Scraps (n. ,fem., singular)

(some of you need to get your minds out of the gutter )

Night before last a rather large group of us went to dinner post-dancing to Rice Bowl. As usual I ordered some sushi and then a Thai dish that most of would go home as leftovers (because it can as opposed to sushi… yes, I like the raw fish types). It was also berylq’s last dance practice, so a bit sad, but not too maudlin, mostly just our usual raucaus selves and I really hope we didn’t scare the new person with us too very badly.

Anyway, the thai dish that evening was something I don’t remember but it involves lots of fried squidy bits. Hence the tasty tentacles. The vast majority of it went home with me and was lunch yesterday.

And speaking of tentacles: Scylla has been slayed. (New readers will need to scroll down to the iEverything post.) Yup… *way* ahead of schedule, surprisingly enough, this first check-point on my way to a mac mini has been met.

Does Scylla have tentacles?

Well, it had a lot of heads and lived near if not in the sea, so I’m thinking there is a possibility of tentacles there.

But the more I use the Scylla and Charybdis reference I am tossed back to Freshman English and a group project I actually enjoyed doing that involved recreating a scene from the Odyssey (or was this part the Illiad? I honestly don’t remember). Anyway… I stayed behind the camera for the whole thing, but 4 other friends depicted news-flash-style Odysseus’ trip between Scylla and Charybdis that involved a diorama with puppet-like Scylla heads attacking a boat and an on-scene ‘interview’ with Odysseus.

The interview was done in a small closet in the English building and since space was small I had to stand on a chair to get Odysseus and the reporter in the shot. At a critical point in the interview this cardboard mouth (jaw, etc.) comes down and tries to eat Oddyseus, the monster operated by another friend who I was trying to keep out of the shot. Until, that is, I lost my balance and the shot slung way wide.

Keep in mind that this was 1990, we did this entirely at school, and there was no way to edit it so each scene had to be done in order, butted up one against the other on the tape, and reshoots could only be done right then.

I still have the tape, even though its becoming worn and I don’t even have a VCR anymore. I think there’s at least one place in town that will transfer VHS home movies to DVD, maybe I should have that done, have 5 copies made, and track down each person involved to send them a copy. I wonder if they would find the nostalgia as fun as I do?

But not for me… sigh…

I’m almost actually jealous of my car, y’all.

So. I knew my front tires were getting pretty worn (the dealership said when I got Phoebe last September that there was PLENTY of wear left in them… I really don’t consider 9 months plenty of wear, but anyway) and the back ones were better, so I was going to do the responsible thing and have them rotated and balanced. Yeah.

So I do a little cursory checking around and decided (even though I know things never go well down this route) to take Phoebe to the Wal-Mart service center for the r&b. I knew it would be a while, so I brought a knitting project to work on while I waited.

An hour and a half later they finally get around to looking at my car and that’s when the first shoe drops:

Tech 1: ‘Ma’am, your front driver’s side tire is separated and needs to be replaced.’

Tech 2: ‘The back one, too, it’s almost as bad.’

Tech 1: ‘What does your car do when you drive it?’

Me: ‘It drives? I haven’t been having problems with the handling or anything.’

Tech 1: ‘Well, you should replace these.’

Me: ‘Okay, so I need two tires?’

Tech 1: ‘Yes, but they’re on the same side and you cannot do that.’

Me: ‘Okay, but the passenger side is fine, right? Can’t you just swap the okay rear one with the new one so that the car is balanced.’

Tech 1: ‘No, we cannot cross them.’

[Now it should be noted that Tech 1 has a very thick Spanish accent so the 'cross them' concept took a while for him to explain and for me to grasp.]

So, after a couple of diagrams and the revision of everything I thought I knew about tire rotation and balancing, I was faced with the decision of replacing the one tire that really needed it, or the two tires that should be. The catch being that if I replace the two tires they were suggesting, I would really need 3 tires because only the front passenger tire could be moved back to the rear, leaving that hole up front, and by heavens buying 3 tires is like shoeing only 3 feet of a horse so I might as well buy 4 tires.

Of course, had I known I was going to need a new set of tires I would have really liked to have comparisoned shopped for the best deal. The Tire Kingdom that I almost went to the previous weekend had a sign that said 4 tires for $99. Granted, they might not have had my type of tires for that deal, and all the putting-on charges might have driven it up a bit, but still, I would have liked the option. And then it turns out there was a Sun Tire offering a 3-day vacation with the purchase of 4 tires. So, see, there were options.

