The wise man built his house upon a rock...

errr..... maybe the Primary song was wrong?

Ultimate Sadness!

I learned something really tragic tonight.  Pop rocks chocolate loses the *pop* factor over time.  It simply becomes a piece of chocolate with a tiny amount of popping, if you know what you're looking for.  And if you suck all the chocolate off, you're left with a piece of what used to have pop, but is now just a decently hard (but slightly chewy) piece of flavorless sadness.

If anyone happens to be going to Jerusalem (or knows anyone there), I would much appreciate a new bar or two to cheer me up.

Plant Spotlight - Doloris

No, not Dolores. This fantastic plant was not named after the evil, wicked woman in Harry Potter. Rather, she has a much more pleasant namesake, my grandma, Doloris, who is a wonderful woman.

When I first got the start from Brother, (only three little starts, if you can believe it from the pictures!) it reminded me of an old-fashioned kind of plant. So I named her after my grandma, who was fantastically old-fashioned and I heart her a lot.

Here she is almost one year ago (May 2008):

However, in this past year she has grown remarkably huge. To the point that I had to repot her and she took up far too much room on the floor, so we figured out how to make her into a hanging plant, where she is much happier. Here's what she looks like today:

She's a very hardy plant. So long as you love her and make sure she gets water here and there and has some sunlight, she'll flourish like crazy. She's a perfect option for someone without a green thumb. Just like Grandma, she loves everyone. If anyone wants one for themselves, bring me a pot and potting soil if you have some (if not, I'm pretty sure I still do) and I'll make starts and even plant them for you. (Unless you're comfortable with starts. Then I'll just give you the starts.)

Plant names

Sister recently decided to listen to my wisdom and name her plants.  I promise, plants do better if you name them, talk to them, etc.  They're basically my pets since I can't have a cat.  Anyway, she blogged about the first plants she named, and would you believe it?  She gave one of them the same names that my plant had first!  Though, hers was named after a living person, and mine after a scriptural person.  So we decided that it was ok.  But to keep her from doing it again, I promised her I would blog the names of all of my plants.  Due to all of my plant pictures being on another computer, I will just give the list of names now, and then I'll start my plant spotlight up again, complete with pictures.  I'm sure you're all thrilled about this.  :)

Amber

Alfred

Jasmine

Karmen

Darby

Tamar (the duplicate name)

George

Chloe

Toby

Doloris

Julie

Daphne Iris of Guild

Irene (pronounced eye-ree-nay)

Juliette

Deceased plants (Sister, if you really want one of these names, I could be flexible)

Ryana

Beatrice (which actually belonged to The Cold One, but I took care of since April... and then killed)

Jefferson

Dibs!

We moved at work today, new cubicles and all that jazz. I went to use the restroom and the bathroom is set up exactly the same, so I went to my normal stall. I was a little surprised to see "Marlene" in stickers all over the door. I was a little shocked... you can claim a public bathroom stall? Does that mean I can't use it? (I was rebellious and used it.) I looked around and found that Chelcy, Jolynn, Katharine and Karen had also claimed stalls. That leaves 3 for the rest of the public.

My goal is now to meet Marlene to see if I should boobytrap her stall or if I should be nice.

Contradictions

I was discussing the pros and cons of blogging today with Laser Jock.  (Or, in other words, I was trying to convince him to blog and he'd have none of it.)  That conversation inspired me to blog again (see my last post) and next thing I knew, I was reading through my archives.  I found that when I got to my really long posts, I skipped them.

Does anyone else find this hypocritical of me?  I won't even read my own long blog posts?

[sigh]

For you, Goblin King

The Goblin King got mad at me the other day for not posting on this blog anymore.  "I miss all the random stuff you'd come up with."

Hmm... what random things could I tell you today?

Did you know that you can put together an entire artificial Christmas tree while running horrible, cursed stats, and get both done without sacrificing the other?  It also makes the worst job in the world tolerable.  Too bad I can't do it again tomorrow as I do the worst part of stats.  [sigh]

I repotted Alfred today.  Is it cruel to do this to a plant?

Laser Jock thought I was being quite cruel.  In fact he told me that I was beig string-ent.  [rolls eyes]  I convinced him I was doing it out of love.  Alfred isn't strong enough to hold himself up in his new pot quite yet.  Give it a week or so and I'll probably remove two of those three strings.  The last one will probably get moved over the weeks to train him to stay in his pot.  It's huge.  I can't repot him into something bigger.  He must learn to grow in a circle.

Hmmm... something else.  Three is a good number.  I should have three random things on here.  Oh, this should please you, GK.  A Garfield comic!  This one made me laugh right out loud.  Go check it out.

Yellow

This is the T-shirt I bought Yellow in Jerusalem as a gag gift. (Please note the word "Girl" is in various fonts. They didn't have the press-on with "girlfriend" so they got a "boyfriend" one, cut out the word "boy", and replaced it with scrap letters that they had cut out from other press-ons. Also, it was a man with one arm that made this shirt. Also, please note the color of the shirt.)

He wore it for the first time (that I've ever seen) when we went camping over Labor Day. It made me laugh and I figured it should be shared with the world.

Thank you for saying thank you!

Part of my job is to answer emails from patrons about our website. Sometimes patrons can be kind of snarky in their emails ("Why does your site do this when I obviously told it to do this other thing?!???!?!?!"), and I take great pleasure in either fixing the problem or writing back and very tactfully explaining what they did wrong. (I take no pleasure when there's nothing I can do about the problem. That just annoys me.)

Yesterday I answered just such an email. I saw immediately what she had done wrong and why it would be confusing. So, in great detail, I explained how each part of the site worked, and even went beyond that and did her search for her, telling her exactly where she could find the data she wanted. It made me feel kind of cool to be able to answer her email in such detail.

