today's horoscope

Well this sounds encouraging:

You may find yourself bursting into tears for no apparent reason today, Aquarius. Seek comfort in sitting by a body of water where you can let your emotions flow. Tension builds as the storm draws near. Once it has passed, however, there is calm as the sunshine pierces the clouds. This time of peace and serenity may seem far off, but it's closer than you think.

 

I burst into tears this morning, but that had a reason - I had to go back to work after having four wonderful days off.  Waaahhh! 

 

I don't want any more tears and I want my serenity and sunshine now!

 

 

wisconsin's not so bad

You know, sometimes I get down on Wisconsin.  I get pissed off at the stereotypes of the fat beer-swilling, cheese-loving, cow milking, backwoods hicks.  I think about the politicians like McCarthy and Walker and Ryan, and I forget all of the great people who have come out of this state.  I took a moment today to take a look at some of the awesome people who have called the true mitten state home, and found some who I hadn't known about.  Pleasant surprises!  Here are some of the greats...

Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker - you know, the people who brought you such classic scenes as this:

And while we're on funny people, let's add a few more: Chris Farley, Joel Hodgson (you know, MST3K), Frank Caliendo, and another of the greats, Gene Wilder:

Then there were more actors listed like Willem Dafoe and Heather Graham, Tom Hulce (though it's not certain), Tony Shaloub, Spencer Tracy, and a couple of people I was pleasantly surprised to see: Mark Ruffalo - my favorite Hulk...

...and the vampire I want to be when I grow up - Kristin Bauer van Straten (Pam from True Blood) Oh, and this is completely NSFW


And there are so many more names that you know, like Harry Houdini, Georgia O'Keefe, Frank Lloyd Wright, Orson Welles, Liberace, Les Paul, and a whole slew of others.  Let's just not get into the whole serial killer thing like Dahmer and Gein, okay?

Yay for Wisconsin!  We're not all backwards-thinking, 19th century-living, paranoia-instilling douchecanoes.

ostriches from hell - updated with illustration!

I pass an ostrich farm on my way to work every day.  Considering I've been driving this path for the past nine years, I kind of know how they usually look and act on any normal day.  (Not to mention I've seen them doing things that I really have never had any desire to see.  Ostrich luvin')

Oh!  Did I tell you I hate ostriches?

They peck hard, they kick hard, they're really fast and birds just shouldn't be that big.  At all.  Unless they're a Muppet with a person standing inside them. And even then they're still kind of creepy.

Anyway, as I was getting up to the farm on my drive this morning, I noticed that the ostriches were standing in a group up near the fence line and they were holding their wings down in an odd way that I hadn't seen before.  Hmm, wonder what that's all about?  Then I get to the point where I'm right in front of them and I saw something horrific.  They were all staring in the same direction with almost zombie-like eyes and their mouths (beaks? bills?) were all gaping open like you see in horror movies - think Invasion of the Body Snatchers. 

Ahhhhhhh!

Okay, the picture above is from wiki commons and is only one bird, but imagine seeing twenty of these things doing exactly the same thing.  I'll have to update this later with my own illustration.

EDIT:  I've done a quick sketch of what I saw.  Well, a smaller number of them anyway...

They don't look happy, do they?

So now I'm convinced that their demon ostrich overlord is sending the message that it's time for them to attack.  The human race will not be wiped out by global warming, disease, zombies or even a Sharknado, it will be taken over by possessed ostriches.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

tiny ducks and brain-dead boy-teens and psychos

Well!  What an interesting few days it's been.  I could easily write separate posts about each of these events, but the way they've been running one right into another calls for one longish post.  Consider yourself warned.

