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Hot Midnight Wiring Action

Around 12:30 we were getting ready for bed and I went to flip the light switch.
This should be a simple action that requires no thought and minimal use of finger muscles. It did not. I had to push very hard to make it turn off, and then harder still to turn it back on and call Mike’s attention to our broken light switch.
He turned it on and off and agreed that our switch was broken. Then we went to bed.
We discussed the broken light switch in the dark. It loomed there in the dark. FIRE HAZARD mere feet from our heads. We confirmed we had a fire extinguisher in the room, but were unsure of the presence of a smoke alarm upstairs. I pointed out we had one unopened paddle switch in the room.

What Do Jacob Marley and My iPod Have in Common?

They’re both dead as door-nails.
At least my iPod won’t come back to haunt me and send me on a long journey into my past and the mistakes I’ve made. I made mistakes? Naaah…

On the bright side, the 30GB iPods are pretty cheap and I don’t harbor any secret desires for one of the new-fangled touch-screen iPods. yet. But do I really have $150 to spend on a new iPod? Probably not, but is my sanity worth $150? I think so. It’s a bad thing for everyone around me if I get stuck at work with a song stuck in my head and no way to get it out. Just mentioning the possibility gets Brend’r and Eddie running through my head again.

Watch out for Low-Flying Planes!**

Aaaah! I feel like I’m coming up from the bottom of a very big pile.
The last week has been a very busy week for me. Between the 2 courses I’m taking and the Ruppert wedding and work I didn’t have much free time.
My lack of free time was further eaten away by having to drive 200 miles north to Rhinelander to conduct a training class on Tuesday. I left at nearly 8pm Monday night, dead tired and desperately wanting a long, satisfying nap. I didn’t get that, but I did get some good, quality alone-time with my car, my iPod, and 154 of my current favorite driving songs. My newest favorite is “Bleeding Heart Show” by the New Pornographers. I know it’s well over a year old, but it’s catchy and very singable which is a double plus bonus for long, solo drives.

Yowsa!

What I didn’t mention in my weekend of hell is that I had a 4 page paper due on Monday. I was supposed to interview a couple farmers, research agricultural economics on global, state and local scale and write some sort of paper about my findings. Since I was up til 10:50 on Friday night finishing my Machu Picchu paper and related assignments, I didn’t have time to do much research on this econ paper. Saturday I took my tooth-achiness to Farmers Market and wandered around trying to find a farmer who wasn’t busy to talk to. Fortunately for me, the extreme cold Saturday morning kept my tooth pretty quiet until the opiates arrived at Walgreens.
Then I went home and used my drug-induced haze to catch up on sleep.

My Weekend of Hell

I woke up early Saturday morning with a toothache. It hurt. A lot.
At 7am I called the on-call dentist and begged for drugs. I was very kindly prescribed a pill that rhymes with Micodin. By Sunday morning every 4 hours wasn’t cutting it. I was in PAIN. Throbbing, horrible, pain radiating out of the right side of my mouth. At times my ears, nose, eye, jaw and teeth hurt.
I made Mike take me to Urgent Care. They prescribed me the drug that rhymes with Mercoset. I promptly started popping these pills. I felt like House.
Unfortunately, nothing actually killed the pain. Even on 2 mercoset EVERY 3.5 hours I was still in agony. I was forced to keep eating ice chips about every 3 minutes to numb the pain.

Growing up with Mythbusters

A little over 4 years ago I was lying in a hospital bed, drugged to the eyeballs and enjoying fledgling motherhood. I watched hours of the Newborn Channel on the hospital cable and reveled in all the baby stuff.
After a day or so I was sick to death of the Newborn Channel and went channel surfing looking for something interesting to watch. Thats when I found a brand new show with a couple crazy guys, one named Adam no less, who tried out crazy myths. The first one I ever saw was the jet-propelled car in the desert myth.
“This is so cool! Mike will love this show and if it lasts, Adam will love it too.” I said to myself.
We immediately started to TiVO this show because it really is awesome.

The Day Before

Everyone remembers The Day™ or The Day After™, but how many people remember The Day(s) Before™?

You know what I remember? A beautiful Virginia late summer, the smell of autumn in the air, a daily drive to Germantown, MD, taking lunch hours to drive over to Butlers Orchard and gawk at fresh, delicious autumnal produce, and planning our upcoming wedding festivities.

You know… all the silly, stupid, banal stuff we do every day and think nothing of. Life just keeps on keepin’ on and all is pretty good.

My First College Assignment

So this semester I’m enrolled in 2 geography courses – one is a senior seminar in Geography which sounded pretty cool to me.

I read through the course syllabus and my first “lab” assignment and my first reaction was “oh man, i’m screwed – I have no idea!” Then I let it stew in my head for a couple hours and decided that it sounded pretty damn fun.

For all you gamer-geek types I think you’ll appreciate my first assignment — read on for your own personal enjoyment!

Laboratory Exercise: Survivor

You are on a Search and Rescue team. You will choose a rescue mission in different parts of the world, determining how to best rescue a group of U.S. Government employees whom have been stranded there.

I Should Be Studying.... Thanks Erin

What Form Would Your Patronus Take? (With 10 Excellent Results & Pictures)

Biking Outing

We had planned on being lazy today, maybe do a bit of cleaning, some yard work and laundry.
Then around 11am I got the IM from Musevia asking if we wanted to go biking. My first inclination was to say no. My Weather.com icon in the systray was registering 81, my kitchen required additional cleaning… Then I thought nah, let’s get out of the house. B&E came down to our house and we biked over to Vilas Zoo (a very pleasant ride); saw some very hot, sleepy, lazy animals; established that yelling “ca-caw” does not entice a peacock to show his beautiful plumage; put Adam on the carousel for one ride and headed home.