Reconciliation?

How could these two people ever be friends?

Person A	Person 1
Female	Female
Liberal, Gay Marriage, Social Justice Christian	Fundamentalist Christian
Democrat	Republican
NPR listener	Fox News watcher
PC computer user	Apple computer person
Flexible planner	Routine maker
Home is functional but never spotless	House is spotless at all times
Multiple pet owner	Dislikes pets – they are messy
Rarely wears makeup	Always wears makeup
Occasionally gets manicures	Nails always done
Thinks some tattoos are tasteful	Thinks all tattoos are shameful
Loves Person @	Loves Person @

And that last line is the problem. Person @ is in the middle of these two people, with loyalties torn. If it weren't for Person @, Person A and Person 1 would never need to have anything to do with one another. 

Any ideas?

Notes from the Road

[[Written on the airplane]]

Driving to Austin this morning, I saw bluebonnets starting to emerge, lovely! It's been a very dry winter though, so my personal prediction is that they will not be very lush this year. I'm no horticulturist, so perhaps they will prove me wrong!

The drought was abundantly evident in the many tanks I drove by that were nothing more than muddy depressions in the ground. A tank, for any yankee or citified southern readers I might have, is a man-made pond for the livestock to drink from and cool off in.

I absolutely love the Austin airport. It's so easy to get to, into, and through! There was one weird inconvenience today: they had signs that directed me on a bizarre goose chase around the parking lot, at the end of which I ended up parking pretty much where I always park. I have no idea what that was about.

They have a shuttle bus, but I always choose to walk. I just sat for an hour and a half, and am about to sit for a couple of hours on the plane, so I welcome the opportunity to stretch my legs in between. I was glad that my parka for Chicago fit into my suitcase so that I didn't have to wear it in the Texas heat!

There was no line at Security, breezed right through. Note to self: hiking boots aren't the *best* choice for pulling off for security...

An earlier flight had cancelled, so the half-full flight I'd signed up for was suddenly full. So, no first class seat for me, but a seat is a seat & I got one, and I'm on my way to the Windy City!

As we were waiting on the jetbridge to board, a cute young boy turned around and started chatting with me and a chick standing near us. Turns out he is a percussion major at UT & is headed to Chicago to play with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He won second place in an international competition last year, so he must be pretty rockin!

The chick said she was headed up with a friend who will be playing in a charity fundraiser poker tournament, so that's pretty cool, too.

The captain on this flight turns out to be female, which is still rare, although I'm sure it's getting less so all the time.

I was not worried that I only have a little left to go on the one book I brought along, because I always enjoy the in-flight magazine, and since I haven't flown in a while, it would be a new one to me. Well. This issue is 100% dedicated to basketball. Articles about players, their clothes, gadgets, favorite restaurants and hotels. Even reviews of CDs that basketball players have guest starred on. So, I flipped through it in about 5 minutes and was done with that! Boring. The good news is that when I head home on Monday, it will be a new month, so there will be a new issue for me to read.

I could kick myself for not bringing along a baggie of almonds! I bought a bag of sunflower seeds in the airport, and they are pretty awful. Yay for rancid vegetable oils. Next time you open a bag of potato or tortilla chips, take a whiff of it before you start chowing. That smell? Rancid vegetable oil. I wish some brave company would step out boldly and make potato chips cooked in lard or beef tallow! Animal fats don't go rancid, folks. Not at anything *like* the rate that veg oils do. Anyway. Today's rant!

We have landed in Chicago, but have stopped short of the gate. I'm sure if adventures warrant, I'll post about them soon!

Back At It!

It's been SO LONG since I posted. Then the old computer died a sudden and complete death. I tried to make a short post from the browser on the iPhone, but of course that didn't work. I could create a post title, but for some reason the box you actually type the entry in was not recognized as a text box. So, no mobile entries for me. I can't wait to get a phone that does not make me scream obscenities every five minutes. April can't come fast enough. (That's when Husband is due for an upgrade. He will inherit the iPhone and I will jump ship to Sprint. I will get the Palm Pre if it's out, and if not, something basic to tide me over until it is.

So this isn't much of a post but I thought I'd start making some short posts about random stuff to get back in the habit. Today's random snippets:

I have a weird and annoying rash on my chest the last couple of days. It doesn't itch so much as sting. I did use Retin-A on it a few times (it was prescribed to get rid of a bit of sun damage on my face, doc said I could use it on the wrinkles as well) and that's the only thing that's changed, so for now I'm blaming that. I do use sunscreen every day, SPF 30, and the parts of my face that I've used the Retin-A on have not reacted the same way, so I don't really know what the problem is.

Husband left Wednesday evening to fly to Tokyo Thursday morning, but the flight cancelled. So he stayed in Dallas overnight, and is going to London instead tonight. He'll fly from London to Chicago on Sunday, and get home about 8:30 that night. We don't care about the Super Bowl so that's no problem. Then he leaves again Tuesday for a four-day trip. I need to find some structure in my life to prevent going nuts while he's gone. He's actually got a pretty good layout for February, it's just this nine days gone with one day home in between that's a long haul for me. There are a ton of things that need doing, but I don't do well with unstructured time.

New computer! This little guy is pretty awesome, I have to say. It's the same memory/hard drive as the laptop I was looking at, but for about half the cost. It's a Dell Hybrid. Tiny thing that sits on the desk and uses 70% less power than a normal tower. Came with a wireless keyboard (in my lap now!) and mouse. In getting it to talk to our internet, we got our service upgraded, so between new computer and faster internet, wheeeee!

New computer also came with Windows Vista. Learning curve there, but not too bad. Installed an old (2000) program and it gave me a message along the lines of "this program is old but we've accomodated it". Biggest problem so far is that Vista can't see my expensive Blue Snowball microphone that I use for my voiceover work. This is a big, and expensive problem. Not only the cost of a new one, but also the money I'm losing by not being able to do my voiceover work.

iHate aPple rant of the day: Old computer died a sudden and total death. Not one file was recoverable. Got a new computer. Downloaded iTunes. Went to sync my iPhone (PS iAm sO oVer tHe iWhatever iThing. oLd! sTupid! sTop iT!) and it updated the software, but what about all the music on my iPhone and iPod? Oh no, so sorry, all those CDs you imported? All those playlists you created? Too bad, you have to reimport and recreate them all. Yes, I'm looking at third party software to do this, but really? It's music I purchased and imported legally. I can also legally put it on my new computer. So why is it only a one-way sync? sTupid aPple!!!

I downloaded Picasa so that I could get all the photos that I've posted there onto the new computer, since over a year of photos was totally lost in the computer crash. I then uploaded the photos I've been hoarding on my camera since December 18th. I wanted to use one for wallpaper, but the proportions are wrong. It makes Husband's head look all squished when it's "fit to screen", too big for tile or center. So I want to resize it. I used to use a program that came with old computer to do this. So I'm messing around with Picasa, but while you can *crop* photos to any size, there does not seem to be a way to *resize* the whole photo. Srsly? This seems to me a very basic and needed function. I used to use it A LOT.

Okay, I really need to go take the Giant Puppy for a long walk, for her sake AND mine. So there are the random snippets for today. I'm sure I'll add more stuff later.

Happy Friday!