THOMnottom

This morning in our bedroom:

THE WOMAN: Somebody turned the AC below 6.
ME: Well, I didn’t do it.
THE WOMAN: It has to be over 6 for it to work.
ME: Maybe it was you.
THE WOMAN: It wasn’t me. Just don’t turn it down.
ME: Maybe someone broke into our house and turned it down…

What kind of jerk would do that?

I’m sure most of you have seen these videos making the rounds (the show may be over already for all I know), but just in case here they are for your pleasure:
First up is the painfully adorable Connie.

That one was sweet and cute and fun. But next up is Paul and… well, just watch.

Wow, I’ve had a lot of tabs open for a couple of weeks – let’s go through this crap and get it out of the way:

• Maggie Mason on the Art of Dressing Well: “I noticed that men who pay attention to making their hairstyle unique were more likely to be dressed well too. Also, anyone wearing color stood out, as it’s almost impossible to find people who aren’t in black.” – I’d like to thank my sisters for the feminine culture they helped raise me in as I come to work today with a hairstyle provided by The Woman and a bold Hawaiian shirt that sparked numerous comments.
• Ever wonder what would happen if you bought 25 bottle of Nyquil at the same time? Now you don’t have to.
• zefrank found all that is horrible on the Internet summed up on one page.
• He also found some amazingly cool and fantastical photography.
• Like paper airplanes? Here’s a few ideas for some, as well as patterns to print out – if you have A4 paper handy.
• I did print out the dragon paper sculpture illusion, but haven’t made it yet.
• Fingerjig is a neat typing game to see how fast you really type. Considering I don’t touch type, I’m still pretty darn good.
• Want a list of 100 words you should have learned in high school but will probably never use outside of college? Here you go. (thanks to kottke)
• I finally got a chance to watch 100 Movies, 100 Quotes, 100 Numbers. Brilliant! And here’s the list of the movies used. (thanks to Neatorama)
• Sometimes I wish the people I greatly respected would go gracefully – because when they hang around like Bradbury, it makes you doubt all of the wonderful things you learned from them when you were young.
• I’m a total softie when it comes to animals, but I also appreciate the whole life and death struggle that The Lion King so poetically explained to us all. While this video might not be for the weak-hearted (there’s no real blood scene) it is an all out struggle involving a few lions, a herd of buffalo, and even a crocodile. Nature sure is amazing.
• And just so we don’t end on a not like that, here’s a bunch of animals who got their heads stuck in things.

That sure does clear up my browser!

Always behind the time with Internet sensations, I finally acquired Rodrigo y Gabriela’s debut album from eMusic. I haven’t even made it through the entire thing yet because every time I hit the end of a track I need to hear it again. Seriously, these songs should be 30 minutes long they are so engaging. Although the eMusic message boards were all a-twitter about them awhile ago, this is the video that first introduced them to me:

Yes, they are that amazing. If that music doesn’t just grab and inspire you, well, you better check with your doctor because I’m pretty sure you’re dead.

I was poking around my Netflix queue this morning (we’ve been very slow with movies, that’s why I haven’t posted another round of reviews) and noticed a “Watch Now” tab. Apparently it’s been up there for almost half a year, but I’m not that observant. But, hey, 4 or 5 months? I’m sure I’m still the first blogger to mention it, right? Yeah, right.

Anywho, since I had a few moments to kill before I’d be running late for work, I figured it would be a good time to try out the service. So I looked for a movie that The Woman would not be interested in but was lingering somewhere on my queue. When I saw Phantasm listed I knew that was the one. Surprisingly easy to setup, the movie started playing after only a few minutes. Time to get my late 70s horror on!

I was surprised at the cheesiness of the opening music. I mean, I know it was low-budget, but it started off sounding pretty lame. But the soundtrack left my mind pretty quickly when the opening shot shifted to a nipple just about filling my screen. Wait, what was that? Yes, it was a nipple. A giant nipple. Well, I guess it was actually normal size and just seemed giant on the 20″ display. Either way, it was rather confusing. And it was a nipple.

And then I looked at the list again and noticed what might be the problem: I had apparently downloaded Fantasm – soft-core porn disguised as a sex comedy. Whoops, guess I’ll have to remember to double check titles in the future…

I held off on the announcement, because I wasn’t sure if my sister Christine and her husband Jason were going to let little Paige name her new baby brother. But it looks like the name has stuck, which means that it’s time to welcome Desmond Rubino into the family. I have to admit, I didn’t realize that Paige was such a big Lost fan. At least Sayid is still available for our first born.

Since Christine has lousy timing, Desmond was born Sunday night. That means I won’t really have the chance to visit until this next weekend. So, until I get a chance to take some photos, you’ll just have to settle for this one of big sister poking her new brother in the eye:

For those who lost count, that’s number 9 of the next generation. And the boys have a healthy 6 to 3 lead – w00t!

