Random Picture Thursday

This Just In!

Cats are weird.

3000

3000 United States Postal Service Domestic Return Receipts.

Which need to have the company’s name and address stamped onto them by hand.

By me.

It Came From An Email

Thanks, H.O.P.S.F., I needed a laugh!

Ring Bell for Service

Thank you, dear readers, for the concern. I’m fine.

No, really. I’m fine.

No, really.

Okay…so I’m not fine…but I’m better than I was.

And now…an update!

Thing One has taken up yoga.

Thing Two has not.

It was really hot on Monday.

This book comes out on Saturday.

This made me laugh.

And that’s all you get!

Umm...

Do you hear that? That noise that sounds a lot like sobbing? Yeah, that’s me.

Friday Ninja Post

Ninja!

Odds And Ends

Yesterday was seriously the day from hell. It was so awesomely bad that I swear I actually saw several former ‘worse days ever’ throw their hands up in defeat and resign their positions at the top of the list. Yes, it was just that craptastically bad. I’m not going to outline all the gory details for you, but I’ll mention some of the ‘highlights’…
- several hours of productive work that will be literally thrown out today
- a long frustrating battle with my horrible printer at work
- an emergency trip to the auto mechanic
- $125.70
- Fuzzy ‘temporary’ punk using my bed as a litter box…AGAIN
- More laundry then one person should have to do in one night
I’m just happy that I made it out the other side of my Thursday in one piece.

Random Notes…

I snapped this picture on Monday afternoon when I got into my car after work.

Take a good long look at that temperature kids. Summer in the south doesn’t mess around.

Passing Strange…

This is a little old church that I pass every day on the way to and from work. I don’t even know if it is still being used or if it has been abandoned. I’m very intrigued by it.


Cheap Giggles…

LibraryDiva is out of town this weekend.

This is the quilt from her bed.

I stripped it off her bed, hauled it out to the kitchen and made a fort out of it, just like I do every time she goes out of town.

I call it “Fort Diva-stan.”

Or, if I’m being honest she left it in the dryer and since I had other laundry to do I stretched it out like this to dry.

But that isn’t as funny as the whole ‘fort’ thing, now is it?

Stumbling Toward Infuriating

As I mentioned in my post on Monday, Diva World Headquarters is being plagued by an unfathomably unexplainable bout of phone calls from our local law enforcement agency. Last night at around midnight, after having snuggled happily under the covers and reaching the very edge of sleep, I was jerked awake by the telephone ringing six inches from my head. Having several elderly relatives and several family members prone to injury it is a rather well ingrained tradition that if the phone rings after 10:00 PM it means that a family member is either in the hospital or dead. I was understandably agitated.

Me: Hello?
Caller: Is this McBurgerandFries?
Me: *thinking WTF!!!* No, I’m sorry, this is a private residence.
Caller: Are you sure this isn’t McBurgerandFries?
Me: This is a private residence.
Caller: This is Officer ___ of the _____ County Police Department. Is Stephen ___ there?
Me: No, Officer, he isn’t.
Caller: Are you sure Stephen ___ isn’t there?
Me: Yes.

Now at this point I am becoming sincerely unhappy about this particular brand of recurring phone conversation. And the frustration is only added to by the rudeness and apparent disbelief of the officers calling. NOT ONCE have they apologized for the lateness of the hour nor seemed to recognize the incivility in calling what has been repeatedly identified as a private residence at such an ungodly time of the night. NOT ONCE have they appeared to comprehend my patient reiterations at my unhappiness in being repetitiously aroused from my slumber. NOT ONCE! (And apparently all that Jane Austen is really starting to mess with my head. Curse you, book on CD!!!)

So now, dear reader (and friends), we come to the crux of the problem. How do I handle this? The repeated phone calls and the constant disbelief are beginning to border on harassment…which I would happily report to the police except that it is the police who are calling! I have had several suggestions made as to how to hopefully resolve this issue and would like your opinions, should you choose to give them.

1. Answer the phone: “Good evening, officer. The number to McBurgerandFries is ___-___-____. Please stop calling me.”

2. Call the local ‘non-emergency’ number and lodge a complaint. (Again…since they are the ones calling…)

3. Demand the calling officer’s name and badge number and then demand to speak to their supervisor on duty. Explain the situation and demand they believe me, even going so far as to insist that they come over and see that I don’t live at a McBurgerandFries.

