Umbrella, Snow, Classiness, Psychobilly/Rockabilly

Man, I love that cover....even the dudes in the dresses, especially the ballet scene.

Some good an Umbrella will do when the White Death is once again descending upon Ohio. School is already canceled (and there is no new snow as of right now), so I have to take Mina and Tristan both on my errands this morning before the snow hits this afternoon. I'll have to wake them up soon.

I stayed up all night writing on my current novel attempt, now I have the caffeine hand twitches.

We finished painting the laundry room last night, it is minty green and bright white goodness. The previous owners had it painted grey with an odd wallpaper border depicting laundry hanging on a line...which I think is kind of redundant.

I had an extra great experience yesterday, sense the sarcasm? I was holding Tristan and waiting to cross the street by Mina's school and some asshat (excuse my French) ran the red light long after the light changed, swerved into the left lane as if to indicate that I shouldn't be stepping out in front of him and then gave me the middle finger. The world is full of classy people. I'm assuming that if that's how he reacts to people just trying to cross the street when it is their turn, then we're only scratching the surface of his worthless traits. Oh well, I'm probably expecting too much from people.

Now some Psychobilly by the Matadors. Kind of a disturbing song...I guess


And this is The Reverend Horton Heat. I actually saw this band perform this song live...

Busy Friday: Drama, Confusion, Surprise, and that other stuff

I should totally sleep, but at 6am it is almost a lost cause?

The snow arrived, I still haven't seen all that much, but we're under a Level 2 Snow Emergency. I think they're just trying to keep us scared because when I was younger it seemed that it took a heck of a lot more snow to get a "Level 2" than we currently have outside right now. Naturally school dismissed early, James got to leave work early and I unwisely ventured to the store amid the pre-Super Bowl and preparing for the white death shopping frenzy. I don't buy into the hype (of the white death or the Super Bowl), but just wanted to make pizza for dinner tonight. It wasn't too bad in my opinion because I've been to the Tensuke Market on their big sale day, and I would greatly advise against being there if you're claustrophobic.
I had an odd afternoon. I put Tristan down for his nap when I got home from the store and my grandparents' offered to get Mina and drop her off because they worried that the snow would be worse and that it would be difficult for me to handle both kids. I sat on the sofa and waited, thought I might fall asleep and had left my cell phone upstairs. The time passed, and I thought they would be by to bring Mina home really soon. I heard my phone ringing and ran upstairs to grab it. James and my grandparents were both calling at the same time. I thought something bad must be going on, but James called the house phone as I was checking my voice mail. He said that he got off work early and he wanted me to move his car out of the garage so he could work on my car out there. Okay. My voice mail says that my grandparents are outside and they didn't see me here. I was confused because I'd only been sitting on the sofa. I thought that they had come to the door and didn't get a response, I didn't think I had fallen asleep or that I could sleep through our very loud doorbell. I call grandma's cell phone and tell them that I'm at home, so they bring Mina by. I realize that they were looking for my car out front, which James had driven to work because he wanted to check out the recent adjustments. So I was not going crazy. For a moment it felt like Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere and the whole London Below thing.

So I moved James' car out of the garage and he brought my car in and said that he'd be working on it for the next few hours. Okay, whatever, he has been messing with the cars a lot recently. Right before I start putting together the pizzas he tells me that he wants me to move my car out of the garage so he can put his car back. I get a bit annoyed because I don't want to go outside, but I do go. I get in my car and he has it all cleaned out, including the nasty cereal that Tristan tossed around the back seat. I turn the car on and the radio is quiet, I'm used to something on the FM starting up in its staticy goodness because I haven't had a CD-player that worked in about a year. This song came on, a Rammstein song that I know they don't play on the radio around here (it's too blatantly naughty). I turn it up, initially thinking "wow, the sound quality is great and they're playing this on some rock station." I reach down and it's a new CD-player with the most recent Rammmstein CD in it. I have a sneaky husband.

We had the pizza for dinner. James and I watched a lot of movies tonight because it's snowy, and I was originally supposed to go out with friends, but the roads in Columbus are apparently much worse than here (we really didn't get much snow, so I thought they were over-reacting). Our electricity flickered once, which freaked out Mina who jsut starts screaming (not cool) and woke up Tristan (double not cool) and she started wandering (not cool again because she can't see the stairs when she wanders in the dark), but she didn't fall down and the power came back up and Tristan legitimately needed a diaper change, so it was all good.
So movies... We started out with Season 2 Disc 1 of Californication--hey, I at least know what to expect here, but it was less softcore porn that The Tudors. Then we watched "Nazi Surf Punks Must Die!" Horrible movie, but it's a Troma thing, so I felt like watching it. The ending was pretty satisfying because the only cool characters were the elderly ladies. After James went to sleep I watched "Fried Green Tomatoes" and that is a really good movie, I had previous seen it in bits and pieces, but watching it all together was great. It made up for my Troma film transgressions.

