Pet Peeve #643

I hate when people start a question with "how come". "How come the sky is blue?" It's not so bad in conversation, but when it's written down... you have time to correct it.

And I've given up on griping about typos on blogs. Because I've learned that I rarely spell check these posts. So I'm becoming the queen of the typos. And lest I be a hypocrite, the subject is now dropped.

But I can gripe about typos on signs. In the Jesus Town, they often have passers-thru who set up a camper on the corner and sell knick knacks and such out of a tent. Usually the wares consist of "name brand shoes" or antiques and junk you win at carnivals. The other day, one of the stands was selling Fantsy fountains. I'm still deciding whether these were fancy fountains of fantasy fountains. Neither sounds that enticing.

A walk in the clouds.

I can tell you 5 members of one family who won't be making the trek out onto this walkway. I'm betting just the description of it is enough to make the Mom cringe.

Jesus Town Goes Global

Did you know the Jesus Town has it's own website? Yeah, apparently neither did the Jesus Town. I just stumbled across it via the Jesus Town Times (whose online version contains a grand total of 1 front page story and 3-day old obituaries). It has useful links like "report a crime" or "pothole patrol". I'm not certain how long it has been up and running, but the employment page is currently showing a job opening with a deadline of April 30th. So at least that long. And the site counter is showing 7300 hits. Quite embarrassing considering that even the Jesus Town population is bigger than that number.

Kids These Days.

The church in the Jesus Town held it's annual picnic yesterday afternoon. Usually they reserve the cow palace at the local park for such an event, but it was previously booked. (And yes, it's actually called the cow palace). Instead, they rented out the local Jesus Town Reserves Armory. It's technically on the park grounds and is the only place in the Jesus Town, outside of the school gyms, that can accommodate large groups.

For those of you who haven't frequented your local armory lately, let me refresh your memory of its amenities. The main room is unairconditioned with a row of windows on one wall about 25 feet from the ground. They did provide a fan for the room which was about 2 feet in diameter for a room that was easily 500 x 500 feet. It did wonders, as you can imagine. I know the whole point of the picnic is to get together away from the church building, but I'm thinking the nice air conditioned Family Life Center of the church would have been preferable to the sweltering heat of that room. It was almost like we were setting that world record for most people in a sauna that I posted the other day.

Anyway, for the meal, they had set up rows of tables and folding metal chairs, which compliment nicely the unfinished concrete floor. While we were sitting there, a couple of 7 year olds started running through all of the tables and chasing one another. After a few minutes, the boy tripped on something and about planted his face on the cold concrete floor. The preacher's son, who's a couple of years younger than me, pointed it out to the Mom and I. (Unfortunately, I had missed the one almost entertaining moment of the evening.) I couldn't believe that whoever was the parents of these kids had let them run around in the middle of a meal for that long. I turned to him and asked him if he knew what would have happened to us if we had been running around like that when we were that age. And he answered that his parents would have tripped him themselves and followed it with a, 'I told you you'd get hurt if you ran around like that.' Ah, the good ole days of aggressive parenting.

Insert creative title here.

The Dad and I were watching an episode of 20/20 last night. And a couple of things were so funny, I had to share for those who weren't hovering around their TVs on a Friday night.

They were doing this special on technology spyware. One of the items was a software program you install on your computer and you can read everything that anyone ever sends via email. Apparently this is a tool of choice for parents and spouses who suspect the other is cheating. One such woman found out that her husband of 6 years was having an affair with a family friend. And after a few weeks, found out he was actually having multiple affairs at that time. At the time of the interview the couple was separated. After this has been revealed, the reporter asks in a voiceover: "Did technology ruin this marriage?" Um, just a guess, but I think the husband sleeping around with multiple women may have had something to do with it.

A second, but equally humorous comment occured during another story about women who marry men in prison. One of the couples met when the woman visited the prison for a college class. She visited the guy frequently and 7 years later, they were married. They had been married 10 years by this point and he has been in prison the whole time. The reporter stated that often, the women stay in the relationship holding on to the hope that their husbands will be paroled. But, she said, the stress of the relationship (including long trips to the prison for visits, high phone bills of collect calls, etc) is too much for some people. Including the couple described above. After 10 years of marriage, they are now "separated." Heh.

The Timeline

The Coldplay concert timeline (as promised):

6:00 Leave my apartment to drive to the north side. We take the back way to avoid the long lines on I-69.

7:15 Arrive at Verizon and abandon the car. Only neither of us think to look at where we abandoned the car.

