Mary Bellamy

1) Arse Elektronika. Apparently, it's some sort of dirty conference. This year's theme? "Do Androids Sleep With Electric Sheep? Critical Perspectives on Sexuality and Pornography in Science and Social Fiction"

2) Are the kids these days really feathering their hair? Even the boys? God I feel old. But this reminds me why I prefer bald men. It's so much harder for them to have fucked up hair as long as they stay current on the shaving.

It’s the weekend. Oh yeah! What’s on my to-do list?
* A beer tasting tonight. Bonus: It’s at the Winter Show, so I can see all the latest snowmachines! I plan to follow the beer up with a trip to the Marlin for, well, more beer. And dancing!
* Chores chores chores. Bob is doing a great job of attacking our woodpile, but I’ve got to clean up the yard a bit and try to round up the errant wood that floated away during the flood. Plus I ought to:

• Put my old studded tires on Craigslist
• Do my drawing homework
• Finish some sewing projects
• Clean my room
• Winterize my car
• Install the closer on the sauna door
• Start downloading the Mira Betz video (I am sooo behind on this project!)
• Rehearse Victoria’s breakdancing robot choreography
• Have brunch with Amanda and get caught up
• Go to an organization meeting for Barack the Vote
• Fix my personal life
• Hit up the library for some DVDs I have on hold
• Value Village misses me
• Apply for disaster assistance from the flood
• Place a massive order from Amazon, which kind of requires me to go to Barnes and Noble for some research
• Try to avoid making any baked goods. The stress baking has got to stop. Can't I just start stress running? Or stress swimming? Or not stressing?
  

I added a new feature to my sidebar - an online playlist of music I'm currently digging. It should be updated about as often as the "books I'm reading" list. I have been tinkering with the code that the music site generated, and have removed the annoying links, but can't quite get it to size up to my sidebar properly. That may be a task for another day.

Congrats to Tom, who completed another Equinox marathon in fine form. And then realized that it was going to hurt to bike home after running 26+ miles.

My current random thoughts:

• Is it wrong to decide to stay in Fairbanks simply because the dry climate here gives me great hair?
• Are the Palin hackers after me, too? Because someone was tinkering with my Yahoo! account. Good thing I rarely use that one anymore. I'm going to delete a bunch of stuff from it.
• I like coming home and seeing my wood pile growing. Almost as much as I like scoring almost half a cord for $37.
  

OK, the log didn’t really win in the end. I’ll get the last laugh as I burn the bastards in my woodstove this winter. This weekend Marmian and I decided to tackle the firewood project. I have a friend of a friend who had some cut wood, some downed trees and some standing dead trees she wanted off her land. Two women, two trucks, one chainsaw. We went to work on Saturday afternoon, cutting down trees, loading up cut wood and lengths and hauling it to our respective house. We managed to put away four truckloads in about five hours. I fled to Chena Hot Springs that night to:

a) soak my aching bones
b) bid a fond farewell to Victoria, who leaves Alaska on Tuesday

After downing some ibuprofen before bed, I awoke to sore and achy muscles on Sunday. Nevertheless, Marmian and I drove out again for more wood. We were pickier this time, cutting into the downed trees to determine the quality of the wood before proceeding. We were also a hell of a lot slower, getting just two truckloads in four hours. A lot of that time was spent debating a particularly heavy piece of wood that was good for burning but was going to be a bitch to cut down, load, unload and split. In the end, I made a persuasive argument that healthy forests flourish when a certain amount of organic matter is left to decay and feed the young trees, and we left that piece there.

We made the mistake of stopping at Carl’s Jr. on the way back into town. This was a mistake not only because I ate another deadly bacon guacamole burger, but also because we sat down, then discovered our muscles had stiffened, leaving us nearly unable to stand up again.

It’s all worth it, though, to look at the large pile of wood next to my driveway. Next weekend I’m going to put the roommate to work cutting wood down to length, splitting wood and gathering kindling. Marmian and I hope to make one more run out to the property for more wood, and I’m also going to get a load of slab wood for fire starting purposes. When you combine this with the triumphant return of my furnace, I’m starting to feel more prepared for winter.

And war wounds? I gots ‘em.

The insurance adjuster called. My car is a total loss. He said it was underwater for over a week. Um, yeah, I knew that. Now if you could please figure out if you’re going to give me any money for it, I’d greatly appreciate it. Speaking of money, today is PFD-and-energy-rebate day. $3,269 in my account. Ka-ching! Things are looking tough but not undoable for the winter. I think any car money will just go into my Roth IRA and the extra into mutual funds. And next year I'll probably head back to the land of small dry cabins. They're cheaper to heat.

