So cute!

Check out this ad for March for Babies (click for full size):

So cute I could die ;>

Moo

The station got a tip from a viewer about 3000 cows that apparently disappeared from the Wrens area of Jefferson County after the tornado March 15. The lady told our morning producer:

"I bet that tornado picked them boogers up and sent them down to Florida on vacation! Someone's looking for their hamburger meat tonight."

My freezer is ridiculous

So today I went and bought a zillion frozen dinners. Healthy Choice, Lean Cuisine, and Smart Ones. If it looked remotely appealing, it went in the cart. I tried to keep them below 600 grams of sodium, but that was impossible in some cases. I also got some frozen Indian dinners...chicken tikka masala, etc. I was pretty much out of luck with those in terms of sodium, but right next to them were some vegetarian dinners that had 350 grams...so I got both.

I also picked up a bag of frozen chicken, because I had the niggling feeling that I hadn't been able to find any lately.

When I got home, I took everything out of the freezer in order to make things fit. I stacked the frozen dinners in the back and juggled most of the frozen veggies into the door. Then I started trying to fit all the meat back in.

I discovered during the course of all this that I already had three bags of frozen chicken in there.

One bag only had one chicken breast left, and it looked pretty crystallized so I threw it away. I also tossed a mostly-empty carton of ice cream and a mostly-empty tub of Cool Whip. Then I rearranged and rearranged and rearranged, trying to make it work. But no matter what I tried, I couldn't get the door to close.

Finally I gave up and I threw away the oldest bag of chicken. It looked pretty crystallized anyway. As for the rest...well, let's just say that tonight's dinner will consist of:

• Hella frozen french fries
• Hella steamed veggies

Sweet rig

Today's Penny Arcade is absolutely hilarious, and so is Tycho's rant:

It's a little inside baseball I guess, but at the same time the story was so delicious that we couldn't leave it be: a District Attorney in Texas is on trial for building himself a sweet rig on the county dime. The machine in question sports "two hard drives, seven fans, high-end video and audio cards, a wireless Internet connection and cables that glow under ultraviolet light." It's a crime, yeah, but it's an awesome crime. I make an exception for awesome crimes.

"I would not configure a backup computer in that way," says Mr. Gregg, FBI senior forensic examiner and reigning Understatement King.

Thanks, Mom and Dad

I love you.

Hard

From Marie's blog:

I tend to think it'll be a while before we move on from this whole fascination with stolen-identity and exposing-ourselves-in-ways-that-make-us-think-we-are-being-authentic. It's just too tempting, too easy to follow the facile path and to engage yourself in a meaningful, and private endeavor is, well, hard.

Ouch.

Brooke and Heather Day

I took Wednesday off from work so I could spend the day with Brooke. We went on a few adventures.

First, we headed out to Thurmond Dam, by way of Pollard's Corner.

This is the way Brooke always used to go to the lake. Pollard's Corner is also on the way to Lincolnton, where I worked briefly in the summer of 2005.

After our stop to pick up sodas and snacks, we headed on to the dam. We went through Georgia until we got to the dam, which is different from the way I went last time. Last time I took 28 through Columbia County and into McCormick County before I got to the lake and river. This time we drove right over the dam to get to the Visitors Center.

The center was open, so we went in and looked at all the displays explaining about J. Strom Thurmond Dam. My favorite part was the window-walled room with views of the lake and pictures and discussions of the wildlife. We had a lot of fun with the bird call recordings; click here.

We went outside and took some pictures of the lake and dam, but it was pretty cold so we soon hopped back in the car and headed on. At this point we hit the field with the old turbine display.

Then we headed towards the dam...but instead of going immediately to the main observation area, we drove down to the boat ramp. I hadn't done that last time because I figured the road just ended at the water, but it turned out there was a broad parking lot there, and some great views of the river and dam.

Once we had our fill of this angle, we headed up to the observation area, where we snapped photos and sat in a porch swing for awhile.

Click here for a video.

