God's little joke (or maybe Yahoo! Weather's)

Clearly, this is someone's idea of April Fool's hilarity. Check out this weather forecast (and these temperatures):


Oh, yeah! April's here! Sixty degrees! SUCKER.

Oh, and for those of you wondering what "Wintry mix" means, right this second it means big white snowflakes, and lots of 'em.

These will be someone's good old days

So, I like country music. I like it more than those of you who have not ridden in a car with me would expect.
That said, I am not immune to the fact that there are basically about 8 motifs in contemporary country music lyrics. Hell, I could write a dissertation on it. We're not getting into that here. One main subset of the genre is "stuff used to be much better when life was simpler, which is whenever I was a kid." In general, I find those particular songs either amusing or annoying, depending on my mood. Hey, by the way, note to Bucky Covington, you are one country singer, in particular, who should not be singing proudly about how your momma smoked and drank while she was pregnant and you ate lead paint chips, because, um, we all know, and we just didn't want to say anything.
But wait.
That's not the point.
The point is that I was driving up Main Street in my small town, which was essentially deserted because it's after 7 on a Sunday night, and the live version of Mayberry, which is a prime example of that scoffable music, came on, and there was a really beautiful light and kids were playing outside in their almost snow-free yards, and I totally, totally got it, for just a second.
And then I drove to the sandwich shop, where my friend and I would sit across the table from each other, not talking, while I write my blog and she reads my blog on our separate laptops, and I get ready to comment to the small-town online social networking site about how what this town needs, really, is a laundromat with wi-fi.

Safety belt

So, last night, my friend and I went looking for a belt for her; her pants were driving her crazy, and we weren't going to be able to do anything else without a belt.
And we found a belt.
A totally fantastic belt, that can be worn two ways, and one way, looks tough and foxy and perfect. Worn the other way, it looks very regular and work-appropriate.
Excellent.
This belt was so awesome that it necessitated several kinds of adventure, which we pursued unsuccessfully like the most boring ever version of After Hours or maybe Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (without weed; perhaps that's obvious).
Some belt, right?
But about that belt.
Does a tough cool-kid belt like that lose some of its street cred if you buy it at JC Penney?
Does it lose any more if you use your mom's discount card to buy it?

And many happy returns

I realize that this must already seem like a weird fascination with a certain someone's age, but today is Vince Vaughn's 38th birthday.
Which means Vince Vaughn is older than David Gregory.
How is that even possible?
Of course, Anderson Cooper is 40.

Snowed again

An inch or two on the ground, about 5" expected.
Anytime March wants to start going out like a lamb, I am ready for it.

Plug

If you have the opportunity to meet Luis Alberto Urrea, or to hear him speak, you should do that.
That is a man with some good stories to tell, and not just the ones that are published.
I have only read one book of his, so far, and it is beautiful, but a total downer.
In person, he is hilarious and not at all a downer.

Also: I feel like I have mentioned this before, but a quick Google search says I haven't, so I'll say it now. When I was first contemplating applying for, interviewing for, taking this job I have, my friend and reference (frequent commenter bzh), got very excited about it. She thought I was made to work in a college. She thought it would be the perfect environment for me. I agreed aloud, but did not get it in my soul. I have had several occasions to remember that she said that, and, totally right. Thanks, bzh.

It's a small town after all

So I have about three friends in this area, though I'm working on it. And one of them had a birthday today. I agreed to join her for a math movie*, followed by dinner, followed by cheap beer.
We knew she'd know some of the people at the movie, but anticipated an evening devoid of people we knew from there, unless some of the people we actively invited to the bar met us there.
None did, but we ran into a total of five people she knew between the restaurant and the bar (including two people I knew, including one guy who for some reason seems to inspire people to show him their chest hair in public, at least every time I am around).
And that, my friends, is what it's like to be in a small town.
Bear this in mind, too: This is actually the "big" town (pop. 23,000) in our area. The really small towns are all the ones around it.


*Your random factoid of the day: Last year, there were two different animated movies made based on Edwin Abbott's 1885 book, Flatland. One is short and filled with famous people's voices. The other is long and filled with the voices of people I have never heard of. Tonight, we saw the short one.

Bellwether

So there are, so far, no crocuses, no daffodils, no chirpy birds or buds on the trees.
And it is 39 degrees out (so the snow is melting, but slowly). More snow is, in fact, expected Friday and Saturday.
But.
But the guy who sells silver jewelry to the college kids outside is back today. So clearly, it's spring.

In the words of my friend and former coworker, "Ah, the harbingers of spring: Hippie Birkenstock Silver Jewelry Guy."

Indeed.

