cleolinda | Entries tagged with cleaning

I wish I had something interesting to say but I don't because I'm tired and I don't really know why. Who knows. Nine of Staves, total exhaustion, whatever.

(I also decided that, since the dresser had been pulled out from the wall, we should steam the carpet where it had been because when are we going to get back there again? Never, that's when. So I'm waiting on that stretch of carpet to dry before I put my room back together.)

Meanwhile,

fading_october has an iPod question:

A couple of months ago, I started it and everything had disappeared off of it. When I went back to sync it, it came up with an unknown error of -69. I've gone to the apple website for help and have done everything listed and it still gives me the same error. I've changed computers, files, version of itunes, I tried using other music programs, I've restored, formatted and even let the battery drain to nothing. It even sat in recovery mode for as long as I can remember.

I bought it in mid 07, it died mid 08. I've taken it to the place where I bought it and they do not repair them, the closest I have to a repair gouges like crazy and at the time I do not have the money to go try geek squad (not like I would after all that I've read about them.) So I'm wondering if anyone has any further tips or if it's just time to get a newish one?

Current Mood: exanimate

So Primary Electric of Birmingham descended upon my house today (and they're great guys; I recommend them) and started checking each and every electrical outlet in my room, the bathroom, and the hall. Some of the wiring was... indifferent, to put it kindly; but then, the developer who did this cul-de-sac twenty years ago also substituted NEWSPAPER for insulation in some of our walls, so I don't know why I'm surprised. They went through and rewired or replaced or something (I don't speak electrician) several of them, went round and round in circles checking them against the panel in the basement (they had one guy there with a walkie-talkie and two in my room) and: neutrals, quick wiring, circuits, loops. These are the words I heard. All I know is, they had to move two cabinets (one of them holding the TV), we had already moved the dresser away from the wall, and they did eventually insist that we had to move my bed. The thing about my bed is that when middle-aged people marry, as in my mother and stepfather's case, they bring possessions that are both many and large with them, as opposed to a young couple starting out. So I ended up with a beautiful old (as in older than me) queen-sized bed... that is A STONE BITCH to move. And where was the socket? Way back in the far corner where the bed stood close to the wall. So I had two guys heaving that thing to and fro--and then: there must be one more socket. There must be. Socket Behind the Bed is the only outlet on that wall, and there's an embarrassment of sockets in this room, so surely there's one more on that wall. Is it...

"It's not behind The Shelf," I said.

"There's really no other place it..."

"IT'S NOT BEHIND THE SHELF."

It was totally behind The Shelf.

I had already evacuated the Middle-Earthians (and hidden everything even remotely related to Twilight, for the lulz or not, because two of the electricians were younger than me so there was a high probability of them recognizing things and I was not in the mood to be judged on this particular day, which is basically to say that any and all Edwards and Bellas were tucked away safely in the closet), so now it was the Ellowynes and the other Tonners' turn to be whisked away. And let me tell you, I would rather set that shelf on fire than try to move it again. It's six or seven feet tall and heavy as fuck, and pretty much cannot be moved over carpet (of course it stands on carpet). It probably took us ten minutes each time to wobble that thing in and out of place.

By "us," in this case, I mean my mother, because you know she's going to come home on her lunch hour and supervise this. I mean, you know it and I know it. And she just keeps shaking her head and muttering to me, "I'm sorry... I'm so sorry about this," like... I appreciate the sentiment, but what else are we going to do, you know? We're not amputating a limb or something. Nine of Staves, baby. It's cool.

And then the Electrician Dude in Charge said he needed to go into the attic.

My first reaction was to laugh--you know, the hysterical OF COURSE YOU DO, IT WOULD NOT BE MY LIFE OTHERWISE laugh I have developed over the past month, because a significant portion of my belongings was in the bathroom stacked against the attic door. My second reaction was to ask (warily), "Where in the attic do you need to go?" He points in a roundabout motion to invisible parts of the house--he needs to go around the front stairwell and back around to the eaves by my room. So then my third reaction was to blanch in horror, because there's a point where the attic just... stops. There's a meager expanse of floor, and then you get to either side where the eaves start to come down fairly low, and there's just... rafters... after that. And tumbleweeds of insulation (apparently the developer splashed out on the upper floor and just didn't have enough for the rest of the house? I don't even know). Basically, take a rope and a Sherpa, because you might not be coming back.

