Category Archives: random

sock-mergency

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The weather app on my phone lied to me again this morning.

It claimed that the temperature was supposed to be around 55 degrees and there was supposed to be sunshine.

Currently, it’s 46 degrees, overcast, and gusting wind.  Which, to be fair, is a lot more common weather for Vermont this time of year than the whole “55 and sunny” scenario.

Unfortunately, rather than listening to my realist brain this morning, I listened to the weather app, and dressed for 55 and sunny.

And now I’m fucking freezing.

Now granted, I do work in an office so it’s not like I’m not sheltered from the elements, but my office is in a very old farmhouse so the term “sheltered” is used…somewhat conditionally.  There are, for instance, 3/4″ gaps between the window casings and the frames of the crappy old removable plate-glass windows.  You can see a sizable strip of daylight between the two, and wind certainly has no problem gusting right in as well.  More than a couple times in the past eight years I’ve actually seen rain or snow driven through these gaps when the wind has wheeled in just the right direction.

I do have a small cache of knitted goods in my office for exactly this reason.  There’s a pair of finger-less mitts and a big fuzzy stole / scarf / lap-blanket thing currently, and supplemental scarves will be added as winter grinds on.

What I do NOT have, which I clearly need if today is any indication, is a pair of emergency socks for the days when my idiot self listens to the weather app.

Sock-Saturday-Pile-RGB

Hi, I’m Shelby and I like to torture myself.

this is payback for something, I’m sure of it.

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My dog wants to go out for a walk.  Normally this wouldn’t pose much of a problem, except I currently look like this:

 

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Fetching…

It’s not even so much that I give a fuck what my neighbors think of how I look – it’s more that my hair isn’t dry yet and it’s really blustery out. Also, I am utter shit at putting my hair in rollers, so literally ANY application of force via air movement is going to make this delicate balance of hope and fuckery all come crashing down.

But…I can’t let the dog piss on the floor (not that he would anyway, he’s a good boy). So fucked-up hair, here I come!

la la la, can’t hear you

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My office-mate has this Pandora station that he listens to every single work day.  It started out as a Led Zeppelin station, which I was definitely A-OK with because I very much enjoy the Zep.  There were a bunch of other classic rock staples on the station too – Grateful Dead, The Doors, Pink Floyd – all good bands that I enjoy listening to of my own accord.

Now, if you’ve been living under a rock for many years and are unfamiliar with the way Pandora works, here’s a quick run-down: you search for an artist you like and then Pandora plays you a song by that artist.  You can either thumbs-up the song to tell Pandora you liked it and would like to hear more of that type of music, or you can thumbs-down it to tell Pandora it’s on the wrong track for your tastes.  Pandora then uses some fancy algorithms and like, I don’t know, fucking internet gnomes with ESP to build a radio station for you based on your musical tastes / preferences.  As such, it’s entirely possible to start out with a very specific genre (say, classic rock, for example) and, through thumbs up / thumbs down-ing songs, manage to make your playlist drift in some spectacularly odd directions.

Which brings me back to office-mate’s Pandora station.

Like I said, it started out as your basic classic rock station.  Over time, I started to notice that a lot of the same songs were being played over and over again.  That’s not uncommon with Pandora – basically, it tries to stick to what it thinks you’ll like, even if that means playing different versions of the same song over and over.  We went through a phase for a while where we’d hear three versions of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” and at least two different versions of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” every day without fail.  Which, while annoying to my weird OCD brain, was still bearable.

That was about six months ago.  Apparently office-mate has spent the last six months thumbs-upping every Jimmy Buffett, Bob Marley, Steely Dan, and steel-drum instrumental track that Pandora has spit at him because today, I can predict with frightening accuracy at least twenty-five songs that I’ll be guaranteed to hear over the course of the seven hours we’re usually in the office together.  Probably more than twenty-five if I really tried, honestly…the first twenty-five are just super easy ones I could come up with off the top of my head.  On days when I don’t listen to my own music over my headphones, I end up going home with songs stuck my head that I would never willingly listen to on my own – mostly Steely Dan. I fucking detest Steely Dan.

