Yeah. That went well.

Friend of mind decided it'd be fun to take ballroom dancing class.  She found a "drop-in" class we could attend for $15.  Teaching "American Waltz."  Anyone can drop in, and you just rotate partners every minute or so.  OK, why the hell not?

(I'll tell you why the hell not.  In the lobby, the dance studio had water and coffee.  No damn breath mints.  And they should be mandatory for dancing with strangers.  Seriously, this one dude's breath was so bad, he asked why I was standing so far away from him in hold.  "Are you religious?" he asked.   No, I just have a functioning olfactory system.)

Here's how it works:  you can drop in whenever you want.  Every month they teach the same dance each week.  Eagle-eyed readers will realize that we were showing up on week four of American Waltz, although we were pretty rank beginners.  But I can pick up basic steps pretty quick, and was doing quite well until she threw in something at the end from a more advanced class.  (I got that eventually -- but only with about half the partners.)


So, yeah, I thought it went pretty well, considering.


Until such time as, after class, walking back to the car, I missed my footing, fell on the curb, whereupon a very smart instinct (which I wasn't aware I had) took over and executed a roll, so I landed on my backside rather than my front.  Commented to the couple (in front of whose car I performed this maneuver), "Yeah, I meant to do that."



Smooth move, Ginger.

I ... I ... there are no words

Went to the Dodger game last night.  Turned out it Empire Strikes Back 30th Anniversary Night.

And I innocently thought, "What can you do celebrate a movie at a Dodger game?"

OK, fine, Billy Dee Williams got the honorary shout of "It's Time for Dodger Baseball!"

Some voice actor from The Clone Wars sang the national anthem.

An animated Darth Vader did the Code of Conduct on the big screen.


But this?  I didn't see that coming.  (Probably should have.)

Hypothetically Speaking...

All other things being equal, do you hire

(a) the guy with a mid-range bid, who offered to beat your lowest estimate?

or

(b) the guy who came up with the lowest estimate in the first place?

Another Sign of Being a Grown Up

Now, when I shop at IKEA, rather than attempt to pile three six-foot long, 54-pound boxes into my car (and take them out at the other end), I ponied up the $49 bucks for them to put 'em on a truck and deliver them directly to my family room.  Yeah, not breaking myself is worth fifty dollars.  It's actually a bargain.

(And why, you may ask, am I still shopping at IKEA when I'm safely past grad school?  My lovely family room (aka, the place where I spend nearly all my waking hours) is home to a custom-made sectional, a custom-made media center, and (in a few weeks) a custom-made built-in wall of cabinetry (comprising a desk, some display cabinets, and a secret door hiding the door to my garage).  But there's about a foot-and-a-half of dead space behind the sectional, running all the way along a 20-foot wall.  It asks for a very low line of shelving.  Now, custom-made-built-in-wall-of-cabinetry guy will happily build this for about $90 a foot.  Or IKEA will sell me this job -- usable horizontally -- for $60 for six feet.  Keeping in mind that we're talking about something that will be, basically, hidden behind the sofa, the $180 IKEA version seems preferable to the $1600 custom job.  So, yeah, that's what I was doing at IKEA.  And, for the first time in my life, with the exception of two 99-cent lint rollers, I actually didn't buy anything at IKEA that I hadn't intended to buy before I went there.)

Of course, I'll have to find the time to actually put them together.  Then again, seeing as I own my own power tools, this process, too, may be somewhat different from when I was in college, and had to borrow a screwdriver from a neighbor for the bits that couldn't be done with that two-inch allen wrench IKEA includes in the box.

It's a Freakin' Conspiracy

When I got my house, I went to the Post Office, cancelled my PO Box, and picked up a voter registration form.  I filled it out with my new address and mailed it in.

Yet, when the next election rolled around, no voter materials were mailed to me.  I checked my local voter registration website which had no record of me.  Not at my new address; not at my old address either.  (Not even at the apartment I lived at in between the two -- I was pretty sure I never re-registered there, but checked it just in case.)

So, when I went to the DMV to renew my license, I checked the little box saying "register me to vote."  I got a receipt and everything, saying that they forwarded the information to the registrar of voters.

And when I got home today -- information for the upcoming primary was in my mailbox.

... addressed to the former owner.

Checked again on the voter registration website and I'm still not in there.

That's two failed registrations, in case you're counting.

I did, however, get a summons for jury duty.

If you will forgive the Marcia Brady moment...

"Ow!  My nose!"

When I remodelled my kitchen, the contractors placed the microwave a little high.  High enough that I removed the rack, because I couldn't reliably reach high enough to balance food on it.  In fact, I can now tell you exactly how high the microwave is -- the bottom of the microwave is at precisely the height of my nose, a fact I unfortunately discovered when I whacked my nose with the corner of the door when opening it last night.

Hard.

Really hard.

