Mishaps and other haps

After a warm Thanksgiving weekend and several weeks of warmish weather, the temperatures dropped yesterday evening.

I was picking up carry-out for me and PhysOrg when the rain gave way to pellets of ice. I could almost pinpoint the moment it happened. When I went into the restaurant, it was raining and when I came out again, it was distinctly icy.

There’s a good reason I prefer a hearty, confident snowfall rather than a “wintry mix”. I’m not really sure which form of precipitation actually makes the roads more dangerous, but I know which one is easier to clean off of a car early in the morning.

It’s not wintry mix.

Yay, it’s Friday and I am not at work! Woo hoo!

Hope everybody had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I decided that being mellow would be better for me than being social yesterday, so I slept in and did not go with PhysOrg to his family’s holiday gathering. I missed the company, the specific people I usually see, the family-gathering tradition, and the wonderful food, but I have also felt pretty happy, calm, and sane since about lunchtime on Wednesday, so I am enjoying being mellow and low-key for the time being.

It sounds like we will have various houseguests tomorrow and a birthday to celebrate, so that will rock!

Things I did do yesterday: Sleep lots! Totally failed in my attempt to make yummy vegetarian things! Ate tortellini for Thanksgiving dinner instead! Ate caramel apple pie! Played Yoshi’s Island! Talked to my mom and my boy (who called twice to check on me)! Watched bad television (but not football)! Made two more pumpkin pies (so excessive)! Had conversations about “the college days” with our houseguest (also opting out of social gatherings)!

Happy Thanksgiving to everybody this week! You are all important to me.

Male people, I have to ask. Do you feel like there is a war against you?

Thanks to

	Type A
	People with A type blood are sensitive, revengeful, careful and cold. You are fiercely grudge holding and never let go of anything – but also a good friend and an extremely loyal one. You are passionate and creative and don’t care what other people say about you.
‘What does your blood type say about you?’ at QuizGalaxy.com

Mostly it’s about the grudges and vengeance, arrrrr!

We also be mighty fierce vegetarians.

I called the repair guy back out today because our furnace problem had not been solved.

A $22.50 switch was the problem– and no labor charge this time since he should have caught it on the first trip.

Wow, it was amazing to walk into a house holding steady at 71 tonight, rather than a house chilling down to 62 or 63.

One of my best friends in high school was adept at winning free soda. For a year or two, almost every soda bottle she opened had a message on the cap instructing her that she had won another free soda. Since she couldn’t drink all of this free soda alone, she gave caps to her friends. Maybe it was sheer luck, or maybe the soda companies were giving away a lot of free soda as a publicity stunt and she just stumbled upon a cache of winning bottle caps.

At some point, soda companies stopped putting instant winner messages on their soda caps. I gave up trying to redeem any prizes or points when the soda instructed me to visit its website, register with my e-mail, and type in a code. I have a short attention span and the soda company prizes were never that great.

But soda sells. The soda companies don’t really need to give away their products or do fabulous promotions beyond the code lures that draw people to their websites. They don’t really need to offer instant gratification or promise any prizes. They have perfected a sugary caffeine formula that is literally addictive. Nobody is going to stop buying Coca-Cola products because they got a “Please try again” message when they typed in their code on the official Coca-Cola homepage.

In a way, it’s like nicotine, because it is addictive. In fact, soda is addictive on two separate fronts. Caffeine is known to be addictive and studies have indicated that high fructose corn syrup (the sweetener in most sodas now) may be more addictive and worse for you than sugar. However, people now take nicotine very seriously. They laugh when you mention that soda may be partially responsible for health conditions like obesity and bone loss.

It’s going to take that first wave of court cases from old folks who believe that their advanced osteoporosis may have been caused or aggravated by years of addiction to soda to make people take this issue seriously. And even that might not work. Chronic ailments and shortened life spans are not quite as dramatic as lung cancer.

Hrm … so anybody want to go see Fast Food Nation with me some time?

Garuuuuuuum bechur?

Me to PhysOrg on Saturday night at dinner: Since I had black beans for breakfast and lunch, I decided it would be too much to have them on my burrito tonight. So I ordered pinto beans instead.

PhysOrg to me last night in the computer room, looking at my dinner, a little amused: Are you eating beans again?

*** Just as a side note, I woke up early this morning and had time to make coffee at home and read. It made me happy and I felt a little more “together” than usual when I left the house. I wonder if I will have the willpower to drag myself out of bed early every morning.***

It has been a good weekend, after a long, kinda stinky week. Nothing bad happened, but there was some grouchiness, fatigue, not feeling completely well, and generally it was one of those kinds of weeks you just want to push your way through.

There was snow Friday afternoon, which wasn’t terrible timing. It made the commute home a little longer and slower than usual (I am a little freaked out about driving in low visibility/snow on the Interstate anyway, so I drove home through town– that made the trip longer).

Saturday morning I had breakfast with Cibman at the ever-popular Hubbard Avenue Diner. After having a tasty breakfast and catching up on the various miscellany of the past few months, we broke company and I headed out to run errands.

I intended to renew my driver’s license this weekend, but I realized I had not thought ahead about how I looked and I do not actually want another horrible driver’s license photo for the next six years. Yeah, I know they are all awful, but there are different degrees of awful.

Most of Saturday afternoon was spent relaxing at home and working on laundry. PhysOrg and I went out for dinner and a movie later in the evening. We saw the new Aardman/Dreamworks film, Flushed Away, which was very cute and funny, in true Aardman form. New, loveable characters, highly talented voice actors, a great story– I highly recommend it.

This morning (I still feel like it is morning), I have been waking up slowly. In an occasional gesture of acknowledgment of my heritage, I threw together a batch of cheese-garlic buttermilk biscuits for breakfast. Wow, I am kind of craving grits, also, but I don’t have any. I think I am being spoiled by real, cooked breakfasts on the weekend. I’ll be wanting it every day before long.

Wow, does it feel like two weeks until Thanksgiving? I am looking forward to a three-day week, followed by a four-day weekend.