pride and prejudice

Yesterday I almost had a legitimate argument about artificial intelligence.

My boyfriend mentioned that I should finish playing Mass Effect 3. I got about 3/4th of the way through it and stopped when all of the spoilers about the ending leaked out. I told him I didn't feel the need to finish it since I already knew what option I would pick at the end - destroy all inorganic life forms. My boyfriend is very pro inorganic life in Mass Effect and thinks all sentient machines are our friends and we'll create a better universe together. I'm very anti inorganics because I think they will inevitably become more intelligent than us and then all bets are off. With our lesser developed human brains we can't predict how they'll act. However, I have a strong feeling they'll just kill us off. I accused him of anthropomorphizing machines, he accused me of inorganic intolerance. It had to be one of my silliest and nerdiest moments to date. At 30. Come on.

I was able to cool down enough to tell him that we could stay together for now, but if the inevitable robotic uprising happens during our lifetime, we are to be sworn enemies.

do not be deceived; sexy robots will destroy us all

a terrible "get out and vote" pep talk

I voted early in the presidential election this year. A voting location is only a mile away from my house, so it was really convenient. And I went in the afternoon, so there wasn't any line. Early voting is great.

You know who else loves early voting? Old white folks. They were the only other people there. As a half Hispanic 30 year old, I felt a little out of place. While I was at a touch screen voting booth contraption, I could hear a woman being told by one of the voter-monitor-volunteer type people that she couldn't "help" her friend vote.  The woman explained that her friend had dementia so he needed her help. That was something I've never thought about before.

If I'm going to be cynical and...realistic, I'd say that unless you're voting for a Republican presidential candidate, your vote doesn't really matter in Texas and hasn't mattered since about 1980. And I could say that a two party system doesn't really give anyone much of a choice. And I could just say my vote is pointless. It probably is. However, it took literally ten minutes out of my day to do. I've spent a lot more time and energy doing things that were much more of a waste (like seeing Taken 2) so there's no way I'm not going to vote.

an evening with my brother

Tonight's purchases:

4 Bavarian creams from Dunkin Donuts.
2 tickets to Taken 2.
2 burgers and a bag of fries from Mooyah.

Save me from myself.

time waste

Life. Life is beautiful. Life is an awesome responsibility. We are given such a finite amount of time to experience what can only be experienced as a human with human thoughts and emotions. We are given such freedom and such beauty to behold. And this self awareness, this knowledge is such a burden. It is so terrifying. How are we to fill our time? What are we to do with ourselves? How do we make this one life, these few moments which are our existence matter? Please, someone just tell us what to do! We are so connected and yet so alone in the universe. Just give me a distraction from my insignificance, from my inevitable demise, so I can ignore the howling void of eternity and nothingness that surrounds me!

Are you suffering from this human affliction also? Well, just buy a house. It will eat up most of your weekends so you won't have time to sit around thinking and having existential crises.

This weekend I painted a side of the house. That's right, just one side. It's an unpleasant and labor intensive job, so every year for the past three years I've painted one side of the house in the fall. It was three years ago that I noticed that the paint around certain areas of the house was peeling badly, so I had a house-painter stop buy to give me a quote to do the job. He said it would be five thousand dollars. I thanked him for his time and told him I'd think about it. After he drove away I laughed and laughed and laughed. $5,000. If a mechanic or plumber quoted me $5,000 I would probably meekly nod my head and sign a check. But to have my house painted? No. My car wasn't going to blow or up my house wasn't going to flood if I did it wrong. The worst that was going to happen was that my house's paint job would look wrecktastic. And it already did, so what was holding me back?

I bought an extension ladder and some paint supplies a few months later and got to it. My father had warned me about buying a house with wood siding. And in defense of myself and houses with wood siding, I don't think repainting a side of a house every year is that big of a burden. In general. In my case, the guy who renovated the house reused old, old, old wood boards in certain areas.  In order to make them match the smooth new wood boards, he just iced a quarter inch layer of spackle on top of them and painted it. Apparently this is a bad idea. I'm sure spackle has its uses, but this doesn't seem to be one of them. I can tell exactly which boards are the old spackle laden ones, because they are the ones with paint peeling off of them terribly.

Ideally, these old boards should be replaced, but I don't have the money for that. So, I just hack away as much of the spackle as I can, smooth it out, and repaint it. I have a dream of re-siding the house with the no-rot fake wood that some of the neighbors have. What am I doing to obtain this dream? Absolutely nothing. That kind of job will cost about $15,000 so I should be saving up some money starting three years ago.

