Cleaning Up The Past

My inbox has been a constant barrage of "Buy Flowers For These Nice People You Bought Flowers For In The Past!!!"

 

 

It's not that I don't want to buy flowers for everyone--at this point, I'm just not doing it because on top of being insanely expensive, I don't like your sales tactics, Online Flower Vendor People.  Not one bit.

 

Oh, and also, you're insanely expensive.  That's the biggie.

 

 

Hidden among the "Buy Flowers!" was a "Hey!  Go See Robert Cray!" email, and I was super-excited about that, until I opened it and discovered that it was actually a "Go See Robert Cray at the Saenger Theatre in Mobile, Alabama" email.

 

Not that I wouldn't....I mean, he's totally worth the trip.  I could probably even find that theatre in downtown Mobile, and everything.  It's a beautiful theatre in a beautiful town....anyone wanna go with me?

 

 

But it was just another Inbox Past Life Blurb.  I get them once in a while, and haven't bothered fixing them or stopping them--some travel place giving me rates from Duluth or Biloxi, someone "reminding" me send this guy flowers, buy that person chocolate, send that other person some certified Angus beef.  Whatever.

 

All of this ease and convenience is annoying the living hell out of me.

 

Don't get me wrong--I'm an online shopping junkie.  No question.  I just wish these online vendors were more creative.  I mean, I buy from Amazon.com all the time, and I don't see them sending me emails every day, reminding me that I once shopped there.  Can you imagine?  Every day an email?  Or a dozen emails? 

 

"Hey!  Remember that time you ordered that weird, used CD from that hippy dippy record guy in Chicago?  Well, we've got more of those!"

 

Awesome...

Brand New Shiny Stuff

In honor of, uh, Monday, I decided to dye my hair red and quit cigarettes.

While this news may seem exciting at first, please remember that my hair has been red before, so it's actually nothing new.

Not All That Fly For A White, uh....Guy?

I've been listening to Black Eyed Peas "Imma Be". A lot. Well, as much as I can, without feeling like a complete ass.


See, that song has one hell of a booming bass line. And any time I play it in my car, my whole car rattles. This is not a bad thing. The bass, I mean, not the rattling.


Say you're sitting at a stop light, and you hear this thumping noise, so you look to your right, and there is this geeky white chick in an SUV, hitting that Will.i.am part, waving her hands around, doing a little driver's seat dancing....


Yeah.


You were probably expecting to see someone else, weren't you?


Sorry.

This Is Pretty Cool...

Rare Photos of Famous People (125 pics) | Crack Two

What Trouble Can We Stir Up This Week?

Really, really bored.

 

Not that I purposely cause problems or drama for other people, but if I'm bored, I find myself delighting in the entertainment value of other people's problems and drama, because there is so little else to care about..  For example, if I were to hear some unfortunate news about the guy who dumped me ten years ago, I may smugly say, "Well, isn't that interesting?" and allow myself to a hearty laugh at his expense, whereas a week ago, when I wasn't bored, I didn't even care if he was still walking around on the planet, much less if Karma had bit him on the ass.

 

(For the record, there is no unfortunate news about the guy who dumped me ten years ago...other than the fact that his hair is COMPLETELY gone.  Bald is not something I personally care about, but it was one of those things he obsessed over, so, kind of ironic that he now has no hair, isn't it?)

 

 

I hereby declare this an Interesting Week.  It WILL be an interesting week before the week is through.  I predict that sometime in the area of Thursday, there's going to be a "Well, isn't that interesting?" thing happening.  At least one.  It might not be something I can blog about, but if you see me use the words, "Well, isn't that interesting?" you'll KNOW!

Getting Away With It

Working really hard today.

 

 

Don't tell my boss. 

 

 

Well, actually, she already knows, but, if you say the words, "Shelly's getting paid to sit at her desk and do a toe reduction on a sock design," then it sounds like I'm getting away with something, when I'm actually just knitting during my down time.

 

 

 

When people ask me what I do for a living, the first, snarky, answer that pops into my head is "I talk doctors down from the ledge, all day."

 

 

Not entirely untrue.

