Because you can never have too many

It might be today, September 30th.  Give or take a day.   I’ve known it was coming, however, to be honest, there’s been so much fan fare, preemptive celebration and gift giving it would be hard to over look.  But as to the actual moment, I’ve kinda gotten confused when it officially is.  Last year I missed it, so I have been determined not to drop the ball this year.  But, even after scanning all the old posts from this time frame last year, I can’t seem to tell just when the actual moment is.  I *think* it is today.

The actual moment of what?

The moment when the illustrious Tilly Bud of The Laughing Housewife actually has her 50th birthday.

Well, if I’m right, and today is your birthday, here’s a birthday greeting:

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you.  You look like a monkey, and you smell like one too.

And, here’s a birthday joke for you:

A family had twin boys whose only resemblance to each other was their looks. If one felt it was too hot, the other thought it was too cold. If one said the TV was too loud, the other claimed the volume needed to be turned up. Opposite in every way, one was an eternal optimist, the other a doom and gloom pessimist. Just to see what would happen, on the twins’ birthday their father loaded the pessimist’s room with every imaginable toy and game. The optimist’s room he loaded with horse manure. That night the father passed by the pessimist’s room and found him sitting amid his new gifts crying bitterly. ‘Why are you crying?’ the father asked. ‘Because my friends will be jealous, I’ll have to read all these instructions before I can do anything with this stuff, I’ll constantly need batteries, and my toys will eventually get broken,’ answered the pessimist twin. Passing the optimist twin’s room, the father found him dancing for joy in the pile of manure. ‘What are you so happy about?’ he asked. To which his optimist twin replied, ‘There’s got to be a pony in here somewhere!’

-I can’t take credit for this joke, it’s courtesy of Man Walks Into A Joke

And, because you can never have too many, here’s a birthday wish:

May your box of Maltesers runneth over, and always be calorie free.  Of course, I have to add, that if you like ponies, may you find your bedroom filled with manure.

But, if today isn’t your birthday, then just forget I mentioned it.

Hugs, Janie

**Update**  Today does appear to be Tilly’s special day.

Congrats to us both:  you for being 50, me for not being embarrassingly late to the party, well, less the time difference from there to here.

I am totally losing my mind

Sometimes I don’t think I’m joking.

I used to be sharp as a tack.  Now, that’s not so much true.  But evidence that I’m losing my mind manifests in little things.  Like just now for example.  I started water for tea.  I pre heated my mug with hot tap water and I decided to drink the nasty new Lipton Cinnamon Spiced Chai (not nearly as good as their original black tea spiced chai).  Most people might wonder, why would Janie drink tea she thinks is nasty?  Well, it wasn’t cheap, I can’t stand to be wasteful, and if you add enough sugar and milk it’s palatable for swilling while doing homework when you aren’t really at liberty to actually enjoy a good cup of tea anyway.  Anyway, indeed, I digress; I totally remembered opening the box and setting out a tea bag.

When the hot water was ready I dumped out the tap water that was preheating the mug and reached for the tea bag.

No tea bag on the counter.

WTF.  I know I got out that tea bag.  Didn’t I?  I remembered feeling irritated that Lipton switched to stupid triangular shaped plastic mesh bags instead of the biodegradable old paper ones.  I remembered feeling disgusted they changed the flavor mix.  But then, as I stood there in confusion and irritation I realized I couldn’t actually remember, did I really take out the bag?  Or did I just brain fart and put the box away without actually getting out the bag?

Surely not?

But it wasn’t on the counter.  It wasn’t on the rolling cart.  It wasn’t in the sink like I’d absently added it to the hot tap water and dumped it out when the boiling water was ready.  I even stopped and physically looked in both hands.  No, I wasn’t holding it already.  And, no I had no pockets so I hadn’t absentmindedly pocketed it.  For some reason losing this tea bag really bothered me.  But I had to come to the conclusion that I must have not actually taken the bag out of the box.  And to think I got out the box, opened it, looked at those idiotic triangular bags, not taken one out, and put the box away, well, that bothered me even more.

Then to my everlasting relief it turned up on the floor.

