The darkness

But I just scored 94% on the "Skin disease or Dungeons & Dragons character?" quiz.

There is unseemly chairdancing.

I like it, despite my evident wrinkliness.  I'm wondering if I should perhaps invest in an iron...

I don't like:

• Earbuds
• Walls without windows
• Windows Vista
• Bullshit meetings
• German fish

I DO like:

• Surround sound
• Feeling the breeze through the screen at night
• Windows XP
• Working while staring into space
• Swedish fish

What's your "go-to" movie?  The one you watch when you need to just get away from it all?
Submitted by uncagedbird.

I don't think I have one.  Possibly "Serenity," but that makes me into just a bit too much of a geek, I think.

Oh, wait.

Duh.

Grease.

 

t, we need to watch Grease again.  Soon.

 

I generally comb out the spitcurl before leaving for work.

Unhappy thoughts:
  - A near-total lack of filing cabinets.
  - Gearing up for summer reruns.
  - Rotten veggies.

Happy thoughts:
  - Doing a hard job well.
  - The North/South trail where if flies over Alt. 19.  I frigging love powering up the overpass.
  - Certain episodes of Futurama.

I shoulda stayed embed (I can totally see myself hammering that line into the ground):

Do you support the gas tax holiday being pushed by Clinton and McCain?

No more than I support the economic stimulus package, which is to say, not at all.

The reason gas costs so much has nothing to do with the gas tax, and everything to do with the oil companies, which continue to post record profits.  Not gross incomes.  Profits.  It's time to change, and the best way to get most of us, myself included, to support transportation options that are less harmful to the environment, is to put the cost of gas up out of reach.

The gas tax supports things like road repairs.  It's just one of the reasons not *every* road in this country is a toll road, and it's one of the very, very few ways that projects like road repairs get funded.  It needs to stay, because roads need to be built and maintained, and also because there's absolutely no guarantee whatsoever that the oil companies will drop the price.  We could very, very easily end up paying the equivalent of the gas tax in straight profits.

...but they seem comfortable.

For anyone with an interest in odd conversions, the foot of my bed is slightly larger than two dogs wide.

Saturday, I went for a bike ride with Mike.  We were about ten miles from the house when he rolled over a staple, and flattened his tire.
  Not a problem.  I carry a spare tube.
  So we fixed his tire and finished our ride.  I bought a new spare tube on Tuesday, and Thursday night, we rode again.

   Guess it was my turn.  We'd gotten about a mile and a half out, and my tire went flat.  I have no idea what I hit, but it went flat.  So we pulled over and yanked the wheel off and that's when the fun started.
  I have fairly new tires, they're a little stiff yet, and while I pack a pump and a spare tube, what I don't pack are tire irons.  So it was field expedient time, which has worked in the past.
  First up: the little locking lever at the head of the pump.  Which is made of plastic.  Result:  broken lever.
  Dammit.
  Second try:  my housekey.  It's worked before.  Result:  bent housekey.
  I forget what we eventually ended up using to get the tire loose, but we did, and got the old tube out and the new tube in, and it was time to inflate the tire, using an itty-bitty travel pump.  trying to get a hundred pounds of pressure in a tire using a hand pump is difficult, but we persevered, and when it was nearly full...

...the tire slipped a little bit in my hand, and the pump ripped the brand-new valvestem out of the brand-new tube, making it completely fucking worthless.

Mike rode home and got his truck, I threw my bike in the back, and he gave me a lift home.  But as soon as I think of something horrible enough, that little fucking pump is gonna PAY.

So I'm sitting at lunch, at my desk, watching Season One of How I Met Your Mother on DVD.  The credits roll, and I see that, lo and behold, the episode featured guest star Susie Plakson, who I think is awesome and should call me  when she's in town and all that.

Thing is, I remember her mostly from my time as a Trekkie, where she was most notably done up as the vision ofKlingon hotness seen here.  But before you start laughing at me, take some time to think about all the times I have refrained from giving YOU shit about your 90's crush on Ian Ziering.  So there.

So, yeah.  Susie.  In the credits.  From awesome warrior woman (and, in a different role, spectacular redhead,) to the plainly dressed Minnesotan wife of Bill Faggerbakke, who was playing a middle-aged riff on his Coach character, "(allegedly) lovable dimwit assistant coach #2"

All, however, is not lost, as I learned some cool things while looking for a picture of her in her Plains State apron in her Midwestern perm (thankfully, I was not able to find one, which means we don't all have to look at it.)  Did you know... (I didn't):
 - She has recorded at least one Country music album
 - She paints, sculpts, and pots?
 - I knew she had played two different aliens on Star Trek.  Turns out, she had roles as four different characters on three different series, only three of which required prosthetic foreheads.