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NaBloPoMo Day 10

Know what I hate?  I hate ads that pop up and cover my entire screen.  Even more, I hate ads that pop up and cover my entire screen while making noise.  I do not like the people who make these things up, and believe they are sadists.  During the Middle Ages, they would have worked for the Inquisition as torturers.

Oh, and websites that nag you to stay there?  Yeah, hate you even more.

Filed by Kelly at 7:21 am under Rant
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NaBloPoMo Day 9

Just the title of the movie made me giggle just a bit.  The movie itself was bizarre and funny, and I was pleasantly surprised that George Clooney did a good job.  I don’t know why I’m always surprised when Clooney does a good job at acting.  It could just be the memories of his kind-of-screwup, slightly helpless Doug Ross on ER.  Ewan MacGregor, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey were, as usual, entertaining and convincing… and in Spacey’s case, just a tad more than a little creepy.

Filed by Kelly at 7:34 am under Babble
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NaBloPoMo Day 8

Normally, I like to watch movies… at home, in the theater… doesn’t much matter.  But lately I just haven’t been interested.  It’s possible that District 9 burned the movie watching part of my brain right out.  However, I will make an attempt today to see a movie.  In the theater.  Further reports to follow.

Filed by Kelly at 9:39 am under Babble
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NaBloPoMo Day 7

I had to pop a couple of things in the mailbox last night and noticed that it smelled like it was going to snow outside.  Back when I lived in Chicago and Denver, when I’d say something like that I’d see most heads nodding and maybe one or two people shaking their heads and rolling their eyes and claiming that a person couldn’t smell snow.  But since moving to Smalbany, most people seem to think I’m nuts when I say that.  What?  People in New York can’t tell snow is coming by sniffing the air?  Are you kidding me?  I’ll bet the folks up in Buffalo and in western New York can smell snow!

Thankfully, when I got up this morning I didn’t notice any snow outside.  There was more frost than I’d seen in the past several days, but that was it.  I’m not at all happy with snow anymore, so if it wanted to stay outside the Capital District this year, I wouldn’t mind.

Filed by Kelly at 10:22 am under Babble
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NaBloMoPo Day 6

Since Sunday, I’ve cooked four different dishes from my new cookbook, 125 Best Vegetarian Slow Cooker Recipes by Judith Finlayson.  Now, many people would not find this newsworthy at all.  People cook… so what?  Well, the big deal is that I absolutely hate to cook, and I can’t remember the last time I actually did any cooking that was more involved than cutting up vegetables for a salad or sandwich.

So which dishes did I make?  Glad you asked!

• Sweet Potatoes and Carrots with Chickpea Topping: pretty good, but a little bland for my taste.  More sweet potato, less carrot?  Maybe just a smidge more brown sugar?  Not sure, but might try it again.
• Moors and Christians: I don’t know where the name came from, but it’s a Cuban dish that I had to make twice because a glass bowl broke into the crockpot the first time around.  Yummy, but needs more cilantro for a cilantro freak like me.  Oh, and I think I’d add more roasted red peppers.  One is just not enough!  I ate it hot, but the recipe says it’s good hot or cold.  Might be good cold in the summer.
• Succulent Succotash: This made the house smell soooo good!  And it is delicious!  This will get prepared again!
• Cider Baked Beans: O. M. G.  So, so, SO good!  I’m making this one for the next potluck!

There are a few more recipes I’d like to try, but now I’m all tired out from cooking.  Maybe I’ll do it again next year.

(Today’s post brought to you by the letter O and the Exclamation Point.)

Filed by Kelly at 7:52 am under Babble
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NaBloPoMo Day 5

I don’t know who is flirting with me.  And I haven’t actually noticed anyone flirting with me.  But there have been people sending me emails several times a day for months now telling me that someone is flirting with me.  They wouldn’t lie, would they?

Apparently, I’m so old that I can’t recognize flirting anymore.  I’m about to fall into a deep funk of depression.

Um, or maybe I should stop reading the subject lines of the crap in my spam folder.  Of course, there’s very little fun in that.  Spammers may be the spawn of the Devil, but sometimes they’re kind of funny.

Filed by Kelly at 10:10 am under Babble
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NaBloPoMo Day 4

I don’t work in a grocery store.  I never have.  Undoubtedly, I am too sensible and incredibly overqualified.  But I shop a lot, and I’ve noticed that the people who work in grocery stores don’t get very good training.  It’s possible they’re shown how to use the scanner/cash register.  Ok, I’d say it’s likely that they’re trained on that piece (those pieces?) of equipment.

But who teaches them how to bag groceries?  You’d think something like that would just be common sense, but since most of the people who do that job don’t possess common sense, somebody needs to teach them.  No matter how you arrange things in those dumb plastic bags, if you put my bunch of bananas in the same bag as my loaf of bread, the bread is going to get squished.  But I bring along my handy cloth tote bags, so that shouldn’t be an issue.  And it usually isn’t.  However, just because my bag is big enough to hold my entire grocery order, that does not mean you need to fill the thing up so that it weighs more than a small child.  Yes, yes!  Those 12 cans of soup will fit in the bag.  But even the stupid bagger can’t lift it… why should it make sense that I would be able to lift it?