Anyway, the side of the house I did this weekend wasn't that hard since it was the side of the house with the carport attached to it. In order to reach the tallest part of the house, all I had to do was climb onto the carport roof. I do have that extension ladder, but I also have a fear of heights, so I try to stay off of it as much as possible.

Here's an example of what I was dealing with.

And here's a section after a lot of mind numbing scraping.

At this point I sand the boards to make them a bit less bumpy and caulk and prime. Spackle is not invited. I probably should have included an after photo...

pumpkin carving

I went to my parent's house today and we had a spontaneous pumpkin carving party. My father bought a ridiculously large pumpkin, which resulted in a 30 minute photo session where my sister stuck her infant inside the excavated gourd. It seemed traumatic, but my niece took it well until about the last ten minutes. It bothers me when people treat babies like accessories. Was it cute? I don't know, maybe after you photo shop the pumpkin slime off the baby. I feel like I'm getting off track here.

My six year old nephew cleaned out and drew a face on his first Halloween pumpkin. Everyone seemed a lot more excited about this than he did.

As usual, it was the grownups who had the best time. Here's my brother.

He was pretty proud of his pumpkin for about 15 minutes. Then my father finished carving his.

My dad liked a design on the back of a pumpkin carving kit he bought, so I drew it for him and he carved it out. We're the freaking jack-o-lantern dream team.

Halloween party

Yesterday my mother hosted a Bunco party at her house and I volunteered to come over and help her party prep. I don't like going to parties, but really enjoy setting them up. I showed up at my parent's house five hours before the party was supposed to start. My mom already had most of the decorating done, so I helped mostly with cooking, cleaning, and setting the tables.

There were four tables in all, and she had each decorated with a slightly different Halloween theme. My mom was running around until right at 7 p.m., when guests were supposed to start showing up. As usual, she made way too much food.

I didn't even tell my mom I was taking this picture, she just ducked out of the frame at the right time to read something out of a cook book sitting on the counter. At 6:45, my mom put a sheet of paper under my nose and said "Make this in a double batch." and ran off to her bedroom to change into her Halloween costume. It was a recipe for margaritas. I've never made a mixed drink in my life, but I can follow a recipe alright, so I made it. In a double batch. It tasted like poison to me, but my mom said it was just like a margarita should be, so I guess I missed my calling as a bartender.

age ain't nuthin but a numbah

I turned 30 this year but I really feel like 29 was the year that old age started to take hold.

That was the year I found my first grey hair.

It was also when I hurt my back while doing yard work and was absolutely shocked when the pain got worse instead of better over the next three days. I was accustomed to abusing my body and a good night's sleep fixing whatever ailed me. It took almost six months for my back to stop twinging when I'd go to pick up anything heavy.

But perhaps the "oldest" thing that happened at 29 was me falling in love with a high fiber cereal.

worried about your fiber intake? sure you are, old timer.

Now the only grocery store in north Texas that carried it has stopped, so I have to start buying it in six packs off of Amazon like a fiber doomsday prepper.

compulsion

I need

to stop

buying

plants!

Ever since I tore down the fence, there are parts of the yard that look a bit bare now, and I can't seem to pass by a home improvement store or nursery without buying something new to un-bare it. I realized it was getting a little out of hand when I went to Lowe's to buy a light bulb and came home with six purple flowers.

The Kills - Satellite

This is not a music blog. I'm just reminding myself.

Expectations

I've seen two movies during my days off. Both defied my expectations.

I saw Dredd with my brother since action movies are kind of his thing, and I heard on the internets that it was actually pretty good. And it was. I wasn't expecting too much when I walked in the theater and I was even more skeptical when I found out it was 3D (I blame you, Avatar). I liked that it didn't force itself into fulfilling all of the typical action movie bullet points: Protagonist at lowest of lows and pulls himself up by his bootstraps after a life changing revelation? Romantic interest? No, thanks. It didn't fit the story so it wasn't in the story. Thank you, Dredd.