To the point where I was surprised (albeit pleasantly) that to discover that there was not, in fact, blood gushing therefrom. 

But it did knock my glasses out of whack, and the impact was so great that my front teeth hurt.  Now.  Nearly 24 hours later.

I'm not safe in a kitchen; I'm really not.

Dear Diary...

Y'know, I work up such a massive sleep debt during the week, I sleep in insanely on weekends.  Today was no exception.  I got to bed around 11:00 last night, set an alarm for 9:30 ... and didn't actually get up until after 1:00.  And then with exercising, playing computer games, and generally doing nothing, I didn't get out of the house until just before 5:00.

It's 1:20 a.m. and I'm still up -- which isn't surprising, as I've only been up for about twelve hours -- but it puts me solidly in line to repeat this process again tomorrow, which will put me to bed late tomorrow night, and start racking up sleep debt as per usual on Monday.  I am someone for whom "break the cycle" really has to be a goal.

In any event, the day ... or, at least, five or so hours of it, was fairly productive.  I know that there's a ton of unpacking I have to do -- not just from going to Arizona (although, yes, I still haven't unpacked from last weekend) --  I'm talking about boxes from moving in last year.  And I know that one of the main reasons I haven't unpacked is because I know I need to replace the great big wall unit/desk contraption in my living room.  (My inner procrastinator is well aware that unpacking all my desk stuff and books makes no sense if I'll have to remove them all from the shelving to replace it.)  So I finally picked up the phone and called the company I'll be hiring to build it.  They're coming out next Saturday for an estimate.


(Yes, I do know the company I'll be hiring.  They gave me a telephone estimate last year, which I thought was too high.  Then I shopped it around and realized that it really was a quite good estimate, all things considered -- as the only time other companies could come close is if they built it with pressboard rather than wood, and left out all the extras.  So I figured I'd eventually go back to this company when I had my fiscal ducks in enough of a row to spend what it would actually cost to do this right.)


You ever hold two conflicting thoughts in your head at the same time and not realize they're conflicting?  For about two hours after I made the appointment for the estimate, I had the completely unrelated thought about finalizing plans for my (finally scheduled) birthday celebration next Saturday and failed to recognize that next Saturday is next Saturday.  (Honestly, if it isn't in my Droid, it doesn't exist.)


Yeah, the birthday thing was getting annoying -- with everything I wanted being either too expensive, or too far away, or something that half my friends couldn't do, or something that I didn't really want -- so I finally just said "fuck it," moved my birthday up a good month and a half to a more convenient time, and invited a bunch of friends to see Iron Man 2 and have dinner afterward.  So, today I picked up the tickets and made the dinner reservation.  Done and done.  (And it was really when I walked out of the restaurant that I thought, "Oh, yeah, that's when I booked the wall unit estimate.  Idiot.")


Actually, I stopped for dinner at the restaurant.  It's one of those teppan places, where they sit you in groups with other people.  Ended up having dinner with a nice family -- grandparents taking their kid and a few grandkids out to dinner.  Very friendly and sweet.  The granddaughter sitting next to me was a young teenager, and she was at that age where everything her grandfather does embarasses her.  And he knew it, so was harmlessly saying annoying things, just to get a rise out of her.  I was smiling a lot, and just thinking about when I last went out to dinner with either of my grandfathers -- they both passed, gosh, more than 20 years ago.  I very nearly said something to the girl along those lines, and how she ought to just cherish her time with him while he's young enough to still have fun and she's old enough to form lasting memories ... but then I realized that's just the age I'm at, and it wouldn't make any impression on her anyhow.  

Bonus, though -- the restaurant gave us all $5 off coupons -- so I got one and they got six.  Grandfather offered me theirs, as they wouldn't be coming back before the expiration date.  I gladly accepted -- the damn things are stackable -- so that'll save me $35 at my not-birthday party next week.


Got my nails done, too.  It's been forever -- and it's certainly been forever since I went to this particular salon.  (At least three months -- the manager certainly wasn't visibly pregnant the last time I was there.)  About five minutes in, I noticed that the nail tech doing my pedicure had an, er, extra finger.  (Not a whole one, just a sorta partial one.)  I spent the remainder of the pedicure trying not to stare, pondering what sort of difficulties it posed, and wondering why I was so curious about this anyway.  (And I was doing very well until such time as I went to hand her a pen and actually dropped it.  I'm so smooth.)


Came home and rewatched my Iron Man DVD (as though I'd actually need to catch up before the sequel).  It really holds up, though -- my favoritest superhero origin story ever.  Watched some random TV when it was over, and discovered that Dish is now carrying the HD version of BBC America.  This is the cause of much joy over here -- as it has really been annoying to watch BBCA showing all of its "Now in HD" ads but not actually having the HD version available to me.  (Suck it, Charter.)


2:00 a.m. now.  Time to go to bed and cram all of my weekend Things To Do in a few hours tomorrow.