Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

The best thing about Monday nights? Watching new "Heroes" in HD on a big-ass TV screen.

The worst thing about Monday nights? The "to be continued..." tag after each new episode. 

It almost makes me want to stop watching the show and just wait for it to come out on DVD. Almost, but not really, because I crave that Heroes fix and can't seem to live without it. Well, I'm sure I could... it's just the most exciting thing I have going on Monday evenings these days. What could I do instead? Oh, paint the family room, I guess. Bleh. I'd rather watch Heroes.

But WTF?!? Is Hiro ever going to realize that HE is the Kensei of Legend? And who is Adam? When is West going to be bumped off for being too annoying? What is Jessica's real motivation with Mohinder right now? You probably have the same questions (and more) that I do if you're a fan. Sure, there are cheesy parts, and I really hate the horrible green-screening they're doing once in a while, but overall it's just really good TV.

*Sniff* and I won't be able to get the first season on DVD until the HD format wars are over and we get an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player or an all-in-one or whatever ends up winning. Because it would be too traumatic to watch a lesser quality DVD of Heroes after seeing it broadcast in amazing HD.    

/ end of TV geek-out for now. 

Posted by Yvette at 07:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: TV & Movies

Wired has asked readers to submit photos of their geeky jack o' lantern carvings, and the people have delivered.  Here are my top three favorites, with links to the owners' photos and hopes that they won't be mad for me touting their awesome dedication to a geek-filled Halloween.

 

 

Posted by Yvette at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Geeky | Holidays

There's an article today on computerworld.com, under "careers," called Geek stars: The secret (nerdy) life of celebrities.  It lists forty celebrities with "some serious science and technology chops."

There are some I knew about and some I didn't, but it's an interesting little read. Obvious ones to geeks like me include Wil Wheaton, Natalie Portman, and Danica McKellar. One of my sister's childhood heroes is listed (Bill Nye the Science Guy), as well as her could-be neuroscience colleague, Mayim Bialik.

I feel like they cheated by listing Weird Al... he was an architecture major. I don't think architecture is particularly geeky or nerdy by itself (correct me if I'm wrong) but everyone knows he's a geek otherwise. Dr. Demento's Tom Lehrer is also on the the list, but he actually left Dr. Demento to pursue a career in mathematics! Most other people on the list started out studing math or science and then left for acting, music, or whatever.

Other quick notes: Sharon Stone is a self-described nerd? Interesting. Robin Williams is a big gamer and gadget freak? Well, he had to replace his crack habit with... another potentially dangerous crack habit (albeit with an admittedly lower death rate). Kurt Vonnegut and Huey Lewis studied engineering, Alfred Hitchcock studied mechanics and navigation, Trent Reznor studied computer engineering, Art Garfunkel has a masters in math, and Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson) studied electrical engineering. There are many more names that you may or may not recognize.

The most surprising to me was Hedy Lamarr, the Black and White movie actress whose name I really only know because it's included in the lyrics of the "Little Shop of Horrors" musical number "Feed Me" (...How about a date with Hedy Lamarr?  You gonna git it...)

She was a pioneer in spread spectrum technology... the stuff behind two little things called Ethernet and cell phones. So maybe we could blame her for the resultant txt msg cultr and interweb sp33k.  It seems that she wanted to become an inventor, but was instead encouraged to smile and shake her booty for soldiers to raise war bonds.

Also, her full first name is Hedwig, which was also my great-grandmother's name before it ever became associated with a snowy owl. She just jumped to my own personal "cool people" list.

Posted by Yvette at 07:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Geeky | Nerd Alert

I thought you might be interested in geek terminology from Croatia (Hrvatska).

Nerds are called "štreberi" (shtreberi). Geeks are actually called geeks, but they're sometimes also called shtreberi, frikovi (from English freak), šmokljani (shmokljani), and more specified names depending of the area of their geekness.

 

P.S. Your geek test is cool.

(I scored 54,95661% and titled as a super geek :)

but you were right - I'll try again!)

