dittrich

How weird is it that, immediately after the BSG premiere, I started up iTunes and "End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)" comes up on shuffle?

The apartment Deb & I had before we got the house was *ok* but I rarely feel any nostalgia towards it. When it gets this cold out (-13.4, according to my thermometer), I sure miss the heated, underground parking.

I DID put it in the garage again tonight. This morning, it was 5 degrees in the garage...which was an improvement over -17 outside. Car started right up (admittedly, the battery got replaced late last summer) AND I didn't have to scrape the windows.

Still not as good as HEATED parking...

Not that I don't love having a house or anything.

I *THOUGHT* I was going to an unofficial ProEx Xmas party... Turns out it was Deb throwing me a surprise 40th birthday party. And many of you showed up.

I've NEVER had a surprise party before. When I walked up the stairs and saw 1) My Mom, 2) My brother-in-law, & 3) a high school friend I haven't seen in a couple of years, I was like...WTF!?!?!

All of you who came: thank you so much! It was fantastic to be surprised by you all.

And, if you couldn't make it, it's too bad you couldn't make it. It was fun.

Added bonus: there was an 80's hair cover band playing later on in the evening. All kinds of stuff that is either ON my iPod or probably should be...

Woke up at 2am this morning thinking I smelled smoke. I'm pretty sure it was a dream because a short check of the house turned up nothing. It took me an hour to get back to sleep. Then I woke up again around 4am for a few minutes.

Needless to say, I'm dragging a bit now. A walk to Caribou for something caffeinated is definitely necessary soon.

Anyone got any ideas of where I could look (online or brick-and-mortar store) for some good winter-type socks? Target only seems to have cotton and they aren't cutting it for keeping my feet comfortable (the same pair can have my feet too warm at times & too cold at others, I blame the lack of wicking by cotton).

I looked on Amazon & found some for $10 a pair. That seems a bit steep for socks.

Got a "birthday" card from renface today.

Birthday is in quotes because it was actually a sympathy card.

Someone is a smartass.

OK, it WAS funny. But she's still a smartass.

Looks like LJ laid off some people. Hope this doesn't lead to this place going bye-bye...

In the last hour:
- Josephina - Gene Loves Jezebel
- The Nothing Man - Bruce Springsteen
- A View to a Kill - Duran Duran
- Something So Strong - Crowded House
- Love Shack - the B-52's
- Take It Back - Pink Floyd
- Portions for Foxes - Rilo Kiley (the live Current version)
- Animal - Def Leppard
- Run Runaway - Slade
- Brick - Ben Folds Five
- Round and Round - Ratt

Very little skipping involved. To be fair, the playlist I'm shuffling is a smart list that's a compilation of a bunch of other smart lists. This includes one list that throws random songs that are unrated in (I have a program that automatically rates songs that have been played, based on frequency of play & recentness of play, so unrated stuff either hasn't been played or hasn't been played in a long time.).

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

I'm going to the bar tonight! There's a Surly tapping of something called "Firkin" at the Groveland Tap tonight. I invited several people...and only one accepted. Everyone else had lame-ass excuses like band practice, Xmas shopping, & "other stuff going on." They suck.

(OK, mostly kidding. I am kind of bummed that people can't make it. More beer for those of us that DO make it, though.)

Playing around with my iPhone & a string of LED Xmas lights. I was trying to get a cool blurry effect. Got the blurry, but also got the vertical black bars. These get worse the closed I got to the lights.

Still, sort of cool looking...

Today's high: 37 (the temp right now)
Tomorrows high: -5 (yes, MINUS 5)

It's raining right now, which is at least getting some of the snow off the roads. They'll be much better skating rinks later, when the rain freezes...

OK, if you own Sheryl Crow's Tuesday Night Music Club, go dig it out. Is "I Shall Believe" an absolutely gorgeous song or what?

Also, if you were putting together a mix called "Beautiful Songs about Ugly Subjects," what would you put on it? Without thinking too hard about it, I can come up with two songs:
- "Not an Addict" by K's Choice (addiction)
- "Woman in Chains" by Tears for Fears (abuse)
Suggested by Deb
- "Janie's Got a Gun" by Aerosmith (abuse & murder)
- "American Skin" by Bruce Springsteen (cops kill a kid for pulling something that turns out to be his wallet out of his pocket)
From angelsmom
- "Luka" by Suzanne Vega (child abuse)
From Chris
- "Brick" by Ben Folds Five (abortion)

I'm sure there are many, many more & I'd like to see what people can add to the list. As an aside to those who do CD challenges for summer BBQs (you know who you are), I think a "Scavenger Hunt" CD, with us finding songs that fit various pre-selected criteria, would be interesting...and, yes, "Beautiful Songs with Ugly Subjects" could be one such criteria.

"If you accept -- and I do -- that freedom of speech is important, then you are going to have to defend the indefensible. That means you are going to be defending the right of people to read, or to write, or to say, what you don't say or like or want said.

The Law is a huge blunt weapon that does not and will not make distinctions between what you find acceptable and what you don't. This is how the Law is made."

From this blog entry

I just looked through some pictures Deb took of me over the summer (I volunteered because she needed practice photographing people outside prior to taking our oldest niece's senior pictures). It made me realize a couple of things:

1) My face looks fatter in pictures than it does in the mirror.
2) My glasses never look like they're on straight. I can get new frames with my vision plan next year, maybe I can get something that sits a little better...
3) Wow! The gray is getting worse!
4) The increased gray bugs me more than I thought it would. Probably not enough to go this route quite yet, though.

Rules:
*Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
*Turn to page 56.
*Find the fifth sentence.
*Post that sentence along with these instructions in your LiveJournal.
*Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

"She looked into the backseat."