It started off on Friday when the hubby received a call from one of the tenants saying that there were a bunch of ducklings following everybody around outside.  We had known that there was a nest there and that it would be full of little ducks soon, but for some reason the mother was nowhere to be found and the six little fuzzy chirping babies wanted to be led to food!  They followed people into their garages, up hills, around driveways - it was so dang cute!  But we also knew it wasn't safe for them.  As the neighbors gathered, it was decided we'd call the people over at Fellow Mortals, an amazing non-profit wildlife hospital in the next town over, to see what they recommended.  While we waited to hear back from them, we thought we'd better gather them up and thought maybe if we left them by their nest, the mom would come back.  You know, like those starlings last year.  We grabbed a big plastic bin and gently placed them inside.  We shortly got a call back from Fellow Mortals and they said that it's not right for the mother to be absent like that after her babies have hatched and to bring them in to their facility in the morning.  Our only other question was do we leave them outside or is it too cold?  Too cold!  So I brought the bin of tiny ducks into our apartment where they spent the night.

Rub-a-dub-dub, six ducks in a tub

I got up on Saturday morning, went to work for a few hours (more weekend joy) and then went home to collect the bin and the babies and take them to the facility.  They apparently fall asleep on car rides just like baby humans.  When I got there, they took them right in the back and checked them out.  They looked pretty healthy, but because they didn't know if maybe the mom ate something poisonous and fed it to them, they were going to keep a close eye on them for a while.  Turns out they were about three days old (therefore hatched on our kid's birthday) and were about a month behind normal egg-laying schedule.  They would have to be housed there probably until next spring when they could safely be released back into the wild.  Wow - this place is amazing!  (Seriously, if you want to give to a worth-while charity, please give to this one.  Follow the link above and click on "Donate". You can even say it's in the name of the ducklings admitted on 8/3/13.)

Napping in the car

  

So, with the little duckies taken care of, it was time to head home and mentally prep for my son's birthday party - a sleepover and trip to a local waterpark.  With a group of 4 or 5 thirteen-year-old boys.  Give me strength!!

There was an interesting phenomenon that I saw though that I'd never seen before at one of his birthday parties, and I've shared this with a couple of friends already, so excuse the repetition, but it baffles me.  Apparently when one-on-one with a thirteen-year-old boy, he comprehends what you're saying, follows directions (to a point), is a normal human being, but put him in a group of kids who are the same age and all of that disappears.  They become easily distracted, don't finish sentences or thoughts, start doing something like heading to the locker room to change, but instead stop after one step and try to whack each other with towels...for five minutes...before we had to start leading them to the locker room physically.  It was like we had never said anything at all.  I knew this day would come eventually, but I was hoping it would wait until he hit high school, and my hope of it ending around 18 was squashed by the hubby telling me it lasted until at least 40.   (Still glad I had a boy though)

We eventually got them to a place where they could change and went back to our place for a  sleepover.  Pizza, Doritos, Combos, soda and video games.  They were pretty content and the hubster and I went to bed at 11:30, leaving the dogs to make sure they didn't tear up the place.  The dogs did well.  Everyone survived and we sent them home in the morning.  Success! 

Sunday was a day of recuperation for everyone (booze and naps!), but today became interesting.  The hubby was accosted by some psycho ex-boyfriend of another one of our tenants.  Apparently this guy thinks that she's such a winner that every man who has ever talked to her (my husband included) is obviously boning her and must be dealt with. Even though he's not with her anymore and hasn't been for quite some time (gee, I wonder why). Can we say loony?  He threatened him, threatened to f*ck up his family (meaning us), blah blah blah, and drove off. 

Well that's awesome!

      

Now I get to make sure I carry my phone with me at all times and watch out for his car and keep the doors locked, but of course I'll do all of this without being paranoid because I'm freaking Wonder Woman, dammit!

So, yeah.  That's things here.  How have you been?

  

i *am* ready for some football

The chilly weather this weekend was downright fall-like. (The Weather Channel had deemed "Julytober" Note to TWC - combining words doesn't always work as well as Sharknado.)  The weather was perfect for my twenty-some-odd mile walk on Saturday.  I didn't sweat, didn't want to pass out from the heat, I was thankful!  On Sunday though, I woke up and put on the most comfortable snuggly clothes I could find...my big Packers sweatshirt and capris.  And it was cold and sunny-ish and we went to the store and all I wanted to buy was cheese, sausage and crackers and bugles and chili dip and pretzels and ranch dip...and I WANTED FOOTBALL FOOD!!!  And football! 

And it didn't help that my Twitter and Instagram feeds were full of pictures of Packers training camp. 

