As always, haha.

How was your weekend? Mine was okay.

Saturday I slept in late - yay for weekends. Then went to the Wild Birds Store (LINKY!) to get Mom's Day present. A crystal for the window with a little moon-fairy on it. And a hanging bird feeder/bath that's shaped like a pink flower. Forgot to take a photo of either, of course.

Brother and I went to Starbucks as is our routine, and then went out to get mom a gift (from him). Originally we planned on getting her a plant, but she said she didn't want one, instead she wanted new seat cushions for the swing. Seems that last year she left them on all winter and then the birds took them apart for nesting materials, and a swing ain't much good without cushions. Very uncomfortable. Her only requirement was that it not be brown stripes as was the original design.

Well, the backyard store where we originally got the swing only had the same brown striped cushions. Oh well. Went to Home Depot, which didn't have any swing cushions, so we improvised and got three chair cushions instead. Here is the result:

Brother chose the cushions and I guess he made a good choice because she liked them. Not overtly floral, but greenish brown so they don't clash with the general atmosphere.

Mum suggested I stay over Saturday night since we were all supposed to go out to dinner on Sunday, being that it was not only Mom's Day but also Brother's birthday. However, I had much cleaning, laundry, and laziness to accomplish, so I went home Saturday night.

Sunday I took care of the laundry and then planned to finally lay down my living room carpet (over the existing wall-to-wall because I like this carpet, dagnabit). However, I promptly discovered that a) furniture is really heavy and b) furniture is really hard to move on a carpet. So after exhausting myself with attempting to fight with the area rug, I gave up and decided I'll have to commandeer Brother to help me with the furniture-moving (perhaps next weekend) in order to get the living room in order.

Laundry miraculously got accomplished. I was then intending to go to the library since I forgot about a book that was due back on that day. In the course of straightening the living room a bit I found the book under a pile of some other junk on the armchair (which I don't know why I have this armchair since I never sit on it) but then promptly forgot to actually go to the library to return it. Remembered that evening at mom's when we were discussing books and libraries and reading. Oh well.

Anyway, swung by Starbucks for some caffeine, as I really needed some at this point (and it was the last day of half-price fraps) and I'd promised to by Brother his usual iced tea lemonade. Drive-thru line was umpteen cars long, so I parked, ran inside, got the drinks and got out in half the time (or so it seemed). I've been known to park and run inside frequently at drive-thrus. :P

Dinner was at Applebee's, which is Brother's go-to restaurant whenever it's his choice (which it was since it was his birthday), and Mum had no objections. Food was okay, and then came back to lounge in the backyard as it's currently that nice time of year where it's pleasantly warm enough to be outside, and the mosquitoes have not yet begun to attack me so I can enjoy it without having to overdose on Off!

Some flower photos from the gardens:

Mom calls these her "Ugly Irises." They're kind of an antique yellow with some faded purple edging that remind me of old Victorian houses. I don't hate them as much as she does, but they're definitely not gorgeous. Colorado Uncle (Uncle #1 in case you care) thought they were beautiful, but we're all pretty sure that he's crazy. Mom said that after they die she'll dig up the bulbs and he can have them.

Here is the second of the two forms of Ugly Irises:

Turns out Aunt #1 (Ohio Aunt), who is involved with the garden club, had some excess irises one year and brought some out to Jersey to share with her unsuspecting beloved sisters. She had two piles of irises, one which got tossed over the cliff into Lake Erie (she lives on the edge of such) and the other got brought to Jersey. So Mom planted them and some point afterward was expressing her dislike of said flowers via phone to Aunt #1.

Aunt #1 then realized that she had accidentally tossed the irises she intended to share and brought the irises she'd intended to toss. More proof of the scatterbrained insanity which runs in my genes, I suppose.

Here are some irises we all generally agree to be beautiful:

The all-purple ones are done blooming, and me without having taken a single photo, but the purple-white ones have a certain elegance as well.

The sky as seen from the above swing, looking at the roof of the screen-house. Maybe this year we'll actually get the canopy on the frame (never did get to it last year).

