Catchy Name Needed

So I spent the evening yesterday hanging out with Anthea in Houston. She is in for a week for work. We had a fun time - we went to Galleria and messed around for several hours - we let a really over-enthusiastic Benefit saleslady in Macy's do our eyebrows (I have dark eyebrows to begin with so it never occurred to me to put any further color on them, but I have to admit that it really didn't look bad) and we oohed and aahed over the overpriced but really cute stuff in the Ed Hardy boutique, and we wandered around the various designer boutiques mostly window-shopping but occasionally wandering inside. (The results of this were usually jawdropping. The really cute embroidered leather Fendi purse I liked? $2700. A cute sort of peasant-style dress Anthea liked? $3500.) We also did a lot of talking, of course, and coffee-drinking, and later there was dinner, although both of us ended up eating breakfast food, at IHOP. Anthea had never had chicken-fried steak, and I had to attempt to explain it ("it's fried the same way chicken is fried" was the gist of it) and so she tried it, and somewhat to my surprise, liked it. We decided that we had both grown up on fairly similar red-meat-based diets in Queensland and Texas. And we are discussing trying to do something else on Saturday before she leaves.

In other news, I am taking a Medical Terminology class online, and will probably take a certification class on medical coding after that. (I'm hoping to be able to zoom through the terminology part pretty quickly.) The job market is really bad right now, as everybody knows, and I can't seem to work up any enthusiasm for going back to doing anything secretarial, anyway. Coding is supposed to be a really growing field and is something I can get into with just a few months of training, apparently, so it seems like a good alternative. And since I've already been working in a hospital, the experience I already have will help, somewhat.

Also, we went to see The Wrestler on Sunday, and as often tends to happen with movies that have hugely favorable reviews, I was just a bit disappointed. ("I expected more there there," was what I said to Rob.) It was good but somehow I felt like something was lacking. Practically every scene with Marisa Tomei was in the trailer - except for the ones where she was topless, and there weren't even really that much of those. It seemed to me that about half of the movie was in the trailer, although of course it wasn't, really. The part that wasn't was the wrestling part, mostly, and I actually liked a lot of that - we used to watch some wrestling back when we were first married, and in fact we went to a WWF thing in Houston once (a "Royal Rumble" along about 1988). I especially liked the backstage bits where they were working out what they were going to do, because of course that's something that you normally don't see. Like I said, it was good, and Mickey Rourke's performance was excellent, of course. I just think I was expecting something that didn't turn out to be there.

Things that made me happy today:
-- coffee
-- the necklace I made to give my mother-in-law (blue and green Czech glass)
-- reading So You Want to Be a Wizard (more A Wrinkle In Time than Harry Potter, but good)
-- shopping, even though I didn't buy much
-- the holiday decorations on the gigantic houses in the River Oaks area in Houston
-- sourdough bread from Central Market


So I made my more-or-less annual trip into the horror that is Houston traffic today to go shopping. The traffic wasn't really too too horrible, and in fact I drove around considerably more than I really needed to, just to look around. In fact, I think it's fair to say that the purpose of these trips is as much to get in the holiday mood as much as it is to actually shop. I generally do get some shopping done, just the same. (See last year's entry for actual numbers, although I didn't spend anything like that amount today.)

I usually do this on a Thursday or Friday, and so I was trying to decide how much of the reduced foot-traffic I saw today was the economy, and how much was just that it was Tuesday. I suspect it was both. There were a lot of parking spaces at Highland Village, but the stores I went in mostly seemed to be doing decent business - except for West Elm, which was almost deserted. There were a lot of people in Pottery Barn and Crate and Barrel - particularly the latter. There was an exceptional number of very fashionably-dressed women in Pottery Barn, but that may just be that women like that don't work and so they're free to wander around shopping on weekdays. Or maybe it has something to do with that this particular Pottery Barn is about two doors down from Tootsie's, a very chi-chi women's clothing store. I don't know. Usually I buy some ornaments and stuff like that at one place or another, but today I didn't. That might have partly had to do with the economy, too - or it might just be that I can't really justify buying ornaments for the tree I haven't bothered to put up.

