It’s hot, unseasonably so, and I can’t resist looking at weather.com to see what it is in Denver. This afternoon, when Jeremy and I looked, it was 62, and I commented that such a temperature was at least appropriate for April. Last week was cool and rainy and refreshing, and after only two days of this sunny hot weather, I feel parched and prickly.

I’m sitting hear nibbling on a salad and felt the urge to write but I’ve couched it as fiction. You can read it here. No, it’s not another formal blog, it’s just a place to post stuff that isn’t quite what I want here. No need to blogroll it, links will be offered on the rare occasions when content changes.

I think I’m allergic to summer.
My allergies were undercontrol til the heat hit 90.
I want to move.
I want a house with air conditioning and three more rooms, and a gourmet kitchen.

God, I’m whiny tonight.
I blame the weather.

The new Strawberries & Cream frappacinos at $tarbuck$ are quite tasty, lighter and frothier than an actual strawberry milkshake, with more strawberry flavor.

But if you order it with a pump of mocha, it tastes just like Neapolitan ice cream.

Yay summery beverages!

Fuzzy and I have developed the routine of spending Saturday evenings curled up on the couch watching bad movies on the SciFi channel. I call them modern b movies, because, really, that’s what they are. And since they’re on cable, and we’re not paying for tickets or rental fees, we don’t even have to feel guilty about them.

I have a special fondness for bad monster movies and horror movies, one that was only encouraged by a friend and bus-mate (we were both the last stop for the special magnet bus) from high school, whom I’ll call Camille, because she’d like that.

Camille and I were always good acquaintences, but never really friends until senior year, when we realized we both liked mocking the magnet slut, who also rode our bus, and when we hung out together we’d keep up running commentary on everything.

One of our jokes was that we both wanted to be graduates of “The Linnea Quigley Film School” where we’d learn how to issue bloodcurdling horror-flick screams, and create secret recipes for stage blood. (You have to add a little bit of green food coloring, which cuts the vibrance of the red, and makes it look that much more visceral.)

And of course, we came up with stupid movie titles, either to mock people whose hair was sprayed into that late-eighties thing with the bangs standing almost straight and then curled backwards. We called it the Space Monkey Swirl, I think. The best title we ever came up with was Psycho Sluts of Satan II, which, we said, wasn’t a sequel, but had a number to make it sound cooler.

Tonight, Fuzzy and I watched (and I cannot believe I’m committing this admission to a blog entry) DinoCroc. It was a truly bad, poorly written, horribly acted *thing* that was sort of Jurassic Park meets The Crocodile Hunter meets Jaws. In fact, other than the addition of Linnea Quigley to the cast, the only thing that could have made it cheesier is any cast member uttering the line, “I think we need a bigger jeep.”

I was telling a net-friend about this, resisting as long as possible because I knew I’d be mocked, when memories of wandering around San Francisco in the middle of the night with Camille, telling people we were siamese twins who’d been separated at the elbow, popped into my head., making me emit random giggles.

Fuzzy is perplexed; I am still giggling.

Today we celebrated Earth Day by doing lawn maintenance. This may not seem like much, and you could, I suppose, call us dandelion murderers, but Fuzzy mowed and edged both lawns, and pulled the dandelions from the area around the monstrous play structure we never use and have never bothered to remove or replace.

Truly, he did a lot, especially for a computer geek who generally only glimpses the sky through cracks in the miniblinds, or car windshields.

As for me, I had the easier, if more hunched over, job of weeding the front flower box, pruning the rosebushes, and cutting back the calla lilies and bloomed out bulbs. I’m all itchy but I haven’t been outside enough, and this was good for me, and the garden. I saw some lady bugs, which made me smile, and some termites, which did NOT.

It was a lovely day, and I was sorely tempted to jump in the pool, but it wasn’t quite warm enough for that. Or rather, it was, but there haven’t been enough consecutive days with a warm enough temperature to make the pool water warm enough for swimming, though sitting on the edge with my feet in the water was great.

So, we’re both in our offices for the evening, puttering, and pausing now and then for smoochy breaks. And I’ve just turned on the two thirds of the front sprinklers (there isn’t enough water pressure to do all three sections at once), and in four minutes, I’ll go turn them off, and turn the others on. Meanwhile, it’s just breezy enough that the water is blowing across the lawn, and if I turn my head toward the window the cool water mists toward me, and smells like summer rain.

Week of 18 April 2004

1. Virginia:: Ginny
2. Soft:: as feathers, sharp as thumbtacks…
3. Carol:: Channing
4. Vanity:: Fair
5. Feminist:: Mystique
6. Alias:: Spy
7. Coward:: Noel
8. Beer:: Lime
9. Chance:: Monopoly
10. Honest:: sincere

…is that with the market the way it is, we should list the house asap, planning on an open house by Memorial Day, and negotiate a 30-day rentback, find a temp apt in Colorado, then get settled there and search for the perfect new house.