One of Mom's famous unwanted roses. I love this rose bush, and it's grown since long before I was born and possibly before my mother was born. She's not overly fond of it. But it keeps on living. :)

This year's vacation plans are to head to the great state of Maine in mid-August (same week as my birthday). Uncle #4 and his wife have a vacation house up there in the middle of freakin' nowhere, and they intend to rent it to other unsuspecting beloved family and friends until they retire and can move there full-time. This was Mom's idea, and Dad seems to be into it as well, and since I have no other plans to go anywhere this year, I may well go with them. My only requirement for vacations going forward is that I go somewhere I have not been before. I have never been to Maine.

Interestingly enough, today's Snapple Fact informs me that there are no venomous snakes native to Maine. I suppose this is a good thing?

The downsides to a Maine vacation mean:

a week with family

in a cabin with three television stations and no internet (and probably no cell service).

We'll see how this works out.

Anyway, that's enough babbling. You'll be happy to know I returned my late library book today and paid the exorbitant fee of .25 cents.

Hope you had a relaxing weekend. I know Josh did:

...but I feel obligated to write a blog anyway.

Why are you reading this? Are you bored? Do you feel obligated to read it, since I spent all of about ten minutes writing it? (The time thing is an estimate, since I just started, so I have no way of knowing how long it will take me to finish.)

I don't usually plan blogs out ahead of time. Okay, occasionally I do, if it's not just a pile of babbles and I actually have a point, but that's a rare thing. Even the Playlists, I have an idea of songs beforehand but I just start writing on the day and boom there's a blog.

Boom.

So today, for the second day in a row, I tried a new way to get home from work. It involved going a bit north for a bit, which is where I got turned around yesterday. Ended up on 9W north instead of 9W south...not sure why it's 9 "W" if it runs north to south...I'm assuming the W doesn't stand for West. But anyway. Ended up driving about ten minutes north on 9W because there was no place to #*$& turn around. Finally did, right before the Tappanzee bridge. Yeah, WAY farther north than I wanted to be. Oh well.

Today I didn't bother with 9W, which by the way I hadn't intended to be on in the first place but ended up on because I somehow missed 303 (because there was no SIGN for it! Why should there be SIGNS marking the roads at intersections? ). Today I tried a different way to get to where I was trying to get to, which was the Palisades Parkway.

The Palisades Parkway is an interesting Parkway, by the way. It starts somewhere up in New York, I have no idea where, and there are only 3 exits in New Jersey. The first, the furthest north, appears to not be accessible to any useful roadways, so the best way to get ON the Palisades is to drive north into Rockland County (which is an odd place, by the way. Very odd.) and then head south down the eastern edge of Jersey. After the first exit in Jersey, which is exit 2, there are no more exits for approximately 97,000 miles.

And there's nothing to see. Nothing but trees on either side and cars. The speed limit is 50 and I was doing about 60 something and everyone was flying past me in the left lane. Okay. 9W runs along side it, so sometimes you see things that look vaguely interesting, but you can't get to them because there aren't any exits. Your only option is to get off aalll the way down at exit 1 and then drive all the way back north up 9W. So I suppose it's an expressway.

Exit 1 is where I get off, and then it's about ten minutes from there through the center of a town that's trying to be The City (there are a few of those in North Jersey, Fort Lee is the most obvious, but this one is another) with its art galleries and Oriental Rug shops and fancy-pants McDonalds. There's even a thee-ate-er.

Anyway if you were to stay on the Palisades past Exit 1, it eventually ends in Fort Lee, where the George Washington is located. There are a bunch of big roads getting to the GW bridge, and most of the time, they're all jammed like jelly into a jar. Wait. No. They're jammed like that band you heard the other day you thought was great. They're jammed like the printer at work when I need to print one email, but it's VERY important. Does that work? I'm working on creative similes. It's a hobby.

If you listen to the traffic reports at any point of the day or night, they mention the approaches to the GW. There's 80/95, the 1&9, 4, etc. It's a cluster of numbers, basically, and most of the time the report says something like, "30 minute delay on 80/95, twenty from the other approaches. Palisades looks like your best bet."