7:40 A completely sucktastic band starts playing the opening act. We only understood 3 words the whold set. We could understand "run" as in the chorus "run run ruuun run runnn run" etc, except the word could very well have been "fluh", we'll never know. And the other 2 words were "Vancouver Canada" as in after every song they said, "We're (unintelligible and likely dorky band name) from Vancouver Canada." I kid you not when I say that all 5 members, 4 guys and a girl, had the exact same hairstyle; shoulder length and wavy. Then the chick starts playing something that looks like a green plastic milk carton with a tube sticking out. We later determined that it must have been her water bottle. Otherwise, I just lost more respect for them.

[After looking them up, I see we weren't the only ones with this opinion. From a concert review a few days before our concert (the reviewer is even Canadian):
Supporting Coldplay as an unknown band to mainstream pop fans is a thankless task. But that’s exactly what Vancouver's Black Mountain faced, as a half capacity A.C.C. were subjected to their set. First track "Don't Run Our Hearts Around" went down very well, but by the third track, the impatient Coldplay fans had lost interest. Black Mountain do have an atmospheric output suited to the big arena, but it sounded too much like they were jamming in their dad's garage, ignoring the 7,000 or so people listening.]

Ooh, and the title of this VHI Article sums it up nicely: Who Are Black Mountain — And Why On Earth Are They Touring With Coldplay? Vancouver quintet's heavy sound seems likely to horrify Coldplay fans.


8:30 Sucky opening act plays their last 12 minute "song" and the 15 year old guys next to us express everyone's sentiment that we hope they aren't just playing with us and are actually leaving.

9:10 Coldplay takes the stage.

9:45 Coldplay, having exhausted their mainstream songs, launches into a variety of slow songs that no one knows. The bathroom/beer lines quadruple in length.

9:52 K and I realize that neither of us paid any attention to where we parked. We decide to worry about that later.

10:30 Coldplay plays their last song. They leave the stage and pretend they're done for the night while the stage crew is clearly tuning their instruments for the encore.

10:38 During the encore, Chris Martin leaves the stage and runs through the crowd. He's so close to us his sweat could possibly have splattered on us.

10:45 K and I leave during the last song and head to the car.

10:50 K and I are walking amongst about 1500 cars trying to find hers. She has no car alarm, and the several hundred other fans are already using this technique to find their cars.

11:02 We find the car.

11:15 While still waiting to get out of our parking spot, a fight erupts between passengers of the car in front of us. Unfortunately, for our entertainment's sake, it breaks up before the punches are thrown.

11:35 Still waiting in our spot, it starts to rain. Cars start cutting through the rows to get to another line.

11:55 K and I are getting impatient. We haven't moved from our spot and are completely blocked in by cars pointing in every direction. Drivers with a sense of entitlement try jumping the line and cutting people off.

12:35 After several close calls, dumbass drivers who cut us off and then won't let us out of our spot, we finally make it out of the lot.

1:00 K and I satisfy our Steak and Shake cravings. Our waiter thinks he's working at the Tavern on the Green, NYC. He's so proper and keeps addressing us in complete, and proper sentences. "Good evening ladies. I apologize for the delay. May I start your dinner with a beverage."

1:30 We finish our meals.

1:35 Waiter asks if we want dessert. We decline and wait on our bill.

1:38 Waiter again asks if we want dessert. We again decline.

1:42 Waiter just wants to be sure we don't want dessert.

1:46 Waiter pleads with us to buy dessert.

1:50 Waiter's supervisor comes to see if we want dessert. We decline, again, and then he asks us if he can get us anything. We say the bill, and he finally gets it.

And that was the end of the night. K drove me back home and then apparently almost fell asleep a few times on the drive back to her place. We decided that for our Jack Johnson concert in a couple of weeks, we're splurging and getting the $20 VIP parking pass. Reserved spot, and they let us out first? We're there.

Dance Like You Mean It

Of my 6 or so television channels I get on my tv, Fox happens to come in the best. Flipping through the channels tonight, I stumbled upon "So you Think You can Dance." And after about 30 minutes, I'm already addicted. I can't dance to save my life, so to see people who can keep the rhythm and move, it's quite stunning. And at least it's all visual, so my ears don't have to sufffer through like they do with Idol. Plusses all around.

If you can't stand the heat:

600+ people crammed into a giant sauna in Michigan on Saturday in an attempt to set the World Record for most people in a sauna. Two things come to mind when I read this:

(1)Who comes up with these ideas? Is there a world record for everything now. I bet I set the world record for the most people ever in my Vue the other day. Because I doubt the guy that put the 1 mile on it driving it around the lot had more than 4 people in it. Call Guiness.

