Mishaps and other haps

First post from Signy.
She is teh awesome.

Yes, I know I have a noticeable purple bruise on my chin today. No, I wasn’t fighting in the schoolyard. No one has been beating me up. Someone might have bitten me, though. I guess it’s because I am so damn tasty.

You know I’m right. Just admit it! Why stew in anger over an issue when the tension can easily be resolved with a few punches or a quick body slam?

And who better to punch than FedEx? Yes, FedEx, the most sinister corporation on earth, the company that encourages you to SEND, but not RECEIVE.

Granted, I have no patience, I overreact, and I am the devil when I want something, but consider the following strikes against FedEx:

– No estimated windowframe of delivery. You must be home ALL DAY in order to receive your package.

– No local number to call. Takes some poking to reach a real person at the corporate number.

– SECRET LOCATION! They are loathe to reveal their actual address to people who may wish to pick up their packages.

– SECRET HOURS! The corporate fellow I talked to could not divulge the local hours of operation.

– NO TICKET! I would not know that a delivery attempt had been made if I had not poked the tracking website.

Oh, heads will be bashed and the contents of innocent packages may be shattered and spilled! I will attempt to visit them during my lunchbreak tomorrow.

I bought a paper shredder today to help me with the process of cleaning out. I LOVE this device. I called my sister and bubbled with excitement about the shredding.

I was a very paper-oriented person in the past. I threw out most of my school litter a long time ago– it took up a good portion of a storage closet at one of my old apartments (that was mostly just grad school stuff– some of the undergrad portion may still be somewhere at my parents’ house).

However, I have a *lot* of correspondence that I was hanging on to– dating back to 1993, when I started college. And a little chunk of the massive collection of papers I wrote in school. And a sizeable bit of personal writing.

So this afternoon I have been sifting through this collection, reading bits of letters from family, friends, and teachers and remembering good and bad things about college, grad school, my first few years in Wisconsin …

Most of this paper is going to be shredded when my shredder recovers from the massive amounts of shredding it did earlier today. A few things will be kept. I think I have the important parts memorized in my heart.

Remembering the past is not always nostalgic, but I realized that I have lost touch with some people and that makes me feel a little nostalgic. On the other hand, I will always remember the people who have been important in my life.

1) Organizing! I am sort of starting to pack up some books and kitchen things that I will not need for the next couple of months. Also, since my new computer should arrive next week, I have taken the opportunity to purge old files and save some necessary files by depositing them into my Gmail account.

2) Spending bits of time here and there: I visited “the boys” on Friday night and snuggled into the video game madness. Also, I dropped in for a bit this morning to say “hi” with sugar-enriched breakfast roundness.

3) Some movies that arrived in the mailbox:

From Dusk Till Dawn
Highlights:
Salma Hayek (w00t! And evil!)
Justifies Quentin Tarantino seeming kinda creepy
The Pussy Man
Drawbacks:
Didn’t really hold my interest until the end– started becoming too predictable once the vampires gave chase.

My Neighbor Totoro (second or third viewing)
Highlights:
Cute, fun!
DUSTBUNNIES!!!
Little girls are very enthusiastic about new house!!!
Big fuzzy friend!
Cat bus!
Drawbacks:
None really, but I was distracted by the files I was transferring to my Gmail account, so I tuned out about the time Mei got lost.

A Room With a View
Highlights:
The huge sigh of relief felt all over Italy once the English tourists went home.
Drawbacks:
Unfortunately, the rest of the movie followed the annoying English tourists back to England.
I can’t remember whether I finished watching this movie or not.

(Had memory of the chelovyek singing this)

No!

No is no
No is always no
If they say no, it means a thousand times no

No plus no equals no
All nos lead to no no no

(Seems like wise philosophy)

That is what my brain is wondering. It has searched the entire contents of my bloodstream and cannot currently find even one molecule of caffeine.

This is often the case on weekday afternoons, but yesterday we went a little overboard with the coffee. There was coffee before we went out to have the tires replaced, coffee while we were having the tires replaced, and coffee in the early afternoon (well after the tires had been replaced).

So today … withdrawal. Very sad.

I was just reading an article about archaeology and the Bible by Daniel Lazare (“False Testament”, originally published in Harper’s Magazine a few years back). He reports that the last twenty-five years of archaeological research have undermined the historicity of the Old Testament.

Archaeologists have determined that Jewish monotheism coalesced much later than previously believed and the kings and leaders detailed in the Old Testament likely did not exist or were not as important as the religious texts would indicate (this includes Kings Solomon and David and “earlier” important leaders such as Abraham and Moses).

Rather, monotheism became predominant only AFTER Israel gained political importance and suffered some losses to the Assyrians. The priests of Yahweh blamed toleration of other local cults for this setback and conducted a bloody purge. The past was subsequently reinvented to establish territorial rights for Israel.

But that is just context. What I really *like* about the article is near the end, when Lazare questions whether monotheism was just a “con” and a waste of time as a way of thinking about the world and what humans are doing in it. He has this to say about it:

“Monotheism’s attempt at a unified field theory – a single explanation for everything from the creation of the universe to the origin of law- failed, but in failing it ensured that people would try doubly hard to come up with some new ‘theory of everything’ to take its place.”

Isn’t it interesting how people are talking about religion and science nowadays?

It has been a sort of busy day. I took my car in for a maintenance check-up and, as I thought, I need a new set of tires. I have had the current set for the life of the car (7 years this month), so I have been expecting this for about a year now.

I priced and ordered some that should be fantastic for traction and they will be installed tomorrow.

I have also been shopping for food, paid some bills, finished up my apartment app. and took it by the office, and made cheesecake. It is looking like the cheesecake is a little burnt around the edges, but I think it will mostly still be tasty. I will test it on some people later.

If you think that there is a trick to understanding women, you are right. There is. But you’ll never get it.

(Sorry– I promise not to be arrogant and irritating for the rest of the day, but I had to get that out of my system. I do have some more thoughtful content that I haven’t had time to post yet. Maybe later.)