closertofine

With a devilish look in his eye.

I just happened to spot on my Livejournal profile -- my last entry was my 1,000th entry. :)

LJ, you have been very good to me. I didn't think much of blogging when I started ("it'll never catch on") and didn't understand LJ is more about community than it is about blogging, really -- but I'm awfully glad I gave it a shot, since I've got you nice folks in my life, some new, some still around, in many ways because of it. xoxo

Review of: The Secret Life of Bees
By: Sue Monk Kidd
302 pages, Penguin, 2002.
Summary: Lily Owens' life has been shaped around the memory of the afternoon her mother was killed.

When you read The Secret Life of Bees, just make sure you’ve got a jar of honey somewhere in the house. ( review continues here )

Today I bought child-proofing equipment for the house, and also got a tetanus shot. All courtesy of my feline children.

George, as you know, likes to knock over furniture, turn on stove and otherwise cause mayhem in my house. While I've accommodated a lot of his wilder habits, the stove one is non-negotiable, in that it needs to stop. Since I can't trust Georgie to exercise self-control (ha), I bought these:



Nifty things, actually. There's no way he can turn on any burners anymore. But as a consolation prize, these things sit loosely (but securely) on top of your stove knobs, so if he's really determined he can spin them around with his paw, I guess. You might think, well, that sounds pretty stupid, why would he want to do that? I don't know, but this is the same cat who spent a good hour this morning trying to pounce on the dishwasher, because it was making noise.

And my poor Freddy is responsible for the shot, though just as a precaution. On Monday I was holding him when there was a super-loud noise. I don't know what it was; the neighbors heard it too. Not thunder, didn't sound like a car backfiring. It honestly sounded like a mini-explosion. I guess we'll never know, but the point it, my Freddy is a scaredy-cat, always, and this one frightened the bejesus out of him. He freaked and launched himself out of my arms -- and in the process put some pretty painful gouges into my chest. He didn't mean to, poor guy. I yelled in pain, not at him, but he spent the next couple hours looking horribly apologetic and needing many kisses and much reassurance. Anyhow, I'm been Neosporin-ing the heck out of the scratches since then, but I had a doctor's appointment (for an entirely different thing) this morning, and the doc and I decided on a tetanus booster, just in case. Cat scratches, from an indoor kitty and then carefully cleaned as mine were, weren't likely to put me at risk, but as I haven't had a booster since about, oh, 1987, now seemed like a good time.

These boys certainly do keep me on my toes.

Review of: Take Your Shirt Off and Cry
By: Nancy Balbirer
231 pages, Bloomsbury, 2009.
Summary: Non-fiction. "A memoir of near-fame experiences", the author describes her career, and lack of success, as an actor.

Nancy's Balbirer's story of self-discovery through a series of near-miss-big breaks is surprisingly unpretentious, despite the famous people who litter its pages: some named, such as David Mamet, and others going by pseudonyms, such as "Jane", the loosely-hidden Jennifer Aniston. Balbirer herself is not fazed by her brushes with celebrity, but importantly, she does not expect us to be, either.

While definitely unflinching, I'm not sure I would describe "Take Your Shirt Off and Cry" with the label so many others are eager to give it -- "honest". ( review here )

So two weeks ago I got the blue screen of death, went to restart, and was informed by my computer that it was missing some important files and could not restart. Further investigation told me that it was basically missing all the important files. The ones that make it, you know, a computer, as opposed to a box with wires. Would I like to reinstall those files and wipe out all the data on my computer in the process? "No? Why not? Well that's no problem," my computer replied. "I'll just be sitting over here being a box with wires. No skin off my motherboard either way."

Yeah, so, hard drive crash. And I should have known it was coming. Random blue screens, weird glitches. Remember I couldn't get Norton to work? One weekend it decided to erase the driver for my iPhone, for no apparent reason. In other words, data loss, and the hard drive was starting to go, but I kept patching things up & moving on. And now it's really gone so -- new computer. (I could've reformatted the old one & started over, obviously, but it was well past its expiration date.) Very shiny. All kinds of fast, lots of room. I don't hate Vista the way I thought I would (yeah, I know, I'm missing Windows 7 by a few months). And as for recovering my files, I managed to get them all back. It should have been easier than it was; I have an external hard drive for exactly this reason, but it turned out that Vista wouldn't read said hard drive, the way it was formatted. ("Would you like to reformat and wipe out all the files on this drive in the process?") But I extracted them at work, got them home the slow way (couple of trips with a key drive), did some other shenanigans, and in the end worked it all out.

