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Saturday, July 26, 2008

tell me again *why* I pay for this thing?

I swear that I really really want to post more than once a week. I do. I feel terribly guilty for letting so much time go by between posts. Not because I am concerned that my thousands of loyal readers (SNORT) will be disappointed, but because this thing costs me money, by golly. Maybe I need to impose a post-a-day rule on myself again, strictly as an exercise. An exercise in rationalizing procrastination, that is.

ANyway. I did have a couple of listish kinds of snippets floating around in my head that were too long for Twitter*, and I have a few minutes to fill in (ever since I read The Phantom Tollbooth in the fourth grade, I have a hard time saying that I'm "killing time". Poor Tock!) while I upload some chapters to Librivox, so I'll grace the Internet with more of my madd blogging skillz.

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Snippet the First: THINGS I LOATHE. (ooh, goody! a list!)

• Use of the word "architecting". People, an architect (n.) does not architect (v.). There is no such (v.). He/She designs. So does anyone else whose activities you might be tempted to describe with that not-word. Please, for the sake of my sanity, stop. Just stop. There are other perfectly good verbs and gerunds you can use that won't cause me to go into spasms of uncontrollable twitching in the middle of a late-night transcribing session. Thank you. (PW: It wasn't you.)

• Cheetos.

• 95-degree days during which it RAINS. (OK, sprinkles.) This is California. I should not have to deal with this.

• Stupid expletive-deleted blossom-end rot. Every one of my full-sized tomatoes has this. It's all my fault, apparently -- I overwatered them when they were little baby tomato plants -- but that is no excuse. (Besides, the cherry tomatoes, which I also overwatered, are JUST FINE.)

• Automatic spell-checking in text fields. Yes, Firefox, "overwatered" is a word. So is Librivox. (You're right about "architecting", though, which makes me a wee bit less annoyed with you. I may let you live. For today, at least.)

• Library Elf's new email format. All of a sudden they only tell me what's due or what's on hold, without giving me a full list of everything I have checked out every time. Now how am I supposed to remember what I've read at the end of the month when I go to write a book post? Am I supposed to save actual paper library receipts? Surely I can't be expected to keep track of the books as I go? Sigh.

• Weeds. I turn my back for SIX DANG MINUTES (or, um. Cough. Six dang weeks. Cough.) and they take over every spare inch of my garden.

• The nightly chain reaction wherein one set of neighborhood dogs gets started barking and then others join in until it's this enormous cacophony of woofing and yipping and how-how-hooowwling that I think you can hear from space. How do the owners sleep through that when it's right outside their windows? (Scout, being indoors, just lifts her head for a brief growl and then goes back to sleep. Good dog.)

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Snippet the Second: THINGS I LOVE:

• Steamed yellow crookneck squash with just a dash of salt.

• Summer vacation.

• The fact that at 1:30 AM I just had to go wrestle a book out of my son's hands and force him to turn off his light and go to sleep.

• The little itty bitty tiny frogs that live in my garden.

• Sitting on the porch swing just before sunset in a tank top and capris and feeling completely comfortable. (Notice how I'm trying not to hate summer?)

• Letting the sun heat our water and dry our clothes, so that our utility bills in summer are slightly more than half what they are in winter. (See? Again.)

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And with that, the uploader is 15 seconds from finishing the last file, and I have less than five hours before I need to be up in the morning, and I still want to lie awake and read some Jane Austen for a while. I am SUCH a REBEL. Goodnight.

*if you actually are interested in the events of my life or simply miss my self-deprecating, sarcastic sense of humor -- what? you don't? -- when I'm not posting here, you can follow me on twitter. I do generally put up at least one or two little micro-posts each day. Followers are treated to snippets about how awesomely cool our family's DVD watching habits are, the occasional fascinating garden update, and of course complaints about the weather. Aren't you itching to go click "Follow" RIGHT NOW? You know you are.

Comments

Posted by: Maureen at July 26, 2008 06:16 AM

Posted by: Michael at July 26, 2008 06:27 AM

Posted by: Kat with a K at July 26, 2008 03:49 PM

Posted by: Beck at July 26, 2008 05:09 PM

Posted by: Suzie at July 26, 2008 10:43 PM

Posted by: Jennifer at July 28, 2008 08:22 PM

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