 

 

What I actually do is, when my company tells all of the physicians in the US, "oh, by the way, we're going to be doing THIS" and springs some new product/methodology on them, and the docs liked it the old way, and they're all mad as hell and want us to die, I'm the one who calms their asses down and teaches them how to do that thing that we're making them do while simultaneously Rah-Rah-Rah-ing the thing we're making them do. 

 

There is a specific set of skills required to bring a person from the point of seething hatred all the way to "Hey, I guess this doesn't suck and/or You guys are the BEST!"  Lucky me, I have those exact skills.  For the record, "You guys are the BEST!" is somewhat rare, but I'm almost always able to achieve something between "I guess this doesn't suck" and "This is actually pretty cool."  Close enough.  Considering that I slept through my public relations classes in college, that's quite good.  Don't tell my public relations professor that I got good at it, in spite of the hours spent snoozing--I don't want her to think that I'm getting away with something.

 

 

I "get away with" a lot of stuff--mostly because it doesn't occur to me to ask permission before I do a thing--hey, if I'm dead-wrong, I'll apologize and hang my head in shame for the required amount of time, but I'll be damned if I'm not going to try something just because someone who's never even thought about it is too scared to acknowledge that it just might work.  I admire my employer because they are a lot like that, and, that provides me with the most enjoyable job of explaining to people why that doesn't suck.

 

Know this: most people operate under a veil of fear.  To them, everything is a delicate balance, and they will go WAY out of their way to avoid toppling the cart.  People do all kinds of crazy things to stay away from discomfort, because they think it will be the end of them.  You wanna know something?  You're not that fragile.  Nothing in the world has more bounce-back than the human spirit.  People come back from horrendous situations, stronger than ever.  They come back as better people.  How can this be bad?  The dumb stuff my bosses throw out, for me to defend, is nothing compared to any real trauma.

 

I greatly admire the innovators--those that went out and did a thing and didn't wait around for the "no".  Or maybe they got a bunch of "no" and went ahead and did it anyway.  That takes guts.  It's also the reason why I really like my job, and the company I work for.  When an organization, or a person, is like that, I'm driven to support them--even if it means that I get to spend the day knitting because the company hasn't pissed anyone off this week.

 

What are YOU getting away with?  What would you LIKE to get away with, if you had the chance?

Interesting...

I liked this article (linked below).

I've been fortunate enough to have been exposed to all kinds of different people in my life, and I find that people on the extreme ends of the political spectrum (both ends) are some of the scariest individuals I have ever met. Even more disturbing is the fact that most of the people in the middle, who would not be considered "extreme" are basically unconscious--they are empty vessels, waiting to be filled, and those on the far right or far left are more than happy to top them off in an effort to gather more people into their ideological flocks. Of course, this is a sign of insecurity on either end--when you are stepping out with some very bold statements, it just feels better to know that there are others who feel the same, even if you had to talk them into it.

I think that the difference between the right and the left is that the right is the more forceful side, using bold scare tactics to bring you into the fold. The left, on the other hand, uses their supposed moral superiority.

Yesterday, I went to a concert--it was an all-school orchestra concert, and, since my daughter plays the violin, she was there in support of her school and orchestra. When the guest conductor was introduced, they handed her a microphone, and within the first three sentences of her short presentation, she informed her waiting audience that she had played at Carnegie Hall.

It's not that this woman is not a passionate, talented person, and I'm not saying that she is somehow less dedicated to music education in our public schools just because her opening salvo happened to be "I'm so much better than you people...". The problem is that she seemed completely unaware that her attitude didn't help. No wonder it's so easy for right-wingers to get people fired up against "liberals". I mean, I'm a fairly liberal person myself, and, I didn't like the guest conductor much, right out of the gate. Her superiority complex did nothing to further her cause. Only someone who is themselves jockeying for position in society would have found that endearing enough to ingratiate themselves to it. Luckily for public school music programs, those societal up-and-comers happen to have money.

