Author: Heather Meadows

Just curious…

The dictionary isn’t helping much. Is this a British thing?

Because.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to indulge in Shinichi goodness.

Ahhh…that’s better. I’ve been wanting to do that all week!

(Sheesh, Ran…move your big head!)

I’ve got the Charlie Brown Christmas music going, in rotation with my fave Nutcracker tracks. My mood? Splendiferous. In just two days, I will be home with my family :)

I would love to learn how to play “Skating” on the piano (as well as the beloved “Linus and Lucy”). Lately I have really been wanting to get a piano again. I even went and checked out digitals at Turner Keyboards a few weeks back.

Hopefully someday I can save up some money for one :) First, of course, will be my new car. (I also want a grossly expensive digital SLR camera…and some lenses…)

But it’s a hopeful time of year :) Someday, I’m sure I’ll be able to do these things, and more. I just need to remember to do instead of worrying about doing.

The Lexington Herald-Leader is reporting on some construction I’ve run into every time I’ve visited my grandmother in the past couple of years.

Sure, there will be larger classrooms, state-of-the-art science labs, a refurbished gymnasium and an 8,600-square-foot auditorium to seat 500.

But when Bryan Station High School students arrive Jan. 3 to the new $43.9 million building on Eastin Road, many will have nowhere to park. And to make matters worse, they will contend with aggressive tow trucks if they park without permission in the surrounding neighborhood.

“It’s a huge debacle,” said Blaze Douglas, 17, a senior and student representative on the school’s decision-making council.

Okay, let me just stop there.

“It’s a huge debacle,” said Blaze Douglas

XD XD XD XD

Best. Name. Ever. For someone using the word “debacle”, anyway.

Jumbo Glazed Honey Buns from Cloverhill Bakery do, at any rate.

Dieting is hard. I drank a Slim-Fast this morning, but that leaves a gunky taste in my mouth, so I wanted something to chew on to get rid of it. The honey bun was the only thing that looked even remotely appealing in the vending machine…but now I’ve eaten half my daily allotted calories.

Great!

Ah well, I was planning on having a salad for lunch anyway :>

For like…two seconds. It’s a happy holidays promo we did at work, and it’s pretty cute :) I’d link to it directly, but 1) it won’t be online forever; and 2) I try not to directly link to my workplace, or even mention its name. (Have you noticed?)

There are obviously ways for people to find out where I work; that’s not the issue. The issue is, this is the internet, and phrases I type may come up in Google results. While I’m much smarter now than I was a few years ago about what I write here, you never know what will offend or annoy people.

So if you do figure out where to see the promo, don’t mention it in the comments, or I will have to delete the reference ;>

I was on my way to lunch today when Brooke called to tell me something awesome.

Here is a conversation she had with a guy at the place where she picked up her wedding invitations:

GUY: Can I tell you something? You might think I’m weird.

BROOKE: Okay.

[Actually she probably rambled on and on about how she’s weird too and everyone’s weird and it’s totally okay.]

GUY: I think I found your blog!

BROOKE (disbelievingly): Oh really.

GUY: Well, I read this blog called pixelscribbles…

At this point, my brain went “SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”, so I can’t testify to the accuracy of my recollections. But apparently this guy reads my blog because he likes my photos and he likes that I take pictures of local places, like North Augusta. He found Brooke’s blog through my blogroll.

So wow, someone local found and reads my blog! And lately all he’s seen is my whining :> I promise, Mystery Local Photo Guy, I will get out and take more photos soon!

I got up at 6 a.m. today.

I tend to wake up a couple of hours before I normally get up, and usually when that happens I’ll go to the bathroom and go back to sleep. This morning I was headed back towards the bed when I thought, I have things I want to do today. If I just get up now, I’ll have extra time to do them. Gazing fondly at the bed, I added, There’s nothing I’d rather do more than climb back in and go back to sleep. I love sleeping. But I’ll be happier if I do this.

I don’t know when I started thinking in complete sentences, but these days my thoughts are like a novel’s narration, or a diary.

In any case, I got up–leaving the bed shockingly unmade–and picked an outfit, then headed out to the living room where Sean was still up and on his computer.

Half asleep, I sniffed the air.

“I got hungry,” Sean chuckled. “That’s what you smell.”

Ah, I thought, ramen.

Setting my chosen outfit in the bathroom, I headed back out to the kitchen and for some reason started doing the dishes. I cleaned out the sink and emptied the dishwasher, and even washed down the stove and counters. Then I went to the bedroom and started a load of whites (and while I was there, made the bed).

Finally I hopped in the shower. By the time I was finished getting dressed and putting my makeup on, Sean had gone to sleep. (These days he sleeps on the couch because less light comes in through the patio doors than does through our bedroom window.) The laundry was still going, so I grabbed my shopping list and headed to Wal-Mart.