I spent the most money in Central Market, actually. I don't think I'd been in there in a couple of years, and I'd forgotten how much stuff they keep around this time of year that's gift-able. We are supposed to be holding down our gift-giving to the minimum this year, more or less, but I sabotaged that by buying, among other things, a big jug of maple syrup for Rob. (Is that a weird gift? He had expressed interest in having some, and it's very expensive. columbina has already informed me that giving my father-in-law apples is a rather odd choice, but Rob came up with that idea so I don't take any responsibility. I just bought some nice organic apples that looked like they might survive the trip, and I added some locally-grown honey to it, that seemed like something most people would like.) (Also, I pointed out to Col that if the apples came from Harry and David and cost about three times as much, nobody would think it was odd at all. Which he agreed was a valid point.)


Something I noticed on the tollway coming home - and to a certain extent in Houston proper - is the number of roofs still held together by blue tarps. There are still quite a lot of them, three months after the storm.


Today's Holidailies prompt was "Write the annual holiday card/brag letter for your family." but I have already done that. (And I wouldn't exactly call it a "brag letter" except in the sense of "Can you top this?" -- Which, come to think of it, is one reason I didn't send it to people who are local - because many of them can.)

I have no results for the "How Texas are you?" quiz, because I am apparently not Texas enough to check a box that says "Forget driving a Porsche, you'd rather have a brand new truck." Aargh. I got annoyed by the stereotyping and didn't answer at all. (Not annoyed enough to refuse to link to it, though, you notice.) However, for some reason, the one about how the only spices you know are salt, pepper, ketchup, bbq sauce, and Ranch dressing amused me instead of annoying me, even though I've heard variations on it before. It's still very Texas. Nevermind that I loathe ranch dressing and am not really all that big on BBQ sauce, the stuff is inescapable around here. So are pickups, actually - although everybody that doesn't actually own a ranch or something is suddenly scrambling to get rid of theirs. Anyway, the silly quiz as a whole was mildly amusing, I just didn't think you could really get anything resembling meaningful results out of the thing. (Although I suppose expecting meaningful results out of a Blogthing is probably ridiculous, in any case!) (And besides, if you think about it too hard, the part about ranch dressing being a spice will break your brain.)

Well, anyway. What else? I have been shopping on Etsy again - this time I bought these lampwork earrings, which I have been eyeing for a couple of days. In semi-related news, you may have noticed that I have mostly stopped babbling about jewelry lately - I think there's a definite connection between the lack of bead-talk and the increase in WoW talk. If I spend all my time on the latter, there's no time to make jewelry. However, there are still beads and findings all over my dining room table and I have no doubt that I will pick it up again eventually. As a matter of fact, just yesterday I was thinking about the carmine glass beads I bought a while back and wishing I had a bracelet made of them to wear - unfortunately I didn't think about it early enough to be able to actually do anything about that. Mostly I have been staying away from the beads and the shopping online, which is probably a good thing, on the whole.

I had the afternoon off yesterday because I was supposed to do financial-type things because this afternoon I have my long-delayed appointment with Mom's accountant and I was supposed to be preparing. And I actually did do some financial-type things, and an awful lot of sorting through papers and things like that, but unfortunately I am still not prepared. I just decided that I am going to have to do that annoying thing that people do (annoying if you're an accountant, anyway) where you take all the papers and dump them on the accountant's desk and let him sort it out. Or let him help me sort it out, at least, or something like that. Because otherwise it's clearly never going to get done. I seem to only be able to deal with one piece of the estate business at a time - lately it's been the house, and everything else has been on hold. The good news, of course, is that with the house selling (knock on wood - I have this fear that something will still go horribly wrong with it), there is light at the end of the tunnel there, and we can look at getting everything all closed out and done before too too long.

Speaking of Las Vegas (well, we haven't spoken of it lately but it's still my default icon!), I think I have created a monster. Rob said yesterday that he wants to go back to Las Vegas - luckily he wasn't specific as to when - and furthermore, that we have to stay at TI again so that he can play his favorite set of slot machines, which are, as it happens, right by the elevators at TI. (I have this theory that they put slot machines which pay off slightly better in prominent places so you'll get hooked. No idea if that's really true.) Oh well, could be worse. I like Las Vegas anyway, and it's not like he's given to gambling indiscriminately. We'd probably better not wait 5 years or anything to go back, though, or his favorite slot machines might have been replaced, and then where will we be?

The University is restructuring again. At least it's not layoffs this time. (There are rumors of a possible hiring freeze, actually, but nothing official on that front yet.) Our division (Finance) is getting moved yet again - the last time around, they split us up into Hospital Finance, Academic Finance, and so forth, but now we are all getting rolled back into one big division again. We suspect that our division head is sort of getting left out in the cold in the process, although theoretically he got new employees out of the deal. But he would be the logical person for that third EVP position, and his name is pointedly not mentioned even though he does seem to be performing those duties on an interim basis. (It's not in this article, either.)

