Thinking short but not so random thoughts

Colin and I were sick over the weekend with something everyone has been catching at his office. Very low but persistent fever, off and on sore throat and headaches, congestion, fatigue, and Colin did more coughing than I did. Not so much fun. I've had two small lattes (including extra milk added to my already half-drinked cup) today and I haven't had coffee for almost a week. I did have lots of tea and we've got only one bag of Constant Comment left, but I definitely have a buzz right now.

I noticed I say "oh well" a lot here. It generally sums up how I feel quite nicely but I need to stop saying it so often because I'd imagine that repeated phrases irritate people.

Also, it seems I am not done rolling the egg rolls that have no egg in them. I've used up the 50 wrappers and I've still got a good chunk of stuffing. I did a lot of them while watching "Marley and Me" by myself last night while Colin had a business dinner. The movie is sad, sure, but not quite as sad as I thought it would be. There were some cute parts but it seemed a lot more "real lifey" than I'd expected it to be. So it's back to the store to get some more wrappers, probably tomorrow. No library volunteering session tomorrow since the lady who heads it is out of town to a funeral.

Today we finally got to try the Wild Berries pancake place somewhat close to home. The french toast stuffed with cream cheese and topped with strawberries is really good! Colin dreamed of clocks not working and then it turned out his alarm hadn't gone off when I got up 45 minutes after the usual alarm time. For lunch, we went to visit a restaurant we used to go to more when we lived in the area to celebrate Shaheli's birthday. We'd found a mug that seemed to fit her very well: sparkly, contains silly words like "hope your day is filled with love!", has a rainbow and cute sketches of little boys.

Oh, and I wanted to correct what I said earlier: the pringles weren't a dollar a piece. Well, originally they were, but I bought them for 25 cents each. I knew it had been a better deal. I found some different cookie wafers at Garden Fresh Market yesterday. One thing I realize now is that so much of the food is imported and it makes me wonder just how much food mileage there is for most things at that store. Yet on the other hand, many of their fresh foods are more local than most grocery stores. I think at least spice packets for Indian foods would be a fair exception. I know many people who try to be more locavore follow the Marco Polo rule: if it was transported during his time by ships (such as spices), it's okay if it comes from the other side of the world. I always with the out of pocket costs versus ethic (environmental) dilemma. I like a deal but I also like good guilt-free food. I'm mostly gonna be ignoring this during November I think ...

Speaking of November, it's coming up so fast! Eep! I've been feeling nervous about not having enough story stuff but today I was mostly doing some research but also spitting out overall plot fragments that have been floating around in my mind. I feel much better have stuff a bit more written out and better organized although my "outline" is very very bare. Still have a couple overall questions but the characters are much less elusive to me now, so that's helpful. Overall, I've got 5,000 words of research. This includes copy pasted passages and writing tips. Considering that this is one tenth of the word count goal, the goal feels more real and obtainable now. Of course, none of these will actually be in the novel itself as that would be against the rules. But words beget words, it seems.

Pretty much all about food

I'm getting pretty wiped out and I still have 50 egg rolls to wrap and dinner to make. It's been kind of a long day. But I need a physical break.

First, I woke up way too early and my brain was hopping all over the place. I caught it in a net and took it downstairs with blanket and bathrobe and demanded it spit out what it needed to say into my journal so I could get some peace and quiet. Also, Colin and I are both battling a fairly weak bug but I think I might have had a slight temperature. Yay drugs! Even after journaling a bit, I had to grab "Russia: Experiment with a People" which I don't care if I ever actually get through or not. I don't like how things are presented but it's nice to kind of brush up my memory and learn other little tidbits about the Cold War etc. I got through quite a few long pages before the sky started turning light blue and I said, "Okay that's it. We're going back to bed whether you're ready or not." I managed another couple hours of okay sleep before dragging out of bed just in time to take Colin to the train station.

I had to shower, eat, and get a bunch of other stuff done in an hour then I went to the church library for about 2.5 hours. It was fun to have a working typewriter to write up the catalog cards. Yes, actual physical real catalog cards. I never thought about the need to have more than one author card if a book was written by two or more people. Little things like that just boggle my mind.

After lunch, I was running through the recipes I'd picked out and gone shopping for on Tuesday when I realized I had gotten the wrong kind of wrapper thingies. I certainly didn't know there are different types of spring and egg roll wrappers. So there was nothing to do but go back and exchange for the right kind. By the way, I love shopping at Garden Fresh Markets - they have such a wealth of international food stuffs and we get our Indian food ingredients there. The mystery is that they don't have paneer. I've never managed to find paneer in stores here, so if you have any ideas where to look I would love to hear them. For now, we're experimenting with farmer's cheese and slowly getting closer to what we want it to be.

