Thuddingly obvious horoscope day

My horoscope for February 20, 2009

Today is a day to find your bearings, JAY. It may feel as someone has given you
a road map for life and a direction into which you can channel your energy as
someone who innovates things and liberates other people. Today your ideas may
seem to be more concrete and precise, and you will have a clearer idea of where
you are going in life...

An interesting horoscope to've received on the last day of 40 hour employment (for the time being) and the eve of a funeral.

Of Ice Storms and Hard Drives

I find myself pacing around the house tonight. The news has been all gloom and doom today about the weather. We even got sent home early from work today. The drive in to work and drive home with mostly slippery and slidey, so I'm glad we got that opportunity to avoid rush hour. It's glazing up out there now, little ice chips hitting crusted-over snow and sounding vaguely like a crackling fire to me. If you step on the snow, the stop crust breaks like plaster. They say it'll (maybe) be the "Worst Ice Storm EVER" and all day long on Twitter we called it SnoMG!

Every five minutes I pace in here to fret if I should shut down before the threatened power outage happens or run another diagnostic. I've defragmented and run every tool in my System Mechanic's arsenal. My computer is still buggy and freezes up if sitting idle too long or forced to... well, do work.

Not a word in the vein of "pets taking after their owners," either.

The last two weeks have been buggier than ever, computer-wise and last night was my final straw. I couldn't look at a referral someone sent me. Namely, something that could be beneficial to me career-wise. Instead I sat around with egg on my face repetitively rebooting. There's little more emasculating for a guy nowadays than saying "I'm sorry, but I can't really read this right now because my computer doesn't work."

So, I'm going to be stripping her down and reinstalling everything shortly (by which I probably really mean I'll be buttering Matt up to to do it, which I will call him "helping me") and if that doesn't work, I'm going to pony up some credit or get a small loan and finally get myself a new machine.

In my head I call it my "infinite patience," but in reality I think it's just my "infinite masochism." New box coming... or rebuilt one. Either way, the dawn of a new and exciting era. One in which I can sit down and actually want to write a blog post instead of just rebooting and trying fixes.

Meanwhile, the house is chilly and everything's glazing up out there. I'm going to shut down, make a cup of hot tea, and curl up with an honest to goodness book (madness, I know!).

More to follow...

Agatha Raisin and the Guy Who Feels A Little Sheepish Admitting Publicly He's Read All Her Books...

One of my little list of resolutions for the New Year is to eschew always checking out the latest thing at the library that catches my fancy in order to pursue the amazing backlog of titles I've bought over the years that clutter up my shelves and add to the mover's bill, yet I haven't actually read them yet.

Since I'd checked it out before the list of resolutions were made and it was in the house, I decided to let the book I was about to start - and have since finished - squeak in under the radar. I'm going to try and keep the list through the year, more for my own edification and sense of progress than anything else, and will try and share my progress.

About 4 1/2 years ago or so, BJ suggested I read a mystery series she'd just started and was enjoying. I borrowed the first book from her, M.C. Beaton's "Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death" and enjoyed it so much I pretty much barrelled through the entire series. Since catching up with the backlog, I've scooped up each new one the moment I've seen them on the library shelves. The one I just finished "A Spoonful of Poison" was the 19th (yikes) in the series. The first fourteen all followed the conceit of titles starting with "Agatha Raisin and..." and I'm attached enough to miss that scheme.

This volume features the Agatha Raisin Detective Agency trying to solve a mystery starting with "Who spiked the pots of homemade Plum jam with LSD, leading to the deaths of two little old British ladies" through to "Who killed the Dreamy-yet-Stuffy Architect's first wife" and "Who stole the 30-grand to fix the Church's roof?" There's lots of visiting and countryside and fine cottages. Different oh-so-British characters travel by train and drink tea. Beaton finds a way to work in visits to and from all the series' usual characters and -as in most mysteries - people travel a lot to get things done that really could be resolved with a phone call in the real world. (While good for dramatic purposes, this is not unlike how it always amuses me in television shows like "Smallville," when people will drive to Lex's mansion (established as being twenty miles or so out of town) or all the way to Metropolis (three hours away) for a two minute confrontation... seriously, people, think about your carbon footprint!)

It's a cozy mystery series set in the English Cotswolds, and it's all very twee and comforting with pots of jam and painted china on the covers. Full of thatched cottages and Vicars' wives, as much stays the same as changes and evolves - and what are "Cozies," if not comforting?

