Technically, I stayed home.  However, because I had a turkey TV dinner and my cats split a can of ground turkey and giblets cat food, and because two of the cats have been in the family for three feline generations, I can legitimately say that I had turkey dinner with my family.  This is good in case anyone asks because it’s hard to fake a perfect life while saying you spent a holiday on your own.  I mean, a real holiday that people celebrate, not Presidents’ Day or something.

The cats behaved well and enjoyed the treat.  Today they seemed to be asking for more; they were sniffing at the bowls I fed them in and meowing at me.  No, you little beggars, that was a special occasion, you’ve got plenty of kitty kibble.   Squirrel’s been letting me pet her more lately–the day before yesterday she even walked onto my lap with all four paws.  That kitten may turn out cuddly yet.

There was no TV watching as the TV is still not hooked up (still haven’t scraped together the $300 deposit).  This is for the best as I’m sure Christmas toy ads have become insanely obnoxious, and I get to miss them this year.  Hooray!

I don’t even remember why I read the reviews for this book–I think either a friend mentioned it or it came up in StumbleUpon.  Either way, the whole “corn in everything” bit sounded kind of creepy.  I mean, it belongs in some things, like tortillas and summer barbecues.  But putting it in everything because it has to go somewhere because we’re subsidizing too much of it…well…why not subsidize carrots instead?  Mmmmm…

I’m not kidding when I say “everything,” either.  I happened to look at the labels of spaghetti sauces while I was shopping today, and they all had corn syrup.  Seriously.  Tomato sauce doesn’t need sugar.  But I guess the average $5,600,000,000 has to go somewhere…I just wish it didn’t have to be into pointless empty calories.

(And I adore empty calories.  Mmmmm chocolate.  I just like them to be defined and enjoyed as such, not part of freaking spaghetti sauce.)

As a bit of a comupter geek, this frightens me.  It can’t be easy to debug and it has to be blocking some airflow.

It also, however, looks a bit like a Triscuit.

So I don’t know whether to be afraid or hungry.

I have no problem with people trying to do healthy stuff. I toy with the idea off and on myself, though I never seem to have a calm and peaceful enough life, so that I can worry about things like what kind of carbs I’m putting in my mouth, for more than a few days at a time, so it doesn’t stick.

I also have no problem with Taco Bell. Heck, this post is happening because I went to Taco Bell.

I just have a problem with…ridiculousness.

Usually I go through the drive-through and eat in my car, listening to my own radio instead of Taco Bell’s, but because the drive-through line was long and the dining room was empty, I ate in the dining room today. During that time, I happened to look up, through the window on the other side of which was the drive-through line.

In the drive-through line, a woman was reading a book on her steering wheel…which would have been fine, except…it was something about a Fiber Diet. This led me to consider the fiber content of most of what Taco Bell offers. While I don’t happen to have memorized the nutrition facts of everything, I know that there can’t be much in, say, the nacho cheese sauce. I would guess that she would’ve gotten more fiber by eating the book instead of reading it at Taco Bell.

I have nothing against healthy stuff and nothing against Taco Bell, but the two, when juxtaposed, are laughable.

VitaminWater: $6/week

Taco Bell Crunchwraps: $4/week

Shopping at Borders: $30/week

Baja Fresh: $8/week

The fact that none of the above will kill me: priceless. Some things money can’t buy.

According to my mom, who I talked to for other reasons (to be discussed once I figure out what’s going on), tea is supposed to be allowed to steep for 3-5 minutes.  I’ve been conditioned in my ideas of what’s a good amount of preparation time for a cup of tea by a concoction I figured out from an herb book, referred to by me simply as “headache tea,” which involves chamomile, peppermint, and rosemary.  It works fairly often, actually, but has to be very strong to work on anything other than sinus headaches (for which a cup of steaming water would work roughly as well and for the same reason; have tissues at hand when trying this).

I brewed up a pot of what was meant to be quasi-traditional chai tea (brown sugar instead of regular sugar, since that’s what I had) yesterday…I think around 6 PM.  Being conditioned by the preparation times for headache tea, well, I’m not sure exactly how long it steeped, but…not 3-5 minutes.  It took me a while to drink my way through it since I wasn’t drinking it quickly, probably around 8 PM by the time I got done.  It was, I thought, fairly good…but then I couldn’t sleep once I tried.  I remember being sharply awake at 2:30 AM, so sharply awake that I wouldn’t be surprised to find out I actually got to sleep around 4.  I started on waking up at 5, actually hauled myself out of bed a bit after 6…I’m figuring somewhere around two hours’ worth of sleep.

I’ve been dead tired all day and somehow getting stuff done anyway, about as well as any other day.  Managed to line a couple of things up as well as do assignment-type stuff.  Go figure.

Yesterday, I had quasi-graduational festivities out at the university, and then stopped by the bookstore to check on books for summer term. I only had to get one book for next term (yay, one of the rare cheap terms!), so I grabbed it. I also picked up a planner since my current one expires at the end of July and I don’t want to NEED a new one in the middle of crunch time at the end of the term/orientation/moving/new job/etc. That’s not the dumb part.

After having my wallet out, for purposes of using my credit card at the bookstore, I sat down in the comfortable chairs in the alcove next to the bookstore to do a little perusing of what I’d just thrown money at…skimming one, filling in upcoming events in the other. And then, after an unknown amount of time (I wasn’t really paying attention), I got up, went out to my car, and drove home. Somewhere in there is the dumb part. (more…)

Crime rate’s up, crime rate’s down, property crime and violent crime are going in the same directions/different directions/sideways (which would be a pretty good trick), whatever. It’s all numbers. I like numbers, but they don’t tell the whole story…maybe she had a good reason for punching him, maybe he robbed that bank to pay his kid’s hospital bill…not really possible to say, from numbers alone, how human decency is doing these days.

But then there’s a story like this one that blows the numbers, whatever they might be, out of the water: a fast food manager got shot by a customer who wanted more freaking chili sauce. Fortunately the shots didn’t turn out to be life-threatening. Unfortunately, we live in the kind of society where people shoot each other over condiments.

As further evidence of the strangeness of humanity, I present…printed toast. All I have to say is, if a guy ever manages to put up with me for long enough that it leads to toasters, I want one that’ll do this kind of thing.

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Forgot to turn the stove fan on when I cooked up a burger patty (I desperately needed protein: pretty sure I forgot to eat dinner last night).  Whoops.  I now know for sure that the smoke detector still works.