dangerblog

Taking the Week Off

My posts have been sparse lately. But this week I am going to do something totally different - I am not going to try to post at all.

I am going through a major change in my life: I am moving to my own apartment on Saturday. I am not going to write about that on here, but starting next week, I expect to start having lots of stuff to blog about. Promise.

How to Eat Cereal With Spoiled Milk

I am a huge milk snob. The brand of milk that I get is incredibly important. Even if I do all my grocery shopping at SuperTarget, I still drop by Publix on the way home to pick up my milk. I can't help it. Generally, my obsession with Cracklin' Oat Bran has co-existed peacefully with my love of milk, but this morning, the Cracklin' Oat Bran outstepped its boundaries and the unthinkable happened: I actually ate a bowl of cereal with spoiled milk. You might be wondering how someone who professes to love milk could commit such an atrocity. Well, here's a primer:

0. Wake up all congested and sneezy, but put off taking Claratin until you have food in your stomach.
1. Take milk out of the refrigerator and pretend not to notice that it expires today.
2. Bring milk halfway to nose, pretending to sniff but knowing that you will not actually be able to smell anything due to aforementioned stuffy nose.
3. Pour milk into bowl only until deep enough to lightly moisten the delightful little oatmeal O's.
4. Dunk cereal in milk until moist, then pick up cereal, drain out all traces of milk and eat.
5. Follow bowl of cereal with large glass of orange juice to wash away any lingering milk taste.

I'm not dead yet (although that surprises me somewhat), and as I did get new milk tonight, I will not be tweaking this primer tomorrow. Next time we'll just have to cross our fingers and hope it works out as well.

Vending Machine Pop Tarts

Pop-Tarts are uniquely weighted so that when they fall from their shelf in any vending machine, they inevitably land on a corner. The corner is, of course, the weakest part, so it breaks off. And then it doesn't heat up right in the microwave.

Which brings me to my second observation in this area: why do the vending machine guys always put them at the top of the machine, thus increasing the chances for more serious corner damage on their fall?

Things to ponder...

My Week

Hellllooooooooo out there!

I have been a very bad blogger these past few weeks. I am hanging my head in shame, but I am planning to mend my evil ways this week and get back in the habit of posting here more often.

After a couple of weeks of working like mad, I have been made enough progress at work that I think I may actually make my November 12th deadline. I have been working 10 or 12 hours a day, getting up only to get another caffeinated beverage. All of the code that has ever been written on this project is in my head. I am dreaming about this stuff every single night. Even weekends. Somehow whatever perfectly normal situation arises in my dreams, I can solve it through coding. I am becoming one with my computer. Be very afraid.

But I am actually getting out of the house and doing stuff too, for the first time in a while. Dangerguy has come up with a lot of great ideas lately of stuff to do. On Tuesday, we went to the Pixies concert. I still have their Dolittle album in my rotation, so I was thrilled to get to see them in concert, and they were really awesome (particularly since they played almost every song that I know from them).

Friday night we went to a college football game, the first I have been to in years and years. I don't really fully understand football, although I think it is fun to watch. I am even more entertained by putting on some comfy warm clothes, sitting under the stars, and watching the cheerleaders almost come to their death every time they attempt a pyramid. Dangerguy introduced me to some old friends of his that were super friendly and we talked to them through most of the 4th quarter. Our home team won, and we had a great night out of the house.

Saturday, we went to our favorite Chinese restaurant, watched "The Forgotten" (which was really good - a lot better than the reviews it received), went to see some live music at a cafe nearby, and then went to Barnes and Noble for some late-night shopping. Most of the songs we saw at the cafe were done by a random assortment of people performing kind of folk and bluegrass stuff, some of which was ok, but overall they seemed unrehearsed, like a group of friends who meet once a month in someone's basement to jam. The main act of the evening was very talented, from the 3 or 4 songs we saw her perform before we headed out. We wandered around Barnes and Noble on the way home (second on my list of Stores I Cannot Leave Without Spending Money I Don't Have, right behind Target) and I got the Jon Stewart book "America: The Book" (which if you haven't at least flipped through, you are totally missing out.)