I think I enjoy the series because the lead character is composed of the qualities most of us like to play down in ourselves (she's prideful, dyspeptic, cantankerous), making her very human. I think the wish fulfillment qualities of telling people off help immensely. The way she's described, small, with "Bearish" beady eyes, and her general demeanor - I always picture in my head Judi Densch (in fact the whole conceit of her and her pursuit of the equally grouchy James Lacey always makes me think of the old BBC TV show "As Time Goes By" with her and Geoffrey Palmer courting after 38 years apart).

The series also has followed an honest timeline. I like that the characters age and evolve, and in a pop-culture world where most characters keep status quo and try not to break any of the "David & Maddie" rules, it's nice to see a lead who sets her hat for someone, eventually gets him, marries him, then eventually divorces, and moves on. They could have easily stayed together, but had the same 50/50 chances as the rest of us. In the meantime, she does have some thru-lines like subsisting almost exclusively on freezer burned curries and being a character who, refreshingly on the grounds of PC-ing up popular entertainments, still smokes.

Beaton publishes probably 2-3 volumes a year in both her "Agatha Raisin" and "Hamish MacBeth" series (of which I've only read two), so she's little like a cozy-mystery version of the James Patterson industry. If one or two Agatha Raisin titles come out over the next year -- well, I'll probably have dropped my resolution by then and snatch them off the "New Release" shelf...

Oh I just thought of another one

I just remembered one other thing I wanted to focus on in the New Year, even though I'm sure it's reactionary and silly...

11) Cut out the damn Aspartame... after a conversation about Aspartame this last week and hearing aspersions cast upon it about how it slows the brain down and is evidently just terrible for your health, I'm going to try and follow up last year's "Let's weed out some caffeine and soda by switching to Carbonated Water" with "Let's cut out any diet soda for a while not made with Splenda and try a fizzy water and Iced Tea approach for a while."

We'll see how it goes...

Plotting New Year's Resolutions

So I'm actually planning on making New Year's Resolutions this time around. Generally I'm pretty dismissive of the concept and see them as "promises you make in order to break." But, I'm going to try and do them publicly, as most people resolve to do, in order to get held to them.

So, I present "Vague First Draft of New Year's Resolutions"-- and if I say "I", I mean "Me." When I say "You," I generally also mean "Me." It's like "The Royal We" so just go with it.

1) Blog regularly again because it brought you a lot of enjoyment. When you sit around and think "I really should post something" for most of the month of December, while other things are going on, maybe that's your brain saying "Shut up and go type."

2) Secure a greater source of income. I took a lot of paid time-off this year. I didn't really realize how much until I realized I made less this year than I have the last 2. This is not good. I don't care how lousy the friggin' economy is either, MY economy has to improve.

3) Return to the routine that involved going to the gym four to five times a week -- or even once, as you're paying for it. Sure you travelled, sure you had things going on, but -- when a commitment is made (Financially *ahem*) then you really have to stick to it. Bite the bullet, revisit the personal trainer, and get back on the stick. Remember: don't be ashamed you failed, be ashamed you didn't try again.

4) Get all the boxes of files organized and the junk thrown out. There's a lot of junk I got through back in April when I put the house on the market, but too many things still wound up in boxes in the basement. Considering last go round I found pay stubs from the 90's (four moves ago), who knows what evil still lurks in the heart of my clutter?

5) Communicate with friends and neighbors more.This includes getting re-involved at ACRNAlumni.com (My fab neighbors especially. They're all really great and I feel like I never talk to them enough.)

6) Take more pictures and Flickr more - that's another thing you were really enjoying. Also, can't convincingly convince people to post naked for you without a legitimate body of work... (kidding... or am I?)

7) Make a list of new books to read while you spend the year reading all the books you've purchased that you haven't read yet (this WILL take a year). I have "A Peoples' History of the United States" and "Guns, Germs, and Steel" still collecting dust... yet I found time to read "Cross Country" by James Patterson. There's something here that brings great shame to my people.

8) Spend less on frivolous things. As I look around my office I realize that while the Beethoven bobble-head was a gift, I did buy myself a Lava Lamp at some point this year. This needs to stop...

9) Define what you find frivolous. The Lava Lamp gives me pleasure. The bobble-head is frivolous. I think frequently that I have too much clutter. Well, more to the point, I KNOW I have too much clutter. Let's clean house (why didn't I think of this when there was more than 3 days left in the tax year to get tax-deductible donations in to Goodwill?) and get all Zen-resolve-y about what I have and what I need.

10) Get the house re-listed and sold. I resolved the last two New Years that this was the year I would move. Let's make third time the charm, huh?

So there's ten resolutions and the list is subject to change and revision, but these are probably ten core ideas that have been bobbing around in my thoughts...