Anyway...just some thoughts...here's the article:

Are Liberals Pathetic? | | AlterNet

Food

Nothing to do with anything serious, but I thought I would post the recipe for Total Cheat Chili--I think it may be one of my favorite discoveries of all time, and it was an absolute accident to happen across this short-cut, but a happy accident, indeed.  I used to make Tomatillo Chicken Chili, which involved lots of dicing and cooking and washing of vegetables, stirring, etc, and I still love that, but this a very close version of the same thing that takes less than 20 minutes.  (Less than 15 minutes if you're doing the vegetarian version...) In my household of three people, this is enough for everybody to have seconds.

Total Cheat Chili (vegetarian version) 

1 Jar Salsa Verde (the green stuff) However hot the salsa is, that's how hot the chili will be.

Vegetable broth

2 cans white beans, drained (lightly rinsed)  Use whatever kind you like.

1/2 tsp chili powder

1 heaping tsp cumin

Dump the salsa in the soup pot, then fill the salsa jar with vegetable broth and dump that in the soup pot.  Add the rest of the ingredients and heat.  Taste to check seasonings, and adjust if necessary--it probably won't be necessary.  Enjoy.

Meat version

Same as above, but use chicken broth instead of vegetable broth, and add cooked chicken meat--as much as you want.  Since I have both vegetarian and non-vegetarian people in my house, I just cook one or two boneless, skinless chicken breasts or thighs (the kind that come in a big bag, frozen) separately while I'm heating the vegetarian chili, cut up the meat and serve it on the side--that way the meaties can throw some chicken in their bowl, top it with the chili, and have chili with meat.

If you want to double or triple it, go for it, but don't double or triple the spices--add original recipe amount, taste it, and adjust to your taste.  I'm a big fan of cumin, which is why there is so much in the recipe to begin with...

There, now wasn't that easy?

The Ick

Have you ever cleared your Google Web History before?

 

 

 

I mean....actually looked at what was searched for under your Google account?  Because you do have the option to just clear the whole thing without looking, but, where's the fun in that?

 

 

 

I just did that.  I looked at my entire Google Search History, going all the way back to 2006.

 

 

Yeah, work is super-boring right now...shut up!

 

 

 

Anyway...there were a few months in there in which I was living in the same house as my step-son, and the searches....((shudder))

 

 

Can I just say that he was one revolting kid?  I mean, 16 when he moved in, and he's searching for WHAT???????  Yeah, the ickiest of porn.  I'm gagging, thinking about how I had my daughters that close to that disgusting pig.  And I suddenly have a renewed interest in jumping up and down on his head while wearing spiked shoes.

 

 

It's an interesting thing to pick through your web search history...I followed us from Duluth, MN, to Mobile, Alabama, and back to Minneapolis.  I saw my daughter's homework research; me trying to find a house in a nice neighborhood in Mobile; me shopping for Christmas presents, birthday cakes and Valentine flowers; me researching articles and essays, and I also found what appeared to be my ex looking up names of men I knew.  Huh.  I hope he wasn't disappointed by the sheer boredom of that...I was such a Pollyanna in that marriage.

 

 

I think I might have needed to look at that stuff today.  What better way to jump-start your move forward than to consider how you got here, and symbolically erase all of the icky stuff?  And I don't mean to say, "pretend it never happened", but rather, just wash the "ick" off of you and move on...

On The Up

You know what I hate?  I hate when people say that someone is "under-rated".  There was a guy on Twitter the other day, saying that Justin Currie was "under-rated"

 

 

Really?  Because I've read the reviews.  Rabid, slobbery gushing is pretty much all I could find.  How is that "under-rated"?

 

I'll tell you how it's under-rated....it's under-rated because the guy who said that is one of the only people he knows who actively likes Justin's music. 

 

I don't think that's "under-rated"--I just think that is an indicator that the guy who said that needs to hang out with a better class of people.  Or, he needs to stop worrying about what his friends think of his taste in music.

 

I think you should go ahead and sing the praises of things that you like, without worrying about whether or not people agree with you.  People are not always going to agree with you--that's just a fact of life.  Don't apologize for having a preference by calling them "under-rated"--that accomplishes nothing but making that thing look like a victim of horrible circumstance.  Why label them in this way?  So they get the pity vote?  Screw the pity vote--artists are much better served by you declaring them triumphant.  Nobody likes a sob story...