Brain Fog

The problem with keeping two blogs under two different names is that sometimes I forget which blog I'm signed into when I write a post. So, if you happened to see a blog post that didn't make much sense, it was meant for the other blog. I've since taken it down from here. I blame the login gremlins or the html goblins. Take your pick.

Some cheese with my whine...

I usually try to keep this blog fairly upbeat. However, today, I’m going to complain. I hear a little bit of complaining can be healthy, and goodness knows I could use a little bit of healthiness right now.

I’m exhausted! Not just the usual stayed up too late tired or the need a vacation tired. The bone-numbingly drained feeling that can only be described as feeling like something has been leeching the life force out of me for months and is reaching the bottom of the barrel.

Around Town

I meant to blog this one last week, but I was busy. Last Monday, on my lunch break, I drove to the library to check out a book. The library is about a 10 minute drive from work, and when I got downtown, I saw a police van.

It was one of those fifteen passenger vans with the back windows made of car body material instead of glass. Along with the standard police painting, it had the words "School Services" painted on the back. I had a mental image of the van driving up and down Castro Street rounding up truants. It reminded me of the scene in the Disney movie Lady and the Tramp where the dog catcher rode around town picking up strays.

When I was a kid, I didn't believe that truant officers existed. I thought they were boogeymen that parents made up to scare their kids into going to school. Whenever I was sick and tried to convince my mom to let me stay home, if she thought I was faking it, she would say that the truant officer would come. Sometimes she said the truant officer would arrest me, and sometimes she said the truant officer would arrest her. I never believed her. (I still think she was exaggerating. They have bigger things to worry about than one kid who allegedly fakes being sick for one day.)

How Not to Job Hunt

I review zillions of job applications. I’ve seen good ones, mediocre ones, and bad ones. However, there’s one recently that took the cake. If any of you are looking for jobs, please don’t do this. It’s the fastest way to remove yourself from consideration.

Chatty Batty and the Salem Witches

That sounds like it ought to be the name of a band or something. Instead, it’s the description of Thursday evening.

There’s a small community theatre* near my apartment. It’s called Broadway West, and it’s upstairs from a charming little coffee shop. Right now, they’re doing The Crucible, and I wanted to see it. Jen and I decided to make an evening of it, so we ordered takeout from the local Chinese restaurant and ate it at my apartment. Then we went to the show.

The show started at 8 and the box office was supposed to open at 7:30. We arrived around 7:30 and waited. An old lady walked over. She had the standard old lady hair (a silver helmet of curls extending at least two inches out from her head in all directions), and she was wearing a loud floral blouse and a pin-on button with her name on it. I assumed that she was an employee of the theatre company.

My Nerd Diagnosis

Only 44%? See, that's 56% normal!

You Are 44% Nerdy

You may be a bit surprised with this score, but you are more of a closet nerd than an actual nerd. Stop denying your inner nerd! You're truly dorkier than you think.

How Nerdy Are You?

The Write Stuff

All throughout school, I believed myself to be a bad writer. No teacher ever explicitly said those words to me, but that was definitely the substance of their feedback. I think that's a big part of why I initially rejected the idea of becoming a professor. (The idea first occurred to me when I was 19. I distinctly remember the moment I thought of and rejected it. I was walking across the main road on campus. I had just gotten out of class in Bannan Hall, and I was walking toward the Arts & Sciences Building.) I knew of the "publish or perish" mentality, and I figured I would be one of the ones to perish.

Avian Serenade

Every morning this week, I've been awoken by the sound of birds. Doesn't that sound like a nice, soothing, all-natural way to start the day? I would have guessed that, too. Unfortunately, the birds are angry pigeons.

The noise sounds like a cross between a growl and a lawn mower, and it's always accompanied by a lot of flapping of the wings. I've only seen two of them (both male), but I suspect there are more, given the amount of noise they make.

These birds are huge! They perch on my balcony railing right outside my bedroom window and make their ruckus. Naturally, this makes Ebony agitated, so she starts meowing and pacing on my window sill. Yesterday, I decided that I would try to scare the birds away by letting Ebony onto the balcony.