All class, all the time

One of the great benefits to my job is free college classes. Eventually, I may decide to pursue a master's degree, but for right now, I am taking classes just for fun. I start being able to use this benefit just in time for the first summer session.
So, what should I take?
What would you take, if you could, for free, with no grade-type pressure?
What do you wish you'd taken in college, just for kicks?
Some of the current contenders:

• Seminar: James Joyce's Ulysses.
• Piano Class I
• Writing Poetry
• Ethics
• Residential Landscape Design
• Whole Grain Cooking

Some of the options I'm not considering now (in some cases, purely for scheduling reasons):

• Human Skeletal Remains
• Mythology, Genre, and the American Dream: The Baseball Film
• Explosive Dust Evaluation
• Currency Crises and Global Poverty
• Introduction to Geography

Fun with headlines

The local paper's front-page, above the fold story yesterday bore this headline:
Roundabout crashes down

So, when you read that, what was your first assumption about this story?
a) There is a roundabout locally that has somehow collapsed.
b) The number of crashes in a local roundabout (or, perhaps, in all roundabouts) has decreased.
c) Roundabout? What the hell is a roundabout?

I'll add the correct answer, with my own commentary, after you all have had a chance to have at it.

Things that probably happen all the time in Washington (but not to me)

So tonight, for work, I'm ghost-hunting with the good folks from the local branch of The Atlantic Paranormal Society.
What did I possibly do to deserve a job as awesome as this?

Hair

If you saw me, and my hair was in what can only be described as a "Marlo-Thomas-as-That-Girl flip, but frizzier," you would not judge me too harshly, would you? Would you assume that's how my hair always looks? Because seriously, it's just one bad day.

You OK?

I can't help but notice that this week, when it's so quiet on campus and in the local taverns (Spring Break), it's also very quiet on IM and on my favorite blogs.
So I just wanted to check in and be sure you're all OK. I mean, if you're not blogging or chatting because you're also on Spring Break, then party on, dudes.
But I'm beginning to get worried about you.
Exempt: Mike, who has been commenting up a storm over here, and polkadotcreations, who commented a few times here and entertained me with a minute-mystery on her own blog just last night.

Weather (indoors edition)

Sometimes, you might have a late-afternoon meeting that would require you leave your office in a big hurry at around 4:20.
And sometimes, the next morning, you might decide to work from home to finish up a very important project, which would mean you'd get in around 11, when the project was done.
Sometimes, it might happen coincidentally that in your haste to get to the meeting, you might neglect to turn off the humidifier that is necessitated by the fact that your office is very hot and dry.
And so sometimes, by the time you opened the door to your office, there might be condensation dripping off the window, and your office might resemble a tropical rainforest.

Weather

Snowed again.
More snow coming tomorrow, too. But for now, it's just freezing raining.
Looks like spring really is coming.

Reasons it is probably just as well that I am not someone's mom

To me, peanut butter cookies are a reasonable appetizer before dinner.
Two nights in a row.

Lost phone

For all of those of you who've had fun making fun of my phone and how old-school it appears to be, with its antenna and being the size of my head and all, I'd just like to point out that what appears to be my very phone was in last week's episode of Lost as Jin's phone that gets run over in Korea.
Yup, on TV. Which, I believe, makes it hip and up-to-the-minute.
Oh, I guess except for the fact that Lost takes place in 2004. Hm.

Sick

Today, I am sick, which means I am:
a) whiny, and
b) not going cross-country skiing with my old friend and his wife and their child, who I have never met. Even though they are getting several inches more pretty fresh snow even as we speak.
You should feel sad for me and take this opportunity to be very entertaining. If you don't have anything entertaining to say yourself, give me an entertaining link to play on.

Things that would not happen in Washington (but would happen in a movie)

Today, I was waiting with three other people for a business meeting.
Two of the people, who had not met each other before, who are in different not-farming lines of work, got into a discussion of their sheep (which both own, as pets) and chickens (which both own). And how old the respective animals were, and what sexes and kinds they were, and whether the male was a wether or ram. Some of these sheep and chickens are very old, so you know.
Also discussed: The one rooster that the one guy has. "We don't know anything about him, his lineage or anything. We found him. He wandered out of the town forest."
So, yeah.
I did not ever have this conversation before a business meeting in Washington.

What readers want to know

By far the most frequent in-person question I get from regular readers of my blog is, "Did you get your garage doors fixed?"
"Fixed" is a funny word.
But to update: I actually sort of got them deliberately broken. They both go up and down now, but I have to do it manually, and the garage door openers are disengaged so they can't do any more harm. Someday, I will have so much money that I will already have a dryer and a disposal and a dishwasher and a new furnace, and a pile of money left over, and then, I might replace the garage door openers with ones that are younger than David Gregory.

David Gregory

Fresh on the heels of a conversation with two women friends last night on whether or not we do or should dye our hair, and whether it's for reasons of grayness or blondness, another friend reminded me of one of my favorite factlets: David Gregory is less than a year older than I am.
If you don't know David Gregory, he is a TV journalist who seems like a real grownup, who does especially well grilling the president of the United States and also dancing goofily on the Today show.
The David Gregory conversation this morning went roughly like this:

She: Seriously, the man questions the president on a daily basis. Do you feel old enough to question the president?

