Randomosity

As if you couldn’t tell from my poll a couple days ago, you know what is really irritating me right now? People on Facebook who, if I or one of my Florida friends comments on the unreasonable cold we’re having, says that because we live in Florida we really have no right to complain about the cold.

OK, first? Fuck you.

Second? Next time it gets down to 23, I want you to turn off your heat and randomly crack open three windows – not much, just about a quarter of an inch. Now live like that for three days. Is it about 40 degrees in your house? HOW DO YOU FEEL NOW, MOTHERFUCKER? Because that’s what it’s like for me BECAUSE WE DON’T HAVE A HEATER. Tell me I don’t have a right to complain about the cold now, Frozen Fingers.

Third? My mentioning that I am cold in no way detracts from the fact that you’re cold – there is more than enough cold to go around –  so why do you want to behave like you have a monopoly on cold (other than the fact that you’re a grandstanding asshat)?

Whew. Apparently I needed to work out some anger there.

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I lost my dayplanner about a week and a half ago. I switched immediately to the old tried-and-not-true method of writing shit down on little scraps of paper so I wouldn’t forget what to do… promptly lost most of the scraps… and started making a list on a big notebook which I also seem to have misplaced somewhere. Yesterday I found my dayplanner and now all I can do is shoot it dirty looks. Clearly something I am doing is not effective, be it making lists or using scrap paper or notebooks or dayplanners. What do y’all use to keep track of the millions of tiny things that need to be remembered?

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Did I tell you about the $70 knife I bought? It was really hard for me to purchase it, but once it came and I used it I was so glad I did. Check this fucker out – I buy my soap base in 25-lb blocks, and have been hacking them up with a regular knife. Messy, possibly dangerous, hard, and it takes a while. I usually have to do about a quarter of the block at one time, and then go rest my arms. NOT ANY MORE! This new knife cuts through the block like buttah! BUTTAH! And so far I have managed not to cut off any of my fingers, although I did nick one (sharp knife is sharp) and also cut a hole in a shirt that accidentally got caught by it.

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Have I mentioned the problem we’ve been having with the TV? For a number of months now our TV will randomly turn off. We’ve done extensive testing on this (read: “watching TV”) and it doesn’t seem to matter what’s going on; it’s almost completely random. We’ve somewhat got it narrowed down to “when the TV needs to warm up” and “when there are bright things on the screen”… which means that it’ll turn off the first few thirty times you turn it on in the day, or if there’s a tampon commercial on with lots of people running around in white, against white backgrounds.

It got so frustrating that a couple of weeks ago we just quit turning it off. We’d leave it on one of the music channels all night, on a low volume. Now that I work at home, I like to have the TV on during the day. It’s a voice, and sometimes I even get to sit in front of it and let it feed me pablum as I wrap soaps or paint ceramics. So if I have to turn it back on every three minutes, it becomes rather frustrating and almost like a chore. And yet I can’t sit at the table for six hours and wrap soap with nothing going on around me (yes, I like to cultivate silence… but that’s *too much* silence).

Now it’s gotten to the point where even if it’s been on for 36 hours, it will randomly turn off. Mostly when there’s a lot of brightness on the screen… say, if I want to look at the guide to see what else is on TV. It gets to the blue and white of the guide and just… :click:. It got so frustrating we brought the little TV out of the bedroom (since we never watch it) and put it on a TV tray in front of the big TV. (Insert many jokes by Tim along the lines of “whatcha doin, hon? Watching a little TV? HAHAHAHAHAH! See what I did there!?”

So we’ve been watching the little TV for a couple of days now, and I’m getting used to it – other than if there’s a silence between commercials I automatically think the TV has turned off. Until this morning, when Tim came into my office and informed me that the little TV is acting wonky. Apparently it is turning itself on when it is supposed to be off. Sigh.

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Unca Joe wrote a cute review for my soap. You should read it.

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I have a friend who is in the process of being diagnosed with cancer, most likely Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. I have a whole blog post in my head about how angry this makes me at the universe, as she is the sweetest, dearest, most stubborn and full of life person I know. Fuck you, universe. Why can’t you give this to someone who sucks? Why do you have to give it to someone who already has been through some shit? She doesn’t need more shit, she needs chocolate and roses and wine for the rest of her long, active, beautiful life. At the same time that I feel helpless to help her, I feel the love and strength emanating from her blog posts about how bravely she is facing this.

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Shiny new kiln is shiny. Post on that in my head and coming soon, too. I had to wait for a while before test-firing, but I’ll explain that in the post. Suffice to say that I’ll be cranking that puppy up today, just as soon as I finish glazing a couple of things!

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Is everyone having a good holiday season? I haven’t missed Christmas, have I? I’ve been mighty busy. For all I know it could be February now.