Hence the bleach.

Move over Martha Stewart and Martha Stewart-wannabes who rushed in to fill the Martha Stewart void after she mysteriously left the scene for a little while there -- there's a new home guru in the House. (Me.)

Today's topic is how to make your room smell nice using a Yankee Candle and the laws of physics. You know those candle-warmers that plug into an outlet and heat your jar candles without you having to light one? Well, my mom has one and this one time left it on all night with a Sugar Cookie Yankee Jar Candle on it, and the whole family woke up demanding yellow cake with chocolate icing, because we're not really a sugar cookie family and it really did smell like yellow cake. And the wick of the candle sank into waxy oblivion.

How do you avoid this problem? Well, one, don't use candles that smell like food. Second, if you take a sampler candle and stick it on the hot air vent on the floor -- you don't even have to unwrap it -- the candle will be warmed slightly and its scent will be projected through the room. My suggestion is an elegant solution to the candle-warmer problem, because it doesn't get warm enough to actually melt the candle and uses only sporadic heat. (Although, for liability purposes, I insist that you check the candle every two minutes while the heat is running to make sure it's not on fire.)

Raise your hand if you're a little freaked out because you were just thinking about Johnny Carson, like, day before yesterday.

"Magic" means don't think about it.

Goals for 2005

I don't believe in resolutions, i.e. changing something about yourself one day at a time, particularly because the "resolution" itself seems to usually be made in order to impress people with the shockingly small amount of time it takes for it to bite the dust. I'm more in favor of setting my sights on one-off actions that can be checked off a list easily. So, here they are:

1) Convince younger brother #1 to start his own blog, because seriously, you people are missing some SOLID COMEDY if you aren't on his e-mail list.

2) Make some money from some craft sometime this year. Local coffee shop quilt-hangings, knitted goods (baby blanket, anyone?) sold over the internet, or maybe even a gig as a wedding photographer('s assistant). (I've done two weddings so far and have botched neither. Unfortunately, they were my cousins' weddings and do not really count as jobs. I've got another one coming up in March.)

3) Update this list as it becomes necessary.

Sometimes it feels like your own name is not really yours and that it could not possibly be snowing more.

Just don't color me late for dinner

I just realized that the little pouch I knitted last night (more on that in a second) I knitted on size 3 needles instead of size 6 needles. So THAT's why it took so long. The 3s and 6es are the same color.

I decided that I needed a little pouch to hold a couple sundries that are small and that I would like to keep together. I fly to D. C. this afternoon, because my cousin is getting married there this weekend. Mom got me this nice, real suitcase (as opposed to the left-over-from-traveling-soccer-Adidas-duffel-bag I've used for the past 10 years) that is also freaking tiny relative to said duffel bag. It's a weekender. It's still not packed, despite the fact that I got up yesterday with the full intention to pack first thing.

But see, yesterday sucked. The parking department for this school is usually pretty good about doing things on time and not screwing you over too badly, but on the condition that you are a graduate student, faculty member, or staff member. If you're an adjunct instructor, you're fucked. You have to go in every four months and show them that you're actually hired, because otherwise I guess you'd take your kickass pass and sell it to some undergraduate, heaven forfend. So then they issue you this gargantuan paper pass, designed to block your view of oncoming traffic so that elves can sneak through the wreckage of the crash and take the parking pass back before you can give it to someone else.

Sidebar: the paper pass is also too light to withstand the air vents on the dash very well, so it spent a lot of time last semester blowing to the floor. ONE TIME I forgot to put it back, and got a $20 ticket. Gah.

So I'd been using Other's graduate student pass to park when I, you know, taught my classes. We did well for exactly one time, remembering to transfer it back to his car, but yesterday we forgot. So I got up, realized we probably forgot, and responsibly drove over to the school to replace it.

First, though, I called the parking services place and asked about my pass. No, it was not in the mail, they had to see a signed contract first, so I had to go in.

But he'd already gotten a ticket. DAMN it. $20. Well, since it was pretty much my fault for not going to the parking department to get the new pass instead, I'd take it and pay it. I was going there anyway.

La la la, I thought. Going to the parking department.

