Crappy Projects: Anna vs. The Light Fixture

Universal truth: boobs are awesome but boob lights are the worst.  I don't know how many decades ago somebody said "Do you know what the ceiling needs?  Light bulbs covered in semi-opaque glass shaped like boobs.  And not just THIS ceiling... every ceiling.  Ever."  If you are reading this at home, there is an 85%¹ chance that right now there is a boob lamp stuck to the ceiling over your head, watching you and hating itself for existing².  I do know that they weren't around in the early 20th century, based on my close watching of Downton Abbey, which has provided my entire breadth of knowledge on all the years before 1950 or so.

A Prime Example Of The Offending Light

The Hummus Diaries

I have a history of making questionable nutrition decisions, but I prefer stubbornness over lesson-learning, so I will continue to make more.  I figure that I'm still alive, so I must be doing something not-too-wrong.

I'm not hydrating anymore (everyone loves the dehydrated, constantly thirsty version of me, right?), but I am trying to eat healthier.  I spent a while¹ eating whatever cheese and meat I could get my hands on for lunch, and it was good.  Good meaning tasty.  Not so good in other ways, like cholesterol, and Type II diabetes risk, and still fitting in my bike spandex.

But now² I'm Hummus Anna.  I don't eat meat before 6 pm IF AT ALL.  All I eat at lunch is hummus on pitas.  Why hummus?  Let's examine that:

• Hummus is a weird beige color.  Weird, dull colors always indicate health.  See also: fruit smoothies with kale, root vegetable purees, poultry.
• It's made of mostly beans.  I consider beans to be protein, fruit, and vegetable all in one, so I'm really hitting that food pyramid hard.
• I was allowed to have it as a snack as a kid, and my mom only fed me healthy stuff.
• It contains olive oil instead of animal fats.  Olive oil...
• is a GOOD fat, which means I can eat unlimited amounts of it.
• is the oil of choice for healthy heart diets.  I assume that this is because, instead of clogging arteries, it makes them extra slick.  Like a slip 'n slide for your blood.  You're welcome, heart.

So, how did my lunchtime hummus eating go?

Vennsday (Thursday) - GOP Irony

I spend a good portion of my day reading the political section of the New York Times and listening to NPR, which means I spend a good portion of my day saying "Really?  Really?!?!" inside my head.  The outright lies  don't get to me, and the thinly veiled racism is an expected part of the campaign season.

What makes me say "Really??" is this total lack of a sense of irony.  I am hoping that the following will both help the GOP understand irony, and maybe help them understand Venn Diagrams, too.

I keep hoping someone there will blame it on climate change, for the double Irony Whammy.

To avoid irony in the next convention, I recommend that they all drive non-union cars to Dick Cheney's back yard using privately made gravel roads.  When they arrive, they can shower Bonnaroo style with baby wipes and a gallon of water, so as to avoid using any government utilities.

To be fair, he probably couldn't afford to keep a residence in Massachusetts.  I mean, there are only so many mortgages one man can carry.  Also, does anyone else get a great image of Mitt as a slacker pot-head, living in his son's basement, playing Mario Kart for 8 hours a day?  No, just me?  Oh, carry on then.

Me vs. The Door

I should start out by saying that I love the place where I live.  It is perfect for me and has a huge and beautiful yard that is perfect for me dog.

However, since I moved in, I have been engaged in a war with the bedroom doors (hmmm, that is much to rhymey, and I would rather not say "war with a door" any more than those two times in this post.  Maybe it's more of an epic battle).  To be fair, they are folding doors, so they are unlike 98% of all the doors that I have used.

Round 1 went to the doors.  I struggled to open them for the first couple weeks that I lived there.  But it's totally normal for an adult to be stuck in her own room, right?

Round 2 went to... my dog.  He figured out how to open the doors at about the same time I did and used that skill enthusiastically every morning at 6:45 right before my alarm went off.

Round 3 went to the doors and my dog.  I'm pretty sure that they conspired all day while I was gone at work.  He opened the door, per usual, but instead of just opening, it fell on me and woke me up.  After inspecting myself for life threatening injuries¹, I went to check on the door... and that's when I discovered that it was held together by wire.

For the next month or so, the door leaned up against its frame and experienced feelings of instability, neglect, and ostracism.  I felt a sense of superiority and laziness; every time I looked at the door I thought, "I control your destiny, door!" which I'm going to count as a win for me.  (For those at home keeping score, that's Doors: 2, Dog: 2, Human: 1²).

Finally, one night, fueled by beer and a brief bout of courage, I decided to fix the door.  I knew there was a high risk that I would end up gluing my hand to the door, but I was willing to take it.  I was going to win this battle.

As a safety precaution, I wrapped my hands in paper towel while I handled the glue (we can glide right past the fact that I was doing this all in my underwear, so maybe I should have covered more than just my hands...).  I knelt down over the broken door, glue at the edge of the bottle... and realized that the wires were still on the broken part.

I spent 15 minutes trying to get them off and was rewarded with several bloody fingers and two mangled, but still tight, wires.

"Fine," said I, "Keep your stupid wires!" and then I put glue everywhere I could fit it in the broken part.

Interesting aside:  did you know wood glue foams when you expose it to air?  Neither did I until after I applied it and then read the instructions!

When I awoke in the morning, the door was fixed (yay!), but the hole for the pin that holds the door to its frame was all full of glue-foam.  Hard, hard glue-foam.

Interesting aside the second:  know what's a great way to start the morning?  Hammering a pin into hard glue-foam!  In your underwear, which is apparently the only way I work!