On our way back from the dam, we stopped at the Bartram Trail golf community to see what we thought. The houses were mostly okay, but the yards were pretty small, and we didn't think we would want to live there. I'd previously had high hopes for the area so I was fairly disappointed, but I'm not expecting to ever live in a house that large anyway. Brooke and David are looking for a larger-sized home so they can host family from England, so it was unfortunate that the yards didn't meet Brooke's expectations.

Following that we went on a more mundane (but no less fun!) adventure:

After Brooke beat the pants off me for three games, we decided to go to downtown Augusta for awhile, picking up David on the way.

I need to find a camera that won't add random glowing pixels to night shots.

After that we stopped at the grocery store for supplies and then went to my apartment for dinner and Eton mess, which is ridiculously easy to make and amazingly delicious.

It was a long, fun day. I'm glad we were able to spend so much time together!

Holding on

Originally written as a comment on Marie's blog.

I've always been pretty bad about wanting to hang on to things. Visiting my mother's family in Illinois as a child, I had two experiences that shocked me and made me think that maybe I was hanging on too tight.

The first was with my cousin Cary. We built a diorama out of paper and aluminum foil of some pretend land. When we were done, my cousin exclaimed, "And the best part about Imaginary World? Destroying it!" And she proceeded to tear what we had just created to shreds.

I was so horrified I couldn't even react.

Later that same trip, at my Aunt Carol's house, Carol was teaching me to crochet. I made a long, thin, curly something that I thought was pretty neat.

"Now for the fun part," Carol intoned. "Destroying it!" And she started to pull at the yarn, tugging the loops apart at the end. (Obviously Cary and Carol spent a fair amount of time together.)

This time I thought quickly enough to protest. "No!" I cried. "Don't destroy it! I want to keep it!"

Carol was taken aback by this. Her previous excitement vanished, and the crocheting session ended.

Her reaction made me wonder if I was being silly. I wondered if I should go along with the destruction to please her.

But I've always been stubborn. I said nothing further and kept the strip of woven yarn.

And I kept it for years. In fact, if it hadn't been for our apartment fire three years ago, I'd still have it, 20 years after disingenuously crocheting it.

Sometimes I wonder if that fire was meant to show me that I hang on too much.

"It didn't look this big in the store"

Well, we did it.

(And we still have no intention of getting cable!)

Had to rearrange some things.

The office is now old school.


I didn't want to put the bar table there, but it actually doesn't look bad. I like that I can display my cookbooks...maybe it'll inspire me to use them.


The large chair is where the bar table once was, as is one of the bar stools.


The media cabinets are where the chair used to be, to make room.

Blackface

Today I learned, via Japundit, about a new comedy whose plot involves a movie being filmed about the Vietnam War. Robert Downey, Jr. is playing a actor who has taken a role originally written for a black man. Rather than having the role rewritten, his character, one of a group of very pompous actors, is playing it black.

Given my previous discussions of race issues, you might expect me to be upset about this. I kind of expected me to be upset about this. But this is actually pretty awesome, for two reasons.

1) It's hilarious. I mean, this has got to be one seriously self-involved character, to think he can "play" another race. I'm pretty excited to see what kind of jokes come out of it. Done well, this could be truly effective modern satire.

2) Look at this:

I think this is pretty successful. And I don't think the message is that it's easy to make a white person look like a black person. I think the message is that we don't really look that different.

Hair, eyes, skin color, size...those can all vary. But at the core, we're all human beings. We're made of the same stuff, just in a thousand beautiful variations.

I think that's a very positive message.

Images courtesy Daily Mail

Well, if you demand it...

Just got spam that included this paragraph:

We demand that you take time out of your online experience and renew your records to avoid running into any future problems with the online service. However, failure to renew your recoreds will result in our account suspension.Once you have renewed your account records your internet banking service will not be interrupted and will continue as normal.Please click on log button below.

Um...no. Thanks though!

(Take time out of my online experience...*snerk*)

Don't dress up like Elvis in Nicholasville

Or at least, not in court:

'Elvis' shows up at Kentucky court drunk

NICHOLASVILLE, Ky. - A central Kentucky judge had a suspicious mind when an Elvis Presley impersonator showed up for court apparently drunk and sporting sunglasses and a rhinestone-studded shirt with a scarf draped around his neck.