But I was faced with the fact that I had waited 90 minutes already. To leave would mean having nothing (except a bit of knitting) to show for that time AND the knowledge that I had research ahead of me AND starting the waiting all over when I went some place else.

In the back of my mind I really wondered if things were as bad as they were presented to be. Two other patrons had come in for one thing or another and were being told they needed one more tire than they thought or two front tires, etc. How much was the truth and how much was a sales racket? And was that really how rotating worked?

But, I knew also that I’d feel better with a new set of tires on the car. And I knew I had someone in front of me willing to do the work right then and there. And the quote was within my budget, if you consider that it comprised all of the not-previously-accounted for monies for the month and that my budget would go from comfortably cush to having to watch my spending again until my overtime check in two weeks.

An hour and 10 minutes later they finish shoeing Phoebe and I get to hand over the money. (ouch)

Tech 1: See, I got you out of here quick.

* blink, blink *

Do you believe this guy???

If I hadn’t just wanted to get out of there and go home to examine exactly what damage I’d done to my bank account I really would have let him have it about how 2 hours and 40 minutes is no where *near* quick and let me talk to a manager *now*. As it was I leveled a glare at him, stated that it was 3:10 and I’d been there since 12:30 and do not consider that quick, took my key and left.

Yes, people, I am succumbing to the allure of a certain fruit-emblazoned technology, or at least will be soon.

When I was in elementary school I remember going to ARC (aka College for Kids) one day a week and learning how to move the ‘turtle’ around by writing Basic commands on an Apple IIc. When I was in high school I had to do a History Fair project on column styles (architecturally speaking) and typed up my display board captions and bibliography on the cute rectangular Mac at my Mom’s office, the one with the little screen.

When I graduated high school and came to work at that same place of business, it was the cute 90s-style Mac that I worked on. Then it was a g3, then not to long ago a g4. Meanwhile, I had purchased a computer for home, a Compaq if I remember correctly, because PCs were so much more inexpensive and you could actually afford the software. Only super rich people, graphic artists, and businesses used Apples, or so it seemed at the time.

Now my office is going through a metamorphoses as many of the Macs are being replaced by Dell PCs. This includes my machine, and for over six months I’ve had two computers in front of me, one of each, and have known that my Mac’s days were numbered.

It’s a shame, too, having finally been able to upgrade to OS X and seeing on the shiny fun things X can do. I love Safari and the fact that Mail is virtually untouchable by viruses. How nice not to worry about those pesky things. I like the interfaces, I adore iTunes (though I do have it downloaded on my PCs as well) and will greatly miss using my Mac regularly as we transition fully to the new system. I even like the keyboard better.

Of course, the cute advertisements and iEverything also make the lure of the albino fruit all the more enticing. And the old arguments: too expensive, software non-existant or prohibitively expensive, etc. are all falling away in the wake of the new technologies. Even my ex’s mantra “Can’t compute with fruit” no longer holds true as those lovely Macs can run Windows too, though even I’m having a tough time figuring out why I’d really need to with Mac’s own software and the open-source programs available.

All this to say, the lure of the mac mini is becoming more than I can bear. Nor do I implore my friends to lash me to the mast in order to resist the siren song for my mind is made up, but I have my own Scylla and Charybdis to tackle first.

I have put before myself two obstacles to overcome before letting my fingers click that precious ‘add to cart’ button:

Scylla is the many-headed monster that is the software transition at work. Recently it was decided that the running of the parallel systems will end after July. Once our ‘working’ August begins (always a little after the calendar one starts, just the nature of the business) I will no longer be doing everything twice. How nice. So that’s step one, and a rather fitting step since this change will be what terminates my daily work use of the mac.

Charybdis is the swirling vortex that I fittingly have called for some time The Abyss–my craftroom, office, studio… the second bedroom of my apartment that is more a retaining pond for my creative supplies and anything else that doesn’t belong in the ‘front’ of the house that people see than actually the functional space it was meant to be. It is into this room that the mac mini will go and therefore it is only fitting to place it there after running iOrganize on the space. I had started to tackle this project a few months ago, then life happened and progress stopped. The craft supply forest has made a move to reclaim its territory and now the path I’d carefully carved out has its edges blurred as tendrils of fabric snake out and replant themselves.

So that’s it. I get those two things accomplished while keeping the rest of my life at its normal clip and then I will gleefully reward myself with a super cute mac mini with the larger harddrive and DVD burner, etc. The hp desktop that currently resides in that space will go to the Shady Acres Rest Home (aka my mom’s place) where it will live out its years playing Solitaire, Freecell, and Textwist and reading the news.

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Oh. My. Word.