Full pads today. QB Aaron Rodgers on the move early in practice. #Packers pic.twitter.com/2d8T3GBmAI
— Green Bay Packers (@packers) July 28, 2013

And to top it all off...Clay's back!  Aren't you as excited as I am?

Their bikes were too small, so Clay just stopped to say hello to these triplets in 52 jerseys. #Packers pic.twitter.com/AunUawidAM
— Green Bay Packers (@packers) July 28, 2013

Gah!  The cuteness!

Okay, I love living in a place with four distinct seasons and I'm not quite ready for summer to be over, but this little taste of fall and football season leaves me wanting more. 

and the geeks shall inherit the earth

SDCC was last weekend, (that's San Diego Comic-Con, for those of you not in the know), and with so much going on in the world of sci-fi and fantasy, the "geek" label is thrown around like a frisbee at
Bonnaroo.  Who's a geek, who's not geeky enough, girls and fake geekery, yadda yadda yadda...

So, now "geek" is something that's exclusive as well?  In that case, I don't know if I'm a geek or not.  I know I'm pretty dang geeky when it comes to some things, but whether or not I fit into the new definition of the "geek" label is beyond me.

I grew up not only playing with Barbies and My Little Ponies, but also with Transformers and Star Wars figures.  When I watched TV, my favorite shows were Wonder Woman, He-Man and Super Friends.  I had a crush on Christopher Reeve as Superman and David Bowie in Labyrinth.  These were in the mainstream, not fringe entertainment.

The same can be said for entertainment today.  We're in the land of 80's remakes like Transformers and GI Joe and not only that, but comic book characters rule the world of movies and cartoons.  Avengers, Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, (Green) Arrow, sadly still no Wonder Woman though...they're everywhere.  It's rare that you find anyone who doesn't watch any of these.

So, I guess where my confusion lies is if all of these characters and story lines are so mainstream, when does a fan cross into the "geek" category?  Are we all geeks or are there certain criteria that need to be adhered to? 

I've read that they now have geek clubs in schools where you have to answer certain questions in order to be accepted.  Seriously?  Geekdom is something you can be excluded from now?  Something you have to study to attain?  I just do not get this.

And there are throngs of women/girls who feel like they're not accepted.  That they're being labeled as "fake geek".  How can you be fake geek?  I just can't wrap my head around this.  This whole issue has been summarized in one music video by The Doubleclicks....



So, here I am...  You know what my interests were when I grew up.  I still love watching the original sci-fi & fantasy movies I watched as a kid, I'm a huge fan of the new Marvel movies, still strive to be Wonder Woman, but I've never owned a comic book (well, until this year), never got into role playing games, Dungeons & Dragons (except for the 80's cartoon), and I don't know the names of the aliens sitting behind Jabba the Hut's throne in Return of the Jedi.  To throw everyone for a loop, let's also throw in the fact that I greatly enjoy watching football as well.  (*gasp*)  Where do I fall on the geek scale?

And does it really matter?

Just be yourself, my friends!  Like what you like, be okay with what you don't like.  Don't feel like you have to conform to standards to be accepted, and most important of all, always follow Wheaton's Law:

Don't be a dick.

no, i'm not on the face book

Today is my first full day off of Facebook - I deactivated my account yesterday evening.  Jaws dropped across the land when I warned them of my impending departure.  You see, I was always on Facebook.  No matter where I was, work, home, car, and it was sucking the life out of me!  Even if I wasn't posting anything, it was on somewhere in the background, frequently refreshed, so I wouldn't miss a minute of what was going on.

And what was going on anyway? 

Not a whole lot.

Most of the people who I really wanted to see updates on fell into two categories: They rarely ever posted or they also posted things via Twitter, Instagram and/or blogs.  And yet I kept hitting refresh.  I'd keep getting frustrated by the things I was seeing from other people- the memes, the reposting without researching, the constant outrage, the incessant need for attention.  And I'd keep refreshing.   I'd go for periods of days without posting anything, but I just. kept. refreshing.

