Anyway, do you know who turns 40 in 40 days?

Lloyd.

That means he has 39 days to hold on to his youth before middle age smacks him in the face like an offended old lady. Let’s wish him 39 good things today! I’ll start:

1. I wish that your monitor will magically fix itself.
2. I wish that only good television will come on when you’re watching.
3. I wish you’d put your dishes in the dishwasher. Wait, that’s not nice…..

Your turn.

Lloyd took care of them this time, mowing slowly to really mulch them up - then he mowed over everything else. Disregarding rocks, sticks or stepping stones, now the hostas are gone, as well as the peonies and seedums. Oh, and we’re going to need a new mower blade.

Along those lines, we can’t imagine why people rake. Mowing is so much easier, and (presumably) better for your yard since the little bits break down and enrich the soil. Plus - no sweating, no blisters, no bagging. With a self-propelled mower, the only way it could be easier would be if you could sleepwalk while doing it.

So, pick your side: Mower or raker?

I showed it to Lloyd on YouTube, and immediately following it is the sorrowful and haunting tune about *sob* lonely lowercase n. Sheesh, no wonder I have trouble anthopomorphising everything now as an adult. Isn’t that right, computer?

I’ve been having some really bad hair days lately, and wondered why it was more goofy-looking than normal. Upon closer examination, it appears I have a wave that goes all the way around my head that looks like the bend you get in your hair after you wear a ponytail, but I never wear one. I’ve tried switching my part (if you can call where I just let it flop in an uneven line a ‘part’) to see if that would fix it, and it hasn’t.

So, what’s the culprit? Stress? Age? Turbie Twist? (Probably that.) We’ll find out in a month - if the bend is further down, it’s the hair’s fault. If it’s in the same spot, I need to see a hair styling trainer.

Wavy hair - ur doin’ it rong.

We get to wear jeans at work on Friday, and honestly, the above words are how I count off my week. “Two more days until jeans day.” It’s a small light at the end of a sometimes-dark tunnel.

Ah….. jeans day is divine - even if the brand I wear is rumored to have problems. I told Lloyd I was sorry that he didn’t get to have jeans day and he told me *gasp* he doesn’t think jeans are as comfortable as dress pants!!

Perhaps I should stop lining his jeans with fire ants.

A couple of days ago I got one that most definitely wasn’t me. Two thousand dollars at Verizon Wireless??!!?? Who is this moron? Shouldn’t he be easy to catch? Seriously - a guy with a trunkful of phones???

They never got our actual cards, just the number. Again. Grrrrrrrrrrrr. We don’t have to pay for the charges, but the vengeful, vengeful part of me hopes that terrible things happen to the thieves.

Cards cancelled. New ones on the way. Hateful thoughts in my heart. Gratitude towards CitiBank - blah blah blah, but mostly the hateful thoughts.

Grrrrrrr.

I mean, how could we go right with a movie called ZombieLand? Doesn’t that just scream bad movie? Well, it was all around well done. The acting, the dialog, the zombies, they were all top notch. There was even a really funny extended cameo in the middle of the flick.

If you only see one zombie movie this year, this is the one you want. Oh, and stay until the end of the credits too.

The good people at Lemi Shine have a monthly testimonial contest, and I’ve read many of the winning entries - they sing the praises of this miracle powder for the hard-water inflicted that makes their spotted glassware sparkle, cleans the spots off the inside of their dishwasher, and makes it smell lemon-y fresh.

Pffffff. Those people don’t have real hard water problems.

Here’s a real problem - a couple of weeks ago I looked into the bottom of one of the dishwashers at work and the heating element had so much build-up on it, it looked like a piece of coral. Horrified, I checked the other dishwasher - same problem. (This discovery led to the realization that our water softener has been unplugged for several months, and our super-hard water has been baking onto the heating elements.)

Holy. Crud. I didn’t take a ‘before’ picture, this is a ‘during’, but you can see the strata.

I tried soaking some washcloths in vinegar and wrapping them around the elements overnight, but it didn’t help. A little internet search said that vinegar was too weak of an acid - you need citric acid. I scoured the kitchen for lemonade drink mix, but we didn’t have any. So, out to Wal-Mart to see what they had.

They had Lemi Shine.

I filled the bottoms of both dishwashers with enough hot water to cover the elements, poured in a bunch of Lemi Shine, and let it sit for a couple of hours. I came back and was able to chip off a fair amount of crud. After that, though, the voice of my old boss from Dairy King, Bonsall Huffington, came back to me - “Let the water do the work”. I’ve been letting the solution sit overnight and am able to gently scrape it off with a jam spreader, and I’m almost down to the elements.

Thank you, Lemi Shine. You saved us the cost of two heating elements, if not two new dishwashers.

Yet I only have nine.
Hmmmm……

Halloween is over and done. I was exhausted by 8:30 and was ready for bed by 9.

Best moment of the night - A 3-year-old vampire (a stranger, not one of mine) walked right in and helped himself from the candy bucket then gave my leg a grateful hug.

Best line of the night - Army man and (an older) vampire got their treats, turned around, and as I closed the door Army man said in wonder, “Is this a sugar stick?”

Yes, Army man. They are all sugar sticks.

Saddest moment of the night: Older sister, dressed as an impressive box of Froot Loops, arrived with her 3-year-old bunny sister and they got their treats. Froot Loops walked away, bunny stayed and told me resignedly, “I’m just a bunny.” People must have really been commenting on the cereal box costume.

I believe Showing the Messes will be my new fallback plan when stuck for a post idea.

Prepare for a lot of fallback, people.

UPDATE ONE:
The downstairs. It really isn’t that bad because Lloyd cleaned up before Samith stopped by last week and we haven’t been home enough to mess it up. (Be patient for the next updates. I have to eat and then go upstairs to take some horrifying photos!)

