LiveJournal

[2017/11/02 12:00 am]
My name is Elizabeth, and I am a neurotic housewife. This journal is somewhat less interesting than the average, since I don't enjoy having fun, but the spelling is likely to be better.

My old LiveJournal, defunct: [info]psychodyke42
My DeadJournal, also defunct: beware (the lazarus joint)
My website, in dire need of updating: the sibyl of cumae

If you'd like to add me to your friends list, you should know two things:

1) I often miss being added until well after my new friend gets impatient and defriends me, and
2) I also frequently manage to add someone to my friends list but not to the proper viewing filter.

Therefore, if I don't add you back or comment on your journal, don't take it personally, because it may well be that I am a moron.

Current Mood: grumpyCurrent Music: Silverchair, "Tomorrow"

[2010/07/29 5:26 pm]


I LOVE HER. I wanna live with her and help her groom opossums.

She's obviously taking the piss, but she does it so gently and playfully, it just makes me so happy.

Check out her website, too, it's a scream.

Pearl of Wisdom absolves herself of any and all responsibility for whatever may go terribly terribly wrong as a result of taking her advice. Thank you for writing in and have a nice day.
[2010/07/29 3:09 pm]
FUCK YOU TONYA SCHUITMAKER
STOP FUCKING CALLING ME

First at least a half-dozen mailings, now robocalls? Listen, you obnoxious bitch, I wouldn't vote for you even if I liked you. Which I don't, because your ideas suck. You're in favor of the term limits which cripple our government with clueless n00bs and you like the idea of outsourcing to private companies which sounds great but never works and you're one of those people who talks like "government waste" is actually a great big line item marked USELESS SHIT: $5 TRILLION and you're the first person to ever think of cutting it.

But that's all beside the point because even if I agreed with you right down to favorite pizza toppings, I do not agree with you being all up in my shit on a daily basis. I am seriously tempted to call your office -- yes, actually call -- and tell whoever answers that you've lost any possible hope of my vote by being so goddamn annoying. I would email, but the form requires full name and address and YOU HAVE CLEARLY DEMONSTRATED YOUR MASTERY THEREOF (IN OTHER WORDS YOU CAN STOP NOW) so no dice.

Dear readers: should I overcome my usual loathing of the phone in order to express (in civilized terms) my loathing of a political campaign, and if so, what's that synonym for "omnipresent" that implies "also annoying"?

edit: ubiquitous! There we go.

edit again: OH MY GOD THE MAIL JUST CAME AND GUESS WHAT

all right, that fucking tears it. I called and left the world's snottiest voicemail WITH MY FULL NAME AND NUMBER and told her "I've just gotten about the tenth mailing from you today, and a robocall, and I know it's late in the game because the election is Tuesday but if you could take me off all your lists immediately that would be great", and that she "lost my vote by this behavior because it's just really obnoxious," and I also rather nonsensically asked her to get me taken off her friends' lists (you know they share them around, but why I thought she could or would do any such thing is beyond me) and good Lord did I sound irritating BUT NOT AS IRRITATING AS HER OKAY.

I wish they WOULD call me back. I would love to have a little discussion with them about the words "overkill" and "backlash."
[2010/07/28 11:23 pm]
Oh, by the way, this has being going on for a couple days.

At least they were able to turn it off, so it's not a constant gusher like the Gulf spill, but SERIOUSLY JESUS H CHRIST.

I first heard about it on the radio, where the DJ was spending time during songs making calls to get some efforts together, and he's an old pro but he was this close to making incoherent duck-spit noises into the mike. Or swearing. And this was before the oil even made it to the main river!

There's supposed to be some storms in the next couple days -- awesome -- and the previous storms have the water level really high already which is interfering with vehicles -- EVEN AWESOMER -- and apparently a bunch of geese are getting oily, which I'm actually kind of okay with because, as I've conclusively demonstrated in the past, nobody likes geese.

But yeah, so that's happening. Woo!
[2010/07/27 7:11 pm]


SEE THAT? THAT IS SOME BAD-ASS CHRIST-KICKING MOTION BLUR, IS WHAT THAT IS, THIS SHIT SPINS SO FAST YOUR UNBORN CHILDREN ARE DIZZY

IT GOES IN FORWARD AND REVERSE FOR WINTER YOU BEST FUCKING BELIEVE THIS AIN'T NO ONE-SEASON BULLSHIT

COMES WITH SWEET AS HELL PULL-CHAIN ACTION BECAUSE LIGHT SWITCHES ARE FOR PUSSIES AND COMMUNISTS

And yes, my living room is a catastrophe.

