Month: August 2007

Ingredients:

• One box thin mints
• One container cool whip

Directions:

• Dip cookie in cool whip. Eat. Repeat. (For maximum indulgence, do not let spouse see.)

(On the west coast, my mother just dropped her latest sewing project and ran across the house to read my blog. She just heard my dad think the words ‘baby fever,’ as he noticed the title to my latest post.)

Nope, I haven’t caught it. But everyone else seems to have! There’s another round of it going around the neighborhood. Which means I have to get going on some serious knitting if I’m going to be ready for all the impending babies. I have one ‘girl’ blanket in the hold, one half-completed ‘boy’ blanket, one mostly-completed ‘boy’ blanket, and one soon-to-be completed ‘neutral’ blanket. Hmmm … mathematically, that comes out to just over 3 blankets … maybe my work is done …

blech. I thought I would give it a try, especially after it was recommended by my sister, but I really don’t like it. At all. I bought the ‘vanilla’ flavor, thinking it would help mask the soy flavor, but I found it bitter. And with a really horrible aftertaste that stuck with me for hours. I had it on my cereal, so I wasn’t like I was just drinking it by itself.

So – for any soy milk lovers out there – if I stick with it, does it get better? Does it get less bitter? Did I pick the wrong flavor? Did I pick the wrong brand? Do I need to make sure it’s supa cold before I drink it? I made the switch to lactose-free milk a while back, and that definitely took some time to get used to – and it’s based on actual milk.

I should know better than to try foods recommended by family. My dad likes greek olives, my mom likes kimchi, and my older brother likes a whole host of foul smelling foods, including buttermilk, sour kraut, and emmenthaler cheese. Perhaps I’ll finally learn my lesson …

I own akaemi.com. Which is my name. As a domain name. And I love it!

Admittedly, I didn’t come up with the idea to buy akaemi.com. That genius actually lies with my husband. akaemi.com was born right before last Christmas – and it’s the best thing I’ve ever gotten, right up there tied with a surprise weekend trip to Hershey, PA. (Again, the genius of my husband.)

Also, akaemi.com would not have been possible without the incredible foresight of my mother. My name is actually based on the Japanese name, Akemi. And if you go to akemi.com – you get redirected to some german site that manufactures adhesives. Yeah. German adhesives. My mother threw in the extra ‘a’ in my name, in an attempt to westernize it – so that it would be easier for people to pronounce upon first reading it. That seems to have only worked for about 10 people, but one benefit of the extra a is that I have a unique, domain-nameable, name. And that, is frickin’ awesome.

That’s the number of burnt out light bulbs in my house. Well, actually that number is now down to 12, because I replaced 5 of them. The other 12 will have to wait till it drops to 90 outside (I’m hoping about 6 tonight) and I make a Home Depot run to buy the appropriate bulbs: 6 giant round bulbs, 4 small round bulbs, 1 small spotlighty bulb, and 1 of those small, oblong, pointy bulbs.

17 burnt out light bulbs. You may very well be wondering: “have you been sitting in the dark??” And the answer to that question is no. There happen to be 80 light sockets in my house. (That’s right, 80 light sockets and 3.5 bathrooms for 2 people. It didn’t seem so excessive when we bought the place …) With 63 bulbs still burning bright, it’s easy to miss the 17 burnt out ones. Until all the lights in single fixture go out – which is what happened, and what prompted me to start on this light bulb escapade.

Thursday morning, I awoke to find that I had no light in the Master closet. Which is troublesome, as that is where I pick out my wardrobe for the day. And that’s hard, when you can’t see much. So this morning, on my errand-running-before-it-hit-100-degrees trip, I purchased 2 4-packs of regular 60 watt bulbs, thinking I’d replace a few other burnt out bulbs I had noticed, and then I’d have a few to spare. Because bulbs are always burning out in my house. Or, rather, it seems like bulbs are always burning out, but when you’ve got 80 to keep up with, it’s not surprising.

So, when I told my husband I was replacing the Master closet lights, he mentioned that of the two light fixtures in the upstairs hall, there is only 1 light bulb providing light. 1, tiny, 40-watt, oblong pointy bulb. Lighting the staircase to the upstairs. And it is sure to give out at any moment, plunging the staircase into treacherous darkness. None of those fixtures takes regular bulbs, however, so that requires a trip to Home Depot. Once the temps drop below ‘instant death.’

(Ok, I know 100, by itself, isn’t instant death. I lived in the Phoenix area till I was 8 years old, and survived just fine, with plenty of running around outside in ridiculous temperatures. But, that, as they say, is a dry heat. Virginia, on the other hand, has a miserably wet heat, a heat that makes you wonder why you even bothered taking a shower if you were going to go outside, because you are sticky-sweaty-wet the instant you step into it. That sticky-sweaty-wet stays with you, even when your car’s AC finally cools the car, even when you make it to the freezer section of the grocery store.)

So, anyway, since I have to go buy specialty bulbs, I decided to take inventory of the whole house. Which is when I realized that all the bathrooms have at least one burnt out bulb. And that one of the recessed lighting bulbs in the living room is burnt out. And that … well, you get the point. I never knew I had so many different kinds of bulb needs! I don’t even know what, exactly, these bulbs are. Which is why I will be taking them with me to the Home Depot lighting center, to play a little game of ‘match’.

Sometime, later this evening, I will have 80 functioning light bulbs. And I will have a stockpile of bulbs, in 5 different sizes, in preparation of the next burnout.