My old computer was five years old, which was like 98 for a human. I'd upgraded parts over the years -- RAM, new DVD drive, and so on. But everything wears out eventually, I guess. So, it was time for a new machine. I hadn't exactly planned to spend that kind of $$ right now, but, it's the cost of doing business, I guess, is how I look at it. I'd sooner go without a television or a phone than a computer, so, it had to be replaced.

So, the exhibit opened. Well, two weeks ago, it opened. And I really meant to write about it then. But honestly, there just hasn't been enough time to focus. After all those months of planning, and getting ready, and getting the photographs printed and mounted and onto screens, it turned out that the last month was even *more* intense than that. We got it done, just under the wire, and since then I've been going back and taking care of all the things that got "pushed aside" while we were doing the exhibit. That, and, in a fit of that thing where you fixate on something nonessential because the essential things are just impossible to think about right now, I rearranged the office mail room.

Our exhibit is titled "From Forest to Front Lawn: the story of Amherst, an American suburb" and is our permanent exhibit, there for the next 10-20 years. Below the cut, here's a brief summary of what the exhibit is about:

( From Forest to Front Lawn )

Some images of my favorite parts of the exhibit:



- Title panel. Ignore the messy office you can see on the right.
- Civil War dudes. One of them (I honestly can't remember which right now, I think the one sitting) was from Amherst. Died in camp, I believe.
- Timothy A. Hopkins. His father (Timothy S. Hopkins) was our Town's first Supervisor; Timothy A. was the sixth. I like A.'s picture better. Doesn't he look like a statesmen-like guy?
- Replica of the Amherst Centre House Tavern
- 1950s Nash Metropolitan
- One of two digital frames (something like 32 inches. they cost a fortune); the other one holds historic photos, in a place where we didn't have enough wall space for all the images we wanted to use. In this case, it depicts current photographs from around the Town of Amherst, and we can update it as time goes by, keeping the exhibit current.
- Section on area colleges
- Wall-sized photo of Great Baehre Swamp (that I took this spring) in the Town of Amherst. Beneath the lift-up panels, we talk about the land Amherst was built on (all swamp), land use and conservation.
- More of that section, current photos. Sorry about the light flare; I took these with my iPhone.
- Jimmy's Diner was in the town for 50 years & closed last year. We got the sign & rebuilt this counter; the awning matches how the real one was. On the counter are "table mats" with word searches and puzzles about Town history, for young visitors to fill out. This section is missing a couple of labels and a photo of the original diner (those are coming next week).

So, it's done. :) There's a lot left to do, even so; for me, the biggest part is that I have to now catalog all the photos I took for this exhibit, probably about 200 or so. It actually shouldn't take that long. And soon enough we need to work on the two to-be-added sections (one on Native Americans in this area, and the other on the Police/Firefighters of Amherst). But there's always something. At least this is done, and it's a big relief.

Review of: A Walk in the Woods
By: Bill Bryson
276 pages, Broadway Books, 1999.
Summary: Non-fiction. After living in England for 20 years, Bill Bryson decided to reacquaint himself with his native country by walking the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Georgia to Maine.

Reading A Walk in the Woods was an unusual experience. I loved it, I hated it, and then I liked it. That was the progression of the book for me, and I can’t help but wonder if, on some level, that parallels Bryson’s own feelings about the Appalachian Trail.

( review continues here )

Well, I am free from county jury duty for another eight years, after a day of sitting in the jury assembly room for 7 hours and then being sent home, without ever seeing a lawyer or judge -- which is exactly what happened the last time I was called, exactly eight years ago. They sure like to haul me down there, but then never want to so much as talk to me. :) Also, I know plenty of people who NEVER get called for jury duty. And yet me, the very first day I'm eligible again, I get called. (It really was eight years to the very day. I checked.) And while I know they can, wouldn't it a little more fair if, when my eight years are up, *before* they call me, they hit a few of those people who've NEVER gone, first? :)

Chances are, I'm most likely not ever going to get selected for a jury anyhow. I'm a government employee, I'm in a union, I have a relative who works for the biggest "personal injury" firm around these parts, relatives that work in insurance and claims adjusting, relatives who work in health care. So geesh, why keep calling me in, then? LOL.