So, this morning, after an entire weekend of not having to hear office-mate’s classic rock cum island getaway Pandora station, you can’t even imagine my annoyance at waking up to “Kid Charlemange” by STEELY NUT-SUCKING DAN running on loop in my head.

I had to sing “Bohemian Rhaphsody” to the dog just to break the cycle so that I could function again.

smurf ass

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So, the thing about brightly colored hair is, it bleeds. The darker colors especially have very large pigment molecules, lots of which don’t actually penetrate the hair shaft, but rather just sit on the cuticle (the surface of each hair) until they are eventually dislodged by washing or what have you. As a result, the first few showers I take after a dye job are pretty spectacular visually: mountains of purple suds when I shampoo, rivulets of purple water running across my skin, and swirls of purple circling the drain at my feet.

The color doesn’t just come off in the shower though. I try to wear my hair up for the first few nights after a fresh dye because otherwise I’ll end up with a disturbingly bruised-looking neck and shoulders:

dyeneck

The purple really adds depth to my neck rolls, doesn’t it?

When the dye gets onto my skin like this, it’s quite hard to get off, even with soap. Almost like it’s, you know, MADE to stain. I’ve never had it transfer to my clothing or other surfaces from my skin, though – only ever from my hair itself.

Until today, anyway…when I stained the toilet seat blue at work.

Yes, that’s right, not only do I apparently have Smurf Ass, but it appears to be catching. Or at least, transferable to other surfaces, porous and non-porous alike.

I mean, I’m PRETTY sure the toilet seat wasn’t blue-ish before I sat down on it. It’s not like I was on it all that long or like my ass was especially sweaty while I WAS on it. But, when I stood up and looked down at the toilet, there was definitely a faint blue ass-print there.

All I can figure is that the sheer amount of extra dye being rinsed out of my hair this time stained my ass. I checked out my ass in the mirror after I noticed the toilet seat, but the lighting in the bathroom is terrible and who can actually twist around enough to see their whole ass anyway, you know? It maybe looked a LITTLE blue, but not like…”Jesus, what’s wrong with your ASS?” blue.

So I don’t know. Maybe the toilet seat really did have a weird faint blue butt-print on it before I got in there. Or maybe the cleaning ladies that come in this weekend are going to be SUPER confused.

I’m honestly kind of hoping it’s the latter.

This is my truest self.

mermaid hair, etc.

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This afternoon I had a hair appointment.  It was extra long because I was getting some extensive bleaching and dying done.  There were several other women in the salon at the same time, one of who had a gaggle of daughters with her.  The youngest of the girls gave me the side-eye a few times while the stylist was applying the bleach and foils to my hair.  I smiled at her when she made eye contact, assuming she was fascinated with the dying process, especially since she had seen that I had bright purple streaks in my hair when I first came in.

As the stylist was finishing up with my foil packets the little girl sidled over to me and, in a surprisingly earnest tone for an 11 year old said, “You’re very pretty”.  I was momentarily taken aback but also quite charmed (hey, I never said I wasn’t shallow…heh).  Smiling again, I replied with, “Well thank you! So are you!”.

I hope she believed me, because it’s true.  I also hope she holds onto her own incredible generosity of spirit as she grows up.  I hope she doesn’t have it bullied and shamed out of her by asshole kids and a shitty society that tries to convince girls that their worth is determined by their clothing size.

The little girl had to head out when her mom’s hair was done, long before I was out from under the foils and hood dryer.  She was disappointed that she wasn’t going to get to see what my hair came out looking like, and I was a little sad that I didn’t get to see her eyes go wide in wonder at the swirls of bright green, blue and purple that emerged from under my stylist’s talented hands.  I think she would have liked it:

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mermaid-y!

The world didn’t end so I guess I have to write more blog posts.

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Well, here we are, so I suppose the world didn’t end.  Again. The most hilarious part to me is that the wing-nuts who make these predictions don’t ever seem all that embarrassed that they continue to be wrong. It’s almost like a lottery drawing, you know?

