It hit me hard first thing this morning. Brett noticed it before I did; the first thing he said to me this morning after I greeted him was, "are your sinuses bothering you?" My first response was a puzzled "no," followed immediately by a confused "yes." Then my sinuses gave their own response by GURGLING. Which is never a good sign.
By the time we were heading out to run errands I'd already chapped the end of my nose with kleenex, I had a cough, and was achy and shivery. In retrospect maybe it was rude of me to spend so much time unnecessarily exposing the whole town to my cooties while browsing through the grocery store today, but I love the grocery store, so I had to go. I washed my hands though, and coughed and sneezed into the crook of my elbow.
Now we're back home and Brett is taking good care of me. He's making homemade gumbo for dinner (chicken and andouille thickened with okra, file, AND a roux, just the way I likes it), and we're watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD. Later we'll watch new episodes of Food Network shows, and then we'll fall asleep. And hopefully I'll feel better in the morning.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Once I Wanted To Be The Greatest...
Things that have come to my attention today:
1) Cat Power has a few songs I like, but according to iTunes, "The Greatest" is the one I've ended up listening to the most. Making it, in my opinion, "the greatest" song she's written. Or performed, since she seems to sing a lot of stuff she didn't actually write.
2) If you eat about a pound of carrots, your poop will be orange.
3) If Brett comes across a carrot he dislikes, he will apparently be perfectly comfortable spitting the whole chewed up mess into his water glass and setting it in the kitchen for me to discover and then rinse out for him.
4) A 2 lb bag of baby carrots might be a little much for two people to go through on their own.
5) [Entry deleted, as per Brett's request, because apparently he doesn't want anyone to see something he wrote when he was nine. Because he's a jerk.]
1) Cat Power has a few songs I like, but according to iTunes, "The Greatest" is the one I've ended up listening to the most. Making it, in my opinion, "the greatest" song she's written. Or performed, since she seems to sing a lot of stuff she didn't actually write.
2) If you eat about a pound of carrots, your poop will be orange.
3) If Brett comes across a carrot he dislikes, he will apparently be perfectly comfortable spitting the whole chewed up mess into his water glass and setting it in the kitchen for me to discover and then rinse out for him.
4) A 2 lb bag of baby carrots might be a little much for two people to go through on their own.
5) [Entry deleted, as per Brett's request, because apparently he doesn't want anyone to see something he wrote when he was nine. Because he's a jerk.]
Friday, October 26, 2007
Play that banjolele!
I've enjoyed writing things in numbered lists today, so I will continue that trend with this post.
1) Brett bought a ukulele today. He's wanted one for a long time, and occasionally when he would bring it up I would refer to it as a pukulele. He's on the couch tuning it right now, and is very excited to have it. We now have a piano, keyboard, cello, trumpet, bamboo flute, and...ukulele.
I have just over five years of piano lessons under my belt, and play terribly. Sometimes I sit down at the piano and try to bang out something that sounds vaguely musical, but for the most part we don't really get along. I've never really spent time with the other instruments. They're pretty much all just Brett's.
The imbalance of musical skill in our relationship does bother me on occasion (I don't really like being reminded of things I'm not good at), but for the most part I just try to enjoy listening to Brett play whatever instrument he feels like playing, and take pleasure in it that way. Sometimes I like singing, but I'm not very good at that either. As Brett will attest to.
2) I found out this morning that one of my photos is being used on Schmap's neighborhood guide for Portland, so that's pretty cool. They asked my permission awhile ago but weren't sure if they would actually use it. But they did. Yay! I've had other publications use my photos before (most of my first-time visitor hits come through image links), but Schmap travel guides are pretty cool, so this kind of makes me feel like maybe I really AM a decent photographer.
3) I started this post like an hour and a half ago, and now I don't remember what else I was going to write.
4) Avatar is on in a half an hour, and the oven has finished pre-heating for the frozen vegan pizza I plan on eating during tv time (lazy Friday nights are teh awesome), so I'm going to go. But OH! If you don't watch Avatar, you should, because it's supes cool. Courtney, you would especially like it, but I don't know if you have it in JP. US iTunes has it, though. But that costs money.
1) Brett bought a ukulele today. He's wanted one for a long time, and occasionally when he would bring it up I would refer to it as a pukulele. He's on the couch tuning it right now, and is very excited to have it. We now have a piano, keyboard, cello, trumpet, bamboo flute, and...ukulele.
