Yearly Archives: 2007

Flotsam / Jetsam

A very irritable day

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Today’s been a pip. I’m not sure exactly what’s going on, but it seems like we’ve been saving up all of our Let’s Deal With Irritations chips for today. And so I’m turning into Ranty McRanterson, just for this post.

  1. Our e-mail was down for a good part of yesterday and then again this morning. I’d sent in a support request yesterday afternoon. When I looked at the “ticket history” this morning, though, it said that no one had even looked at the request. So I called the support call center. I was on hold for 40 minutes before they (“they” being either the support center or my cell provider) dropped my call. Oh, I was not pleased.

    After I’d showered and had breakfast, I called again and was only on hold for about 20 minutes. And they found the problem and fixed it pretty quickly. Everything was blue skies and bunny rabbits again.

    Until …

  2. First, a little background: A few weeks ago, around 9:30pm, our floor started to shake. I’m pretty sure we’re not on a fault line here. And even if we were, I don’t think earthquakes are accompanied by any sort of kickin’ guitar riffs. So after about 20 minutes, I went downstairs to ask the neighbors to turn down their stereo. The response wasn’t, “Sorry about that; we’ll turn it down.” Which was sort of what I’d expected. Instead, the girl said, “Oh, are you the one with the little girl? She was running around all morning, and it was really loud.”

    I was a little irritated then, and I’ve been irritated a couple of times when they’ve cranked up the tunes since then. But today, I think steam actually came out my ears.

    One of the downstairs neighbor dropped by this afternoon to say that Poppy “or your dogs or whatever” had been running around for two hours and it was disturbing him. He said he had talked to the property manager about it (I’m not sure when, and I don’t know why he didn’t come up here first) and she told him we were moving out soon. But, he said, he “just couldn’t take it anymore.” Rockford told him he was sorry, but there wasn’t much we could do about it, seeing as we live on the third floor in an apartment with wooden floors. And we have a toddler. To which he responded, “When I was little, I wasn’t allowed to run in the house.”

    I’m glad we’ll be moving soon, because I really don’t know how to respond to such complaints. I’m thinking about suggesting to the property manager that they don’t rent this unit to anyone with children after we leave. I don’t know. What do you think? For now, I’m just chanting “Only two more weeks … two more weeks.”

  3. Rockford had a buy-one, get-one-free coupon for Starbucks that he tried to redeem today. The cashier said he couldn’t use it because he wasn’t ordering two of the same item. Rockford said, “You’re kidding me,” and the girl went to get her manager. “Can you deal with these people?” she asked. “I just can’t take this.”

We must be putting off some very strange and intolerable vibes today.

Screen time

Dispatches from the nerdery, vol. II

Last week, Nichole asked me to write something on the blog about Barry Bonds and his ascension to the homerun crown.

Well, that’s done.

******
rocket2.jpg

“The Welfare lines are full of video game players.”
“No they aren’t, Dad.”
“Well…they will be!”

As of late, Nichole and I have been enjoying a TV show that we watched way back when. “Freaks and Geeks” is this little gem of a show that focuses on two fringe groups at McKinley High School outside Detroit. The Weir family has two representatives: Lindsey (Freak), the former mathlete gone (mildly) bad after the death of her grandmother and Sam (Geek), an awkward young man struggling to avoid bullies and having to take showers after PE.

The show only ran for 18 episodes back in 1999-2000, which is really too bad. There are few shows that capture the drive to try and fit in matched with the futility of the effort with quite as much heart as this show. I guess I never realized how much I liked this show and how it became part of my subconcious meter stick for how shows measure up. But after watching these episodes again, I discovered the impact it had on my tastes. After “Freaks and Geeks” I had a hard time watching canned laughter shows. They just didn’t work for me anymore. Of course I can watch and enjoy Seinfeld re-runs but for the most part the laugh track shows lost it for me.

The other aspect of the show that I found comforting, for lack of a better word, was the way in which series creator and writer Judd Apatow portrayed the Geeks. This is probably because I was and still am one.

Yes, I can quote from Blade Runner and a bevy of other Sci-Fi movies.
Yes, I have a Star Wars pillow (REturn of the Jedi era, no less!).
Yes, I could sit down and debate the pros and cons of Hostess vs. Dolly Madison snack cakes, and in fact I have on occasion.
And yes, I wear sneakers that don’t match my socks from time to time….or almost every day.

“Freaks and Geeks” was one of the first shows to spotlight the difficulty with which kids navigate the treacherous waters of youth in the pressure cooker setting of High School. The great thing that most kids didn’t know then and still don’t today, is that it’s okay to be a geek, a nerd, a fringe member. It’s allright to not break into the inner sanctum and let me tell you why: I broke in and discovered that those kids (and now grown ups) were pretty sad and mixed up, too.

So be a nerd, be a geek! Quote from Blazing Saddles. Ponder the finer points of breakfast cereal. Enjoy being you.

Apatow said it like this: “I think that everything I do tends to root for the underdog. I always felt as a kid that I was under appreciated, invisible or weird, but I’ve always secretly thought people would one day appreciate what is different about me. I’m always putting that message out there. Eventually, the nerds and the geeks will have their day.”

Amen, brother.

Too bad there aren’t more shows like this and one less Grey’s Anatomy.

Domestic Blitz

Steep learning curve

Today I took on the Simple Tote from “Bend-the-Rules Sewing.” And I learned that the definition of “simple” is variable, depending upon your level of experience and comprehension.

I got turned around a few times on the project. I put the lining and the facing together the wrong way, so the raw edges are on display on the inside of the bag. And when I stitched all the pieces together and turned it right-side-out, I found that I’d trapped the handles in the tote’s insides. I had to fish them out and improvise, because I didn’t want to take the whole thing apart. (Because I’m lazy.)

The book calls for two different fabrics for this project. I came home with two from the fabric store, but I didn’t like them together when I started working. So I used all polka-dots, and I think it’s pretty cute even without the contrast.

It’s a smaller bag than I’d pictured (I’m not so good with envisioning dimensions), but it’ll work quite well as a little tote for Poppy.

I have quite a bit of the polka-dot fabric left over, so I may try to make another one tomorrow, to see if I can get everything right. Now, though, I have to disassemble my “sewing room” before Poppy wakes up from her nap.