Things that excite me:

• my furnace appears to be fixed
• sauna party tonight
• the new Jenny Lewis album hits stores in 11 days
• hot springs with the dance troupe tomorrow, possibly followed by dancing at the Marlin
• gathering some free firewood with Marmian tomorrow
• my shiny new “Picard/Riker ‘08: Leadership for the Next Generation” T-shirt. order yours here!
• a 4-mile run this morning

Things that do not excite me:

• the overwhelming aroma of fuel oil that woke me from a dead sleep this morning
• the prospect of paying a LOT of money for more firewood
• this week at work - lots of Department of Defense people here for the annual security review
• women who will vote for Palin just because she has ovaries
• art class - I hope this moves into the other category soon

But Christopher Walken? He's the scariest man in the world. He'll kick your puppy if you look at him wrong.

	Make your own at MoreCowbell.dj

I've been having fun since I found this site a few days ago....

It's not just the insomnia that has my stomach in knots. Though my staggered sleep sessions and lack of proper food today certainly have me off balance. Tomorrow I start my evening class for the fall semester. If you didn't know, I've started taking some foundation classes for possibly getting another degree in graphic design. UAF doesn't offer such a degree, so I'm just getting a lot of the basics out of the way, and I'll look into transferring when I'm ready to move on.

What class, you may ask, has me so worried? Basic Drawing. Why am I scared of drawing? I'm so Type A. I like things to be under my control and as perfect as possible. However, I lack artistic skills. And now I have no choice but to take a drawing class. And seriously, when I try to draw an apple, it had better fucking look like an apple!! Whoa. Deep breaths. This is going to be a humbling experience.

4:42 a.m. and I'm posting? Insomnia has struck again. It doesn't come often, but there's no way to fight it when it happens. I'm just glad it usually doesn't occur during the week. I've found that the only viable solution is to go into work at around 3 a.m. and just try to pull off a full 8 hours. By that time, I'm often ready to go to bed and try to realign my sleep schedule. My bosses have always been pretty flexible with my schedule, but it's still strange for them to find me working feverishly at 7 a.m. and then watch me depart before noon.

Despite my hopes that returning home might ease the depression that resulted from my extended trip to Connecticut, I'm still in a bit of a funk. The random crying jags seem to be lessening, but the return hasn't been the cure I'd hoped it might be. I still have my house, which survived the flood, but share it with two new people. We do not have our heat back yet, so I am curled up under an electric blanket borrowed from a co-worker. My relationship is in a weird place that I don't want to think about or define right now, as the only logical thing seems to be to end it. Am I being overly analytical? I started therapy on Friday. Some wise and cranky old vegans told me that it was OK to feel sad, especially given the amount of crap I've had to deal with in the last 2 months. I'm hoping to get out of therapy without any medications, but when I lay awake at night, my stomach twisting in knots as my mind races and picks apart every aspect of my life, analyzing all problems and possible outcomes, well, it starts to seem like a magic pill might be a good thing.

Yawn. I'm going to read car repair forums until I feel tired enough to tackle this "sleep" thing again.

4/29truth.com has a beverage-spewingly funny post. I'm not going to violate their copyright and reproduce it, because you can just click the link right here.

OK, I'll spoil it a little. McCain is a Cylon.

Seriously, go read!

I nearly fucked up my entire blog just trying to put in a new element. Somebody please remind me that I cannot use the new version of Blogger. My XML isn't valid and I haven't the energy to look at it. I don't have the energy for much these days, but that's a story for another day.

Today is the day I put it all in the hands of you, the readers. I am back in Fairbanks with my shiny new-ish car. And since I've got many weeks yet before I can actually register it in Alaska, I've got time to think. I'm thinking vanity plates. I've never done them before because, well, my cars don't last that long. But this one had better last, dammit. I'm going to make the $30 investment that share my passion, my pride AND my joy with the world.

So, what will they say? Well, that's where you come in. I'm putting up a poll to let you vote on what my new vanity plates should read. I'm going to give you several options, along with the "Other (See comments)" option that will allow you to make your own suggestions. And per a discussion with Christi and Tom today, I am pretty sure that the DMV will not let me put "Asshat" on my car.

 What should I get on the vanity plates for my new car?

• 
  
  fonts Because I am a font dork


• 
  
  fusion Tribal fusion dance


• 
  
  bllywd My love of Bollywood knows no bounds


• 
  
  picard See above, substitute Jean-Luc


• 
  
  trek Simple, classic, probably taken. Hell, "Imzadi" is taken


• 
  
  jedi A lone Star Wars reference


• 
  
  borg Really, this would only work if I owned a Scion


• 
  
  nxt gen Easily misunderstood, but of course it's a nerdy reference


• 
  
  srk lvr Shahrukh Khan lover


• 
  
  frak Alternate spelling: frack


• 
  
  frak me More likely to be nixed by the DMV


• 
  
  jeebus To match the possible Jeebus fish


• 
  
  ganesh Because these days I feel like I need an elephant god to guide me safely through my journeys


• 
  
  other (see comments) Go ahead, make a suggestion

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