Bit of Ivory

We got a call from Allstate, which is the other lady’s insurance company. They’ve accepted full liability for the accident, and will be sending an adjuster soon. Because of the high number of accidents in the Utah that day, it may take a bit. Lizzy is currently in the tow company’s yard, waiting to be moved to the repair shop of our choice, which can’t happen until Monday. Allstate is offering a rental car if I need it.

I’ve had a bit of neck pain– mostly stiffness– and a horrendous headache today, which might just be because I didn’t sleep well last night. I haven’t seen a doctor, but if I don’t feel better tomorrow, I probably will.

I miss my car.

I’m trying so hard not to cry. It’s not working very well.

My parents were really nice to me this morning. You see, we had a big snowstorm through the night. My dad took today off, and my sister wasn’t working until this afternoon, so I was the only one that was going to have to dig out in the morning. Mom decided it would be nice if we pulled the van out of the garage and put my car in instead. And they did! I didn’t have to clear off a single bit of snow from Lizzy this morning. The commute was okay, if a bit slow, and I made it to work. Where we were all in a festive kind of a mood, and where I kept getting presents from coworkers and suppliers and stuff like that. And we decided we all wanted to order in, so I ate lunch at my desk and then left to do a bit of last minute shopping. And to deposit my paycheck.

And all was good. I was almost back to work, blasting “Song for Ten” on endless repeat on my iPod, and I stopped at a light. The line was longer than usual, I admit. And I had to stop just a bit shorter than I like– short enough that my iPod slipped off the passenger seat and on to the floor. I bent down to pick it up. . .

and got rear-ended. Apparently the lady in the Honda Pilot wasn’t paying attention– she said she was looking down for just a moment– and couldn’t stop in time. She did try to swerve to miss me, but didn’t quite succeed– her right headlight collided with Lizzy’s left taillight. Smashing up the trunk in the process. The impact wasn’t enough to deploy the airbags, but it sure did a number on my poor car.

I feel okay. A bit of a headache, and a bruise on my leg where it slammed into the dashboard. I’m much more injured in spirit. This is the first time I’ve been in an accident. Well, okay, I’ve been rear-ended before, but it was at low speed with no damage. And I accidentally scraped Lizzy along my brother’s bumper in the driveway. This was different. Police were called. And even though it wasn’t at all my fault, I feel horrible.

Especially because of my car. Lizzy’s pretty old, you see– a 1997 Toyota Corolla. My parents bought her for me to commute in the summer after my freshman year of college, which was 1999. She was in great shape then, and she was still in great shape, except for a bit of paint damage (from the above-mentioned scraping and various other things like flying rocks on freeways). I love that car. I’ve driven her for 8 years. I drove her to the Shakespearean Festival three times, and to Lumos. Other people drove her every once in a while–my brother and I shared her for a couple of years in college, until he bought his own car, and Mom takes her when she doesn’t want to drive the van, but she’s really my car. I named her. I planned to buy her, as soon as my credit cards were paid off. I was going to get her oil changed next weekend, and fill up her tires. I’ve gotten awfully attached to that hunk of metal.

And now I’m mortally afraid that the lady’s insurance will want to total her.

Yeah. Really not doing so well with the not crying thing.

Not in a ughIthinkI’mGoingToThrowUp kind of a way, but in a sick feeling in my soul kind of a way.

I lost my hat.

Not just any hat. My Irish Hiking Coronet hat. A hat made with expensive yarn, a hat that caused me a lot of trouble to make. I finished it in September, but have only been able to wear it for two weeks. I took pictures of it on Saturday. And then– I went to dinner last night, and lost it. I checked with the restaurant and with the store we stopped by before that (to buy the Pirates DVD), but no dice.

It’s all I can do not to break down in tears. The first time I splurge on expensive imported-from-Italy-superwash-merino wool, and I LOST IT. IT’S GONE FOREVER.

I hope whoever picked it up without turning it in gets good use out of it. But now all I have left of my beautiful hat is two crummy pictures.

This is closer to the real color.

:((

I mean, I always knew that music affects you, but this has been such a dramatic change, I’m really quite amazed.

So, on Nov. 1, KOSY started playing Christmas music, right? Well, my boss went to change the station, but rather than changing it straight to KODJ (the oldies station) as we’d discussed, she went to KSFI instead, which is a near-clone of KOSY. It wasn’t as dramatic a change as I’d hoped, but while they played a lot of the same songs, they also played several that KOSY never did, and they didn’t seem to repeat artists and songs as much as KOSY did. I was satisfied.

