Ravings of a Textual Deviant

I was working on a document and I told the word processing program to find “government” and replace it with “work”.

After all the necessary back-and-forth involved in making lunch plans with someone I haven’t seen in far too long…

Me: I will be there. But not with bells on.

Her: How about some tinsel?

Me: Only if it goes with my shoes.

Her: I have faith in your ability to accessorize.

But sick as the proverbial dog. Head cold with lots of ambition has colonized entire respiratory system. Lots of ick and fatigue has ensued. Will write more when coughing less.

ETA: Spouse also has the ick. And all the handkerchiefs except one are in the wash for the second time this week.

It seems that the Wii favors intuitive thinkers, of which I am one. Spouse, not quite so much. As a result, I have outscored him in Wii tennis, Wii golf, and Wii bowling. He’s ahead in Wii baseball by a single game score of 1-0; both of us are better at pitching than hitting. We have not tried the boxing; there are certain things that married couples ought not to do together, and this is on my list.

I expect that as soon as Spouse figures out the mechanics, I will very shortly be losing to his outstanding reflexes and analytical skills. Fortunately, I am not terribly attached to results beyond the fact that we’re moving more (Wii tennis is a great warm-up) and interacting more (we figured out how to play as a doubles team against the machine).

I am a triple threat. I cannot sing or play any musical instruments, I cannot dance, I cannot act. And every single one of you out there should thank your lucky stars that I am too old to be the next Hannah Montana. (I certainly do.)

My Spouse and In-Laws, on the other hand, are fairly dripping with musical talent.

To give you an idea, this is the first thing you see when you walk through Spouse’s Parents’ front door.

Great Wall of Instruments

When they were up at our house for Thanksgiving, Spouse’s parents brought their instruments, and we had quite a good time with the playing and (in my case) the listening. Sheet music was exchanged, and when we had our after-Christmas get-together in Louisville, they reconvened and added in Spouse’s Aunt, Brother, and Sister-in-law. Even without having practiced together (or in some cases, at all), they were sounding darned fine, if I may say so, particularly on “Silent Night” and “Scarborough Fair.”

If I didn’t know that at least one of the parties involved would probably have my head for posting their picture on the internet, I’d upload the videos. But I wish to live a long and happy life, so you’ll have to make do without.

Mother-in-law played both the mountain dulcimer, and a teensy bit of autoharp (just long enough for me to get a couple of pictures).

Mountain Dulcimer

Autoharp

Father-in-law can play anything he picks up, but last night alternated between hammered dulcimer and what I think is a tin whistle, but I’m so musically ignorant that I’m lucky to have identified the other instruments correctly.

Hammered Dulcimer

Whistle?

Spouse’s Aunt brought her bowed psaltery, an instrument that I had not only never seen before but had never even heard of until Thanksgiving, when she mentioned that she’d forgotten hers.

Bowed Psaltery

Spouse brought his harp, and Brother-in-law took a break from his three-day stretch of making Julia Child’s cassoulet—

The Art of French Cooking, as Mastered by Brother-in-Law

(for Christmas, he and I both got copies of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1 from Mother-in-law) and borrowed a guitar.

Harp & Guitar

I’m particularly fond of this picture, because autofocus is a bitch.

Brother-in-law’s wife sang, because she mostly plays woodwinds, her instruments are all on the West Coast, and nobody had any loaners. The pair of them did a great duet on “Folsom Prison Blues”. (Sometimes, you have to go with the songs to which you know the words.)

And the cassoulet rocked, even though I skipped the many and various kinds of red meat and only ate the beans. Definitely worth three days of work…especially when someone else is doing the work.

We also played Wii bowling, of which I have no pictures because discretion is by far the better part of valor. Normally, I don’t like video games, and I’ve never bowled in real life (rental shoes—need I say more?), but it was fun and the company was very, very good.

It’s been brought to my attention that I haven’t posted for a while. So here it is.

Recovery from surgery went fine. I was more tired, and tired more easily, than usual, but other than having the mother of all migraines the following Wednesday, it went as expected with no problems. Also, all the labs came back fine, which is good to know. The bill has not arrived yet, although an unrelated letter from the IRS has. And I will need to deal with that soon. But not today.

Work was very busy through the 24th. At my client site, people start trying to use up vacation right after Thanksgiving and it’s not uncommon for people who have been there for a while (like, say, the ones who review and sign our documents) to be gone for most of December. I have said before, and will probably continue to say that, after Thanksgiving, it’s like an Agatha Christie novel—fewer people each day. Plus, a lot of projects were careening towards an end-of-year finish, so instead of coasting, we were all hands on deck this year.

Then, two weeks before Christmas, Spouse had seven hearings in three days, which threw off our schedule for most of that week. Necessity, and all that. He followed it up with a bout with a nasty, nasty digestive bug the Sunday before Christmas, and didn’t make it into work at all last week. Not that he wasn’t motivated, but I tend to think that if you can’t keep down solid food, you probably shouldn’t be sharing your germs with the court staff. And I took advantage of his weakened condition to enforce that, because I’m mean, nasty, rotten, and not very nice.

I have avoided getting sick. In fact, I have insisted upon it. Tired, however, is another matter entirely. I could sleep like a cat for a month, I think, and probably get to the point where I had begun to feel a bit rested.

After a delightfully quiet Christmas day highlighted by Chinese food with friends, we spent the next couple of days driving up and down I-65 to visit Spouse’s sister’s place, where the extended family had gathered for December holidays and Youngest Niece’s birthday. Spouse’s Sister is quite the candy-maker, and she sent us home with a far-too-large-for-two-people platter with eight or nine kinds of cookies and candy.  No reindeer logs, but I’ll have to send her the recipe.

Today, I took Youngest Niece, who just turned 18, for lunch, shopping, a manicure, and homemade hot chocolate (Spouse is turning out to be quite the barista, since we splurged on the espresso machine).

Coming up, we’ll be putting in more time on I-65, only going south rather than north, later this week. Also possible catching up with my Illinois relative. In between, I plan to do a little lot of laundry, some light housekeeping, enjoy my present from Spouse (all things AbFab on DVD!!) and not a hell of a lot else. Including blogging, so don’t worry if I’m quiet for a little while yet.

In the mean time, head over to your local library and get a copy of the book I just finished, Nancy Kress’s Steal Across the Sky, which is nifty novel about the ultimate double-blind experiment. (It’s given me an idea for a screenplay that I just might be able to finish. As opposed to some ideas that have been kicking around and mutating for ten or twelve years now, but never seem to come together. But I digress.) And if you haven’t read her Beggars in Spain either, get that while you’re at it.

Have a happy and safe New Year’s, all.

For those who didn’t already know, I had a *very* minor surgical procedure on Wednesday. Everything went fine. No incision required, all done in (I’m told) about 30 minutes. No problems from the anesthetic, didn’t even need the pain meds after. Spent much of Thursday very tired, but slept a lot and Spouse took excellent care of me. No trouble at all at the facility; the staff was very nice and very competent. And I am glad to have it behind me; the anticipation and buildup was far worse than the reality.

Now, it’s all over but the billing.

My dad grows zucchini. Lots of zucchini. So many zucchini, in fact, that he occasionally loses track of them in the tangle of leaves. Which is how I ended up with this:

Monster Zucchini

Yes, that’s an apple next to it.

I had considered setting a bunch of obsidian blades into it so it would be a sort of Aztec-esque war club, but honestly? I’m lazy.

And that laziness explains how I ended up without a pumpkin to carve for Halloween. So I decided to solve two problems at once.

Zuch-O-Lantern

Naturally, I have named it “Danny Zuccho”.