jim gaffigan, etc.

My friend Raskolnikov invited me and several others over to his place on Sunday night to watch the premiere of Jim Gaffigan's "King Baby" on Comedy Central. I'm not much of a follower of stand up comedians, so I didn't really know who Jim Gaffigan was, but I will now say that I am a fan. He was just so funny. I was crying pretty much for the whole show I was laughing so hard. So, point being - go ahead and watch some Jim Gaffigan. He is fairly unoffensive too (fairly).

In other news, Raskolnikov is a very good playlist maker. He made me a couple of great cds a couple of weeks back. I was going to do a detailed review of all the songs, but then I realized probably no one would be interested, except maybe The Librarian, because I think you have music tastes most closely aligned to mine. But if anyone is interested, I'll let you know some of the songs I've fallen in love with. Just one thing - Blur. Where did that band come from? Why haven't I been listening to them all my life? It's a mystery.

In more other news, I was talking to my friend Anne of Green Gables tonight for the first time in a long time. It was delightful to talk to her. We were discussing how from now on when we ask for status reports on people, we are going to include pregnancy status. Especially on our single friends. (Anne of Green Gables: not pregnant.)
Stacey : not pregnant
Mrs. Weasely : pregnant
The Librarian : it could go either way at any time.

jeans day

Today at work I got to wear jeans. I was more excited than a woman my age with an addiction for public radio should be. The deal was thus: if we paid $30 to the Ohio Food Bank (or some Ohio food something, I don't really remember) we get to wear jeans every Friday from now until July. Of course I signed up, even though I'm not really sure what charity I donated to. I probably would have given the $30 to the Society for the Return of Voldemort and Murder of Baby Kittens Fund to wear jeans to work once a week for four months. I personally don't see why programmers have to wear "business casual" anyway. I mean, I do have to go to meetings with other people, but they are all people in my company and they are all people who should know that "programmer" = "no social skills, and you're lucky I even remembered to put enough clothes on to cover everything". But, c'est la vie. Once a week is enough for me.

Side note: I'm wearing jeans as I'm working right now, as I had some stuff to finish up for work today and for once I didn't have to change when I got home. (huzzah!) Also, it's okay that I'm updating my blog and checking facebook as I am finishing up this work stuffo because I'm not billing these hours, right? Right.

feeding the addiction

I am addicted to news radio. (Not the tv show. They are playing the news on the radio now. I am not even making this up!) It has gotten to the point where I am annoyed when the local classical music station plays classical music instead of NPR. This is ridiculous, of course, as the reason I programmed that station into my car in the first place was for the classical music.

Luckily, I have a way to feed my news addiction: my iPod touch. This is a brilliant piece of technology. I have had it for a mere three months, and I already wonder what I did without it. In terms of news radio, we of course have podcasts. In older generations of iPods, you had to download podcasts to your iTunes and then sync with your iPod. But the iPod touch has WiFi, so I can skip the middleman and go straight for the content. I just download news right to my iPod and listen to it at my leisure. (My leisure is usually right away, but sometimes it is casually over the course of a day or two.) And then when I've listened, I can just delete it right off - no need to sync with iTunes ever. It's the perfect system, as long as I have access to WiFi. (I have it in my house, so I'm usually set.)

nobody nose the trouble i've seen

My nose has had a hard life. I seem to be rather hard on my nose, physically speaking. (Emotionally speaking, I am very abusive to my nose. I think it is too big, and I'm not afraid to tell it. If there was a diet for noses, I would enroll mine.)

When I was a young lass, maybe 2 or 3, I was even less graceful than I am now (if that even seems possible) and I tripped and fell into the hearth. My mom said my nose bled so much she thought she might have to take me to the hospital. (She didn't, though. For some reason my family doesn't like going to the doctor.) Possibly due to that incident or possibly just from living in a very dry climate, I got frequent nose bleeds as a kid. (If you didn't know, from the time I was about 1 through third grade, I lived in Wyoming.) I can still remember many a trip down to the nurse's office to lay on the couch until my nose stopped bleeding. (It was back in the days when they had you lay down on your back to stop a nose bleed. I think that may have changed now.)