Until I came to work on Monday, only to discover– TA DA! KSFI has switched to Christmas, too! GAH. Although they weren’t as annoying as KOSY’s Christmas– they stuck mostly to old-school stuff like Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole and Andy Williams and the Carpenters. So I didn’t have to hear any rendition of “Last Christmas, I Gave You My Heart” before Alyson got in, realized that yes, they were playing the Ringalingalinga Ding Dong Ding version of “Sleigh Ride,” and we’d better change the station again. So she did, and this time she went straight to KODJ.

Oh my heck, you guys. What a difference! There’s still some overlap– KOSY was big on 70s soft rock, and KODJ plays it too (they call themselves a Super Hits station, which means they play 60s and 70s music rather than their original format of 50s and 60s), but in a much greater variety. So while I hear Neil Diamond several times a day, it’s a much wider range of his songs (“Forever in Blue Jeans”! “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show”!). KODJ knows that ABBA and Frankie Valli and the Beach Boys had more than one hit– shocking! And they mix up the stuff I’ve heard a lot of lately with stuff I haven’t heard in ages– “Happy Together” by the Turtles and “Hooked on a Feeling” by B.J. Thomas and “I’m a Believer” by the Monkees and “The Mighty Quinn” by Manfred Mann and the original Supremes version of “Can’t Hurry Love” instead of the mediocre Phil Collins remake, and– it’s fantastic, people, it really is. It’s all I can do not to sing out loud when “Sherry” comes on, and I walked into work yesterday filled with glee when I realized that I wouldn’t have to hear “Before He Cheats” or “How to Save a Life” or “Chasing Cars” or any Celine Dion. At all! Not until January, at least! Although my boss has gotten such good comments on the station, that I have a sneaking suspicion she might leave it here, even after KOSY abandons the Christmas Overload format.

I’m sure I’ll get sick of it eventually, but right now I’m so giddy about the music, it makes the day go faster and leaves me SO much less cranky at the end of the day. So I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.

Okay, here’s pictures. Now, keep in mind that I wasn’t really planning on dressing up at all. And then I got a fabulous idea on Friday night. A few trips to thrift stores and costume stores later, and I was set. So what did I go as?

Yup. That’s me, Tracy Turnblad. I figured, hey, I haven’t lost the weight I wanted to, so why not use it to my advantage?

I think I did pretty well for my time limitations, don’t you?

Well, enough of me. Look at my cute nephew and niece!

Thomas as Peter Pan. He also had a little yellow puffball with wings that was his Tinkerbell, but he wouldn’t keep a hold of it.

Thomas and Anna together, with Anna in her BYU Cheerleading outfit. Aren’t they the cutest things?

Yup, it’s begun. I’ve only been listening to it for an hour, and I’m already sick of it.

I really need my boss to come in so she can switch it to the oldies station.

I dressed up for Halloween this year. I was too tired to upload any pics last night, but when I get home, I’ll do so. ‘Cause I really want ya’ll to see my awesome costume.

Going to the eye doctor this afternoon. Maybe he can actually find a solution to my dry, red, itchy eye problem (now with icky film that sticks to my contacts and makes it impossible to see!). I really hope, though, that the solution isn’t going back to glasses full time. I haven’t worn glasses since I was twelve.

Have I mentioned that I’m going to be an aunt again? My SiL is expecting in March. And. . . it’s another girl! Right now the frontrunner for the name is Katherine, to be called Kate. I think Anna and Kate are adorable together.

In the meantime, Thomas turns one next week. Where has the time gone? He was Peter Pan for Halloween. So cute! Anna was a BYU cheerleader. Also cute! I can’t stand how adorable my niece and nephew are, really. Especially now that Anna has started saying my name– I’m “Emmy.” Makes me melt every time.

Dude, this music is just reminding me how behind I am on my Christmas knitting. Eek! I’d better stop typing and start knitting. Now if only I could figure out where the extra stitch is coming from on the border for the silk scarf I’m knitting for my aunt. . .

So, two Wednesdays back (10/10), I decided that I wanted to prove to myself that KOSY plays the same songs and artists over and over and over again. So I started keeping track of all the songs played between 8:00 am and 5:00 pm for one whole week, with the help of KOSY.com. I had to reconstruct what was played during my lunch hour, so I might have missed a few songs. I ended up doing 6 days, actually, because I thought that the first Wednesday was kind of atypical, and wanted to compare (I was right). I took Thursday off from my spreadsheet (yes, a spreadsheet), and on Friday began compiling my data. I would have posted this yesterday, but our internet went kaput (hopefully it will be fixed by the time I get home).

