Journals : 2006 : January
1 January 2006 | Link this
Happy New Year. Just returned from an unannounced few days in Charleston and Savannah, and I haven't dealt with the email or anything else. And I'm not planning to until tomorrow. This is merely to let anyone cares know that I'm alive and well...
4 January 2006 | Link this
After three days, I now have an internet connection again. It's a long story, but now that it's back, I'll try to actually answer email and post pictures from the trip and stuff. I know you've all been sitting on the edge of your chairs waiting for that, right?
5 January 2006 | Link this
Read about the road trip to Savannah and Charleston...
6 January 2006 | Link this
Isn't there someone out there who can make sure that Pat Roberston stays on his medication? Seriously. I'm worried that he may hurt himself one of these days, bless his heart...
9 January 2006 | Link this
The hubby and I spent yesterday afternoon in Winston-Salem. I've always liked it there, and I'd argue that it may well be the most attractive city in North Carolina. It has a denser urban feel than many similar or larger cities in the area, most likely because until the 1920s, it was the biggest city in the state.
As I've opined many times before, the size of any given city in the 1920s is perhaps the most accurate single predictor of how "urban" we perceive that city to be today. It seems the form and density of 1920s development is what defines urbanism to many of us, if only from an aesthetic perspective. A city can have earlier or later development too, but without a fairly high proportion of semi-dense early twentieth-century residential and commercial areas, it just seems quaint and precious like Charleston or a little sanitized and bland like Charlotte and Phoenix...
Winston-Salem is our own little slice of Pittsburgh, not just grittty and industrial at its heart, but also built on numerous hills and more than a little run-down. Yet there are still beautiful and stable inner-city areas which are amazingly inexpensive compared to their counterparts in Charlotte or Raleigh or even Greensboro.
Yes, Winston-Salem is a really nice place...
13 January 2006 | Link this
Ten years ago tonight, as I uploaded the very first version of Planet SOMA -- using my brand new 28K modem -- I don't think I realized what an effect the damned thing would have on the next ten years of my life...
17 January 2006 | Link this
Kinkos: The Game (via Rae)...
17 January 2006 Later | Link this
Note to anyone who might care in the Los Angeles area: I'll be a guest on KCRW's "Good Food" on Saturday 21 January at 11AM. If you miss the show or don't live near LA, I believe there's also a podcast available for free download...
18 January 2006 | Link this
Random observations from your favorite web-journalling housewife:
- When people from organizations like this one call my number to do a survey and ask for "the lady of the house", I never remember in time just to say "this is she" and see how they react...
- Triple coupon day at Lowes is a wonderful thing...
- Daytime TV all in all is NOT a wonderful thing, although I am excited to note that Dish Network seems finally to have added Oxygen, so I can get my Grace Under Fire re-run fix...
18 January 2006 Later | Link this
Found this on eBay while looking for something else. I have to wonder about the customer who might have been expected to purchase this back in 1910. Frankly, it just seems a bit tasteless to write "Having a lovely time. Wish you were here!" on the back of a postcard showing an orphanage...
19 January 2006 | Link this
If I were a parent, I'd thank the Great Pumpkin every day for advocacy groups and lawsuits like this one, which demonstrate a tireless commitment to absolving me and my peers of any personal responsibility whatsoever for how our children are raised...
Why merely turn off the TV or (Great Pumpkin forbid) say "no" to your kids when you can sue someone else into saving you the effort? Or why make your kids do their homework when you can simply sue the school system for a better grade?
Litigation: the top-rated American substutute for parenting skills twenty years running...
22 January 2006 | Link this
Didn't snap a picture, but I saw this Dunkin' Donuts billboard today along I-77 just south of Huntersville that said "STAR coffee for only two BUCKS". If that ain't a lawsuit waiting to happen, I don't know what is...
23 January 2006 | Link this
It's really pitifully, disturbingly geeky that I got all excited about uploading a file that was exactly 50,000 bytes, isn't it?
23 January 2006 Later | Link this
I offer a new rant for your perusal this Monday afternoon, inspired by my Sunday afternoon drive to Huntersville. It's entitled New Urbanism is Neither. Enjoy...
25 January 2006 | Link this
I could've pulled a better name for a network out of the WC...