I have just over five years of piano lessons under my belt, and play terribly. Sometimes I sit down at the piano and try to bang out something that sounds vaguely musical, but for the most part we don't really get along. I've never really spent time with the other instruments. They're pretty much all just Brett's.
The imbalance of musical skill in our relationship does bother me on occasion (I don't really like being reminded of things I'm not good at), but for the most part I just try to enjoy listening to Brett play whatever instrument he feels like playing, and take pleasure in it that way. Sometimes I like singing, but I'm not very good at that either. As Brett will attest to.
2) I found out this morning that one of my photos is being used on Schmap's neighborhood guide for Portland, so that's pretty cool. They asked my permission awhile ago but weren't sure if they would actually use it. But they did. Yay! I've had other publications use my photos before (most of my first-time visitor hits come through image links), but Schmap travel guides are pretty cool, so this kind of makes me feel like maybe I really AM a decent photographer.
3) I started this post like an hour and a half ago, and now I don't remember what else I was going to write.
4) Avatar is on in a half an hour, and the oven has finished pre-heating for the frozen vegan pizza I plan on eating during tv time (lazy Friday nights are teh awesome), so I'm going to go. But OH! If you don't watch Avatar, you should, because it's supes cool. Courtney, you would especially like it, but I don't know if you have it in JP. US iTunes has it, though. But that costs money.
I should really be asleep right now.
But I felt it would be a little lame if, the same day I declared that I was going to try to post something here every day, I didn't post. I've written some comments on a past post, but until now I hadn't actually created a new post. And now I have. And aside from what I've just said, I'd like to use this post to say three things:
1) Awhile back, one of my younger brothers (who has a comp sci degree from Brown and works for some fancy tech company down in silicon valley) asked me how many hits I had on my blog. When I told him, he was like, "oh." And pretty much stopped talking to me about the internets. WELL SCREW YOU, SAM! AND your fancy degree! Because I just did the math, and right now with 195 posts (this is 196) and 11, 805 unique visitors, I'm averaging about 60.5 visits per post! (And our IP is blocked, so it's not counting Brett OR me.) I may be not be in the league of facebook, youtube, or even maybe even this douche, but I don't think I'm THAT unpopular. Geez.
2) For the last few years, Brett and I have had all of our tv/video equipment monitored by the Nielsen Media Research company. It was fun while it lasted (and the stuff on tv these days is much more my taste than it was before), but alas - I was notified this morning that our survey has ended, and that someone would need to come by to "deinstall" us.
It's kind of bittersweet; I'm sad that it's ending and that what we watch on tv will no longer matter to The Man, but at the same time it'll be nice to be able to move our tvs/dvd players/etc. around again, because right now they all have wires coming out of the back of them that connect them to creepy boxes that are connected to our phone line, and when we want to move them around we have to schedule an appointment. :P
3) I uploaded a new photo set to flickah:
Brett's Parents' House
1) Awhile back, one of my younger brothers (who has a comp sci degree from Brown and works for some fancy tech company down in silicon valley) asked me how many hits I had on my blog. When I told him, he was like, "oh." And pretty much stopped talking to me about the internets. WELL SCREW YOU, SAM! AND your fancy degree! Because I just did the math, and right now with 195 posts (this is 196) and 11, 805 unique visitors, I'm averaging about 60.5 visits per post! (And our IP is blocked, so it's not counting Brett OR me.) I may be not be in the league of facebook, youtube, or even maybe even this douche, but I don't think I'm THAT unpopular. Geez.
2) For the last few years, Brett and I have had all of our tv/video equipment monitored by the Nielsen Media Research company. It was fun while it lasted (and the stuff on tv these days is much more my taste than it was before), but alas - I was notified this morning that our survey has ended, and that someone would need to come by to "deinstall" us.
It's kind of bittersweet; I'm sad that it's ending and that what we watch on tv will no longer matter to The Man, but at the same time it'll be nice to be able to move our tvs/dvd players/etc. around again, because right now they all have wires coming out of the back of them that connect them to creepy boxes that are connected to our phone line, and when we want to move them around we have to schedule an appointment. :P
3) I uploaded a new photo set to flickah:
Brett's Parents' House
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Take THAT, "The Man!"
From what I learned at hippy school, The Man is always looking for ways to keep us little guys down. One of those ways is by using marketing to fuel our desires and/or play on our insecurities in order to get us to buy things we don't really "need," so that we'll keep giving our money to the people on top, thereby perpetuating our own financial oppression. Or something like that.