I don't know what all they did, but they did a lot of it and were really great about it and I think everything works now. Apparently the problem was that the outlets were "losing voltage," so whatever they tightened or rewired helped that (they also rewired the light switches. P.S. I now need a new overhead fan, because apparently it was holding on by a sprocket and a prayer. Which does explain the rattling), and they said to check the voltage requirements on whatever new computer I end up getting, but it should end up all right. And I do have the uninterrupted power source (UPS), which apparently beeps if you make it unhappy, so that's the canary down the mineshaft.

And I'm pretty sure the guy found his way out of the attic. I mean, probably.

Internets, can I tell you how much cleaning sucks? Because it SUUUUUCKS. Cleaning sucks dirty hosewater. Cleaning sucks frat boys in Tijuana. Cleaning sucks maenad blood and LIKES IT.

The reason for this particular panic of cleaning is that the electricians are coming to check and/or replace my electrical sockets today (so that I won't fry my new computer, whenever I order it), and not only did I have to clean out just for them to get into the room, I then realized that there are outlets behind my bed, dresser, and TV cabinet, so I had to clean enough behind/around them so that people stronger than I am can move them and reveal the dustbunny horrors beneath, but there it is. (I do begin to understand why my allergies are so bad, though.) Everything had to be moved, drawers had to be emptied, apparently I have enough DVDs to stock a small video store, so on and so forth. Internets, I am tired.

Meanwhile, my favorite new iPhone app is the Goddess Tarot--one of my favorite decks for artwork anyway--and you can use it to do a one-card... draw... oracle... thing... whatever. I tend to ask (mentally), "What do I need to know for today?," and this is what I got just now:

The Nine of Staves presents a portrait of total exhaustion. It feels like completion is close, yet so far away! The lesson offered by this card is one of patience--though success is close at hand, we need to rest first.

THANKS, GODDESS TAROT.

(As a side note, Brian Froud's Faerie Oracle deck, which you can actually use online, is one of my favorites in terms of the way the cards actually resonate with me. The icon up there is from the Faeries artwork as well.)

Also, I drafted another (very) short story last night, but typing that up will have to wait, because: electricians.

So I came up with another short story idea yesterday while watching TV--it didn't fall on my head quite as fully formed as the one the other day, so I think it could use more time rolling around in my head. The ending's a pretty basic, common twist, so the point of the story--the So What of it, as my first English professor used to say--has got to be what leads up to it. It's got to be the kind of ending that enriches what came before, rather than just (try to) give you a DUN DUN DUNNNN moment. So. I think that's going to take a while to develop.

It's all good, though, because the hardest thing for me is coming up with concepts. I'm much more interested in and work better with character, and could write shorter one-offs about established characters, but when you're writing just a stand-alone short story, you don't really have enough room to get really, really deep into that, so it's more the theme, the So What, that takes precedence. The idea, really. And that's hard for me, to come up with stand-alone concepts. I don't know.

*obligatory whine about cleaning*

A few things:

I think I gave the wrong impression when I talked about my closet the other day--it's not Confessions of a Shopaholic up in there; it's filled with fifteen (or more) years of cheap junk. The "purses and handbags" are, like, $20 woven satchels or totes from a couple of local places, not $1500 Prada bags or something. And I have a habit of stashing away old odds and ends--the scarf nobody wanted, the ribbons from opened gifts or old dresses, the old green vase cluttering up the kitchen counter, the beads from the necklace that broke--and so most of the accumulated stuff didn't even cost me anything. And many of the "boxes of clippings" are shoeboxes, not gigantic crates or anything. The list was more of an exercise in "Wow, when you put it in words like that, I really do have a lot of ancient and pointless crap I could stand to get rid of," not "Look at my decadent materialism!"

However, if you were interested in the historical costume coloring books, they are from Bellerophon Books and roughly $5 each.