I got there around 7 and shopped until 8:15. Not only did I stock up on some supplies so I can cook at home for a change, but I also got some Christmas presents. This year’s funds are slim, but I would hate to go home for Christmas empty-handed, and I was able to find some good deals that I think people will like. There are still four people left to find gifts for–the hardest ones, of course. We’ll see how that turns out.

The total at the register turned out to be $50 less than I was expecting, somehow, which gave me a serious reason to smile.

The sun had come up when I wheeled the cart outside, but there was fog everywhere. I had to be careful as I pulled out of the lot and headed home, but it was beautiful. The sun looked like the moon through all that fog.

Now here I am, arrived home with plenty of time to unpack everything. I put the frozen food away first, then the rest of the supplies, and finally arranged all the Christmas gifts on the bed in the office/guest bedroom. I also laid out the new cards I bought and pulled out my supplies for signing cards from last year–the ink on the gold pen is probably dry by now, but we’ll see. I’m hideously late on cards this year, and I still need to go get stamps, but if I manage to mail them tomorrow, hopefully they won’t arrive too long after Christmas.

The other day I was feeling overwhelmed and I thought, Maybe I shouldn’t even try to make cookies this year. I have so much else to do. Committing myself to making cookies will just stress me out more.

That may be the case, but I’m not going to call it quits just yet. If it happens this week that I feel up to it, I’ll bake some cookies. It would just feel strange not to.

Plus, I’ve had tins for them sitting around the office for months!

From the Augusta Chronicle, though this is hardly the only institution that does this:

Police describe one of the two suspects as a black man, 30 to 40 years old, about 6 feet tall and weighing about 190 pounds. The man also reportedly was wearing a dark blue running suit with a white stripe down the side and had a close-shaved head and was wearing an earring.

The female suspect was described as 30 to 40 years old with short bleached blond hair and acne on her face. She is 5 feet, 8 inches tall and weighs about 130 pounds.

Yes, we can assume the woman is white, but it’s not fair that she’s not tagged as such when the man was clearly labeled. It implies that white is the baseline and all other “races” are modifications.

It’s also possible, from that description, that she is any race, since her hair is dyed. So the description fails unless you operate from the white-as-baseline paradigm.

Where I work, we avoid mentioning race entirely and rely on mugshots for physical descriptions beyond height, weight, and what the suspect was last seen wearing. I don’t know if that’s an optimal solution, but it’s certainly better than this.

I have been somewhat out of sorts lately (you may have noticed). One thing that has cheered me a bit is my new copy of The Nutcracker–Dorati’s Concertegebouw Orchestra recording. A lot of the tracks are relatively new to me–while I have of course seen the ballet (and would love to go again), there are a few tracks that get the most play, while the rest are known only to the hardcore fan.

When I reached three of those oft-played tracks tonight–the Arabian, Chinese, and Russian dances–I had to smile.

And now I’m to Waltz of the Flowers!

I feel guilt for practically everything in my life. What I do, what I don’t do, things that happen to me that I can’t control but somehow feel that I should have predicted and prepared for. My guilt is a large part of the reason I gave up on religion–I didn’t need another reason to feel guilty.

I could be so much more, I think. I could be helping people. I could be learning new things. I could be making more money. I could master piano, drawing, writing.

I should have prepared for the fire, I think. I should have put important things in a safe place. I shouldn’t have borrowed things from friends, and I shouldn’t have been so selfish as to take heirloom furniture with me to Georgia.

I’m lazy and disorganized, I think, and I hate myself for it. Everyone else is doing so much more than me. I can’t accomplish anything. But I should be. With my talents, I should be doing something. So why aren’t I?

You couldn’t afford a child even if you could have one.

CBS News is reporting (though I can’t find a link yet) about a survey that found that 95% of Iraqi respondents believe security in their country is worse now than it was under Saddam Hussein.

Gee. You think?

Obviously the country was far more stable under Saddam’s tyrannical rule. I don’t see how this is even a question worth asking.

What we need to know is how they feel about their lives now.

I think Iraqis probably fear for their lives just as much now as they did under Saddam. Then, the fear of pissing off a known enemy kept them in line. Now, the fear of the unknown, of random, meaningless violence, keeps the people not so much in line, but instead prisoners of terror.

A better, more direct question would be, “Was it worth it?” Because it’s the mood of the general populace that will determine the final outcome in Iraq.

But I do. I hate it.

I hate that when I’m looking at a “set”, I can’t tell where I am–how close I am to the end.

I hate that the organization is so loose that I can’t tell how anything’s related to anything else.

I hate that there are seemingly five billion ways to view someone’s photos, and I can’t figure out why or how I got into the one I’m in, or how to get back out.

Why can’t it just have galleries with thumbnails?

I don’t know what my problem is, why I don’t grok Flickr, but I don’t, and I don’t want to. I just want to be able to look at photos without trying to figure out how to use the UI, without getting lost.

Everyone just needs to switch to SmugMug.