(2)The idea of 600 people in an enclosed space at 160 degree temperatures is absolutely my worst nightmare. Really, I have to stop thinking of it.

A rose by any other name.

I went to dinner tonight with Kyleen, Mary, and Debi E. Across the restaurant was a meeting of the Red Hat Society. Debi told us that when you join, you have to have a nickname. So we created some for ourselves. See if you can correctly guess which one of us fits with which name.

Aloe Vera
Twinkle Toes
Honeydew Melons
Rosebud

Sorry to those of you in the blogosphere who don't actually know us.
I was in need of a post topic.

Gymanstico

Chuck, KeeKee and I went to the US Gymnastics Nationals last night. Aside from the introduction of the 2004 Olympic Teams and the 5 hall of fame inductees, I knew relatively no one. Apparently the tradition is that the Olympic team does not compete the year after they had the glory of the Olympics. But it was fun nonetheless.

At the end of it, prior to the medal ceremony, they haul out the Visa vice president to give some schpeal. And he drones on about how Visa is the best credit card in the world and that their new slogan is "throw away your American Express and use your Visa." To which Chuck suggested that a more appropriate slogan would be "Because you don't already have enough debt." I hopefully asked if this was the moment they would tell us to look under our seats to find our new Visa card, and KeeKee was quick to point out that this was not the Oprah show. Darn.

Concert Interruptus

I've been meaning to buy the latest Coldplay album for a while. I've even had "Clocks" as my ringtone since I got my new phone. So when I ran into KeeKee and she told me that one of our friends had won tickets to last night's concert and couldn't use them, I jumped on board.

For my parents readers who need a reference point, that's the band that's currently number 1 on the charts and whose lead singer is married to Gwenneth Paltrow.

The concert was good, but I'm glad we didn't pay the 70 bucks for the tickets. I've kinda been spoiled when it comes to concerts there. The only other one I've been to was a Weezer concert with my former roommate. She used to work for a label and occassionally she got VIP tickets which spoil you with the VIP parking, the VIP bar, the VIP seats, and most importantly, the VIP separate marble bathrooms. So while last night's tickets were free, it wasn't the same royal treatment. Alas, I survived.

I'll post a timeline later, because really, it's worth it.

Beating the Odds

Mumber of times during the day where I feel brilliant: 1
Number of times during the day where I feel incompentent and act like a complete and utter moron: 42

And things aren't looking to improve in the near future either.

A Case of the Mondays

I have no other way to describe my mood today. It took me several hours to wake up out of whatever funk I was in. The funny thing is that the more sleep I get, the more tired I am. I've been a good little girl, trying to get 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night, and I'm absolutely dragging by the next morning. Counter that with the nights I fall asleep around 1 a.m. and have a 6 a.m wakeup call and am rather perky around the office. I think I need to conduct and official experiment. Look forward for the results in the near future.

The parents are coming to visit tomorrow and then going to the opening of the State Fair on Wednesday. My apartment is an absolute disaster at this point, and I attempted to do a little straightening a bit today. It was a fruitless effort. My style of cleaning tends to consist of moving all of the junk from A to B. And then the next time I clean, from B to A. Not exactly a productive system. Thank heavens the parents love me in spite of this, and dare I say, after 27 years, they're not going to expect much different from me.

Notes to Myself

Stopping by the grocery store on the way home from work=bad idea.
Maybe it was just because everyone else in the area was trapped in their homes over the weekend, but the Kroger here was more packed at 5:30 today than I've ever seen the Jesus Town Kroger on a Sunday.

When needing gas on the way to work, don't count on the place you stopped last week. I got gas at a BP last Tues. It was rather new, computers at the pump and all. Driving by it today, it was a different sight entirely. The windows were all boarded up, and all of the pumps were covered in black plastic. What a difference 6 days makes.

Quotables

Scientists have successfully cloned a dog. And while I have no interest in this story on the surface, I couldn't pass up these great quotes from this article:

Within weeks of Dolly's birth, a US millionaire gave $5m to a Texas university to duplicate a mongrel dog called Missy. The project became known as Missyplicity....

A US biotech company launched itself under the name Genetic Savings and Clone and cloned a procession of pet cats on demand....

The researchers implanted more than 1,000 embryos into 123 bitches to achieve just three pregnancies.

Had it been James Focus on the Family Dobson's daughter, this might have been ironic. As it is, it's only embarrassing.

Welcome Race Fans. Now go away.

