home sweet home, bed luscious bed

tonight was fun. we saw the first two bands (the deadbeats are adorable wee little punk boys. teehee) and most of the third. unfortunately, i was too damn tired to stay for all of riot act. they're nifty--sort of progressive punk. i wish could've heard the whole set.

anyhow, i wore my big hair tonight, so ashbet should be happy. i was even complimented. ;)

the drive home was great. there weren't any slowpokes in front of me, so i could cruise along at will on SR20 all the way home. we did see lots of deer, so i kept an eye out.

and the last song i heard in the car before i came in the house was "smash it up"....

makes me wanna go jump on the bed.

guess i'll have to settle for some pita and hummus. hopefully tom will finish his shower soon so i can get to bed. mmmmm... bed.

(no subject)

Eppie Lederer has passed away.

Ann Landers

stuff to read this morning...

A manatee in Richmond?

skeletons of steamboats

episcopalians and baptists show support for muslim after Southern Baptist minister refers to the prophet Muhammed as a "demon-possessed pedophile"

richmond's elusive black dog

(no subject)

living in a rural area can be lovely, but it can also be quite frustrating.

i find myself missing phone lines of decent quality. the fastest i've connected thus far is 31.2kps... ick. this wouldn't be such a big deal, but i found myself suffering at 56k, nostalgic for the t-3 of my college-hood. ;)

besides, boy works from home. it would be nice if he could actually communicate at a reasonable speed.

we did manage to get the second line fixed. i was right--the problem was external. then again, when one is receiving the neighbors' phone calls and phantom calls, the problem probably isn't internal wiring. the phone company tried to convince me other wise... well, customer service did, but the outside workers didn't even come near the house and the problem was fixed the next day.... well, the fifth time i called, anyway.

i do still want to rewire the house. the crumbling two-pair lines probably don't help, even though those don't go to the living room and the office. the lines we do use are connected to that crumbling line, however, and that probably causes some interference. i figure i should do all i can to make this house up to date internally.

interesting article on high speed service and rural localities in virginia.

heck, i grew up in an Indiana county with high unemployment, yet my parents can often connect at decent speeds.

goshdarnit, i live in one of the richest counties in virginia... why don't we have a decent infrastructure? i'm guessing that all my wealthy neighbors either eschew high-speed communication or can afford StarBand.

another article on rural connectivity

i realize that phone companies feel it's not profitable to provide modern service to rural areas, but they tried this 50 years ago and eventually lost. besides, how profitable will Sprint (my ONLY option for local service) find it when more and more rural customers opt for cell phones and wireless/satellite options? we've contemplated losing one phone line in favor of a cell phone. we've contemplated StarBand, despite the fact that it really is prohibitively expensive... the only thing truly keeping up from starband at the moment is really the incompatibility--it isn't suitable for Macintosh -or- Virtual Private Network (tom uses it for work). otherwise, we'd likely find the money when boy's raise becomes effective.

blah.

another thing--this house has been rewired throughout. there is a ground wire near each outlet. WHY, then, did they not put in NEW outlets when they did this? the wiring is fairly new--less than 10 years old (in a turn-of-the-century house)... and they left in outlets from the 40s and 50s, with the exception of the kitchen and utility room and one outlet in each of the two front rooms. these outlets are three-prong, but the others are all weird old plugs. we even have one of those older slant-plug outlets that serves a purpose i can never remember as we don't use it.

dad explained how to rewire the outlets to me, but told me not to do it. he did make sure that the outlets we use for the computers (two front rooms) and microwave (kitchen) are all actually connected to the ground wires. one of them wasn't. what kind of idiot rewired this house?!?!?!?

my mom made me promise not to take up electrical wiring, too, though i've read up on it and am pretty sure i could do it. then again, i'd probably join the long line of pace and schrock men who've been zapped on do-it-yourself jobs. i could be the first woman! woohoo!

you know, if the work didn't entail scary crawlspaces and attics, i think i'd take up telephone or electrical wiring as a vocation... probably be the only russian-speaking, pushkin-quoting telephone worker in virginia. ;)Æ

downsizing the cd cabinets

we're getting rid of some CDs...

anyhow, most of these were promos from boy's days reviewing CDs for The Eagle, American University's student newspaper.

These CDs either have spectacularly bad rev iews or blah reviews (I know, this isn't selling them)...

Before passing them off to the used CD store, however, I'm checking the web for info on the bands.

I see that Blue Rodeo seems to be a well-known canadian band. so, if anyone wants a copy of Blue Rodeo's album Nowhere To Here, let me know. We'll be happy to send it along to you for free. Heck, maybe we'll even include boy's humorous review.

Also up for grabs, Amy Arena (self-titled 1995), Ho-Hum Local, Lustre (self-titled, 1996), Wammo

( Error: Irreparable invalid markup in entry. Raw contents behind the cut. )

(no subject)

okay... i suppose i could explain some of my rare-r interests.

or i could just let y'all roll your eyes as you glance over my interests and move on.

( bwahahahahaha )