From what I've learned from being me, I'm a sucker for good marketing. Or bad marketing...whatevs. If I see something I like, I want it. When I was a kid I used to fantasize about creating a device that would allow me to reach into the tv and literally just pull out anything I saw that I wanted. Especially Strawberry Shortcake dolls. Ahhh...Strawberry Shortcake. Last weekend I watched this and craved orange soda all night. It wasn't an ad for orange soda, and it wasn't even the first time I'd seen it, yet they talked about orange soda, and I wanted it.
Brett and I have been trying to be more thrifty lately, which means no more crazy shopping sprees or big orders from Sephora. Which has actually ended up being more than financially beneficial to us, because I've also realized just how little I can buy, and still feel like my normal self. It's also been great because it's taught me to appreciate all the nice things we already have and, when I DO buy new things, to really see them as special and new. Seriously...when I was working and we had all that disposable income, sometimes we'd go to the mall, come home with three or four shopping bags, and just leave the stuff sitting in the bag on the dining room table for a WEEK without touching it.
Since I've been at home we've had to make some changes, and some of them have been easier than others, but I've been really proud of our thriftiness. I think the thing I'm MOST proud of is that I feel like we've been able to spend less (WAY less) than before, but that we both feel like our quality of life has actually improved, rather than suffered. I'm also proud of the fact that much of our food, cleaning products, and health/beauty items are organic, and that we still manage to avoid doing business with companies whose practices we find unethical.
Admittedly, I don't know much about the business practices at Illuminations, but I've *tried* to learn more, and haven't been able to get any information, which is a good sign. I haven't been able to find them on any boycott lists for fair trade, gay rights, environmental damage, animal testing, etc., which makes me happy. Happy...that...I just screwed them...hmmm...
Whatever. They're still a big company, so they're still "The Man." I think. Either way, THEY offered the sales, and I just took advantage of what they were offering. Our Halloween party is in December again this year (xmasweenukah), so the fact that my order is scheduled to arrive between 10/28-11/01 doesn't bother me in the slightest. Check out my loot!:
I really have been good at avoiding buying unnecessary things this year, but in years past we've spent much more than this on holiday decorations, so I'm still proud of myself. I waited for the 75% off sale that Illuminations has on their Halloween stuff every year, and then I also used a $15 off of $60 or more coupon. Woo! :)
For more money saving inspiration, check out the links below.
People who've taken it to the extreme:
Six Weeks Without a Wash
Brown Dress Project
MSN Money articles:
Help! I can't afford my life
Save big with the flashback budget
Get off the spending treadmill
The secret to success in the middle class
6 (worthless) excuses for not saving money
Scraping by on $150,000 a year
From what I've learned from being me, I'm a sucker for good marketing. Or bad marketing...whatevs. If I see something I like, I want it. When I was a kid I used to fantasize about creating a device that would allow me to reach into the tv and literally just pull out anything I saw that I wanted. Especially Strawberry Shortcake dolls. Ahhh...Strawberry Shortcake. Last weekend I watched this and craved orange soda all night. It wasn't an ad for orange soda, and it wasn't even the first time I'd seen it, yet they talked about orange soda, and I wanted it.
Brett and I have been trying to be more thrifty lately, which means no more crazy shopping sprees or big orders from Sephora. Which has actually ended up being more than financially beneficial to us, because I've also realized just how little I can buy, and still feel like my normal self. It's also been great because it's taught me to appreciate all the nice things we already have and, when I DO buy new things, to really see them as special and new. Seriously...when I was working and we had all that disposable income, sometimes we'd go to the mall, come home with three or four shopping bags, and just leave the stuff sitting in the bag on the dining room table for a WEEK without touching it.
Since I've been at home we've had to make some changes, and some of them have been easier than others, but I've been really proud of our thriftiness. I think the thing I'm MOST proud of is that I feel like we've been able to spend less (WAY less) than before, but that we both feel like our quality of life has actually improved, rather than suffered. I'm also proud of the fact that much of our food, cleaning products, and health/beauty items are organic, and that we still manage to avoid doing business with companies whose practices we find unethical.
Admittedly, I don't know much about the business practices at Illuminations, but I've *tried* to learn more, and haven't been able to get any information, which is a good sign. I haven't been able to find them on any boycott lists for fair trade, gay rights, environmental damage, animal testing, etc., which makes me happy. Happy...that...I just screwed them...hmmm...