Posted by Yvette at 07:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Tags: Geek Test & innergeek.us

Posted by Yvette at 02:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: House & Home

This is my adorable little Phoebe, who's now about six months old. She's growing too big for the basket in this photo, but loves to sleep in it while I'm sitting at the computer. That is, of course, if she's not being an annoying little shit like right now and standing in front of my monitor... playing with a loose emery board, drinking from my water glass or pulling thumbtacks out of my newly hung corkboard.

I put a loose Spiderman 3 action figure in her bed one day and took a bunch of photos. He had been hanging from a plastic web that was suction-cupped to my filing cabinet. I left him on the desk because it was the lazy thing to do, and the next day, and the next, Phoebe wanted to play with him like she loves to play with her little colored toy mice (she's kind of racist... she prefers the blue, orange and pink mice to the black, white or rattly ones). I afeared she might damage Spidey, but was also incredibly amused. He's tucked away now until I put the camera on video or I desperately need her to get out of my hair.

She must have sensed that I was getting annoyed, because now she's tucked herself into bed again. How fucking adorable can you get. It makes me sick with love.

I didn't realize how much I could fall in love with this little kitten when I brought her home a few months ago. She squeaks, really, instead of meowing. She purrs almost any time I pick her up. She cuddles up with my bare ankles and my slippers every morning when I stand at the counter making coffee. She made fast friends with Loki, our middle-aged fatty, with whom she plays/plagues and who seems to enjoy the attention rather than be annoyed with it. She lies down next to him, literally right up against him, quite often. See the Lazr Kitteh photo below.

Of course Loki just lays on top of her to let her know that he's done playing. Our other cat Isis now tolerates Phoebe much better, and we've even caught her playing with her little nemesis a few times. Mostly Isis still looks with disdain upon us giving Phoebe attention. We try to hold Isis, but she still has all of her claws and has never been much of a snuggler unless she initiates the attention.

I'm blabbering on like a crazy cat lady. I don't have kids yet, so I guess all of that mothering love is being poured into my cats right now.  Look at these photos and tell me how I could not!

 

 

Posted by Yvette at 07:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Tags: Geeky | My 3 Cats

I'm at work and for some reason I thought I was archiving comments from the past few weeks that people have made on my blog. Instead, I deleted them. I am an idiot.

People whose comments I deleted: Madeleine, Monique, Liz, WithaK, Tina Kubala and ImaGeek2. Again, it's not because I don't love you. It's just that I'm an idiot.

Can I blame this minor little cold that I have right now? Yes, I think I'd like to play that card. It's not as bad as the cold I got a couple months ago, but I have been feeling a little light-headed. 

Posted by Yvette at 01:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Thank you, Liz, for making me laugh with this little comic about the Norway and Atheism. Russell's Teapot - Dra Til Helvete

P.S. Yes, "dra til helvete" means go to hell.

P.P.S. Thanks to the little guy in the upper right corner of the page, I now have Violent Femmes' "Kiss off" song stuck in my head!

Posted by Yvette at 10:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Politics & Religion

Ben and I spent some of Friday evening and all day Saturday cleaning the house. I did a pretty good job in the kitchen/dining room/living room and Ben worked some serious magic in the dungeon, I mean family room, where our big TV and his computer workspace live. I also put a couple posters/artwork in frames (didn't hang anything yet) and hung some smaller things on the wall in the guest bathroom and hung a corkboard in my office.

I prepared a smorgasbord of sandwich fixins for dinner, for which my aunt Regina and uncle Alex joined us when they finally arrived from Minnesota. They're staying with us for a couple days, then with some other friends around Utah, and then flying to Italy where they'll be living for the next few-to-several years to be with my uncle's family.

Yes, my uncle is Italian and made some fantastic aleo alio pasta for dinner yesterday. My dad came down for dinner with Prosciutto ham, pepperocinis and some Asiago cheese... so it was quite a delicious meal and the company was nice, too. Alex is also a big racing fan... not of NASCAR. Of Ferrari. And Ferrari won the championship yesterday, which made him clap his hands and do a cute, unexpected dance when he checked the score online (since we don't get the Speed Channel on which it was broadcast). I couldn't believe, after that, that he hadn't seen the Pixar movie "Cars," so we watched that together after dinner.