Quick Facts:

Each day there was at least one song played twice. On Wednesday 10/17, two songs were played twice. On Wednesday 10/10 and Monday 10/15, the same song (“Chasing Cars” by Snow Patrol) was played twice; in other words, the same song was played twice twice.

Each day except Tuesday, at least one artist had their songs played 4 times. Most days there were multiple artists with 4 plays.

On Friday 10/12, a whopping 16 artists had multiple plays, including 4 artists with at least 4 songs played.

14 artists had a song played on each of the 6 days. Of those 14, 5 of them had only one song played, and one artist, Michael Bublé, had one song (“Everything”) played all but one of his plays, making it 6 songs that were played each day for 6 days.

13 artists had songs played 5 of the 6 days. Of those, 2 had the same song played. One group (Rascal Flatts) had one song (“My Wish”) played 5/6 days, in addition to other songs.

Elton John was the most played artist, with 20 plays (13 unique songs). Following close behind were Celine Dion and Phil Collins, who each had 17 plays, with 10 unique songs.

In addition to the 27 artists mentioned above, 126 artists were played more than once. Of those, 70 had only one song played (some of these were one-hit wonders; most were not).

Want more detail? Click the link!

[Read more →]

So, a couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about genres and how the academy pretty much dismisses genre fiction out of hand. In it, I mentioned that I have Issues with Critical Theory, but that that was a whole nother post. Well. Here it is. [Read more →]

Note: Many thanks and respect to Robin McKinley, whose recent post and encouragement got me to finally type this out.

I’ve been thinking. About the kind of reading I do, and what that means to my chosen profession. [Read more →]

So, yesterday and the day before, I ended up taking my very first sick days since I started working here. That’s a pretty good track record, eh? Anyway, I woke up that morning feeling like I hadn’t gotten any sleep at all (and having pulled a few all-nighters in my life, I *do* know how that feels), but I went to work anyway. Then I started feeling queasy. And then I started feeling achy.

Yup. All the signs of flu.

At about 10:15, I couldn’t take it any more. If I didn’t go home soon, I’d end up throwing up in the garbage can. They have quite enough of that with our patients– they don’t need it with the employees! So I called my supervisor, who was kind enough to take over for me.

Anyway. I shall spare you all the gory details. It must have been a 24-hour bug , because I was feeling much better yesterday, but not well enough to come back in. It was that stage where, while you’re laying down, you feel almost completely normal, and you wonder if you’re just milking it and should just suck it up and do something productive. Then you actually get up and realize that, no, there’s still something seriously wrong with you.

Anyway, I’m back at work today, but still not feeling quite 100%. This being-vertical thing is going to take some getting used to.

I did use the horizontal time semi-productively, though– I got about halfway through Mansfield Park (which is the only Austen novel I don’t tend to pick up and read at least once a year– I think I’ve only read it 4 times, tops, and two of those readings were for classes– and is therefore the one I’m least familiar with), and found that I’m enjoying it more this time last previous readings. Maybe I’m getting used to it.

In the meantime, my 4-year Dell Complete Care/Warranty has now paid for itself. My USB ports on Ginevra suddenly stopped working a few weeks ago. I thought at first that it was just my laptop mouse that had died, but then my camera wouldn’t connect either. I finally got on Dell’s support chat, and after going through several pointless driver updates and diagnostics, they agreed with me that they were simply fried and agreed to send a tech out to replace my motherboard. Which he did, on Saturday. And they worked again! For about an hour. I’d reconnected my mouse and left the room for a moment, only to come in and find my laptop turned off. When I got it booted up again, the USB ports were not working. AGAIN. My dad realized that there must be a short in my laptop mouse that was causing the USB power supply to overheat. In any case, they were fried again. This time I sent Dell an e-mail, and they called back, and I managed to make my needs understood through the language barrier (I’m sure the rep on the other end was very intelligent, but his accent was quite thick), and he agreed to replace the motherboard again. The Dell tech came again last night, and I refrained from using my mouse (I’m going to buy a new one), and aside from a slight scare that probably can be blamed on my camera’s battery being low, it seems all is right with Ginevra. Now I can back her up and reinstall XP, which I’ve been wanting to do for months.

But, yeah. Two new motherboards in 5 days. The warranty is definitely worth it.

Wanna see my pretty 100% alpaca yarn that I splurged on at the Great Basin Fiber Arts Fair on Saturday? No? Oh, well. I’m linking it anyway.