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NaBloPoMo Day 22

I really like words.  When I was a kid, I used to read the dictionary.  Yes, yes… I was a complete dork by age 10.  (And, um, I still enjoy reading the dictionary.)  Loving words and loving to read are all tied up together.

I remember that there were always books to read in our house growing up.  Not quite as many as I have in my house now, but still quite a lot compared to most people I knew.  Both my parents love mysteries… Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series seemed to be most popular.  My dad was also a big fan of Louis L’Amour, while my mother enjoyed historical novels (she spent close to a year reading everything she could about Henry VIII and his wives… fact and fiction).  So the fact that I always have something around me to read is not at all strange.  To me.

By the time I was in fourth grade, I’d read all the books in our small school library at least once.  By the time I was in sixth grade, I’d finished all the books in the children’s department of the nearby public library.  (Oh, and that was quite a feat!  Except for the main library downtown, Hild Regional Branch was the largest library in the city of Chicago.  I even read all the “boys” books… the Hardy Boys and Chip Hilton and quite a few others.)  I was already reading at the college level by this time (yes, yes… total nerd), and my folks didn’t see any reason why I shouldn’t read books from the adult department.  The librarians had other ideas, though.  You couldn’t check out a book from the adult section on a “youth” card… and you couldn’t get a “young adult” card until you were 14.  Now, just because my parents were completely supportive of their children reading everything they could get their hands on did not mean they wanted to schlep to the library every week.

I vividly remember the day my dad walked me over to the library and marched right up to the front desk, demanding to speak to the person in charge.  Mrs. Bare was in charge that day (I’ll never forget that woman… I worked for her right there in that same library several years later), and my dad insisted that she give me a “young adult” card.  Mrs. Bare explained the rules; dad just gave her that glare that he did oh so well.  Mrs. Bare (gods love her) just stared back.  Finally, dad gave her one of his rare smiles and explained that I’d already read all the books in the children’s department, that I was entirely too smart for my own good, that I read all the same books he and my mom read, and that he trusted that I wouldn’t bring home anything inappropriate.  Mrs. Bare (bless her heart) smiled, too, and said that maybe — just this once — she could bend the rules.  After all, 12 was pretty close to 14.

When I retold her that story when I was working for her, Mrs. Bare didn’t really recall it.  But I do.  And I always will.  Why?  Because that was one of the only times I knew my dad was proud of me.

My parents gave me a gift that’s still with me: the love of words, the love of reading, the love of books.  Thanks, Mom and Dad!  (And I seem to have passed on the love of reading to my darling Offspring.  Go me!)

Ah, if only I could remember to update my book blog to tell people about all the great (and not-so-great) books I read.  Maybe next year for NaBloPoMo…

Filed by Kelly at 8:51 am under Babble
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NaBloPoMo Day 21

There are certain people who do inappropriate things in and to cars who ought to be locked up in a mental health facility because they are a danger to themselves and others:

• The person who drives 20 (or more) miles per hour below the speed limit…  someday, someone driving a Hummer is going to run them over after they’ve caused the blood pressure of the 87 people behind them to rise to dangerous levels.
• The person who plays chicken with oncoming traffic by making illegal left turns… one of these days, it’s going to be safer for me not to slam on my brakes to keep from hitting your stupid ass because I’m afraid of the person behind me driving the Hummer.
• The person who PARKS HIS CAR in the traffic lane rather than pull into the parking space that is 10 yards further up the street.  Sometimes these people actually BLOCK a parking space to park in the traffic lane.
• The person who put those headlights in his car that burn out my retinas.  Are you insane??  Oh wait.  Yes.  You are.  The next time you drive towards me and blind me, maybe I’ll be driving a Hummer and crash into you.  Because I’m blind.  And it’s your fault.

There are other crazy people in the world.  This list is just a first draft.

Filed by Kelly at 11:18 am under Rant
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NaBloPoMo Day 20

Well, that’s what the wankers at American Family Association seem to think.  They’re dissing the Gap’s latest TV ad because it mentions Solstice, which is equivalent to supporting witchcraft.  Um.  Ok, whatever.  I get the impression that the AFA thinks Christmas has been celebrated since the dawn of time, and encourages their groupies to completely ignore the fact that Solstice has been celebrated for far longer.

Ah well.  This all just makes me want to make a special trip to the mall to shop at the Gap.  And we all know how I feel about malls!  All my Wiccan friends and I will have a very merry Gap Solstice.