Luigi and Guido, the little Italian cars from Radiator Springs, were even funnier given the earlier hoopla scene Alex had made about Ferrari. I also hadn't realized how much Italian was spoken in the movie! Alex and Regina both enjoyed it. Apparently there will be partying in Italy for a month because Ferrari won the race. W007, I guess?

We had dinner early, around 5:30, so there was still time after the movie to play the Simpsons version of Clue, which I haven't played for several years. It was fun, and I won the first round pretty quickly because I guessed the solution by chance. Then I won the second game through hard-nosed detective work. Alex and Ben were both already out of the game because they both guessed wrong before they had all the evidence. Silly boys.

I'm looking forward to pasta in a butter pea sauce for dinner this evening. Yummy food makes giving up my Saturday to cleaning a little easier to handle. 

Posted by Yvette at 07:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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The windows are open in our house this evening because it was a really nice, somewhat warm and sunny day. I can hear the local high school football game announcer because we only live a half mile away from the field.  

I've never seen the show "Friday Night Lights," which is apparently about football. The last football game I attended was in the fall of my first year at Miami University when I was in the marching band. In fact, the only other football games I attended were while I was in the high school marching band. Okay, there were also a few early attempts at socialization while I was in middle school that took place at Friday night high school football games.

I don't watch football on TV, I don't play football video games, and I've never had the experience or the urge to toss the ol' pigskin around while growing up--even though I was somewhat of a tomboy.  And even though I love quirky and eccentric consumer goods, I never wanted a free football phone with a paid subscription to Sports Illustrated. Would it surprise you to discover that I still don't understand how the game works? Even though I've attended two or three Superbowl parties and even dated two different guys in high school who were on the football team?

(One dumped me as soon as he discovered that I wasn't going to put out. I didn't feel bad at all because he wrote me a break-up note and was clearly not even of average intelligence. The other was actually a Varsity soccer player whose only role on the team was Kicker. We were in the same circle of friends and I went to prom with him... then he graduated and we parted as friends.) 

So hearing the sounds drift into my house this evening evokes different memories for me. When I hear the band play "Let's Go Team" I smile and think about sitting with the other baritone and trombone players on the top bleacher in the band's reserved section.

When I hear the announcer getting excited about some play, and the roar of applause follows, I think of laughing with my fellow band geeks and half-assedly playing a song or two and not caring at all about what's happening on the field. When I hear the local band playing what must be their halftime show, I remember how incredible it felt to march in step in my crisp and scratchy white and red uniform with polished white Dinkles shoes; to stop in the middle of the field, tilt my silver marching baritone up in the air so it glittered in the bright lights; to place my lips on the suddenly freezing mouthpiece and blare my horn as mightily as I was able. It didn't matter if I played the wrong notes here or there because it was a big band and I was there to have fun.

And then, after halftime, my band went back to the bleachers to play second fiddle to the "real" stars... the athletes.  I bet none of the football players ever had a right pinky muscle built up like I did from holding that heavy hunk of an instrument, though! I also had a killer upper lip muscle.

I need to get my scanner back from Ben so I can start including more photos. The one I'd like to include here is a dorky-cute posed picture of me in my marching band uniform with my instrument. Well, the school's instrument. There are occasions where I really miss playing low brass. I wasn't ever a great player because I didn't practice very much, but I was tolerably good. Huh. I really didn't think I'd spend the evening reminiscing about high school.

Maybe I'm feeling chatty because of the cool music I'm listening to: the Life Aquatic soundtrack, with David Bowie songs translated into Portuguese and sung by Seu Jorge. I had a really crappy morning, but at least it's ending well. 

Posted by Yvette at 08:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Geeky | Memories

Doing a little each day can actually make a difference. This is not a new concept, but one that I am actualizing for the first time in a while (unless you count playing Super Paper Mario in doses... then again, maybe that was the practice I needed to remember that it all adds up in the end).

I went on two business trips in the course of a month, which is a lot more than I'm used to. The main area of our house is cleaner than usual, thanks to a weekend dedicated to cleaning and organizing back in September. Hopefully we can keep it that way. It's at least in a condition that can be fairly quickly tidied up in case we have company. It helps that we're not cleaning up any "presents" from a sick cat anymore... that was exhausting, especially when you consider the mental exhaustion associated with trips to vet that cost more than we were expecting. But all the cats are healthy now and we can sleep through the night.

