Archive for July, 2005

The scary world of yarn craft

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beccataylor
3 years, 2 months ago
in Random miscellany
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Nathan is The Master when it comes to finding obscure and humorous web tidbits. Almost every day he’ll IM me with his latest find. For a long time I would ask where he finds such great/terrible/offensive/scary things. Almost invariably his reply would be “TiVo board.” So now when he pulls something out of thin air and I raise my eyebrows at him, we just say “TiVo board!”

Anyhoo (and I have not verfied that his source is the TiVo board, because now sometimes it’s Fark), the latest find is a snarky site all about how thread and yarn craft can go awry. Remember those hideous pattern covers? This site brings them all back. Me, I thought it was hilarious. Now, my mom thought I was smoking something to be amused. I think she just thought it was too weird to have much of a reaction. :)

View the wonders of Threadbared.

Some of my favorites:

Beam me up, Scotty

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beccataylor
3 years, 2 months ago
in Musings
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Actor Jimmy Doohan of Star Trek fame has passed away. Farewell, Scotty!

Why did the chicken cross the road?

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beccataylor
3 years, 2 months ago
in Musings
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I don’t know. Fact is, I figure he DIDN’T actually cross the road because he got sidetracked with other stuff. Like how the hen next door is really cute, or the rooster in the next row keeps blowin’ smoke and pickin’ fights. Or how the farmer keeps threatening to get rid of all the chickens and find new ones who will do the job better or more efficiently. Yup, life happens that way.

I’ve never been good at keeping a journal, so I don’t know why I get discouraged that I post only rarely on my blog. :) I also noticed that almost all of my entries are in my “Just rambling…” category. Huh. Never knew I rambled that much. :)

Anyhoo, not much newsie stuff to share. Work sucks. School is going to kick my butt this class (the syllabus scared me into an altered state of consciousness). And it’s July in Texas. The only worse than July in Texas? August in Texas. ;) (I read a joke on that somewhere, not sure where now, but it definitely works). At least we don’t have to worry about hurricane Emily! I suppose things could always be worse than they are. ;)

On a side note, I’ve always enjoyed reading our small town newspaper because there are always fantastic grammatical blunders that delight a grammar nerd like me. For instance, in the June 28 issue of the Tomball Magnolia Tribune, you see a headline “Untimely accident results in fatality for Magnolia woman.” Ummm…. untimely accident, huh? That’s really overly redundant. Not to mention the fact that accidents are rarely timely, which hardly calls for calling one UNtimely.

I consider myself a moderate in politics. Not too conservative, not too liberal. I tend to be a fiscal conservative but social liberal. Not that those labels mean much any more, because the politics of our society have forever rebranded the extremes. But, I tell you what, living in this small Texas town has made me feel like a tree-hugging, pot-smoking, un-inhibited hippie compared to most of the folks here.

I wrote my first letter to the editor this week because one of our editorial columns just had my jaw dragging on the floor for a whole evening. I wish the paper was online or I’d link to the article, but to give you a small taste: “While it is true that not all followers of Islam are terrorists, it is, however, a fact that all followers of Islam are in solidarity with the extremists” (Tomball Magnolia Tribune, July 18 2005, page 2). Note: that’s not MY comment, but a direct quote of the paper (just trying to reduce the flames that could roll my way…)

WHAT!?!? Holy smokes, things like this really get my blood boiling. Why is it that religion seems to completely replace reason for so many people? The ignorance of that statement still astounds me. It’s akin to someone saying (and believing) that all Christians are ignorant hypocrites who have no qualms about publically renouncing the teachings of their religious texts because it’s just easier to be hateful and selfish than compassionate. Clearly, not all Christians reflect that misconception; I just wish the VOCAL ones didn’t! Grrrrrrrrr….

Okay, must be time to climb down off my soapbox. Sorry for the detour. :)

Now and then

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beccataylor
3 years, 3 months ago
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I just discovered that school work goes much faster when you’re nursing a great glass of wine. OK, well, maybe not faster, but more pleasantly. :) This is the last week of my 3rd to last class (woohoo!), and the last weeks are always the hardest. There’s always a big team project due. And, I swear, these last few classes are the hardest yet. Not because of the course content, but because the constant grind of it has caught up with me. The day in and day out of dealing with life and work, with school on top of it all. I can’t imagine doing this with kids–I have such respect and awe for my classmates who manage all of this with young children too.