“Aww, SO CLOSE, only one number away from the End Times! Sorry, Revered Wing-Nut Steve…better luck next time!”

 

Time for another stamp!

Anyway – it’s been a busy week here around HBCIG Headquarters. I guess. I mean, that would explain the sink overflowing with dirty dishes and the living room floor strewn with socks, right?

Actually, that’s pretty much business as usual around here:

Notice the desperation of the stuffed alligator stage left, and the "who, me?" look on the small white demon in the upper right.

You thought I was joking. Look at the dog’s face. He’s like, “This shit is GDFR, folks”.

It HAS been busy, though. Since the world didn’t end on Wednesday, my super awesome husband reserved me a space in a cooking class at our favorite local restaurant. I’ve been to four or five classes there and it’s always interesting. It’s demo-style, so it’s not like Chef is letting us have knives or anything. It’s really more “edu-tainment” than education, but I’ve definitely learned from every class I’ve gone to. Plus, there’s something to be said for spending time in a place where you feel like you belong, and for me, that’s kitchens. And, you know, I’m not ever going to bitch about anywhere that not only actually WANTS me to drink wine, but keeps bringing it to me when my glass mysteriously empties.

Thursday was full of fuckery, plain and simple. There was work fuckery that had me feeling like I embarrassed myself, which is always good fodder for a subsequent round of self-loathing. There was also small appliance fuckery in the form of the crock pot refusing to turn on for me after I had peeled, cored and sliced seven pounds of apples in preparation for making apple butter. In the crock pot. That wouldn’t turn on. After a mild panic about what my options were for dealing with a huge pile of peeled apples at 9pm, (for context: I’m usually in bed by 9, so the idea of trying to fuck around and make pie crust or even wait for the apples to cook down into sauce at 9pm was like, nearly cause for crying. Hormones may have also played a part), and some especially creative and descriptive cursing, the crock pot finally deigned to turn on for me. I loaded that sumbitch with apples, brown sugar and a boatload of spices and was rewarded in the morning with this:

Wow, so brown, much apple.

Wow, so brown, much apple.

It actually didn’t look like that at first – that was after a judicious thrashing with the stick blender. I can’t lie to you – this shit tastes amazing. It’s like the inside of apple pie but without the chunks to get in the way, basically. I had a couple spoonfuls of it mixed into some plain 2% Fage greek yogurt for lunch just now and it was like eating all the non-pastry parts of an apple danish but without all the weird feelings that may or may not bring up…

And, finally and most terrifyingly, Friday I applied for spring semester at my local community college. It’s not that I’m afraid of being rejected – it’s a community college, for fuck’s sake. I don’t think they’re actually ALLOWED to not accept anyone who wants to take classes. No, the terror is more along the lines of, “shit, why am I volunteering to write essays again?!”. I always liked school in that my friends could be found there, there was usually chocolate milk available at some point and music class was pretty awesome, but I could never quite get the hang of writing essays. Funny from someone who likes to write, I know, but notice how most of my posts just ramble on and contain a lot of cursing and made-up words and I don’t usually have a point or the ability to edit myself? Yeah. That approach doesn’t really work for school essays, and that’s…the only approach I have, basically. The upside is, I’ll be studying accounting so hopefully there won’t be too much call for essay writing. I’m also harboring the hope that, since I’ve been doing accounting and bookkeeping professionally for more than ten years now, I might actually be able to test out of a bunch of classes. That would save me a lot of time, money and sleepless nights staring at a blank computer screen.

if the world is going to end, I need to tell you some things

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Crazy people think the world is ending tomorrow.  They’ve never been right before, but I figure, why waste a perfectly good opportunity to tell secrets and air grievances, right?  RIGHT. So pour yourself an adult beverage and let’s begin. Try not to judge me too harshly, ok?