4. Start answering my phone “Thank you for calling McBurgerandFries, this is HistoryDiva, how may I help you?” And of course deny that the requested employee works there.

(Blogger’s Note: In reference to the above mentioned phone call I have to confess that my first thought when the officer requested Stephen ____ was to say something really snarky like “Not unless he’s hiding under my bed,” however, I don’t think that would have gone over too well. But it would have been really funny.)

'Pride and Prejudice' Strikes Back

Take the Quiz here!

Read the book here

A Very Monday Post

Notes from the Nightstand

Well, darlings, I’ve finished reading both New Moon and Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer. That makes three 600+ page novels in one week…which is really just proof that I need to get out more. Of course I put off mountains of other things in order to free up so much ‘reading time’ but I really don’t care. Dishes and garbage and laundry can wait when there is angst driven teenaged vampire love on the line.

So, long winded opinion cut very short, I have enjoyed the series. And I would even go so far as to recommend it to others…provided that they would appreciate this kind of literature. The final installment of the ‘saga’ is set for release at midnight on the 1st of August…accompanied by a special ‘release party’ at the local bookstore. And yes, I have a copy on reserve, and yes, I’ll be attending the release party and taking LibraryDiva with me, and yes, I’ll sneak in my camera and take pictures of the crowd dressed up like their favorite characters from the books, and NO, before you ask let me reassure that I am going dressed as myself.

P.S. They are bringing all this angst to the big screen this Christmas. Here’s a production still featuring the main characters. And here’s a little shout out to all my nerdy HP fan friends…Cedric Diggory didn’t die, apparently he just turned into Edward Cullen.

Diva-stan Update

The cleaning crew arrived this week and began the enormous/disgusting job of decontaminated the former apartment of our creepy neighbors. I wish them good luck.

Our resident ‘temporary’ fuzzy punk and I had an unfortunate encounter in my bedroom on Friday night. While I was in the shower shorty apparently decided that my ridiculously expensive Original Mattress Factory Orthopedic Luxury Firm mattress would make a fantastic litter box. Much swearing and gnashing of teeth ensued. Little man was ‘corrected’ and has been avoiding my room like the plague ever since. This doesn’t distress me in the slightest. Thing One and Thing Two seem to appreciate having an officially ‘kitten free zone’ in the apartment as well as illustrated by the following…

Saturday Afternoon


Saturday Evening

Sunday Afternoon

Speaking of home, here’s another story for you. Several weeks ago LibraryDiva and I were watching the Saturday night ‘cheese’ (it had something to do with a factory full of possessed dolls and the ancient Aztecs) on the Sci-Fi channel when the phone rang. Now, normally this wouldn’t be that big of a deal…but it was almost 3:00 AM at the time. A quick glance at the caller ID showed a local government number.

Me: Hello?
Caller: Is this McBurgerandFries?
Me: No, I’m sorry, this is a private residence.
Caller: Are you sure this isn’t McBurgerandFries?
Me: Yes, very sure. This is my home.
Caller: Oh! Sorry.

LibraryDiva and I were still wondering at this when the phone rang again.

Me: Hello?
Caller: Is this McBurgerandFries?
Me: *quick glance at caller ID* No, this is the same residence you called a few minutes ago.
Caller: Oh, sorry.

Now, I had all but forgotten about this little late night exchange with what a quick flip though the phone book revealed to be our local police on their ‘non-emergency’ number until my phone rang this morning at 6:20 AM.

Me: *very groggy and newly awakened* Hello?
Caller: Is this McBurgerandFries?
Me: No, this is a private residence.
Caller: Oh.

The frustration of this incident has been all but overlooked on my part owning largely to the fact that it is out local law enforcement who is calling in error. Were it simply a drunken idiot then my wrath would have been swift and mighty…but it’s the cops…which means I’m all kinds of polite and friendly because that’s the way I was raised. When I got to work this morning I fished my handy-dandy local phone directory out of the drawer and looked up the numbers for all the local McBurgerandFries. I spotted the problem immediately; the last four digits of our numbers can be very easily transposed.

At some point during this weekend I think that I was supposed to spend some time with another friend of mine…whom we’ll call NeedyAnimeDiva. I have a vague memory of her calling me at some point in the last few weeks and mentioning that we should go see the new Batman movie together. Despite much memory searching assisted by helpful prompts from LibraryDiva I was unable to scrape together any agreed upon details of our exchange. I felt sure that I hadn’t actually agreed to anything but had in truth been volunteered…because that is the NeedyAnimeDiva way. She called on Sunday afternoon and I ignored the phone (hey, I was up to my eyeballs in angsty teenage fiction and four loads of laundry). And while I know that this was in truth very badly done of me, if you knew NeedyAnimeDiva the way I do, you would have hit the ‘reject’ button too.

