Pressure washing the patio is a remarkably unpleasant activity. The patio furniture has to be put on the lawn, and the lawn will become soggy during the pressure washing, so it's even harder to put back on the patio. I get wet and covered in dirt doing it. It takes about 2 hours to do. The driveway and walkway take even longer, but there's only one piece of furniture out front and it's quite light. Then the GFI will switch, but I don't realize this for a while so I'll stand there like a confused gorilla wondering what happened. In conclusion, I don't really like pressure washing and I lack any true facility for mechanical things like putting pressure washers together.
I think The Brother comes home on Saturday. This is a particularly happy occassion, as I look forward to months of off-color inside jokes.
Networked computers and printers have names. I'd wager that the most common names are from Star Wars. At least from the names that I've seen. But you get into a naming groove sometimes. I like calendars. If I'm given the choice, my computer is "november." Then use up the rest of the months. Then use days of the week. Then use Spanish days of the week. Then use animals from the Chinese calendar. Then maybe months from the Jewish or Muslim calendars. Note to me: list this, include characters from Dawson's Creek.
There's a pretty stock cover letter that I use with almost every job I apply for. Since most of the jobs I apply for have some similarities, I change a dozen or two words in this letter, depending on the nature of the job and company. The key being that I need to actually change those words. In an interview with a consulting firm I was asked about something in there that I hadn't changed from a job I applied for with a think tank. I had realized this and thought about it before the question came up, but it surprised me that it actually got read. I figured it was just something formal to take up paper and make things feel a little heavier. Makes me uncomfortable to know that things get read. Happily, the sentence did make 90% sense in the context of what the consultancy actually did.
"The West Edge." If it weren't for the marketing efforts of the City of Seattle or the Chamber of Commerce, this place wouldn't actually exist. And I think it only really exists in street signs and a mural. I've probably complained about this before, but it's a very small area and naming it is a solution to a problem that was never there in the first place. It's a Robb Benson song, too. I like that song.
People who've died from SARS: 500. People in the United States who die from influenza each year: 36,000 (note: the 1918 influenza pandemic killed between 20 and 40 million people worldwide). So stop talking about this, one of the few diseases named to appease an acronym-obsessed society, unless it becomes exponentially worse and I think people having an irrational fear of it might be worse than the actual disease.
Quotation marks: on some wire stories, they use 2 accent marks to start a quote (``) but use an inch mark (") to end a quote. One is 2 characters, the other is one character. I hate the 2 accent marks. Just use the inch mark or, if you insist on being so obnoxious that you'd do the accent marks, use smart quotes instead.
I was reading that sleazy reality shows with a large audience aren't major windfalls for networks because nobody wants their products associated with that sort of thing. Makes sense. Now get them off the television.
As far as seating in our living room there's a couch, 2 chairs, an ottoman and then the piano bench (the last one needs a name: the pianch, prounounced pee-yanch). Designers on TV shows are always obsessed with creating "conversation areas" in rooms, as though people realize they are talking to someone and say to themselves "Oh my gosh! I'm having a conversation! This would be perfect for Conversation Area #B in the formal living room." My parents and I were in the living room - talking, if you can imagine that. I was laying on the floor and they were sitting on the couch. I wonder, if we hired a designer, would they pick up on the couch-floor conversation area dynamic?
"I'm as hungry as the winter."
