Ravings of a Textual Deviant

Note to friends & family—My hotmail server was down for several hours today, so if you sent me anything between 9:00 AM and 4:00 PM, I may not have gotten it.  Please resend—thanks!

File taxes - Done

Sign divorce papers - Done

Update:  A manicure and pedicure won’t solve my problems, but being fussed over a bit feels as good as therapy.

We had some impressive weather earlier this evening—hail the size of jawbreakers coming down as if it were going out of style, and plenty of rain to go along with it. I had been running the vaccuum, and turned it off to realize that the wailing I heard was tornado sirens. I made a mad dash through the house, looking for the cat (who, quite sensibly, was hiding in a closet somewhere much safer than I was). I huddled in an interior room with no windows, and listened to the pounding that was very nearly loud enough to drown out my thoughts, hoping that the windows and skylights would hold up. I’ve lived in the Midwest long enough to be used to severe thunderstorms, but this beyond even what I’m used to. No damage to the house, although my poor tulips took quite a beating, and Mom and Dad (three blocks away) are fine, too.

Ed, on the other hand, took it in stride. “Once you’ve seen 190 mph winds, you can say, ‘eh, it’s just weather.’”

TW: Li mentioned this delight at our meeting yesterday. I brought some in along with bread (best toasted) so you could try it. Please come by.

Me: Please don’t wait for me; as it’s Passover, I can’t eat the bread, and I only eat Nutella directly from the jar late at night when I’m standing in front of the fridge. Thanks, though.

TW: I’ll see if I can find you a straw…

Boss (walking into bullpen where several of us are laughing; very stern): Sounds like you’re having fun here. What’s up with that?

Me: Reindeer porn.

It’s no secret that Scout, my feline niece, is a lot cuter than she is smart. This was reaffirmed a few weeks ago, when she set her tail on fire, and didn’t notice. Apparently, she was quite put out by my brother’s efforts to put her out, too. “What are you doing to my tail, housemonkey…and what’s that awful smell?”

Now, my foster cat’s daddy laughed at this story, and then told me that he thinks Minx doesn’t even know he’s got a tail. I disagree; I think that Minx knows he has a tail, but doesn’t care, as he’ll let it fall any old where…such as Ed’s morning coffee. What’s really bad, though, is what happened Saturday morning. Ed was drinking his coffee and minding his business (almost as if he were back at the Waffle House in Bloomington), when the cat came up to him, meowing for attention and climbing the couch. The cat climbed around for a bit and got the petting he was looking for, and then jumped down to go about his kitty business. As he sauntered off, Ed noticed that the cat’s rear end was wet…and the only nearby source of liquid was (you guessed it) Ed’s cup of morning coffee.

I’m nearly over my icky virus, and while it wasn’t as bad as my pal’s Bataan Death Flu, it knocked me completely flat for 48 hours earlier this week. I’m not back up to full speed, yet. However, I can eat, digest, and sleep comfortably, which makes a huge difference. And I can get more than 5 feet from a box of tissues without regretting it. With any luck, I’ll be all better by next weekend at the latest.

My yoga teacher training school has sent me the good news that the new 200-hour training program that’ll start in 2007 has been approved by Yoga Alliance. I’ll be done with my program in Novemebr of this year, but I’m hoping this means that they’ll have a 500-hour program developed soon, too. And even if they don’t, there are some new classes I’ll want to take next year. I’ll need the Continuing Education Units anyway, in order to maintain my RYT. There’s going to be a Level 5, which is only at the conferences (looks like I’ll be heading to Hood River again next August), as well as a Yoga Anatomy seminar, which I’m hoping to talk NIFS into hosting, along with a YogaFit Plus (for plus-size people—a demographic for which I have a lot of empathy). I’m not going to do something crazy, like go for a 500-hour RYT in one year, but I’m absolutely thrilled that I’ve got options for CEUs, and that YogaFit is adding new courses.

I’ve been looking for a decent skirted suit and some office-appropriate skirts for some time now, and the Fashion Idiocy Industry has not been obliging. Bastards.

Fortunately, I’m not easily deterred, and finally managed to find not one, but TWO suits and THREE skirts that fit, are attractive, comfortable, go with other things I already own AND each other, and are reasonably priced. I ended up having to go to the outlet mall in Edinburgh, Indiana to do it, but it was worth the trip to find a source. There’s an entire store that is just women’s businesswear, and a good half of their selection is petite sizes. That’s a very nice change from the stores in Indy that don’t even carry petite sizes…or don’t carry very small petite sizes, like 4 and under, which I need now.

So, I am now the ecstatic owner of an all-season, all-purpose, classic black skirt suit with green dotted pinstripes and a fall/winter suit that was too cute to resist at only $50—a brown velvet jacket and brown tweed skirt—three summerweight skirts; one black, two prints, and a green, summerweight cableknit sweater. I can now go into work, or more importantly, to my company’s home office, and look all respectable and business-like. (It throws people off.)

It’s not world peace. It’s not therapy. But it’s a load off my mind, a new resource, and the end to a lot of fruitless shopping. And it’s about time, too. Now I can focus on other things, like getting ready for Passover and doing my taxes.

Mil Millington’s third novel, Love and Other Near-Death Experiences, is the story of a radio presenter—that’s the same as an “announcer,” for my fellow Americans—having what my friend Sandy once called a third-of-a-life crisis (thirty-one being too young for a midlife crisis).

Personally, I’m a fan of Millington’s work for two reasons; he’ll put absolutely anything in writing, and he’ll describe whatever it is in such a way as to guarantee that Rule #1—Don’t Visualize—will be broken in a thoroughly egregious manner. Not a single character in Love and Other Near-Death Experiences seems to have a working internal censor. Not only do I know people like that…I am people like that.

Like its most recent predecessor, A Certain Chemistry, there’s a lot to think about between the lines. Unlike its predecessor, though, the type of thinking it prompts is the that which tends to be done by drunken undergraduate philosophy students in the wee small hours of the morning. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I wasn’t terribly surprised by how the two main plot lines were resolved, but I did enjoy getting there.

Give it a try—the book, not the type of thinking that tends to be done by drunken undergraduate philosophy students in the wee small hours of the morning…unless, of course, you are one and it is.