I don't feel old or mature enough to question the president.

Me: This president? Yeah, I feel up to it.

I'm still letting my mother bully talk me into pink-and-green dining room curtains in my office, but I could handle this particular president, I think.

Weather (or not)

A friend who's from Massachusetts originally but who I know from D.C. asked me yesterday if there were any signs of spring up here yet. Apparently he's getting tulips.
Hahahahahaha.
I've shied away from the weather posts lately, because all I'd ever have to say would be "snowed again," and "stopped snowing briefly."
But, just in case you're curious:
Snowed again.
More coming today.

This weekend, we did have a lot of cold rain, which, I suppose, would be a sign of spring, if it hadn't already started snowing again.

The wisdom of playing Quarters (in your mid-30s) (with people who are so competitive they literally tackle)

I am not sure this post can improve upon its title.
So we're doing it call-and-response style.
What do you still want to know? I will answer questions posted as comments honestly.
Probably.

Democracy=Quaint=Ape suits

My friend who is originally from Texas but more recently from Virginia visited this weekend. As we went to my parents' house, she noticed the enormous sign announcing Town Meeting and was delighted.
I know some of you people think it's just something from old books, but it's real, and it's how we make decisions around here. Sometimes, I think it's neat that we do things in this superdemocratic way up here, and sometimes, I am very aware that a neighboring town has had to vote eight times over three years to fund a new school, and last time (last week) they were one vote shy of the two-thirds majority they needed.
For a kind of neat take on the whole thing, see the local newspaper's blog on town meetings in the area.

Baggin' it

This is not one of the posts you're waiting for.
To be totally honest, most of those will probably never come. You don't have to get over it, but if you do, your life will be richer, because you'll be happier with what you have.

Today, we're talking purses.

For three reasons (chronologically):

1. A friend of mine recently reminded me that I used to keep a backpack with a change of clothes in it in my car, so I could just go do stuff on a whim. I like doing stuff on a whim, and even more important, I like the idea of doing stuff on a whim. This was so important to me that I apparently wrote her a poem on the subject, which she still has, because you don't just throw away poetry. Even mine, which is universally terrible.
2. I was working on Beth's questions, and got to, "What's in your purse?" and realized the answer is, "Practically nothing I need. Wallet, phone and keys usually wind up in my pockets. There's probably a lip gloss and some coupons in there."
3. I stumbled across a testimonial for FlyLady's wallet. If you don't know FlyLady yet, or don't know my relationship with her brilliance yet, that's a post for another day (by which I mean, possibly never). But I need a new wallet because mine is in pieces, and doesn't that one look convenient and streamlined?

So, here's the thing: I carry this enormous purse back and forth to work every day, totally unnecessarily. It is a remnant of my former life, when I brought work home with me (also unnecessarily, between us, because I only actually did any of that work at home about once a month). I never even pretend I am doing work at home now, unless it's Web-based, in which case I do not need a giant purse to accommodate it.
So, starting today, no purse. We're trying it for two weeks. If I miss it even once, I'll reconsider. But I bet I don't.
Also today, I am throwing a change of clothes and a spare toothbrush in my backpack, and putting that backpack in my car.
I like doing stuff on a whim.

W'sup

A chronology of recent events for my needy readers:

• Went to New Mexico for a few days that turned into one more than a few
• Came home and was slammed with work, having anticipated missing two days of work and actually having missed three
• Had a lovely visit from frequent commenter kay bailey, involving lots of good fun, an hour sprung forward, and also about ten hours of driving to and from airports or other places near airports
• Slept 11 hours
  
• Had comments whining about the lack of posting from the aforementioned kay bailey, who last posted to her own blog January 15, and mike

Commenters who would like to jump to conclusions publicly are more than welcome to do so in the comments. Can't wait to hear.

Fried ice cream flavored ice cream

Yes, there is such a thing. It's made by Breyer's, and you can apparently get it many places, but not where I live. For a location near you, click here (you'll find it in the product list under "Fun & Indulgent," which, yes. Right on.).
It seems, simultaneously, like such a good and bad idea. In execution, it does not taste like fried ice cream, quite, but it does taste like all the components of fried ice cream (except heat), and that is really, really good.
And I left almost a quart and a half of it, along with some other pretty sweet things, in New Mexico. Hope my new friends Jen and Kim enjoy.

Teases

More coming soon, obviously, and sorry to have been so completely absent.
Upcoming posts may include (but are certainly not limited to):

• Why I hate a certain airline
• The wisdom of playing Quarters (in your mid-30s) (with people who are so competitive they literally tackle)
• Fried ice cream flavored ice cream
• Bruises and puncture wounds
• Red or green
• Why I am glad I am not literally a brain surgeon
• Why I am still weirdly bitter about the every-two-years Olympic schedule