Also discussed in the Town Meeting was new dormitories, which affects my husband since the old ones are where he works. (The presentation from the meeting, which I think you should be able to access, has a drawing of the new building on page 5.) We don't know what sort of job changes will shake out of this, but our theory is that we have at least a couple of years to let it sort itself out, since it's highly unlikely that the building will actually be finished by December 2009, as it says there, considering that UTMB never does anything very fast and work hasn't even started on it yet. (It took them three years to build a two-story parking garage, after all. And you'd think that would be a much simpler thing than a regular building.)

I'm wearing my pink plaid shoes again, which I love unabashedly. I do seem to sort of have a thing for pink, don't I? (There are also these beads, which came in my Fire Mountain order yesterday, and which will probably be a bracelet - and possibly matching earrings - before the weekend is over, if not today.) (The pink shoes don't seem to be available on Target's website, but Target is where they came from - they're Keds knock-offs, branded Merona. Keds usually calls this type of shoe "skimmers" - sort of ballet-flat shaped, but with a white tennis-shoe type bottom. Just in case you're interested!)

I have been feeling kind of crappy this afternoon - I don't know what that's about. I hope to hell I'm not coming down with something. That would be very bad timing. (But par for the course, really.) Rob was watching the MST3K Santa Claus Conquers the Martians earlier and I couldn't really get into it (imagine that) and I went in the bedroom to read for a minute and fell asleep, which I never do this time of day. Of course, that could be why I feel groggy, couldn't it? We'll see, I guess - if I'm really getting sick I'll know it soon enough.


We went in Wal-Mart last night and it was oddly empty. I mean, not actually empty, just not crazily full like you would think. My only theory is that it's sort of the deep breath between the early shoppers, who are done now, and the late shoppers, who will start their shopping this weekend. (Hey, they have all the way til the end of the day Monday, after all!)

(Oh, looking for a last-minute gift? How about a Segway? Seriously, I got a "last-minute gifts" e-mail that had this listed in it. Only $4700!!)

Anyway, I went in Target after I got off work this afternoon - it was not terribly busy either. I don't know what's up with that, but oh well, it was nice. The only gift I bought there was Letters from Iwo Jima for my dad. (Let's see if he has any wisecracks about it being in Japanese.) I went in the quilt store after that, to buy something for my aunt, but nothing appealed to me too much. Also, one of the employees did say hello to me when I came in but they proceeded to ignore me after that. I probably would have bought something if somebody had been helping me but I wandered around for a while and then walked out, instead, giftless. I hope I get inspired about what to do about that gift because I'm running out of time. We may be looking at a gift certificate. (Or a Segway, who knows?)

I also went in Marshall's but by that time I was thoroughly disgruntled and didn't buy anything there, either. Then I came home, hungry and thinking I was going to have a hamburger for lunch, only to find that someone (hint: not me) had stuck all the hamburger in the house in the freezer. I gave up at that point and ordered a pizza. Forget any semblance of the diet... although the diet pretty much went out the window this morning when not one but two of my co-workers came in with donuts, anyway. So I played GuildWars and waited for the pizza guy to come. A highly productive afternoon, this one.


Oh, I got several more e-mails from my sister, one of which contained the information that she's not coming to Houston after all. I can't say I'm really surprised, but anyway, we are off the hook on trying to meet her on Sunday. At this point, I think that's probably for the best.

I went to Austin saying that the main thing I wanted to do - besides see my sister, of course - was shop, but we didn't actually end up getting any shopping done to speak of. Saturday we started out to shop, and I'm still not exactly sure where the whole day went, but the only place we actually went shopping was Waterloo Records. We did go see my nephew (and his dad), which is always nice. He is almost 17, which seems unbelievable. Pretty nice kid, though, on the whole.

I didn't realize that it'd so long since I'd been in Waterloo - when we walked in I realized that the last time I was there, most of the records were still on vinyl. I do think I'd been in the "new" location once, maybe, but most of the time I was in Austin, they were over on the other side of Town Lake, further down Lamar. Or maybe I hadn't been in that store at all - when did they move, anyway? I know they were there by the time I started coming to Austin more often, the last five years or so, at least. Before that I came so seldom for a long time that I'm not sure of anything.

