Quotes

I love quotes, especially when they appear seemingly from nowhere, at the perfect time, and jump off the page at you. They attach themselves to my brain like an octopus tentacle might.

"Life is a comedy for those who think... and a tragedy for those who feel."

This quote jumped out at me this morning, and it made me appreciate the fact that I'm mostly a Thinker, and I can find humor in anything. Even the dark parts of life.

I just spent a long weekend on a positively lovely vacation with 8 fantastic women. We ate good food, drank cocktails, lounged on the beach, walked, swam, talked, talked, and talked. It was so good for all of our souls.

Upon return to work yesterday, I found out there would be "an announcement" today, we should "stay focused on our projects" and continue "business as usual."

The irony of the timing was indisputable, so I waited till I got home, and then laughed. Life takes such amazing twists and turns, you just never know what's coming. I choose to find humor in that...and "choose" is the key word.

Without laughter, I have nothing.

Happy Birthday, Mimi

My grandmother had her 99th birthday last week. She's raised 5 children of her own and has 10 grandkids and many great-grandkids.

She's been alive 99 years. 99. What a cool number.

If I live to be her age, that means I have 59 years to go! I'm not even halfway there yet!

I'm just amazed by that.

Happy Birthday, Mimi !!

Band Concerts

I'm talkin' about the Middle School variety --- not Sting or U2. My youngest has a band concert tonight, and I'm home with bronchitis. I desperately want to go to the concert, because they really *are* entertaining, but my ears are sensitive.

I'm wondering if it would be rude to sit in the back with earplugs. :-) Or maybe I'll just stay home and watch more of the Olympics.

Speaking of the Olympics, when do they end? I think everyone I know is suffering from sleep deprivation. Despite the fact that so many of us have DVRs, we're watching on time delay, and the results are posted online (with lots of videos) the following day, *nobody* wants to go to bed and miss a thing! It's quite funny if you think about it...

Google Buzz: Privacy Fail

I was initially excited to see the new Google Buzz appear in my gmail and wrote some silly posts about it with my friends. I was curious, as always, so I started poking around. Interestingly, and much like Facebook, I could see who my friends were following, and who *their* friends were following. I thought nothing of this until I saw a friend's link to a blog entitled "F*ck you, Google" which admonished Google for setting these friends up without permission.


The author was physically abused by a former boyfriend, and he was suddenly a follower in her Buzz. All because they had exchanged emails.


Then I realized that anyone could choose to follow me without my notification or permission. Not sure I like this...


I clicked the "turn off Buzz" button at the bottom of the gmail page and the Buzz folder went away. Am I off the Buzz grid? Not quite!


It turns out that there are some pretty detailed instructions for completely opting out which haven't been well-publicized yet. A friend emailed them to me, and I'll link to them at the bottom of this post.


I've been following Internet privacy for a decade. Initially because I was collecting usage data at work that was illegal to collect, unless we called it "Research & Development" ~~ which it certainly was, so we were in the clear. Our privacy attorney was still pretty squeamish about it though, so we stopped. That program has snowballed into the bandwidth monitoring and limiting program at the US's biggest broadband provider. All because I said "hey, why don't we...?"


I'd like to publicly thank Google for giving us something newsworthy to follow when we aren't watching the Olympics!! I have a feeling we're going to see some new laws and some very quick backpedaling by the big G.


The links I promised, in case you want to opt out too:


http://www.scotxblog.com/legal-tech/gmails-turn-off-buzz-still-does-not-turn-off-buzz-heres-how-to-really-do-it/


http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=175004#off

Short and sweet

I've been reading more blogs lately and recently realized that I read short blogs and skip the longer ones. I either don't have the time or attention span to read the whole thing in one sitting. I'm perfectly capable of reading long blogs, I just don't.


So I've decided that I'm going to write shorter blogs more often. I'm not going to wait for something funny to happen, like I have been. Apparently my life isn't as funny as I thought it was last year. :-)


Soccer season starts in two weeks, I'll probably encounter more ridiculousness there...

On Being a Homeowner

Last week there was a terrible, horrible, no good very bad smell eminating from my basement. At first it reminded me of rotten laundry, so I checked the laundry room. All clean. I thought "maybe it's broccoli," so I checked the fridge. Nothing but fresh organic broccoli straight from Boulder's finest. Hmmm.

Then I remembered a similar smell a few months ago, when I found dead mice in the basement window well. Armed with a flashlight, I checked all the window wells. Nothing.

Uh oh - could it be gas? I looked at the dog, and asked him. Do you have gas? No, not that kind of gas! The kind that heats our house! He just stared at me with those beautiful puppy eyes, wondering when I was going to FEED HIM. Next move: get 12 year old to march around the house with me trying to find it. We couldn't figure it out, so I naturally blamed the kids. Or the dog. We turned on all the exhaust fans in the house and called a friend who is a fireman. He recommended calling 911 and the energy company to make sure it wasn't gas.

I have to admit that it was kind of exciting to have a fire truck pull up to the house with all of its lights flashing, and then watch 4 hunky firefighters come to the door. They went to the basement with their gas- and CO-detectors, and found nothing dangerous. One suggested the smell was sewage. I nearly fainted.

About an hour later the guy from the energy company showed up (if it were gas, we might have exploded by now! I exclaimed to my son, which might have been a poor choice in exclamations...) and told me there was nothing dangerous. He recommended pouring water down the floor drain. Duh, why didn't I think of that?

Later that night I was awakened by a rotten, terrible, foul, even worse smell. I was genuinely beginning to think there was a dead body of some sort under the basement floor. I was nearing a breakdown, so the next morning I begged for help on my facebook page, and had no less than 7 offers for help. In general, my friends have some pretty impressive husbands.

I'll make this long story even longer. Dan was the first to arrive, and within FIVE MINUTES had determined that the sump pump was broken and there was some pretty rancid water sitting in the pit. We poured a little bleach in there, and the smell was gone. GONE. Internet, this was nothing short of amazing. I was seriously contemplating selling my house to get away, but who would buy a stinky house? Problem solved.

Fast forward a few days: Dan was just here again, to clean up some trees he saw growing in one of the window wells (and they do qualify as trees now, as they're getting large), and get the specs for a new sump pump. He found some roots in the sump pit, cleaned those up, and voila! the sump pump works again. It's the Little Pump That Could. It's going on 10 years old, and I love it.

Who knew all this could happen. I've been a homeowner for nearly 20 years and learn something every year. I've considered dating a handyman just for the benefits, but I've decided that it's much smarter to have friends with handy husbands. Then I get 7 offers for help instead of just one.

Bottom line: I love my friends. I hate aspen tree roots. The trees are beautiful, but what a nuisance. Who planted those things, anyway...