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Thoughts

by on July 29, 2011, in but in our house we never get bored, health, or something like it, jump aboard the crazy train, life etc., my cat's cooler than yours, the first rule is you do not blog about work

On Mac OS 10.7, otherwise known as Lion: So far I’m liking it, although I really haven’t gotten to delve into the newness of it too much yet. Except for the natural scrolling “feature” that was introduced. That one I got thrown into headfirst. Basically, Apple has changed scrolling with Lion to mimic the way it’s done with iOS. So instead of moving your fingers or mouse wheel down to scroll down a page, you are pushing the page up or pulling it down. It definitely felt more natural to me when using the trackpad (and, therefore, my fingers) than when using the mouse, but I think I’m about used to it now.

On the weather (because that’s all Middle Tennesseans talk about these days): It’s really goddamn hot. It’s been in the upper 90s for what seems like years now, and the humidity is about a billion percent. And for some reason my allergies are really, really bad this year. So bad that I’ve started doubling my dose of Zyrtec again, something my doctor told me to do one time in the past when I had a bad cold and that caused me to hallucinate and feel like I was walking around in a fog. So far I haven’t hallucinated or heard any voices, but I do feel pretty dizzy and out of it. We’ll see what happens.

On the cats: Somehow King Boo has won over Gordo, who, as you might remember, has hated him with a fiery passion of a thousand suns dipped in hatesauce since the day we brought him home. But we’ve caught Gordo grooming King Boo from time to time, and every morning they have Cat Wrestlemania in the bedroom and Gordo appears to be playing, not actually trying to kill King Boo. So, you know, progress. I’d also like to say a big fat I TOLD YOU SO to all of the haters in the house. I was the only one who liked King Boo when we brought him home, and now he’s won over every single living entity in the house except for Evil Twin, but he sucks and doesn’t count.

On jobs: My new job is still going swimmingly and sometimes I have to pinch myself. I’m starting to get some more responsibilities and pulled into various projects that have been pretty fun. And I still get tickled that I can mention a video game or some weird nerdy meme and not only do these people know what it is, they probably knew about it before I did. I am feeling more at home every day.

And Ian’s doing quite well in the job department, too, as he recently got a really big promotion and is now heading up the department where he’s worked for the last four years. He even has to wear a state-issued cellphone on his belt! Who’s the nerd now?! (Yeah, still me. I know.)

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We’ll see how it goes

by on July 11, 2011, in around town, health, or something like it, life etc.

Today after work Ian & I joined a gym. We’d been talking about it for a while and had tried to go check out the one a block from our house last week, but it was so full there wasn’t even anywhere to park for a minute. At about 7:30 p.m.

So today we stopped by Gold’s Gym to see what it was all about, and I was surprised. I expected it to be muscley and gross and seedy, but it was actually pretty nice. Lots of machines, plenty of light and space, and plenty of middle-aged folks in there to where I don’t think I’ll feel terribly uncomfortable. There will always be muscle-heads at any gym, but since I’ve only ever gone to the YMCA or the hospital wellness center I wasn’t too sure what to expect.

We go Wednesday evening for our fitness consultation with a personal trainer. I’m sure Ian will have no trouble, but I’m a little afraid of being laughed out of there when I say I really just want to use the bikes and eliptical machines with the TVs.

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Love is watching someone die

by on May 24, 2011, in life etc., we don't always put the "fun" in dysfunctional

This weekend Ian and I drove up to Chicago for my grandma’s funeral. There was a Catholic mass, and I had to laugh because it meant my grandma succeeded in getting me into church one more time. From the graaaave. And on the day of the supposed rapture at that!

After the mass we went to the cemetery for a small ceremony led by a deacon, and then we walked out to her burial plot where her remains were buried next to her husband and some other family members. I chuckled when I noticed a nearby grave marker bore the name “Schardt,” but then my mom told me that might have been a relative. Oops.

After I said my farewell, I piled back in the car with Katie, Junnhi, Emily and Ian and we headed over to a nearby restaurant for a family lunch. Luckily my family recognizes the importance of an open bar in times like these, so I could knock back a few glasses of wine before having to read aloud something that I wrote for my grandmother. I was so nervous that I wouldn’t be able to make it through without crying, but I put on my big-girl pants and powered through it. Everyone laughed at the points that were supposed to be funny and at the end they applauded me—and I was only told once to speak louder—so I’m guessing it was well-received. One of my uncles asked me to post it online, so here it is.

Norman Rockwell could not have painted a more quintessential grandmother than Grandma Jean. Homemade chocolate chip cookies, apple pies, hard candy in a crystal jar. She was a five-star grandma indeed. Always eager to find out what her grandchildren had been up to, there to watch us when we were out sick from school, plying our boredom with a box of old toys from generations past that somehow always seemed to have a draw to them, despite our usual penchant for video games.

For Katie and I, Grandma Jean’s house was always a refuge on Sundays, a way to ease back into the school week set to a soundtrack of Perry Cuomo and butterscotch candy wrappers being opened by our grubby little fingers.