So I think I'll try to get a couple hours of sleep...I'm going to blame this on the fact that I was fueled by caffeine today, seriously too much.

"The Tudors," "The Wiggles" and my torn-up Kitchen

I'm still writing elsewhere and trying to get my crap together for grad school or law school, but every time I think about the GRE or LSAT I start to feel like this is all a bad idea.
Anyway I've been watching "The Tudors" on Netflix on demand. It seems to be 25% Historical inaccuracies, 25% softcore porn, 25% "I was untouched by man when I came to your bed", and 25% "I will have my divorce." It's really a mixed bag when someone with a background in History watches these things, but the inaccuracies don't bug me too much, but just the ability to drag the whole "church won't grant the divorce" thing takes about 10 episodes, his marriage to Anne lasts 3 episodes before he's already distracted by Jane Seymore. The time management of the series doesn't seem suspenseful or exciting to me and rather it just seems to drag out some segments of the story line and skim over others.
Tristan has been enjoying dancing to "The Wiggles" music, but he'll dance to just about anything. I got a friend request on Myspace from Quorum in Columbus(at Outland on Liberty February 27th) and Tristan walked over to my laptop and started making a funny face and bobbing his head along with their profile song which is "Hard and Dirty" by Modulate. As soon as I try to get photographic evidence of his dancing he gets all shy and won't dance...I'll have to try to capture that on film covertly.
My kitchen is currently torn up, James' co-worker was supposed to come over and install our dishwasher, but so far all I have to show for that is a demoed cabinet, a dishwasher in the middle of the kitchen floor and a sink that is disconnected as of right now. I can't let Tristan walk around at all because I can't block off the kitchen very easily. James is going to pick up dinner, but he's currently trying to replace the starter on my car. We thought that he'd have more time to do this, or that it would be a quicker fix, but he has been taking calls from work and then doing remote access to his computer at work and still working from home intermittently through the afternoon.
So that's what I've been doing for the most part. Well...also Mina has been having more behavior problems, we think due to a change in classroom assistants. James and I also went out for my friend's birthday on Saturday, good times. So that's what I've been doing...really, that's it
sorry for any typos, I wrote this quickly

The first rule of Fight Club...

Sleep does not appear to be happening tonight.
I've had an exhausting past couple of days and cuddled with Tristan and slept most of the day on Wednesday. He has had a tummy problem and I've been on messy diaper watch (so I can change him before the diaper leaks) for the past few days. He seems to be having more normal diapers in the past 12 hours, but I'm still paranoid that the diapers will leak and we'll have a "putting the baby in the shower while fully clothed and still in his diaper because he pooped through his clothing and I don't know what else to do" kind of experience again. When Mina was a baby she had some bad diapers, but Tristan's bad diapers are just off the charts in horrible.

Since I slept some during the day, I really don't have the urge to sleep tonight and it is after 5am now. Tristan keeps waking up and crying a little--maybe one cry and then he goes back to sleep, so my paranoia that he is going to start crying and need to be picked up and changed or given a bottle with some water in it, or something continues. I stay awake.

I watched Fight Club tonight and picked up a couple quotes about insomnia...

"With insomnia, nothing is real.
Everything is far away. Everything
is a copy of a copy of a copy."

"With insomnia, you're never really asleep;
you're never really awake."

What am I thinking?

I registered to attend a campus visit for prospective students at a law school.
I guess I need to figure out something to do and I'm going to miss admissions for the History program that I had thought about.

Started job hunting as well, just to see what happens.

Still working on doing some writing other than blogging.

I'm eagerly waiting for two CD's that I ordered, which would be "Drop The Mask" by XP8 and "The Holiness of Now" by thoushaltnot.

There's my excitement for the time being.

Tristan has been sick and my car is still not behaving.
My Xbox Gold account lapsed because we're getting a better price by buying the cards from Walmart, but now we have to wait for it. So, no getting pwned on Halo 3 online (yeah, I'm no good at that game) and no Netflix movies streaming to the TV, which means that for the time being no music episodes of The Wiggles for Tristan to dance along with. He can't resist pushing buttons on the computer, so I don't know if using the laptop to watch The Wiggles would work for him or not.

