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This is partially a test post to see if certain issues are resolved. Apparently, something got into one of my wp files making me appear to Google as a sales person of some male enhancement product, as well as posting my articles “as” Google instead of myself. Now that I’ve uncovered the hack, I’m busily hammering things back into place.
It’s been the worst weekend ever. My teenage self would probably say different, but here’s how the weekend has gone. With something like 28″ of snow falling between Friday and Saturday, it’s been hard to get anything accomplished. But on top of that I spent the weekend with a nasty cold that evolved into a case of pink-eye. Twitter friends turned me on to a remedy for that, which turned out to be something my own body happens to be making: breast milk eye washes. I know, it sounds crazy! But it worked!
So now the cold is better and the pink-eye has abated, but the heating oil truck that was supposed to come yesterday never came. I called and was told “I’m in the queue” but that some of their drivers were not able to make it into work, so they are running really behind. The tank, which was at a quarter full last week, is now sitting on empty, and I turned it off to avoid needing to have it primed. We thought we’d be able to get some kerosene to put into the tank to hold us overnight, but every single store is sold out of containers for transporting said kerosene. So the furnace stayed shut off overnight.
Jesse is now wearing two sets of pajamas and napping fitfully under two fuzzy blankets. Kieran is holed up with a space heater. I’ve busted out my own layers and am running the oven on the cleaning cycle. Dean has gone into Northern Va to swap out some work files, and hopefully will find some kerosene in case the truck can’t make it again today—which is entirely possible, given that it’s already snowed a bit here…
But we’re ok, if a bit cold. Jesse doesn’t seem to have been affected by my being sick, and everyone else is doing just peachy. I realized why this cold hit me harder than they usually do: I’m accustomed to being able to sleep all day when I take sick—and Jesse no longer sleeps all day, so that’s a lost cause.
But with no Momma’s helpers around—sitter and FIL are even more snowbound than I am, and Kieran’s only useful as a babywatcher when said baby is asleep—I’m staying busy.
And the day goes on — I wrote the above much earlier today. At 6:30, I saw a truck go by from my oil company, and wilted as it pressed on down the street–knowing it couldn’t have stopped even if it wanted to because there was so much traffic stacked behind it and there was no clearance for it to pull over because of the snow piled up there, as tall as 5 feet in places because of digs and plowage. But I compartmentalized the house so that the heaters are strategically placed and everyone has a warm place to sleep and the pipes won’t freeze (I hope). And lo, there is more snow falling here, work is closed again tomorrow, and I remain behind on work AND school because of all of this. Missed my entire week, assignment wise, of an online course–and doubtless will be graded down for it. But if I can rock the course for the rest of the term, I might be able to pull it out. We’ll see. And the web site at work is languishing. Hopefully tomorrow, with Dean home, I can catch that up.
And after all, if it has been the worst (extended) weekend ever, things can only get better, right?
RIGHT?
Oil watch now on day 6. Snowbound day 5. Help!
My husband is the master of misplacing things. I have my moments, but he’s an expert, and rather than embracing it he usually flies into a rage when Important Thing X goes missing. Now, some years ago, he did some freelance work that we had to have the check recut for because it went missing. In fact, it was so missing that I thought he had never received it.
He found it the other day:
Me: Where did you find it?
D: It was in that file that seems to eat paper and regurgitate it randomly into the future.
This is the kind of statement that sends me sprawling on the floor laughing, and D has the same kind of knack for it that my best friend Jenn does.
This morning, I was suffering in silence on the way in to work, biting my tongue to keep from being a backseat driver and annoying passenger. I mentioned it on twitter.
Among my complaints:
The CD that was playing was a bizarre fusion of funk, blues, and the occasional far-eastern riff. I didn’t dig it at all, but I wasn’t about to opine on it when I was half asleep anyway.
My husband has a tendency to mosey down the road. I’m a bit more type-A, although not a speeder. Still, when every single other driver on the road passes us, I get antsy.
This is even more true when we’re cruising at this speed in the left lane with traffic munching up behind us. I’m generally at least polite enough to get out of the way and, you know, keep right, like you’re supposed to.
So when I check back in on Twitter, there were a few people who pointed me to resources on why driving more slowly is a good thing when it comes to gas economy. Here’s the thing.
I already know that.
Do you want to know what I’m doing to conserve gas on the whole?
I’m incredibly efficient in heavy traffic, maintaining a ludicrous following distance so that I can maintain a steady speed in stop-and-go traffic. You’ve probably seen tractor-trailers doing this, but what’s really awesome is when you get several cars in a row doing it.
I telecommute two days a week.
I bought a car at the top of the price I could afford. It’s not a hybrid, but after 18 months of documenting my mileage I can tell you that my Toyota Matrix is optimized to cruise at about 68 mph, where it gets about 37 miles per gallon. I maintain it regularly, too.
The whole reason I was stuck with bad music this morning was because we were carpooling.
Oh, and D. cycles into work all summer, barely putting any miles on his car at all, by staying at his dad’s old house. In fact, he stays at that house during the work week year round, so that he doesn’t run up his miles commuting from the house we actually own. I could save gas by staying there as well, but there are limits to what I will put up with in the interest of fuel economy, and there are compelling reasons to not move into Dad’s old house.