UPDATE TWO:
The guest room. We don’t open this room in the winter, so everything gets thrown in here until spring. Oh, the shame. I have to go mow and then I’ll show you more.

That’s right. I’m posting about my shirts. Welcome to Boringville. At least I spared you photos of brown, red and purple.

Lloyd: “Come read my new rubric for web design class.” (That’s right, we use words like ‘rubric’ around here. We’re Smarty-Smartersons.)

Me: “Mm-hmmm. Yes… looks good….” (Counting in my head to seventy-five while staring at the screen and pretending to know what it means. What the heck is a rubric, anyway?)

Lloyd: “You’re not really reading, are you?”

Me: “Ummmmm…..”

Luckily, at this point his giant monitor starts to flicker in a mad, seizure-inducing way.

Lloyd gets very, very quiet.

I start laughing.

Lloyd glares.

I stop laughing.

I take pictures.

Lloyd messes with the controls and continues to be very, very quiet.

I go to my trusty, non-broken computer, look up “Gateway monitor flicker” and find many, many angry people in the world who hate Gateway with a fiery passion because their monitors have also betrayed them.

Lloyd is also doing research, watching (through the flicker) a video of someone who is speaking in a calm, comforting voice - like a person highly trained in comforting the bereaved.

I get bored and start watching YouTube videos.

Lloyd quietly hisses, “Stop watching videos. You’re using all my bandwidths.”

I go to bed and leave him alone in his sorrow.

End scene

Please leave your condolences below.

Oh, and just so you know, though in this story I seem like a really awful, heartless person - I know what a rubric is.

It’s a nice little post, and it’s sitting there without any comments. I almost cried. So instead of commenting on today’s post, how about heading back a few years and adding a little something? If you don’t want to comment on that post (I mean, it’s like old and all), you could try to remember something that was going on in your life three years ago and fire that off.

Three years from now we’ll try it again.

Well, it seemed like a great time to re-use a cereal dispenser that I bought years ago for work in a desperate attempt to streamline things at breakfast. (I knew it wouldn’t work there, but it was a great excuse to buy it and have it.) Anyway, it’s been sitting unused in my closet for so long, this seemed like a great re-purposing.

It looks so sleek filled with supplies. So tidy. So smart.

Doesn’t it?

What I don’t have a picture of is how I blissfully dispensed some detergent (a little too much, but I just didn’t pour it all in the washer), and then went to dispense some Oxy-Clean….. and it poured all over the top of the dryer.

“Help!” I hollered up to Lloyd. “Bring a plate!”

Yeah, a plate. I’m quick on my feet.

Lloyd and/or I had every intention of mowing up the the leaves this weekend, but they were just too wet and would probably gum up the mower. or something like that.

I emptied out the rain barrel and dismantled ConBloGar and OvAmCuLad (that’s code for ‘Overly Ambitious Cucumber Ladder’).

It was sad to take it all down. Sadder still is that I didn’t have a good plan for putting the downspout back together after removing the rain barrel. It’s ‘done’ now, but it’s blessedly too dark to take a photo and show you how I ‘fixed it‘. Let’s just say that it would be a good thing if I could raise the whole yard about two feet and leave it at that.

It still needs work, but that’s for another year day.

Have a face? Send it to me and I’ll add it. (If I’m not at church or napping.)

I’ve never used to use lotion on my legs regularly, but we got a giant bottle a while ago from a box of stuff from Lloyd’s uncle and I used it. Turns out it makes your legs less scaly. Who knew?

Anyway, when I was nearing the end of the first bottle, I was mad because the pump stopped working and obviously there was a lot left in there. I tried all the gimmicks to eek out the contents - shaking, wiping the sides with the pump stick, I even contemplated making a tiny spatula - then I just cut it open. I thought I was being quite ingenious, considering I got two more week’s worth of lotion out of there, but apparently people have been doing this for ages. Consumer Reports says that 25 - 33% of mustard, lotion, toothpaste, conditioner, etc. is left behind in the bottle.

Well, not around here, CR. Not around here.

The band is Pomplamoose and the song is Single Ladies by Beyonce. (I can know stuff.)

If you are a Glee fan, I saw this video the day after the episode where the football team danced to this song, so I love it double.

*sigh* I need to live in a little apartment with tons of instruments, a cool haircut, and some talent.

The NE Technology Coordinator’s Fall meeting (or as I like to call it,
“The day all the computers in Nebraska schools stop working.”) Is
happening in Grand Island today. If you need me, that’s where I’ll
be.
–Lloyd

About an hour later I received a flurry of text messages, phone calls and e-mails, including this one:

So - as long as it doesn’t end up being a super headache for you, I am amused that the server crashed the day you were at a tech conference. I think the server read your email.
–Jared

Well, it turned out to be a very good conference. Really, “conference” is probably too strong a word for it. It was a bunch of technology coordinators from across Nebraska getting together. Some were from schools smaller than Lincoln Lutheran and some were from districts with 48,000 students. Someone would complain about something and a dozen other people would commiserate that the same thing happened to them and then 3 or 4 people would offer some really good ways to deal with that problem. (lather, rinse, repeat)

It was free, and I even bummed a ride with a group of people coming from Omaha. But I’m not really looking forward to going back to school tomorrow. To keep my mind off of it, I bought this game:

It’s called World of Goo, and it’s a sort of puzzle/physics simulation type game. It’s the 1st anniversary of the game, and they are currently selling it for “Whatever you want to pay for it.” If you decide to buy it (and at that price, why wouldn’t you?) I would be interested in knowing what you paid for it. There are versions for Windows, Macs, Linux and Wii. The music is cool, and I played about 5 levels tonight before watching the movie Rounders.