I hate your blog

I am actually writing more, but just not online. Perhaps this will be the novel that I actually finish....who knows?

Oh and the cat is better, didn't take her to the vet, but she's back to normal.

So I leave you with some MC Frontalot.
I'm not having any problems with this here, but I do find it amusing when people gripe about how much something "sucks," but they keep reading and complaining.

Must have heard that we'd have a little extra money in a couple weeks

James partially filed our tax return already and we should have that cash rather soon, which is quite convenient because the starter in my car decided to only work halfway and the naughty cat Britney has been vomiting a lot more this past week.
So....these things are happening now, but still don't have the money. How does the starter work halfway exactly? I'm not sure, but it makes absolutely no attempt to start when I turn the key, but I step on the gas a little and it starts. I'm just waiting for the time when it doesn't start...and hopefully that happens when I try to leave the house instead of when I'm already at a destination and trying to get home.
Great.
The older cat Britney is given to occasional fits of over-eating and them yaking right afterward, but now she's doing a lot more and even after removing food for most of the day she is still doing it. She's not into eating foreign objects, so I'm fearing something really not good. Something that requires at least a vet visit and maybe x-rays. So, that puts me in an odd place because James has to go to work, my car is not to be fully trusted currently...I don't know how well the cat is feeling, but I think she should go to the vet tomorrow. Maybe the vet's office has some evening appointments. Britney is drinking the water I give her, so at least there is that. I'll try to give her food again in the morning and see what happens.

Oh yeah...I'm not doing so well at this "going to sleep" business, but I hope to be asleep before 4am tonight, this morning, whatever.

Taste of Bali adventure...before this cold took hold of me

So, it is a late night...after 3am, but I slept a good portion of the day because I have a bad cold and sore throat, which I've had for a few days, but it got a lot worse today. I guess I was pretty out of it today and I can't say that I feel all that much better, but I am awake. Tristan also has a cold, but he doesn't seem to be slowed down all that much. I'm awake planning my vegetable garden and watching episodes of Anthony Bordain's: No Reservation and Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern.
I can't say I'm as culinary adventurous as Andrew Zimmern, but I have found myself in more than one situation to eat durian, which James did attempt to drink in smoothie form and I attempted to drink it as well, but upon approaching the durian smoothie with boba (purchased at Pochi near OSU's campus) drinking it was not happening. I was also pregnant with Tristan and my standard foods were not agreeing with me let alone the mushy fruit with an onion and wet garbage aftertaste. The smell was pretty bad.
My most recent chance to have durian occurred on Saturday afternoon. It was dark and foggy as James, Tristan and I (Mina went to my Mom's house for the evening) ventured to Taste Of Bali Indonesian restaurant. The parking was crazy because it is right by a discount movie theater. The restaurant itself was simply decorated and the table where we were sat was right beside a couple who also had a little boy (who Tristan kept watching). James ordered a sampler appetizer, but most of the items on that were also on the special sets that we had for dinner. I really appreciated that the food was all Halal, which makes sense because Indonesia is the country with the largest Muslim population in the world. I had the Adventurous set and James had the Spicy set. The sauces were really good and the Gudeg (Jack Fruit with sauce) was the good kind of interesting because I've never had Jack Fruit. It does have a texture kind of like meat and I'm going to have to figure out where to buy some to experiment with. Oper Ayam was chicken in a white curry sauce and the favor was really delicate. I really liked the Risol, crispy fried spring roll with ground chicken, carrots and a creamy sauce. The flavors were all really good. James tried the Gudong and liked it, but he was most intrigued by the Telor Balado which was a spicy hard-boiled and then fried egg. He also liked the variety of spices. The peanut sauce was really good. Tristan ate chicken over rice with a sweet sauce. He ate pretty well, Mina wouold not have eaten anything off of that menu though, it wasn't a standard "kid's menu," with no hot dogs or burgers or mac and cheese anywhere to be seen, but just simpler less spicy items.
I think my favorite part of the evening was the Pink Soda, which was carbonated, but creamy and sweet and rose-flavored. I love rose-flavored things and there really isn't all that much opportunity to consume rose-flavored things. We were too full for desert, but the menu featured a durian with shaved ice dessert. I was more interested in the black rice dessert with coconut milk though. Another dessert features young coconut, which I also found intriguing. We'll have to go back and try something else some other time. I think I have a new favorite restaurant, which is pretty cool because this was my first real experience with Indonesian food.

Well, I'm going to try to sleep now.
Still don't feel well.