When she lived in Vernon Hills, Katie and I would run ourselves ragged on the path around the lake, pretending the woods were haunted and wishing for snow so we could pretend we had the guts to take a sled to The Big Hill. Any kid that visited grandma at that house knows about The Big Hill. It was legendary, and my greatest triumph as an elementary schooler was convincing Grandma Jean to hike halfway to the top with me.

She was a trooper.

But when I grew up and moved to Tennessee, I finally realized what a gift her vernacular was. Living in the south, I often think of her when I hear someone say “rapscallion” or that someone is making them “cross.” However, after spending 13 years in the south, I now know that her most powerful phrase was “bless your heart.” If you’ve spent any time in the south, you know what this really means. There is no more polite way to tell someone you pity them and think they’re stupid at the same time than “bless your heart.” It is kind, yet pointed.

Which brings me to my final thought. We all know what a lifelong fan of the Cubs grandma was. I can’t remember being at her house during baseball season and not seeing her watching her beloved Cubbies. And now that she’s gone, that leaves it up to the rest of us to keep cheering them on. (Even you, Uncle Mike.) They haven’t won a World Series since 1908, but maybe this will be their year.

Bless their hearts.

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Random thoughts

by on May 17, 2011, in life etc.

1. My grandma’s funeral is approaching swiftly and I still can’t write what I’m supposed to read in front of my family after the service.

2. If I go for too long without watching some episodes of The Office, I get a feeling like homesickness. For some reason, that show comforts me like a security blanket.

3. Speaking of TV shows, the first season of Family Ties is now on Netflix Instant. It is amazing.

4. I’ve been working on building a website for someone, and they were already signed up for webhosting through Yahoo! Small Business Webhosting before the project began. This deserves a post of its own, but let me go ahead and warn you to never, ever sign up for Yahoo! webhosting if you value your time, your sanity or your ability to not stab yourself in the leg 12 times an hour. Yahoo makes it sound like they’re a great hosting solution, but they actually are the exact opposite. So. You’ve been warned. Learn from my horrors.

5. I’m getting really excited for Bonnaroo. Especially since my sister Emily will be coming down for it, too. And since she’s not old enough to drink, I’ve bribed her into being my designated driver so we can go home each night and not have to camp among the cicada infestation.

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The new

by on May 9, 2011, in life etc., the first rule is you do not blog about work

I’ve been bad at updating lately, which I realize bothers nobody but me. But I’ve been strangely busy—I’ve been in a “I don’t have time to blog about stuff because I’m out doing it” mood the last few weeks, I suppose.

I guess the biggest news is that I started a new job. After five and a half years at Hammock Inc., first as a writer and then as the digital media manager, I have started at Raven Internet Marketing Tools as a user support specialist.

As excited I am to be part of such an innovative, geeky team at Raven, I have to point out that it wasn’t an easy decision to leave Hammock. I enjoyed what I did there, and I made some great friends (I’m looking at you, wolfpack!). And Rex, the founder/CEO, was so great to work for and with. He’s a brilliant, mad-scientist kind of guy who just gets it, and I really appreciate all that I learned from him.

But over my last couple of years there, I realized that development is where I am headed. I’ll always consider myself a writer at heart, but work-wise I keep gravitating more and more to coding. And if I want to get serious about learning and really pursuing that path, what’s better than working right in the middle of a bunch of developers every day? And Raven is a great, growing company with amazing people working there, and I’m really excited to have been invited to be a part of their team. Last week was my first week there and I’m already having a blast.

And, quite honestly, when they were described to me as the “island of misfit toys” I knew it was someplace I belonged.

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This is not an afterthought

by on April 26, 2011, in life etc., we don't always put the "fun" in dysfunctional

I just realized that I never wrote about my grandmother dying here. I guess because it happened in the middle of some other crazy life stuff, I just threw up my hands and said “fuck it” there for a while. But I want to record it here so I don’t forget. Because my grandmother deserves more than an afterthought.

She died around midnight on Friday—well, I guess Saturday, April 9, 2011. She was 94 years old and had been sick for a few years with congestive heart failure and, basically, old age. We all knew it was coming. I had gotten several “she’s not going to be with us much longer” phone calls over the past year and had made the trip up to Chicago at least twice expecting I’d never see her again. My mom had bore the brunt of caring for her over the last several years, and so my first thought upon receiving the call was that I hoped she was OK.

We discussed funeral plans for a bit, my mom in Chicago, me sitting on my bed in the dark, as it was nearly 1 a.m. by that time. Then the cremation service called, and my mom had to go. I hung up the phone, laid my head down on Ian and cried. I woke up the next day and spent almost 12 hours helping my sister-in-law move from a three-bedroom house into a two-bedroom apartment. Because life goes on.

I’m still trying to piece together something that I’d like to read at the funeral. I don’t guess things like that are supposed to come easily, and this sure isn’t.

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And once again, life gets in the way

by on April 18, 2011, in blogging, but in our house we never get bored, Internet, life etc., travel

I know nobody cares, but it bothers me when I’m bad about blogging. Because ultimately I’m keeping this record of my life for myself, as selfish as that sounds, so that in 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 years I can look back and see what I was up to at a certain moment in my life. And laugh at myself, undoubtedly.