Anyway, it was neat to be there. One of the things I've kept an eye out for is snack food for nanowrimo. I've got lots of pringles that were a dollar a container. There's a couple of real ramen noodle packets to try for lunches and see if I like them. I found some cookies I remember eating and liking from the annual holiday packages we used to get from friends in Japan. Junk food won't be a problem ... we've amassed a lot of it over the years. We just don't eat it. Some might be stale but who cares (I don't). Also, Halloween is coming up. I also plan to get veggies to chop up, stick in the fridge, and munch on whenever. But today I saw a bunch of usually kind of expensive packages of food for a discounted price because they had a best by date of Oct 31. I went all out and am now staring at a stack of five different things (like fancy gorp, dried cranberries, dried pineapples). They were all at least a dollar off their original prices. Pretty cool. Roughly 15 bucks for all these goodies so far.

I'm kind of chatty today. Hope no one minds too much. I was planning on the next post to be "How to change a clump of VOB files into one subtitled M4V file" but I've run into some gnarly bits trying to figure it out myself. More on that later when I've mastered it. After I post pictures and rave about my egg rolls. Which, oddly, don't have any eggs ... the recipe I chose didn't call for any. Oh well. I think I'll leave most of the rolling for tomorrow - draining the stuffing took a lot longer than I thought it would. But we'll have some tonight with another cool recipe I'm trying out - Chow Mein! Gonna go start prepping for that before Colin needs to be picked up.

More on Columbus Day

I just read this. I try to refrain from posting many comics and lolcats on here, but this one is especially relevant for today. Also, perhaps you'll find you like Bug Comics!

The trip to Battle Creek to hang out with Colin's grandparents was very nice. It was perfect weather; it actually in the mid 80s on Sunday and one could have been fooled into thinking it was July except for the leaves falling onto your plate and into your salad. They were baby sitting a very sweet dog who has selective hearing and eats bumblebees and wasps for snacks. I ate too much, as one always has to expect when visiting the grandparents. Also got some intense garage sale-ing done! Found a nice long blue skirt and a couple of gifts. I also couldn't help myself but got a bunch of Snoopy postcards for a whopping 25 cents. I am tempted to put a picture of them here but wouldn't want to ruin the surprise for you. Since I have a good stack of them and they're all the same. So I have an idea: if you want one, all you have to do is email me your snail mail address! Then I'll send you one with a nice message from me to you on it. We all love getting real mail right? Oh and in case you don't have it yet, my email address is K J Larsen (with an E) at gee mail dot com. no spaces, all lower case, ignore the parentheseed comment and realize that there's no such thing as geemail. Just trying to be extra clever against those roving evil robot spammer things.

I haven't really planned out my day and it's already 10:30. Oh well - I've been catching up on blog reading and a little bit of hopping around on the internet. It was nice not to actually have much internet beyond searching for directions and getting emails this weekend but I am glad to be back. Good day to get some stuff done including laundry and to get out and enjoy the warm sunny air. Happy Columbus Day, however you do or don't celebrate it!

Libraries and cell phones (unrelated in this post)

This week has been a bit crazier than normal weeks (but what is a normal week?). I'm making fairly good progress on my October Get Things Done. The dentist thing is still sitting there glaring me in the face ... but we've changed to our current addresses on our driver's license. Which means I can check books out of every library I run into! Well, in the area anyway. That's a big plus for me. The library in Gurnee deserves another visit - they're doing some pretty interesting new things there. Different building shape and set up, including a TV in a designated place near the front door where you can just hang out and watch the news. It's also *very* popular. I went there on a Monday evening and even then overflow parking was pretty full.

More exciting library-related news: I've found a couple more jobs which I *will* be working on the applications for today. This is so nice, but why do they come in clumps?

We finally got our cellphones switched from our respective family plans to our own family plan. Becca liked the idea, that since we have identical cell phones (Nexus Ones), we are getting a same sex marriage. Unfortunately, this means my actual cellphone number has changed. Again. Sorry guys, I don't like the need to frequently update my number either. This time it's an MN based number since Colin, who is the actual owner of the account, has a MN number. However, the good news is that I've got a Google Voice number which I don't plan on changing or getting rid of ever if I can help it. I don't have actual texting anymore but I do have a limited data plan! So email me to get my GVoice number, then feel free to text that number to your heart's content. In case this is too confusing for you - just ask me for my new number and then pretend that is my real new cellphone number. The one glitch is that when I call you I can't yet have it show that I'm calling from my GVoice number every time. So if I'm out and about, your caller ID may show some odd MN number (218 yada yada) and that's probably me. Go ahead and log that into your address book but I'd ask you to please just use my 231 Gvoice to call and text me.

Kind of a long explanation for something that I don't like using. I hate talking on the phone. I love texting though. And the fact that Google Voice can give me automated transcriptions for voicemail messages. I thought long and hard about whether or not I should just get a data or texting plan, but in the end safety/comfort and overall expenses/headaches had getting a normal voice with data plan win out. I do know that if it was just me, I'm pretty sure I'd swing for data/text, but being on a family plan with Colin who still needs voice changes things. However, for those of you who ever think they might be able to do just texting, definitely check out Qwert. For 10 bucks a month you get 400 texts a month, or for 20 bucks it's unlimited texting. The coolest thing is that they send you a SIM card and there are no extra services required for this low texting plan. The only catch seems to be that you then have a SIM card that can only do texting. Unless you want to physically swap SIM cards in and out every time you need to check SMS messages, you have to be really sure that this will be a good solution for you.