Which is because nobody wants to take the Palisades. Which is because hardly anyone knows it's there, and nobody takes it to get to the GW. Most people are coming from the south or the west, so there's nobody on the Palisades. :shrug:

So anyway I don't think I'm going to go that way regularly because it's not really any faster, and it's kinda boring. But might not be a bad alternate route once the summer southbound traffic gets going and everything else backs up. Or once it's Christmas and all the roads near the malls back up. There are few roads not near malls in this part of Jersey.

Jeez, did I just spend all that time talking about my commute. I need a life. :P

I met my upstairs neighbor yesterday. She knocked on my door and said she just wanted to introduce herself and of course I forget her name. Thing is though, I thought my upstairs neighbor was a man. Because once before I was home in the evening, went out to pick up the mail, and returned to the apartment just as he was getting home. We said hi, and he went upstairs and that was all. So I suppose that either I've gotten a new neighbor in the last few weeks without me noticing them moving, which is somewhat unsurprising since I'm rarely home anyway, or these two people live together, which I suppose is possible because it's a decent sized apartment for two people. My old apartment was so tiny that I couldn't imagine sharing it with someone without really wanting to kill them after a short period of time, but this one is a bit bigger (and I assume the upstairs is the same). Anyway she seemed nice and asked me how I like it. "Quiet, right?" "Yes," I said, "so far." And she said if you need anything we're right upstairs. I think she said, "we" not "I," but I could be wrong.

Anyway I don't need anything and if I did I don't think I'd ask my upstairs neighbors. What are you supposed to ask neighbors for? People always say, "Oh, call me if you need me," or whatever, but I'm not sure under what circumstances I'm allowed to call. Okay, I'm bored and want to chat. Does that qualify as a need? I don't want to bother people over trivial things. So I don't call, and then they forget I exist. This is probably a good relationship to have with a neighbor, to forget they exist. This is the sort of person I want to be, I want you to forget I exist so I don't have to be obligated to call and chat or loan you a cup of sugar or whatever it is people do with each other.

Yeah, I suck at socializing. This is probably why I don't have friends.

In other news, after not speaking for some time, random OK Cupid Guy #4 (I think?) called me last Saturday while I was at my mom's. I didn't answer (would have been REAL awkward) and so he babbled at my voicemail about not communicating because of the NHL playoffs (sports, sports, hockey, work, yadda, blah) but Hi and maybe we could get together. I considered calling him back on Sunday but didn't because I don't know when is a good time to call people and I don't know what to say to him. He seems like a nice guy but if he's going to spend the whole date talking about HOCKEY PLAYOFFS I'm just going to scream. Seems he's a sportswriter or something so not only does he like sports he also works with sports.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind sports. Sports are great. I never watch them or follow them (except when my brother babbles about it or I happen to hear something on the news if I happen to be listening) but I have nothing against them. Still, I haven't got a passion about sports. Baseball is okay. Basketball is okay. I don't watch football at all and Hockey is just plan bo-ring. I can't figure out what's going on. I went to two professional hockey games in my youth and the entire time I hadn't the slightest idea what was going on and the half-second in which I blinked was the moment in which they scored and then the whole place was cheering (or groaning) and I had no idea why.

I don't usually like feeling stupid. Anyway, all that aside, I considered calling him back today and apologizing for being lame but let's do something this weekend, but then I remembered that he'd probably want to talk about SPORTS the whole date and then I'd have to fake enthusiasm about HOCKEY which I don't think I can do. If it was basketball I could maybe manage to say something intelligent about how the Knicks suck and Carmello Anthony is a waste of money because I've had that conversation with my brother a dozen times, but hockey? Yeah, no way.

And OKC guy #3, for the record, dropped off the face of the planet yet again, so either he's still deathly ill or he's found some other more interesting chick to hang out with. I think I shall return to my single hermit state. It's probably for the best. :P

Well, hello there, Internet. Thanks for dropping by. Today is Friday which means the weekend has started (yay!) and it's time for...

This is weekly feature, which I invite you all to participate in if you are so inclined, in which I list a number of songs on a particular theme.