Then, when I was a sophmore in college, my roommate Nat the Rat was an expert juggler. She could do rings, bowling pins, knives - pretty much anything you could throw at her (haha - throw at her). She even had some fire battons. One day she was in the clubhouse practicing for an upcoming talent show and I was in there with her just messing around. We thought - hey, wouldn't it be funny to play ring toss with these juggling rings and our heads? (I would say we were young and dumb, which we were, but I'm not saying I wouldn't do something like that again.) (And, ps, it really was funny.) We were getting to be fairly decent shots when one toss made it safely over my head, but the inside edge of the ring landed smack on the bridge of my nose on the way down. It was blue for a week. I still have a small scar, if you know what you are looking for.

The latest occurance of nose abuse happened last Friday. (This is why my nose is on my mind, of course.) We had a ward activity which was a film festival. My friend, Orin, and I won "best kiss" even though we didn't actually kiss. (Long story.) Well, as we were going up to accept our award, he thought it would be funny to pretend to kiss me again. Only, he was far too forceful and he totally smashed my nose with his head. I thought it could have been broken. Thankfully it didn't bleed. Only it still hurts five days later and is a little bit red. Not didn't wear sunscreen while skiing red, just cartoon drunk red.

Well, at least everyone knows I'm the best kisser in the ward (or something like that) so I guess it was worth it. My poor little nose. It will feel better after fat camp this summer.

warning: political discussion (kind of) and the third reich

I was talking with a friend last night and the topic of conversation turned to politics. Specifically gun control. I have no problems talking politics with people who understand the issue, even if they have a different opinion than me. Usually I gain some pretty interesting insights. What bugs me is when people understand just enough to think they have an opinion, but don't really get what's going on.

For example, last night this guy just didn't understand what "gun control" means. When I said I was in favor of gun control, his only argument back was that we shouldn't be allowed to take away people's guns. (Specifically his, I think. I'm pretty sure he thought I wanted to personally come to his house and destroy all his guns while he looked on helpless.) Please tell me you see the difference. Gun control doesn't mean no one gets guns. It means there is some regulation in the kinds of guns and permits and locations you can have guns, etc. If you want to have rifles and shotguns and hunting guns and maybe even a few handguns - be my guest. (Just don't be expected to be admitted to my home.) But I don't think the joe public should have access to any and all kinds of weapons and just tote them around with them all the time "just in case".

But this guy just didn't get it. Anytime I said the words "gun control" he heard "no guns for anyone in this country and possibly the world" and would explain to me why we needed guns. When I tried to explain what I meant, he would just give examples of why it was helpful to have guns. I wanted to shake some sense into him.

The conversation ended when he invoked "the Hitler defense". I can't remember where I first heard about the Hitler defense (probably from Rebecca - she's smart), but basically it's the point in the debate when the other person brings up Hitler. It is made to bring in the shock value of what Hitler did. My friend said that one of the things Hitler did to the Jews was to take away their right to have weapons. This is probably true; I'm too lazy to look it up. But true or not, it's a dumb argument. Is he saying if we regulate guns, we are going to have a genocide here? I'm not really sure because that is the poing of the Hitler defense - you are saying you have no more valid arguments but who will argue against that horrible event in history? It is pretty much the equivelent of saying, "I know I'm right" (which no one can argue with) but with more pretention. (Also, for the love! I don't want to take away everyone's guns! Just regulate!)

In summary: Don't resort to the Hitler defense in debates. (Especially if you aren't really clear on what we are debating.) Quote history responsibly and relevantly.

(Ps. To the friend I was debating with last night: I'm sorry I called you stupid here. But I doubt you are reading this anyway.)

