Swollen, bloated mess

I’ve been drinking too much beer and eating too many salted snacks. I feel horrible. On top of that a mosquito decided to take a bite out of my forehead and it’s swollen and sore. I also have two huge bloody sores on my feet from where the straps of my shoes decided to wear away my skin. My house is hot and I don’t want to turn on the air conditioning just yet.

Things aren’t all bad. I got some stuff accomplished today that I’ve been putting off for far too long. And tomorrow is a new month.

Pookie bear helped me move my new, very old formica dining table into my kitchen on Sunday. I love the way it looks! Reminds me of when I was a little girl sitting at my grandparents’ table. I’ll have to try to take some pictures of it to post. First I want to make slip covers for the chairs. The vinyl isn’t very pretty and needs to be hidden.

I went to my parents’ house today for the Memorial Day BBQ. Torrential rain hit so we ate inside. We had Italian hot dogs. They were delish! Of course, talk about more salt which I really didn’t need. We reflected on those who lost their lives for our country. And all my complaining suddenly seemed pretty silly.

Sirius XM Negotiating Special Pricing

I love my Sirius XM radio!  LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT!  Especially since XM merged with Sirius because I get to listen to Elvis Radio!  And Little Steven’s Underground Garage.  I also love 80’s on 8, 70’s on 7, 60’s on 6, 50’s on 5, New Wave, Siriusly Sinatra and Willie’s Place.

At any rate, my subscription just came up for renewal and I was able to negotiate a really good deal that I thought I would share with you.  I called the cancellation department and told them that I was hoping they might help me because I didn’t want to have to cancel the service but the renewal amount, $149.00 was beyond my budget.  The cancellation rep said she could offer me a special price of 88.78 for the year.  I declined saying I had heard about a special rate of 77.00.  “The 88.78 is the 77.00 rate except there is a 12.00 fee for music royalty fees.”

I asked her to wipe the royalty fee.  She refused.  I asked her to credit me a month.  Still nothing.  We sat in silence for a bit.  I then said, “If you take away the royalty fee I will give you my credit card right now.”

She put me on hold and when she came back on she told me she would charge my credit card 79.80.  Hooray!  Just under 7.00 a month for commercial free radio!  I signed up for another year!

Dreamless sleep

I slept good last night. Right through. No interruptions in the form of night terrors or piss urges or thirst. No dreams either which sucks. Today I am taking my Dad to the circus, that is if he doesn’t flake on me.

Yesterday the first disc of the first season DVD boxset for Burn Notice arrived. I am looking forward to watching it. And hopefully loving it. We shall see.

I was supposed to go to my first Toastmasters’ meeting yesterday but I got caught up with silly stuff and decided to go the next meeting instead. Anyone have any experience with Toastmasters? I’ve been doing a lot of presentations and I want to get better so it seems like a pretty smart idea to get involved with them. We shall see.

This weekend I plan on getting a Maid2Match Gold Coast service for cleaning up my vintage kitchen table and chairs. I also need to move my winter clothes into the attic and my summer clothes out of the attic. I have some plants that need re-potting and I need to weed as well.

The excitement never ends, kids!

No sleep but I feel fine

I awoke at 3:30ish. I got up for water thinking I’d fall right back to sleep. No dice. I lay there in bed until 6am when I decided I had had enough. Two and a half hours of staring at my overhead ceiling fan. I discovered that if I turned my head to the right, I heard the clicking the fan made as it spun BUT if I turned my head to the left, no clicking. I’m not sure why this happened. Could I be partially deaf in my right ear?

Looking out my window just now, I saw a woman walking her dog. The dog led her between my unit and my neighbor’s unit and the dog squatted and took a big dump. Isn’t that rather rude? What I mean is, make your dog go close to the sidewalk. Don’t let him lead you all the way to our door for his morning crap! Maybe I am just cranky from my night of sleepless, meandering thoughts.

Remember how I had an exterminator come and perform mass murder on my ant problem? The ants are staging a comeback!!! I have to call the exterminator again! AND my car’s engine light came back on…AGAIN! What’s going on here?

Rockin’ Ron Cade wrote on my Facebook wall this morning! Made my day! Rockin’ Ron’s show, Elvis and Friends is on WOGL every Sunday morning from 7 to 10. I rarely catch it anymore because I listen to Elvis Radio on SiriusXM pretty much exclusively. But it’s more than that– I can’t go back to listening to regular radio with it’s incessant commercials and stupid listener contests. I wish Elvis Radio would hire Rockin’ Ron and give him his own show. That would be so awesome. Of course I would want him to be on at a good time because I NEVER listen to Bruce Berenson’s Rockabilly Roadtrip anymore and I miss it so much but not enough to remember that it’s on Saturdays from 10-11pm.

Disc Vs Disk

Did you know there is a difference between Disc and Disk? I had no idea! I had been using them pretty interchangeably. But I was wrong!

Discs
A disc refers to optical media, such as an audio CD, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, DVD-RAM, or DVD-Video disc. Some discs are read-only (ROM), others allow you to burn content (write files) to the disc once (such as a CD-R or DVD-R, unless you do a multisession burn), and some can be erased and rewritten over many times (such as CD-RW, DVD-RW, and DVD-RAM discs).

All discs are removable, meaning when you unmount or eject the disc from your desktop or Finder, it physically comes out of your computer.

Disks
A disk refers to magnetic media, such as a floppy disk, the disk in your computer’s hard drive, an external hard drive. Disks are always rewritable unless intentionally locked or write-protected. You can easily partition a disk into several smaller volumes, too.

Disks are usually sealed inside a metal or plastic casing (often, a disk and its enclosing mechanism are collectively known as a “hard drive”).

