Happy Birthday, Mrs.!

Twenty nine is a good number.

Psalm 29

Ascribe to the LORD, O mighty ones,
ascribe to the LORD glory and strength.
Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name;
worship the LORD in the splendor of his holiness.
The voice of the LORD is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the LORD thunders over the mighty waters.
The voice of the LORD is powerful;
the voice of the LORD is majestic.
The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars;
the LORD breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon.
He makes Lebanon skip like a calf,
Sirion like a young wild ox.
The voice of the LORD strikes
with flashes of lightning.
The voice of the LORD shakes the desert;
the LORD shakes the Desert of Kadesh.
The voice of the LORD twists the oaks
and strips the forests bare.
And in his temple all cry, "Glory!"
The LORD sits enthroned over the flood;
the LORD is enthroned as King forever.
The LORD gives strength to his people;
the LORD blesses his people with peace.


"When you are twenty-nine it can be the beginning of everything."
--Gertrude Stein

Here's to the road ahead!



This post was brought to you by the number 29.

cheese

Today the Mr. and I ventured to the dentist. We both enjoy going, for different reasons....he enjoys the dental hygenist and I think she hates me (so I don't enjoy her quite as much). I enjoy the flouride rinse...mostly because I think it puts a super protective shield over my teeth to protect them for the next 6 months till I go back agian and Matt does the kids flouride because he 'hates the taste'. We both got at least an A on our "home care" which is much better than our last report.

"The couple that flosses together stays together," shouted the Dentist from the Mr.s side while I was getting my teeth cleaned in the next room. Good times.

Growing up I LOVED going to the dentist. My dentist was the father of one of my friends. Hey just seemed to take good care when pulling out the tounge and checking for cancer, you know? I think of him every time I go to the dentist, and I think of his family; my friend 'fatty' who sang in our wedding. Fatty is MOST certainly not fat..and the genesis of the name is another story. But after I think of fatty I think of her younger sister Jenna. She was a beautiful woman who lived life to the full. She died at 24 from Cancer, incredibly sad. Fatty and I were both in Grad School at the time, and it was good to be with her then. Jenna lived more life than alot of people I know who live years beyond her mere 24- but it is sad to know that she isn't going to grow old with her sister, nor her mom, dad, and brothers. Fatty is in New York City living a dream that Jenna would be proud to support, auditioning for Broadway and being a city girl.

I had every intention to keep this a light and funny post...but Jenna came to mind....she had a great sense of humor. So... here I am wondering...is this what the dentist sees when he puts on his goggles and head lamp.

It takes an iVillage

At work, it takes a whole IT department to keep my pc working. (And yes, most of the guys in the IT department look like the PC guy...though a little younger).

Our much more hip and stylish readers have been a wonderful little iVillage for us and we are very thankful. Hopefully we will raise our mac well.

Speaking of which, I think we are behind on at least one thing...a name for our new little friend. i floated a name this morning, but the iMrs. was not impressed.

Some background: when i was in grad school, i stayed with this wonderful Filipino family. They would take me to big family events and i would be the only 'white guy'--as they would they would say--in attendance. They said if I heard somebody say 'puti' (pronounced 'poo-TEE'), they were talking about me, 'the white guy.' So given the complexion of our new little friend, i thought 'puti' might be a nice name.

Now i'm told that one must think about likely nick names. Presumably there won't be many little Tagalog-speaking macs running around taunting ours, but if there are, it could be a problem. My Tagalog-speaking coworker says that 'puta' (pronounced 'poo-TAY'), means, well...a member of the oldest profession. But somehow I think being called a 'pc' might feel a lot worse to our little guy than being called a 'puta.'

Thoughts?

Of mice and macs

I've been feeling a little Old Testament today. That is, a little Abrahmic and a little ancient-Egyptian.

When our iScreen died the other day, i will admit that i was a little frustrated. And in my frustration, i cooked up a little scheme whereby the wife would be slightly disengenuous with folks at the Apple store and i/we would benefit from our iscreen misfortune.

To muddle the analogies and metaphors further, i would be the bad cop (in abstentia) and she would be the good cop. The plan would go something like the following. iMrs.: "Hi, um, can you PLEASE help me?! I finally talked my ihusband into getting a mac...told him it would make him cool. He finally gave in...but now the screen doesn't work and he's really mad and ready to give up on macs and on ever being cool. Could you give me a computer with a screen that works AND a free mouse? He might be willing to keep on trying to be cool then."

Now, in her virtue (and, OK, forgetfulness), the iMrs. did not, in fact, carry out the scheme. We'll never know if we would have gotten a free mac mouse. But as it turns out, it was that very same day that we discovered justice had been done. We got at least one free--very live--mouse in our house: a plague for my plot.

Now if i only had some people i could set free to rid us of our pestilence...

