postings of a professional redhead

I currently drive a 2007 Honda CR-V. Her name is Stella and she’s a lovely car, bigger than I need most days but great when we go camping or kayaking etc. Stella gets between 18-22MPG in the city, and between 28-43 on the highway (depending on how fast - or slow - I am driving). Considering my recent move to be less than 5 miles to work, most of my driving now is city driving. I just made up my mind to trade in my trusty Honda for the Toyota Prius when…

The car of the future has arrived.

Meet the 2008 Honda FCX Clarity, the first consumer-available fuel cell-powered vehicle. Of course they’re only making a couple dozen available for the lucky folks in SoCal to lease for $600/mo - but considering the price of gas! What a deal! Next year they will offer 200 on a three-year lease, to collect data before making the car available for purchase (I hope). And I want one, look at that car, it’s shit hot red and you’ll never have to stop to put gas in your tank again!

Speaking of gas prices, are they not outrageous? The following was published by CNN on the 11th, the prices have increased a bit since then, but the top three states in terms of gas prices at that time were:

1. California
2. Connecticut
3. Alaska

That’s right, go Connecticut, we have the 2nd highest gas in the country! More expensive than Alaska! And still no reprieve from the $0.35/gallon state gas tax, which is why I fill my tank up in Northampton, MA once a week.

Just call me mom. That’s because I offered to be a foster mom for the shelter I adopted Mischief from. I’ve not had to deal with such a baby kitty in…ever. When Catherine and I brought Bandit home, he was just shy of 6 weeks old. “Lucky” - as my mother has dubbed this little baby cat - is just around (or shy of) 4 weeks old. She (I am told she’s a she) was rescued from a litter, rejected by their mother, and found covered in ticks. She’s got normal baby blue eyes, which are still very cloudy and unfocused. She walks - sort of. She kind of totters around. If I walk away from her, she’ll hip-hop along to follow me, but mostly she eats, sleeps, and needs to be put in the litter box every few hours. Essentially, it’s like having a baby around, except one that can fit in your hand. And doesn’t cry as loud as a human baby (but cri-cri she does).

Bandit and Mischief:

Bandit and Lucky (he cleaned her from head to toe about five minutes later):

Just Lucky:

EDIT: Lucky turned out to be a boy, and he has been named “Binky” due to the small woolen stuffed animal he carries around with him whenever he goes anywhere.

The True Colors Tour* was quite possibly the best concert I’ve ever been to see. No, it WAS the best damn concert I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been to quite a few concerts. Carson Kressley (famous from “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”) was the M.C., Rosie O’Donnell did stand up (as well as play the drums during “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”), the band lineup was The Clicks, followed by Tegan & Sara, followed by THE B-52′S, and ending with Cyndi Lauper.

So The Clicks. I honestly had never heard this band before, but I sure as hell am buying a CD now. Their lead singer has such an amazing voice (especially, I have to say, in the duet she performed with Cyndi Lauper) and the bass player has more presence than any bass player I’ve ever seen - I could barely take my eyes off the woman. They were truly spectacular, I highly recommend giving them a listen.

Tegan and Sara. One of my favorite bands ever (though Laura had never heard their stuff before) - they played so well I had goosebumps during their entire set. They also did completely new and different arrangements of the songs they played, and I’m hoping a b-side comes out so i can snag those. It’s rare that I’m in goosebumps for every song a band plays - but they managed just fine.

Let’s talk about how The B-52’s have been one of my favorite bands since I was a wee baron. I never thought I would see them perform live - so their part of the show was my favorite in that “I can’t believe I’m seeing this band live!” way, and in the “holy crap I can’t believe they’re rocking so hard!” way as well. They played “Roam” - which is my favorite song of theirs, and of course “Love Shack,” “Mesopotamia,” as well as a few songs off their new album (if you haven’t heard the G-Spot song, you really need to get the CD, it’s hilarious to hear that man singing about visiting the g-spot).

Cyndi Lauper was, of course, in true form. She’s still an 80s pop star, but her new music is, while still poppy, really damn good. There was this one dance beat she played that got the ENTIRE audience - which had a lot of blue hairs as this was a casino show at the new MGM Grand down at Foxwoods. I’ve seen Cyndi once before - I won tickets to see her and Joan Jett by drinking about 30 bahama mama shooters at Diva’s one night (I had help) and my father and I went and both agreed she’s an amazing performer. She was even better this past Friday night, I would still go see her even a third time I think.

By the way, while the casino and restaurants at the new MGM Grand in Connecticut are totally small, lame, and wicked overpriced (compared to Las Vegas, and to Mohegan for that matter), the concert hall there has AMAZING sound. It was never TOO loud, everything was perfectly balanced, and the seats were pretty comfy to crash in during dance breaks. I’d definitely go see a show there again, but next time I would eat elsewhere before the show.

* I’m pimping the HRC webpage for the tour because Cyndi Lauper must have mentioned H-R-C-dot-ORG about 20 times during the show, reminding everyong to go register to vote. We also watched a lovely video about gay marriage, which I’m betting they have on their website. Oh yes June is totall queer month, right? So I’m passing on the message - if you’re not registered, then GET registered, because this is a very important election. Putting aside gay rights or war in Iraq or social security and everything else people seem to be so worried about, we have an impending food apocolypse that’s actually very real, and will be something to worry about way before I’m retiring and finding out their is no social security check for my generation…

After suffering through the hottest days we have experienced in Connecticut in quite some time (105 degrees!!) I decided to leave work a little early today to go to the spa. I jumped in the truck and plugged in the GPS unit my parents gave me for my recent birthday, and typed in “spa.” I ended up in Glastonbury, with a nice woman who gave me a foot, hand, and back rub in addition to a pedicure and manicure.