Ebony walked out onto the balcony like she owned the place. (She probably does own the place. She's so kind to let me live inside the apartment in exchange for food and toys.) She walked over to the pigeons and they didn't leave. They expanded their wings, flapped them, cooed threateningly, and chased my cat back into the apartment! I walked outside and chased them away. (I guess a human is scarier than a cat.)

This morning, they were back at it, waking me up at 6:30 AM. It wasn't so bad today, since I had to get up for work, but I'm going to be really annoyed if they wake me up early tomorrow. I wonder if a scarecrow will keep them away.

I suppose it could be worse, though. At least I'm not waking up to an apian serenade.

Changes

When I started this blog, I intended for it to be a lighthearted place where I could share my quirky and humorous observations of life. I promised that it would be about nothing serious at all. I keep a serious blog under a pseudonym, but lately both blogs have been experiencing mission creep. Everyday Narcissism has had a few serious posts of late, and my other blog has had a few lighthearted posts. Since both blogs have a different set of readers, I'm not going to close either one. Instead, I'm just going to embrace the evolution of my blogging life. While this blog will still be mostly lighthearted, I'm going to start posting more of my inner thoughts here.

You've already been subjected to my musings with such posts as:
Song Lyrics
Why I Hate the F-Word
Pondering Pronouns
What's in a Name?
A Public Service Announcement

I'm always interested in reader feedback. What do you want to read? Serious, lighthearted, or some combination of the two?

Homemade Yogurt!

It's true! It's possible to make homemade yogurt. It's ridiculously easy, too. The only ingredients are milk, and a little bit of yogurt to use as a starter. I made mine from nonfat milk and nonfat yogurt, but you can use any type. I've even seen vegan recipes from soy milk (with soy yogurt as the starter).

Super Easy Homemade Yogurt:
2 quarts milk
1/2 cup plain yogurt (Make sure it has live active cultures, otherwise it won't work. I used Trader Joe's nonfat organic Greek-style yogurt.)

1. Put the milk in a crock pot on low for 2 1/2 hours.
2. Turn off the crock pot, but leave the lid on, and let sit for 3 hours.
3. Add the yogurt to the milk and stir until it's all mixed in.
4. Put the lid back on and wrap the crock pot in a bath towel to insulate it. (Don't turn the crock pot on. If you do, you'll kill the Lactobacillus acidophilus, and it won't turn into yogurt.)
5. Let it sit for 8 hours.
6. Once it has turned into yogurt, refrigerate it and use within 7-10 days. You can use some of this batch as the starter for the next batch.

I haven't tasted it yet, since it wasn't ready until 6:00 this morning, and I didn't want to eat warm yogurt for breakfast. I stuck it in the fridge, and I'll try it when I get home tonight. It smelled right, though. I'm not sure if the batch can be doubled or cut in half, since I haven't tried it. I think next time I'll cut it in half and see what happens. 2 quarts is a lot of yogurt for one person. I'm also going to try mixing it with various fruits to see what tastes good.

I love how much money I saved. 2 quarts of plain yogurt would have cost $5.98 at the store. I spent $1.39 on a 5 oz container of plain yogurt. (It can be gotten more cheaply, but I wanted to use organic yogurt.) I used powdered milk that one of my old roommates gave me, so the milk was free. Total cost: $1.39. Savings: $4.59. (Even if I had to buy milk, it's only $1.49 for a half gallon, so I would still be saving $3.10.) The savings increase on the second batch because I don't have to buy the yogurt again. Since I still have some powdered milk left, my next batch of yogurt will be free! Plus, now I know exactly what's going into my breakfast.

Twisted Word Interpretations - Landlord Edition

When I started law school five years ago, I thought I knew what words meant. After all, I used to read the dictionary as a kid. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that perfectly normal words like "reasonable", "person", "willful", "knowing", "reckless", etc. also have legal meanings that are only tangentially related to their common meanings.

I've gotten used to words not meaning what they seem to mean. However, yesterday I ran across the most ridiculous interpretation of a phrase I've ever seen, courtesy of my landlord. My landlord likes to make silly little rules. One of them involves exercising tight control over the balconies. As I mentioned previously, my balcony had no privacy, so I put up a tiki fence to correct that problem. It was up for a week and a half with no complaints.