Fortunately, I didn't have to go back up into the attic to redo the brace, because I was able to find a shallower ceiling box. Still took way too much pain and suffering to get the damn thing up there, but it's up there now.

Today has been a day where I have done ninety little things wrong and it's just really tiresome. For instance, I got to play about ninety rounds of my very favoritest game, Where The Fuck Is That I Just Used It Two Seconds Ago. I screwed up on the self-scanner at both Meijer and Lowe's. I managed to pull into a parking space at Lowe's near a curb and then couldn't get out of it without backing and filling, and some guy shouted at me through the window and then went "Oh, I'm just messin with ya, sorry" and I forgot to put the Glock in my glove compartment.

On the other hand, at least putting up the new pull-chain light fixture (looks like this</i> but with a chain) was a cakewalk. I bought a nice little pull for it but I can't find it because of the aforementioned catastrophe/general failure at everything. It could literally be anywhere in the fucking house.

Oh, and going into the attic was every bit as bad as I remembered it, especially since I had to crawl halfway across the house and squeeze under the roof a little. I don't know what I hate most about going into the attic: having to suit up in long pants tucked into socks, long-sleeved shirt, and two or three bandannas over my head and face to avoid getting fiberglass all over me, the stifling heat, or the way I can't plant my knee on a joist without it wobbling around a little bit because knees aren't quite flat. Oh, or maybe it's the constant fear that I'm going to plummet through the ceiling? That one's pretty good, too.

I have to keep telling myself it's worth it. And it is. I would be embarrassed and pissed off if I hired someone to do something that I can do myself, even if my process takes three times as long and ten times as many curse words.

edit: Check out my sweet new icon. I'm uncertain about the broom, maybe it's too much, but the general idea is sound.
[2010/07/27 3:28 pm]
The new floor is here! It looks so pretty. The cat, true to form, has already staked out a position on top of the tower of boxes; for a while we had somebody else's printer here, and she was devastated when we took it away from her, so she should be content for a while now. Of course, we'll eventually use it all, but I haven't had the heart to break it to her yet.

We'll need to let it acclimate for a few days, though I'm not sure if I should take off the plastic wrap to facilitate that. I also know, so far, that we need to leave a 1/4" gap between the flooring and the wall, to allow for expansion and contraction; that we need to stagger the seams when installing it; and that any cut edges should be placed against the wall. Does anyone have any other pointers?

The acclimation period will give me ample time to finish up the prep work. So far I've taken off about half of the baseboards, the rest being blocked by furniture I shoved to one side of the room, and also removed a few mysterious strips of fiberboard near the front door. It appears, on closer acquaintance with the floor, that there was once some other sort of floor installed over it -- I'm betting the same ugly brown carpet we found in the bedrooms -- and that, when some previous owner removed the fiberboard that had been nailed down underneath it, s/he pounded most of the nails down into the floor instead of pulling them out. Those of you who were around for the summer-2007 renovations may recall the insane number of drywall nails and floor tacks that drove me to hysterics at the time, and it appears whoever put the fiberboard down shared that inordinate love of fasteners.

I also discovered that the baseboards are being held on by three-inch nails. Not even joking. Okay, maybe two-and-a-half inches or something, but seriously, they're way too long for the purpose. Fasteners! They're awesome!

Today I picked up a new ceiling fan brace, the kind that installs between joists, and a pull-chain light. This should fix all my problems, except I very much fear I'll have to crawl up into the attic to remove the old brace, and that's just so much fun I could puke. There's also a weak spot on one of the walls that I think I'm going to have to cut out and patch; I knew about it, but I wasn't aware it was quite as bad until I started prying off the baseboard and the drywall just crumbled.

As you can probably tell, by writing this entry I am procrastinating, because even when you break a large task down into smaller ones you sometimes still look at the smaller tasks and think oh god really I don't want to do any of this. Like the ceiling fan, for instance, or boxing up the rest of the books so I can move the bookshelves, or cleaning ALL the things.

