAGEDY. *laugh* :)

Filing this one under "Things I'm Glad I Didn't Know Yesterday", I reached into the drawer under the stove for a pan tonight, and noticed that... half of the mushroom stuffing that fell all over the place had actually fallen into that drawer, on top of my clean pans. And I? I carefully removed the pan I needed and closed the drawer again and waited for M to get home. I know, he spoils me rotten. Somehow, the mushroom disaster cleanup became his job, probably because it is his job to stabilize my moods and cleaning up would NOT have helped with that.

Speaking of dinner, we have had roasted asparagus, fried potatoes and bearnaise for two meals this week, including tonight, and it is So. Good. that it makes me want to invite everyone I know over to feed them delicious food. This would be a bad idea because a) I would have to make a whole heck of a lot more and b) most people I know would just think it was really weird. You know, I had never really had asparagus but once or twice, and thought it was decently alriight but not amazing and had never made it myself, but lately had been wanting to have it again. It is so easy and so, so good.

The bug bites are worse today than yesterday and I am beginning to wonder if they aweren't bug bites but an allergy to one of the plants I was working with on Sunday. The oozing blisters just don't say "bug bite" to me. But then again, almost all of the places are just red itchy bumps. Well, whatever it is, it ain't happy.

When I was an obnoxious little brat, I learned in school that "ain't" isn't a word and I spent years attempting to correct my family when they said it. They, umm, really hated that. It actually creeped into my vocabulary on purpose after we moved back and people kept making fun of my non-country way of speaking. Funny how much less I care about that sort of thing now.

Tomorrow there is a SHSK event, where they're setting up at a kite festival in Georgetown. I really wish we didn't have to go.. not because I don't want to, but because I am lazy, and I don't like to have fun. Or so M says. Not that he's one to talk because he's harder to get out of bed on a weekend than I am. I talked to J tonight on the phone and sort of promised that we'd be there in time for setting up tomorrow. I guess that means that I should go to bed. Not much of a hardship since M is listening to even worse music than usual, and you know that's saying a lot.

daily ramblings, plus a rant about ads

I have been pestering my poor husband for half an hour now. Neither of us were doing anything in particular.. until he announced that he was going to go downstairs to work on his mandolin. "BUT DON'T YOU LOVE ME?" I wailed, and proceeded to follow him around talking to him and asking him questions and hugging him. He has been very patient with me. I kept saying things like "You can go downstairs! I'll be okay! Hey, do you know..." This finally ended with me pulling him away from the basement door, where he was holding the tool he was taking down with him, to come in here and disconnect my speakers because they are RUNTING MY LIFE. My monitor has really crappy emergency sound, hence the speakers, but the speakers cannot handle cell phones. It drives me crazy. So, when I'm not actively needing sound, I end up turning it off and then I'll try to do something requiring sound and.. well, it's annoying. Anyway. Suddenly, it was Imperative that the speakers be removed from my presence. Also, he set up our spare, previously to-be media server, computer downstairs but he has no speakers for it.. which is unfortunate since he wanted it largely for a mp3 server.. so I kindly and graciously volunteered mine, totally out of the goodness of my heart and not AT ALL for any self-serving reasons. I know, I know. Anyway, he took away the offending Speakers of Annoyance, and is now finally downstairs, playing with frets or something. I bet he didn't expect me to continue talking to him through the vent when he ran away downstairs, did he? *cackle*

(Don't feel too sorry for him--he is now angling for me to take over his speakers instead of buying a new set for myself because he wants new ones.)

What's with people being so angry at Livejournal for the new ad-supported membership level? Does it really offend someone's sensibilities that much that a free service would allow ads to be displayed at the request of users? I really don't get this whole thing. See, you watch television. Television has ads. Not just that, but television has ads that it is really hard to not watch because it interrupts your show! Obnoxious ads that take up a third of your viewing time! And yet, it would be ludicrous for someone to call NBC to say, "Dudes! You have ADS! YOU HAVE SOLD OUT! I HATE YOU!" Because.. umm. That's what being a company means--the pursuit of profit. Also, there are millions of sites out there that have ads. I would wager a guess that most people don't throw a hissy fit over them, even if they don't like seeing them. Almost all of the stand-alone type of blogs have ads. Some of them support their whole family, some of them are support only charities, and everything in between. The only difference here is who the money goes to.

I personally think it's great that people can make a little money on their blogs, and perhaps the reason I think that is that I am someone who actually PAYS HOSTING BILLS every month. I host three sites on a charity basis (Mosaic Minds is one of them) and some more for personal reasons (seriously, I gotta stop buying domains.. it's like crack.) I spend actual real money on this and yes, I write it off as entertainment because I enjoy it. But, maybe it makes it easier for me to see how people might not want to operate at a loss.

That was really not where I meant to go with this post. I was going to post pictures from the kite festival we went to today, where I made approximately ten gazillion paper hearts. It was a fantastic day, weather-wise. The festival was cute, but it is Way Too Much Social for someone like me. Did you know that everyone is of Scandinavian descent? Because they are. If you ask them. Anyway, we took down names and contact info for a lot of people and so that maybe we'll get some new members eventually. Also, I bought the domain name for the website tonight--which I will gladly share once there is something there. Are any of you married-to-Swedes people living in the US involved in a similar society? Just curious. Ours is (mostly) fun, although in some website research that I did recently, I discovered one club that is begging for donations so hard that they were giving instructions on how to cash in your life insurance policy and submit the income from your rental properties. That kind of scared me, no matter what kind of "cause" you are raising money for.