the everyday adventures of sabrina » stories

in which i think i made someone’s day better

sabrina — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 21:31:51 +0000

So I had something kinda cool happen to me yesterday. I had to go to the post office to mail something. It was Friday at 5 so there was this huge long line. Plod, plod, plod through the line. And I got up there, and got your usual tired, end of the day, customers are tired, everybody’s cranky, frontline postal employee. Plod, plod, plod. And the printer kept breaking so she was getting progressively more and more cranky. But finally, it printed my postage, and before she rang me up, I asked for a book of Forever stamps.

She answered, they’re out of Forever stamps, until Tuesday, and looked at me like she was kind of expecting me to get mad. But I just said, okay, well, do you have any regular first class stamps? (Seriously, it’s stamps, who gets mad over stamps?) So she got out the stamp varieties and held them out for me to pick one. I picked out the Black Heritage ones. She immediately perked up and became totally enthusiastic.

The stamp I chose features Anna Julia Cooper, who was an educator, activist, and the fourth black woman in American history to earn a Ph.D, from the Sorbonne, no less. She asked if I’ve got a passport, and when I said yeah, she said that she’s got a quote in there, and I promised to go look for it. She was telling me how they get to learn about all kinds of history, every time the Post Office puts out a new stamp, and how much fun it was. And she was just so enthusiastic, telling me all this stuff about this historical figure that I’d never heard of. It was, like, Instant Happy Postal Worker, just add stamps. It kind of made my day too, actually.

The passport quote is: The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class – it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity.

So now I have a story, I have learned something new, and I have stamps. Pretty awesome, huh?

a little life lesson for you all to learn from

sabrina — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 22:34:51 +0000

so, as you might have heard, i recently settled a little debate between the irs and me regarding whether or not i had in fact filed my 2003 tax return. (me: of course i have, i always file my taxes, and your stupid electronic system’s braindamage is not my problem. them: oh yes it is, sweetcheeks.) part of the problem was that i would have just redone the goddamn taxes from scratch (having long since lost my TurboTax 2003 disk) except for the minor problem of having mislaid my file folder of tax papers for tax year 2003.

now, as you may or may not recall, in early 2004, i was busily looking for a new apartment, signing papers for one, finding money to pay for the move, packing, and, finally, moving. i in fact moved in april of 2004. i filed my taxes electronically on the morning of april 15 — i recall, because i had insomnia that night, so i gave up on sleep at around 2AM, then got up and did my taxes. (really, you’d think the taxes would have put me back to sleep, but nooooo.) it actually worked out to my benefit, because of course the evening of april 15, everyone’s servers exploded due to those who procrastinated ever so slightly more than i. (not that i hadn’t planned to do my taxes that evening. it was just that, with the insomnia and all, i had nothing better to do than my taxes.) after that, the tax information got packed — i remembered very distinctly putting it someplace specific so that i wouldn’t lose it, in case i needed it. it is to this day a mystery why i didn’t leave it with all my other goddamn files of back tax years.

i never did find that goddamn folder, and wouldn’t you know it, that’s the one year i ever had an issue with my taxes?

fast forward a couple of years, and the irs is getting ever more cranky about this strange gap in my taxpaying history, and i cannot find that file. i mean, it’s the file folder with everything — W2s, 1099s, mortgage interest statements, donation receipts, everything. it’s the file. and i have no clue, none — for years running, i have no idea! — what i did with it, despite having made a point to put it some place i wouldn’t lose it. in the end, i started running down the list of everybody i can remember, trying to get duplicate papers for everything — which is a pain in the ass, because you try remembering everyone you might have done tax-related business with five years ago. in the end, i actually stooped to calling the irs (which, honestly, should probably have been step #1, but since i am Denial Girl, step #1 was, well, denial), and the nice lady said “oh, do you still have a copy of your 1040? just send it to us, don’t worry about the rest — everybody sends us your W2 and 1099s anyways.” and since i had filed electronically and had saved myself a PDF — like i always do — i did in fact still have my 1040 (and nothing else).

so i mailed it in, and now, three months later, i’m all good. denial is really, i must admit, an ineffectual approach to this sort of situation. oh well.

but now we come to the life lesson part of the story.

you ever have something in your house that you know what’s in it, you don’t have to look? i mean, you’re quite sure what’s in it, and you don’t have to deal with that (nor do you want to), so you’re not even going to open it?