This week, the theme is The Weather, because I have nothing else to talk about, so I'll start a conversation about the weather. (Yes, I am a hit at parties.)

1.  Always Take The Weather With You, by Crowded House

This video has absolutely nothing to do with the song. One of the youtube commenters suggests that the creator has a public transportation fetish. I suppose it might be that they were thinking that if you are taking the weather with you, you're going somewhere, so you must be taking a train or something?

Anyway. If you know anything by Crowded House, you probably know "Don't Dream, It's Over," which is an okay song and was very popular, but I like this one better. I'm not sure what the song is trying to say. I suppose it would be nice to take weather with you if the weather you were taking was nice, warm, and sunny, but if you're from the middle of Siberia and your weather is freezing cold, I don't think you'd want to take it with you to Miami.

2. It's Raining Men, by Weather Girls

So, technically this isn't really about the weather, because I've never heard of men actually falling from the sky (frogs and fish, yes, but not humans). And it's kind of a silly song. Mother Nature decides to make it rain men so that every woman in the world has somebody. (I guess she has no sympathy for lesbians? Well, the gay guys can take those men.)

3. Everybody's Talking At Me, by The Beautiful South

This song is included because of the line, "going where the weather suits my clothes," which I think is a wonderful line because my clothes would be quite comfortable for warm weather. My college roommate was an aspiring nudist, so the line intrigued her because in an ideal situation she'd wear no clothes.

This is a cover version by a British band called The Beautiful South. I actually saw them live when I was in high school; they opened for Barenaked Ladies, and I was so interested that I immediately went and bought a few of their albums. Apparently they're quite popular over there, but I haven't met too many Americans who are into them. This is the first time I've managed to include them on a playlist, which makes me happy and yet somewhat sad, because I think I should have put them on one before. In future I shall attempt to include one of their original songs.

4. NYC Weather Report, by Five For Fighting

Another band I like but somehow hasn't made it on a playlist before. I'm not sure what this song is about or what it means, but I like it. It reminds me of springtime in New York City, and my ex and taking the bus or train across the Meadowlands, which are the closest you can get to middle-of-nowhere in North Jersey. If you ignore the distant cities and the fact that you're on a train, and just look at the acres of golden grass, you can get the impression of what this place was like before people came and built things. From what I understand, the area is protected natural habitat, and largely swampland, which is why you can't build anything on it. I would like one day to stop on the side of the road and just take some photos, but they discourage such things on the Turnpike.

5. Diane, by Guster

"I watched you board a train, in the London rain, and waved bye-bye as you slipped out of view."

Guster is a band I like, and have liked for quite some time, but don't have a lot of music by. Many of their songs seem to be about dysfunctional relationships. This is no exception. Though the chorus sings, "We'll make it out together," I get the impression that when she boards the train in the London rain, it's sort of a final good-bye.

6. The Storm, by Gaelic Storm

No lyrics to discuss with this one, but I think it's fairly obvious why it's included. :)

Gaelic Storm sometimes does covers of traditional Irish folk tunes and sometimes does their own music. This is one of their original compositions. If I remember right, the liner notes for this album basically apologized for the unoriginal title of the tune, but I think it's awesome and the music totally conveys thunderstorm to me, and would even if they hadn't included the sound effect in the beginning.

7. A Horse With No Name, by America

"I been through the desert on a horse with no name, it felt good to be out of the rain."

I've never understood why they didn't name the horse. I mean, seriously, you rode the dang thing all the way through the desert but you didn't bother to name it? Why not?

So that's it for songs about the weather. Hope you didn't hate it.

How's the weather by you?

What kind of weather do you like?

Next week, delving into the mystical and metaphysical with Songs About Dreams.

Until then, enjoy the weather, and hope it is pleasant near you. :)

Meh, feeling lazy today, again, but here is a blog without a subject or a title anyway.

Yesterday we had a meeting to discuss the meeting that the bigwigs went to last Thursday. It was the most boring meeting I have ever been to. We were supposed to start off by watching a video, but because it was only being played on a laptop and there were no speakers, no one could hear it, so we didn't watch it.