Today I got the following reply from her, "That was a FANTASTIC explanation! Thank you for taking time to do all that for me."

It made me smile. Those kind of responses make all the snarky emails totally worth it.

junk mail

Dear Publishers Clearing House ~

Stop sending me your crap. I don't open it, and you're just killing trees.

~ Dragon Lady

I CAN cook! I promise!

Despite my best efforts to prove otherwise today in my labors of a boston cream pie (Brother's birthday) and brownies (visiting teaching), I really can cook! (We won't go into the terrors of my kitchen today.) I mean, really... I made a boston cream pie!

So why is it that we got two fire extinguishers for wedding presents? Do people not know me at all?! (Heartless, you may remain silent on this one.)

Plant Spotlight - Iris Daphne of Guild

This beautiful orchid was one of my favorite splurges at IKEA. Isn't she pretty? Soon after I got her, I decided that all of my plants needed to be named. I enlisted the help of my roommates in doing so. The Cold One was quite fantastic about helping me come up with names... except for this beauty. The Cold One insisted upon calling her Iris. I can't call her Iris! She'll have an identity complex. Problem is, Heartless also liked the name Iris and every once in awhile I'd even find myself slipping. [sigh] However, I liked the name Daphne much better for her. It seems a royal name... also, it's the name of my best friend when I was a small child. Finally, a compromise was struck. Her name is officially Iris Daphne of Guild. When I initially named her, it was a lot more complicated. Probably something inspired by Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. The several names were forgotten, however, and it just became Iris Daphne. But that sounded... empty. It was missing something. It wasn't royal enough. So she got a place as well. Where is Guild, you ask? No idea. But I have the strangest suspicion that it was subconsciously influenced by Myst.

Sadly... she's down to only two flowers. However, I moved her to a windowsill and she has been much happier. There is a bud about ready to bloom and another one that I expect will bloom in a week or two.

Finally!

When you're done with the game, you can watch an instant replay. Typically this only takes a couple of minutes. As for this game...
Breakdown
Taking over all other colors: 2 mins
Battle over that one territory: 4.5 mins
Final takeover, once I broke through that bottleneck: 1 min

Dice Wars... indefinitely

This is a horrible position to be in.  I've been battling green for probably the past 20 minutes and it always comes back to this.  Unfortunately, Dice Wars is addicting, so I just keep playing... I wonder who will give up first, me or the computer.

Randomness for Sanity

Heartless and I went to a meeting today at work that was amongst the most chaotic meetings of my entire life. We took 4 pages of notes... not on the meeting itself, but commenting on the mayhem flying around us. We quite enjoyed them, so we thought it might be fun to share parts with you as well. And now you know the secret as to how we stay sane at work.

• I'm not a user.  :(
• Since when is red and blue opposite?
• Funny thing is, I think
• Sometimes you have to think
• If you chance to meet a frown...
• TOO MANY VOICES!!!
• Reskew = rescue?
• afghpqklmna  (apparently my attempt to recreate "asldfkjal; dfj;law klwe" (what I type when I'm frustrated) comes out in mostly alphabetical order when I actually have to write out the letters by hand.)
• "No.  That's a Kofax bug."  Isn't this a KOFAX MEETING?!
• Valid.  But dumb.
• Look how [coworker] eats her cheese.
• So, maybe we just need training.
• "Oh!  I can zoom!"
• "Hello!  That's what the list was!"  "Apparently not!"  (This reminded Heartless of a dinosaur comic (The 2nd frame of the comic))
• Can I go home?

And just for randomness with no context:

HHoowwardaraandndgered

angered

anGgeeorregde

WWWoWGooooodoo

Time to get up!

Yellow's alarm clock is set to the radio. This morning we woke up to the oddest words ever:

"Can Jesus and Satan worship God together? This morning, here to sing a song together, now we have Jesus and Satan."

I love working internationally

I just got off a work phone call where I was told to "make haste" and "give a shout out".

That long phone call was totally worth it for those two phrases at the end.

Just a little thing

I love it when books have obvious breaks in the middle of chapters. Like, a few extra lines or three stars or something. You know what I mean.

Why do I love them? Because it gives me a good place to stop reading where I can easily see where I stopped without being a chapter break. Because chapter endings almost always leave me on the edge of my seat wanting more. Half the time if I stopped 3 paragraphs before the end of the chapter I would be fine. But noooo... I always have to read those last 3 paragraphs and force myself to close the book, then spend the next several hours wondering what in the world is gonna happen.

I suppose authors are just smart that way.

It's creepy when these things are so true

You Are Aurora! (A.K.A. Sleeping Beauty.)

Thoughtful and loving. Authority figures probably have been sheltering you all of your life. Thankfully you're a very tranquil person who is content with what life has given you, but secretly you want to know how the outside world works.

Which Disney Princess Are You?

A+ to O-

So, remember how I was so sad about not being able to give blood? Well, I was free and clear to give blood again in July. But the beginning of June I went to France. I didn't know if that would affect my blood donor eligibility or not, though. I kept meaning to call and ask, but kept forgetting. I made Yellow promise to come with me because he has the most amazing veins that were made for giving blood. Yet, I still kept forgetting to call.

Today I got an email from the Red Cross reminding me to give blood and I decided this was the reminder I've been needing. So I called. After calling two numbers and talking to three different ladies, I ended up finding out that 1 week in France is nothing and I can still give blood. And one year after returning from Egypt is enough time. Then she even walked me through what I would have to answer on the little computer questionnaire thing.

Red Cross, here we come!