so i was cleaning my office this afternoon, because frankly it was a fucking mess, and it got so bad i couldn’t stand it anymore (chiefly driven by my attempt to start cleaning yesterday afternoon, which in fact resulted in increased mess), so i went through every bit of paper i had been piling up for a rainy day, shredded everything that looked interesting, pitched every single envelope, sorted the rest, pitched a bunch more crap i didn’t care about, shredded some more stuff, generated a huge trash bag of ripped-open envelopes and the stupid inserts they put in your electric bill and another huge bag full of shredded goodness, and as i was transferring some files from my filing cabinet into a filing box i’d newly emptied of piled-up old mail i didn’t care about in 2006 and sure-hell didn’t care about now, i noticed a banker’s envelope leaning against my bookshelf. now, this envelope was full of correspondance, from a while ago — i’d briefly enjoyed some cross-Atlantic penpal chatter after having been bored one day and putting a penpal ad in SFX magazine, which to this day remains the one and only magazine to which i have ever subscribed which enjoys the privilege of my actually reading every single issue as soon as it arrived, though i digress — and we’d all long since quit writing. by ‘long since,’ i mean, since i lived in hyde park. where i moved out of in early 2004. i thought to myself, well, i’m throwing shit out, i might as well dump that shit. so i unwrapped the closure on the folder, and sure enough, piles of letters and unused airmail envelopes inside, … along with a bright red hanging file folder.

i always store all my tax files in bright red hanging file folders.

yes kids, after four long years of searching, in two different apartments, and after having finally gotten the goddamn mess figured out with the IRS, i have finally got my 2003 tax folder back.

…

and that is why you should always obey the two year rule, because if you don’t, you assume you know what it is that you’re ignoring, but since you’ve ignored it for years now, you’re wrong, and man, doesn’t that make you feel like a damnfool idiot?

but now, if you’ll excuse me, i have to vacuum and try to forget what a damnfool idiot i am.

a table, a table; my kingdom for a table!

sabrina — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 23:09:11 +0000

i recently rearranged my apartment slightly, which has led to a Crisis™.

you see, i have very little in the way of furniture. when i say “very little,” i mean i have a desk and chair, an easy chair, a futon to sleep on, two cat trees, an ikea wardrobe and dresser, and some wire baker’s racks. since i no longer live in a studio and the futon can no longer do double duty, when i have company over, they have to sit on folding camping chairs. so, recently when i decided to go back to school, i needed to find a place where i could sit and do homework. i have a desk — a rather nice, large desk, actually — but it is covered with computer stuff (a display, two laptops, speakers, full-sized keyboard, two mice, et cetera) and so it’s ineligible for study nook status. so i decided to relocate my kitchen table — a vinyl-topped card table (but a nice one) from the kitchen to the office. this choice renders my office full (i have to fold up and move the table if i want to open my filing cabinet), but at least it’s someplace to put books.

of course that means my kitchen is empty and now i don’t have any work space (or, perhaps more accurately based on recent historical usage patterns, any “pile crap up rather than putting it away where it belongs” space). so i have been searching for a table.

i have a very specific vision of what i want in the way of a kitchen table: i want a non-wood, lightweight, inexpensive table that i don’t have to take care of. i want something that i can get flour all over it when i want to knead bread dough. i want something that i can leave cold glasses of ice water sitting on without a coaster. i want a table i can carry upstairs to my apartment by myself. i have a very specific image of my Dream Table™: it’s formica-topped, has a leaf, and four legs, which come off easily so i can fit it in my car and carry it up my stairs. i want someone to find this table in their basement and sell it to me for $10 or $20. the trouble is that the intarwebs are not coming through for me on the “people cleaning out their basement for convenient prices” front. (also troublesome is the hipster kitsch revival meaning that although all i want is a table i don’t have to piss and moan about taking care of, everyone else is going to be competing for the swank retro boomerang pattern or for the “ironic” green ice print that’s so tacky it’s hip (…if you’re still in college), and so even if someone does find my Dream Table in their basement, everyone else will read the ad it appears in before me, and snatch it out of my fingers.)

despite this, i cannot find it in my soul to dedicate significant swathes of time to haunting ad sites in search of the Dream Table. i spend an hour or two a week scanning sites. the energy required to stalk ad sites multiple times daily is beyond me. at heart, i am a slacker who believes lots of people have useless crap in their basements, and so, if an ad goes by once and i miss it, there will inevitably be another later on. and perhaps then my dilettantish efforts at searching will be happily synchronized with someone’s efforts to get said Grandma’s Old Useless Crap Table out of the basement. oh frabjous day!