Re: Yesterday's Secret Life: The rocking chair (sitting unheralded in the back of one of the pictures) was one of the smaller reader gift/mail items that I've been holding onto until I can work them in. Also, I don't know why Anna's arm kind of looks jaundiced in the picture. Also-also: two icons!

(I TOLD YOU GUYS The Littlest Edward was tiny, didn't I?)

( Catchup linkspam! )

Current Mood: mellow, a smidge headachy
Current Music: Chicane - Leaving Town

While my internet was out, I got so bored that I started cleaning. (If you know me, you know how dire a situation this must have been, and not just because I was getting over a stomach bug at the time.) And once I got going in my closet (it's a walk-in, so you can imagine how many years of crap were piled up in there), I started compiling a list of what I found there. This is what I was reduced to for entertainment, people.

( The list is ANNOTATED, you guys )

Current Mood: dirty

Re: LiveJournal: Here's the press release about the layoffs.

Back at the ranch, as it were, I got so sucked into this afternoon's rerun of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit when Sister Girl was over doing laundry this afternoon--it was one of those L&O specialties where they started off with one crime and midway through switched to another that they discovered in the course of investigating the first one, which was great and fantastic and all except that I kept screaming "BUT WHAT ABOUT BRIANNA????"

... maybe you had to be there.

Meanwhile, yesterday, I ran around doing housework (you know it's bad when I try to procrastinate by cleaning) until I ended up throwing up all over the bathroom. (Which then, of course, had to be... cleaned.) I have no idea what that was about, except that I'd had a heavy breakfast (well, you know: greasy fast-food biscuit) on a nervous stomach. And then I felt feverish and had chills all day (and a good bit of today as well), so maybe I'm legitimately sick, who knows.

I made Sister Girl take the rest of the Mountain Dews with her, though, so that temptation is at least removed. Also, I think the withdrawal headaches have eased up.

I'm also trying to remind myself that I may be in a hypomanic phase (what with the running around cleaning), so if I suddenly crash and don't feel magically energetic anymore, that's not a moral failing. It just means that if I feel good now, I need to make hay while the sun shines.

Apropos of nothing much, one more thing about Prince Caspian: ( Read more... )

Oh, by the way, I got an email newsletter/casting call from Universal Pictures, and when I tried to copypaste the info to pass it along, it turned out to be a series of image files. Huh. Therefore, I will present it to you as it was presented to me (click to enlarge): ( ARE YOU THE NEXT MCLOVIN????? )

Of course, I saw the name "Edward" and ran screaming, but there you are. (Oh, and the MySpace and Facebook links were clickable; at least you don't have to type those in. The latter demands to know whether you are THE NEXT MCLOVIN' OR MICHAEL CERA?!, which should give you an idea of what they're looking for.)

Speaking of Edward,

mistress_gwen has started the comm

sparklpires for lolfans. Enjoy.

( Catchup linkspam! )

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Coldplay - Violet Hill

So, the mouse is still in residence, but the cat has discovered him (her?). Fortunately or unfortunately, whichever way you prefer to look at it, the cat hasn't been able to catch him, but we (the cat and I) have definitely been spending a lot of quality time together. Particularly at night. The way I figure it is, apparently the mouse is smart enough to stay out of my room when the cat's there, and that's sufficient for me. Meanwhile, I'm still cleaning, and I've probably gotten further in a week than I got all last summer. What my mother suggested was that I pick a given area of my bedroom (keep in mind that I have four large bookshelves, a dresser, a large closet, several boxes of unsorted crap, and an under-bed area to tackle) and work on it for an hour at a time. At the end of an hour, I can walk away and do whatever I want. As simple as the concept is, it's actually working for me, because I think one of my unspoken fears about heavy-duty cleaning is that it'll take over my life and I'll be shackled to a garbage can for days at a time, unable to escape until I've gone through every single thing I own and made the Sophie's choice of whether I get to keep it or have to throw it away. When you rephrase the task as "Spend an hour alphabetizing your CDs and then walk away," it's much easier to swallow. And since I've got this mouse hanging over my head (uh... metaphorically), I keep coming back for another hour, and then another. So... thanks, Reep!