A few months ago, I came to the realization that this wasn't a productive way to spend my time (ya think?) and knew that I wanted to let it go completely, but I couldn't just yet.  I was in the midst of planning a class reunion and that was our main means of communication, so instead of leaving completely, I drastically reduced the number of people on my friends list by about half, only keeping my classmates, close family, and the few closer friends I wanted to try to keep in touch with.  The purge gave me a great feeling.  I wasn't done yet, but at least it was a start.

Once the reunion was over a couple of weeks ago, I was ready to leave completely.  Any responsibilities I had on there, I was sure to give to other completely competent people.  Any pages I was watching on Facebook for news or information I found on Twitter and started following them there instead.  Those friends who fell into the "also posting on Twitter/Instagram/blog" category, I made sure to follow on those other sites.  I started a new blog which I'd actually give my family the link to (as opposed to this one) to keep them up to date on pictures of events and non-events.  I put all of my contact information on my page for a few days so that people would have the time to jot it all down or add me to their bookmarks before anything I posted disappeared.

Last night, when I was sure I had done all I could, I deactivated my account.  This is no simple task.  You have to go through three different security measures and on top of it all, they throw up a page with 5 random friends on it saying how much they are going to miss you when you're gone.  Of the people they listed, I might agree with one, but seriously?  They play the guilt card?  I finally made it through the gauntlet of "are you sure"s and was free.

I'm hoping to stay off forever.  My husband and close friends laugh at me - they're pretty sure I can't do it. 

My friend sent this to me.  I thanked him for his vote of confidence.

Barring any type of emergency where I need to get in touch with two hundred people at once or the need to keep up with something going on that I can only do via that medium, I think I can probably do this.  Sure, it's going to be difficult, but I have other things that can occupy my time and I have pretty good willpower.  And hey, maybe my hubby and I will have actual conversations at night now instead of both of us sitting there, laptops on our laps, hitting refresh every 5 minutes.

THAT will be refreshing.

why i will probably never land another job

I've been employed by the same company for almost eleven years now.  I can't remember the last job interview I had because when I came to this company, I was hired back by someone I had worked for previously.  No need for an interview. 

As any person who is looking to expand their horizons would do, I get job opening emails and tips for getting the perfect new job posted in my facebook feed that I rarely ever look at unless feeling exceptionally bored or inspired (go figure). 

Today I clicked on a link titled "How to Answer the Top 10 Job Interview Questions" and discovered that there is no way I could do this these days.  When I was looking for a job back in the day, I just needed a job.  Entry level.  As long as I could show up on time, speak intelligently and smile, I was in.  Now that I have more experience and would be looking for a position suited to that experience, and adding in the lack of available jobs compared to the number of people looking for those jobs, there are games that need to be played.  There are keywords to be spoken, research to be done.  And that's if you even get to the interview process.  The resume bots are out there scanning for keywords that probably don't even apply to the specific position you're looking for.  Miss one of those words and you're passed over. 

I admire the people who have the ambition to go out there, research every single company they might be interested in, puff themselves up, practice the perfect handshake, rehearse their interview answers in front of a mirror, but it's just not something I can do.  It's just not me.  (Of course, if I were out of a job, I suppose I could do anything out of desperation.)  So with that in mind I just have to say, all of you out there looking for a job and going through this, I truly wish you the best of luck. The world of the job search is just crazy!

Side note: No, if prospective employers are out there googling my name, they will not find this blog.  I'm not completely insane.

did she say what i think she just said?

Oh, all this Paula Deen nonsense.  I really don't care what some butter-lovin', fake-tanned, southern-cookin' TV personality says.  (If y'all don't know what I'm talking about, and I only know about it because of the Daily Show, here's the scoop.)

The whole thing did remind me of one very important life-lesson that I learned...the hard way.