the only question is how long must i wait for this celestial Dream Table/Useless Crap synchronicity to occur… and will i lose patience before it does?

so far, i have been searching on craigslist (and lest you think i am not willing to go the extra mile, i have branched out from chicago.craigslist.org to milwaukee, champaign-urbana, peoria, and even indianapolis). i have been searching the chicago reader classified ads. i have searched for local flea markets and estate sales. i have joined the chicago freecycle group. and friends, i am still just not having much luck.

i admit that i do have some sort of aesthetic that i’m requiring be fulfilled in my Dream Table. specifically, when it comes to formica/laminate prints, i do not want that skanky faux-butcher’s block print. i’m okay with faux woodgrain; i just don’t want that ugly, nasty brown fake plank design. it transcends kitsch and retro; it goes beyond the call of duty for tacky. it is ugly and while my interior design scheme may in fact look like Target Clearance Chic i have at least enough good taste to just say no to “blindingly hideous.”

naturally, that is the only sort of table i am having any luck finding.

oh, i’ve found lovely dinette sets that i would happily call Dream Table candidates if not for minor problems like “For Pickup Only – Albuquerque” or “Must pick up – Nashua, NH.” i contemplated for days a $10 table in Kokomo, Indiana, three hours away; i deliberated for longer than i really should have over a five-piece set in excellent condition that i could have had for the $0.99 opening bid price and a drive to Hutchinson, Minnesota (slightly less than 8 hours according to mapquest, not counting snow conditions). but apparently people in and around chicago are selling formica-topped tables either in rickety condition (i’m not talking “slight chip on corner”; i’m talking “leg not stable so place it against a wall”) or only with that ugly freaking fake wood that i detest. of course i could use a tablecloth but i would know that under the cloak of fabric lay shameful ugliness, and my soul would wither.

for now, i am continuing the cheapskate hunt. i don’t want to buy new. i know someone has my table in their basement or attic. i want to rescue it and give it a loving new home; i want to save it from the landfill. but, dammit, i just didn’t think it would be this much effort to buy someone’s crappy old kitchen table. sigh.

beams

sabrina — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 04:41:35 +0000

so. scene:

there i was, an average sunday afternoon at home. nothing much going on. i was, in fact, cleaning my kitchen and doing the laundry. my hair was pushed back with a plastic headband to keep it out of my face; i was wearing khakis stained with pink paint from painting my bathroom, a t-shirt wherein a nerdy joke about emacs versus vi was being explained in comic form and, horror of horrors, i had grabbed a pair of Doc Marten sandals to put on over my socked feet while i ran downstairs to the basement to pull out the last load of laundry.

i had just gotten it upstairs and dumped it out on the bed to be folded and put away when m. showed up at my door with some soup he’d made. i went downstairs to answer the door … and he said, “get in the car!”

he then proceeded to steal me off to the hopleaf, one of my favorite beer-fan bars in the city, where others were lying in wait for us. we had a fantastic dinner (venison! and their wonderful mussels! and the “unhealthiest appetizer ever”! and the apple fritters (by which they mean deep fried tart apple slices with crème anglaise) and the chocolate torte thing (that was so dense with dark chocolate that we kept cracking jokes about how it was about to collapse into a black hole — okay, yes, two of the people there work at Argonne and we’re all giant nerds; shush)) were delicious, and of course the beers were marvellous. (i was having a very Unibroue evening, so several glasses of Maudite were had, along with a mug of warm Quelque Chose, though i did start out with some St. Louis framboise which was also excellent.) but best of all was the company of my friends.

this was an awesome birthday, even if i was caught, in fact not dead, in public wearing socks with sandals. :)

y’all, i have a bad history with “weekend getaways”

sabrina — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 04:01:00 +0000

friday, the thirteenth of october:
a tale of adventure, madcap hijinks, and the search for a
relaxing weekend in a baltimore suburb vacationing with friends.
a play in one act
(mostly because by the time i got done typing out Act I i was too disheartened to continue with Acts II and III).Dramatis Personae:
sabrina, a girl
american airlines, the weenies
the nice lady from national’s traveler’s aid desk, a woman
metro, the first public transport
the nice lady from amtrak, a woman
marc, the second public transport
some commuter bus place, hell if i know, the third public transport
the cash admissions guy at laurel park racetrack, a man
the pre-paid admissions woman at laurel park racetrack, a woman
the programs guy at laurel park racetrack, a man
the dispatcher from Taxi-Taxi, a woman
the taxi driver from Taxi-Taxi, a man
john the firefighter,
super shuttle, the incompentent and overpriced morons
and a supporting cast of thousands. ACT Isetting: friday morning, the thirteenth of october 2006, 4:30 AM CT: sabrina
[walks to el. boards el. successfully arrives at chicago o’hare international airport, where she learns that her 0625 to dulles international aiport has been cancelled. checks voice mail, where american airlines has left her a voice mail informing her of same, and that they have put her on a 1030 flight instead.]

