Justice

Just as I was wondering why there were so many secret service agents walking around McDonough Hall, I walked right next to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.  She was sitting on a bench.  And, as I passed, the words I heard her speak were these:

"They were Mormons.  They are all Mormons."

I'm not kidding.

Change I can Believe In

Finally, the campaign promises come through... (teehee)

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/01/21/brown.washington/index.html?hpt=T2

Thank you for restoring balance to the two-party system.

Some days...

We're going to need a new washing machine sooner than I thought.

Here's how I know.

I thought I'd do both of the loads of laundry I've been putting off.  I put the first in and headed up to the office and schoolwork and a certain vat of chocolate chip cookies. 

Three typed pages and two cookies later, I went down to swtich the laundry and start another load. 

For those of you who haven't been to our house, you may not know that our washing machine is 40 years old.  Yep, it's a classic.  Still going strong (even though all of the buttons are worn down and the previous owners had to draw a big, sloppy, indellible arrow to show us how far to turn the dial to start the thing).  Still going strong until today, I guess.

Instead of being connected to the sewer with outgoing water pipes, our dinosaur empties directly into the utility sink that resides next to it.  That's great.  I mean, we get the added bonus of the sound of rushing water, along with the sonic booms every time the machine changes gears.  Well, usually it's great.  Except when the water does extra rushing and the machine does extra booming.

I'd left a paintbrush out to dry on the corner of the utility sink last night (by the way, our kitchen is completely finished now, hooray!), and all the booming and shaking of the machine made the brush fall down into the sink instead of staying on the corner where it was supposed to.  That would have been fine, except it landed in the exact right (I mean, WRONG, VERY WRONG) spot and clogged the drain.  So, when I came down to switch my laundry, the floor was covered in an inch of water all over the unfinished portion of the basement.

THIS IS RIDICULOUS!

That's what I shouted.

I contemplated crying, but I figured there was already enough water involved and I should just get to it.

One linen-closet's worth of towels, two rolls of paper towls, two hours, and much gnashing of teeth later, I had the basement cleaned up.  And I mean CLEANED UP.  I had to mop up and wipe off every single thing we had down there.  So much for being green and saving all of our boxes from moving, hello soggy mess.

So, I cleared out the sink and the drain with my trusty tuperware pitcher and decided to give it another go.  I needed to wash all of the towels I'd had to use for operation wet washer, and so I put them in the beast.  I sat down by the washer for 10 minutes to make sure all was well, and when I saw it was properly draining I went back up to question number four, cookie number three, and a bowl of soup.

Ten minutes later I heard a wailing from the basement.

I ran down. 

WHAT NOW?

Smoke.  Smoke pouring out of the top of the washer.  Oh no!  I didn't know if something was on fire, or if we'd blown a fuse.  So, I did the fastest thinking I was capable of at the time and yanked out the plug.

With the basement door open, it was smoke-free in no time.  So, I turned the water to cold, and hoped that I wouldnt' blow anything up when I turned it back on (I needed it to drain out the dirty water before I could really turn it off.)

I sat down by it again and waited.

Everything seemed fine.

Same drill.  Ten minutes later, and halfway through my next cookie, I heard a horrific thumping. 

You know in old movies when the washer breaks and it literally hops around the floor and spews things.  Who knew that actually happened in real life? 

It was hopping, thumping, booming and spewing smoke.  I unplugged it permenantly.

I think it's dead.

UPDATE:

See, I told you it's 40 years old:

Buttons.  Hand-drawn arrow directions.

DINOSAUR.

Yep.  Hello.

Circumlocuting is not a word (apparently)

Well, here I am. A week of silence and I'm back.

Don't worry. It was a VERY productive silence.

I've been busy at work with Week One and the beginning of the semester coming up. Tracking down professors is harder than you might think. Oh, what's that? People who bill $1,000 per hour just don't have the time for little ol' me? Sounds about right, gotcha.

I've been busy at home with cleaning, organizing, finishing the kitchen, researching treadmills and cleaning some more. Like the professors, these projects are sometimes hard to find time to pin down. The sealant oil for the counter tops smells sumthin' fierce.