By the time I left for work, I had two standing doors.  I had succeeded.

Except somehow neither door was actually set correctly in the door frame.

I think now it's time to go to the graph to see how I have done overall against the door.

Not graphed: Doors laughing heartily at my failures.  I ran out of colors, but I can tell you it would be a line at 2 all the way across. 

Oh, I have clearly lost.  At this point, the door is galloping around my house, with my desecrated carcass  attached to the back of its chariot³.



¹There were none, except for the emotional ones.  An irrational fear of doors shouldn't be a problem, right?  I can just live in a tent!  I know just the place for that!
²Ninjas: 3,467,591.  They always win.
³It would appear from my multiple Troy references that the only epic poem I've read is the Illiad.  I will try to casually work in some other classics references so that this blog attracts the right crowd.

My Crappy Meetings

I'm pretty good at meetings.  At least, I'm pretty good at the types of meetings I like to have, which are quick and efficient.  (I've noticed that all these things rise together: position in a company, self importance, enjoyment of one's own voice, and length of meetings.... which seems uncoincidental.)

In the meetings that I run with people who are approximately my level, no one talks more or less than they need to, everything is completely sorted out in about 15 minutes, and everyone leaves with a clear idea of what they need to do.

In order to give the appearance of preparedness, I like to show up with a messenger bag full of stuff.  It's like no matter what question they ask me, I could - at any moment - whip out a reference manual, a scale, and a calculator and MATH¹ right there on the table.

In truth, all I have actually brought to the meeting is a set of plans printed out on 11x17 paper and the writing utensil that was closest to my hand when I left.  I do not put these plans in my bag because my bag is full of unrelated crap, and I am afraid that when I pull the plans out, things will go flying (see previous entries on losing stuff and lack of organization).

Things actually in the bag: planner, journal, unsent postcards, tampons, keys, sunglasses, somewhere between 2 and 73 gum wrappers, gum, sometimes a broken watch (I like to think of it as Schrödinger's watch in that it is both there an not there at any given time), business cards, and receipts.

That's right, I take a full bag, which I do not open, and a separate pile of papers, which I often drop.  All so I can look like I am prepared.


¹In lieu of actually MATHing, I say things like "It's all very complicated, I'll send you the spreadsheet" and then wait for the look of panic followed by a polite refusal of said spreadsheet.  It doesn't even have to be a spreadsheet, sometimes I say "code section" or "email from the city" or "shnarfle²" and it elicits the same response.  People like to know you did the work, but they don't want to know the dirty, boring details.
²I made this word up.  Right at this minute.  You never what's going to happen here; it's craziness.

Organization Schmorganization

As anyone who has lived with me can attest, I am not organized.  My argument would be that I do not appear to be organized.  No, my clothes don't live in drawers, and my books aren't all nicely alphabetized (by genre, then by author or subject, not that I've thought about it) and put in bookshelves.  They stay in piles.  I know what's in the piles, but to the untrained eye it probably looks like a mess.

This organization issue of mine is compounded when I move.  I do not pack things in any kind of organized fashion, and then I don't usually bother to organize them when I unpack again.  In my last house, this actually worked out because there were closets galore.  I actually had 4 or 5 boxes that I never even opened that contain god knows what.

In my new place, though, there are only two (doorless!) closets, so:

My closet drank too much absinthe and threw up all over the guest room.  It refuses to go to rehab - I fear it will end up like Amy Winehouse.

Most two-year-olds can do this

There are many items that are considered fool-proof that were probably made for people like me, who are fools.  Items like the easy tear part on a resealable bag of cheese (oh yes, I have cut that whole deal off before), the sharp side of aluminum foil boxes with brightly colored text saying "TEAR HERE" (I usually try to tear it on the soft, flexible, cardboard only side), and jar lids (I can never open them, and end up crying on the floor of the kitchen as my pasta boils and boils and boils).

Then, of course, are the plastic rings that hold together 6 packs of soda (or pop, in my home state of Michigan). I almost always am able to vanquish their hold on my desired drink, but about 60% of the time, I end up punching myself with a full can of soda in the process.  Not on Wednesday, oh no.  On Wednesday, a can just dropped out of the 6 pack while I was carrying it around, making the fallen can's top all fucked up.  I am assuming it's because this product is (awesomely) still made in America, and therefore the cans are all non-uniform and made out of inferior aluminum, but I can't prove that.

I am a generous soul.  I feel bad for things that are deformed, like maybe they'll have no friends.  I imagined my fucked up can in the fridge with all the "normal" cans, and I thought it would probably have a hard and terrible life in there.  I didn't want it to feel like it was being chosen last because of its abnormality, so I chose it FIRST.

Now, the second foolproof item in this story, which is really about how the universe doesn't want me to be hydrated, is the easy-open tabs.  You know the ones; they're on all beverage cans.  They are hearty.  They work really well.  They make that satisfying noise when you press them into the pre-punctured area of the top of the can, which is pleasantly shaped for ease of drinking.

Not for me.  I bent it forward, it almost fell off, and only made a tiny hole in the top of the can.  I thought it would be enough for me to get my delicious ginger ale into my glass, but I was wrong.  All that came out was a few drops of foam.

I decided to battle on.  I was NOT going to let this stupid mutant can defeat me.  No, I would rip its head off if I had to.

In the end, I prevailed, and ended up with a can that looked like it had been exposed to some kind of radiation as a baby pod can, and then been forced through a war.  Oh, the taste of victory is sweet, sweet like ginger ale.