sabrina
[manages through some heretofore unheard-of strength of will to avoid desperate suicide by bashing her head into the wall in order to avoid spending hour after unnecessary hour at ORD.]
was it not enough that i left the house at 4AM? now my flight is cancelled! oh woe! woe! woe! now put me on another damn flight!

american airlines
how’s 6:30 sound? into ronald reagan washington national long-ass name airport instead? that work?

sabrina
dude, you totally could’ve just done that the first time you rescheduled me. i am so on board with this plan.

american airlines
rock on.

sabrina
[boards plane at 06whatever.]

american airlines
[lands at 0907 ET]

sabrina
hooray! this is the best thing ever! i landed before my original flight was going to land despite taking off later, and i am geographically much closer to my destination than i would have otherwise been! hooray! oh, dang, all my transit plans are now in upheaval. i shall inquire at the Traveler’s Aid desk.

sabrina
hello, nice lady from the national traveler’s aid desk. i see on this little free map you have helpfully provided that my destination, laurel, maryland, has a little “MARC” icon on it, and “MARC” is indicated, by said map’s legend, to be your local commuter rail service. can i get to there from here?

nice lady from the national traveler’s aid desk
sure thing. hop on the yellow line, transfer to the red line at gallery, get off at union station, hop on a marc train. enjoy!

sabrina
i love this plan. nothing can go wrong today! …

sabrina
[09:50 ET. get on yellow line. transfer to red line at gallery, after watching some sort of amusing interlude wherein two teenage idiots are denying that they know each other after getting busted by a metro security guard for something, which suits me just fine because they shoved onto the train in front of me and several other be-suitcased individuals and i am not a forgiving soul.
10:20 ET. arrive at union station.]

sabrina
hello, nice lady from amtrak! i see on this map here that i can take a marc train to laurel, maryland. true?

nice lady from amtrak
true. one way or round trip? oh, really, you take the train to odenton and transfer to a bus, the bus takes you to laurel.

sabrina
sweet. one way, please!

sabrina
[11:15 ET. boards train.]

MARC train
[takes me to odenton. MARC double-decker commuter trains are, by the way, indistinguishable from Metra trains except for their livery: they seem to have little maryland flags on them. how twee. anyways.]

crack-addled commuter bus co, inc.
[waits at train station.]

sabrina and ten thousand elderly men

[board bus.]

sabrina
[who is dim but not stupid]
is this the bus to laurel?

crack-addled commuter bus co, inc
laurel race track.

sabrina
you said “laurel” and that’s good enough for me!
[piles aboard with suitcase and carry-on, with the ten thousand elderly men who are all, sabrina now sees, discussing horse racing.]

crack-addled commuter bus co, inc
[drives to laurel park race track. kicks everyone off bus.]

sabrina
say, do you know where i can get a cab around here?

crack-addled commuter bus co, inc
hell if i know. have a nice day and get off my bus!

sabrina
[12:00 ET. stares at her surroundings.]
i would appear to be at a horse racing track out in the middle of nowhere. this was not at all what i had had in mind. oh well, i’ll go ask someone for the number to call a cab.

ten thousand elderly gentlemen
[go very, very slowly, through the admissions queues.]

sabrina
[seeing no other alternative, like say an information desk, gets in the admissions line. upon arriving at the head of the line, asks if they know the number of a cab company.]

the cash admissions guy from laurel park racetrack
hell if i know, go ask the pre-paid admissions woman.

sabrina
hey, do you know how i can call a cab?

the pre-paid admissions woman from laurel park racetrack
what the hell are you doing in my line asking me for a cab?

sabrina
…dude, i just need a cab. chill out.

the pre-paid admissions woman from laurel park racetrack
fine, jesus. go inside and ask the programs guy. and get out of my line!

