Wow. Over already?
I’m still doing my Christmas shopping.
When I find the cable, I’ll post pictures of elephant seals sited on my Yule journey to the coast. They look pretty much like this.
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I’m out the door on the way to the coast. I have to finish my Christmas shopping, and your ordinary department store just won’t do.
Why isn’t it?
Dang.
Tonight’s commute was startling. I pulled up to a stoplight and noticed my car happened to be sitting next to a police car. I further noticed that the police car was the same one that had been behind me a moment or two before. Further, the officer was waving, pointing toward the tail of my car, and saying something.
Of course, I’m thinking, DARN, what’s wrong with my car??? ARG! So I roll down the window.
“What does the sticker mean?”
Oh. The bumper sticker. That says “there’s no place like 197.0.0.1.”
Which is how I wound up delivering a networking basics class of .05 minutes on the street tonight. I don’t think he really “got it,” but he seemed satisfied enough.
The number, by the way, is an IP address that is essentially “home” - if you ping it from your system it will always be, in a nutshell, your computer talking to itself.
Now I’m going to go drive by firehouses. (Have you seen the annual fireman’s calendar? HUBBA!)
I learned this week:
1. Thinking about washing the car, followed by recognizing that it needs new wiper blades, will result in rain.
2. The less interested I am in a show, following a period of intense interest, the more likely my brain will suddenly think of fic that will inevitably start quite innocently then spiral into a series of shorts, novellas, and novels, as the grey matter attempts to rescue the show from its own dwindling quality.
3. My Inner Child is alive and well, and able to spring forth at a whim when confronted with charming lil’ urchins in need of better mental health. How I’m going to manage a session note for an hour of drawing crayon pictures with a cute little girl, I’m not certain. I think I may have found the long-dormant vestigial maternal instinct I thought I didn’t have.
4. I am apparently having a fannish affair with Mandy Patinkin that has more staying power than expected. I loved him in Princess Bride, fell for him again in Dead Like Me, and I’ve discovered Criminal Minds and now return to it again and again in order to view his weathered, kind face and hear his reassuring baritone. Which, since he does not have a British accent, is odd, as I’m usually drawn to That Deep Cultured Voice more than anything else, as evidenced by my yen for Sean Connery and Patrick Stewart.
5. As Christmas approach the Bah Humbug sets in. I think it’s the Year of the Gift Certificate.
Off to the housecleaning and the library. The latter to feed my unending yearning for decent fiction.
My crazy friends decided to knock a digit off my age, as all the preprinted stuff they could find was black. So I arrived at John’s Incredible Pizza suspecting there would be ’surprises’ and not being disappointed - Barbie princess table mat, tiara and wand, and pink and purple streamers. And a card that says happy 4th birthday.
One of them got me a drill so he could get his back from me. There’s a hint.
We played weird games for tickets and redeemed the tickets, and they gave me a glitter lamp. Or was it a lava lamp? I was hoping for the huge lips phone, but, not that many tickets.
I put the tiara on backwards. Someone said I looked like ‘that chick on Babylon 5′ which was, of course, the whole idea. After wandering about mumbling about The Three and the light and the darkness, it was decided I’d had too much soda and pizza and we went to our various homes.
And now, Monday begins.
Today I went to the local university library and signed up for a card. As it is part of the CSU system, I learned, I could sign up as an alumni for a free card. Alas, I am not a member of the alumni association. I swore I wouldn’t join because of lingering bitterness over various incidents in which I had to practically beat people up to get paperwork done. (Well, not really, otherwise I’d be blogging from jail, wouldn’t I?) So I wrote a check for a community membership. The other alternative is to continue ordering various books that cost about the same as a year membership at the library.
I figured out today the total amount of money I spent on the move. I then cried for a bit, did four loads of laundry, ate something fattening, and realized I had voicemail. Like its predecessor, my cell phone appears to ignore incoming calls. Also, I opened my credit card bill and cried a while longer. Oy.
Monday is right around the corner. I actually look forward to going to work these days. It’s interesting how doing something you actually want to do makes a huge difference, eh?