We did run very low on food for a little while and definitely ate out more often this past month. Ben is happy to make dinner for us, but he usually needs me to decide what to make... so I'm the main grocery shopper. Clearly, that one's a difficult job while you're out of town. I did some basic grocery shopping on Sunday (there are a couple grocery stores that aren't open on Sunday, but Albertson's is open) and went to Sam's Club last night to bulk up on the necessities: a huge box of brownie mix, canned fruit, pumpkin puree, toilet paper, detergent, etc. I also bought a huge bag of Halloween candy that Ben offered to hide in a special place (his tummy), but I told him was for trick-or-treaters and he could eat the leftovers on November 1. Yeah, we'll see how that goes.   

Before Sam's Club (Costco is too far away, otherwise I'd have a membership there), I stopped into JoAnn's to buy a bigger basket bed for Phoebe. Her body still fits in the little one that she's used for the last three months, but her head has to be tucked in a way that can't be comfortable if it is to stay in the basket. Well, they didn't have any baskets I liked and I was talking to Liz on the phone and she told me not to buy one that I didn't like, so I didn't. I bought a "fall wreath" for my front door instead, which probably won't provide the necessary distraction from our woefully neglected front garden. Colorful dead leaves on the door are better than really dead leaves and plants, right?

I also picked up a pair of devil horn barrettes. What the hell are those, you ask? They're an ingenious way to wear devil horns that don't require a stupid headband!

This image is basically what they look like... just bits of stuffed fabric that are sewn onto basic red snap barrettes. Craftzine.com blogged about someone named Cat Morley who wrote a tutorial on how to make the cute devil horn barrettes, but the link isn't working. So just go to JoAnn's (or probably Target, Michael's, etc.) and buy them for a couple bucks. I don't really know how I'm going to dress up for Halloween, but I'm going to start wearing my horns to work before then.

On a somewhat related note, I watched an episode of Xena: Warrior Princess last night that involved Xena traveling to the Underworld (what wasn't much spookier than Super Paper Mario level 7-1) and fixing corruption that led to the evildoers taking over the Elysian Fields and the innocents and good people being forced into Tartarus. This resulted in some weird dreams last night about the Greek Underworld, Hades, etc. When I first learned about Tartarus, I was grossed out because I related the word to the tartar that can collect on teeth. That was the ultimate sin in my household, with my mom as my dentist!  

Posted by Yvette at 06:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Box of Chocolates | Holidays | My 3 Cats | Personal | TV & Movies

Posted by Yvette at 07:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Box of Chocolates

I learned today from Slashdot that it's Blog Action Day, a day to test how 15,000 blogs with millions of readers can make a difference. Sure, I'll jump on board to support today's agenda, which sounds really trendy: the environment!

I checked my carbon footprint this morning. As calculated by the Nature Conservancy Carbon Footprint Calculator, Ben and I have too much house for two people and our footprint is above the average of 53 for American Households with two people. It's waaaay above the international average of 11, but I wonder if you have to live in a 600 square foot apartment and not own a car in order to even come close to that. Does it matter that where I live, we have renewable hydroelectric power that's generated from our local mountain snowpack? Unlike where I grew up, just a couple miles from a nuclear power plant, I now rely on the type of energy that looks forward to the annual meltdown... har har.

Speaking of the Nature Conservancy, I donated $15 while I was in college to get the free umbrella as a thank you. They've been a reliable source of return address labels for many years now, and unlike the DMV, they always know where I live without me filling out a form.

I said DMV because it's on my mind... I have until the end of the month to renew my car registration, for which I must go to the DMV in person. Why can't I just send it in? That's a good question, reader.

Apparently when you move within Utah, they don't forward your renewal forms even though you've registered for mail forwarding with the United States Postal Service, and even when you change your address online or over the phone, they still won't send them to you. That was partially understandable last year when I actually moved. But I'm pretty certain that over a year after that first annoying event, at which time I'm fairly certain I gave them my new address on the forms, they should have been able to send me the renewal forms. But no. I have to waste my time and gasoline (there goes my hope of reducing my carbon footprint) just to get a stupid sticker to go on my license plate. And the USPS is now going to have to raise their rates again because the DMV wouldn't pay the 41 cents to send in the forms. And you have to have the printed forms with a PIN in order to renew your tags online. Grr.

