Rest In Peace, Doug Feiger

Doug Fieger, lead singer of The Knack, has passed away.

These are two of my most favorite songs *ever*.

Computer woes...

This is getting to be a little bit insane. Just before Christmas, Didge and I both had our computers go kaput on the same day. Mine was a hard drive issue, evidently, and his? Myriad issues that began, we think, with the wireless card going bad. Okay, fine - we decided to go computerless for a while, since we were spending way, way too much time online anyway.

Enter the loaner PC. Enter the virus. Or was it? It could have been something due to his downloading Windows Service Pack 3. More issues ensued - something to do with the wrong kind of RAM having been installed on that machine a couple of years ago. He got it all worked out - or did he? Once the RAM issue was solved, the other nonsense came back. Taking Service Pack 3 off solved the issues that kept...cropping....up. Fun, fun, fun.

I got my new (cough) PC, and just in the nick of time - Didge needed it for a lot of frantic research fueled by the appearance on his finally fixed computer of the dreaded (duhn duhn duhnnnnn) BSoD - Blue Screen of Death. Just after the surprisingly protracted final wave of purging my past lives (ha!), Didge set up Entertainment Central in the living room - and on Tuesday, downloaded an update that is doing this. According to Didge, it's gotten to Vista and Windows 7 machines, too, but don't quote me on that - I don't know his sources. I just know that he got the damn thing of my computer last night as soon as he read what he read. As for his? He was up until about 5am working on it. Whee.

So - for Valentine's Day, Didge and I would like a day without BS computer issues due to stuff the manufacterer says you're supposed to download and install in order for all to be right with the world.

And a one, and a two, and a slight rename...and snow.

New yoga blog was called Life, the Universe, and Yoga for all of one day. I decided its web addy was the perfect name, and changed it to 42 Yoga in short order. Fun part, though, because of how I've chosen to set up the title and description, it still shows in Blogger's listings as Life, the Universe, and Yoga. This has been somewhat frustrating.

We had snow yesterday - in Augusta, GA, no less. Every now and again we'll get a good hit of it, and yesterday was one of those nows and agains. Loved every minute of it, and would love some more. I'm sore from running and playing, but am nevertheless totally relaxed.

And I got to smack Didge with a snowball to get him back for all those vile flatulence videos he's so keen on watching of late.

Albino brain chiggers and hot chocolate...

We're going to get snow, wethinks! In Augusta, Georgia!

Didge and I are ready - he set up his mega wall of entertainment nerdness last night. We did not join the traditional regional frey for bread, milk, and fueling up our cars. Who needs such a stash when you have a computer wired up to a stereo wired up to a gaming system alongside a separate television dedicated to a vintage Atari system? It rules. We're happy.

And we're going to get to play in the snow, free of supermarket rush bumps and bruises!

Almost live from the Didgeridoo household...

I'm smack dab in the middle of purging "Area 3" - the last of the big to-be-purged hotspots that I thought I'd purged already and learned over the weekend I really hadn't. Won't say I'm almost finished with it, although I really think I am. Anyway, I finally managed to upload some videos from the past week - when Didge acquired a whoopee cushion.

He looooves his whoopee cushion. Didge is someone who is not at all ashamed of embracing and expressing his inner child, and that's one of the things I love so much about him. However, sometimes my nerves (as well as the dog's) do wind up a tad frazzled. Case in point, the first video -

Didgeridoo Boy doles our some whoopee cushion trauma:



Yeah. You feel me, right?

But he wasn't finished. He decided to liven up the "fun" (ahem) that will forever be known as The Saturday GKG Realized Purging Takes Forever (hence the messy house). And just know that this is only thirty seconds or so of what transpired. Notice the cat on top of the refrigerator -

More Didgeridoo Boy and his beloved whoopee cushion (just click play - the preview's out of whack, but the video works):



At least the dog is over her fear of the thing.

Holy improvements, Batman!

Seriously good morning in the Didgeridoo household! It was so nice to wake up to a decluttered bedroom. This project isn't finished by any stretch of the imagination, but it's being tackled quite efficiently and I am a seriously happy little person. The next step is to ransack the room that will become our bedroom again - and to completely avoid thinking about what it is going to be like moving the bed and dresser down the stairs.