Friday Ninja Post

Ninja!

So Wrong

...but so funny.

Cheap Giggles

Yesterday was not a good one. What with one thing and another I was completely out of patience by about 10:15 AM…and since it is my job to keep answering the phone politely, greeting people courteously, and avoid ripping the heads off of my co-workers, I’ll just say that the day was ‘stressful’ and leave things at that. By the time I got home I was literally crawling under the oppressing weight of fatigue and shuttering slightly from the caffeine withdrawal. I needed something, anything, to take my mind off of things.

So…I picked up our resident ‘temporary’ punk and set him atop LibraryDiva’s head.

And the sight of him perched there made me laugh…resulting in the blurry photo.

And my laughter made LibraryDiva laugh…hence the frantic looking blurry kitten.

Poor thing, having to tolerate humans such as us.

A Book Review

…of sorts.

Well, I have finished reading Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. The plot was decent, the pacing was good and the characters were interesting. I find myself actually quite taken aback as I am normally not a fan of the whole ‘vampire fiction’ genre.

Sunday evening I passed this book off to LibraryDiva. She spent the entire next day cursing my name and spitting on the ground I walk on. Apparently she had stayed up until 2:00 AM reading. This made me laugh…which made her mad…which made me laugh harder.

I picked up a copy of New Moon, the second book in this series, yesterday and I’m about 50 pages into it. I confess that I was a bit ‘spoiled’ on this one, since I have checked out the author’s website and completely ignored the ‘if you haven’t read the book don’t read this’ warning she had posted. Since I know what’s coming perhaps I won’t react to it as frantically as some of her other readers.

I’ll keep you posted.

A Wednesday Morning Quick Update: LibraryDiva has since finished Twilight and declared me an agent of Satan (I'm totally putting that on my resume). She is desperate to read New Moon but will not allow herself to even look at the cover of the book until she has gotten well ahead in her classes (remember, she's in Grad School). I am now 300 pages into New Moon and had serious difficulty putting it down last night to get some sleep. Damn you, Stephenie Meyer!

A Funny

A Diva Weekend Update

Sunday (yes, I’m starting with Sunday…wanna make something of it?)

LibraryDiva, my roommate and best friend, is one of the nosiest people on the planet. She comes by it honestly however, having inherited it from her mother, but on Sunday evening LibraryDiva learned to rue this trait. She had noticed, in passing, that the door to the apartment next door (a.k.a. residence of CREEPY NEIGHBORS) was open. Having seen the last of these particularly odious co-habitators on Friday, I was more than fairly certain that the apartment was now empty. At LibraryDiva’s insistence we investigated this matter. (Meaning she dragged me out of our apartment, down the breezeway and knocked on the door.)

Since no one answered our knock LibraryDiva pushed the door open, an action she immediately regretted. We were granted our first peek inside the former apartment of our creepy, leering, drunken, druggie neighbors. The carpet, at one time identical to the light tan wall to wall in our apartment, was black with both filth and dog hair. Clearly visible were ‘clean spots’ (which were still filthy) outlining the placement of the couch and a chair. A thick curtain of cobwebs, dust, and filth hung from the blades of the ceiling fan. The walls were stained, discolored, and there were several large holes where it appears that our neighbor lost his temper and took it out on the drywall. The kitchen light fixtures were broken and flickering (I guess they left them on) the counters were covered in grime and someone had ripped a drawer out from one of the cabinets. The linoleum was gray with filth. We crept deeper into the apartment because we could hear the bathroom fans running and see other lights still glowing in the gathering gloom of evening. The carpet in the hall and bedrooms was just as discolored as the living room carpet. The bathrooms were caked in grime and had obviously never been cleaned.

We beat a hasty retreat, tip toeing across the disgusting carpet, and scampered back to the safety of our place. Frantic hand washing and house cleaning immediately commenced and since when it comes to keeping our place clean neither one of us could be referred to as lazy you can only imagine how tidy things are now. We came to a mutual agreement that neither one of us would EVER complain about the others housekeeping skills again.

Saturday

On Saturday LibraryDiva journeyed to the city for a workshop pertaining to her profession. She learned interesting things like “The Card Catalog and You: An Insider’s Guide” and “Which Reference Questions Get Librarians Hot under their Indexes.”