So… who else thinks it would be crazy to restart dance classes in the middle of July? Show of hands? Yes, me too, but that’s certainly what I did last night. After a 6-month-plus hiatus on account of the tendonitis and such I’m back to dancing at Chandra’s once a week.

Granted, I haven’t practiced at home even in those 6 months, though the three and a half choreographies I’d learned through last fall were kept relatively fresh in my mind thanks to having the music loaded onto my iTunes player at work and they do come up in the ‘Party Shuffle’ mode. Because of this, and the fact they were still doing those same routines in the Intermediate class I jumped into, I didn’t fair too badly, remembering most things but I would lose my concentration easily and oh, the lack of technique is dismal right now.

Still, I think I did okay. I made it through the entire class, and Julie actually gave me a compliment in the beginning when she handed me a flyer for the Performance Troupe saying ‘I know you’re interested and I know you’re good enough.’ Of course, that’s before we started dancing… hopefully she doesn’t need to rethink that last part now.

Tonight I’m going back but I’m being good, pacing myself, and just hanging out in the Performace class to help transcribe the choreographies (NO dancing). I’m a fairly good technical writer and can put the moves into written style and charts a la marching band instructions, and that helps some people so I’ll do what I can.

It was good to be back, however. Even if it meant sweating profusely for an hour then having to ice both heels when I got home. I’ll make sure to practice more of the combinations we started with to keep the hip muscles fluid and hopefully be back to performing with the group by the next First Friday!

Shall I explain?

Well, see, the thing of it is, I did something not completely bright yesterday evening. For those that do not know, I have a stimulant sensitivity and since over Christmas break it got even more sensitive I’ve had no significant amount of caffiene since December. Yes, it sucks, and it makes my coffee order awfully complicated, but such is life.

So, last night, I go to Knit Night at Borders and stop by the cafe first for an iced coffee. I remembered to order the soy milk (because yes, I’m lactose intolerant too!) but somehow got sidetracked and only ordered the Medium Hazlenut Latte Iced, Soy… and not decaf.

Two and a half hours later and I head home I notice that I’m feeling kind of shaky and I first thought it was because I only picked at dinner before leaving the apartment. Then I passed it off as coming down from that natural, contact high that being around 20 or so high-energy females can cause. Until, that is, I reached for my coffee (which was still, blessedly, half full) and realized that much to my dismay I was merely over-caffienated.

It was then that I truly understood georgie_bird’s anectdote from Sunday about being absolutely wired because of a brainless moment and not being able to do a dog-gone thing about it.

Except that I thought, perhaps, there was something I could do about it. First, I made sure to eat dinner when I got home, even though it was late, because I figured I didn’t need a low blood-sugar attack on top of everything else. Second, I made myself a cup of chamomile tea, which has calming properties, to hopefully counteract the caffiene coursing through my once sedate veins.

I did actually sleep. Though it took quite a while to get there and I don’t think I slept soundly at any point. The very air seemed to reflect my addled state, heat lightening flickering through my windows as I tried to calm my mind and my nerves as I lay in bed.

It was towards morning when I had the strangest dream…

I, georgie_bird, and a third person totally unknown to myself were sitting at a small table, obviously at an event as we were in garb, and the stranger was berrating georgie_bird (genially) for something or another and georgie_bird said in her way, as she removed her glasses, ‘I know, I know.’ But this is not the strange part.

She was wearing, for lack of a better description, an Elizabethan gown of some sort, a light olive green in color (I remember looking very closely at it and being reminded of the olive CTMH cardstock I like so very much) with slashed sleeves, etc. It was the sleeves that were particulary interesting for while they were slashed, the chemise had not been pulled and puffed through. Come to think of it, this was what the stranger was harping upon, and then she proceded to pull the chemise through the slashes of georgie_bird’s left arm as I, on her right, was encouraged to do the same.

I believe I demurred manhandling georgie_bird in such a way, but this was when I looked very closely at the garment itself, noted the particular green color of the over dress, and the pattern of the chemise: red apples, in groups and singles, on an ecru background, with red and dark green plaid bands run through, shot with metallic gold thread, at random intervals.

Not that I’ve ever seen georgie_bird in anything resembling Elizabethan garb, nor anything apple-patterned, but it’s certainly an interesting concept…

Sigh… for the first time in I don’t know how long I have a floral arrangement that I’m just not totally happy with.

Let me back up a bit.

