You will be seeing less of me in July and hopefully by July’s end there will also be less of me to see. Fear not, the blog will still arrive at your virtual doorstep on a daily basis. I plan to take my birthday month as a time to re-evaluate my life a wee little bit.
Read Along With Me
Today’s passage from Notes To Myself.
But if I make you aware of just how I feel, your reaction might give me much blunt information about myself — or at least about us.
To all who have helped me — Thanks.
I Finally Got Some Guts
I don’t know why it took me this long to join GUTS; it’s not like I don’t already know about ten people who are also members.
Anyway, with the notion of running the Mystery Mountain 12-Mile Trail Run in November and the lure of saving $5 on the price of entry, I finally sent GUTS a $15 check for membership yesterday. Sure, my membership will need to be reviewed on January 1, but it’s going to be worth it to me.
Now all I have to do is start training…
Some Expanding Is Good
This is kind of a commercial from which I receive no monetary incentive and is not applicable if you don’t use a Mac.
Still here? Cool.
For the past few months I’ve been using a program called TextExpander from Smile On My Mac. TextExpander allows me to define tags that when typed get expanded into other things. For example if I type the letters hrefvp that gets expanded to the http code which produces this Variety Playhouse. I think that it’s pretty cool and an awesome time saver.
Last night on the new AppleTV I watched a training video podcast from ScreenCastsOnline which was all about TextExpander. At the end of the program they announced that they had worked out a deal with Smile On My Mac to knock 20% off of the price of TextExpander if the purchase is made before the end of July. To get the deal you just have to go to this link and buy it.
I already run TextExpander on my laptop and will be buying another copy for my iMac soon. I swear that the only thing I might receive from me telling you this is thanks.
ITP Flickr Pic
Cadillac, Cadillac…
Long and dark…
Shiny and black blood red.
Hey Georgians, Let’s Buy Some Wine!
As of today we are legally allowed to order wine directly from wineries and have it shipped to our homes. We can now also take partially-consumed bottles home when purchasing a bottle at a restaurant.
Say it with me…. Hallelujah! It’s about fucking time!
Remember The Alamo!
After much deliberation I decided to finally cave and rent a car for the entire duration of my near-future Colorado trip. At first I was going to take a shuttle bus from Denver to Fort Collins for the photography seminar and then deal with renting a car then. However, when I started scanning around at the price of car rentals, even now when it’s no longer ski season, the rates were high. Of the major car rental players I was able to swing a decent deal from Alamo so I pulled the trigger.
I sincerely hope that Alamo’s car rental skills are better than the skills of the people they hired to build their website. I was going to be a “team player” and register with their site so that all of my information would be in their database and I could possibly make life easier for myself if I rented from them in the future. The first annoyance I encountered was my password selection. On the data entry form there was this statement Password must be at least 6 characters next to the password field, so I proceeded to enter a long password (on the order of twelve characters. When I submitted my data I was shown an error message Password must be between 6-10 characters. Well if that was the case why didn’t they say that originally??? After changing my password to meet their new criteria I resubmitted my data. This time I was shown an error message You must enter an expiration date for your driver’s license. Guess what, there was no place to enter this! Believe me, I looked and looked. At that point I gave up on registering with Alamo.
Digital Download Of The Week
Not much from which to choose. There is a new Night Ranger disc out today. I believe this is the same Night Ranger I saw in Disneyword at Grad Night ’83 when I graduated from high school.
I’m more inclined to check out the Los Lonely Boys disc however. Sure, Los Lonely Boys are a poor man’s Stevie Ray Vaughn w/Double Trouble, but I rather enjoyed the disc they put out a few years back.
A Question About Friday
I am assuming that the majority of the ITP readership will not be checking in on Friday because of the celebration of the United States’ independence. Should I even bother to post anything on Friday? Or, I am considering doing a Question/Answer entry on Friday in which between now and then you all ask me questions, either through email or comment, and I answer them on Friday. Keep in mind that I will not be answering anything that I consider to be too revealing mind you (like when I lost my virginity and why I have regained it…) but feel free to ask anyway.
And now for some ideas stolen from LiveJournal…
Current Mood – wish I was on vacation
Current Music – Sirius Satellite Radio, Channel 26 playing Lykke Li — “Little Bit” (sadly, not a song about me)
Website Of The Day – Have you ever wanted to use your cell phone as a dictation device so that you can send text messages, emails, and other notes by speaking into it? That’s exactly what Jott allows you to do.