Via

Netflix Queue Strategy

I keep watching La Femme Nikita episodes over and over and over again. It’s a freaking sickness with me. I’ve decided I need to expand my television horizons and so I’ve queued up the first disc of the first season of a couple shows I thought I might like but never caught:

  • Alias
  • Burn Notice
  • Mad Men

And so I ask you, my dear friends, are there any shows you think may take the place of my dear Nikita that I can queue on Netflix or Hulu? I like strong, smart, kick-butt, take no prisoners, women characters (Nikita, Xena, Avengers, X-Files). I like the lone hero fighting against forces much larger than himself (Fugitive, Incredible Hulk, Starman). I like partners helping each other (Starsky and Hutch, The Dukes of Hazzard, X-Files). I like men who dress up as women (Bosom Buddies). I love immortals who experience flashbacks to prior times in their long lives (Forever Knight, The Highlander). I like hokie Eastern mysticism and karate (Kung Fu). I think you get it. I want some suggestions!

Here’s a full list of my favorite shows:
La Femme Nikita, The Highlander, Wonder Woman, Misfits of Science, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, Batman, Starman, MacGyver, The A-Team, Avengers, It Takes a Thief, Run for Your Life, The Fugitive, Incredible Hulk, Zorro, Nikita, Black Adder, Due South, Xena: Warrior Princess, The X-Files, Double Trouble, Bosom Buddies, Forever Knight, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, MythBusters, Travel Channel’s Man v. Food, Flight of the Conchords, The Monkees, etc…

A Vintage Daystrom Day

What a day I had yesterday. In the morning I went garage sale-ing with Mom and Barbra. It was the second or third house we pulled up to that I found my treasure: a Vintage Formica (mother of pearl finish) kitchen table from the 40’s/50’s along with 4 matching chairs. The husband and wife selling it wanted $10.00. And I didn’t even bother to barter it down. The man said it was the kitchen table he grew up with as a child. He was born in 1948 and it’s always been in his memory. Luckily Barb had her big SUV with her so we loaded it in. It’s sitting in my garage right now in desperate need of a good cleaning.

Here’s some pix:

I love how the chair has one of those “Do not remove under penalty of law” tags!

As soon as I get them cleaned up, I will post more pictures.

After garage sale-ing, I had lunch with my parents. We sat out on their deck. The weather was wonderful. At 3:30 I had a hair appointment with Aprille over at Salon 39 in Doylestown. I love going to the salon even though I tend to put it off. They have a new gal doing the shampoo and she is amazing! Rather than just doing a typical shampoo, she massaged my scalp! I didn’t want her to ever rinse! Aprille worked her scissors magic, like always. My hair is still long but cut into a nice shape again.

Rather than going straight home, I decided to check out Old Navy and see about those two dresses I liked so much from their Website. I quickly found them on a circular rack and took them into the dressing room only to discover they LOOK LIKE CRAP ON! The striped job was passable but I don’t want passable. I’d rather save my money and buy something incredible. The stripes in the shirt weren’t sewn straight so it looked odd how the stripe was uneven around the waist. It also sat weird around my hips and then I noticed the reason was the damn dress had POCKETS!? The Charo dress looked like a beach cover up. I left empty-handed.

I recently reactivated my Netflix membership. I’ve been spending about $10-12.00 on Redbox movies even though I am really limited in terms of the movies I can watch on Redbox so I figured I might as well go back to Netflix. Last night my first movie arrived, Grey Gardens. I had seen the documentary which it was based on and I think that helped big time. If you were unaware of the original documentary, I think you’d be totally lost and confused. Truth is, I was just left with more questions. Something had to have happen between Little Edie coming back home from NYC to the two of them going bonkers. And I don’t think it was Little Edie losing her hair. I can’t get over how ineffectual Big Edie’s sons were. Why the hell didn’t they try harder to get them out of that house? And why the hell didn’t the Edies ever clean up? After awhile you gotta realize the maid’s not coming back and the task falls to YOU. Along the same lines, why didn’t they ever consider getting JOBS!?!?! Heck, before the darn house started to disintegrate, they could have turned it into a B&B. I can accept that they were born into privilege but at some point you gotta wake up (like when a raccoon makes his home under your bed)… right? I am just going to say they were loons without any steadying forces who could intercede and help. If you saw the movie or the documentary, I’d be interested in your take of their situation.

Old Navy Dresses

I found two dresses on the Old Navy site I really want… and yet I know that they never ever ever look as good on me as they do on the model or in the picture on the Website.


That striped number looks like something Ingrid Bergman wore in Intermezzo. I can see her sitting at a cafe with a scarf knotted around her neck, sipping an espresso as Lesley Howard loves her with his eyes.

The other one looks like something Charo wore on the Love Boat.

I want both.

Goethe Baader-Meinhof Faction

Am I the only person who had no clue The Baader Meinhof Komplex film had even been made? Why didn’t anyone tell me about it? Hello! McFly?

I moved it to the top of my queue but watching the trailer I am a little worried that it might glorify The Red Army Faction rather than showing them rightly as murderers. And who plays Andreas Baader? Moritz Bleibtreu!!!! You might remember him as Lola’s Freund in Lola rennt (Run Lola Run!) or in Stadtgespräch? And checking out his IMDB film list I am now having HEART PALPITATIONS! An upcoming film of his is called: Goethe! Here’s the synopsis: Young law student Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is in love with Lotte, but Albert Kestner also laid an eye on her. YES!!! It’s like they’re casting Goethe in the middle of Die Leiden des jungen Werthers! Die Leiden des jungen Johann Wolfgang? I know, I know– it was loosely autobiographical but still! I am too excited for words right now!

Holy crap!!! He’s also starring as Mephisto in FAUST!