Basically I spent the day reading a book, meeting an old friend for lunch, and watching the pilot episode of Glee on my iPhone. Cute show. I'll definitely watch for it when it comes back in the fall. Obviously not the worst day ever. On the other hand, I had to pay $$ to park, buy lunch (I always bring a lunch to work) and my commute was three times as long as it normally is -- so I'm glad it's over with, at least for another eight years.

I spent my entire morning, right up until when I had to leave for work, with Symantec trying to get my Norton Antivirus to work. I used their tech chat and let them remotely control my desktop. We had to uninstall it and then reinstall it. Except the reinstall won't work. They tried for FOUR HOURS, though honestly it seemed to me like they just kept trying the same thing over and over again. Eventually, even the tech gave up and escalated my problem, whatever the hell that means. Someone will call me back, Monday. Supposedly. Until then, they're leaving me with no virus protection from them, whereas when the support call started I at least still had protection. I was Less Than Pleased.

I installed AVG Free, which I'd heard about in the past. cschick, I think you recommended it once. And honestly, now I'm thinking, what the hell. That seems to work pretty well. Installed in minutes. And it's free.

Thoughts? Advice? Right now, my inclination is just to tell Norton where to go frak themselves and use AVG. Does anyone else use it? Happy, not happy?

Hiraeth is a Welsh word that *has* no equivalent or direct English translation; an approximation would be the longing, or yearning for home, and that not being entirely literal. A Welsh minister (Martyn Lloyd Jones) once said, "It is difficult to define hiraeth, but to me it means the consciousness of man being out of his home area and that which is dear to him. That is why it can be felt even among a host of peoples amidst nature's beauty; like a Christian yearning for heaven."

Review of: Apples and Oranges: my brother and me, lost and found
By: Marie Brenner
265 pages, Picador, 2009.
Summary: How can two people from the same family turn out so entirely different? Brenner's brother lives in the apple country of Washington, cultivating his orchards, polishing his guns, and going to church, while Marie, a journalist and author, leads a sophisticated life among the "New York libs" he loathes. The author describes here her journey to mend the anger between them.

( Review here )

see moar lolcats

Review of: The Cellist of Sarajevo
By: Steven Galloway
235 pages, Riverhead Books, 2008.
Summary: In a city ravaged by war, a defiant young musician decides to play his cello at the site of a mortar attack for twenty-two days, in memory of his fallen friends and neighbors.

( A short review )

Why lick yourself when your brother can do it for you?

Holy CRAP, Grey's.

(I don't even have a fitting icon for this one.)

Fred and George knocked over the dresser this past weekend. Yes, a dresser. The tall five-drawer kind. No, it wasn't empty. Lots of clothes and jewelry and all sorts of things.

Some of you may have heard my cries of dismay over this already, but honestly, I'm mostly just astounded. What are these, superpowered cats? Krypton cats? How do they pull this stuff off? I have a theory about how they may have done it -- I think someone may have figured out how to open the top drawer, climbed inside and then perhaps started Kittywrestlemania there, tipping the whole thing over. It's possible. All I know is that I heard a loud crash, went to investigate, and found Fred fleeing the scene and George sniffing interestedly amongst the rubble. To be perfectly frank, I probably stood there at least a minute, trying to process what I was looking at -- drawers tipped out and over, clothes everywhere, knick-knacks, and the entire contents of my jewelry box, which had been on top of said dresser. Then I noticed George wandering through the debris and put him out of the room, shut the door, and stared at it some more.

It actually wasn't as bad to clean up as I thought. The dresser was still intact; I just needed to put it upright, slide the drawers back in, and refold my clothes. The jewelry was worse. I have something like 50 pairs of earrings, and of course they weren't neatly paired in their little compartments anymore. That took an hour or so of sorting -- but I found them all! Whoo hoo! Knick-knacks were put away and all was well, I guess. The only thing that broke? Ironically -- and I am not making this up -- a candle I bought while I was in college, back in 1991 or so, a black candle in the shape of a Siamese cat. Perhaps their objective the whole time?

I can't seem to bring myself to be really mad at them, though I should be. They're getting big (tried to weigh them last night but neither cat would sit still on my digital scale, and the weigh myself and then weigh myself with them method wasn't working, for squirminess, I think) and they're inquisitive; it's not so much that they need to break things as it is that they need to check things out, and that they don't know their own strength. And that dear sweet George, especially, isn't the brightest meowy guy on the block. Seriously. If Fred and George had thumbs, they'd be like Zod and Non from Superman II. But, you know, nicer and more purr-y.

moar funny pictures

Fred, in a rare moment of calm. He's been kind of freaskishly nuts with energy lately.