*Big DumpTruck*

Bottles of Water

I don't care what anyone says, I like Poland Spring bottled water better than any other bottled water. Now me saying that means they will change it, or go out of business or something. I hope that doesn't happen, but I am the Grim Reaper of all consumer products.

I'm supposed to catch up by writing 7000 words this weekend. Oh, right, THAT'S going to happen. Look, I'm busy refereeing my step children and my son and writing entries in my blog. We had lunch in, so for a big treat we're having Wendy's. Oh, boy, I must have been a good girl in a previous life.

So, You Wish This Site Was a Movie Character?

Wow, I was going to just post a link, but there's a commercial on right now to try to convince people that they can make money raising alpacas. I had no idea it was that lucrative. Go to ilovealpacas.com for more info. (I'm not building the link, because I don't want them to know I'm talking about them. Those alpacas are mean and they spit, you know? I don't need that.)

Oh, so go to this site, Astonishingtales.com and read a wonderful screenplay featuring The Big DumpTruck as a character. If it doesn't work right, just plug in the url.

Miffy, Day Two

Okay, all modesty aside, check out this Boston Globe article where they actually say"Robert Skilling, the observer in charge yesterday, said winds were peaking between 50 and 52 miles per hour atop the 635-foot hill as the barometric pressure dropped to near-hurricane levels."

Near-hurricane levels. Read that again to yourself. Okay, now, let me explain that a typhoon is a "western North Pacific hurricane." Granted it didn't meet the sustained winds required to be fully called a hurricane (74mph), but still, I think you can nod your head and say "well, she isn't entirely crazy". I passed 10 utility trucks on 495 south this morning. I didn't recognize the name of the company (which I promptly forgot) but I got the feeling they were like the contract utility companies who come down from Canada to help out whenever there's a bad storm.

So technically, I was NOT all that far off naming this puppy. You may bow down at my feet and leave me offerings of snackfoods and health and beauty aids.

Chapter 3 - With the Wind Comes...Snow?

My wind-whipped soul is in shock: I swear I saw snowflakes. No, really. Curse you, Miffy!! You mock me, and then you laugh your cold, whistling laugh. But we will perservere. I just hope that the trees stay intact through this one. I was standing on the deck a moment ago and decided I would be better off behind the protective barrier of the slider. Man, that is some loud wind. Could you pipe down out there? I'm trying to write a novel!

The drive home was relatively uneventful; no top-heavy vehicles were pushed over, if that's what you consider an event. You have failed, Miffy!

Now that I'm home and can hear the wind, I can hear the wind. When at work I am pretty insulated from nature, good and bad. So far we still have electricity and drinking water. I laugh at you, Typhoon Miffy! Actually, I don't know how the satellite dish is fairing, because we aren't watching television. Gamecube is the mind-numbing activity of choice this evening.

I'm going to start rationing the rootbeer and Tostitos. I hear this is going to last all night.

Chapter 2 - Still the Calm Before the Storm

I have looked Miffy in the eye and...well, okay, I didn't look Miffy in the eye. I'll admit it. She's a wiley foe, hiding the way she is, waiting to pounce. There's a breeze, but no 40mph sustained winds...yet.

I have chosen an apple turnover to fuel me this morning, to give me the energy I need to survive Typhoon Miffy. And my eleven o'clock project meeting. There was no time to go to the store and buy water and bread, so I will just have to pray that I don't get a hankering for cinnamon toast and tea. Oh the humanity!

Typhoon Miffy Update - the morning

Doesn't seem so bad out. A little wet. Cool breezes. Nothing bad - is this the calm before the storm?

We are stocked up with cans of rootbeer and leftover Halloween Candy. Bring it on, Mother Nature!

They're Talking About Me Again

You know, for someone who is talked about in college classes as the epitome of mundane, I get very little traffic from it. Don't more people want to see how I am of little interest to scholars who would look for resistance and transgression in either the text (Fiske) or the medium (Mele)? (scroll to bottom) Whatever the hell that means. I'm sure that the fact that I'm talking about being talked about is going to throw a whole monkey wrench into the goodly professor's Week 10 lecture on The Big DumpTruck!