So, thanks to a light and fruity glass of Malvasia Bianca from St Clair Winery, my afternoon of chores and school work has been quite mellow. I forgot how nice it is to just sit and sip wine. There’s just something about a good glass of wine that prompts me to slow down, consider what I’m doing, focus a little more on the now instead of what I have to do for the rest of the evening.

Then, pair the wine with UB40 (a reggae band), and you’ve got a veritable massage for the senses. UB40 brings back so many memories for me. As I sip my wine, I can’t fight the flashbacks to my freshman year of college. 12 years have passed, but the wistful nostalgia is still so strong.

12 years. Wow. In less than 2 months I’ll be 30! Wow. I’ve told my friends that 30 isn’t a scary birthday for me, and it truly isn’t. But sometimes I’m still so shocked that I’m going to be 30! I can’t help but think on it. A lot. :)
I mean, I don’t feel 30! And it’s so weird sometimes to think that I can measure my life and file my memories in decades. When I’m not feeling slightly disconcerted about trying to reconcile my mental age with my physical age, this 30th birthday has made me pause to think about where I’ve been and where I’ve landed.

Turning 30 is a milestone, right? At milestones, we stop to gauge our progress and look ahead, right? Looking back on the last 12 years or so (because the first 18 hardly count–I feel like I didn’t really come into my own until my college years), it’s easy to see the turning points. The decisions and events that have landed me where I am now. At so many points, I could’ve done something else and my life would be SO different. That realization is unsettling, but oddly comforting, and definitely humbling.

I spent a lot of those 12 years believing that I wasn’t good enough, that I was somehow deficient and I had to constantly better myself. I think I still feel that doubt to some extent–convincing myself that my academically challenged undergraduate college years were abnormal is why I’ve been busting my butt to keep this 3.75 GPA for my Master’s degree. But all of a sudden today, I realized that turning 30 isn’t the only milestone this summer.

I think that’s what 30 is about for me. Finally recognizing and understanding that all of the angst and confusion of those 12 years were actually outweighed by the joy and growth. I finally see that the scared 20-something girl is going to be a 30-something woman with a whole lot of life to live. So I have now proven to myself that I’ve accomplished something with my life. But now it’s time to do something with it. What that will be, I don’t know. But staring down the Big 3-0 has taught me that it’s time to stop doing and planning, and just focus on living, loving, and growing every day.

“And every hour of every day I’m learning more
The more I learn, the less I know about before
The less I know, the more I want to look around”
(from UB40’s “Higher Ground”)

P.S. Jo, thanks for the great wine! :)

Tales from the dark side (aka, it’s a wheezer!)

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beccataylor
3 years, 3 months ago
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In 1998, I had a very long bout of sinus infection that developed into bronchitis, which took forever to heal because I was not taking care of myself at all. Why do I open with this, you ask? Well, it seems as though that first bout of bronchitis has irrevocably altered my respiratory system so that when I laugh really hard I wheeze. Could be that I’m imagining things, but that’s when I remember the wheezing, whirring, and croaking started. :)

So, why do I tell you this, you ask? Last night my sister had me laughing so hard I thought I was going to pass out–yep, it was a wheezer!

Jo was relating a story she heard from my mom about a job application (little had I known that job apps are a field of ridicule ripe for the picking!). The fellow apparently seemed nice enough, but upon further inspection of the application, she discovered that every single job he’d ever had listed the same reason for leaving. When asked why the applicant left his job, his answer was “became incarcerated.” Really!? Like “becoming incarcerated” is some passive activity that just sorta happened to you? Just snuck up on you?! :)
While this brought about some giggles, Jo was quick to inform me that she could trump that story quite easily.

As a retail manager, I imagine she sees some pretty amusing histories and personalities. But this one indeed takes the cake. One applicant, when asked about his educational background, listed “Clown school.” Yup! And wouldn’t you know it, his major skill was making balloon animals! I can see it now: “Here, Ms. Customer, please enjoy this balloon animal with your lamp.” Now THAT’S customer service!