Then today, Dangerguy and I got up early and drove down to the Kentuck Art Festival in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and spent the day looking at folk art in perfect fall weather. It was awesome. I bought my first Christmas present of the year for my Mom. Dangerguy and I made some art of our own at the Sloss Furnace exhibit. We etched a design in a sand cast and they poured hot iron ore in it to produce a small square tile of our designs. Apparently, we can go over to the furnaces at any time to pick up more casts and they will cast them for us. Now that I see what they turn out like, I may try it. I am thinking cool Christmas presents.

I will leave you with some cool pictures from the awesome art festival today:

The Race Is On

After I spent a whole week doing very little other than working and sleeping, Dangerguy treated me to a wonderful evening last night. He took me out to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, got us a nice little romantic table hidden away from all the hubbub of the restaurant and we talked and talked and talked. After dinner, the presidential debate had just started, and we listened to the start of the debate on the radio on the drive home and finished watching it on television when we got here. And when it was over, we went online and checked all the polls to see what the rest of the country (at least those with Internet addictions) thought and then we talked some more. It was such a fun night that I hated to go to sleep.

On the subject of the debate, I thought that Kerry probably won the debate, but I found myself wishing that Kerry would seize upon some of the openings that Bush gave him in his answers (and non-answers). I think Kerry has a lot to work with, but he's just not coming on as strong as he could be. Edwards seemed to be much more articulate and much more at ease when he was debating Cheney earlier in the week. I was pleasantly surprised, however, that Kerry was able to speak so personably to the audience. His aristocratic air wasn't completely gone, but he related to the audience very well, much better than I expected him to. Bush scared me a little in the beginning with some reasonably well-thought out answers, but when he started talking about internets(?) and green eye shades, he was back to the old Bush that we all know and make fun of.

I am really looking forward to seeing the media spin over the next couple of days. After a couple of months of boring campaign tit-for-tat, the presidential race is starting to be fun again!

Ants Marching

My toes itch so much that I am considering amputation.

We seem to have an ant problem here at work. Although it is clearly well past labor day and I have no business wearing sandals to work (with no hosiery of course), I think I should reasonably be able to expect not to have ants crawling across the tops of my feet all day. And I am not entirely sure why they are so mad at me. Is it just that my feet are in their path? Am I yummier than whatever it is they are looking for?

If our carpet here wasn't all dark and patterned, I might have a shot at making a pre-emptive strike. For now, I guess I am sentenced to wearing closed-toe shoes until they are eradicated.

When Will This Be Over?

I know you are sick of hearing about it, but I am not happy with this new arrangement of having to work long hours, leaving for work when it is still dark out, FOCUSING on my assignment. No blog reading. No Salon. No Register. Sad, lonely (sleepy) Dangergirl.

I am also sick of being sick. I have had this cough/cold-type misery thing at various stages for probably three weeks. It's not really bad enough to warrant antibiotics. It just saps my energy and prevents me from having fun in those few hours between working and sleeping.

I am ready to start exercising again. I want to be able to leave the house and not feel like curling up and going to sleep at 9 PM. I want to make it one night without a dream about work. Argh.

It Doesn't Take Much to Amuse Me

It's been quite a while since I've put in a real post here. Work has gotten substantially more hectic and I've been working a lot of hours to try to catch up. The good news is that I made a lot of progress this week, and I can finally see the light at the tunnel. The bad news is that unfortunately, the light is 1.5 months away and I may have to keep waking up when it is still dark out in order to get done in time. Ugh.

But it wasn't a completely awful week. Some very exciting things happened:

a) The really grainy photo below was brought to you by my new Sidekick II! I replaced my old sidekick (that was in perfectly good shape) for my new toy. The benefits are the built in camera with flash. Also the speakerphone is probably a good thing too, but I very rarely talk on my phone, I really use it for data more than anything.

b) This is really from last week but it is still exciting even this week: Gizmodo wrote a little blurb about an easter egg on the Sidekicks that allows you to make monkey faces in AOL instant messenger. I don't know why I find that so exciting, but I can't stop using them even though they take a lot more keystrokes than the normal emoticons. God, I am such a geek.

c) We got a convenience store in my office building. Do you know what that means? SKITTLES! No programming project is complete without Skittles and Mountain Dew. Yippee!

So anyway, that's what's been going on with me this week. I've actually got some activities planned for this weekend and the weather is supposed to be lovely, so hopefully I will have more to report over the next few days.