The Mosher Pit

In particular, AES:

Since last Monday, you’ve sent me — I just counted — *32* pieces of mail. When I called you last week to ask for a forbearance, it was because I had never opened one of your pieces of mail because I thought it was junk mail (I get a lot of “important student loan information” mail from people who want to consolidate my loans). Now, it pretty much is junk mail. But thank you for the forbearance and the interest remission; and, I suppose, for telling me three times that I was eligible for it.

Posted in Grrr! by: Helen
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I bought a lot of knitting needles off Ebay for 5 bucks. When she shipped them, she also included several sets of double-pointed needles–she didn’t know what they were, but figured since they were with the other needles, I might be able to use them.

Score!!

In other news, that somewhat irrational fear I have of falling? I took a spill on black ice yesterday and banged up my hip, my elbow, and my two outermost fingers. If I can ever go a few weeks without injuring myself, I’d like to get back into climbing; but I’m going to have to start from scratch, because yesterdays fall was a freefall from vertical to horizontal and I narrowly missed cracking open my skull.

However, I sort of packed the fingers in snow on the trip home and the result is there’s no discoloration and very little swelling, but a whole lot of pain.

In other news, today is the first day of the rest of your life. That may sound cheesy, but one friend is particularly wound up in past patterns creating fear of a new future. There is the blue collar approach to life, and the white collar approach. The former is all caught up in finding a job; the latter is all caught up in finding a career. There’s nothing inherently wrong with either path, but which yields more returns, at least in beltwayland?

Posted in Knitting, Oops!, Ouch!, Quotations, Random, Yay! by: Helen
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we had to postpone the trip to philly to this weekend because of weather the previous weekend, but it worked out. after dropping K. off at my aunt’s, we headed over to a boutique in South Philly to shop for bridesmaid dresses… and hoo golly did we ever score. I can’t say I’ve ever wanted so many dresses in one store in my entire life, but since fully half of them were highly influenced by the art deco period of bias-cut, floor length beauty I managed to find the dress I wanted very early on.

But I skipped trying it on because it said it was a size six.

Several dresses later, I finally decided to give it a shot. I fell in love with it before spotting the price tag, though. But it’s the right dress.

Everyone looked beautiful. I’m just not sure how we’re going to get Andrew’s kilt to coordinate with these pastels! Also, I am going to have a fabulous time with the hair design to go with this dress.

Posted in Friends, Travel by: Helen
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Hair gone poof in a john taylor kind of way: Check.
Froofy scarf, knitted during ALA, wound round neck and tied: Check.
Long waist-coat cardigan with slighly flared 3/4 sleeves: Check.

It’s good to dress normal again.

Posted in Hair, Out and About by: Helen
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K. pointed out to me tonight that this is the first year he can remember that neither me or his dad was in school.

And it then occurred to me, that K. learned to crawl on the floor at Lord Fairfax Community College.

We’ve _never_ not been in school–one or the other of us–for the past 12 years. I spent more time out than his dad did, and as such, he got a PhD and I only got a bachelors.

But, yanno, K.’s 12 now. And we were welfare parents. I supported the three of us in 1993 on $8,000 dollars. We had food stamps. And I fought, tooth and nail, for a better life for us.

We’re far from perfect, but we’re definitely in a better life.

Posted in Family, Life, Yay! by: Helen
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No, not another one. I just noticed that I posted two memes in a row, one quizzie, one questionaire, and I haven’t done that in a while.

At any rate, more bizarre was the fact that this, being the third night in a row that I’ve had an IM conversation with K., he decides to put his dad on the line. Apparently, every question his dad typed, I answered before he could type it, which created much mirth on their end of the IM. But here we are signing off, some oh, ten years after the divorce, and he says, “c ya.”

And I answer “l8r.”

I realize, with horror, what a terrible precedent we had set for our son. Chatting in… chatspeak.

K.’s reaction to the whole thing?

“lol”

Posted in Family, LOLZ! by: Helen
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1. What year was it?
1988

2. What were your three favourite bands?
U2, The Damned, Depeche Mode

3. What was your favourite outfit?
Jeans and sweaters. I haven’t changed much.

4. What was up with your hair?
That was the year I grew it out and got a perm, after three years of haircolor of the week-ness and all manner of amateur spikes.

5. Who were your best friends?
Iveta, Laura, and Stephanie. I was really only really close to Iveta, but musically Laura and Stephanie had more in common with me, and back then music was everything.

Oh, and Mark, but that’s another story.