(Why alphabetize the CDs? you're thinking. Isn't that unnecessarily fussy? Well, because most of my music is on my computer now. The CDs need to be straightened and arranged on a rack, so alphabetizing means I have them in a nice library format whenever I need to pull one out, and since I rarely touch them anymore, it's an order that can be easily preserved. I would never bother alphabetizing books, because I'd never be able to keep them that way. Although I do tend to group them loosely by author and genre--top shelf, right left side of room is historical biographies; top shelf, right side of room is fantasy, with a corner set aside for Harry Potter books.)

Anyway, it's a slow, sweltering Memorial Day weekend, and not much else is going on beyond cleaning and writing ~~oh God help me I am so bored~~. Linkspam: ( Read more... )

Current Mood: industrious

I've had The Twilight Zone on since this morning--it's the New Year's Sci-Fi Channel marathon, and for some reason I find that as fun and comforting as most people do A Christmas Story. Not going out tonight, which I know objectively is kind of lame, but--I really kind of like staying in on New Year's Eve. I don't know why--but as long as I have it to myself (I remember one flu-ridden New Year's that involved a death-march game of Monopoly I'd rather not repeat) with something fun to drink and The Twilight Zone, I'm happy as a clam. So basically, I'd either like to go out and have fun with people or stay home and have fun by myself, pretty much no in-between.

I've spent the day cleaning as well--not even out of any urge to "start fresh," but rather out of pure necessity, because I can't move in here. It's like I woke up and realized that everything on this side of the room needed to be on that side of the room, and everything on that side of the room needed to be on this side of the room. I have too many DVDs, so I'm recolonizing a cabinet. I've cleaned off a shelf for my Black Ribbon-related books so that I can have them close at hand, all in a row, when I need to check something. My closet is stuffed with stackable plastic drawers that I'm emptying and setting up in the bedroom itself so that I have more room in the closet--and I'm moving the hanging shoe rack from the back of the closet to the front. You know, so I can reach the shoes. (It's a walk-in, which is a huge luxury compared to the, uh, NO CLOSET I had in my room as a kid. I had to go down the hall to get to my own clothes, and the closet I did have was about two feet deep at that. Of course, this was probably for the best, because I'm not sure inveterate magpie-packrats need to be given the free rein of a walk-in closet. It's kind of like the Mines of Moria in there now, is all I'm saying--the dustbunnies delved too greedily and too deep.) One stack of drawers is now a makeshift vanity--all I have to get now is one of those round revolving mirrors to set on top--and I threw out a ton of old makeup, which was hard to do. Among the items that went trashward was Baby's First Powder Compact, because it was fifteen years old. I hate throwing things away because it feels wasteful--you know, that's a perfectly good tube of lipstick someone gave me in a free makeup kit that one time, even though it's a hideous color and it's kind of dried out to boot. But I feel terrible actually tossing it... which is why I'm up to my ears in junk. So one of my--well, I wouldn't say it's a resolution, exactly, but I am trying to give myself permission to be "wasteful" and let go of things. Raggedy old shoes I haven't even worn in ten years anyway, stale boxes of tea, bottles of fragrance "splash" that I never liked in the first place... throwing it all away feels both icky and liberating. I'm just going to try to train myself to enjoy the "liberating" part more. So I'm going to keep moving and cleaning, probably over the course of the week, and see if I can't see the floor by Saturdayish.

Hmm. Not sure what to do for dinner, but I have two options for New Year's drinkage: bust into the tin of Serendipity Fr[rr]ozen Hot Chocolate mix that Sister Girl gave me (pros: chocolate, fun; cons: do I really want to bust out the blender?) or try mixing this awesome white grape/peach juice with rum and some crushed ice (pros: white grape/peach is so awesome; cons: not chocolate). I suppose I could do both over the course of the evening, but... that would just be... decadent. Thoughts?

Current Mood: festive

Today is kind of a Cinderella day, and I think it's going to be a Cinderella weekend--it's my mother's birthday on Sunday, so there's a lot of cleaning to do (in part because family's coming over, but a lot of the cleaning is upstairs, just because I think that would make her happy). I've got wood floors to shine, tile floors to mop, laundry to wash, trash to take out, dogs to walk (as always), boxes to go through (with an eye towards forcing myself to throw their contents out. O, my papers and clippings!), and a bathroom to scrub. Also, muffins to bake, because I'm hungry. And that's not even counting tomorrow, which is going to involve birthday shopping with my sister.

