Last night, when I went to get on the Metro at Union Station, I reached in my pocket for my iPod. I had been watching Dr Who and West Wing with my earbuds on the train, so I hadn't been using it. It wasn't there. I had been dropping things (my cell phone, my glove) all evening, and I freaked out. I went back up to where I had searched for my SmartTrip card through my pockets (dropping half of their contents on the floor). I asked at the information by the incoming terminals. I left the Metro area and retraced my steps. I talked the Amtrak people into letting me look on the train. The woman who was cleaning up the train was really sweet and helped me look, flipping up all the seat cushions. It wasn't there. I left in tears, figuring I would wind up buying a new iPod. (I have been eyeing the iTouch). I asked the Metro lady again if anyone had handed one in, she said no. I started crying (seriously. I haven't gotten enough sleep in a week, and had been on edge all day). I sat down, waiting for the train, opened up a different compartment of my (new) purse, and there it was. When I had pulled out my pen to sign my train ticket, I must've put it in with the pen. I was relieved, and annoyed that in my stupidity, I had delayed getting home by at least half an hour.
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09:56:15 AM,Thursday 27 December 2007
((This is a spill-over from the comments on a different blog.))
Lancelot gets to be interesting because he was sleeping with Guenevere. It adds a dark edge and complexity. You don't get to be a cookie-cutter do-gooder dull hero and also sleep with the King's wife and leave the Round Table in disarray that allows the whole mess to fall. Galahad is a dull prissy goody-goody, but Lancelot can actually be interesting.
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04:12:57 PM,Friday 21 December 2007
Yesterday we got a Christmas card with with a stamp that said "Eid Greetings" which charmed me to no end.
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09:27:44 AM,Friday 21 December 2007
What does mistletoe symbolize? Why is it part of Christmas? I associate it with Balder and Loki, and that's about it.
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(3)
07:05:05 PM,Thursday 20 December 2007
I have been inordinately homesick for Philadelphia lately. I miss Penn's boat houses, and I miss the bizarre strangeness of being downtown late at night and having the faux gothic splendor of Independence Hall be set off by the brilliant splendor of the futuristic sky scrapers. I miss living properly in a city, and I miss wandering off to the park (or Barnes and Nobles) at Rittenhouse Square. I miss being able to find Hope's Cookies at coffee shops around the city. I miss Mari living a few blocks away, even if we never saw each other.
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05:35:32 PM,Thursday 20 December 2007
So cool!_
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(2)
01:54:07 PM,Thursday 20 December 2007
Ah ha! My office supply raid was succesfull! Richard was hording some of the smaller DHL bags!
(Wow, am I bored.)
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11:27:21 AM,Thursday 20 December 2007
Conversation with my father this afternoon:
Dad: "You use six sticks of butter and six cups of sugar and 10 ounces of evaporated milk, and a little more than two bags of chocolate, and use the big thing of marshmallow fluff..."
Me (who had been writing this down): "Wait...the recipe on the small thing of fluff says 3 sticks of butter and 3 cups of sugar and 5 ounces of evaporated milk, and one bag of chocolate...So is your recipe a double batch?"
Dad: "Oh! Yes! That could well be. Well, use liqueur instead of vanilla if you want to. I use raspberry stuff."
Me: "I was thinking Frangelico, cause I have it."
Dad: "Almond?"
Me: "Hazelnut."
Dad: "Oh, I bet that'll be delicious."
My grandfather's super secret family fudge recipe was the one on the back of the glass jar of marshmallow fluff. It really is the best fudge, just like Nestle Tollhouse cookies really are the best chocolate chip cookies.
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(8)
03:56:01 PM,Tuesday 18 December 2007
My stepbrother Zeb got his first very own dog. After going through a spat of wanting a pug (his girlfriend, with whom he just bought a house, declared that they were too ugly), they went through a series of increasingly violent Asian dogs (starting with a Chow, going to some fighting dog, and stopping briefly on a Tibetan Mastiff, which apparently was bread to protect against leopards, and hates all people who aren't It's Family, and can and will chew through cement), they ended on a Great Pyreness/Newfoundland mutt. At 10 weeks, this dog is (or so I am told) at least twice as big as my Sam, and the breeder thinks she'll get to 220 lbs. Also, mellow and sweet, which is what you want in a giant dog if you live in the suburbs. This is the breed combo that I wanted for like 10 years.
But, man, am I glad I have a small dog.
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(4)
04:18:03 PM,Monday 17 December 2007
Netflix was supposed to send me the third Pirates movie. I opened up the envelope to watch it this evening, and it was Georgia Rule. Not even the wrong DVD in the right slip, just the entirely wrong movie.
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05:22:58 PM,Saturday 15 December 2007
Several times this week I have typed in the word "Amsterdam" and each time I do, I am convinced that I am spelling it wrong. I'm not sure what I think it's supposed to be, but I think it just looks funny. Today I copied it off of a bank's website, and I am still sure it looks wrong.
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(6)
09:10:56 AM,Friday 14 December 2007
I read, somewhere, someone saying that of course politicians will only talk about Climate Change in the summer, because people will listen about that when it's hot out. I pay more attention to it when it's 60 degrees (like earlier this week) in the middle of December. I'm not that far south.
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(2)
04:18:24 PM,Thursday 13 December 2007
Last night Lara came over and we watched an episode of Nero Wolf while eating pizza and caramels. When the episode was over (I think it was a double episode), it was 10, and I said "let's not watch any more, cause it's 10." And then, somehow, we wound up watching videos on YouTube. It started with this one that's Star Trek and Monty Python, and then there was the Potter Puppet Pals and the Mysterious Ticking Noise. Brianne was sitting at the computer and spent some time trying to find everything else that was remotely like those Puppet Pals, which somehow turned into Eddie Izzard, which then became these home videos someone had done of acting out what Eddie Izzard was talking about with Legos. And then it was 11:30, and I said "we have to stop. I have to go to bed."
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(2)
08:50:24 AM,Wednesday 12 December 2007
I spilled soup on my white shirt. Damn. It's not quite thin enough that I feel the need to wear something underneath, but it's definately too white and too thin for me to be terribly thirlled when it gets wet. And my Tide pen didn't really help do anything other than get it wet.
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(2)
01:45:30 PM,Monday 10 December 2007
Yesterday I bathed Sam. I had been kind of avoiding it, cause his fur was in the "I might turn into mats" sort of look, and water is the best way to make that actually turn in to mats. But I brushed him a bit during the week, and then gave him a bath yesterday afternoon. He is very good about baths; sometimes I can even get him to jump into the bathtub. I conditioned him with lavender conditioner, and then brushed him again when he was dry. He is a giant puffball. Also very soft, and he smells kind of like lavender, which is nice.
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09:30:17 AM,Monday 10 December 2007
Incredibly much better, let me add, than the stuffed jalepeno smell that Brianne left in the house earlier today.
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07:09:00 PM,Saturday 8 December 2007
And my house smells like vanilla and cooked butter and sugar. It is awesome.
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07:08:21 PM,Saturday 8 December 2007
I have made caramels. They are sitting out to cool/solidify overnight. The rubber spatula with which I stirred them tastes delicious.
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07:07:19 PM,Saturday 8 December 2007
Note to self: Just because a kitchen gadget is red does not mean I must own it.
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03:09:03 PM,Friday 7 December 2007
I taught Brianne how to knit last night. She holds her left needle kind of funny (kind of like she's still trying to crochet), but I only demoed two stitches. Her gauge is incredibly uneven (and loose), but she didn't wind up with 20 zillion extra stitches, or far too few. I am all proud of both of us.
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12:12:42 PM,Friday 7 December 2007