One thing I really like, a simple thing that makes me happy, is having fresh flowers in the house. One thing past boyfriends/husbands have had in common is some strange anathema to that concept. Some were just dense and didn’t get the memo that girls like flowers, some considered the giving of flowers to be a symbol of truly deep feelings which they may not actually feel for me (no? then why have we been dating a year?) and others even took the approach that to cut them was to kill them and thus end their beauty. Not to mention that flowers growing wild were for everyone’s enjoyment whereas flowers in the house were selfish.

Um. Yeah.

Sue me for being selfish (so not a new thing…) and I have a black thumb so house plants don’t stand a chance with me (I’m still amazed that the dish garden from Valentine’s Day is still alive because I remember to water it maybe once every couple of weeks… but at least its in the kitchen where I see it often). And I’m not even greedy! While I really adore roses, I’m happy to have anything that blooms in the house as long as its pretty and I can put it in a vase.

Anyway, backstory aside, one of the things I started doing when I moved into the apartment last June was buy myself flowers every week or so. I’d buy a big bunch of something and then divide them between vases throughout the apartment. Some would last longer than others, and when I change them out I snip off the dried buds and save them in a crystal bowl on the bookcase (I have plans for them).

Something I’ve always been able to do, however, was create a pleasing arrangement of whatever I brought home. I’m not taking arty floral sculpture necessarily, but more than just dropping a bunch of same-length stems in a vase… I put effort into it and its generally rewarding. Last night? not so much.

For some reason I just could not get the mixture of white daisies and mums to cooperate. I went through a couple of version before redoing the frog and centering them in the square vase. Though I usually don’t ad pebbles or ribbons and such, I think I may have to in order to be pleased with it.

Now, I’m sure some of my more honest friends will read this and want to say to me, ‘if this is the only thing you have to complain about and you’re being this whiny about it, you need a reality check’ and part of me agrees. The other part of me realizes that this simple bit of disharmony is indicative of the larger picture of things spinning around right now with very little control or conscience. My focus is a bit off, and I desparately want a new distraction for a while to clear my head, but I know that what I really need to be doing is cutting down the number of distraction I’ve already set before me.

My first attempt with the flowers last night was to spread them out among to compartments I’d created via the frog. I like things compartmentalized, identified, categorized, manageable. But the flowers kept slipping on the base of the vase, tangling their stems. Some things defy categorization, people are many times unmanageable, glass floors make for unstable foundations. So I pulled everything out and started over, the new frog narrowed the opening of the vase and I clustered everything inside a central opening, arranged for height. In frustration everything I do gets tossed into one central pile, neatly stacked and seemingly organized, but really chaos reigns until I separate them once again.

Tonight maybe I will try again. Try a different vase. I’ll try and sort and reorganize again. The flowers, too.

Well, okay, so I’m not Catholic, nor am I sneezing all that much, its more the coughing and such that is the real pain.

Oh, the coughing…

See, some things were meant to be shared, and others weren’t, and I was unwittingly (and totally unintentionally) a party to the second variety… berylq’s cold. Only it’s not a cold, it’s a monster cold, it’s not even a monster cold, it’s freaking broncchitis or something.

With me, these things always turn into brocchitis.

I was a good girl, though, I went to the doctor Thursday morning and even though there was nothing at the moment to suggest it was more than a cold (I said flu but apparently it can’t be since it’s not flu season even though all my symptoms matched the ones on the flu medicine box) I explained that I was going out of town over the long weekend and was afraid it would get worse. I walked out with an Rx for a z-pack. I love my doctor.

Friday morning things officially progressed to ‘worse’ even after a day of rest and juice and soup. It was like a bad 70s living room set up camp in my lungs (if you catch my drift). Ugh. I made it almost 2 hours at work before going back to my perch on the couch with soup, juice and back to back episodes of Friends (’cause daytime tv? sucks…). Mom was my hero because she brought me popsicles on her way home.

Today I did manage to sleep in a little (both because I slept pretty much sitting up and got up at 4am for more meds) but, wow, I needed to do a load of laundry this morning and it totally wiped me out. Plus? I’m running out of my heaven-sent cough syrup, the only one that has ever worked, and the doctor’s office is closed until Wednesday. So off I trip my coughy, no-voiced self (I had to email Mom the request for popsicles because voice? gone….) to the pharmacy to plead my case and ask for a recommendation on what will work as good. I’m not totally convinced that the sub is the best thing in the world, but it should hopefully get me through the rest of this weekend.

Because tomorrow? I get to spend six hours in the car trying not to infect Mom, then however many hours at the viewing trying not to choke and I will undoubtably be crying, then Monday the services and then another six hours in the car home. Just a quick trip there and back, me, Mom, and my cooler of Gatorade and meds.

See y’all on Tuesday.