By the way, if you're wondering why the linkspam has suddenly improved, it's because I've finally gotten unlazy enough to check my Google Reader RSS blog feeds again.( Read more... )

So, we finished. Well, we finished Stage One, which is Get Everything Off the Floor and Steam the Carpet, something we have not achieved in many, many moons. And that in itself is a ~~pitiful~~ giant achievement, and one for which my mother repeatedly stopped by to thank me for. Seriously, I felt like I'd just given birth to Edward VI. Granted, she's only been trying to get me to do this for about four years, but, as I kept telling her, it was futile without anything to put stuff on. Voilà, the new shelves, etc. Of course, once I had the shelves, I kind of had to live up to my word to prove I wasn't just a completely lazy cuss who could have somehow managed without vital shelving, so by Saturday, after about a week solid of herding dustbunnies, I just threw up my hands and said, "I have no more clean." Of course, I still had a bit more to go before we could get to the carpet, so on Sunday I dragged my aching carcass out of bed and did that. And between me cleaning and my mother steaming all the other carpets in the house and running various errands (on her last day of freedom, no less), we were both ready to be put down and taken to the glue factory.

And then we had watermelon.

And ached.

I slept really hard and had bad dreams all night long.

So now, Stage Two is to go through everything I ended up piling (neatly!) in the closet and in the corners. I swear to you that the only reason we even got this far is that I knew she wanted to do the carpet before she went back to work (today: it's mostly policy orientation so far, and she hasn't even seen her office yet, but she seems to like it), so I basically decreed that if it wasn't on the floor, it could damn well stay wherever it was. Don't like the crap piled on top of the cabinet? Tough, it ain't on the floor. Dresser's messy? Ain't gonna get in the way of the steamer, so shut it. Which was perfectly expedient for me, but my mother (so full of glee that I was actually cleaning for a sustained length of time, and eager to micromanage) kept coming in and pointing out things I could do next. So I kept repeating the Carpet Mantra over and over and over: It's Not in the Way, So It's Not Getting Done Now. Which she couldn't really argue with.

Well... Stage Two is about getting all of that done. Sigh. But I'm not on a deadline with that, so I can take a bit more time doing it and actually fit in, you know, actual work in between cleaning spasms.

Current Music: Garbage, "Girl Don't Come"

YAY I AM SO EXCITED! I found this David Bowie CD--six live tracks and/or remixes that randomly came packaged with some magazine I subscribed to about ten years ago, which was AWESOME. It has my favorite version of "Heart's Filthy Lesson"--that had been missing and I found it and it had fallen behind the file cabinet and it was missing but I found it! I found it! SWEET.

Also, I itch now. I really don't want to think about what's in all that dust. Seriously, don't tell me. I know some of y'all smartasses will tell me about spiders and mites and shit and I am telling you right now, I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW.

Current Mood: dirty

*weeps, dustily*

Current Mood: dirty
Current Music: Garbage, "Tornado"

Can't... clean... anymore... send help. Got a massive amount done, but--you've heard of black lung? I now have dustbunny lung. Also, no Omen for me. I'm afraid the room (pictured in icon, as the swirling vortex that it is) has broken my spirit, but it was a Very Yelly Cleaningmas earlier this morning:

( Cut to protect the children ) So now I've had a late lunch and a long shower and I'm going to lie down for a little while and try not to die of a dust clot. Maybe I'll lie down on a bed of loot I found in my room, like a dragon--it's not as good as the time I found perfume, truffles and incense, but this time I did find the aforesaid earrings, three smallish but half-full bottles of New Year's booze (two vodka, one rum), a box of crayons (64), three pairs of tweezers, two pairs of nail clippers, a bag of rubber bands, a folding fan, two skeins of multicolor yarn, and Batman Begins on DVD.

P.S. Happy birthday to

brett_the_vet!