But anyway. That’s a sampling. What it comes down to is that I appreciate the need to save gas, but we’re among the more conscientious of consumers in that regard anyway. The least I can do is put up with longer trips with bad music, but it won’t stop me from tweeting that I’m annoyed. More than anything, there’s humor to be had in these situations. It’s just that somehow, the humor seems to get lost in a need to say “Well, Helen, of course you’re wrong….”
Well of course!!!!! We all are!!!!!
I think it’s a quiet victory for me that I weigh 18 pounds less than I did at the beginning of 2008.
It’s the first year I’ve lost weight that didn’t involve a breakup.
I cooked it myself, so on top of all the tasting and what not — there was just no way I was going to stick with weight watchers today. But I didn’t care.
I started last night making the dip for the crudites–mostly pita and tortilla chips, to be honest– with a chevre based dip chock full of roasted vegetables (garlic, eggplant and red pepper, to be exact). It came out middling–I don’t think I got the same kind of chevre as I did last time, and its flavor was decidedly more goat. Taste improved the longer it sat out, for some reason, but at any rate, I was too busy to partake and no one else seemed interested (more like it was invisible than the chevre chasing them off).
Got up about 8:30 this morning and set about the rest of the feast, which included:
Apricot-Dijon Glazed Turkey Breast with Roasted Sweet Potatoes
Sweet and Savory Stuffing with Cranberries (using cinnamon raisin bread)
Yeast Cloverleaf Rolls
Rosemary Mashed Potatoes with gravy deglazed from the turkey
Garden Salad w/homemade Balsamic Vinaigrette
Peas
Four-cheese Rotini Bake
Ham-boiled Peppergrass
Apple Pie
It went over smashingly well, with my husband actually saying it was among the top holiday meals he’d ever had. It’s also the first time I’ve cooked on a grand scale for company in years, and my skills are much improved–both cooking-wise and in my ability to stage things well. Had almost everything ready by 1:30 only to get phone calls announcing we’re running late, so kept everything warm in the oven while the rolls got some bonus proofing time. Some of them wound up looking like mushroom clouds, they got so big.
Probably to no one’s surprise, our christmas gift haul was mostly food-related, either on the up side (an ice cream maker, a griddle) or the down side (an Eating Well cookbook, a new Weight Watchers scale). My son got a wireless hookup for his xbox, so I’ll be lucky to ever see my TV again…
Today at church, it actually was someone who goes to the 8 a.m. service that came up to me and introduced herself. She asked if I was single, and I mentioned I was newly married, the second time around, and that we have two kids, mine being 16 and his being 10. She looked aghast. “I thought you were in your 20s.”
The tooth-whitening, weight-loss and new moisturizing regime are doing wonders, methinks.
(For more on the “You Go to the Other Service” phenomenon, click here.)
I’m on vacation in Philadelphia right now, which will segue into a conference for work tomorrow evening. But let me sing the praises of my favorite convenience store chain, especially here in Philadelphia where you have Wawas that don’t look like Sheetzes.
The thing that sets Wawa apart, for me, isn’t the awesome hoagies or the cash registers that sound like video games or the free ATMs or the coffeetopia thing they have always had going on even before they called it that. It’s the creative way they approach snack food. Among the offerings in their prepack cooler? Hummus and pita rounds. Watermelon and canteloupe. Apples and peanut butter. Carrots and celery dippers. Perfect single servings of potato or macaroni salad. And their build menu, including their hoagies, really are awesome. If I’m in a Wawa-enabled region, I won’t stop anywhere else (with the notable exception of Gainesville, VA, which is significantly out of the way despite being only a few miles south of the Gainesville exit, mostly because traffic on that corridor is so congested).
For travelers on the I-95 corridor, it’s important to know that the cheapest gas you’ll find on that leg of the trip can be had in the Bel Air region north of Baltimore. Use exit 77 to Md. Rt. 24 north, and take the first right, follow that around to the Wawa on the right. (You can drive a little further on 24 and get to an even cheaper Wawa near Rt. 1, and in fact follow Rt. 1 all the way up to Pennsylvania, save yourself tolls and traffic, and enjoy much nicer views, but that’s another post. Also, the next cheap gas stop is in Bowling Green, VA. It’s all about strategy. Yet another post.)
So how do I get a Wawa in Front Royal?
Periodically I run across the most amusing descriptions of Episcopalians while combing the ‘net for links on the Cafe. Today, this gem from horror ‘zine Fangoria. Kevin Sorbo apparently plays an Episcopal priest in a new horror flick called “Something Beneath.” And it’s a good thing the hunky former Hercules star is an Episcopal priest, they write, because… well:
In SOMETHING BENEATH (making its DVDebut September 9 from Genius Products, following airings on the Sci Fi Channel), Sorbo swaps Dylan Hunt’s space outfits for a collar in the role of Father Douglas Middleton, an ecologically aware Episcopalian priest (note to budding screenwriters: Episcopalian priests are handy because they’re allowed to have love interests). Attending an eco conference in a brand new hotel, Father Middleton finds himself caught up in a series of bizarre and horrific deaths. The building, it seems, has disturbed a sentient ooze which creates terrifying, fatal hallucinations in the minds of its staff and guests.