Not. Thinking. About. That.

In a really cool husbandly move, Didge encouraged me to start a yoga blog, so I did - Life, the Universe, and Yoga. Yes, that would be a direct play on Douglas Adams. Why do you ask? It's in the url, too - 42yoga.blogspot.com. I'm wrangling over whether or not to include a yoga-mat-as-towel reference, but that might be something only hardcore Hitchhiker freaks would get.

Didge and I have decided to bite the our-home-isn't-perfect bullet and have some friends over on Saturday. Very, very excited about this - it'll be the first time we've all been in the same room since 1991. And get this: Didge was dating one of them at the time (I was in the unfortunate learning experience of my first marriage). It's kicked my inner Martha Stewart into high gear - there should be a menu, and playlists, and...and...and... Heaven knows, I do love being a hostess. I used to be able to put together a spur-of-the-moment dinner party, centerpiece and all, in half an hour. Few things fire me up more than planning a happening - it gets scary.

And speaking of hostessy, girly stuff, Kimberly Wilson's blog introduced me to Fancy Nancy and her downloadable party kit. Like Kimberly, I am wondering why the heck we didn't have anything this damned cool when I was a kid. Granted, I *did* have a purple bicycle with a paisley banana seat and a kick-butt playhouse in my back yard, but I feel somewhat deprived over the lack of Fancy Nancy in my childhood. (Well, I *did* have Ramona the Brave, too, but *still*. Fancy Nancy has *flair*.)

Tons to do today, plus another blog entry to write, so I should be off. Have an utterly fantabulous Monday!

Hoards...

Alright, I'm officially paranoid. I thought I had purged in the past, but yesterday was a lightshed. I thought I would spend a couple of leisurely hours on the last round of purging, then about an hour arranging, and be finished quickly so Didge and I could move some furniture around before dinner.

No.

At 9pm, I gave the hell up. Purging took until about 7pm, and this still isn't the last round. I found things that there was simply no good reason to hold on to, stacks of mail from home offices of my past that had absolutely no value whatsoever, and piles of printed material from long-gone phases of brief interest. There are six bags of trash waiting for Thursday morning pickup. I have five bags of clothes going to Goodwill. There's more to be gone through, although I would say I have half of it knocked out now. I think.

I think what might have happened is a collection of "good enough" attempts at clearing out all of this crap. Didge taking up residence (as husbands do) finally necessitated diving in and really getting it all done, so until this point I had no freaking clue I'd amassed this much shit. Mind you, I'm not beating myself up, I'm honestly in total shock over how profound my apparent desire to avoid dealing with all of that had become.

I'm really wishing I hadn't watched an OnDemand marathon of A&E's "Hoarders" a couple of weekends ago when I was recovering from bronchitis.

Heck yes...

The drama with the downtown eatery is all over. And yesterday's jot into said establishment went down without any kind of uncomfortable hitch - owner was polite, Didge was polite, and I learned I have perfected a state of engaged blase (there should be an accent over that "e", but snuff it)that will prove most beneficial should such a situation ever arise again. The whole thing was over in a flash, in the same way a dental appointment you've been dreading would be.

Speaking of things dreaded, Didge and I started the process of proving we're on the same page domestically (cough, cough, ahem) last night. I know we have big things in store for today, but I don't know what those things are, which means I need to get my head around all of that instead of sitting in the middle of the living room writing a blog entry. Right?

I wonder if he would object to having his future man cave be the storage room, that we gradually purge as he decides just what he would like to put in there? Yes, it would mean his man cave would be the last room we complete, but he's getting a wall of guy geekdom goodness - there's going to be a computer in the living room (on a decorative stand) that is controlling his wall of tv/music/gaming, for goodness' sake! (Hang on a sec while I bask in the glory of my own good-wifedom.)

(I just basked so hard I'm stumped with regards to what to write next.)

(Perhaps that's a sign I need to shut up and get to work.)

By Monday...