One other thing.  Don’t put the people who suffer from Diarrhea of the Mouth at the checkout area.  When the cashier and the bagger are babbling incessantly with each other every single time I go into their lane, that  is rude.  I don’t want you to babble at me either… but continuing your fascinating conversation about your coworkers (rude in any case) and pretending the customers aren’t even there makes me want to smack you upside your head with the bag you just filled with 12 cans of soup.  Just saying.

Filed by Kelly at 10:07 am under Rant
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NaBloPoMo Day 3

Whether it’s stuffing reams of paper into places where they can be easily found and retrieved, or it’s putting electronic files on a hard drive or external media in some sort of logical order, we’re never going to get away from the concept of filing.  And for a person like me, who breaks out in hives at the thought of filing… well, that just pretty much sucks.

I recently finished going through two crates of papers in an attempt to find some specific papers my realtor wants.  Most of it should be shredded.  (You can’t just throw old papers away anymore, people!  The devil will steal your soul!  Um, or something like that.  Maybe someone will steal your identity?)  Why the hell do I still have all that paper?  Because I hate filing, that’s why.  It’s much better to just dump it all in a crate or a box, and never think about it again.  Except, sadly, it isn’t.  The specific papers that my realtor wants were not in either crate.  They weren’t in the pile of papers on my desk that I cleaned off last week.  That means I either threw them away (fat chance… throwing things away is a form of filing) or they are in one of the boxes of stuff I tucked up in the attic when we had our open house last month.

If you never hear from me again, you’ll know I went into the attic.

Filed by Kelly at 7:13 am under Babble
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NaBloPoMo Day 2

A long time ago (11+ years ago) in a galaxy far, far away (Denver), I hung out in a number of CompuServer forums (fora?).  My buddy Tardis sucked me into the Star Trek Ships game in the RPGames forum.  Oh, man.  I can’t even tell you about all the great fun I had, and the awesome people I’ve lost touch with from those days!  I can’t tell you about it because I just wander off to the Eclipse or the Hawking or the Odyssey and sit with a silly grin on my face.

My favorite ship was the Eclipse and my favorite character was a fey holodeck programmer by the name of Moira O’Shaughnessy.  She started off as a Lt JG in engineering and wound up, through a fascinating series of disasters and misadventures, as the Captain of the ship.  Some real-life unpleasantness killed off the game, and more than a decade later, I hate to admit to still being a little bitter about that.  Still, in Real Life, I married the guy who played the Chief Security Officer, so all was not lost.

Said Spousal Unit is now heavily obsessed with World of Warcraft, and has tried to entice me to play pretty much constantly since he became addicted.  But I think about the roleplaying we all did back on the Eclipse, and I can’t see how WoW can even come close to that level of awesomeness.  Where’s the character development?  Where’s the storyline?  And what’s up with all the pretty pictures?  Even when I played Dungeons and Dragons (an even longer long time ago (25+ years), in a galaxy slightly closer (Chicago)), there was a story to go along with the quest… at least when I was the DM.  When Jeff was the DM, it was a series of jokes and puns that often had us laughing so hard we could barely breathe.  My favorite Gamemaster in STS was a dude named Dan.  Sometimes I suspected he was trying to kill us all with his storylines, but HOLY CRAP did we do some fantastic roleplaying!

Ah, what memories, what memories.  Sure, I’m living in the past (RPG-wise).  And if I could find my group again, I’d jump at the chance to play Moira.  Until then, I’ll be over here painting or playing Solitaire.

Filed by Kelly at 8:12 am under Babble
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So, there’s this thing called NaNoWriMo, which is all about writing a first draft of a novel in a month.  I’m not in the least bit interested in writing a novel.  Not this year anyway.  Maybe next year.  Or perhaps in 2025.  Or even never.

But there’s this other thing called NaBloPoMo, which is all about writing a blog post every day for a month.  Heck, I already make a blog post every day on my art blog!  But that seems pretty easy compared to stringing words together in a coherent way every single day for a month.

Will I be able to write something every single day?  Even on those days when my brain seems to be saying, “Just stare at the pretty lights”?  Well, that remains to be seen, doesn’t it?  I read quite a number of blogs whose authors manage to post interesting items on a daily basis… some even post several times a day!  I can’t even imagine that.  Baby steps, baby steps… one post a day.  Just for November.  This is probably the perfect time of year to start something like this… there is just so much about the impending Holiday Madness that raises my normally low blood pressure into the dangerously average range.  I’m ready to break out the Valium already!  (Gosh, if only I actually had some.  Sigh.)

Oh hey… the time changed last night.  The cable box, my computers and my cell phone all helpfully reset themselve to the new time.  Ha.  Exept that the cell phone kind of overcompensated and set itself back TWO hours instead of just one.  Guess those folks at AT&T/Cingular are overachievers.

Filed by Kelly at 8:38 am under Babble
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