Argephontes
3/28/2003
I'm getting ready to leave for Memphis. My Dad has a wedding to go to in Arkansas (no jokes, please. I've heard there are some beautiful places in AR... I haven't seen them, but I've heard). I'm going to pick up my 16 year old little sis, who will stay with me for the weekend. Ryan is out of town, so we should be able to cram in some good sister-time sans driving the Boy crazy with our giggling.
I was thinking about the drive (grumbling about it, actually), and I got a bug. Got home from work, and immediately tore into the closet to dig out the box where Ryan and I stashed all our old cassettes.
Maybe its because I was thinking about Jazz (my sis, not the music), or maybe it's just the solitude of the last three days finally getting to me and sending me over the edge, but I just have this craving for Crap I Listened to in High School. I've got on my Darth Vader tee-shirt (the Vader pic on the front has peeled off to actually a darkish blur), and I've got tapes. Just to clue you in on what I was like at 16/17, I selected from the box:
-The homeade, Mikkie-approved Very, Very Best of John Williams.
-Alice In Chains - Dirt
-Public Enemy - Fear of a Black Planet (actually that's more from freshman year of college, but eh)
-Denis Leary - No Cure For Cancer (a dubbed copy with some Frank Zappa tagged on at the end to fill up the rest of the space)
Random Mix of mostly Monty Python tunes, The Bangles, Primus, and John Lennon
Faith No More - The Real Thing
Queen - News of the World
And people wonder I'm so scatter-brained. I'm trying to wrap my brain around a connection amidst the randomness, but I don't think one exists. It should be fun to play it all for Jazz, and compare her reaction to my music. Will she crinkle her face at me and give me that pitying, "You're OLD" look? We shall see. Should be fun. Or an exercise in lunacy. Quite possibly both.
Just a side note - anyone who has anything to say about my high school collection can eat it. Since mine and Ryan's are mixed up, I had to dig through Color Me Badd, Freak Nasty, and DC Talk to get to it. Now THAT is eclectic taste. ¶ 3/28/2003 07:22:00 PM
I was thinking about the drive (grumbling about it, actually), and I got a bug. Got home from work, and immediately tore into the closet to dig out the box where Ryan and I stashed all our old cassettes.
Maybe its because I was thinking about Jazz (my sis, not the music), or maybe it's just the solitude of the last three days finally getting to me and sending me over the edge, but I just have this craving for Crap I Listened to in High School. I've got on my Darth Vader tee-shirt (the Vader pic on the front has peeled off to actually a darkish blur), and I've got tapes. Just to clue you in on what I was like at 16/17, I selected from the box:
-The homeade, Mikkie-approved Very, Very Best of John Williams.
-Alice In Chains - Dirt
-Public Enemy - Fear of a Black Planet (actually that's more from freshman year of college, but eh)
-Denis Leary - No Cure For Cancer (a dubbed copy with some Frank Zappa tagged on at the end to fill up the rest of the space)
Random Mix of mostly Monty Python tunes, The Bangles, Primus, and John Lennon
Faith No More - The Real Thing
Queen - News of the World
And people wonder I'm so scatter-brained. I'm trying to wrap my brain around a connection amidst the randomness, but I don't think one exists. It should be fun to play it all for Jazz, and compare her reaction to my music. Will she crinkle her face at me and give me that pitying, "You're OLD" look? We shall see. Should be fun. Or an exercise in lunacy. Quite possibly both.
Just a side note - anyone who has anything to say about my high school collection can eat it. Since mine and Ryan's are mixed up, I had to dig through Color Me Badd, Freak Nasty, and DC Talk to get to it. Now THAT is eclectic taste. ¶ 3/28/2003 07:22:00 PM
3/26/2003
I just called downstairs to the helpdesk. This morning, a co-worker informed me that they had received an email from me with a virus attached to it. Our server automatically blocks out most viruses - so that you get a notification that the attachement was removed, and that it was a virus. Note that I said most.
Anyway, Co-worker didn't open it or anything, and was basically just giving me a heads up that such had occurred. I freaked a bit - I am very, very careful about things. I never open anything or download anything that I don't specifically know what it is, blah-de-blah blah, so I was a little disturbed, but whatever. So I run VirusScan.
