Category: NaBloWriMo

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Pain and frustration are relative

Today started off pretty crappy. I woke up just as Mom was leaving to go have lunch with a friend. She pushed the button to lift the garage door, drove her car out, then pushed the button to lower it back down. The garage door went down… about a foot before going back up. Why? We’re still not sure. All I know is that Dad and I have been working on it for over four hours.

It’s attached to cables that were really loose and snarled up, so we straightened and tightened those. No good. Maybe the door was off-center and getting jammed on the way down, so we disconnected the cables altogether and lowered the door to the ground. Not the problem. Maybe the wheels are getting stuck, maybe the spring is too tight, maybe the door has become a sentient being and is pissed off that one of its screws had been loose for months. We tightened that, but still nothing. And now one of our wrenches seems to have escaped as well. Damn sentient inanimate objects…

And as I stared at the garage door in frustration, it occurred to me that it was 50 degrees and sunny outside. Warm enough that I didn’t really need the jacket I was wearing. Meanwhile, out east, Mother Nature recently decided that Hurricane Sandy didn’t cause enough damage, so she sent a Nor’easter to hammer the coast as well. Snow, freezing temperatures, damaged houses with no power… my life is so very, very good in comparison right now.

That’s not to say I’m not allowed to be a little frustrated, but I’m making sure to thank God, Jesus, Allah, Buddha, Flying Spaghetti Monster and anyone else who might be listening up there. Thank you for all the blessings in my life, thank you for giving me such tiny problems to whine about and please help out the people who need it most. Amen.

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I’m voting against you! Ptbpptbptpbt!!!

I took part in the political process earlier this morning, did my civic duty and voted. Yay me!

I went there with both my parents and thankfully, all of the discussion (at varying volumes) about our voting choices was done last night, so there were no arguments in the car ride there nor home again. However, Dad told us a brief story afterward that he considered amusing and I thought may have been seriously offensive.

In Minnesota, there are two new Constitutional amendments on the ballot: forbidding gay marriage and requiring a legal form of ID to vote. Obviously, we don’t need an ID yet, so since we were already registered, the three of us walked up to a desk, signed in, then went over to the table to get our ballots. When Dad got there, he put his driver’s license down on the table in front of the worker and she threw it back at him. Like I said, he thought it was pretty funny.

As for myself, well, I think I can understand why she would have such a bad reaction. If she felt really strongly about not wanting the voter ID amendment to pass, showing your driver’s license would be like bluntly stating to her face, “I’m voting against your strong beliefs.” (Meanwhile, she has to sit there and not say anything since that’s her civic duty.)

And it’s not just telling her how he’s voting. He’s making a physical gesture when doing so: putting his ID on the table in front of her. In my mind, that could be like saying, “I’m voting against your strong beliefs”, then giving her the finger. If that was how she looked at it, I’m impressed that she restrained herself enough to only throw his driver’s license back at him.

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Time for November Madness!

In preparations for the election tomorrow, I got a copy of a sample ballot and began filling in the bubbles for my candidates of choice. Or at least the candidates that I think won’t suck too bad. And as I did more research and kept filling in the bubbles, it suddenly felt like I was making college basketball picks for March Madness. Who will be going to the next round by being elected? Who will be curled up in a ball, crying on the floor in anguish after losing?

Then there’s the championship game, the presidential election, the one that matters most and will have the largest impact on the U.S. for the next four years. Unfortunately, there’s a distinct possibility that there won’t be a final score at the end of the night, no one will be celebrating and the winner could be determined inside of the wrong kind of court.

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Sharing is now more aesthetically pleasing

I got a text this morning from someone who was reading the blog using his phone. Why? Because that big floating SHARE was taking up a lot of space on the screen, so he had to read around it. Sure, he may have been whining, but he was also right—I checked and decided it looked a little too annoying on my phone, too. Thus, it’s gone.

Instead of the big floating SHARE, you have to go to the bottom of each post and click on the buttons there if you want to tweet it, like it, etc. The change also takes away the option of tweeting or liking the website as a whole, but now I can pretend that you all would have clicked them if they were still available. Thus, I consider the adjustment a win-win. If you don’t… sorry, Facebook still hasn’t created a “dislike” button.

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I’ll Pray For Douchebags, Too

I was visiting some friends this afternoon because I was going to do a voice-over for a WaZoo sketch. We ended up skipping it because the voice-over would have doubled the length of the sketch and it really wasn’t necessary. (Blame it on my English degree: get rid of the chaff and be succinct and to the point. Unless your paper isn’t long enough to fill the minimum number of pages, in which case you should bullshit as much as needed.)

While talking after dinner, their teenage daughter came downstairs to return a Flash drive I loaned her. The music on her iPod got wiped clean a while ago, so I used it to give her a copy of all my mp3 files. When she handed it back to me, she said that one song on there was particularly awesome.

I guess some of her classmates have been a major pain in the ass recently, so now whenever those people start being a nuisance, she can hear this song in her head and be happy again. There are two music videos for the song—this one was her favorite—so now I present you with Pray For You by Jaron and the Long Road to Love.