So anyway, I think it's about time that Ben and I start paying the $6 a month to participate in our new local recycling program. Even if global warming is a myth, and we're only experiencing the cycle of Mother Earth (and not 100% to blame for inducing an environmental apocolypse), I think recycling is helpful on many levels. I already drop off my telephone books and newspapers in the public recycling bins, so that gives me the warm fuzzies and all that.

And I think I remember, from my mixed memories of early education in the 1980s, something about Reduce, Reuse, Recycle leading to a major bonus point if you get stuck in purgatory after you die.  I went to Catholic school for a year and a half, so that may have contributed to the confusion. And my half-hearted attendance at PSR, the extracurricular parochial education for Catholics attending wayward public schools, didn't help with much of anything. I remember coloring pictures of Jesus that I'm sure weren't recycled.

I hang out with the Unitarian Universalists now, whose seventh principle affirms and promotes "Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part." That means they're totally down with being environmentalist hippies. Hooray! Of course, there are only four of us in the entire state of Utah. I don't understand why more liberal congregations aren't popping up all around...

Posted by Yvette at 07:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Around Town & Beyond | Box of Chocolates

On my birthday, my coworkers made this card for me and did their best to shock me with the worst, most  horrifying grammar inside. I'm one of those people who correct the grammar of friends so that they might learn through experience what they did not learn (or were not taught) in school. My own grammar is not perfect, but I strive to use the American-English language as well as possible. I have my own limits, which means that I do occasionally end sentences with prepositions when the alternative is to sound like an 18th-century grammar textbook. Two of the biggies that cross the line, however, are when people say "how come?" instead of "why" and when they use "at" unnecessarily, such as "here's where I'm at" and "where at?"

My coworkers are very good sports. They respect my knowledge and often use incorrect grammar on purpose just to annoy me. Of course they only know that it annoys me because I've corrected them before. Using "funner" or "funnest" is a common source of personal anguish for me, so I suppose it's only natural that they went out of their way to make that card. I pulled out some of the best comments from inside, because I'm really proud of them for making such an effort on my behalf.

I have the Best. Coworkers. Evar.

Posted by Yvette at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Tags: Friends & Relationships | Geeky | Holidays | Reading, Writing & Books

Happy Birthday, Ben! Even though I gave you an Xbox 360 as an early present and you already beat the one game that matters, and were disappointed in it, I still wanted to send you some extra digital love in a public manner.

And as a bonus for any readers out there, here's the graphic I snagged and altered for his card!

Posted by Yvette at 07:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Friends & Relationships | Gaming | Geeky | Holidays

October 9, 1987: My first birthday party together with people other than my immediate family, held at McDonald's. The cake had hard sugary characters of Ronald McDonald and friends on top. I still have the small, white teddy bear from David, on whom I had a big crush.

October 9, 1988: My birthday fell on Columbus Day weekend, and my mom had a dental seminar in Washington, DC. I was bored in some kids' seminar/activity session and pulled out one of my teeth (it was already loose). That was fun to lose a tooth at a dental seminar.  

October 9, 1989: I don't remember celebrating the actual day, which would have been a Sunday, with my family. My class sang happy birthday to me at school the next day, but it was kind of lame. It was kind of a crappy day-after-birthday, until dinnertime, when the birthday cake my parents presented to me was round and frosted to look like the largest hamburger ever. I don't know why they picked a hamburger... I wasn't a huge hamburger fan or anything (I'm thinking of Wimpy, from Popeye, as the biggest iconic hamburger fan). Actually, I think that's the birthday that I received my Skip-it, the toy that slips around one ankle and you spin it around and skip over it with the other foot. It had a counter.

October 9, 1995: My mom picked me up from school in the middle of the day to go take my driver's license test. I drove our stick shift Saturn SL2 and I passed. I returned to class in 6th period, I think, and showed off my new license to my "pod" in English class, which included my good friends John, Danielle and who-knew-he'd-be-my-future-husband Ben. Ben couldn't believe that I skipped school to get my driver's license. I guess he got over it.