Bits of Randomness

Wow, it's been a while since I've blogged. I'll regale you with tales of randomness from the past few weeks.

Update on the move:
I'm all moved into my new apartment. I love my new place; it's so quiet and peaceful, and I can do my own thing. I haven't finished unpacking all of my boxes, but I'm getting there. I don't have a dishwasher, which is mildly annoying, but I do have heat, which is an improvement. Ebony is a bit scared of the furnace, but she's getting used to it. My balcony is huge! I could totally do a reenactment of the famous scene from Romeo and Juliet. (Assuming that Shakespeare contemplated tiki fencing...) Speaking of tiki fencing - my balcony had no privacy when I moved in. From ground level, people could see right onto my balcony and if the blinds were open, they could see into my apartment. I went to Home Depot and bought two rolls of tiki fencing and a canister of zip ties. Now I have a 6-foot high fence. I just need a few torches to complete the look!

Mistaken identity:
I'm no stranger to having my name written incorrectly. For some reason, people have trouble spelling Rushforth. I've seen Rushmore, Rushworth, Rushford, Rushfort, Rush-Forth, Bushforth, etc. Well, today, I received another incorrectly addressed package. My real, live, honest-to-goodness legal first name is Trudy. It isn't short for anything. (It seems to be something of a family tradition. My great grandmother is named Jennie, I have a cousin Larry, a cousin Jennie, an aunt Kim, a cousin Danny, and best of all, my dad's uncle, whose first name is simply the letter K. He goes by his middle name.) When I got the package today, it was addressed to Gertrude Rushforth. Erm...whatever. I don't know where they got that from, seeing as I filled out the information with my correct name. At least the package still got to me. I hope dear old Gertrude (whoever she may be) didn't order the same item I did and have it shipped to my work. If she did, she'll be wondering what happened to her stuff!

Is It Time to Replace My Car?

I love my car. Liandra has character. (Yes, I name inanimate objects. For example, the toaster is named José.) She also is 20 years old and has 275,000 miles. She needs a new suspension system, the driver's side window is permanently jammed in the up position, the headlights short out every six months, there's a massive oil leak, and the heater/air conditioner only works on the high setting. But, she has four wheels and an engine, and she gets me where I need to go.

I've had my eye on a Toyota Yaris for a long time. They're cute little cars, and Toyotas run forever. (See above about Liandra. She's a 1990 Camry.) I was listening to the radio this morning, and Toyota has some really great deals right now. For people with good credit, they're offering a 60 month interest-free car loan on the purchase of a new car, and they're throwing in 2 years of free oil changes and tire rotations for people who already own a Toyota. Now, I'm a used car person, but this is a tempting offer. I ran the numbers, and it actually makes sense in my budget. (Getting a new car on these terms is about as cheap as a nice used car and only a little more expensive than keeping Liandra.)

Obviously, this is the kind of decision that's worth thinking about carefully. I'm not one to make impulsive decisions, so I'm definitely not going to do anything until the weekend. (Part of me would like to just go carless, but since I commute for both work and school, and my work isn't in a place that's well served by public transit, I need a car.)

New Blog Layout

I've changed my blog layout a bit, and I'm wondering what my readers (if I even have any) think of the new look.

Header: I decided that I wanted a custom header, so I made one. (The flower is a narcissus. It seemed like an appropriate mascot.) How does it look on your browser? (If it looks funny, please let me know which browser you use.)

Blog Width: I widened the blog from 660 pixels to 780 pixels. I would actually like to make it a bit wider, but I wasn't sure what screen resolution most people use. How's the width? (Could I safely go wider, or should I leave it?)

Colors: What do you think of the color scheme?

Other: Any other comments? Your feedback is helpful!

Fun with HTML!

I've seen other blogs where lengthy posts start out with the first few paragraphs, followed by a link to read more. Since I'm long-winded, I wanted to do that here on my blog, but I didn't know how to do it. I found out this morning! For all of you who use Blogger, I'll let you in on a little secret. When you're composing a post, click on the "Edit Html" [sic] tab. Where you want to put the break, insert the code . It will put a break there!

Edit: Sorry about the funny look. I had to convert the tag to an image file because otherwise the software kept wanting to change it into HTML.