Just trust me when I say I looked at tons of options, including how to be able to call people without a voice plan and/or wifi ... I don't think you want me to prove it by explaining them all. I also started looking around for what the best solution for keeping in touch when we're in Europe in December. I'll undoubtably write up a post about findings and results. The best thing is that our Nexus Ones are unlocked and we can call people whenever we have wifi for very cheap (or if that person is on Google Voice or Skype, for free). Additionally, we can check for voicemail and text messages whenever we connect to wifi without it costing anything because we've both got Google Voice. The trick is what we do outside of wifi range. While it's true I did just fine on study abroad without having my own cellphone, it helped immensely that a few in the group did have them. We can get local SIM cards and there's other solutions available (but you can easily get confused doing research for the one that fits you best), but until Colin and I have figured out what countries we will be in for how long, I am forcing myself to pause this research. Word of advice for those traveling to Europe: whenever possible, text don't call. Texting is so much cheaper and I think Europe laws say you can't be charged for any incoming text messages.

I'm in Deerfield for the second time this week since we're heading to MI to visit family this weekend. I'm on my own for lunch (there's always lunch meetings on Friday which is why I usually come earlier in the week). Walking to Potbelly's nearby is sounding like the best idea ...

Anxiously awaiting

I don't like waiting, especially when it's waiting for someone traveling to show up at my house and I've got no more cleaning and prepping I can think of to do. Reminds me of those times when I'd be anxiously awaiting Colin's arrival on weekends in Bloomington. However, I am willingly putting up with the anxiety right now because one of my best friends from high school is going to be here for dinner! I can't remember how long it's been since I've seen her but it will be good times all around.

Perhaps I should bring in the rest of the tomatoes and whatever we don't want killed by the frost tonight. Okay, then ... I'll try to focus on reading a book and probably fail. Oh well.

#followalibrary

A couple things of note: Today is #followalibrary day on twitter. The rules are simple: if you have a twitter account, tweet your favorite library that you follow on twitter. Or, in my case, look at over a dozen libraries you've been to and find less than a third that do indeed have twitter accounts. It surprised me that Chicago PL (public library) doesn't have one. Or the Library of Michigan. Highland Park (@hplibrary) and Glencoe (@GlencoePL) PLs have them which is expected, and then there's Kalamazoo PL (@KzooLibrary) and IUB's (Indiana University - Bloomington) libraries (@libnlearn). Oh, and for those of you who would like to follow me on twitter, you can find me here: @deafelephant

Second, it's the first day of October! Yay! I love pumpkin spiced lattes and apple cider and watching the leaves put on a show. And cuddling under heaps of blankets and taking walks in the crispy air without the muck of snow or mud. This October, as I mentioned in my previous post, is the "Month of Getting Things Done." It unofficially started a few days ago. I've got the scanner to work with my new Linux Mint OS (that took more time than I'd expected). I made zucchini bread, vacuumed upstairs and the stairs, did laundry, booked plane tickets for San Francisco and did some touristy research, finally mailed stuff to Mom, started looking into more volunteer opps, keep chipping away at the massive amount of unread library blog entries I've neglected, organized my backup hard drive, figured out what to do with the huge vob files, converted two movies and inserted subtitles, made naan twice (I think I'm getting a better idea how to make them less cake-y), took a couple of hikes ...

Some I usually do during the week anyway but others I'd been meaning to get around to doing or at least do more of them. I've also been slowly adding bits and pieces to my nanowrimo story idea. Yesterday I felt frustrated because between my volunteering hours, a nap, and getting the scanner hooked up, I felt like I hadn't accomplished as much as I would've liked. I've already started to feel a time-pressure anxiety which I'm not dealing with well. I've got the mindset that I need to constantly wonder what else I should be doing just then, how to better use my time. I need a bit more adjusting.

Today has ended up being one of those other kind of days. The kind where I seemed to purposely not do anything. Sometimes this works in weird ways and you end up feeling refreshed and actually do get stuff done. It's hard not doing things. But instead of planning out the day and making to do lists, I simply do what I want. This doesn't mean going on a shopping spree or running through the streets screaming my head off (neither of these activities really appeal to me, if you must know). This involves more of an id approach to things. For instance, "hey, I want to go outside." So I go outside. "I don't need to dry my hair just yet." So I put it in a loss ponytail and leave out my aids for a couple hours. "Hey, I want tea." So I get up and make tea, and while waiting I do the dishes. Or I put on some day clothes but keep my pajama pants on and wear wool socks. It's not that big of a difference, but it is a difference. I try hard not to feel bad that I'm not doing certain things and I don't think things through and wonder what I should do instead or beforehand.

This may seem like a contradictory way to start my "Getting Things Done Month" but the challenge is not going to work if I don't try to balance things out and ease anxiety. It's a process and I hope to bring today's method into a productivity method. Now I'm going to go stare out the window while sipping tea.