It feels like I’ve switched themes more often than posted as of late. But while reading the response’s to Khaleed’s request for a stripped-down theme template I was directed to Brian Gardner’s themes. Very nice collection. I immediately felt the itch trigger finger moving to download, upload and apply a brand new look. And once I saw the beautiful simplicity of Silhouette, I was sold.

It feels similar to the Spotlight theme I was using earlier, but closer to what I personally wanted. I still love the work that Plaintxt.org has put out, but until I have time to adapt one of their themes to my own style, I need a little more contrast on this site.

For now I just need to figure out what that ugly search button is doing in the upper right – as if anyone really needs to search this site…

I think I can just title every entry from now on by labeling what is currently sucking in my life. Haha! Of course I won’t do that, what do you think this is, Livejournal? Ooooooo – I apologize to all of my LJ friends…

Alright, the basic story is that we only have The Woman’s minivan for another couple of weeks. The nasty downside of leases is that they actually do want the car back when you stop paying for it. Actually, that’s the nasty downside to a lot of things in life… Regardless, as much as I love looking like the coolest cat on the block thanks to the sweet ride that is a Honda Odyssey, it is unfortunately time for us to get a more practical car. You know, like… a car. Since I’m already on the hook for my hot new Corolla – remember, that’s how I roll – we decided to start looking at used previously enjoyed and then subsequently trashed cars. That’s a fun experience.

There was a time when you could wander through a car lot and get an idea of what you could afford by looking at the stickers on the windows. Now they love to give you the keys, show you how much the car suits you, take it out for a ride, and then act surprised when they realize it’s 3 times what you actually want to spend. No matter, they will then proceed to waste the next 5 hours of your life trying to figure out how to make a deal so that you can drive away with a vehicle you’re not even that thrilled with for a price that you’ll regret later. The constant question of “What would it take to get you in that car today?” is just begging for the honest answer: “Give me the keys, back away, and wave bye-bye.”

Despite the horrendous nature of the industry, we did manage to find a pretty good deal yesterday. And this morning The Woman got to drive in her not-quite-new 2005 Ford Focus. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: “An American car?” That’s how I feel. But she’s paying a lot less than me, still has a fairly recent car (it’s actually a year younger than the one she’s leasing), and should get much better gas mileage than the oversized troop transport. At least we got to give that beauty a fitting send off with the trek out to Ohio last month.

So that’s taken care of, and we’re on to the next stage – worrying if we actually made a smart decision…

So it turns out that I had some sort of flu. I say “some sort of” because I have difficulty believing that’s what it was even though everything points in that direction. My head was swimming for a few days and that was it – I guess I expected something more dramatic. Although Saturday night’s experience was bad enough, thank you very much. But the rest of the time was just me avoiding too much work and drinking plenty of fluids. Sounds like an average day for me…

What pisses me off is that I couldn’t make it to see The National and The Broken West Monday night. Fortunately I’m only out about 50 bucks, but thanks to the crappy rules of will call there’s no way I could have sold the tickets. Thankfully everything went south before I even had a chance to find people to take the 2 extras I had, because it would have been extra sucky to screw someone else out of the show at the same time. Argh! And to top it off, The National are still playing 2 more shows, but they’re sold out – and me listening to their latest album is easing the pain either.

Anywho, I’m back on my feet and hopefully ready to return to my serious blogging career. I hear I was in a wedding in Ohio or something…

Yesterday, the Woman and I headed over to the in-laws for a Memorial Day/”everybody’s born around the same time” gathering. All was going well with much good food and much good conversation filling the day. And then something strange happened.

Near the end of the night I got a little dizzy. It started when her nephew… well, I guess he’s my nephew, too… was spinning around in circles in the living room. Someone joked that he was going so fast that it was making us dizzy just watching. And, sure enough, it was. No big deal. I shook my head to clear it and started to get ready to head out. But my head never fully cleared. My steps were a little uneven, and moving my head disoriented me.

Stupidly I figured the car ride home would be fine and I would be over it shortly. I guess it was fine, but I had to be careful even checking my mirrors to fast. By the time I got home, I had to confess that I was losing my balance and feeling out of it. It was pretty obvious when I had trouble walking in a straight line up the pathway. The rest of the night was largely spent with me trying to sit as still as possible so as not to send me spinning out of control. In other words, imagine being drunk but without the benefit of alcohol to kill your sense of how terrible you fell.

From what we can tell, it was some sort of perfect storm of causes – dehydration, overheating, moving heavy furniture in the morning, etc. – that rattled my head with a bout of vertigo. The Woman got me through the night, but unfortunately it’s not something that goes away quickly. So my plans for doing lots of yard work this holiday weekend have gone swirly, and instead I’m spending today and tomorrow primarily sitting still staring at the TV.

Hopefully I’ll be able to walk straight enough to make it into the City tomorrow night for The National and The Broken West. At the very least, maybe I can sit in front of the computer long enough to get some photos processed – yeah, right!