County Attorney Brian Goettl said that as a result, the judge had David Blaisdell, 64, tested for intoxication and sentenced him to three days in jail for contempt of court when it was determined that the man's blood-alcohol level was nearly twice that at which a person in Kentucky is considered legally drunk.

Blaisdell, who was in court for a pretrial conference on misdemeanor charges of stalking and violating a protective order, told the judge he had had a few drinks the night before, Goettl said.

Good to know those drunk Elvis impersonators aren't getting off easy in the ol' hometown! ;)

Final office layout

Here it is: the second best possible configuration for my office. (I can't do the first best configuration because the cables and internet jacks are all on the wrong side of the room.)

The floor plan.


View from the door leading to the north side of the building. Speaking of wires...I'm thinking of covering them with a curtain.


My workspace.


View from the door leading to the south side of the building.


View from that same door, looking straight over my desk.


View from the north side door again.

So far I really like the new layout. People have plenty of room to walk, and I don't have people coming up behind me all the time. I think this'll work!

Previously: Office Evolution

Even More Previously: Transition and What can I say, I like moving furniture.

Edit: Added floor plan and captions.

Office evolution

This is what my office looked like originally.

At first I shared the office with a full-time graphic designer. Nowadays I have the office to myself, except when various people come in and use the graphics computer.

When that change first happened, I rearranged the desks like this:

This was okay for many months. I really liked having the extra work space that the second L-shaped desk gave me. However, the room was really cluttered, and I felt I could do more with the space if that second desk was taken out. I ended up trading it for my boss' old desk, and I put the graphics computer on her desk rather than the flimsy white table it had been sitting on. Everyone was pleased to be using a real desk at last, and I was happy that the room was more open. You can see that layout in this movie I took at Christmas time, and in these two pictures:

However, the loss of the arm of that second L-shaped desk eliminated what I considered to be useful privacy. Now I had people coming up standing behind me all the time, which was the last thing I wanted to encourage. It's just not feng shui.

So I spent a few months pondering what sort of furniture arrangement would make it so that people wouldn't stand behind me, and also allow better traffic flow through the office, since it's essentially a hallway these days. Finally I drew up a floorplan of the room using the ceiling tiles as measurements, and that enabled me to move things around without actually moving them...so I tried lots of different arrangements that I hadn't considered before.

That led me to this work-in-progress:

It may not look like much in the pictures, but I got it rearranged a bit more after I took them, and I think it's going to be pretty sweet when I'm all finished (and I've had a chance to dust, yeesh). Only time will tell if it'll keep people from coming up behind me, but the idea is that the arm of the desk pointing towards the door will create the feeling of a hallway, so that people won't turn left and come into my desk area.

What's great about this layout is that there is a much wider path to walk through the office. I'm thinking it will work out pretty well.

I'll put up final photos once I'm done.

Edit: I just realized you can't really make out the door I'm talking about in any of the new pics. It's to the left of the CD shelf. You actually do see it in the second new picture, but it's hard to tell that it's a door :>

(That gray strip alongside it is not the door frame; it's a shadow due to the fact that the wall juts out behind the door, causing the door to only open about 90 degrees. The reason for this is there is a water fountain on the other side of the wall. And Now You Know.)

Brookie's here!

And here she is.

She and David and I met for lunch at the Boll Weevil. I ordered the exact same thing I had a week or so ago with a group from work: chicken salad sandwich (they make it with honey mustard and horseradish!) and potato soup. Then, of course, I had to have dessert...a piece of chocolate raspberry rhapsody cake. (This was different from the other day, when I had the 7th Heaven chocolate cake...)

Anyway, enough about the food. It is so great to have Brooke back in town. Now I just need to make sure I spend as much time with her as possible! She has already dedicated next Wednesday to me, and hopefully we'll do all sorts of fun things and maybe even take a half-day trip somewhere...but one day is not enough! I still miss the days when I could call her after work and say "What's up?" and just go to her place to hang out. My evenings are very quiet these days, except for those occasions when I get to go out with work peeps.

They're making plans to move back to the States someday, maybe in two years, so by the time our next lease is up at this apartment, I might have my best friend back ;>