It's a good thing I like my website, or reading about myself this way would cause me to cry and eat Tostitos. (Oh, wait, does the professor want me to link out to Tostitos? Or maybe to a place on Amazon where you can buy them?)

At some point, someone is going to ask me about all these things, so that instead of listening to that Atton punk (who didn't have the decency to verify some of the stuff he wrote, and was forced to include a postscript clarifying at least one point) they could ask me in person, "If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?"

I Have Not forsaken You

This concludes our test of the Emergency No Update System...

Look, I'm just going to pretend that people cared at all that I didn't post yesterday. It was a full day, top to bottom, and the blog got pushed waaaaay down on the list. I mean, I had to take Junior bowling, people!

We're gearing up here for Typhoon, er, "Miffy". Hey, it's my typhoon, I get to name it. Okay, so the National Weather Service just says it's going to be really windy - but 60mph gusts and 30mph sustained winds deserve some kind of name, don't you think? So I declare tomorrow Typhoon Miffy day. And don't bother calling and writing to tell me that to be a Typhoon the storm needs winds to be n mph. I'm in charge, do you hear me!?

When a storm like Miffy comes along this late in the season, it has a cool sound all its own. Mostly because there are no leaves on the trees to break the wind (heh) but also because I have a lot of trees close together and they're going to sound like one of those wooden windchimes. I'm just hoping that the lack of leaves means I won't lose any trees (or parts of trees, as was the case during the last windstorm).

I'll keep the Miffy Updates coming...

Wow, That's Some Hit Count!

Noticed a bunch of traffic coming from one of my other pages, so I thought to myself "Self, there are a bunch of people off reading that page - you should see how many."

Sometimes, you think your eyes are playing tricks on you. And sometimes they aren't, and you've really had 7000+ people reading the List of People With A First Name for a Last Name in the past two days, because collegehumor.com linked to me.

Now more people should be clicking back to read THIS page, but for the few of you who have - I just want to say thank you, and take your shoes off before you track mud all over my kitchen floor. And don't leave your empties on the coffee table! Sheesh, college kids these days!

p.s. For those of you who normally get thousands of hits a day without even trying, please, don't tell me about it or I'll cry. I'm fragile that way. And my NaNoWriMo novel will under up being a dark and depressing thing, as opposed to the goofy novel I was hoping to write.

Flu-Be-Gone

No, I don't have the Flu, but thanks to the free flu shots they're handing out like candy here at work today, I'm hoping to avoid it altogether this year.

The only thing that bothered me was that when it was my turn, the first thing the nurse said was "You're already pale," meaning, I guess, that some people get pale at the thought of a shot, but I arrived looking like the Ghost of Christmas Past.

I'm not afraid of shots, or blood draws. I'm hypothyroid, I get my blood drawn 4 times a year or so. I mean, it's not that. So I'm so pale that she had to comment on it? Wrong thing to say to a hypochondriac, of course. Now I'm just going to wonder if I'm coming down with something. Or near death. Or dead and but I don't know I'm dead, like that movie that I won't name so I can't be blamed for spoiling it for folks who haven't rented the movie. Even though they've had plenty of time, thank you.

I think that's it from here. Other than wondering about the weather bricklet on my work homepage that shows trees being blown sideways for Friday. I can honestly say, since starting here in June, I've never seen the trees blowing sideways icon. I can only assume it means a typhoon is headed this way.

Ice, Ice, Baby

Gah. Cold. Cold bad. Cold hurt Jody. Jody hate cold. Brrrr. Cold.

See what happens when I have to go outside in early November and it's only 20 degrees out? Brain cells DIE, people.

It's time to ask Santa for some Land's End gift certificates so I can get that coat that's rated to like twenty below zero.