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve had my nails done in my life. The first was with Catherine when I went home with her in 2000 so she could vote in her first (mine as well) presidential election. We went to the Philadelphia art museum the afternoon before voting, and there was a group of people sitting on the steps - made famous in the movie “Rocky” which I have yet to watch but heard so much about from my Philadelphian friend - each holding a letter to spell out “Vote Gore.” Catherine of course wanted her photo taken with them, and as I was framing the shot I heard a male voice behind me asking if it was the first time we were voting. I told him yes, and we were both very excited to finally be a part of the process, took the photo, turned, and guess who was standing next to me?

Sam Waterston.

This might not be a big deal to most people, but for Catherine and I - both huge Law & Order fans (or Orderly Lawns as it’s often called in conversation) it was huge. He told us both that he was in town on break from filming, and that he was campaigning for Gore.

I was, sadly, not very articulate - I think I actually said “ohmygod, I LOVE Law & Order!” to the man - but Catherine was, of course, totally calm and actually spoke with him for a few minutes as we walked into the museum to see the Van Gogh exhibit they had at the time.

I blame my lack of grace on the fact I had a total crush on the man. I do love a man with silver hair.

Back to my pedicure - I think that sometimes people underestimate the importance of taking time out and doing something nice for themselves.  I have a lot of friends who seem to get lost in work, or school, or family life, and never do anything just for them.  Every now and then you need to go get a massage - or whatever it is you get personal pleasure from - or you know the saying, “all work and no play make jack a dull boy.”

Apparently I make a very bad housewife:
13
As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure)
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What is a wife? According to Merriam-Webster online:

Main Entry:wife ‘ wif\ Function: noun Inflected Form(s): plural wives \ ‘ wivz\
Etymology: Middle English wif, from Old English wif; akin to Old High German wib wife and probably to Tocharian B kwipe female pudenda Date: before 12th century
1 a dialect:woman b: a woman acting in a specified capacity —used in combination <fishwife>2: a female partner in a marriage - wife·hood

But HUSBAND:
136
As a 1930s husband, I am Very Superior
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Main Entry: ¹hus·band Pronunciation: \‘h?z-b?nd\ Function: noun Etymology: Middle English husbonde, from Old English husbonda master of a house, from Old Norse husbondi, from hus house + bondi householder; akin to Old Norse bua to inhabit; akin to Old English buan to dwell — more at bower Date: 13th century 1: a male partner in a marriage2British : manager, steward3: a frugal manager — hus·band·ly adjective
So apparently by 1930s standards, I make an amazing man/husband.

So I haven’t coded CSS in at least a year, and I seem to be having some technical difficulties!  Eep!

Sometimes, being my own tech support is far more trouble than it is worth. Most of the time I’m everyone else’s tech support as well – aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends, parents, co-workers, professors…the list goes on…

Three years ago I built – what was at the time – the fastest, coolest, most Zoot Capri computer I could design. I built a top of the line gaming system for $700 less than if I had purchased it from Dell. Of course, had I purchased it from Dell, I wouldn’t have had over a month down time while I RMA’d the CPU…twice.

About a year ago, my father and grandfather decided they were ready for a new computer, and that I was to design and build one for each of them. So I dusted off my PC design skills, and managed to build them what have turned out to be really amazing systems (if you’re interested in the design, let me know, it could probably be built for about $500 now).

Their computers always worked much better than the “Alpha” version I built myself, frustrating enough, but also the fact that both my grandfather and my father had nicer, faster computers than me was just too much to bear.

Until now.

Last month my RAM died. I replaced the RAM. Then the sound card died. The video started acting weird. I determined that I had a gremlin in my computer – aka, a bad mainboard. So what’s a tech-savvy lady such as myself to do?

Go on a major newegg.com shopping spree, the kind of spree that takes days of planning but less than five minutes to load up the credit card.

Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz 45nm CPU (OC’d @ 4.3GHz)
NVidea GeForce 8800GTS 640MB 320-bit GDDR3 video card
Gigabyte GA-EP35C-DS3R Energy Saver Ultra Durable II Intel MoBo
OCZ Reaper HPC 4GB DDR2 1066(PC2 8500) dual channel RAM

I already have over a terabyte of space, a very nice Antec P180 case, 600w Hiper PSU, and pretty SATA DVD-RW/DVD drives.

I now have the fastest computer. Ever. End of discussion. The Queen of Zoot Capri computers.

The thing is, I spent six hours rebuilding it this time – that counts installing the hardware listed above and putting in a fresh install of WinXPPro. Then I had to install my recent birthday gift Burning Crusades (thanks Ploman!) and all the update patches (+1 hour) and then reconfigure all my other software, start bar and various other settings. A tip if you like fresh, shiny versions of WinXPPro but hate reinstalling all your other software: many programs and most games can be installed outside of your C: drive.

Not counting the many other hours I spent troubleshooting and diagnosing the thing to begin with.

I’ve also been in an ongoing debate with HP about whether they will fix my laptop, and finally – over a year out of my 3-year extended warranty – they sent me an empty box and are willing to fix the damn thing. In the meantime, I ordered a new DC power jack for my Fujitsu laptop, and will be re-soldering that onto the mainboard so it will once again have power. I think that power jack connections are probably the most ill-designed part of a laptop, other than morons who put speakers on the bottom.

So the next person who asks me if I will fix their computer for them? I’m saying no. So don’t even ask.