October 9, 1996: My host parents in Norway gave me some beautiful, scratchy wool mittens that were (machine-)knitted in a traditional Selbu star pattern, as well as pressed wool slippers that I still wear now when a chill sets in. They are amazing slippers. My new friends at school lit a match and stuck it in a sweet roll at lunch.

October 9, 1997: In my first year at Miami University, I couldn't believe that it was warm enough that I had to wear shorts on my birthday. I had missed El Nino while in Scandinavia but was feeling the effects of La Nina, plus it was the first year I lived below 40 degrees latitude.

October 9, 2000: Another Monday birthday. I feel like I've had more than my share. I went to class, then Ben drove up from Cincinnati to go out with me and a couple of my over-21 friends. The first over-21 bar we went to that evening didn't card me, but I made the bouncer look at my license anyway. Then later, at Mac and Joe's, Riggy bought me a Smurf shot, which was okay. Then Scotty brought me two shots and told me to put them in my mouth at the same time, and to get the full flavor, he told me make chomping motions while my lips were closed. I did, and suddenly felt chunks in my mouth that I didn't put there... and of course Scotty was dying laughing. It's called a "cement mixer" and is made of two shots: lime juice and Bailey's. I swallowed mine, but Scotty said that it's quite normal for the victim to spray it all over when the coagulation starts. I got home quite late that evening, not totally drunk, but threw up because of alcohol for the first time.  Maybe I wouldn't have thrown up if I hadn't had a Smurf followed by a cement mixer.  

October 9, 2002: I had the day off from my job as hotel front desk manager, but I decided to come in for the weekly Wednesday managers' meeting because I knew they'd have cake. I was running errands in my first new car, which was only one-month-old Subaru Impreza, and gas was low. The only car I'd driven regularly was the same stick-shift Saturn SL2 in which I'd learned how to drive, and the needle would dip below "E" before the low gas light came on. I ran out of gas in my new car about a half-mile away from the hotel, right off the freeway exit, but luckily the maintenance staff kept a couple gallons of gas on hand for whatever reason and I was rescued. I walked into the meeting late and was thoroughly (and deservedly) harrassed for my stupidity while eating cake.

October 9, 2007: Ben brought a mug of coffee to me after my alarm went off and said happy birthday. I arrived late to work to discover that my cubicle had been decorated with balloons and streamers, and sitting on my desk was a bottle of OJ, a large cinnamon roll (from a delicious local bakery in Provo called Shirley's), and a happy birthday post-it note from my boss friend. There was also a small from my friend and co-worker Laura with Hiro on the front!

She used "funnest" because that's one of my biggest grammar pet peeves, and many people on the sales and marketing team use it regularly. They don't know that you should say "most fun" instead, and once they learn that it gives me an eye tick when I hear it, they use it whenever possible. Except I've never told the CEO, whom I see occasionally, and I've still heard him use it. Oh, Utah. I'm the official grammar police at work.

Anyway, that's some background as to why my department gave me this card at the end of the day. They even spelled birthday with a u! Inside, my darling coworkers did their best to write in a way that would make my insides turn out, both from horror and laughter. It was one of the most thoughtful gifts I've ever received! I'll post the inside comments in my next blog entry.

Everyone who walked by my cubicle said happy birthday and chatted for a little while, which I enjoyed but also came to be a little annoying. So I left work in a good mood and came home to find the kitchen and dining room quite clean, and fresh fall air blowing in through the windows. Ben had come home early, and I knew something was up when I saw the gallon of milk in the fridge... we're both pretty lactose intolerant, and when we buy milk, it's usually only a half gallon. Sure enough, our friends and their kids (who are big milk drinkers) came over to wish me a happy birthday and share the yummy frosted brownies that Ben made. I didn't even smell the evidence because all of the windows had been open!

Ben gave me a sweet, funny card and a couple things from my Amazon.com wishlist, and my mom sent me a generous gift certificate from Amazon.com (see a pattern?). My dad said he wanted to take me and Ben out to dinner this weekend.  I received phone calls at work from my sister, my long-distance friend Liz, and my family in Norway. I received email greetings from a few other extended family members.