To lighten things up, here's a quote from Eric Snider:

The billboard I saw on my way to work said this:
"The United Nations Wants to Take YOUR Gun!"
I was alarmed. How could the United Nations Want to Take MY Gun when I don't even have one? Are they planning to issue guns to everyone, just so they can take them away? Because THAT sure wouldn't make any sense. Plus, I don't want a gun in my house, even if it's only long enough for the U.N. to take it away. Who knows how long they'll leave it there before they come get it? It could be days, or even weeks, and in that time, plenty could go wrong, such as my roommate leaving dirty dishes in the sink FOR THE LAST TIME.

(from here)

unpacked and edelweiss

Well, I am finally all moved into my new apartment. And all unpacked. It only took me a week. (I'm starting my time from when I was completely out of my old place.) It's a good feeling to not have unpacking hanging over my head. Of course, I haven't been running like I should have been. I'll have to pick it up again this week. (And ongoing....)

In other news, last Saturday night I went to the symphony with the new Relief Society president. (Well, she wasn't "officially" the president at the time.) The special guest visitors with the symphony were the Von Trapp children. Not the original children. These ones were the great grandchildren of the captain. The grand children of Kurt. ("I'm Kurt. I'm incorigable.") It was surprisingly good. I thought it was just going to be corny. Well, it was corny, but it was also good. And we even got to sing along to "Edelweiss". (They sang a lot of songs from "The Sound of Music".) Point being: buying season tickets to the Columbus symphony was a good idea. Sometimes some good comes of just doing things without thinking about them.

I was going to give an overview of the rest of my week, but nothing else really happened. Instead I will tell you about Books I have Read This Week:

1. The Book Theif by Markus Zusak. I recommend this book. It has very interesting prose. I just like how it read. (It's about a young girl growing up in World War 2 Germany.)

2. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. This one just won the Newberry Award. I like that it did because usually they give the Newberry to some overly sappy book that teaches some great message, and I would say this one doesn't. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's a great book. It just didn't seem like it was trying to win the Newberry. And Neil Gaiman (author of "Coraline" and "Stardust") is just kind of weird sometimes. Anyway - I recommend this one too.

3. Fablehaven: Grip of the Shadow Plague by Brandon Mull. Remember how I didn't really like the first book? Well, the second one was better. And now I'm in the middle of the third one, and it's good too. So just muscle your way through the first one to get to the rest of the series. Two thoughts: 1. Thanks to Sarah and Robbie for telling me to keep reading. 2. I think it's funny how Brandon Mull names a lot of his characters after old members of the Divine Comedy troupe from BYU. (From back in the day when I used to go.)

And now that's all I've got for today.

this was almost the coolest post ever

If this was the coolest blog post ever, it would have started like this:
Today, I shook President Obama's hand.

But this is not the coolest blog post ever, and so, instead it begins like this:
I had to work today, and I hate Gatsby.

The timeline:
Sunday: Gatsby called me and asked if I waned to go the the press conference that the president was giving in Columbus on Friday. He knew a guy and blah blah blah we would get to go, if we wanted. Of course I said yes.
Monday: I went through the hoops of getting Friday off. Since I am currently working for two different groups in my department it was harder than it seems like it should be. I had to ask both bosses (one of whom was out of the office) and then the big boss. Then I had to schedule it into the master schedule and all that. But I got it off. And I was excited.
Wednesday: Checking my gmail when I got into work, I saw that Gatsby had written on my facebook wall saying there was a problem. When he called his contact to set us up, there was only one slot left, and he took it for himself. Two problems: 1. Why didn't he call earlier - as soon as I told him I wanted to go? 2. Why did he tell me over facebook that I couldn't go? (As Rebecca says, telling someone something over facebook is awful because then the whole world gets to know it, and usually before you.) (When I start speaking to Gatsby again, I'm going to tell him to grow a pair.) Spent the rest of the day doodling "I hate Gatsby" on my notebook.
Thursday: Gave up hope and cancelled vacation day.
Friday: Did not shake the president's hand.

And that's that. Now, today's post:

I had to work today, and I hate Gatsby. Also, I got my taxes done. (By "I", I really mean "My dad", but I did look on and I answered questions when he had them.)

The End. Ugh.