internet weird

So, I'm on the internet. Trying to catch up on "Desperate Housewives," a show I've only watched once. So maybe I deserved it. The banner ad at the top? "BUST SANTA'S ZIT and win a free iPod." With an animation of Santa's face, creepily heaving up and down like he's panting, complete with a gigantic zit that pops up first on his cheek, then on his nose...I wish I was making this up. I'll let you count the ways that is sick and wrong.

Sidewalk Graffiti, 9th Ave. NE

Sidewalk Graffiti, 9th Ave. NE, originally uploaded by NiceMarmot.

This is what I drove home and back to photograph.

i'm BAAAAAAAaaaaaack!!!

Got home yesterday at 4:30 PM PST.

Had a WONDERFUL WONDERFUL time!!! Unnumbered thanks go to my friends J & G who graciously welcomed me into their home and took great delight in showing me their city.

I LOVED it. I cannot WAIT to go back. I went to museums, saw street performers, Ground Zero, the Mid-Manhattan NY Public Library, Times Square, skyscrapers, diverse peoples of every color and interest on the sidewalks and in the subway, blooming cherry trees. Ate delicious food. Saw delicious art. Met delicious people. Went to delicious theater.

I packed a lot into four days. Stayed up late, got up early. I don't think I've ever been so tired in my life. I went to bed at 7:30 and slept for eleven hours straight.

More details later--as you can imagine, my email inbox is piled high with work and my boss tried to plug in the air conditioner on Friday without plugging the exhaust into a window--on the bright side he didn't blow the circuit and knock out the servers but...you see where my day is going.

One more thing: In my experience, New Yorkers are not rude. They are very communicative, open, and often courteous and friendly. Unlike Seattleites, I observed that for New Yorkers, there's no wall of politeness that must be breached in order for an interaction to take place between strangers.

huzzah!

On a sunny run around Green Lake this morning at approximately 6:45 AM, Susse spied (and alerted me to) the first ducklings of spring. (The first for us, anyway!) Six of them. Tiny, adorable, fluffy. Highly pleasing. Spring has sprung. Even in New York, to which I will go tomorrow. I will attempt photoblogging via camera phone, BUT don't hold your breath. I brought my coworkers scones and croissants this morning, so they will remember me fondly while I'm gone--you will have to accept a *virtual* scone. :) Toodles.

dammit!

So help me, I am never leaving the house without my camera again.

I got home from Portland this afternoon. Did this, did that, long story short, decided to go see "Sahara" at 7:00 down at the Metro, by myself. Because no one in MY city wants to see it with me. Meant I would miss MSH getting home at 8:00, but I guess I really wanted to go. Nothing like popcorn and Junior Mints for dinner.

ANYWAY, saw the movie (blog that later,) walked out of the theater and down the sidewalk to my car and saw something I found very, very intriguing. And didn't have my camera. I drove home, grabbed my digital camera--MSH was already SOUND ASLEEP--ran back out and drove *back* to the theater and took the picture. It's money. Took it with ambient light. So then I race home, straight to the computer, download the photos, go to flickr.com to upload--and it politely informs me I have hit my upload limit for the month. This must have been in the Terms and Conditions I agreed to by checking the box--it IS free, so really I shouldn't complain, but I just didn't see it coming. I can upgrade to a premium account or something for $41.77. I have a feeling that kind of expense is what MSH would refer to as "frivolity." So now, because I had to upload ALL those stupid plum blossom progression photos before I was ready to blog them, I cannot at this time show you the photo of the thing which I saw outside the theater and which I don't want to overhype any further. Nor will I get to send you a photo direct to my blog from my camera phone in New York. Nor will you get to see one of the ever-popular flash-free smudgy-head photos taken at the show I was at Friday. Basically, you're back to just text. Unless I blog the plum blossom photos, but now they taunt me and my premature uploading, and I refuse to blog photos that taunt me. Snotty little photos.

Fingernail Etiquette In The Workplace

Background: I sometimes find an uneven spot on my fingernails and whip out a nail file from my desk and file it, rather than keep worrying at it and then bite my fingernail (any more than it already is.) In the past, Coworker A, whom I like, has in the past found this nail-filing of mine hilarious, like I’m a bored, vain receptionist or something, filing away.

COWORKER A: [Takes out fingernail clippers, gestures with them] See? Like your nail file.

ME: Mmm…no, because you need to use those in private.

COWORKER A: Really? [clip] You think so.

ME: Yeah, that noise is seriously obnoxious.

COWORKER A: [Clip! Clip!]

ME: [stifles: I was being serious!]

COWORKER A: [Clip! Clippety clip!]

ME: [desperately dons headphones, checks CD drive for music, cues up kexp.org to drown out clipping sounds]

SO DEAR READERS:
Is this just a personal pet peeve? Where do you stand on public fingernail clipping? Especially in an office with no cubicles or partitions of any kind?

Is this instant karma for filing my nails, to wit: is my filing my nails JUST AS ANNOYING AND INAPPROPRIATE as clipping of fingernails?

I look forward to your input.

Morris Mini/Mini Cooper

mini1, originally uploaded by NiceMarmot.

One of our neighbors threw a Mini convention. Click!

Mas

mini2, originally uploaded by NiceMarmot.

Boom! More Minis

mini3, originally uploaded by NiceMarmot.

Last o the minis

mini4, originally uploaded by NiceMarmot.

pink and brown porch

pink and brown porch, originally uploaded by NiceMarmot.