Oh, and AFA says the actors are “chanting” in the ad.  They need to get out more if they can’t tell the difference between a chant and a rap.  Most of the time, the AFA makes my head hurt in the way all illogical and bombastic people do… but there are times when they’re good for a laugh or two.  Their latest screed against the Gap makes me laugh.

Go Christmas, Go Hanukkah, Go Kwanzaa, Go Solstice…
Go Christmas, Go Hanukkah, go whatever holiday you wanukkah!

Filed by Kelly at 7:45 am under Babble
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NaBloPoMo Day 19

My old printer, which was going on five years old, has been increasingly reluctant to actually print anything.  Well, I guess that isn’t really true.  It’s been printing… just not on paper.  It started off by pulling the paper in a bit askew and finally wound up — yesterday — refusing to even try to pull any paper through.  So I wandered off to the local office supply store to buy a new printer.

I picked the Epson Stylus NX515 because my last three printers have been Epsons, and except for the little problem of them not lasting forever, they’ve been great machines.  The print quality is excellent.  I went with the NX515 because it has wireless printing.

Oh, sure it does!  It just doesn’t have wireless printing in my house.  I’m not really sure why.  I suspect it has something to do with Windows Vista, though, because the printer is talking to the wireless network.  I thought about trying to get it working on my XP machine but — oh, look!! — the DVD drive won’t open.  Isn’t that interesting?

But the printer does print with the USB cable and it scans beautifully, so the rest of the issues will have to wait until I have time (perhaps over the weekend) and patience (ut oh… maybe next year) to deal with them.

Filed by Kelly at 7:25 am under Babble
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NaBloPoMo Day 18

I would like to share with you some of the things you do that piss me off.

First, you autoplay a video or some music when I go to your site.  Don’t do that.  What if I’m surfing the web at Oh-Dark-Thirty?  I don’t need your noisy website to wake up the rest of the household and, incidentally, scare the crap out of me.  What if I’m surfing the web at work and listening to my happy music?  Do you really think I want to hear YOUR crap over my happy music?  Oh, no.  I do not.  Just stop doing this.  It’s obnoxious, and it’s rude.

Next, you decide you know what the best size is for my browser, and shrink it down to something really small.  What the hell is up with that?  I like my browser to be big, bold and FULL SCREEN, damn it.  Stop mucking around with my settings.  That’s obnoxious, rude and verging on criminal.

Lastly, you have pop-up dialog box after pop-up dialog box jumping out to nag me about leaving your evil, stupid, ugly site.  What the fuck is wrong with you???  Be assured that whatever product you are hawking, I will never buy it.  I will also never voluntarily return to your website.

These practices are, in my opinion, the sign of someone who is completely unprofessional.  If these practices are your clients’ ideas, then it behooves you to tell them how much they are pissing of their potential customers.  Grow a spine and just say No.

Regards,
Kelly

Filed by Kelly at 6:33 am under Rant
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NaBloPoMo Day 17

Yesterday morning, I spent about 15 seconds grabbing an empty can that had been rolling around in the back of my car for several days and tossing it in one of the recycling bins in the garage.  Had I not done that, the SUV that sped though the red light at the intersection of Lincoln and McKinley would have plowed into me.  That would have been really inconvenient, to say nothing of the fact that neither I nor my car would have been very happy about it.

And yo!  Where are the Albany cops when you need them, eh?  Because that’s not the first time I’ve seen someone ignore red lights on Lincoln.  It was, however, the first time I’d seen somebody going that damn fast through the red light, though.  Too bad I didn’t catch a license plate number.  Sigh.  Next time, asshole.  Next time.

Filed by Kelly at 6:40 am under Rant
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NaBloPoMo Day 16

I used like going to malls.  Something changed somewhere along the way, though.  Today, the thought of going to a mall fills me with dread.  Could be the mad crush of people, could be the fact that parking in a mall lot is a danger to life, limb and vehicle.  Or it could just be that everybody sells the same thing in different packages.

I had occasion to visit one of our local malls the other day, though.  While there trying to avoid all the Christmas crap, I saw a parent and child combination that almost had me laughing out loud.  The child was on one of those kid leashes, and every time the parent picked the kid up to stand on her (looked like a little girl, anyway) little feet, she’d flop down on the floor… just like my cats do whenever I have the audacity to attach a collar and leash to them.