We ate lunch at Hut's - which hadn't changed a bit in 20 years - and dinner at El Arroyo, as I said before. That was a new place to me, but it was really good, and it was nice to get to talk to anjea, when my sister let us get a word in edgewise. Luckily (well, sort of) she went for a couple of long smoke breaks. (I've been trying hard not to say anything about her smoking. I don't think it'd do any good.)

I told Anjea that the worlds were colliding because she met my sister, who of course calls me by my real name, while just about everybody I know online (except possibly karen_d) calls me Mel, even if they know perfectly well what my real name is. I never quite know what to tell people when that happens. When I meet the "online people" in person, they always say, "Well, which one do you want to be called?" and then I get all indecisive. I guess really, I'd just as soon be Mel. As I've said many times, I don't like my real name very much anyway. If we move to Austin when we retire - as we've been saying for a couple of years we're going to, and retirement for us is not all that far away  - I may be tempted to just change my name. Not legally, because legally my name is already a mess - but I might just start calling myself Mel in general. I dunno, we'll see, we still have a good while to go, and I may feel differently about it by then. But it seems like that would be the best time to ever do it, if I decide I really want to.

My sister is trying to become an artist - by which I mean, one who actually makes money at it. She's always had a flair for design, and an original style, and she has developed a technique which does seem to be something a bit different, so it does seem like there are possibilities in this. I've only seen a couple of the pieces she's made to sell, but I really like some of them quite a lot. She's supposed to send me pictures and if she does I'll put some of them up. She has a website up already but she keeps saying it's not finished so I guess I shouldn't link to it yet.



I don't have to go in to work til after lunch tomorrow - if I wake up in time, I may go see if they can color my hair in the morning. I've never been in there in the morning, but surely they open by 10 or so, I would think. That ought to be enough time. I have big old gray roots that are driving me crazy - and it's only been two months since I got it done, I don't know why they look so bad already!


 

I have already done several Terribly Important Things today - I got a flu shot and sent out revised phone lists and other such fun tasks, all before 10am - so can I go home now? I don't care that it's only 10:30, I don't care that I'm already off Friday and next Monday, I just wanna go home. This may have something to do with the fact that I couldn't sleep and I got up at midnight and installed Word on my computer just so I could make a template for new-address postcards. (My Dell came with WordPerfect installed, and either I just completely don't understand WordPerfect any more, or it's gotten very wonky. Or possibly a bit of both. I made labels the other day and saved them, and when I opened them again later they were all screwed up. And nobody tell me how to fix that, ok? I have already fixed it by installing Word, which I at least know how to use. I knew all the ins and outs of WordPerfect 10 years ago, and I don't really want to go back.) Anyway, Word is installed and the postcards are created and I did eventually manage to go to sleep, and aside from being a bit cranky now, all is well.



I spent most of yesterday dealing with Comcast idiocy. AT&T's customer service looks sterling by contrast, which makes me very tempted to try out that high-speed DSL they tried so hard to sell me. But I'm not convinced it's as fast as they're trying to make me think.

Odds & ends:
Encase your hard drive in Carbonite. (First I thought this was a joke. Then I realized it was just a PC-backup service. I wonder if they have to pay royalties to George Lucas.)

And I think my workplace has problems. (Don't follow that link expecting something funny; it's not.)

I really need one of these. I can never remember what blood type I am, I have some kind of mental block about it. I'm not O and I'm not AB - I think I'm A-positive but I'm not quite sure. A laminated card I could carry around would be just the ticket. (Of course, once I had it, I would remember.)

You can tell it's a slow day when I start making multiple posts.

When I said in chat the other night that President Ford was dead, somebody said, "That's two" - presumably meaning James Brown was the first one. What I want to know is, does Saddam count as #3? Or do the deaths have to be by a more natural means than execution? I don't understand the rules of that business, I guess.

(I may have more to say about President Ford later. I started writing a massive brain dump about presidents, but that's the kind of thing that I may or may not ever finish. We'll see.)

In other current-events-related things, I am inclined to want to rant about Donald Trump, mostly because, in my interpretation of what he's said, his objections to Rosie O'Donnell are primarily that she's fat and she has a hot girlfriend. (I do not buy for a minute that Rosie O'Donnell is ugly. She's not. Donald Trump is, though, which may be why he's so damn sensitive on the topic.)

Also, I loathe people who call other people "losers" - ugh. I didn't like the man to begin with but I've just gotten a lot more vehement about it.



So, I've been meaning to write an entry all week that was about what I've actually been doing this week, and I keep getting off on other topics.

( So here goes. )

Read this: the slackers of bedford falls. Somebody else doesn't like that movie! yay!