Overall, I really have to say that my birthday was totally awesome this year. I'm not used to receiving so much attention, and it really made me reflect how much love there is in my life from many sources. In the year that follows, when I'm feeling depressed and unloved, I will think about this day.

I care less and less about material birthday gifts, probably because I've been working long enough where I can generally afford the things I really want. But it's an invigorating, joyful experience to have one day in which the people you love make a point of remembering you, even if it's just emailing to say hello. Do I do the same for the people I love? I feel like the world would be a better place if everyone had a day or two every year like I had on this birthday. I think that a really good day can make up for a long string of crappy ones.

Posted by Yvette at 07:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Box of Chocolates | Friends & Relationships | Holidays | Personal

I have been meaning to post this for a long time, and now the time has come:

It's 3-D Mario World Paper Crafting like you've never seen before!!! Thanks to WithaK for originally sharing the nerd-craft blog post with me. 

Naturally, since I love Mario and work in the scrapbook and paper craft industry, I found this particularly amusing and awesome.

Many people (yes, 99% women) who scrapbook and do crafty things are hot for all things Disney. If I were in control of licensing for my company (or other scrapbook industry companies), I would defintiely skip Disney in favor of stalking the good people at Nintendo for their approval to use characters from the Mario World in many varied crafting products. 

Though if I were a SAHM (stay-at-home mom, acronym courtesy of all those scrapbooking forums I occasionally read for work) I would probably spend my free time actually playing Mario on the Wii than filling my scrapbook with his likeness. And maybe taking care of my child.

But if/when the time comes to have a baby, I have a bitchin' idea for a maternity t-shirt. Oh yes, you will just have to wait and see. Until then, I will leave you with a wonderful example of other other Mario merchandise that is currently available on ThinkGeek.com : a USB Mouse in your choice of Mario or Star!

Posted by Yvette at 07:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Gaming | Geeky

Something weird happened on Saturday, when it was cold and raining in Utah while heat waves raged across other parts of the county. The weather was awful and it was nearly dark even though it was the afternoon. I don't know if the weather had anything to do with this, but who knows.

Ben and I are both stubborn people, you see, and things got a little harsh at one point during an argument. Not extraordinarily unusual for a married couple, I guess. But instead of ending anger or tears, we actually had one of the best, most honest conversations we've had in a long time. It was like therapy, but free, and with no facilitators. I think even our cats were impressed.

We had a pleasant evening together, which included dinner out at Mimi's Cafe (let's not talk about how there is no apostrophe in their logo) and some bargain-book browsing at Barnes & Noble. I felt a little guilty paying for books there with my Amazon.com credit card, but whatever. We then woke up Sunday morning to bright sunshine and a crisp fall day. I cleaned some windows and Ben cleaned the gutters, and we made a loooooong, room-by-room list of all the stuff that still needs to be finished around the house (which definitely weighs down on us and contributes extra stress when we don't really need it). My OCD juices were tingling while making the list, though.

It would have been a nice day to finally drive the Alpine Loop, as one of my coworkers assigned me to do as a Utah resident, but she warned me not to do it on the weekend of the Mormons' semi-annual general conference, which brings a ton of visitors to Utah who clog up all the scenic byways and other touristy stuff. Our newest next-door neighbor brought over a loaf of pumpkin peanut butter bread for us between sessions, which was really nice of her. It tastes odd, but good. So we didn't go anywhere and just hung out together, ignoring the list (mostly) for the rest of the day.

So, in summary, we didn't do much this weekend. But I think we both feel pretty great about it. 

Posted by Yvette at 07:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Friends & Relationships

I got an email from a guy in Italy about a mistake on the Italian Geek Test. His signature quote was this quote by Trevor Linton:

"Of course my password is the same as my pet's name!
My cat's name was Q47pY!3 and I change it every 90 days."

Also, I found an article entitled Brooklyn Doctor Opens IM Practice: OMG! You've Got Cancer :(

I just love that title!   Here's a snippet from the article, which definitely describes a type of cutting-edge medical practice that would be really cool if it works out in the long run:

"Parkinson's medical practice combines quaint house calls of yore with decidedly 21st-century technology. For a yearly fee of $500, Parkinson makes an initial visit to his patients in their apartments and offers two additional visits as needed. But he is available to them any time between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. weekdays for unlimited consultation on IM or e-mail."