6. What did you do after school?
Usually hung out with Iveta. Smoked. Drank. Whatever.

7. Did you take the bus?
No, I drove.

8. Who did you have a crush on?
Mark. And Gunner, briefly. But mostly Mark.

9. Did you fight with your parents?
Constantly. And I usually won.

10. Who did you have a CELEBRITY crush on?
Larry Mullen and Dave Vanian. It’s hard to believe I spent more than an hour on the phone with the latter one day a year and change ago.

11. Did you smoke cigarettes?
Yes.

12. Did you lug all of your books around in your backpack all day because you were too nervous to find your locker?
Actually, my locker was a bit of a hangout. Seniors had good placement, and I was pretty hip by my senior year. Kinda. Sorta.

13. Did you have a ‘clique’?
In a way, several. There was a younger group that I really enjoyed hanging out with, but we were sort of the new wave kids. There was a group of my peers, who were more into the REM side of things, that included Bill and Jeff and Dave and a host of others. I was one of the yearbook staff, and we were very cliquey. But honestly, I wasn’t close to any of my senior year cliques. My earlier ones were better. Junior year, it was Shawn, Darlene, and Michael. Freshman and Sophomore year, it was Kelly, Chris, Jesse. Throughout all of that, there were the Kings Dominion gang.. Robbie, Bobby, Valerie, Dan, Gunner, Todd… gosh. lots of people. And there was the whole Latin club thing. Wait, I think I’m getting nostalgic. Over high school. shoot me.

14. Did you have “The Max” like Zach, Kelly and Slater?
I was part of all these fringe-like cliques who were too good for our city. Most of my hangouts were in Richmond and Northern Virginia. Mostly, we hung out at each others’ houses.

15. Admit it, were you popular?
Not with the popular crowd. I was always an outsider, and at the time I was too self-conscious to really fit in anywhere.

16. Who did you want to be just like?
Sherry Kennedy, one of my english teachers. With a bit of Dave Vanian hair and flair.

17. What did you want to be when you grew up?
Snerk. A latin professor. But all my English teachers said I was going to be a writer.

18. Where did you think you’d be at the age you are now?
I had no friggin clue, like most of us.

Posted in About Me, Life, Memery, Memories by: Helen
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Not only is this Emzebel’s fault, the quiz even said so.

I can turn kittens into….

Your Silver-Age Superhero Career
LJ Username
Your alias first-name is:	AstroAtomicBitterBlackBlueCoffeeDangerDarkDeathDoomFunkyGreenHappyHarmlessHyperLemonLethargicLiberalLightningMedicatedMegaObsessiveParanoidPlasticQuantumRedShadowSilverSleepyStarSunshineSuperTacoTheUltraWonder
Your alias last-name is:	BadgerBoyBozoBubblesCatCaptainChefChiefCowDogDudeGalGirlGuyKidKnightLadLassManMuffinNeighborPersonPigSquirrelStormThunderWoman
You can turn….	angerchocolatecoffeeheatkinetic energykittensleaveslightmedicationmoneypizzasoundsugarwater
…into:	cheesecredit card receiptsdisappointed relativesexcusesgood vibesgrapeshairHTMLicelaserslightningLJ postsmilkmilk jugsMountain Dewoptic beamspainparking ticketspuppiesraisinssmokesnowsocial awkwardnessspare changesquirrelstoothpastewallpaperwine
You team up with…	emzebel
…to battle:	Dan Rather
You petition to join:	the Boston Celtics
Their response:	they agree, and when they all completely disrobe in celebration, you flee in terror
You are best remembered for:	being elected to three terms in the Senate
Your heroic level: – 70%
This cool quiz by sigma7 – Taken 31649 Times.

Other silly link deleted by the editryx

Posted in LOLZ!, Memery, Random by: Helen
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Twice in the past week I’ve been asked to dumb down something I’ve written because I’m writing over people’s heads.

Fine. I can do that. But I will, here, say, that sometimes it’s better to (a) give your reading public the benefit of the doubt and (b) expose readers to new and better words so that they are better able to communicate themselves. For one thing, it doesn’t require that many IQ points to look things up, especially now that all the dictionaries are on the web, and for another, it pays to enrich your word power.

Posted in Writing by: Helen
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Well, this is an interesting development. Because I had an acting promotion at Temple in 2003, and because this has been a checkered year for me employmentwise, I actually made a whopping $500 more this year than last year. And my expenses have almost tripled.

No wonder I still feel like I haven’t gotten anywhere.

Posted in Fail! by: Helen
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