Well, of course there was nowhere to park. I circled twice, making note of a space in a parking lot that I couldn't find a label for. Finally I took that spot, figuring that it would only be a few minutes. In and out. La la la.

Then I locked my keys in the car. I had my wallet, I had my contract, but I had no keys. I have non-power locks, so I just lock the door as I get out, and this is the first time ever (in four years of owning it) that I've locked my keys in the car. I was getting frustrated by this point, but I kept it together and decided to go get the pass, then come back and write a note to the parking attendant with my new pass number, then find a spare key.

La. la. la. But then I got to the parking services place, and there was a sign on the door. "Parking services will be closed today from 9:30-11:00 so we can serve you better."

Couldn't this information have been shared with me when I called this morning and stated my intent to come to the parking services department? On New Year's Eve, when I worked at the pharmacy, I told everyone we were closing early that night. How about a little karma? Maybe someone told them during their inservice that when they're planning to be closed randomly, they should tell that to people who are planning to come in.

So, by this point I was highly frustrated. God only knows what kind of ticket I'd get for parking in the mystery lot without a pass of any kind.

Other was teaching, and I wasn't sure what time his second class would end, so I left a pathetic message on our home answering machine, explaining, and booked it over to the English Department. Luckily, five years ago we traded spare car keys as a symbol of our, you know, whatever, and after class he gave me my spare key. (Hooray for our inadvertent practicality.)

I booked it back to the parking services place as it was starting to rain (AGAIN) and found that, at 10 after 11, they still were not back. So I did the only thing I could, which was sit in my car and scream curses at the school and parking department.

Eventually, of course, I got the pass and even avoided a ticket for the mystery space. But I still haven't finished packing.

The Tortise, the Hare, and the Third Little Bear

I have finally settled in to the new-ish job, enough to recognize regular customers and start being seriously bothered by some habits of my coworkers. One coworker is, I think, on speed. (Not really, because she doesn't seem like the drug-user type. She does, though, drink gallons of caffeinated beverages in short periods of time, so maybe it's that.) It's like working with the Tazmanian Devil. You have to find work to do when she's not looking and at the same time concentrate on avoiding being elbowed in the temple. Theoretically, it's cool that she works so hard and is so efficient. Practically, it would be great if she'd chill out a bit.

Another coworker seems to be on 'ludes. (Seriously.) He's particular, methodical, and slooooooow. I watched him today, and as the phone rings, he reeeaaachessss for it. 90% of the time, one of the normally-paced human beings pickes it up (there are three extensions total in the pharmacy) before the hand reaches the receiver and he draws back, looking surprised. I cannot tell if he's doing this on purpose so as not to have to answer the phone, or if he just has his own tranquilized drummer.

Taz hates Tranq. It's gotten to the point, if I'm reading things right, of open volleys. Trouble's a-brewing.

Meanwhile, I'm screaming in my head at both of them to do totally opposite things. This gets tiring.

If a rock 'n roller says the 'f'-word on TV and nobody hears it, should you still be outraged?*

Well, after a 10-hour break from the rain, it is again raining and will continue to rain until Saturday, at which point they will be looking for our house by helicopter, somewhere downstream. I love dreariness and rain; I also love being able to heat the house.

At work today, another technician asked me if the water in the ducts wouldn't cause mildew, and I said "Well, yah, the guy who pumps the water out says there's enough hot air going through them to dry it out..." and then my boss actually turned around so we could see her smirk at the silliness of such a statement.

The turn-and-smirk cannot be a good sign, but there was no time to pursue this line of thought. I will try to get more information tomorrow.


Please, internet, not tonight -- I've got a headache.

The awesome and computer-savvy brother-in-law went and got us a wireless internet thing for Christmas, and now I cannot stop reading this hilarious and alarming and sickening and engrossing encyclopedia of baby names chatboard, which is mediated through a -- well "critical" is an understatement, but will have to do -- lens.



*Thank you, Channel 64, for that philosophical quandary of the day.

After Dinner Mints -- For Breakfast!

Seventeen inches of snow + 3 days of 50 degree weather = 7" of standing water in our ducts. = waves beneath the living room and kitchen whenever the heat is on + double the warm air heading upstairs = night sweats (for forgetting to turn the heat off).