sabrina
[hauls suitcase and carry-on up the ramp to the programs desk.]
do you happen to know how i can get a cab?

the programs guy at laurel park racetrack
go ask the pre-paid admissions woman, she’ll call you a cab.

sabrina
[finally beginning to get a bad feeling about all this]
um, she sent me to you. she said you’d have the phone book?

the programs guy at laurel park racetrack
fine, jesus. give me a minute.
[grudgingly searches for and eventually hands over a coffee-stained, messy card for a very creatively-named cab company called “Taxi-Taxi.”]

sabrina
thank you, kind sir! it has been a pleasure!
[12:10 ET. walks outside, calls cab company.]

dispatcher from Taxi-Taxi
Taxi-Taxi, whaddya want?

sabrina
hi, i need a cab from the laurel park racetrack to the holiday inn in laurel.

dispatcher from Taxi-Taxi
ten minutes. [hangs up]

sabrina
well, this isn’t so bad! it’s such a beautiful day outside. so blue-skied and temperate. things could be worse than waiting here on such a nice day for my taxicab to the hotel. i guess i should just hang back and relax!

sabrina’s phone
[12:20 ET.]
“twenty, twenty, twenty-four hours to go-o-oh, i wanna be sedated!
nothin’ to do, nowhere to go-o-oh, i wanna be sedated!”

driver from Taxi-Taxi
hi, i’m here, where are you?

sabrina
here? where? i don’t see a cab.

driver from Taxi-Taxi
at the main entrance?

sabrina
hmm. i’m at the “grandstand entrance,” i don’t know if that’s different. do you see a yellow penske truck?

driver from Taxi-Taxi
hmm, no. are you at the restaurant?

sabrina
hmm, no, i don’t see a restaurant. do you see the outer wall of the racetrack with the horses on it? [repeat Q&A session with other fine local checkpoints including the railroad tracks, the green awning, the red awning, the ambulance, the bus parking lot, the cab driver’s white cab, sabrina’s lime-green winter coat, and a horsie.]

driver from Taxi-Taxi
hmm, no. let me ask someone here and see if they know where you are.

driver from Taxi-Taxi
well, this is apparently the public entrance. are there any signs around you?

sabrina
just a sign that says “thank you for coming to the laurel park racetrack.”

driver from Taxi-Taxi
laurel park racetrack? are you serious?

sabrina
um. yes? laurel park racetrack? in laurel?

driver from Taxi-Taxi
dude. the dispatcher said you were at the racetrack restaurant in fort washington. i’m like 45 miles away.

sabrina
i hate my life. so much. you have no idea.

driver from Taxi-Taxi
yeah, that sucks. good luck with the taxicab thing. ciao!

sabrina
[12:30 ET. returns to the hostile admissions desk, defeated.]
do you happen to know the street address here? i tried asking for a cab to the laurel park racetrack and that really didn’t work out so well for me.

the pre-paid admissions woman from laurel park racetrack
what? street address? are you kidding? just say “laurel park racetrack.”jesus. go away.

the cash admissions guy from laurel park racetrack
what happened?

sabrina
they sent the cab to fort washington.

the cash admissions guy from laurel park racetrack AND the pre-paid admissions woman from laurel park racetrack
[groan.]

the cash admissions guy from laurel park racetrack
well, where are you trying to go?

sabrina
the holiday inn in laurel.

the cash admissions guy from laurel park racetrack
oh! well, jeez. that’s just like a mile up the road. go walk down that road there, turn right, then turn right again, then when you get to 198, turn left, it’s right there. can’t be more than a mile.

sabrina
[eyes wheely suitcase. shrugs.]
what the hell. i’m not waiting another half hour for another cab to show up someplace and call me from, like, alexandria.
[sets out on hike.]
[time passes.]
[more time passes.]

sabrina
less than a mile MY ASS YOU IDIOT.

john the firefighter
[pulls up in a silver isuzu rodeo.]
um, are you lost? do you need a ride? what the hell are you doing walking alone with a suitcase along this backwoods, winding, hilly country road?

sabrina
OH YOU HAVE NO IDEA.
um, do you know where the holiday inn is?

john the firefighter
no idea, but i’ve got a map. hop in.

sabrina
[mentally weighs relative merits of continuing along this never-ending country road, lugging my wheely bag — thankfully only barely packed, since its real purpose was to bring things home with me — and being kidnapped by a crazy man in a silver isuzu rodeo. kidnapping wins.]
excellent.