Instead we just listened to the boss-people report what their boss-people had said at the meeting. I was sort of expecting some sort of plan with concrete ideas, but the whole thing was insanely vague and therefore boring. There were three people doing the speaking: Matt, The Happy Hockey Lady, and the Financial Lady. Matt and the Financial Lady tried but were basically just reading from their notes and so they were pretty boring. The Happy Hockey Lady is definitely more experienced and better at talking to a group. She looked at her notes but wasn't reading from them and she kept trying to engage the rest of us. So that was nice. But even so it was very boring.

On the plus side, we did get pizza for lunch, however stuffing my face with pizza made me s l e e p y and so by the end I wanted to go to sleep. Except I had to go back to work instead. SIGH.

See, about three weeks ago, after the insanity of the insanity was over at work, Matt came into our staff meeting and said, "as a reward for putting forth extra effort. We're going to have pizza for everyone. It'll be Wednesday."

So Wednesday came and it was 12:30 and the New People both asked me if I knew anything about the pizza which I didn't and then finally Frank said, "I'm going to find out what's going on," and so he went into Matt's office and we all heard Matt say, "Oh. My Bad." Frank came out and said, "Yeah, we'll have it next week."

Well, no, that was a lie also. Because the next Wednesday came and then the next message we got (through Frank) was, "We'll let you know when it's coming."

Which means never, probably. /pessimism

So then this week on Monday we got a meeting invite from the Happy Hockey Lady and my first thought was, Oh, are we going to get pizza this time? But of course we did because The Happy Hockey Lady actually PLANS and FOLLOWS THROUGH and is ORGANIZED unlike some people.

We are all now waiting to see if Matt will try to pass THIS pizza off as the pizza we are owed. We are all saying, No, no, no. We are owed pizza. So there!

That was the most exciting part of the week. Here is a picture which made me think of promisesunshine.

and here is another picture which I find humorous but is not for any particular person:

And here is a LINK to an interesting and much more technically knowledgeable playlist than I could ever make, even though it's not Friday. Sadface.

It occurred to me that even though I have given you a VERY abbreviated, half-blindfolded tour of my apartment, you haven't any idea what the outside looks like. So here are some pictures which I took a few weekends ago but never bothered to post.

The outside. My apartment is the downstairs left. The narrow window is my bathroom. No peeking!!!

I took these photos as I was headed to the laundry room. The point at which I am standing in this picture is at the juncture of two sidewalks. Immediately after taking this photo, I turned right and walked down to the end of the walk. I don't live on a street, I live on a Walk. Seriously, that's my address.

A tree because I like trees. And some other buildings.This is at the end of the Walk, where we actually get to the street.

after walking across the street, I look back and take this photo. To get to my apartment you'd have to walk along that sidewalk, and then just past that building on the right you turn and my apartment is in the little nook thingie over there.

Sorry if I am including too many technical terms here.

walking down one of the roads toward the laundry room. The garages are rent-able for an extra $100 a month, otherwise parking is first-come, first-serve. I didn't bother to rent a garage. My parents have a garage but never use it, and I've never parked my car in a garage so why start now?

Where the sidewalk begins is the entrance to the laundry room. I didn't take any photos of the washing machines. They're nothing spectacular.

Here is a bird in a tree. I liked the way this came out.

So I had a thought today about sidewalks. I know, exciting, right? I was driving home from work and passing through a residential suburban area and a woman had taken out a bookshelf cabinet thingie and put it near the curb. In that space between the curb and the sidewalk.

Now, the grassy patch between the curb and the sidewalk is not really part of your property if you are a homeowner, but you have to maintain it. Like sidewalks. You are expected to mow it, and if someone falls on it they can sue you. At least that's how I understand it, correct me if I'm wrong. There is never any landscaping or bushes or anything on that little patch, it's just grass. And if something is put there, it's basically declared to be unwanted. You put garbage at the curb, recyclables, lawn & leaf bags filled with clippings, and when there's one of those BIG junk pickups, things like furniture and old, broken toys go there.