So I was going to recap my New Orleans trip and talk all about how awesome the train was, at least for the first couple of hours, and how I liked walking back through the cars as the train was moving, getting jostled from side to side and seeing the world fly by me out the windows the most. And I was going to tell funny and scandalous stories about the times my friends and I had while in New Orleans, starting with how Ian and our friend John started drinking about 8 a.m. on the way down there, and how by the time we got to the train station in Birmingham John had consumed seven beers and a 4Loko and was yelling out the car window as we drove through the ghetto to find a parking lot.

And I was going to detail how excited I was to be in New Orleans and run into an old, old friend of mine—like, someone I was BFFs with all through elementary school—made possible by checking into a bar on Facebook, of all things. And I was going to recount the fun we had at the St. Patrick’s Day parade that night—old friends, current friends, and new friends all celebrating together—and then how Ian got lost for a short period of time and once again Google Maps and GPS on my iPhone saved the day.

But time has passed, and some stories are better recounted in person, told time after time in bars and at cookouts instead of immortalized by the pen of the Internet. Some things are best held close by the people who experienced them, and not everything has to be validated by blog entry or tweet or Facebook update.

But mainly I’m just lazy.

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Old Stone Fort State Archaeological Park

by on March 9, 2011, in around town, but in our house we never get bored, life etc.

Old Stone Fort State Archaeological ParkAbout a month ago Ian and I drove down to Manchester for a day hike at Old Stone Fort State Archaeological Park, a 2,000-year-old American Indian ceremonial site.

It was gorgeous in spite of the still winter-esque landscape (there’s something a little sad about an entire forest of barren trees with just a few sprigs of green), though I was bummed to discover that there was not, in fact, a big fortress made out of stone for me to look at and maybe climb around on. But come on, when you read this:

It consists of mounds and walls that combine with cliffs and rivers to form an enclosure measuring 1-1/4 miles around. The 50-acre hilltop enclosure mound site is believed to have served as a central ceremonial gathering place for some 500 years. It has been identified as, perhaps, the most spectacularly sited sacred area of its period in the United States and the largest and most complex hilltop enclosure in the south.

You’re going to expect a FORT, right? Walls! It says walls! But the only stone walls to look at were those of an old mill. Which was cool, but not 2,000-years-old cool. We kept seeing signs that directed us to walk either above or below the “wall,” but let’s face it: They should just stick with calling those things mounds. Because that’s what they were. Small hills in the landscape that were covered in dirt and leaves and mud.

And a note for the settlers who “tended to name such enclosures ‘forts,’” — come on. You know what a fort is. Don’t tell me you weren’t trying to play a practical joke on your descendants, knowing that by the time we discovered what you had stumbled upon anything that was left of a structure would be gone and we’d be all “WTF? Where is the fort?!”

But despite a little historical pwnage from our ancestors, we really enjoyed this state park and are planning on returning sometime this spring/summer to see what everything looks like when the foliage is out in full force.

Pictures are here.

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Almost

by on February 15, 2011, in life etc.

This morning before I left for work I made the first of my spring smoothies. I don’t know why, but I only like smoothies in the spring and summer. I put frozen blueberries, yogurt and a banana in the blender, and then cussed because our blender sucks and I had to add some milk to get it to blend.

I can feel spring coming. Usually I am afraid this time of year, because in Tennessee spring means tornadoes. Mother Nature is a bitch around these parts, bringing death and destruction in the same suitcase with which she carries the new life of spring. But just like this past winter, I am not dreading the spring this time, either. I’m sure once the first tornado warning sends me, Ian and the cats into our downstairs half-bath I’ll change my mind, but for now I’m looking forward to growth and warmth.

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Women’s lib my ass

by on February 8, 2011, in life etc., me and Murphy Brown, media

Last year after all of the misogynistic GoDaddy commercials during the Super Bowl, I transferred all of my domains from them over to BlueHost, where I host this blog. I have about 10 domains, which I realize is not even enough for GoDaddy to notice. But it made me feel better to not support a company that obviously doesn’t mind alienating its female customer base. This year, GoDaddy’s overplayed and tired “look at Danica Patrick’s b00bz and hey! maybe she’ll make out with this other chick” commercials confirmed that I made the right move by severing all ties with the company last year.

But one thing keeps sticking in my craw: So Danica Patrick is a woman succeeding in a field that is obviously dominated by males, right? She’s doing this awesome thing—playing the boys’ game and winning, right?

And how does she celebrate her badassery? By signing on with GoDaddy to make commercials that ensure she’s only seen as a pair of tits. Instead of being seen as a woman kicking the boys’ asses and taking their names, she’s allowing herself to be devalued and objectified. If this really is the only avenue she thought she could take to build her brand, I’m sad for her. And for our society as a whole.

I don’t watch Nascar or the Indy races, but if I ever hear her talk about how it’s hard for a woman to be taken seriously in a man’s field I will laugh so, so hard. And then cry. Like a girl, right?

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