26 January 2006 | Link this
It's nice to go the doctor and get relatively good news once in a while. Mine thought I might have developed asthma, and I still may have, albeit in a rather minor and easily manageable way. Asthma is a sporadic thing, and its symptoms come and go. But the good news was that I passed a lung function test. With flying colors, even. The doctor said my lung function and chest x-ray are pretty much normal, as if I'd never smoked a cigarette in my life. Thus, I should be spared that emphysema I'd been worried about...
I will close by taking this opportunity to say that if you quit smoking, your life will suck for quite a while. After that, though, you will be very happy that you did it. That is as close to a nag as I care to get, thanks...
Now if I could just lose, oh, fifty pounds or so...
28 January 2006 | Link this
So apparently Clay Aiken had unprotected boysex in a Quality Inn (per the National Enquirer and via Stumble):
The paper says "Paulus passed a polygraph exam" and “provided copies of instant message conversations he claims he had with bachelor Aiken over a two-week period." He also says he "has towels he says were used by Aiken from the sexual encounter which he claims contains the singer’s DNA."
Hmmm. I'll bet the Quality Inn folks would like to talk to Mr. Paulus about the whereabouts of those towels. I don't think you're really supposed to take them out of the room with you when you leave...
"See this hat? I bought it at the cutest little store in Charleston. Check out my cool refrigerator magnets and postcards from Savannah. And don't forget my spooge-encrusted towels and DNA samples from the Quality Inn in North Carolina."
I miss the old days when people collected normal things like matchbooks and ashtrays...
29 January 2006 | Link this
I'm not sure what's more disturbing: (1) the fact that my hometown is becoming famous for its contributions to the field of reality television or (2) the fact that some people seem to be so damned proud of fact that my hometown is becoming famous for its contributions to the field of reality television...
31 January 2006 | Link this
After more than six months, the strangest things still make me almost giddily happy to have departed The City of Doom for good. Like, for example, the beef tips and fried squash at Gus' Sir Beef or the fact that I can go to the grocery store pretty much any time of day, find what I need, and buy it without spending a half hour in line and another half hour trying to park when I get home...
Today's thing that makes me excited, oddly enough, is that I'm going to the auto glass place to get a repair done on Mark's car. I spent a lot of time at the auto glass place in San Francisco, but it's different this time. I'm getting a naturally-occurring crack in the windshield fixed rather than a broken window...
Yes, I'm going to the auto glass place. And it excites
me because I'm not doing it as a result of the actions of some differently-socialized
substance abuser with no options in life slimy crack-addled piece
of shit, but as a regular bit of routine maintenance. Plus, it'll probably
cost less here too...
31 January 2006 Later | Link this
I Do Not Nurture Nature: Why I Won't Be Seeing "Brokeback Mountain"...
31 January 2006 Even Later | Link this
I've written before about my intense annoyance with people who can't quite figure out how to use apostrophes and quotation marks. In fact, I've often thought about sending violators on my message boards a link to this site with a plea that they read and study it before embarrassing themselves further.
Here's a related annoyance: people who add a possessive to a business name when there isn't supposed to be one. I noticed this years ago when I kept hearing people refer to a local queer bar in Charlotte as "Scorpio's" when the name, in fact, was "Scorpio". People apparently assumed (erroneously) that it was founded by some guy named George M. Scorpio or something. I also noticed that people said things like "I'm going down to Kmart's", which no doubt was named for famed retailing genius Abraham J. Kmart.
I assumed it was just another southern oddity -- like "license" being treated as a plural word because it ends in an "s" sound -- until I moved to California and heard people talking about shopping at something called "Lucky's". There was never a supermarket chain called "Lucky's" in California, although there was one called "Lucky". Even today, newspaper columnists -- who should know better, at least in theory -- make the same mistake.
It's OK to do this with stores that really DO use the possessive in their names and advertising, like Kinko's (actually named after a guy whose nickname was "Kinko") and Macy's. I can even forgive it in cases of companies that used the possessive in their names in the PAST, like J.C. Penney, which was still installing "Penney's" signage as late as the early 1970s, and Belk, which caused a little bit of controversy in North Carolina when it lost its "s" in the late 1960s. Lucky and Kmart, though, don't fit into either of these categories.
Saying "Lucky's" or "Costco's" or "Kmart's" sounds just plain silly...
31 January 2006 Still Later | Link this
Just a thought: people who demonstrate a consistent inability to compose a coherent and properly-punctuated English sentence of their own really shouldn't embarrass themselves by creating vaguely racist message board posts about the educational shortcomings of others. Enough said...