Exercise (b)Log – nothing (not that I could have included it today anyway)
Monthly Foot Mileage – 0 miles
Monthly Wheel Mileage – 0 miles
Mode Of Transportation To Work – My car
Monthly Marta Rides – 0
Use Stairs / Use Elevator – 1 / 0
Consecutive Days Of Bed-Making (Longest Streak) – 90 (90)
Books To Read To Earn Kindle – 4
July Goals
1) Run/Walk no fewer than 75 miles
2) Ride no fewer than 150 road miles
3) Ride Marta no fewer than twenty times (ten round-trips)
4) Read at least two books
5) Make my bed every day
6) Relaunch www.JalapenoBeach.com
7) Keep track of how many days I use stairs over elevators
Cheers,
Paulie [eatl/ga]
We’ve been able to ship wine from a winery that doesn’t distribute in Georgia, but this new law is great news. But, it always says on the box you have to have someone over 18 sign for it, so I’m thinking I’ll still have to get everything shipped to the office.
I get everything I can shipped to the office anyway. No sense leaving my goodies around for the neighborhood asshats to take for themselves.
Thanks for the GUTS plug 🙂
I have used my cell phone to record shopping lists for myself… I doubt I’d try and text them… and who would want my shopping list- even Debbie doesn’t!!
-FP
I’m not allowed to have stuff shipped to the office? I guess it is just one more reason for me to work at home.
and yes, post on Friday…I’m thinking I may skip the Peachtree activies this year and I’ll need something to entertain me
Oh BTW…you did win on Sunday…I rechecked the drunk girl’s math…WOW did she suck 😉
Martha, I think you should stay home and watch Sally and the Kenyans from home!!
And you can’t get things shipped to the orifice? While I know everthing will go through an X-ray, even the Fed doesn’t get that anal.
-FP
@Steve: It’s not meant for old people like us… it’s for the kids.
@Martha (re: dominoes): That’s a riot!
Yes, it seems in ‘Martha World’, 286 33 = 219… I lost BIG time.
Weather Update: Fu*king unbelievable outside right now…anyone want to play hooky???
I WANT TO PLAY HOOKY – but we are slammed over here. I have no plans after 5PM, if you want to come north, we could ride.
@Sarah: No problem. I really can’t believe I hadn’t joined earlier.
@Martha / Barb: I *really* wanted to go to the Braves’ game tonight. Unfortunately, I must ground myself because there are things that need to get done which haven’t gotten done. If I get everything done I may go tomorrow, of course it’s supposed to be hotter than today. 🙁
Glad to have you as a GUTS member. Our next group run is July 13th at the Chattahooche Jones Bridge Unit.
Jason a/k/a Urine Development is doing his birthday run at Kennesaw Mountain on the 12th….he plans to run 39 miles and could use the company for all or part of the run! 🙂
@ Barb, probably can’t make it tonight…I rode the bike to work today which makes for a much longer day in general. Maybe tomorrow.
@Paulie, I never made it to one Braves game last year and this year isn’t looking much better, I’ll just have to make time in the schedule….
There are partially-consumed bottles of wine purchased at restaurants? Can’t say that’s ever happened to me! 😀
The country ain’t got no internet access hooked up yet, so I won’t be readin’ yer blog come Friday…but I like that thar question/answer idear you gots! Be lookin’ forward to readin’ that come Monday!
Tacky hick country talk aside? I’d be a true bad, bad grammar goddess if I didn’t tell you that your mood should read: “wish I wereon vacation.” 😉
I’ve never liked that grammar rule. There is only one of me, so I think it should be was and not were.
After all we don’t say
“What were Stacy doing yesterday?”
We say
“What was Stacy doing yesterday?”
I’m just sayin’…
Hi Paulie,
Not to be a schoolmarm but….the issue isn’t plural versus singular but rather you are talking about a scenario that cannot happen (at least in the moment the statement ‘wish you were here’ is made) and that’s why you use a different tense.
It’s known as the subjective tense, though we have very few instances in which we use it. In French, Italian, Spanish, etc, they use it all the time to refer to situations that are contrary to fact.
Consider:
I wish you were older (but you’re not).
I wish it were cooler outside (but it’s not).
If it were earlier in the evening, I would say let’s stay for another round of beers (but it’s not earlier).
Statements that begin with the verb “wish” or the word “If” take this tense.
I would like to say I hope this helps, but I doubt it does since knowing why we say ‘were’ isn’t going to save anyone today.
But it does give me the opportunity to say once again I really like your blog! You are such a dedicated blogwriter. You really put me to shame.
Happy July 4th,
Ciambellina
Thanks, Ciambellina. That might be the most intellectual thing that has ever been posted in this blog.
I can’t guarantee that I will be able to remember, and actually use the rule, but I have a much better understanding about a portion of my “native” language.
Hey, I forgot something today. For all you wacky Canucks….
Happy Canada Day!
I love Ciambellina. Like, for real. *sigh*…. 🙂
Good on ya, kid. It’s your time and your life – take it back!
Yeah, but can we order the wine on Sunday?