Where to start....  Well, I guess the beginning.  My grandmother was born in 1912 (a week before or after the Titanic went down - I can never remember which) and lived in a farming town in South Dakota.  They were extremely rural (she endured the Dust Bowl), and a little behind the times.  She was raised with certain...stereotypes...and used certain terms that in her mind were perfectly commonplace and not at all taboo.  She was raised with poems and songs from the time that she would recite around the house when she was cooking or cleaning, the same way we would sing along with any song we grew up with.  Here's an example of one of them (if you're offended by n-words, I suggest you don't click the link).  Yeah...  Brazil nuts were called "n----r toes" (sigh), and this was a book that I read quite often when I was at her place:

I remember this cover vividly.
It was much more tame than the original 1900's version.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not accusing her of being blatantly racist.  (Okay, she wasn't the most open-minded of individuals, but she wasn't out to be intentionally derogatory.)  She just didn't understand that the terms and phrases that used to be mainstream (right or not), had become quite offensive and were not to be used  - especially in public.  Especially especially around children.

On one occasion, after she had recited one of her childhood poems and because it was a word I had never heard before (because my parents knew it wasn't very nice), I asked her what that n-word meant.  She stated very simply that it was just another word for a black person.  Oh!  Well, okay then.  I was in grade school, my brain was a sponge, and I loved soaking up new words to impress people with.  Let's add this one to the list!

Flash forward a few months later to one of my parents' popular outdoor parties.  As everyone was on our lawn playing another round of killer croquet while downing sipping on bullfrog punch, my mother had donned some sort of wig stand head of a brownish color and put it on her shoulder to become a two-headed monster.  (Don't ask, I don't remember the details...I attribute it to the copious amounts of bullfrog punch.)
I said, "Wow, Mom!  Now you're a N----r!"

Her eyes widened, I think she actually stopped breathing for a moment.  My uncle, who was standing behind her, did a bullfrog punch spit-take and said, "Oohhhh, I think I'll go this way now..." backed up a few steps and high-tailed it back to the food, trying his hardest not to laugh.  After catching her breath and a bit of stammering, my mother tried keeping her voice at 7 instead of the 11 she really wanted and asked, "Where did you learn that word?"  I was very confused.  It didn't seem like a bad word to me, I mean my grandma said it a lot, so why were people reacting that way?  I told her very innocently and quietly that it was her own mother who gave me that new word.  She was not amused.  In fact, I believe after quickly telling me that that word was never to be used again because it's not a nice word at all, she sought out her mother and gave her a good what-for.  Luckily because of my complete innocence, I was spared from punishment.

It did made for quite a spectacle though, and I don't think I ever heard my grandmother say that word around me again after that.  Oh, there were plenty of other choice words, but that one was not one of them.  (Sometime I'll have to tell you about her hatred of George Michael.)

So, yeah.  There's my random flashback for no good reason.  Thanks a lot, Paula Deen!

lost in translation

Recently we had a very large Japanese group staying in the hotel that I work in.  In fact, they basically took every room in the place.  When I would venture into the lobby area, it would be filled with Japanese men in suits, speaking to each other in a language I did not understand at all.  Other than the few employees who were tucked away in a corner, I felt like I was the odd man out.  It seemed like, even though the surroundings were familiar, I was in a foreign country.  Like I could walk out of those doors and I'd be somewhere completely different.  Or maybe that's just what I was wishing for.



This feeling of disorientation was compounded by the fact that I the one friend that I had at work for the past 6 years had just moved away and I felt like I was stuck there alone.  My sense of normalcy was gone.  My routines blown.  My momentary escapes to his office to chat about upcoming movies or TV shows, or discuss work items that were pissing us off were no more.  He got out - I remained.  

I had my review and though it was a glowing review, my boss told me that she knows I'm not happy there sometimes. Asked if I'm looking for a new job and if so, what I would be looking for in this area. She knows there's not much out there. Another hotel? Another admin job? Something completely different? I had no answers. I don't have a direction. 



She said it's up to me to find my happiness here, which I know is true...if I want to stay.  If I want to cross-train in another department, do it.  If I want to change my job somehow, she's all for it.  She said I need to leave my office more - get out and make more friends in the hotel. The problem is, I've tried.  I have very little in common with the people I work with.  I've written about it before.  We don't have similar interests, they're either younger or older than I am, I don't care about fashion.  Sometimes it's like they're speaking a language just as foreign to me as the Japanese gentleman who were surrounding me in the lobby.

I know I need to make a change.  I need to figure out how.  I need to find a place where I fit, where I'm not walking among people I don't understand. And I'll have to do it on my own.