Let’s start out with some easy ones:

  • I love canned whipped cream.  The actual whipped cream part, not the nitrous oxide, I swear. A can of whipped cream lasts maaaaaybe 36 hours in my house. MAYBE. I will continually wander over to the fridge, up-end the can and spray sugary processed white joy into my mouth with utter abandon. There is no bad time for canned whipped cream. Which is exactly why I don’t buy it except on rare occasions.
  • I would eat pizza once a day, every day, and twice a day on weekends, if I could. Standards apply, of course. I’m not talking like $3.99 frozen pizzas. But decent gas-station pizza? Oh, it’s ON.
  • I talk to my dog constantly. That in and of itself isn’t so bad, but I also do the dog’s part of the conversation back to me in dog-voice. If my husband and I are both home, we take turns doing dog-voice. If the dog ever grows thumbs, we’re totally done for.

Now, some less easy ones:

  • I’m pretty sure most people that say they like me really just feel sorry for me. I don’t feel like I’m a particularly pitiable case or anything, but for some reason I just can’t ever quite believe that most of my friends would actually want to talk to me or hang out with me if given another alternative.
  • I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. I’m almost 36, so this one is starting to become kind of a problem.
  • I am super duper afraid that I’m wasting my life.  I struggle with feeling like nothing I do is ever enough to live up to the fact that this is IT, you know? This is the only time I’m going to get. Am I using it well enough? It’s a scary question, at least for me.

And finally, here’s a video of my dog licking almond butter off a spoon as a bit of a palate cleanser for anyone who made it this far:

motivationally chilly

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My dog is doing this devastatingly adorable thing right now where, while sitting on my lap, he tucks his little nose just under the side of my arm and snoozes.  I’d like to think it’s because he adores the shit out of me, but in reality it’s probably because the poor little bastard is freezing, given I haven’t broken down and turned on the heat yet.

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“I wasn’t a white dog to begin with.  This is accumulated frost on my fur.”

It’s not that we can’t afford to run the heating.  It’s more that I’m just needlessly stubborn.  And also kind of a cheapskate asshole sometimes.  But mostly it’s that I’m a little bit of a sicko and I kind of enjoy the game of mental endurance involved.  It feels like an accomplishment to get through a slightly uncomfortably chilly day without turning up the heat.  My husband doesn’t share the same strange brand of masochism.  He would in fact prefer it if we kept the house at a tropical 78 degrees so that he could lollygag around, comfortably watching football in his undies.

I, however, find the cold motivating.

As in, I need to keep moving in order to stay warm.

Speaking of which, my toes are turning blue. I think it’s time to vacuum!

the universe has a sick sense of humor

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September 30th is the busiest day of the year at my company. The whole month of September is bonkers for us, but the last day of the month is by far the zenith, and always involves people working late into the night to process orders.

Which makes it especially shitty that my workstation decided to shit the bed on Monday afternoon.

Monday night, the IT guy got the workstation back up and running so I was able to work on Tuesday. However, he neglected to tell me that I should not under any circumstances restart the computer after he got it going again. So of course I restarted it at the end of the day Tuesday, just like I have every day for the last eight years.

The resulting message on my screen saying things like “fatal error” and “imminent failure” seemed…bad. I hunted down the IT guy and told him what had happened. He seemed blase, saying basically, “Well that sucks. I’ll get it going again, don’t worry”.

Famous last words.

ka-boom.

Total hard drive meltdown. Computer Chernobyl. Ka-boom.

The short version of the rest of the story is that the IT guy got me set up with a temporary workstation last night so that I could limp through today, but then my email died mid-morning and we had to set up a temporary work-around to the temporary work-around. On the busiest day of the year. When everyone and their brother is emailing me super-rush-must-do-immediately stuff that, you know, must be done immediately.

Everything ended up getting done and all’s well that ends well, but the timing of the whole thing just continues to slay me, the more I think about it. In my many years of doing a variety of computer-intensive jobs, I’ve never had a machine totally die on me like that…and certainly not at the absolute worst possible moment of the entire year. Once is enough, I think.

Are you listening, Universe? Once is enough.