Nothing. Computer looks to be clean. I am not by any strech an expert on these matters, though, so I decided I would let the helpdesk know about the situation and see if there's anything else I should be doing, or if someone wanted to come up and check it out. This is the appropriate protocol for these matters, after all.
Random Helpdesk Guy answers the phone. I explain. He asks me to hold on. And then, I hear him quite clearly explaining to Other Random Helpdesk Guy that some girl is on the phone with something about a viral email problem and he has no idea what I am talking about, etc. Dude, at least have the decency to hold your hand firmly over the mouthpiece, if not actually press the hold button. Anyway, RHG comes back on the line proper, and asks me to explain again. Very clearly and slowly (and, on reflection, I suppose a bit rudely), I tell him "I THINK I MIGHT HAVE A VIRUS ON MY COMPUTER. You may want to send someone to check it out."
He actually said, "Nah, I think you're fine. I don't know much about this e-mail stuff [ HELLO? Then why do you WORK at the HELPDESK?]. I'll ask around and check though."
This is why I never call the helpdesk, and go straight to one of our Analysts instead (who happen to both be out today, unfortunately). ¶ 3/26/2003 02:15:00 PM
Anyway, Co-worker didn't open it or anything, and was basically just giving me a heads up that such had occurred. I freaked a bit - I am very, very careful about things. I never open anything or download anything that I don't specifically know what it is, blah-de-blah blah, so I was a little disturbed, but whatever. So I run VirusScan.
Nothing. Computer looks to be clean. I am not by any strech an expert on these matters, though, so I decided I would let the helpdesk know about the situation and see if there's anything else I should be doing, or if someone wanted to come up and check it out. This is the appropriate protocol for these matters, after all.
Random Helpdesk Guy answers the phone. I explain. He asks me to hold on. And then, I hear him quite clearly explaining to Other Random Helpdesk Guy that some girl is on the phone with something about a viral email problem and he has no idea what I am talking about, etc. Dude, at least have the decency to hold your hand firmly over the mouthpiece, if not actually press the hold button. Anyway, RHG comes back on the line proper, and asks me to explain again. Very clearly and slowly (and, on reflection, I suppose a bit rudely), I tell him "I THINK I MIGHT HAVE A VIRUS ON MY COMPUTER. You may want to send someone to check it out."
He actually said, "Nah, I think you're fine. I don't know much about this e-mail stuff [ HELLO? Then why do you WORK at the HELPDESK?]. I'll ask around and check though."
This is why I never call the helpdesk, and go straight to one of our Analysts instead (who happen to both be out today, unfortunately). ¶ 3/26/2003 02:15:00 PM
3/24/2003
Ho boy, here's one for you (the makings of a country song, I feel it!).
My boyfriend and my friend have run off with my car.
Ok, that's the short, and misleading version. Basically an hour ago I sent Alicia off with my keys to pick the Boy up from the doctor's office (he has hurt his knee - more on that later). This is Oxford, y'all. Even 5:00 traffic doesn't take that long to bust through. I can only assume that they went to AutoZone or Wal-Mart or some such to pick up coolant for Alicia's car, which Ryan promised that he would help with. However, they did not tell me this (although I didn't tell Ryan I was sending Alicia after him, either), and I am sitting here at work, utterly stranded, 20 minutes past time to leave, and imagining all manner of horrendous things that could have happened.
Ryan mis-judged a curb with his crutches, took a spill, and busted the other knee.
Alicia got into a horrible car accident on the way to the office, and is bleeding to death while Ryan sits in the Doctor's Office wondering why I'm so late.
Alicia and Ryan, on their way back here, got into a horrible car accident, and they're both bleeding to death.
I know the *real* reason is that Ryan said, hey, it'll be five minutes to run out to Wal-Mart (actually a 7-10 minute drive from the Doctor's Office), pick up the coolant (5 minutes to trek across the expanse of the Super Wal-mart, then 20 to select the absolute best product - Ryan will comparison shop til he drops, 10 minutes to check out and get back to the car), and head over here (7 minutes from Wal-mart to campus). That's a 52 minute 5 minutes, which means I'll probably be sitting here for about another 22.
¶ 3/24/2003 06:22:00 PM
My boyfriend and my friend have run off with my car.