Without being too specific about the location of my new digs, I will say that a certain auto race is going to affect my ability to leave my apartment on Saturday and Sunday this weekend. And if you think I'm kidding, trust me; I am not. I have spent all week driving past vendors and life-sized posters of drivers while artfully avoiding the limited heavy traffic in the area. I think I'm going to cut my losses and head back to the Jesus Town this weekend and leave the racing to the fans. [i.e. the Dad and the brother-in-law (BIL from now on cause I'm sick of typing it out every time)]

And on a racing note... I cut through the airport this afternoon to avoid interstate traffic. [And anyone out there not from Indiana is clearly wondering how traffic around the airport can actually be the preferred route.] I was sitting at a light by the car rental places, and glanced at one of the other cars at the intersection. The guy driving the SUV looked really familiar and it took me a few seconds to place him. It was that driver who is sponsored by some tire company and does a commercial where he and another guy stand outside the mechanic's bay pretending that their cars are newborns. If I weren't so lazy, I'd look up his name. But if the Dad is reading, I know he'll promptly come to my rescue.

Saved him the trouble. It was this guy.

The Indiana Connection

I hate the Indiana Connection. You know the type. The local news finds it necessary to translate some national news story into local fodder and then beat it like a dead horse. Prime example: the news has had a hey day with the Supreme Court nominee because once upon a time he went to grade school in Indiana. Or the girl that is missing in Aruba has 4th cousins twice removed living in the Indy area that must be interviewed to get their take on the situation. That kind of relevant stuff.

Tonight's Indiana Connection was in respect to the Toronto airplane psuedo-crash today. The 11 o'clock news was live at the Indy airport reporting on a poedunk flight that was supposed to make a quick pitstop at the Toronto airport. I tuned out but I think they were interviewing potential flyers who may have been on the flight that could have landed in the Toronto airport hours after bad weather caused an unrelated super-turbo jet to skid off the runway and newscasters were trying to get the at-home viewer to believe that even though the bad weather was long gone, there was still a potential danger to a flight that never took off and had no passengers, and never entered Canadian airspace.

I guess it would have been too easy to cover the actual plane that did take off, did land in Toronto, and did skid off the runway and burst into flames. But then again, who am I to question actual journalism.

My grand entrance.

I started working full-time on Monday, and while I promised not to post anything about work, I'd be remiss not to share a little detail.

Bright and early Monday morning, I roll into downtown at about 7:30 a.m. I'm not much of a morning person (which if you didn't know that you must be new here), but 7:30 was my suggested start time. Plus I wanted to get a jump on my new career. I worked a few days during the summer, but not really getting my feet wet or the feel for things. So this day really was the first day of the rest of my life.

I was surprised I remembered the door code to get to the floor, but I made it inside nonetheless. And then I heard chirping and notice a control box on the wall. Approximately 42 1/2 seconds later, the alarm is screaming through the building. I head to our office to get someone, but no one is there and the door is locked. And no one from the other offices sharing our floor is there yet either. So like a trapped criminal, I hover in the bathroom to call my boss's cell phone.

The alarm issue resolved (police, security codes, notifying me that there is an alarm, etc), I then hover in the hallway for 30 minutes until the first office member shows up. I really should have double-checked when everyone comes in. Not really the first impression I wanted to make. On the bright side however, I realized I don't have to roll out of bed quite so early in the morning.

It will be ok. I am a professional.

Music of the Moment

I know several people don't care for posts on my music tastes. Deal. I've been told a lot over the last few years that I have weird taste in music, but then been asked to share. So for that one reader who really cares, I'll continue.

1. Jason Mraz: I was only familiar with one of his songs but borrowed the CD from the library the other day. And it's all so catchy. Who can't relate to soul-searching lyrics like,
You can say that I'm one curly fry in the box of the regular".

2. Kelly Clarkson: I'll admit I didn't watch the first season of American Idol. I'll also admit that I avoided her stuff because it was way too trendy for me. But then following her latest album, I kept hearing songs on the radio that I liked, and after I found out they were by her, I made the sacrifice.

3. Anna Nalick: It is very rare indeed for me to have 2 female artists revolving on the playlist at the same time. She's kinda got a Tori Amos feel (which is odd because I never listened to her) and she writes her own music. Which is a must to make my faves list. (Ahem, in light of artist #2 I should probably revise this to say usually required.)

4. Jadon Lavik: I don't know much about him, but for weeks I keep hearing a particular song on the Jesus Radio that strikes a nerve with me. So for that, he gets a nod.

Thank Heavens, for DSL

Got my DSL package installed and running today. It's a savior. Not only have I been stranded in my apartment without television, but I've been internetless for roughly a month. But no more. I'm back to connectivity and sanity for that matter.

This is a big step up for a girl who's been dial-up her whole life.