Current Music: "La Noyée," Amélie soundtrack

GOD! WHAT THE HELL, PEOPLE! There's a hole in the pool, there's a hole in the roof, the carpet needs another steaming (which we do ourselves) and the dogs need bathing again (which we don't, because they need medicated baths and gland-expressing and ear squeegeeing), AND money is tight. You know how people get onto you about using the word "literally" in a non-literal manner? Well, we are literally finding some new problem every time we turn around. "We fixed the shower--but the dogs need--and the pool--and the roof--AUGH!"

For real. Mom and I were discussing the pool as we went upstairs to dig out her box of vintage Nancy Drews--the original books, all of them, preserved ~~in amber~~ since her childhood--when we discovered a puddle on top of them. Fortunately, the books were dry and unharmed, but this caused much dismay and poking in the rafters and the spot diagnosis that the storm last night (and, very likely, previous storms as well) had damaged the roof. As evidenced by... the shingles in the yard. Oh. Those. Duh. So I'm sitting here waiting for the contractor to get here so I can sign his release and he can climb on the roof and, knowing our luck, probably fall off and break a tree or something. And while I'm waiting for him, the pest control guy comes. (This is what I do, you know. This whole "writing at home, taking a semester off" thing? Whether I'm in class or not, I'm kind of the unofficial housekeeper. I am the answerer of doors and the greeter of handyguys and the walker of dogs and the wiper of pee. Also the fetcher of mail, the mopper of floors, the raker of carpets, and Meko's Seeing-Eye Girl. And me and my toiletbowl hands need a change of scenery, quite honestly.)

And what I wanted the Nancy Drew books for was to do some old-school reading-up for the YA detective series I'm hoping to plot out, but it doesn't look like I'm going to get much of that done this afternoon.

Oh my God, y'all. Our shower doors (three sliding panels) have been hinky for the last week or so (because, I suspect, Sister Girl slammed into one on her way out of the shower while running late one morning, because one day they were fine and the next day I went to take a shower and they were not), and when I tried to take a bath last night they were even worse--you could barely squeak them open. So after I was done, I decided it was time to fix the doors; they had clearly come off their runners. Well, things went really bad really fast and the middle door ended up falling out. Nothing broke because I caught it in time, but the middle door, the one with the full-length mirror, is just heavy enough that you can't juggle all three at once by yourself. So I go downstairs and, in a move that will later be our undoing, wake Mom up off the couch and ask her to come help me.

( NORMAN BATES WUZ HERE )

Mmm, nothing like a full day of brushing carpets, bagging garbage and cleaning up poo.

Oh, and my copy of the Infamous All-Naked Keira-Sniffing Vanity Fair finally arrived. You know, two weeks after it hit the newsstand. Thanks, guys.

The Comics Curmudgeon: For all your daily comics snark. Seriously, I couldn't sleep the other night, so I spent about three insomniac hours reading through the archives.

From eve_the_just: Another celebrity airbrushing service. (Go to "Portfolio" and then "Before/After.") You know, how you click on the pictures and toggle back and forth between "before" (wrinkles, cellulite, actual skin textures) and "after" (smoother and shinier than the T-1000)? Well, this one's particularly creepy in that you can click on a b&w image of Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie on the first B/A page and see how Paris has had a few tiny spots of Skeletor boniness brushed out, and Nicole has literally had a section of her body wished into the cornfield. Eeeeeeh.

Lifehacker: Pack light with One Bag.

virtuistic: "I wouldn't normally ask this, and I know you just did this the other night, but I'm writing an article tomorrow and my reporting involves finding out if Americans really understand the semicolon. I've got a poll running in my lj, and if you could pimp it I would be eternally grateful."

The Independent: Turns out the secret to literary success is being nice. Wow! What a concept!

Bookslut, on the new parody memoir A Million Little Lies by "James Pinocchio": "Seriously? That's the best you guys can come up with? Replacing 'pieces' with 'lies' and making a Pinocchio reference that would have been stale in the Eisenhower administration? Oh, hey, that William Taft sure is fat! And Clara Bow sure shows a lot of leg in her new picture! Oh my God, people, if you are not funny then do not write or publish [parody], and fuck you for not being funny."

Pete Doherty arrested. Again. For... stealing a car?

(I still have no idea why I know who Pete Doherty is. Shambles in the what now?)