Well, off to the attic anyway.

edit: OH GODDAMNIT I GOT THE WRONG THING BRB GOING TO LOWES AND ALSO TO THROW MYSELF OFF A BRIDGE
[2010/07/26 2:24 pm]
Oh, something I noticed while watching 2012: so remember in 2008 before we had a black president, and people pointed out that Hollywood was far in advance of real life in that respect?

It's definitely not progressive. Check it:

Morgan Freeman, Deep Impact: horrible meteors

Tiny Lister, The Fifth Element: pure evil out of nowhere

Dennis Haysbert, 24: pretty much every terrorist plot that could ever happen and some that couldnt

Danny Glover, 2012: everybody dies horribly

The message? Black presidents = disaster!
[2010/07/25 7:26 pm]
Oh hey, I have a new laptop keyboard! My shift key works and I have a tilde again! I was sorely put to it when needing to describe something as ~*~special~*~.

The bezel above the keyboard didn't go back on very well, but you know how it is, once you remove those things the first time they never work the same again. Whatever.
[2010/07/23 10:53 pm]
ugh. ceiling fan installation derailed by crappy existing fixtures. it's an old work ceiling fan brace and the part that's supposed to hold the box isn't stable, nor will it let the box come flush with the ceiling. they sell such things at lowe's and wherever, but removing the old one may require a trip into the attic which i always enjoy, it's even better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick

well also it started thunderstorming outside and i think probably working on electrical wiring while there's lightning is probably not the best idea

so now i am sweaty and covered in little bits of drywall and i won't be able to finish this until like monday at the earliest. ffffffff

of course i also need to buy a pull-chain light fixture for the other light on that circuit, i saw this one at the store and it's kind of adorably hideous, but i don't think i'm at the point where i want to permanently install ironic things in my house

[maybe i'm at the point where i'll do it for six bucks, though, i mean really, the one i actually liked is twenty-five bucks]

it is finally raining after about an hour of thunder, i am pleased

also my new keyboard should be coming in tomorrow or monday. i can still use the shift key on the right side of the keyboard but it feels weird so i don't bother unless necessary. i have noticed for a while though that when i leave comments in some places i don't really use capital letters or punctuation because nobody else does and it makes me feel kind of dumb

by the way did you know that 4chan and gawker are having a fight, gawker reported on the jessi slaughter thing [google it, i'm lazy] and 4chan launched ddos attacks and the usual ruination tactics against the poor sod whose lot it was to write the articles. i am torn because i feel 4chan did not cover itself in glory by harassing an 11-year-old girl, and i like gawker, but on the other hand i kind of love seeing the hipster establishment take one on the chin

the internet is a series of loyalties

oh yeah and i finally finished 'for whom the bell tolls,' it felt like it went on forever. really i think it would have been a far better book if hemingway had written it in english and spanish, that would make it less accessible but it would also have gotten rid of all the annoying crap he did, like did i mention he rendered the 'tu' form as 'thou' with all the archaic verb forms. i know this is technically a correct parallel but it is super annoying. and i'm still hung up on things like 'i obscenity in the milk'

as far as i remember 'the sun also rises' does not do this and is therefore superior just for that

now i am having a go at thomas mann's 'doctor faustus' which so far is not annoying me too much except that the narrator apologizes in every single chapter for talking too much, i hope he gets over that at some point. it is not nearly as annoying as 'the magic mountain' where nobody will shut up about their stupid thoughts

come to think of it that's also what annoys me about dostoevsky, people working through their thoughts in multi-page soliloquies. but i soldier on because i am not going to be that person who has unread classics on her shelf just to show them off. it's either read them or get rid of them, and i do like having them there for appearance's sake, so read them it is. my life is hard y'all
[2010/07/23 5:15 pm]
hey the electrician came and now our outlets work. they are still attached to the light switch but i don't really care enough about that to pay for the massive rewiring.

both ceiling fixtures in that room are run off the same switch, which is slightly more annoying but i will get around it with pull-chains.

yesterday we had two tornado warnings in the county and it didn't rain here either time. now we have a severe thunderstorm warning and i heard some thunder but it doesn't seem to have rained for more than two minutes. it's not like i want to be hit by a tornado or anything but we could kind of use some rain here guys. it's like 95 degrees i just want it to stop doing that

tomorrow we are going to mt pleasant to harass a friend who has been making excuses why he can't see us or anyone else for like three years now, we have recruited some other friends to track him down and make him pay attention to us

this is probably mean but wth

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