By Monday, I would like to have my graphics woes done away with. I'm not ready to shell out the bucks for Photoshop just yet, but I really miss the graphics capabilities of my Mac already. I'm still planning to have my Mac looked at - if it can be fixed, I will have it fixed - but that's not high on the list of priorities at the moment.

And then there's everything else. Didge and I are getting seriously domestic, which I suppose was inevitable, but something about wedding rings and the demise of holiday stress has us wanting to have friends over for drinks and edibles. Life's falling into a quiet (for us), but pleasant pattern: We have a "Sam's Day" and a snack shelf, and are gradually amassing a collection of favorite down-time haunts. I thought this kind of thing happened much later in a relationship - even though we're married, Didge and I haven't officially been together even six months. It must have something to do with our having known each other for so long...

...and DAMN, was that a tangent or what? Sorry! Anyway, we're wanting to set up what Didge is calling the "Entertainment Complex" in our living room. I'm down with it, provided I can have my yoga space. All of our stuff will be wired through the now rebuilt "loaner" pc - I have no idea how he's going to do it, and just hope he doesn't shock himself across the room a'la the Roaming Gnome's "Oh, GROW UP!" moment. I don't want to have to call 911 and tell them my husband's gone sailing due to trying to build our own little private Times Square.

Other than yoga spaces and computer/tv stuff, Didge and I have been having a fun time dealing with his former employer, a downtown eatery who cares little for paying former employees, nevermind sending them their W2's. Didge got a little fiery publicly, which I understand but am not entirely too happy about, but they're essentially giving him hush money - which he has to go pick up this afternoon. Was the confusion of the past few months the owner's or the then-manager's fault? Hm. One's blaming the other. And the owner says the W2's aren't his problem, that's all up to his payroll company. He also said some hugely insulting things about Didge which, while I can understand him being angry at some of what Didge said, were astoundingly low blows, and even included an insult to one of Didge's good friends (just totally out of left field). At any rate, I hope Didge has saved all of the emails from a while back when they were telling him they owed him no money, didn't offer pay stubs, and didn't keep such records. I'm really happy five months of stress from dealing with this place is over as of today. (I hope.)

Grr. Hiss.

Now you see why I really, really need my yoga space again!

Be patient with me...

Ugly graphic at the top, huh? Well, at present I am trying to put that together using a pc. Paint. Yeah.

So.

Be patient. Better things are coming.

Bleachin' whoopee...

Didgeridoo Boy bought a bleach kit a while ago, and applied it to his hair today. Whoa. He glows! My husband glows! His hair is yellow, but he's happy with it and it works on him, so it's fine. Really. However, I didn't necessarily feel that way when he had on a *red* t-shirt with *blue* jeans. Combined with his yellow hair, he was quite the primary color study. There is some concern about the slight orangey-ness, but it's fine. Really. Mercy, it's bright.

We're on a bit of a rock shirt kick lately, and today he decided he had to have the very same GNR shirt I purchased. Actually, he'd found the thing, I just bought it first. But whatever. We have matching GNR shirts now.

Perhaps I should dye my hair red so we would be the ketchup and mustard GNR couple.

Other than hair and shirts, Didge has announced his intentions to become a (now, get this) "fartiste", and acquired a whoopee cushion this afternoon. I don't know what all of this means, but I'm pretty sure it can't mean anything at all good.

But it's fine. It's all fine. Really.

It's not pink.

It's not pink.

It's silver.

And it's not a MacBook Pro.

It's an HP Pavilion.

But I kind of like it's silvery cuteness...the track pad is shiny enough to double as a mirror!

Dadgum it!

Married life has brought with it something frightening: Practicality.

Yes, I need rest. Yes, I need yoga. Yes, I need to get out and get some fresh air from time to time. Yes, I can go to the grocery store without my toes being done (it's too cold for open toes, anyway). Yes, I realize that decorating a home can be a slow process, a labor of love, and that's okay. Yes, I need to get back into the habit of writing things down.

And, oh...hell, ye gods, it pains me so to say this.

Yes. I can order a new computer. And it can be a PC. Why? More bang for my computer buck.

But it's going to be pink. So there.