Whatever. They're still a big company, so they're still "The Man." I think. Either way, THEY offered the sales, and I just took advantage of what they were offering. Our Halloween party is in December again this year (xmasweenukah), so the fact that my order is scheduled to arrive between 10/28-11/01 doesn't bother me in the slightest. Check out my loot!:
| ITEM | ORIGINALLY | I PAID | Q. ORDERED |
| bat stake | 24.95 | 4.79 | 2 |
| bat stake | 24.95 | 4.80 | 1 |
| happy cat floating candles | 11.95 | 2.29 | 1 |
| happy pumpkin floating candles | 11.95 | 2.29 | 1 |
| owl lantern | 21.95 | 4.21 | 1 |
| halloween stake replacement votive cup | 2.00 | 0.38 | 3 |
| glass pumpkin scatter | 14.95 | 2.86 | 3 |
| haunted candelabra | 24.95 | 4.79 | 2 |
| haunted taper holder | 7.95 | 1.52 | 3 |
| set of 2 spider cylinder fill | 13.95 | 2.67 | 1 |
| subtotal | 259.25 | 49.70 | |
| shipping | 25.93 | 8.95 | |
| tax | 22.80 | 4.37 | |
| total | 307.97 | 63.02 |
I really have been good at avoiding buying unnecessary things this year, but in years past we've spent much more than this on holiday decorations, so I'm still proud of myself. I waited for the 75% off sale that Illuminations has on their Halloween stuff every year, and then I also used a $15 off of $60 or more coupon. Woo! :)
For more money saving inspiration, check out the links below.
People who've taken it to the extreme:
Six Weeks Without a Wash
Brown Dress Project
MSN Money articles:
Help! I can't afford my life
Save big with the flashback budget
Get off the spending treadmill
The secret to success in the middle class
6 (worthless) excuses for not saving money
Scraping by on $150,000 a year
Damn, yo.
I can't believe I haven't posted since AUGUST. Well, that's not true...I can believe it. But still...that's a long time. It's not that I've been too busy to post (really, it's not that difficult), I just haven't done it.
I always feel like if I'm going to post, it's got to be this huge essay that runs through every little thing I've done since the last time I posted, thereby making up for the fact that I waited so long to post anything at all. The thought of writing what would basically be a "what I did for summer vacation" paper every time I log into this blog kind of turns me off from the task, yet I'M THE ONE WHO DECIDED THAT MY POSTS SHOULD BE THAT LONG.
So forget it. Maybe I'll write long posts every once in awhile, but my new goal is to try for short but frequent, rather than infrequent and ridiculouslylong. As a segue between the two styles, I bring you a brief list of a couple of things that have happened since my last post:
1) I'm dairy free. Maybe someday I'll try goat and/or sheep products, but for now the only "dairy" I'm taking in is of the vegan variety. No animal dairy protein what so ever, because apparently I'm allergic. It makes me SICK. When I wrote in my last post about how sick I felt, that was nothing - it actually got worse and worse over a few weeks' time until FINALLY we figured out it was dairy, I stopped consuming dairy, and I got better. Better than before even, because when I kicked dairy to the curb most of my long-standing digestive issues went with it. Sometimes I'll see a Taco Bell commercial or something and I'll be sad, but mostly I haven't even missed it. Luckily we live in an area with lots of vegan alternatives (we even have good vegan doughnuts!).
2) I've uploaded more photos to flickr. Since my last post, I've uploaded these sets:
On the Road
Sunriver 2007
Kwik-E-Mart
Spokane
Darci & Darren's Wedding
FB Quiz*
Kitty Photos
*"FB Quiz" as some of you may have guessed, was my clever code for "Facebook Quiz." They're photos I put together for a quiz on my facebook profile. I thought about listing the Q&A's on the Flickr images, but I didn't want facebook people to be able to cheat by looking at flickr, so I decided against it. If you aren't on facebook you'll just have to suffer the consequences and not take the quiz. If you ARE on facebook, please don't request to add me if you're not actually my friend. That kind of shit is why I left myspace. Well, that, and the fact that facebook is WAY more awesomed than myspace.
3) I have another blog. ish. thing. It's like, well...a planner. Is exactly what it is. For myself, and for Brett really, but you can look at it too if you want. Sometimes when I tell people I'm a homemaker they get all weird, and either challenge me about it (you wouldn't believe all the people who've asked, "so what do you DO all day?" or made bon bon jokes), or they just sort of stop talking to me, as if I couldn't possibly talk about anything but cookies and rainbows.