Ah…Library humor…

Anyway! Since I was all by my lonesome I decided to do what any healthy young girl my age would do…that’s right…I cleaned my bathroom! Good times…

What with all the riveting activity going on around the home place you can only imagine my relief when the H.O.P.S.F. called and demanded that I go with her to a bookstore, a craft store, and a doughnut shop. I told her she was an agent of Satan and that she needed to be gone from my home. She giggled and said she would be there in twenty minutes. I groaned, took a shower, and got ready to leave. *Insert that old joke about ‘lead me not into temptation, I already know the way.’* We went, we shopped, and we had fantastically fun time. We finished off the evening with ridiculously large amounts of sugar and a chick flick.

Friday

On Friday I worked, came home, spent the evening doing nothing important and went to bed. Then Robert called. Since I was up…again, I decided to wander out into the hall and see what LibraryDiva, who had agreed to work late and thus didn’t arrive home until well after midnight, was up to. She looked at me guiltily. I demanded to know where the fuzzy interloper was. She introduced our new ‘temporary’ roommate.

Fuzzy Punks

Thing One and Thing Two…lounging in my room last weekend.

Thing One and Thing Two…lounging in my room last night.

Lazy bastards!

Friday Zombie Post

Bbbrrraaaiiinnnsss!!!

Notes from the Nightstand

Okay, first and foremost, get your mind out of the gutter. (Robert and Carl…I’m talking about you.)

Now that you’ve recovered from your school-girl-like fit of giggling I’ll explain, ‘Notes from the Nightstand’ is going to be a semi-regular bit here at Blissfully Unaware, in much the same vein as ‘Random Picture Thursday.’ Swiping this bit of inspired creativity from LibraryDiva, I’ll be using these posts to tell you a little bit about the books I’m currently reading…and since I tend to pile these books on my nightstand, you’ll see that it wasn’t much of a mental stretch to come up with a title.

Shall we begin?

I’m about 200 pages into Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. I was going to avoid this series like the plague but since there seems to be an over abundant supply of copies at my local book retailer (I tripped over them several times on my last visit…no really, I literally tripped over a stack of these books) I thought I might as well pick up the first one and see what all the fuss is about. I’m not really a fan of the whole ‘vampire fiction’ genre, as can be attested by both my Diva pals, but I have read several very positive reviews of this particular title. Now, I wouldn’t really recommend this book to most of my friends…what with the teenaged/vampire/angst/love story vibe at the heart of this plot, but over all it really isn’t bad. The central character is well developed and things haven’t gotten overly unbelievable yet.

I’m about 150 pages into Sex with the Queen by Eleanor Herman, an entertaining look at 900 years of royal risqué business. This work is the companion book to Herman’s Sex with Kings, which I read a few years ago. This book makes my inner history major happy while reinforcing the lesson that while ‘it’s good to be the king’ it could be very dangerous to be the queen (or her lover).

I confess that I am only about 25 pages into World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks. The reason? This book is scaring the begeezus out of me! Though fictional, this book is very detailed and incredibly realistic…and creepy, don’t forget creepy. Since I only read in the evening hours during the week this book has been shuffled to the bottom of the pile where it will have to wait for a very sunny Saturday morning for me to pick it up again. Brooks is an amazing story teller.

Gunpowder Plot by Carola Dunn is about a murder mystery set against a Guy Fawkes Day celebration in the late 1920s. Fireworks mask the sound of gun fire and Daisy Dalrymple (don’t you just love that name?) has to figure out ‘who done it.’ It isn’t Agatha…but it isn’t bad. I’m about 50 pages in.

I’m about 50 pages into The Sleeping Doll by Jeffery Deaver. So far we've had the back story, been introduced to our intrepid female investigator, interviewed the bad guy and blown up a courthouse. Not too shabby for three chapters. Deaver is a little meticulous and this one is moving kind of slow. And I’m sure it doesn’t help that I keep putting it down because I get distracted by other things!

I’m about 50 pages into Betrayal: Star Wars Legacy of the Force; Book One by Aaron Allston. This is the first of a nine book series which tracks the fall of Jacen Solo as he turns to the ‘dark side’ of the Force. So far there has been a Jedi battle and a very tense dinner party. I’m hopeful that the story will pick up some steam soon.

Random Picture Thursday

Round Two

Okay...how much junk do these two own???