I absolutely adored There Will Be Blood so I was pretty excited to see The Master since they were both written and directed by the same man. I did not enjoy The Master. In my humble opinion it was a mess. There were parts of There Will Be Blood that were a bit enigmatic, some dialogue that seemed a bit odd, but they were easily forgotten as a part of the whole marvelous movie. The Master, was all odd bits that didn't seem to make a movie. I feel like I could be fancy pants and say something about how the ocean was a symbol of man's wandering nomad soul and discovery, or how sex and alcohol were used to demonstrate man's baser tendencies that were trying to be repressed by The Master to obtain true spiritual freedom. And how can you have freedom if you have a master, blah blah blah. But really, it was just pretentious and bad.

Saturday

Thankfully, last Saturday didn't consist solely of a trip to the local landfill. My brother and I went to Six Flags the same day. It was pretty fun. There was, of course, lots of lines and waiting, but it was nice and cool so we weren't miserable and sweaty the whole time. I broke a promise I made to myself about ten years ago that I would never ride the Texas Giant again. It's a old wooden roller coaster and riding it felt like the equivalent of sitting in the the bed of a truck while it rolled off the side of the hill. My neck and back were traumatized and I had a headache for the rest of the day. I went on it again last weekend because my brother insisted that it was different since the sign to the entrance said  "New Texas Giant." And I don't know what they did to it since the last time I rode it, but it was probably the best ride of the day.

I didn't take any picture while I was at Six Flags so this generic picture of the Texas Giant will have to do.

My boyfriend didn't go to Six Flags. He's prone to migraines and roller coaster rides have triggered them in the past. He wasn't too broken up about it though. He already had this Saturday planned out for a while since a new Magic set was released this weekend.

He has three friends nearby who are fellow Magic players, so they met and nerded it up all day. I'll play a few games just with my boyfriend, but I don't feel confident enough to play with other people, even if they are friends. I still have to stop him (rather frequently) to remind me what an ability does, I have a hard time keeping up with my power/toughness once you start adding auras and enchantments, and I've given up on ever being able to play an infect deck.

Landfill

So my dad came over yesterday with his truck and trailer. We loaded up what was left of my old fence and headed over to the city landfill. I've been to the landfill twice before. Both times my boyfriend and I have taken his small tuck. All we had to do was drive up a concrete ramp and throw whatever trash we had over a ledge and into a dumpster below. We'd drive off about five minutes later.

This trip was nothing like that. I saw the real landfill this trip. I think it was because we had a trailer full of stuff. We were told to keep driving past the concrete ramp I was accustomed to and we drove up a steep gravel hill. And we weren't the only ones. There was an endless line of trucks and trailer in front and behind us.

Excuse this next bad quality picture, but I think it shows the massiveness of the line in front of us pretty well. Keep in mind this line is two trucks wide.

I thought that there must be some particular reason so many people were there to drop off trash at the same time. How could that many people have that much trash all at once? But I guess I don't have that great of an imagination because my dad struck up a conversation with one of the employees while he was waiting for him to wave us on, and he said that it's like that every Saturday. We were fairly high on top of the trash/gravel hill and the colorful view of the surrounding fields was a stark contrast to the literally barren wasteland in front of us.

It took us about an hour to get to the dumping area, which didn't seem that long considering the line of trucks. It was pretty interesting to see. Everyone one should take a trip to the local landfill, if only to make you think twice about making a purchase you may end up trashing in a year anyway. Everyone wants new shiny things (including myself) but if your old not-so-shiny thing is still functional, you may want to think about holding onto it for a bit longer.

All told, I don't think I'm that great when it comes to the grim reality of how things really work. I watched a PBS special ten years ago about chickens and it included a view of the living conditions commercial laying hens were kept in. I still have to buy free range chicken eggs to keep the nightmares away.

Margot and The Nuclear So And So's - Frank Left

High of 53 today! Woooo! I get to wear a sweater! Best day ever!

To celebrate, here's some Margot, the perfect cool cloudy day band. My boyfriend says its thirteen year old girl music, but he's the one that introduced me to them, so it can't be that bad of a thing.

The Bronze

Not much to say. Since it's my seven days "on",  I've just been working and sleeping and working. I did get to take an exciting break in the monotony and fix the broken belt on my dryer. I was actually pretty happy to change it out since it's been broken for about ten days - that's how long it took for the part I ordered to come in. I was starting to getting worried about the laundry that was overflowing out of the basket. About two years ago, I had to take apart my dryer and I was pretty meticulous about it. I printed off directions and drew some pictures. This time I just attacked it with a screw driver until the front came off. I think I had six "extra" screws left after I put it back together. But hey, it still works!

That was a lame story, but I'll leave you with an awesome song.