Perhaps I should clarify.  I’m not relieved it was on the floor per se, if you saw the condition of my kitchen floor just now you’d gag in disgust.  Just that if it was on the floor it was a relief because it meant I hadn’t imagined getting a tea bag out of the box.  How it ended up on the floor, and the fact that I still used it after being on that filthy floor, is a different matter of concern.

I have no idea what to title this post

It is 9:30 am on Saturday.

It is over cast, cool and blustery.  The leaves are falling off the trees and making a pleasing rustling noise as they skitter along the ground.  I love this weather.  Fall is my favorite season.  A sunny clear fall day is lovely, but dark windy fall days are powerfully captivating too.  I’d love to go stand on a rocky out cropping along the big lake today, watch the waves break on the cliffs and spray high into the sky and just feel the power of the weather and the immense presence of the lake all around me.  I want to go up the north shore and wander along the deserted beaches of black sand.  I want to wind my way through the tree lined paths in the marina park, and head down to the slip and watch the masts of the boats wave in the wind and listen to the sound of the lines and what ever bits that make that clanking noise as they slap against the mast poles.  I want to be out there enjoying this wonderful time of year.  I want to feel that satisfaction and contentment that being able to really relax can bring.

Now it’s 10:10.  I’ve been sitting her for 40 minutes trying to finish this post.   I can’t decide what else to say.  I guess I just didn’t want to be alone this morning slaving away on frustrating homework.  But as I can’t decide what else to write I suppose I’d better post this and get some discipline and get to work, the homework won’t do itself.

I’ll take success where I can find it

Surely there are few things which look better on a resume that being able to say you successfully isolated caffeine and sublimated it into a nearly pure sample.

Which I did.

And, even if you’re not a chemistry geek, you would have to admit that watching a solid sublimate is pretty cool.

So, what does one do with .0035 grams of pure caffeine that took you 5 hours over two weeks to isolate and purify?

You throw it away.

Thursday Quote Du Jour #9: I’ve never felt so inspired by tennis before

I haven’t been blogging much.  Mostly the reason is I’ve been too busy.  Physics is kicking my ass.  I hope that once we move past the next chapter things will improve, because calculating vectors and angles requires a lot of Trig, which, conveniently I won’t take until later this fall.  And, when I’m not wallowing in the misery of my own ignorance I’m buckling under the sheer quantity of information being required to be digested each week in Organic Chem and College Algebra.  I also have the joy of looking forward to having my Trig class start the last week of October and adding more work to my week and, naturally, by then I’ll no longer need it for my Physics class.  *grumble, grumble*

Between feeling so frustrated I could explode, and other things, Speccy’s post earlier this week was a wonderful breath of fresh air.  So good in fact I had to borrow a bit from it.

Just believe in yourself.  Even if you don’t, pretend that you do, and at some point you will.

-Venus Williams

and

You have to get up every morning and tell yourself, “I can do this.”

While I love the quotes, I have to say, the snarky butt side of me is reminded of where Cleopatra lived.

In denial.

Oh, geez.  *rolls eyes*  It’s a stupid joke, but I need my laughs any way I can get them.

Well, let’s hope this little bit of PMA goes a long way.  Thanks, Speccy.

If that doesn’t cheer me up then nothing will

I had a very bad day.  It came on the coat tails of what I thought was an upswing in life in general.

So I cried.

I went to class and then cried in the car on the way home.

Back at home I shook off my big girl clothes, climbed into jammies, then into bed and cried some more.  I was so distraught I forgot there was milk and orange juice still in the back of the jeep.

Eventually Leif found me and let me cry on his burly Viking shoulder.  I finally got up when I remembered the milk and juice in the jeep.

Life goes on.  There’s homework to be done.  It doesn’t seem much worth doing right now because all the hard work I’ve been putting in is only resulting in more confusion and shitty grades.  But, life goes on and the homework never ends.

Still, I think life can go on tomorrow.  After I play a few dozen rounds of Free Cell on the 40 inch TV.  We’ve had that TV for some time now, but strangely enough I only just discovered the fun of playing games on it.  Free Cell is always just Free Cell, but somehow it is much more fun on a 40 inch screen being played from your sofa.  Go figure.

Now if only physics was that much fun.

Hello? Anyone home?

Nope Janie’s at the lab.  Doing her best to imitate a mad scientist.

Here I am separating caffeine from tea leaves.