A few months ago, we redid our kitchen. As part of this remodel, we purchased new appliances – including a new refrigerator. And ever since then, sometimes when I go into the kitchen, I find my neurotic cat sitting in front of the refrigerator, at attention, staring intently at the ice and water dispenser. As soon as he hears me come in though, I have interrupted his moment of worship, and he wanders off.

I have often wondered what, exactly, he thinks is going to happen. If there are no people in the kitchen to operate the dispenser, it doesn’t do anything. At all. Ever. Or so I thought.

It turns out, when the planets are aligned just right, something does happen. If, after getting a glass of ice water, a piece of ice falls into the tray at the bottom of the dispenser, right on the edge, and if, after some time, it melts just right, that piece of ice will fall on the floor. And then my neurotic cat gets a tasty treat, or a splendid toy, depending on his mood at that moment. And that is what he waits for, these moments of rare blessing, bestowed by that great deity, the refrigerator.

So, after yesterday’s post, I really started thinking about all my nerdly pursuits. And I decided I could have a weekly installment of ‘don’t even try to out-nerd me.’ I thought perhaps it would be a month or two of good fun, but after I started making a list of all the potential topics, I immediately came up with 3 months worth of topics. The list has slowly grown, and I am now up to 4 and a half months. Which means that I can milk this topic for at least 6 months …

So, be on the lookout for my new nerdly column. I haven’t yet decided what the nerdliest day of the week is …

I just bought a book on regexes. For those less nerdologically inclined, ‘regexes’ is short for regular expressions. Regular expressions being ‘expressions’ you use to match a certain pattern in text. They really are way more impressive than they sound …

Having just started a new job, I’m full of all the excitement and go-get-em attitude that comes with it. Which is what prompted me to buy the book. It got 4 and a half stars on amazon, so it must be good, right? Plus, it was recommended by an old colleague.

My new job makes good use of regexes. Which sounds completely … lame … but if used correctly, according to the intro of my new book, regexes can shave hours off of tasks.

The last time I got all gung-ho about my job and bought a book, I made it to chapter 5. Here’s to hoping this purchase was money well-spent …

I had the opportunity this weekend to go to a Linkin Park concert. Turns out, one of my friends bought tix after she asked her husband over and over if he would go with her, and he agreed. Then he backed out, after the purchase, of course. Enter me, to save the day. 🙂 I gladly went to the concert, especially as my own husband would rather … do just about anything than go see Linkin Park and all the riffraff that comes with it.

I got to admire all the multi-colored hair and piercings that I know I’m too old – and I suppose too ‘professional’ – to be able to pull off. I got to eat overpriced food. But most importantly, I got exposed to some new bands.

My Chemical Romance totally rocked the house. They rocked it harder than Linkin Park. There was fire and fireworks all over that stage – but no manner of pyrotechnics could ever outdo Gerard. Gerard the flamboyantly emo. Gerard who came out on stage dressed up in a Prince-ala-hot-topic getup. Gerard with more makeup than me. (Ok, so that last one’s not hard, seeing as I wear …. chapstick.) Gerard who knows how to put on a show.

The music was awesome, but Gerard really knows how to get the crowd into it. Gerard managed to get a significant portion of the male audience to take off their shirts and swing them around their heads. For real. Cuz when Gerard asks you to do something, in his feverishly appealing way, you do it.

I only knew one of their songs – that ‘when I was a young boy … black parade song’ – but all their songs were great. I’m gonna have to buy their album now. And if I ever see them on the concert circuit again, it’ll be time to call up my friend and get tix of our own.

I recently spent a week in sunny sunny southern California, and managed to get myself quite burned. Walking around Sea World, nonetheless – I wasn’t even laying out on the beach asking for it. I slathered on my husband’s SPF 50 at the beginning of the day, and thought I would be good.

Nope.

Throughout the afternoon, I kept asking how the back of my neck and shoulders looked, and my husband insisted I looked fine. I shouldn’t have taken his word for it – I know I’m not an insta-burner. I know it takes half a day for the true extent of my sun damage to display itself.

Luckily for me, I have spent a teeny amount of time in the Virginia sun this summer. My arms have seen enough to not be stark white, as have my face and neck – and by neck, I mean the neck that shows when I wear my regular, apparently fairly high-neck, t-shirts. So any skin that I normally expose to the sky only got the tiniest bit burned, there was only a small amount of peelage.

But, on Sea World day, I decided to wear a new, adorable shirt. Which exposed more skin than I usually expose. (Don’t get excited, it’s still very much classified a t-shirt, with actual sleeves and everything.) And every bit of skin that hasn’t seen the sun in years, burned. Burned bad. It peeled, over a week and a half, the most painful peeling I’ve ever experienced. And the skin that emerged was pink. Pink! I can’t ever recall having a burn that did anything but peel off to expose a beautiful tan.

My back and shoulders have stopped hurting, and I have been able to resume my nearly scalding hot showers. I have to admit, though, I haven’t looked at them to see what color they may have ended up. My arms however, have what most people would consider a nice color. A nice tan, but not leathery or obnoxious. (Obnoxious tans are the ones arrived at in a tanning bed, or through very deliberate laying out in the sun. You know the look.) Looking at my arms, though, all I see is the color of skin cancer. I see a glimpse of sun-spotted middle-aged lady arms. It doesn’t look good to me, and it most certainly doesn’t look healthy. I can’t wait till mid-fall when my tan finally fades to my own natural white with a tinge of yellowy-olive. I think I may just find myself a dermatologist to start cataloging my moles – and I’m definitely gonna start using more of that SPF 50.