The chuckles I got from that, combined with the fact that Bath and Body Works was having another of their excellent sales, made my trip to the mall less than the misery it generally turns out to be.

Filed by Kelly at 6:22 am under Babble
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NaBloPoMo Day 15

I’ve got a Razr 3.  It’s a spiffy reddish color.  It fits in my pocket, which is good because otherwise I’d wind up leaving it at home.  Or in the car.  Or in my backpack.  It’s fairly good for texting, which is what I mostly use it for.  I don’t talk much on it because (1) I hate talking on the phone and (2) the sound quality is pretty piss-poor.

I have my cell phone service through AT&T.  I’ve had AT&T since they sucked up Cingular.  I was with Cingular since… wow, since I lived in Colorado?  Yeah, that’s possible, though there were a few years in there when I first moved to New York that I didn’t have a cell phone because I didn’t really need one (not that I actually need one now, but the texting feature is very handy).  Anyway, AT&T has been “notifying” me for several months now that I’m eligible for an upgrade on my phone.  I don’t care much for most of the phones they offer.  I like having a camera in my phone because then I can take compromising pictures of the cats.  I don’t really need GPS in my phone because I’ve got a TomTom (or SeanSean as I call it, because the voice I use sounds delightfully like Sean Connery).  I don’t play music on my phone because I have a nifty MP3 play (the Samsung P2… very nice).  And although I’m just a wee bit compulsive about checking my email, I don’t really need to check it when I’m out and about.

So if I’m going to get a new phone, it ought to be better at texting, still fit in my pocket and have better sound quality for the rare times I actually use it as a phone.  I’m contemplating the Motorola Karma.  I’m certainly not sold on any other phone manufacturer or model, and I’m not entirely certain I care all that much for the Karma.  In fact, I may just wait until AT&T offers something more exciting than the Karma.  After all, I’ve gotten along well enough with the Razr 3 for a year and a half… and I had my Razr 2 for almost three years before it decided to stop working althogether.  Ah, I guess I’m just not the gadget nerd I was born to be.

Filed by Kelly at 8:36 am under Babble
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NaBloPoMo Day 14

I am SO addicted to Sudoku!  If I don’t get my daily fix, I get all twitchy.  I like to do a few puzzles first thing in the morning with my Red Bull to really wake up.  Sometimes, I’ll go through five or six puzzles in the evening to help me wind down from a busy day.  I play when I’m bored.  I have a book of puzzles in my car, I have a book of puzzles at work, I have three or four books at home.

I wonder if there’s a 12-Step program for Sudoku addicts.  Not that I care, of course, because I’m not giving up my Sudoku… unless something better comes along.

Filed by Kelly at 12:34 pm under Babble
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NaBloPoMo Day 13

So, I understand that there is Christianist group boycotting the Gap and Old Navy and Banana Republic because they won’t say “Christmas” in their ads.  Excuse me while I try to stop laughing…

There are a couple of reasons why this is just insane.  And funny.  First of all, the number of people who would actually participate in such a boycott is so small that the stockholders of the Gap et al. are probably snickering in their eggnog.  The number of people participating in the boycott will probably be quite easily offset by the number of people purposefully shopping at the Gap et al. because they think the boycott is uber silly.

The second reason why this is insane is really more relevant.  I assume that these Christianist folks are trying to put the “Christ” back in “Christmas.”  What they don’t understand is that Capitalism has co-opted Christmas just as thoroughly as the early Christians co-opted various Pagan winter holidays.  Christmas no longer has a meaning beyond rampant over-spending.  Christmas is no longer a holiday… it’s a Time of Year.  The entire fourth quarter of every year is devoted to Christmas.  Americans are still pushing back a little and insisting that Thanksgiving is still a holiday… but it is quickly being overshadowed by the marketing swill of Christmas.

I have profound reasons for disliking this time of year that I may (or may not) share at some point.  The fact that Big Business has turned it into their major retail event of the year certainly doesn’t help anyone (except Big Business) love it.

My advice for the Christianists (not that they’ll listen to me since I’m not a Christian) is to just quietly celebrate Christmas as the birthday of Jesus, just as you always did before it became the biggest reason of the year for overspending.  I’d actually like Christmas more if it was low-key and laid back.  I’d be able to appreciate it as your religious holiday.  Really guys… you don’t want to be part of the madness.

Bah humbug.

Filed by Kelly at 6:55 am under Rant
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