Sorry I’ve been AWOL. Between the holidays AND coming down with one or more colds (at the same time) AND (temporarily) bricking my brand new laptop, I’ve had nothing.

Not that this post is much, but I know some of you will understand the problem here.

Because my brother is no longer working out of our spare bedroom, we canceled our long distance (again).

When I logged into my bank account today, I found this:

I CANNOT DELETE IT.

But the orange (!) alert ALSO won’t go away.

I am seriously considering trying to submit a payment of $0 on the due date.

(twitch) (twitch)

Michelle: DAMNIT! I’m HUNGRY! We don’t have any snacks! Why don’t we have anything to eat?! This is ENTIRELY your fault. Because you do the grocery shopping. Alone. Entirely unassisted by me.
Michael: It’s because I don’t trust you to get healthy food.

…and Michael wins again.

(Since it’s not necessarily obvious, we go grocery shopping together. I choose the food and he comes along to entertain me and pick up things like chicken and fish, because handling even wrapped packages squicks me out, and I spend the rest of the trip rubbing my hands on my pants trying to “clean” them.

Also, Michael claims to hate vegetables and could happily live on peanut butter sandwiches.)

I actually yelled and made my aunt turn around the car when I saw this.

We’ll have had our Corolla for 9 years come October. It’s been incredibly reliable and hassle free and gets fabulous gas mileage (35 to 41 on the interstate).

However.

Since we only have the one car, we’re thinking it’s time for a new car. (We have no interest in having two cars.)

Our top two are the Corolla and the Jetta: Standard transmission (5 or 6 speed)

We’re considering doing a lot of traveling in the future, so comfort and reliability are extremely important.

One major disadvantage of the Jetta is that the closest dealer is almost an hour away, which makes those free maintenance checks a PITA, especially since we’ll have only the one car.

Disadvantage of the Corolla–it’s getting harder and harder to find manual transmission engines on Toyotas.

Any comments or suggestions?

(Don’t even suggest a Ford or Chevy–we want something that will be reliable AND worth something for trade in later–our 9 year old Corolla is still worth $3 to 6k according to the blue book.)

Michelle: What’s on that bottom shelf, behind all the bags of kitty litter?
Michael: (pause) Plates.
Michelle: Plates? Oh. The Star Trek plates. Behind the kitty litter is a good place for them.
Michael: When I get my man cave those plates are going up!
Michelle: Thank God we can’t afford to move.

First:

The clip, a kind of literature snuff film, opens with Lauren resting her hand on her victims: a stack of books whose spines she will soon rip out.

Second:

It has always been my belief that people who spend too much time with my work end up as lost souls, drained of reason, who lead lives of raving emptiness and occasional lunatic violence. What a relief it is to see this documented.

What kind of writer are you?

You’re a Ernest Hemingway. You chose clear and unflashy words that get right to the point. Other writers known for this style are George Orwell and Raymond Carver. Try your hand at a six-word memoir, consider a career in journalism, and maintain an active Twitter account.

Sounds about right.

Last night I finished a book I enjoyed, but HOLY CARP the cover is HORRIFIC.

Interestingly, I searched online for images, and none of the images I found had the sheer horrificness of fake blood that was on my cover.

My guess is that someone fixed the cover, for later printings. Which makes the current cover bad, but not quite as OMFG YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING horrible.

So, here it is:

Seriously. Click through the Flickr to see larger OMG AWFUL.

Just to prove I didn’t photoshop that horrible blood in there, here is my co-worker Meredith, reacting to the cover.

If you click through to Flickr, you can view full size and still see the horrific blood drips there.

FWIW, I then loaned the book to Meredith to read, because it really is a good book.

(more…)

OMG it is so hot I can’t stand it. Really. If this continues, I’m going to have to move somewhere cooler.

Monongalia County has broken or tied maximum temperature records for June and July seven times. Six of those records were broken in a ten day period. (6/20/2012, 6/29/2012, 7/4/2012, 7/6/2012, 7/7/2012, 7/8/2012, 7/9/2012)

We may have broken that streak today, with a high of only 90F. Which is still unpleasantly hot. (Average historical temperatures should be in the low to mid 80s.)

And rain! (Or lack thereof.) Never do I remember it being this dry. Ever.

Here’s the “departure from normal” for West Virginia.

And the Eastern panhandle is even worse off than we are.

On top of this, there are still “a few thousand” people who don’t have power from the June 29th storm.

That’s right, people haven’t had power while temperatures have hit record highs.

I know full well that the plural of anecdote is not data, but this weather is abnormal, and I really don’t want this to become the new normal.

Michael: You know what they say, the fastest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.
Michelle: No, the fastest way to a man’s heart…
In unison: …is through his rib cage.

(more…)