In the town I grew up in, there was one of those there BIG pickups twice a year. And so around that point in time my mother would go through the garage and the basement and whatnot and look for junk to ditch. (Then, two weeks or so later she'd find more stuff that she forgot to ditch. See, this is where I get it from.) A day or so before the pickup, there were piles of junk everywhere outside of people's houses. And there were people who drove around town looking for junk to pick up. Some times people threw out good stuff, sometimes these junk collectors would be able to refurbish it or whatnot. Whatever. Anyway, if there was junk on the lawn, that was off limits. But junk by the curb, that was free to take. 

Anyway, my thought was: How did this happen? Why is it that sidewalks are not built to go right TO the curb? Who defined this unspoken, unwritten rule that things in that patch of grass are presumed to be discarded? Or is it written down somewhere - I am not familiar with such regulations at all? What if I owned a house and I wanted to put something there, like a bush or some flowers...do I have a right to complain if that landscaping gets destroyed or stolen?

Ah, suburbia, such an odd thing.

I finished reading my book. Will have to go librarying this weekend. That is all.

Who needs titles? Or subjects, for that matter. Themes? Pshaw.

I just write what comes into my head.

Here is a photo:

Slept in late today. Hope that doesn't affect my ability to get up for work tomorrow. Sigh.

Oh, right, the photo. That's my dining room, made up so that it's suitable for public viewing. See, chairs, curtains, table runner, books, spider plant that I think I might be able to bring back from near death now that I'm remembering to water them.

I have three spider plants. They're the only plants I've so far been able to keep from dying. At one point they were quite healthy and huge and then I forgot about their existence and became very lazy and blase about things in the Old Apartment, so the poor spider plants shrank up and almost died. Since the move, I've been watering them regularly again and I imagine that they look healthier. Maybe.

The real color of the curtains doesn't come out well in this photo, but there it is so yay.

Today I was attempting to be all domesticated. I did laundry (including towels) and I vacuumed the bathroom and the kitchen and the above dining room. The dining room didn't really need to be vacuumed but I did it anyway just because I did.

So imagine for the moment that you've come to my apartment.

I've blindfolded you through the living room, because it is not suitable for public viewing yet, and instead allowed you to open your eyes at this moment so that you see the dining room. Above. Immediately you give your opinion, "Yes, it's wonderful," "What is wrong with you this is UG-LEE," or maybe just, "Okay, yeah, that's a dining room...."

"Well," I say, "If you thought that was (wonderful, ugly, whatevah), wait until you see the kitchen!" and then we turn right and you see this:

"Ah," you say, unimpressed. "A stove, a fridge, and some ugly cabinets. Yawn."

I wonder if I might one day put something above the stove, maybe a French chef-inspired type artwork, even though I don't cook French food.

You turn to the right and see:

"Good, a fire extinguisher, so you can stop the place from burning down. I'm sure the insurance company appreciates that."

Haha, I say dryly. Your humor is quite witty, I applaud.

In an attempt to make the kitchen less bland and boring, I have also hung a calendar on the wall and also some potholders because where else are you supposed to put potholders, really?

Then you turn around in order to smugly grin at my appreciation of your witty, dry humor.

And see:

So, there's the rest of the kitchen. Sink with only a handful of dirty dishes, some red curtains that you can't really appreciate in this photo, and spider plant number two.

I imagine you are mildly impressed with the curtains, but that's probably giving you too much credit at this point.

The tour (for the most part) over, we then proceed to eat some (unburnt) food in the dining room before I blindfold you again and escort you out.

Please do come back at some point in the near future so I can show you the rest. :)

Been drawing some more today and yesterday and the day before maybe. So I suppose at some point during the week I might get around to scanning them in and posting them for you to mock. Or something. If you can't wait that long, you can always go HERE. There's not really anything there that I haven't already posted here, but there it is. ::shrug::

In other news, Kathy is coming back to work on Monday, which makes me greatly pleased. I will now have someone to share in my mocking of The Clueless One. Other than Xanga, of course. No, no, you'll never be replaced. Even if you did mock my kitchen.

Anyway, now I am going to take a shower and then dry off with my nice clean towels. Have a fabulous evening.