john the firefighter AND sabrina
[drive up and down rt. 198, see no holiday inn, and no sweitzer lane, and sweitzer lane is not listed on john’s helpful local maps. give it a good ten minutes and finally ask another driver while stopped at a red light. other driver says, “oh, just go straight ahead down 198, you can’t miss it!”]

john the firefighter AND sabrina
HOORAY!!!

john the firefighter AND sabrina
[drive straight up rt. 198 for about ten miles, in the opposite direction from which the cash admissions guy at laurel park racetrack had directed niqui.
13:30 ET. find the holiday inn on sweitzer lane!]
HOORAY!!!

sabrina
LESS THAN A MILE MY ASS.

sabrina
hello, i’d like to check in! my roommate has already checked in.

the holiday inn receptionist
yeah, your name is not on the room. no key for you.

sabrina
but… but… you don’t understand…

the holiday inn receptionist
sorry. you can put your bags behind the desk if you want.

sabrina
I STILL HATE MY LIFE.

john the firefighter
c’mon, i’ll buy you a beer.

sabrina
you are the most awesome person in the history of ever, even if you are crazy enough to pick up strange women lugging suitcases up country highways with no goddamn shoulders to wheel their damn wheely suitcases on.

john the firefighter AND sabrina
[go to local pub. killian’s for john, yeungling for sabrina. BEST. PINT. EVER. or at least since the first pint after the first leg of my very worst vacation ever in the history of vacationkind, but let’s not go there, shall we?]

john the firefighter
yep. hey, you wanna go have sex sometime? like, say, tonight?

sabrina
wow, did we just cross the line of the amount of bizarre shit i’m willing to put up with in one day. no, thank you!

john the firefighter
well, i had to try, right?
[drops me back at the hotel]

sabrina
[14:30 ET. finds roommate.]
OH MY GOD, Y’ALL. YOU. HAVE. NO. IDEA. WHAT. I. HAVE. BEEN. THROUGH. TODAY.

roommate
do you need a hug?

in which niqui is as like unto britney spears, i.e., is toxic.

sabrina — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 00:29:00 +0000

well, /me is white trash.
are you? but i don’t think i’ve ever even seen you with a beer can in a cosy.
* twork is *totally* white trash, though /me tries to cover it up.
you can take the boy out of the trailer park…
* niqui, on the other hand, *has* drunk bad domestic beer out of a can in a beat-up foam cosy while fishing illegally.
that’s your image for today.
oh, i was probably also smoking at the time.
niqui wins today’s white trash derby!
i had sandals on, though. (no fishhooks, please.)

i win in the “be careful what you wish for!” sweepstakes

sabrina — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 18:51:00 +0000

so yesterday, all day, i was doing the next best thing to actually stalking a meterologist from the national weather service: i was obsessively checking the forecast and, especially, the radar. because, you see, they had said it was going to rain… and that the rain would be a part of thunderstorms, caused by a cold front moving in and colliding with the OH MY GOD IT’S HOT weather conditions that were torturing us all since last week. so “rain” meant “cool,” and so you can see why i was obsessed.

