a wolf angel is not a good angel

I only need to be at the synagogue for 10 am and not 8:45 on Saturday. My current plan is to make an appearance, then discreetly hide in the bathroom with a book to preserve my refusal to go in synagogues where men and women are separated stance. It really depends on which family members I end up stuck near sitting with. I know, rude, etc, but I’ll show up for the speech.

Then I get my hair cut, ending my not so successful try with long layers. Not that it looked particularly bad, but the ends being all different lengths drove me nuts. They’re driving me more nuts every day, but I am holding off on cutting my own hair with blunt scissors, if just barely.

And then we take family photos, which will show an amusing clash of outfits: my mother in jeans and a winter shirt, me in jeans and a summer shirt, one sister in a fancy dress. Nothing says “awesome party” like “dress however you want”. (I may wear a long sleeved shirt underneath, if I can find a navy one.) I am dragging a friend, who will probably require something incredibly annoying in return. Still preferable than going solo. Someone to be mean with!

The NYT article called “At last, a $20,000 cup of coffee” amazes me. Were we all waiting for a coffee brewer that costs about one thousand times as much as a cheap one? Was it on anyone’s wishlist? Is there no way to make a good cup of brewed coffee for some intermediate price? Yes, I would totally go buy a cup of that coffee if I knew it were for sale nearby.

I spent the entire bloody day shopping today. It was successful, mostly, though I need shoes. But it was long. I am most excited by the hair clips (shiny! sparkly!) that I got from a secondhand store that just opened up nearby. They’re a pair, which is very hard to find, and they have a weird clasp mechanism that I prefer to a normal barrette, and they’re all fake jewelled. (As someone with huge amounts of hair, anything that isn’t very glitzy gets very lost.)

Actually, I don’t really remember what else I got, other than some basic shirts from H&M, because I am so excited by the hair clips. Oh, jeans and brown cords. And a Mexican hot chocolate mix, for those of us (the sane ones) who like hot chocolate.

You know, if the writer’s strike doesn’t end (sigh), maybe I’ll actually watch The Wire. Or Boston Legal. Or the second season of Life on Mars. Or The Tudors. Or endless reruns as background noise, whichever.

I got three new library books today, and I am so excited to read all of them (which I am sure will lead to disappointment) that I can’t decide and so I haven’t actually started any. But the anticipation is also nice.

Pretty much I am better (some coughing, but not as terrible), and I am much more optimistic than I have been lately, in the sense of the past many months. I don’t know I’ll wake up optimistic tomorrow, but it’s nice even for just today.

One of the things I most enjoy about giving out candy is deciding who to give what to. Teenagers in jeans, anyone wearing football uniforms, anyone talking on their cell phone? Rockets. Kids in homemade costumes, snowsuits, or out with their nannies? Chocolate bars. This year I also gave into requests for exchanges (almost invariably requested by 8-10 year old girls), and gave in to one kid and his identical twin, but not their identical triplet.

Most annoying: the live band hired by the neighbours, playing mostly 60s tunes and dancing on top a fire truck.
Rudest: the photographer who walked in, said he was a photographer looking for something good to take a picture of, then walked out without taking any pictures. Yes, I know that the Kloda stuff looks better, but I also know that your digital card is already paid for.
Most bizarre: little boy who went to the pirate chest, picked up the (dollar store) sword on it and tried to run out with it, saying “Look what I found!”

I just spent an hour or an hour and a half setting up my grandparents’ new dvd player. This included approximately 5 minutes to put the dvd player in the right place (the jacks on the tv were hard to find, and we needed to find a spare cable), 1 hour to set up the freaking remote controls, and half an hour to teach them how to use them. (Mostly because I had each of them try it out.)

My grandparents are smart people. They’re not scared of technology. They can figure out a lot of stuff. But they have absolutely no ability to set up remotes and other tv related items. Not a problem, I’m always happy to help them out. I just don’t get how people who aren’t tech-happy and don’t have the right friends or relatives figure it out.

The PVR remote control can’t change the input for the tv (but can do everything else for the tv), and neither can the dvd remote, so to change between dvd and cable, you need to use the tv remote control. All the remote controls can run the dvd player. None of them can change the PVR stuff at all except the PVR remote itself. Plus you need to remember which things need which remote — it’s not always obvious. I got it down to using the PVR remote except to switch sources from the tv, but of course the single button they ever need to use on the tv remote is not marked out as special in any way, and the writing on the remote is very small. Plus of course all the machines are very picky about line of sight.

Don’t forget that you have to figure out the right code for the dvd player. Sure, 021 can use play and pause and on and off for the dvd player, but it cannot move around between menu items, you actually need code 042. And so on.

No wonder the geek squad does so well.

Despite my usual skill at never running into anyone I know, this weekend I managed it twice — and *I* recognised them, not just the other way round. And I just found out they work at the same company (I do not know if they know each other; I know them from unrelated places).

This should be enough of the randomly meeting people I know for the next year or so.

ask.mefi thread called: how can I make my cat like my wife?

I had to open the stupid thing and see inside to figure out what characterstics his wife had that he thought his cat could emulate.

For the third row (as it were) in a station wagon? Do you also use this term for the third row in a minivan or SUV? (If not, what do you call this row?)

My family was debating this, and though we all use the same term (first used when I carpooled to preschool), we don’t know if it’s specific to Montreal anglos, Montreal Jews, some other random grouping, or what. I couldn’t find it on google, though probably it was cause I didn’t care enough to look.

My answer in the comments so you can think about for a second before responding.

What’s amazing is how quickly a clean place can turn not clean. It’s the newspapers that really kill me, but my exceptionally small kitchen doesn’t help. I am almost through with the laundry, mostly now it’s just the delicates (waiting for a warmer day to air-dry) and then a few pieces. I recall thinking how after things were clean I’d organise, but now I am not, because follow-through is really not my strong point. All I need to do is turn on my ipod and work for a bit, but there always seems to be something lazier to do. I haven’t even brought up my new balcony chair (I do have the Ikea ones, which don’t fit together quite right, but mostly do, and I’m undecided what I should do with them), but it’s too cold to use it for a bit anyhow.

It is almost my birthday.

What do I want as a gift?

Sometimes you’re on a main road and there’s another road cutting in to join you, where they have the stop/yield sign.

Yesterday it was poor driving conditions, and I was on the main road. And on the side road there was a car. It waited for the cars in front of me, and it didn’t have time to go out before me. And yet.

Luckily I anticipated that this car was coming out and slowed down, because poof, there it came, and we would have been in quite the accident. Of course, it came because he hadn’t cleared off any of the windows (back, side), so the driver couldn’t see anything. Who needs vision when it’s dark and snowy and the roads are slippery, right?

On the plus side, I was so relaxed already that it didn’t bother me for long. We particularly liked the woman who, after being told the cold water was around freezing (disturbing to watch the snow melt into water you’re about to enter), asked how long she should stay in it. Like she’s going to accidentally want to stay in it too long? Also the guy who was clearly trying to prove something by staying in the cold water longer than normal. But not that he had a big penis, not anymore.