Somewhere…

Her post reminded me that I get so caught up in trying to say the right thing, or trying to say something the right way, that I often miss saying anything at all.

(Yes, this is totally one of those mea culpa re: delinquent blogging kindof entries.)

So! I am going to try something new! When I have an idea for a post, I’m just going to write it. And publish it. And try not to hate it for being poorly written or overly trite or unintentionally grammatically imperfect. Let’s see how that goes, yes?

Because I miss conversing with all y’all. How are you doing anyhow? Have I told you lately that your hair looks great? Because it totally does.

Subject: SPAM EMAILS

REMOVE ME FROM YOUR FUCKING SPAM EMAILS! STOP SENDING ME THIS SHIT!

[redacted], LUTCF
[redacted] and Associates
www.[redacted].com
317-[XXX-XXXX]
317-[XXX-XXXX] fax
Faith, Hope and Charity.

Yah, read that last line of his signature again.

I’d love to actually publish this idiot’s name and business info, but I don’t think that would be particularly charitable.

We ordered some baby furniture online, and the company we ordered from uses UPS as their delivery service. It took a couple shipments for everything to arrive, and the delivery guy (it’s been the same guy the past few weeks) left a little something extra with today’s delivery:

It’s just a UPS calendar. It’s actually kindof ugly. And we have calendars. But he wrote a little note – for BABY, Welcome to the world!

How sweet is that?

The dude noticed what we were getting (flat-packed in plain boxes for the most part) and reached out to do a little something nice.

How can you not love that?

I didn’t choose UPS for shipping – the decision was made for me in this case. But I’ll definitely look at them as an option next time I send a package.

(aside: which UPS marketing genius decided to abandon “what can brown do for you” to the bland “we <3 logistics”? If it’s working, leave it alone!)

My sister-in-law had an unfortunate accident over new year’s. Thankfully, she’s going to be fine, but it was a bit scary for a few days there.

As I was reflecting on the frailty of life and health (as we do when things like this happen to our loved ones) it occurred to me that I have no fewer than three people in my life who have broken their necks (while I was far, far away having nothing to do with the accidents, just to be clear).

According to their injuries, all of them should be dead or paralyzed, but they managed to land on the single-digit side of the statistics, and aren’t either.

This leads me to believe I am quite possibly incredibly bad luck, or incredibly good luck to have as a friend or family member.

Regardless – be careful out there!

DEAR RECEIVER,

You have just received a Taliban virus. Since we are not so technologicaly advanced in Afghanistan, this is a MANUAL virus. Please delete all the files on your hard disk yourself and send this mail to everyone you know.

Thank you very much for helping us.

Thanks & Regard’s

Miss Freya

—————————

I really did just receive this. Plain text, no links, attachments. So ridiculously silly it made my morning.

What can I say, it’s been a long day. It was either this, or a whiney re-hash of my shitty flight home earlier.

You’re welcome.

First is NaNoWriMo and its ADD cousin, NaBloPoMo. I happened to blog yesterday, so perhaps I shall just keep with it, yes? We’ll see if it lasts until the end of the month.

Second is Movember. For the past few years, Neil’s participated as a proud member of team Mophos, raising funds for men’s health issues.

Not only do I stoically suffer through the lack of delicious beard that he wears for the rest of the year, I also deal with him ending up looking like this at the end of it all:

(Last year’s Mo-spiration was Freddie Mercury. Suggestions for this year? The official theme this year is “luxury”, and the man does own a fedora.)

Anyhow, if you’re so inclined, toss a few dollars either his way, or to Team Mophos overall.

Hasta Mañana!

Me neither. I do recall an early-school-year project from my elementary days when we all made “escape plans” for our homes and learned to “stop, drop and roll” our way out of suddenly bursting into flames.

But I hadn’t thought about fire prevention for many years, until I saw this post on Lifehacker about how to properly use a fire extinguisher.

In fact, I haven’t thought about fire prevention or fire extinguishers since I nearly set my parents’ house on fire in 1995.

Whoops!

It was a summer day (must’ve been a weekday, since my parents were both out at work) and I’d decided to wax my legs.

I had one of those wax kits where you melt the wax in a little copper pot on the stove. So on it went. Except when I tried to pick it up, the potholder slipped and I dumped about a cup of hot wax directly on the element. Which turned into a 3 foot column of flame.

And instead of thinking “I should put a lid on this flame to smother it” I went straight for the extinguisher.

Verdict: I am excellent at using a fire extinguisher.

I also learned the important skill of how to remove fire-retardant dust and dried wax from almost anything. Could be a useful party trick, depending on the type of parties you frequent.

Anyhow, it’s probably as good a time as any to check your smoke alarm batteries, make sure your extinguishers are still charged and ready, and stop-drop-roll just for fun. Also a good time to call your friendly neighbourhood esthetician and make an appointment to have your legs waxed. It’s much safer that way.

We very nearly moved to England. We’d have been leaving in a month. Neil had an offer from his existing company to go over and work on a project that was based over there. But for various reasons to do with the job and the project it went rapidly from being a very good idea to a really not so good one. So we’re not going.

I am simultaneously delighted and disappointed that we’re staying.

To be fair, I was also delighted and disappointed at the idea of moving. So many things I felt would be left undone here. Moving an ocean away from family. Leaving my job here. The excitement of a new adventure.

Now I just get to flip all those. Moving forward on projects here. More time with family. Staying on at my job. No big adventure.

It feels a bit like a zero sum game – but I can’t quite process that zero sum doesn’t equal zero emotion.

It’s amazing how much non-action can be an emotional roller coaster.

Of course we thought it wise to keep our moving news mostly to ourselves while all the details sorted themselves out. Neil still needed to get through some challenging times with his team at work. I didn’t want to rock the boat unnecessarily at work, or give up my job on the off (and now actual)-chance we didn’t go after all.

But at the same time, we were running around like crazy people in semi-secret, trying to sort out the details of international relocation.

Passport and visa research. Calls with our accountant about tax implications. Vet appointments to jump through the hoops to relocate our dog with us. Sorting out details of renting our condo. Working through the financial implications of an undetermined amount of time living off one salary rather than two. Putting off and pushing aside projects we had planned for here that were no longer practical in the face of relocation.

It’s been stressful. And while I thought pushing the reset button would alleviate some of that, it’s really just changed it.

Tying up loose ends and changing direction on some of our financial plans to reflect staying rather than going. Re-starting the fires under the projects we had snuffed. Figuring out what the rest of our year looks like, now that it’s in Vancouver rather than Oxford.

It’s ultimately good. Not only in a “good, we’ve sorted out this important life-event” way, but in a “this has forced us to re-evaluate what we’re doing here and what’s important” way, but in the meantime feels very strange.

I have no good ending for this.