We've been busily trying to avoid asphyxiation for the last two days (and I'm hoping that we don't kill off my Mom with the fumes this weekend). This avoidance includes super-speed dinners: (example) picture us dashing into the kitchen, ripping open the freezer, grabbing out a handful of microwave burritos (yeah, we're THAT classy) and running back into the dining room to nuc them --hmm, yes, we've recently returned the microwave back to the chair in the dining room after its brief hiatus in the kitchen (it’s becoming a permanent fixture in the dining room). Did I mention that all of this is done in one breath, with our noses plugged, followed by weeping, wailing ("I'M DYING") and gnashing of teeth ...

Yeah, that's about how it is at our house right now (sorry Mom).

Here's hoping that the smell has left the premises by the time we get home from the airport.

I've also been busy with school. Much to my chagrin, it's a lot more work than I'd expected. However, much to my (what's the opposite of chagrin?) anti-chagrin, the reading is fantastically interesting and I'm loving the discussion with my classmates and Professor. I may or may not have only missed points on my first assignment because I verbed a couple of nouns. So what. I'm a linguist. I DO WHAT I WANT.

Nevertheless (and ye verily), I will probably have Blake read through my paper before submitting it next time. No point missing points for frivolous verbing. Thank goodness for having a husband who is the anti-me in all things grammar (meaning that he actually understands it and uses it good --unlike me, you see).

Other than that, yeah, my life's been pretty relaxing.

Dreams of My Futures

I had a dream last night that twenty years from now I am watching the news and the political pundits are saying, "Other than Dick Cheney and Jimmy Carter, Michelle Obama was the worst thing to ever happen to the United States."

I woke up very confused.

What do you think that means?

What a Year for a New Year

I can't believe it's 2010 already.  TWENTY-TEN.  That makes me feel old.  Almost as old as I feel when I say we're doing renovations on the house.  I mean, buying a house is one thing, but doing renovations is a whole level altogether. I feel old.  I also feel pudgy (I blame the delicious food I've been eating during the holidays and the fact that we've had to eat out all this past week as our kitchen is en-flux).

We rang in the new year by watching a movie, and the promptly going to bed at 12:05 a.m.  See, I told you, I'm old.  Actually, Blake was sick, and I was feeling about 80 years old after having painted for two straight days (like I said, painting involves a lot of PAIN).  So, we had good excuses, I swear.

Anyhow, here's what I was doing for the last week of 2009 (plus a lot of Super Mario for Wii):

Painting the basement.  It went from dirty knotty pine to divine in only 5 days.  Since I took this picture, I've painted the floor boards and window wells a bright white, removed the tape, painted some furniture, and cleaned it all up.  Now it's ready for our new exercise equipment.  (Just in time...who wants to exercise in a dark and dreary cave?)

And for the icing on the cake: our new kitchen.  It's not quite finished yet, but it's getting there.  They're coming back tomorrow to install a new fan, change the placement of an electrical box, put in some small shelves and re-tile a portion of the floor. I couldn't be happier with the way it's turning out.  I love it and can't wait to cook again.  We currently have our microwave set up in the dining room, but it just isn't the same.

Renovations aside, as I look back on 2009, it's been a very eventful year:

* We got married in February.
* Spent a week in Mexico in March.
* Blake graduated in April.
* Celebrated both our birthdays in May.
*  Blake took the bar in July.
* Spent almost two glorious weeks at the lake in August.
* Blake started at the DOJ in September.
* Closed on our house and found out that Blake passed the bar on the same day in November.
* Spent a week with my family in Utah for Thanksgiving.
*  Held our annual ugly sweater and sub-for-santa Christmas party in December.
* Renovated the kitchen and basement in December.
* Were blessed with another baby nephew in December (number 8!)
* Spent a wonderful Christmas with Blake's family.
* Rang in the new year with a box of kleenex and a bigger box of cookies.

What a year for a new year.  I'll say.