Sorry it's crooked. This was near the south end of University Bridge.

tulipswholefoods

tulipswholefoods, originally uploaded by NiceMarmot.

Ha ha! Thanks to the encouragement of my friend Cocobella, I have finally conquered my own personal demons and posted a photo on my blog. (If this works out.) This is a photo I took outside Whole Foods a week ago, just when they opened. This photo is the perfect example of why I love digital cameras. I saw something purty, I whipped out my camera and snapped it, no automatic cost as with film, and no commitment. I probably won't scrapbook it, but due to the wonders of the Intarweb, now I can share it with you in GLORIOUS TECHNICOLOR. I'd better stop, I'm getting all misty. Stay tuned because most of the next entries in a week or so will be a backlog of photos I took with the intention of blogging them. I have a cool daily progression of the plum tree in front of our house, but I don't think I can blog more than one photo simultaneously from flickr so you may have to wait a day between plum progressions, which is appropriate, since I did when I took them!

Current Marmotty Events

Today we open with a hearty kudos, bon voyage, tally ho, and godspeed to our good friends K and M, who embarked yesterday on a Grand Journey Through Kiwi and the "Land Down Under." They packed up their shizzle, stowed it at the parentals, moved out of their apartment, and will be on the trail for three glorious months. We salute them for the courage and excellent planning which facilitated this trip!! Have an amazing time, kids!!!

(Furthermore, we salute them because they are moving to MarmotTown USA after they return!!!)

On to my next point: Musashi is an excellent place for sushi. Is it the no-nonsense menu? Is it the person who takes your order over the phone and hollers it into the kitchen instantaneously? Is it the gigantic very fresh ten-piece veggie roll for only $4+tax? Is it the deliciousness of this roll? Is it the fact that this roll will suffice for lunch AND DINNER??!!! Run, don't walk, folks. Contrast this with my lunch yesterday: a day-old prepackaged mozzarella pesto sandwhich from Harbucks which set me back $6.50!!

Tonight Fireman Steve aka Baseball Steve aka Hags aka The Crazy Canuck becomes, officially, a Seattle fireman. (To wit, he graduates from Fire Academy--doesn't that sound like someplace you go to learn to _make_ fires?) Kudos to him, too. He commutes (long shifts, so only twice a week) from that neo-Bavarian kitsch haven, Leavenworth, and when his shifts have been close together, he crashes at our place. The first time he came we cleaned the place for him; subsequently, we did not. So he knows how we really live!!

I'm not sure I'm going to keep reading _What's the Matter With Kansas_. I'm on page 68, so I've given it 18 more pages than Nancy Pearl recommends. It's just kind of boring, and I already know how awful the meatpacking industry is (see _Fast Food Nation_), and some things he says are just a little too left for me. (And if you're too left for me...) He just seems so angry and gleefully scornful that I don't know if I can trust what he's saying. I feel like I'd like to read something more objective on the subject. Or at least pretending to be more objective. Maybe I'll skim it. And besides, next up on the reading list is _Plotting Hitler's Death: The Story of the German Resistance_ by Joachim Fest, and we all know I'm going to be naturally much more interested in that subject!

Yesterday one of my coworkers put forward the opinion that Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace was "not that bad." Um. Well. I'm going to have to .... go ahead and ... DISAGREE with you there because IT SUCKED!!! At one point in the argument I said, "Dude, don't make me write you an essay!" So I'm going to write one. Stay tuned.

Also, my friend EBA just got a cat! Congratulations, new cat owner! Cat's name is Gertie, and loves the human lovin'. Is the Marmot jealous? Yes, we are jealous! Come on, MSH, get us a kitty, please?

my day of not smiling

Sorry I've been incommunicada. Reasons:

minor health challenges
lots of work
renewed commitment to and energy for work

Last Monday, I had a bladder infection that did not respond to the first kind of antibiotics I was prescribed. The infection moved very quickly from my bladder into my kidneys. This made me very sick, and I was in a lot of pain. My husband took me to the ER and went across the street to Safeway to get a snack when they drew me blood. Once I had the IV of saline and Cipro in me, I was MUCH BETTER. Now I'm on a ten-day course of Cipro. Cipro is the last line of antibiotic defense because it kills everything--the doctors use it sparingly. When you need it, it is a miracle drug. If I were to meet the people responsible for inventing this drug, I would kiss them all on the lips, with tongue. In the aftermath, I felt very very fortunate to have access to excellent medical care and pharmaceuticals.

So that was bad. But in comparison, the Mohs surgery this week was a walk in the park, so I was pretty relaxed for that. The small treatable basal cell skin cancer to the right of my nose was soon dispatched. After they'd removed that, they made an inch long incision above and below the cancer site, and sewed it up. Supposedly, this was to avoid an unsightly puckered scar, which would have happened if they'd only sewed up the cancerous area. I'm not sure how an inch-long scar is more cosmetically desirable than one smaller than a quarter-inch, even with puckers, and the stitches aren't particularly small. But who am I? If it heals unobtrusively, I'm still a beauty queen; if it heals ugly, I get a well-needed blow to the vanity, and gain an Air of Mystery. At the moment I'm sporting a bandage.

Yesterday, it hurt to smile, seeing as the incision is in an area of the face that gets a lot of action during the smiling. This put me in a sour mood, not being able to smile. Or at least exacerbated my sour mood. Today I can smile. And I'm in a better mood. Which I enhanced with wheatgrass juice. Don't knock it til you've tried it. I also went and looked at the sale rack at the GAP, and was nonplussed.