Ok, that's the short, and misleading version. Basically an hour ago I sent Alicia off with my keys to pick the Boy up from the doctor's office (he has hurt his knee - more on that later). This is Oxford, y'all. Even 5:00 traffic doesn't take that long to bust through. I can only assume that they went to AutoZone or Wal-Mart or some such to pick up coolant for Alicia's car, which Ryan promised that he would help with. However, they did not tell me this (although I didn't tell Ryan I was sending Alicia after him, either), and I am sitting here at work, utterly stranded, 20 minutes past time to leave, and imagining all manner of horrendous things that could have happened.
Ryan mis-judged a curb with his crutches, took a spill, and busted the other knee.
Alicia got into a horrible car accident on the way to the office, and is bleeding to death while Ryan sits in the Doctor's Office wondering why I'm so late.
Alicia and Ryan, on their way back here, got into a horrible car accident, and they're both bleeding to death.
I know the *real* reason is that Ryan said, hey, it'll be five minutes to run out to Wal-Mart (actually a 7-10 minute drive from the Doctor's Office), pick up the coolant (5 minutes to trek across the expanse of the Super Wal-mart, then 20 to select the absolute best product - Ryan will comparison shop til he drops, 10 minutes to check out and get back to the car), and head over here (7 minutes from Wal-mart to campus). That's a 52 minute 5 minutes, which means I'll probably be sitting here for about another 22.
¶ 3/24/2003 06:22:00 PM
3/23/2003
I'm making Gumbo.
I love a good gumbo, and my family, though not properly cajun, have lived in cajun territory long enough to perfect the art of gumbo-making. I've been around good gumbo all my life. I'm a gumbo snob.
What exactly makes a gumbo right is really hard to nail. The only trick is in the roux, and while I've heard other people bitch and moan about how they have problems with rouxs - generally that they burn them - I never have. I make a great roux. Beyond that, anything you put in the pot goes. The whole point is to empty the contents of your refridgerator, back yard, your neighbors back yard, and the swamp back behind the house, and put it all in the pot. You could put a muddy old boot in, if you were a real master of the gumbo, and it would come out tasting like heaven (Don't try this at home).
So why is it that my gumbo is never quite there? It's good, mind you, but it isn't right . The only thing I can think of to describe it is that its clean. Gumbo, like most cajun food, has dirty quality. I lean over my pot (I'm pretty much done, its just simmering til I get around to eating it), and it smells so fresh. And that is not right, in the world of good gumbo. You can use fresh ingredients, but somewhere in the cooking process fresh celery should be exalted to a higher, dirtier, state of being.
It's downright shameful is what it is. Won't stop me from making it though. I have a feeling that maybe that dirty quality is something gained with age, like wisdom or the sharp bite of a good cheese. It's an ingredient you can't find in your pantry (or the swamp behind the house), but something you put in with your soul.
Someday. Someday I will make make that dirty, dirty gumbo. ¶ 3/23/2003 11:01:00 AM
I love a good gumbo, and my family, though not properly cajun, have lived in cajun territory long enough to perfect the art of gumbo-making. I've been around good gumbo all my life. I'm a gumbo snob.
What exactly makes a gumbo right is really hard to nail. The only trick is in the roux, and while I've heard other people bitch and moan about how they have problems with rouxs - generally that they burn them - I never have. I make a great roux. Beyond that, anything you put in the pot goes. The whole point is to empty the contents of your refridgerator, back yard, your neighbors back yard, and the swamp back behind the house, and put it all in the pot. You could put a muddy old boot in, if you were a real master of the gumbo, and it would come out tasting like heaven (Don't try this at home).
So why is it that my gumbo is never quite there? It's good, mind you, but it isn't right . The only thing I can think of to describe it is that its clean. Gumbo, like most cajun food, has dirty quality. I lean over my pot (I'm pretty much done, its just simmering til I get around to eating it), and it smells so fresh. And that is not right, in the world of good gumbo. You can use fresh ingredients, but somewhere in the cooking process fresh celery should be exalted to a higher, dirtier, state of being.
It's downright shameful is what it is. Won't stop me from making it though. I have a feeling that maybe that dirty quality is something gained with age, like wisdom or the sharp bite of a good cheese. It's an ingredient you can't find in your pantry (or the swamp behind the house), but something you put in with your soul.
Someday. Someday I will make make that dirty, dirty gumbo. ¶ 3/23/2003 11:01:00 AM
