GinohnNews
<< REWIND |
20 APRIL 2006 |
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G: What a weekend! Lori told
us a few weeks ago to set this weekend aside for Spring Cleaning. And I
told John he had to get our taxes done.
Friday I went to feed Dave's iguana and, being the lazy
environmentalist I am, wanted to combine the trip with one to Home
Depot which is right nearby. I got out of the house a bit late; I had
told John and some other people that we would leave from our house
around 5pm to go to Franklin's (driving, not biking) for Paul's
birthday celebration (which was from 4 to 7pm). While at Home Depot I
picked out some paint chips for my desk and chair that I'm
refurbishing, using the vinyl covered seat from the chair as a guide
for one of the colors (red), and had to wait for the paint to be mixed.
I got some other things while that was happening, but it still took
longer than I thought and it was a little after 5 when I left the
store.
I jumped in the car and went home, where John was playing an online
ring game of hold'em and Rich was watching. We left immediately and as
we left the house I realized that I had left the paint stir sticks in
the shopping cart in the parking lot at Home Depot. I had gotten some
of the large ones to bring to UM Art and Learning Center to mix glazes
with. I felt very stressed about it since I had been all hurried and I
hate forgetting things and having to drive all over the place. Oh,
well, I already had some large paint sticks and I could find something
around the house to stir the little cans. We were about 1/4 of the way
to Franklin's when I realized that I had ALSO left the CHAIR SEAT in
the shopping cart in the Home Depot parking lot. That sent me into a
self loathing tizzy for a few minutes. We were late to the party, we
had Rich with us, I had just bought paint to match the
seat....AUUUGHHH! John was ready to turn around and go get it but
I felt bad about making Rich late so I said we should drop him off at
Franklin's first. Then Rich called information and got the number for
Home Depot and called them and then pretended he was my husband calling
for the ease of not having to explain further. As you might imagine,
after many attempts to get through, and getting the wrong department or
hung up on or told to call back in a little while so they could check,
a nice lady told me she looked and didn't find it. By now we were at
Franklin's and I had almost finished a beer. I was upset that I
wouldn't get it back, but John got instructions from me where it was
and drove the long haul down Rt. 1 from Franklin's to Home Depot to
look for it.
I joined the party and told people my sob story and got cheered up a
bit, then started worrying that I had actually just left the seat in
the CAR, and forgot it, or, worse, brought it in the HOUSE and didn't
remember. I was worrying and watching and waiting for John to come
back,
and I imagined that if he had found it that he would bring it in with
him, holding it above his head triumphantly. So when I saw him
approaching empty handed, I thought I had lost it for good. But when he
got upstairs to the bar he gave me the thumbs up, and I was sooooo
happy. Everything was good. He's my hero.
Chris came in later that night, and I went off to a little campfire
continuation of the party. Saturday morning I got up early (do you know how
bizarre that is?) so we could go out to Feet First in Columbia and
get me some new running shoes before Lori put the hammer down and it
was time to clean, clean, clean. I've been running some, and my hips
started hurting. They used to hurt several years ago when I was running
regularly, and I never discovered any solution (doctors finally decided
on bursitis and gave me anti-inflamatories which I didn't like to take
so I didn't) except to stop running. I realized this time that all the
other kinds of exercises I'd done fairly regularly since then did not
make my hips hurt - biking, aerobics, dancing (ballroom and DDR), so it
made sense when it was suggested that the proper shoes might help. We
got to the store and Jun happened to be there, and he helped John look
at shoes while the owner of the store looked at my feet and picked out
some non-leather Asics for me that are PURPLE! Well, mostly white but
with lots of purple and lavender. John didn't want to spend the money
but he tried on a pair of shoes that were good for him (and white with
RED and BLACK!) and he liked them so much he got those too. I've only
been running thrice since then so I don't know about the hips yet. If
you don't hear anything it probably worked, if my hips still hurt I
will probably complain. BTW, I've been running most days for half an
hour without stopping. Well, maybe you'd call it jogging.
I almost wanted to move to Columbia while we were there. It was a
very pretty neighborhood shopping plaza; well, the buildings were kinda
ugly but it was landscaped nicely, and there are no power poles or
lines there (they are underground) which is very appealing, and it's
spring with flowers everywhere and we ate at a Thai/sushi restaurant
across from the shoe store that had vegetarian chicken dishes and there
was a big natural foods store and some sort of large produce store
there too.
So anyway, we got home, and Lori got home from brunch with Chris and we started cleaning the bathroom. I didn't know how it was going to go, Lori directed that everything would come out of the bathroom, it would get scrubbed from top to bottom, and all the items would be cleaned and put back in. She and I worked almost constantly and it took at least 4 hours. And I had even done a lot of cleaning in there a week ago! We took a break then also cleaned out the linen closet. The next day when I got up she was behind the refrigerator with the vacuum cleaner. I helped along with cleaning stuff, we were almost done with the stove when Lori had enough. I finished up and later worked on sanding down my desk/vanity. I haven't worked that much in a weekend since... probably... ever.
J: I worked on
taxes all weekend. I used a free online tax preparation application,
and when the application asked me (multiple times) if I would like to
submit a state tax return for 10 bucks or something, I refused. After
uploading Ginohn's taxes three times (the feds found typos) I went to
the free Maryland tax website and submitted our state taxes online. No
stamps, no fees, just the usual aggravation. I was so happy with my
work that I did Lori's tax returns too. I sure hope I didn't make any
mistakes.
Why can't I find a real 26-sided alphabet die? I found lots of
alphabet dice, including several that claimed
to be 26-sided, but they were really smaller dice with a truncated
alphabet, or larger dice with extra faces marked with words like
"wild".
The small rhombicuboctahedron is a beautiful shape, has exactly 26 sides, and with a little modification the areas of the sides can be made equal. But there's no need for that; the faces of the regular small rhombicuboctahedron allow for a die that has three different zones of probability, which is great for putting the common English letters (e,t,a,o,n,i,r,s...) on the high rolling zones to create some reasonable random words (aside from the "qu" problem). RPGs and as-yet undeveloped word games need these dice. Not to mention the world of cryptography. Until some game company wises up (and maybe sends me a little bonus for the idea?) you can build your own small rhombicuboctahedron by printing out this PDF. Add letters, cut it out and tape it together! Yay! Your very own small rhombicuboctahedron!
:-j