Britney Spears celebrates Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

J.K.Rowling Updates Site; Diary Entry on Book Seven Progress.

Teacher to Return After Having Sex Change.

Evangeline Lilly Has Ruffles and Ridges. After some discussion of these pictures, I am torn. On one hand, she looks far better in a ruffled gingham bikini than any earthly woman has a right to. On the other... tiny hillbilly tutu. I'm just saying.

Hermione Granger and the Hangover of Doom, as seen on ohnotheydidnt. And Fandom Wank. And Defamer.

Peanut butter Feder time! Seriously, watch this. It will make your life.

dailydigestnews: Heap big linky goodness.

Current Mood: blah
Current Music: Richard Marx, "Angelia." STOP LAUGHING!

Hmm, what's going on around here... we had some massive panic-induced cleaning yesterday because an appraiser was coming to look at the house today. The good news is that the house is now spick and span for Thanksgiving (and don't think I didn't hit the dictionary to check the spelling of "spick" right there), and the appraiser told us that the dimensions of our house were recorded totally wrong wherever it is that they record the dimensions of houses, and that we're likely to come out worth more than we thought we would be. Which is good, because we need money to keep sending Sister Girl to cooking school.

The bad news is that I was up until one o'clock cleaning, and then Lucky woke me up at about 3:30 by jumping on the bed, chasing his tail for about three minutes solid, and then getting right up in my face all "Hi! Hi! Hi!" So I got up, got vaguely dressed, and took him outside in the freezing-ass cold. Turns out no one took him out before going to bed, so he must have been pretty hysterical by three in the morning. And then he was so happy to have gone that he was hyper for a good half hour afterwards. In conclusion: there was no sleep.

So then the appraiser guy came, and Sister Girl skipped her morning class, which put her trying to get ready right in the middle of the appraiseration ~~in this dancerie~~ and that pissed her off, and then the guy was late and took twice as long as he said he would, which pissed my mother off (although I had tried to warn her that that's totally what was going to happen, because I'm the one who's usually home to answer the door for this kind of thing, and I am wise in the ways of Professionals Who Make House Calls). And then we had lunch at Ixtapa. Mmmfajitas. Fin.

What else... I got the new issue of Vogue in the mail last night (what? I like the pretty pictures, and sometimes they preview movies and stuff), and some blonde who looked weirdly familiar-yet-unfamiliar was on the cover. Seriously, I drew a total blank... until I pulled off the plastic and saw that it was KEIRA KNIGHTLEY WTF? I don't know what the hell the flowing blonde ringlets were for, but I loves Keira and am irrationally excited about Pride and Prejudice, and she has this hilarious Wizard of Oz spread inside (I think Jasper Johns is the Cowardly Lion or something? All the characters are played by famous arteestes). And then there's a big ol' section on Memoirs of a Geisha, with tons of pictures of Ziyi Zhang in the costumes, and... one lonely page for Tilda Swinton. Clearly the Narnia people forgot to call up merchandising and secure the oh-so-important cosmetics and herbal tea contracts.

Oh, yesterday! Christmas shopping! It was like a trip to the library, basically, except that we actually had to pay for the books. The aim of the trip was to get birthday and Christmas presents for me, for about four different relatives to give to me. And if I didn't have the long-term memory of a breath mint, it would be kind of off-putting that I ended up hunting down all the books myself, but I do--hell, I can barely remember any of them right now! Go me. Also, all signs point to a desperate family giving me the entire oeuvre of Gregory Maguire for Christmas, so I hope that I end up liking it.

And while I was there, I finally tried the Burt's Bees lip shimmer. It's... a little cakier than I expected. It's growing on me, though--I like the peppermint tingle.

Oh, and today, the book got slashdotted, and it's a lovely review. Please be advised, however, that hating on things in the comments is the Slashdot raison d'être, so do not go over there and try to argue with them. It's 1) pointless and 2) only makes me look worse, and 3) I'm happy with the review, so God bless us every one, etc.

( Linkspam )

A post that is not (much) about Katrina:

My eyebrow hurts, y'all. My eyebrow. The left one--it's my right eyelid that's got the twitch. I tend to get it any time I do a lot of reading on the computer--like writing a paper, or when I would pull hours trying to update my poor movie site.