My mom and I spent a week together last month while taking an oil painting class at the Sitka Center in Oregon, and the whole time she kept trying to come up with ways for me to justify myself to people, which kind of made me think that before SHE realized what I did she must've thought I just stayed in bed all day.
She kept insisting that I tell people I'm an "Intentional Household Manager" so they'd understand what I REALLY do. I personally like the term "Homemaker" (because I make our house a home. Ghay I know, but I still like it), but she thinks that title "sounds like somebody who'd be on Oprah." I think she meant someone who WATCHES Oprah, which I do not. I don't watch any daytime tv, actually. But she does. She watches Oprah. :O
So...anyhoo, I'm totally ruining my short blog post idea, but what I'm trying to get at is that my Jackson Family Weekly Planner is just that - a planner for US, but I'd rather explain what I "DO all day" by sharing it publicly, than by calling myself an Intentional Household Manager. Which is a little r-tarded. And assholey in a defensive, anal kind of way.
I love you, mom! :D
I always feel like if I'm going to post, it's got to be this huge essay that runs through every little thing I've done since the last time I posted, thereby making up for the fact that I waited so long to post anything at all. The thought of writing what would basically be a "what I did for summer vacation" paper every time I log into this blog kind of turns me off from the task, yet I'M THE ONE WHO DECIDED THAT MY POSTS SHOULD BE THAT LONG.
So forget it. Maybe I'll write long posts every once in awhile, but my new goal is to try for short but frequent, rather than infrequent and ridiculouslylong. As a segue between the two styles, I bring you a brief list of a couple of things that have happened since my last post:
1) I'm dairy free. Maybe someday I'll try goat and/or sheep products, but for now the only "dairy" I'm taking in is of the vegan variety. No animal dairy protein what so ever, because apparently I'm allergic. It makes me SICK. When I wrote in my last post about how sick I felt, that was nothing - it actually got worse and worse over a few weeks' time until FINALLY we figured out it was dairy, I stopped consuming dairy, and I got better. Better than before even, because when I kicked dairy to the curb most of my long-standing digestive issues went with it. Sometimes I'll see a Taco Bell commercial or something and I'll be sad, but mostly I haven't even missed it. Luckily we live in an area with lots of vegan alternatives (we even have good vegan doughnuts!).
2) I've uploaded more photos to flickr. Since my last post, I've uploaded these sets:
On the Road
Sunriver 2007
Kwik-E-Mart
Spokane
Darci & Darren's Wedding
FB Quiz*
Kitty Photos
*"FB Quiz" as some of you may have guessed, was my clever code for "Facebook Quiz." They're photos I put together for a quiz on my facebook profile. I thought about listing the Q&A's on the Flickr images, but I didn't want facebook people to be able to cheat by looking at flickr, so I decided against it. If you aren't on facebook you'll just have to suffer the consequences and not take the quiz. If you ARE on facebook, please don't request to add me if you're not actually my friend. That kind of shit is why I left myspace. Well, that, and the fact that facebook is WAY more awesomed than myspace.
3) I have another blog. ish. thing. It's like, well...a planner. Is exactly what it is. For myself, and for Brett really, but you can look at it too if you want. Sometimes when I tell people I'm a homemaker they get all weird, and either challenge me about it (you wouldn't believe all the people who've asked, "so what do you DO all day?" or made bon bon jokes), or they just sort of stop talking to me, as if I couldn't possibly talk about anything but cookies and rainbows.
My mom and I spent a week together last month while taking an oil painting class at the Sitka Center in Oregon, and the whole time she kept trying to come up with ways for me to justify myself to people, which kind of made me think that before SHE realized what I did she must've thought I just stayed in bed all day.
She kept insisting that I tell people I'm an "Intentional Household Manager" so they'd understand what I REALLY do. I personally like the term "Homemaker" (because I make our house a home. Ghay I know, but I still like it), but she thinks that title "sounds like somebody who'd be on Oprah." I think she meant someone who WATCHES Oprah, which I do not. I don't watch any daytime tv, actually. But she does. She watches Oprah. :O
So...anyhoo, I'm totally ruining my short blog post idea, but what I'm trying to get at is that my Jackson Family Weekly Planner is just that - a planner for US, but I'd rather explain what I "DO all day" by sharing it publicly, than by calling myself an Intentional Household Manager. Which is a little r-tarded. And assholey in a defensive, anal kind of way.
I love you, mom! :D
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