i carried my umbrella to work, because, by god, the national weather service said it was going to be storming by 4PM and if i was ever an optimist about anything i was definitely going to be an optimist about it raining yesterday. i wanted that rain. so all day at work i was checking the weather every hour (more frequently as we grew closer to the predicted storm-time, and i grew more and more frustrated by the clear blue skies outside and the clean radar inside) and cheering the storm front on. after work me and my miscreant cohorts were sitting on IRC urging each little yellow- or red-colored blob on the radar to grow and be strong. i cheered out loud when it finally started raining and laughed at my cats when they ran like hell the first time we got a good thunderclap. of course, that was when i was delivered the just desserts of sitting around demanding to know why i had not yet been granted the “SEVERE!” thunderstorm we had been promised: i was in the middle of watching a CSI: Miami rerun and THUNDER! scared the cats out of the room, which is always great fun because kiyoshi has never figured out that claws do not help him run faster on hardwood flooring. so i paused the tivo and wandered over to the bedroom to try and console the cats that the world was not, in fact, ending. lightning continued flashing and thunder continued crashing and while tiger was willing to be petted and calmed (so long as you came to him, because he sure as hell wasn’t going to you) kiyoshi was under the bed and staying there, and so eventually i decided the cats were as well consoled as they were gonna get, so i fetched a glass of water and went back out to finish watching the show. (it was just at the part where the internal affairs weenie was busting Delko for smoking weed, and Mr. Wolfe (rowr) was looking guilty, and David Caruso was being all David Caruso with the sunglasses and did i mention i really just watch this show for all the terribly, terribly pretty people? because i do!), and so you can see how it was right in the middle of something and i wanted to see how it ended because i haven’t seen this episode before…) i hit the ‘pause’ button and the video playback resumed… with no sound. what? no, there was a little bit of sound. i turned the stereo up. and up and up and up and up. and up and up some more. i could hear the faintest little bit of audio, as the pretty people bickered, no doubt frustrated by their inability to make themselves heard. i figured it was the tivo — after all, my other tivo lost its ability to output sound, and i was not pleased at the idea that my other one had too, but it was at least the most likely suspect — and rebooted it. when it came back up … no dice. i tried the other inputs on the receiver: phono, tape deck, dvd player… all the same: only the faintest of sound at very high volumes. i stepped back to think (and, okay, maybe sulk just a little bit). and then i … thought i heard talking. with the (broken) audio input set to a turned-off component, it couldn’t be the stereo receiver. or could it? it turns out that not only does the stereo receiver not output sound cleanly, or at normal amplification anymore … it no longer distinguishes between the audio input channels. what is the sound of “cacophony”? it’s the sound of what happens when sabrina is given a broken stereo receiver and in the name of testing to see exactly how broken it is, plays back an episode of “House” from the TiVo, a movie from the DVD player, an INXS cassette from the tape deck, and a Who record on the phonograph simultaneously through the same speakers, turned up loud and with ample loud bursts of static. (i could have turned on the CD player as well, but crossing the room to fetch a disc and load it into the changer was far more effort than i was willing to make, as i was slowly coming to the unhappy realization that the price of all this audio-channel-congruence entertainment was the fact that my only-three-years-old!! rather nice (and not particularly cheap, though not terribly expensive either) stereo receiver was fried and i didn’t then and still don’t particularly want to go out and drop four or five hundred bucks on a new one at the moment, and so really i just could not be arsed to try and add the CD player to the noise.) oh, and at the same time, my laptop — shiny, my three+ year old 17″ powerbook — overheated and shut itself off before it melted down, because its dying fan apparently finally died. so not only was my stereo receiver hosed, meaning i couldn’t listen to any music or finish watching the damn CSI: Miami i was still in the middle of, but i couldn’t even go online and bitch about it all on IRC because my laptop was so damned hot it refused to turn on. so unfair! so, i decided to go shopping. (nowhere fun, i’m afraid. i just made a run to the petsmart for cat food; i just liked the “oh my god, you’re such a giiiiirl” implications of saying i went shopping. and hey, with a dead stereo system and no way to blog about it, i have to take my entertainment where i can.) now, i’m just sending emails around to various places trying to investigate having the stereo repaired. i hate being without it! it sucks! fortunately, i do still have my ancient sansui receiver which i can use to hook up the phono and mac, and i can rewire the tivos and dvd player to go directly to the television, so i’m not completely hosed. and the weather’s actually cooled off enough so i won’t mind scrunching down behind all my gear (as it exhausts hot air into my face) to work on doing all of that!

well, well, well — you can never tell!

sabrina — Sun, 28 May 2006 21:53:00 +0000

one of my favorite musical sounds ever is funk bass guitar.

i mean, i love guitars, i love percussion and a nice throbbing bass, but really, funk bass is one of the best developments ever. it gets in you and if you don’t at least want to bop your head along you are sincerely broken somehow.

hich brings me to today’s topic of self-indulgent rumination: the grateful dead.

i used to dislike the grateful dead. i thought it was annoying hippie crap. then, in ’87, they released the single “touch of grey,” which i not only liked immediately but continued to like a whole lot. as a kid, i didn’t have an allowance and therefore never had any money to buy albums (a contributing factor to my modern-day insatiable music-buying lust? no doubt), so i never bought in the dark, but i’d call and request KZ93 to play it for me and dance and sing along every time it came on the radio. i still disliked the dead, but i really liked that song. the contradiction of the relentlessly cheerful music and the way jerry sang the song with the apparent insouciant pessimism of the actual lyrics was always hugely appealing to me, and it still is. (it’s the same reason that i really love outkast’s “unhappy,” which i think is a brilliant fucking song. it’s probably just coincidence that both songs take a ridiculously perky cliche and make it snarky, but i do dig the snark, it must be said.)