It's sad that I'm kind of looking forward to class on Wednesday--it'll be a long afternoon rather than my short jaunt to class, because I have to go xerox an article and then, y'know, read it for that day's discussion--because at least it's time I don't have to spend thinking about Katrina.

(My stepfather made the mistake of saying, in offhanded tones of disgust, that "so many stupid people just didn't leave." Hooooooooooo boy. I've unintentionally become the local Katrina expert, so you can imagine what happened next. I started off with "They didn't order the evacuation until after the buses and trains had been stopped," and finished up with, "... because you can't take pets to shelters." He dotes on the pomeranians, so he was pretty quiet after that.)

Anyhoo. When I'm not compiling news and feeling a little deader inside, I'm trying to clean the Bottomless Room o' Crap. I've gotten through the old pile of Vogues and all the Entertainment Weeklys now. Well, except the huge stash of magazines under my bed, but if my mother doesn't see them, they don't exist, as far as I'm concerned. I am a touch OCD (see: dire need to compile hurricane news), but I don't wash my hands obsessively or go back to see if I turned off the stove 548 times; I save magazine articles and photos. At one point, I had quite an extensive filing system for them, which is buried somewhere in my closet now, I think. Some of it was a fannish urge to collect, but a lot of it was just, "I need to write a story about what's going on in that picture." Or "I totally need this article about homemade meth labs for research. I will use this someday." Or "The girl in this picture looks a lot like what [character] looks like in my head." I don't know which is the more obsessive part--the clipping of magazines itself, or the need to hoard the results.

The only thing I have going for me in this respect is that eventually I will burn myself out, temporarily if not permanently, and the clipping urge will go dormant for a while. Actually, having the internet has abated it in great part--you can save image files and sort them much more easily, or if nothing else, you know there are huge galleries of pictures out there that you don't have to save (even if you then go save them anyway).

But add all my school papers and boxes of books and file folders full of story manuscripts to the giant mass of magazines, and you see why "cleaning" is taking me a long, long time.

Oh, random thought: I did find out that October 20th is for sure the release date for the book, and if there's a site that says anything else, they're just on crack, because... October 20th. (And if it's got the wrong name for author, we know about it and are trying to fix it.)

( More designs )

[Obligatory hatred of cleaning here.]

I am ridiculously pleased with myself over my meager efforts to update dailydigestnews, because, let's face it, three days in a row is a better record than I usually had at the old site anyway. I'm still going slowly, but I'm trying to put up just enough each day to get myself back into the habit. So far I've put up bits about the Karla Homolka movie with Laura Prepon getting pulled, that soccer hooligans movie of Elijah Wood's that has a new name every time I turn around, a Serenity interview with Joss Whedon, a hilarious pan of Alexander on DVD, and lots of Potter news. I think I actually like this format a lot better, because it's got 1) tags, for easy cross-referencing (look! All the Potter entries!) and 2) comments, so I can actually interact with people. Oh, and it doesn't involve me hand-coding shit on an amateurish Geocities page. WHEE.

( Excellent Potter memage )

ETA: Omg, you guys, I just found a handwritten journal I kept in a three-ring binder from February to July of 1997 (my last semester of high school through my first internship). On the very first page, after announcing that my hand-me-down borrowed laptop won't work and that "I must write or die," I immediately begin snarking on recent X-Files episode titles, which is somehow both pitiful and hilarious. It also reminds me why I think pop-culture writing is made for public discourse: it's fun when a bunch of people get together and talk about it. It's sad when your only audience is yourself.

Current Mood: whatever mood means "hatred of cleaning"

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Cleolinda everywhere

Classy dame, sparkle consultant, gothic enthusiast, sporadic recapper.

Entries tagged with cleaning

flop

Compocalypse, New: Electric Boogaloo

Sing it if you know the words

Waiting for my laptop

In which I bring you a Cascade o' Remakes

Things I found in my closet

Sleepy, a little scattered

Waiting on Sister Girl to arrive

Happy New Year's!

So it's probably not good that I'm sleepy

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Notes from the home front

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June 2024

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