Almost Ready

Our iFamily spent a little more time bonding last night. We got off to a bit of a rocky start...my goal was to pay the nice people at Apple 99 cents for an iTune of my choosing. Not surprisingly, getting set up to give them money went pretty well. But it turns out iTunes is not a very big fan of the Canadian Brass. i thought i might celebrate the new member of the iFamily with a signature CB track...a blending of the Hallelujah Chorus and When the Saints Go Marching In. Sadly, there was no singing or marching to be had.

So i downloaded "Not Ready to Make Nice" by a slightly different, but equally talented, musical ensemble. Oddly enough, hearing the Dixie Chicks be mad as hell helped my mood. Our little white buddy then did a great job sucking in Allison Krauss' live album and that improved my mood again (got the iMrs. humming along nicely too.)

At several points I longed for the information my pc offers...signal strength on the wireless connection, the bit rate for ripping cds...the techie stuff. But strangely enough, the wireless kept working without my monitoring the little bars and iTunes sounded pretty good despite me not knowing how it was digitized. (The remote worked quite nicely too, thanks to the helpful reader advice.)

Oh, and we went whole hog and got our house into the deal: our ichat user name is i207s. Can't believe nobody else had that one. Now we're itching to ichat.

i think i'm almost ready to make nice.

their ba-ack

After months of a clean mouse free house I had forgotten just how nice it was to not clean up mouse poos everyday. Tonight I was reminded. The mice are back. It really does make me so sad to find those nasty little poos on the window sill.

Mr. spent a few hours this winter spraying expandable foam in every hole he could find. It was our best plan in the 'war on mice.' Now we must devise a new plan to get rid of these creatures. Plus it is spring, what are they doing inside anyway?

If you are coming for a visit soon, don't worry they are fairly nice...but hopefully they will die soon!

THIS IS WAR! ...again

iGnorance

We now have a second mac laptop. i have to say, it is much easier to use now that the screen works!

The mac reminds me of when I got my first computer, the TI 99/4A. While the mac has 1 gb of ram instead of 16K and a hard drive instead of a audio tape drive, I feel about as clueless as to how to use it. I think I've got the browser mostly down (I can get to cnn.com and Our Inspiration's blog...what else do I need?).

i thought i'd impose a bit on our reader(s)who might have a mac and ask a few questions from time to time in coming days.

The first question: What is the nifty stick-of-gum-like white thing that came with the mac? It looks like a little remote control of some sort, but nothing i point it at seems to do anything (with the exception of the iMrs. who looks at me like I'm crazy) i appreciate that the folks at Apple have eschewed complicated instructions, but a little note on this little doohicky would have been nice!

Cool?

After many months of looking forward to buying a mac, the iMrs. and i finally made it over to the Apple store last night to buy our mac laptop. i asked the isales person what he would suggest that we buy. (His name, interestingly, was "Haleem" as opposed to the traditional "Halim." We can only surmise the 'i' was necessary elsewhere in the store.)

Haleem was very helpful, especially in the liberal application of the adjective "cool." We quickly learned what was cool about dozens of features on the laptop, the service plan, an external mouse, etc. We were convinced and purchased a mac book.

Later that evening, the iMrs. opened up the box and set to getting our new friend up and running. So here's the report:
The packaging: Cool (how did they manage to make the styrofoam seem cool?)
The sleek white case: Cool.
The magnetic power cord: Very cool (again, how did they manage to make a power cord seem cool?)
The soothing, yet hip music intro: Very cool. (setup is usually so painful).
The tailored software setup: Cool (once they knew we were new to macs, the setup questions adapted.)
The screen that fritzed and then stopped working after 4 1/2 minutes: Not cool.

i have to admit, though, the whole process was pretty easy. Even in the end, there weren't any complicated error messages about memory write errors at sector 2E4f89h. Not even the blue screen of death. It just stopped working, plain and simple. Cool.

secrets

Since I am on a break from Popsugar (Lent and all) I have found a new favorite site! Well, actually the Mr. lead me to it. The great thing about it is that the new posts only happen on Sunday. (So I can contain my reading to one day a week) I think part of the addiction to the sugar is that the updates come every few minutes throughout the day. Oh, how i miss my sugar...but this secret is good!

Test upDate

My first exam will be this week! Thurday, March 15.

I am taking one of the three graphic exams: The Building Planning Division. This test is broken up into two parts, Interior Layout (1 hour) and Schematic Design (4 hours), with a 15 minute break in between.

I took a practice exam on Sunday and feel fairly confident about the exam, I have a few more days to study the things I questioned while I was taking the practie.

The thing that I find myself most concerned about is; what if I get hungry during the 4 hour part? At work I notice I get hungry about 10:30, and I can get a snack whenever I want. (Those of you who have been to my office are well aware of all the goodies in the kitchen, and you might understand my concern.) I think I will fill up on protein in the morning, along with the Mr's famous cup of coffee. Other than that, I think I can pass this one. If I don't tell you, I might have failed, in which case it will be a sore topic...so choose your questions wisely.