a few years later a friend — when i got annoyed at being told of all the things i “should” know about, and demanded that he give me a list to work through (i still have it, incidentally, and i believe that i’ve accomplished nearly everything on it except watching Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, which just never really sounded interesting to me) — made me a mixtape (remember mixtapes? i miss mixtapes.) which had “ripple” on it. and then i discovered that i liked that song too.

around that time i finally had a music budget, so at some point i ended up picking up american beauty, which i of course now acknowledge as one of my favorite albums. okay, yes: annoying hippie crap, but it’s a good album.

don’t get the wrong idea. i haven’t entirely reversed my position. i have no dancing bears stickers on my car or tie-dyed grinning skull banners on my walls, i’m not particularly sorry jerry’s dead or that i never got to stalk the dead from hallucinogenic stop to stop, and truth be told i still tend to listen to what might be charitably characterized as “less-than-perky” music most of the time, but there are a number of occasions which, quite frankly, call for one to put on a dead cd and just chill out for a little bit. it’s not going to change the world or anything, but it might make your day a little better, and that’s cool.

this morning was a good time to break out shakedown street. now, shakedown street is not my favorite dead album (of the three i own — the last is workingman’s dead, which is pretty decent), but it features another favorite dead song, the title track. the funk comes in to play around here a little bit, since it was the seventies — god bless the seventies — and even muzak came served with funk standard in the seventies, but that’s all right. it’s a silly little song that never changed the face of music, but that ba da da dat dat WOO! bit gets me every time. i am physically incapable of not singing along. seriously, if they played it at jewel while i was grocery shopping after work, surrounded on all sides by bitter hipsters and bitchy trixies i’d still be going “WOO!” at all the appropriate times, smirking gleefully at the people who stared at me, and also kinda surreptitiously boogying with my basket of groceries. it wouldn’t even matter if i’d had a shitty day at work or if it was a full-on blizzard outside; the bass would eat my good sense and leave nothing behind but a crazy white girl dancing around in the yogurt section.

and so that’s what i’m up to this morning. relaxing, drinking a cup of coffee, and singing along with the grateful dead on “don’t tell me this town ain’t got no heart; y’just gotta poke around.” ‘cos that’s the sort of day today is, and the sort of song the sunshine and breezes coming in my windows are crying out for. it’s hippie crap, but maybe it turns out that i’m a hippie crap kind of girl, sometimes, after all.

my deja vu deja vu

sabrina — Tue, 23 May 2006 21:40:00 +0000

Taking the green line, transfering to blue at clark/lake–it felt so odd; I realized I hadn’t taken that particular escalator route since, at least, it’s gotta be 1996, commuting to InterAccess via blue to green.. and it’s precisely the same, except for the ipod ads. odd. also odd that my own obligatory ipod chose that moment to crash and reset. hey, I was listening to that!

humanity is safe from the wrath of niqui for a little while longer

sabrina — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 06:00:00 +0000

as you can tell pretty much just by looking at me, i’ve never been one of those people who just exercise because it’s fun. i engage in specific activities which i enjoy, and if they happen to involve physical exertion — swimming, biking, yoga — well, fabulous, but that’s not really the point. (well, actually, there’s a caveat — i like weight lifting. it’s fun and doesn’t really have any other point. but, it’s certainly the exception here.)

there was a time in grade school i really liked running. i badgered my mom for proper running shoes and i ran around all over the place. (i especially liked running in the halls at school, which was great fun.) i even went out for the track team, but my middle school was of the stupidly competitive variety, rather than the squishy inclusive kind, and i didn’t make it, which sort of soured me on the entire concept for years. (hello, i was 9; it would have killed you to humor me? screw you, mr. powers. (hey, i’m a grudge-holding kind of girl. and if i’ve never bought any reeboks since, well, … nike’s got a better ad campaign anyways.))

but i have to say that one of my most effective tactics for getting rid of real anger is going for a run. i don’t do furious anger runs very often, mostly because i don’t actually get that angry very often — i get irritated easily, and i get annoyed easily, but generally speaking i have to already be in a sub-par frame of mind and then you still really have to work at it to make me angry. and running angry is a special kind of angry. it’s the kind of mental space where you’re not thinking about anything at all except shutting off.

i got really angry tonight.

now my legs are going to fall off and i’ll probably limp around like a giant wimp tomorrow, but life seems a whole lot better, all things considered.

hooray for endorphins!