The daring part of me, who already has ppl sharing their rolodex and palm files with her, likes this plan A LOT (esp. since she’s being told that the house comps out at $545 – 575k and that she could probably get over 600k if she staged it right).

The conservative part of me is less sure, but still excited.

SEEKING: Friends to spend a weekend or two between now and Memorial Day helping us paint, spackle, repair, and hold a garage sale. Food will be provided. Swimming pool is open. Gratitude is already included.

I am a cheap drunk.
No, I don’t mean I’m a lush. I mean that one beer, on an empty stomach, and served with a slice or two of carb-laden pizza, effectively knocks me out. There is no giddyness, no sloshiness, just a soft descent into sleep.

This is what happened earlier tonight, almost. I fought the sleep, went online, looked at house plans, surfed monster, did research on licensing in Colorado (for my present job, actually), and moved on from there to convincing Fuzzy it was bedtime at 12:47, when we rarely, if ever, turn out the lights before two. Or three.

At 3:30, he got up because Cleo was sitting on the top of the bed, nudging us. Apparently this is her new signal for “Let me out; I have to pee.” Zorro’s signal, much harder to miss, involves sitting on one of our chests and licking our noses, then jumping to the floor, catlike, and scratching at the door. We have no trouble interpreting this, but Cleo can be a bit less obvious (see above).

When she came back, Fuzzy decided HE had to make a pitstop as well. Fortunately, he is an adult human, capable of letting himself out of the bathroom. I sighed, and rolled over, tried to go back to sleep.

It didn’t work. I just kept thinking silly things that wouldn’t go away:
My shoulders hurt. Zorro, stop licking my foot. Now. Stop it now. Thank you. No, don’t sleep on my shoulder – it hurts. Silly dog. It’s hot in here. How can it be hot in here when I’m cold. Am I cold? No. I’m just awake. Sleep. 1-2-3 Sleep. Do I have to pee?

I did, in fact, get up to answer Nature’s call, pausing to rub some mentholated cream on my very achy shoulders. Lovely stuff: it relaxes the muscles and clears the sinus passages, too.

I returned to bed, tried to get comfortable, cuddled up to Fuzzy. And found I was wide awake.

So, here I sit, a bit over an hour later. I began this entry at 4:50 AM. The dogs, who follow ME more than Fuzzy, are snoring in chorus. Zorro is on the blue chair. Cleo is on a pillow on the floor. And I am getting drowsy again.

I’m so glad it’s Friday.

5:00 AM.
Back to bed.

It’s no secret, really, that I have a restless spirit. It comes, I think, from a quasi-nomadic childhood, and is helped along by the fact that I love change, love tweaking, altering, adjusting…apparently editing my own words isn’t something that attracts me, so I edit other things.
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::A geek in the family::

A geek– Hey, who handles tech support at your place? You? …the six year old? …or someone from outside? …and how about in your web space? No, we’re not looking for techs; we’re just curious .

At work, I do most of the techy stuff, though lately that’s been very little. If there’s something I can’t reach, I get someone else to do it, but when it comes to configuring systems, it’s generally me.

At home, I maintain my own machines, but I pawn off whatever tasks I can, on Fuzzy, because he’s faster at some things, than I am, and because he’s less of a klutz with tools and small screws and things. Also, I tend to lack patience.

in the– computer? Just a curiosity for the designer types: what Operating System are you running? …and which browser? Since sites can show up differently in different browsers it’s more than a casual question.

Win XP Pro, which I’ve had NO PROBLEMS with (knock on wood veneer), and while I like the new flavor of Mozilla, so much of what I do at work is tied to IE, that I’m stuck with it. I use IE for blogging, mainly, because the buttons for bold, italics, and stuff, don’t show up for me in Mozilla, not that I need them, but I get lazy…but I switch browsers to import and export.

Family– Do any family members read your place? Do they care? Do they have a clue? …and how about your ‘off line’ friends? …or do you supply a little bit of separation there?

If there’s something I want someone to see, I send a link or copy the text into email, mainly. Fuzzy only reads me through the LJ RSS feed – hmph! If I want to post something private, I use LJ or OD, which have settings for such things.

My rosebush is blooming in a riot of bright pink blossoms.
I hate pink.
And I’m not a particular fan of roses, either.
But my grandmother loved them, and it seems wrong to remove a plant from my garden just because it isn’t my favorite.
So, I leave it there, fertilized with the co-mingled ashes of my grandparents, and a healthy dash of familial love.
And I watch it bloom.
And I think of how my grandmother used to steal cuttings of other people’s bushes.
And I miss her less.