Posted by Yvette at 08:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Box of Chocolates | Geek Test & innergeek.us

Okay, I haven't seen any buffalo wandering around lately. It is the time of year when mule deer start to cross the road in front of me, though.

I arrived home late Wednesday evening and was extremely tired. It was a good trip, and I wrote a lot in my personal, handwritten journal while I was there.  I kept a handwritten journal for the first time in ages when I went to Norway in May, and it was a unique, annoying and yet very satisfying experiment in modern-day record-keeping. I liked it. I write a hell of a lot faster on the computer, but there's something about seeing my own handwriting (including the latent, mild dyslexia that appears only in my journal or letter-writing) that increases the value of the words for me. Not to mention, I'm really only writing it for myself and I don't have the self-editing mode that I do when writing this blog.

In any case, my decision about Brooklyn was that I want to go back. I'd visited my aunt and uncle in Manhattan a couple times while growing up, and never really had the desire to live or really visit that much. I'm a little tired of touristy things, which may be why I didn't bother bringing the camera for this visit (stupid, stupid). 

But walking around Brooklyn on Monday, when I was forced to not work remotely and therefore took the day off, was great. I was by myself and could do what I wanted, which included spending too much time in a little used bookstore (I only ended up buying two books) and wandering around the central branch of the Brooklyn library just absorbing the full shelves (including many books in Russian, Chinese, Hebrew, French and Spanish), the number of people just walking around or reading, and just the general successful public library feeling.  I heart libraries.

The books I took with me to read on the plane were: "She's Such a Geek" (the one to which I submitted an essay but was not chosen, and while I'm enjoying some of the entries I'm having mixed feelings and mulling over what made their essays better than mine) and "The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade" which was really, really good.

I'm not yet finished with the first book because "The Girls Who Went Away" took a lot longer for me to read than I thought it would.  I'm not directly affected by adoption, though I know people who are. The book I'm planning to start over for NaNoWriMo involves research into a family's history, and as I'm fascinated by the whole process, I started to think about what it would be like for someone who was adopted, or perhaps had a closed adoption in the family that prevented any further searching. Then I came to this book and it was more than I could have asked for as far as real people with real stories of the pain and secrecy involved in their individual situations.

Not to sound like LeVar Burton on Reading Rainbow, but if you are an adoptee or someone you know was adopted or has a parent who was adopted, I highly recommend this book. Even if it was a recent adoption. It's clear to me that giving away a baby is rarely an easy decision and simply forgetting about it is never, ever an option.  

Posted by Yvette at 07:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Around Town & Beyond | Reading, Writing & Books

I'm sitting at the Brooklyn Public Library right now where there is free (though unsecure) internet access for anybody within range. I ended up taking the day off because my computer wouldn't turn on... and that allowed me to traipse around Brooklyn in the Park Slope area for a little while. I need to head back to my aunt and uncle's apartment to hang out with my 11-year-old cousin for the rest of the afternoon... and then hopefully catch Heroes this evening. A more detailed report of of my self-guided walking tour will come sometime later.

I'm completely lame because I didn't bring a camera with me to New York. So I don't have a picture of the finished front plaza of the central branch that was just recently finished. Here's an aeriel photo of what it looked like under construction.

My uncle is the project director for the project, which also includes a new 200-person auditorium and conference rooms in the basement, which I got to see. That is also almost done. It was really cool. Awesome libraries are definitely one pro to living in (or near) a big city.

Right now I've forgotten my blog password and I don't feel like resetting it so I'll have to retro-publish this entry.

Someone this past weekend told me that some group of people are petitioning the Oxford English Dictionary to antiquate the use of hyphens, supposedly because of the fast and trendy "internet" or whatever that is. I personally don't think hyphens should be antiquated because then we'll have reallylongass words like the Norwegians and Germans do. They must be on their way to antiquating spaces between words, which is really progressive. Maybe we should all be aiming for that level of linguallove.

Posted by Yvette at 04:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Around Town & Beyond | Nerd Alert