Whoa. Yesterday I fell and hit my cranky bone. Hard. But today’s a new day and all that. It helps that I watched some Farscape before bed last night. The show seems to be filling my Netflix queue these days. I blame some friends who sent me the Season 1 Starburst Edition DVD. They got me hooked. Sure, it’s bad sci-fi, not at all on par with the likes of my beloved Firefly. But Muppets! In space! (But not Muppets From Space, that’s something else entirely.) It really is so bad it’s good.
Bonus: The latest trailer for Marie Antoinette contains no dialogue…but instead features New Order’s Age of Consent. I kept flashing back to where I was and what I was doing when I first heard that song (and when I listened to it over and over again) and there was a serious disconnect between what I was seeing in my head and what I was seeing in the trailer.
Plus: In the interest of full disclosure I stole today’s post title from this article. Usually I don’t remember where I get my post titles from. If they aren’t super obvious song lyrics then they’re just flotsam and jetsam that my brain has glommed on to. But today I remembered. Give my brain a high five!

Kvetchfest coming at ya. It’s been a long frustrating day. Nothing terrible has happened, just a gradual build-up of one minor nuisance atop another until I felt like my brain was going to asplode. It started out well enough. Saw the little man off at the bus stop and decided to take care of some piddly errands afterwards. Thankfully Target opens early so that was an easy stop. But at 9am the mall’s stores (ugh, I don’t generally “mall”) weren’t open, yet the place was teeming with mallwalkers. It was odd to see one elderly gentleman fast-walking to nowhere while listening to an iPod. Which brings me to one of my errands - taking my fairly new iPod mini to the Apple Store. It up and died on me the other day. On top of that, this morning I realized my cell phone was nowhere to be found. It’s just not my week for technology. The especially irritating thing - I don’t use my cell phone every day so I wasn’t sure how long it had been missing. I had visions of some opportunistic individual finding it on the street, days and days ago, and spending the intervening time using it to rack up long distance bills to Russia, or worse…calling the Corey Hotline. But that wasn’t the case. When I got home later the husband quickly located the damned thing…plugged into the charger where I had left it. I am losing my marbles. So my phone has been recovered, yes, but the iPod is still kaput. A slew of Mac lovers had all pre-booked appointments at the freaking Genius Bar, so upon opening this morning the staff at the Apple Store had their hands full. I could have waited, I guess, but I felt my blood sugar levels were dropping (coffee is not, technically, breakfast) and my impatience growing. I made a pit stop back at the house instead, to refuel, before heading out for my afternoon date with the little man, his bio-Dad, and…the passport office. I don’t think I need to elaborate on that one. The icing on the cake? After I finally got home, for good, the husband decided to drop this tidbit: a trip to Hawaii would have cost us less than our impending trip to Iceland, and it would be a helluva lot warmer. He might have mentioned this before we, you know, booked our trip. Pardon me while I go poke my eyes out.

Bonus: Apparently this here blog was the City Pages MN blog of the day on Monday. But this is what they had to say:

“A 32-year-old hipmama blogs about Constantine, being drug-free, and going to Reykjavik at Mass Distraction.”

Hmmm. It seems like they might have just skimmed the bit where I ran out of percocet and figured I’m some sort of recovering addict instead of recovering from surgery. Unless they were referring to my long-time straight-edgedness, which is cool.
Plus: You know who can take a nothing day and suddenly make it seem worthwhile? The fine folks at Drawn and Whip Up, that’s who.
And: With our vacation on the horizon [and yes, I will enjoy Reykjavik just as much as I would have enjoyed Hawaii, dammit, albeit with more clothes on] Flight 001 is one dangerous site for me to discover just now (via PopGadget).
And another thing: Today I think I have abused commas, ellipses and parens even more than usual. So sue me. Umm, I think someone needs to go to bed. Right now.

Still feeling shaky and weak, but generally better today. Well enough to consume some coffee, at any rate, and throw together an obnoxiously upbeat playlist…including the likes of The Flaming Lips, General Public, The Get Up Kids, Le Tigre, Madonna, Manitoba, Metric and Superchunk. This got me revved up enough to search for my passport. We are leaving for Iceland next month, after all. Now, I fully acknowledge that I am a pack-rat of the worst kind. I cling to items with no rhyme or reason, and when it is suggested to me that it is time for a purge, many of these things must be forcibly pried loose from my kung fu death grippe…if at all. So when rooting around the nooks and crannies of my bedroom today, attempting to locate said passport, I came across all sorts of other crap. From the mundane, like ancient Aveda lipsticks, expired condoms, and an unused stick of deodorant (which I promptly threw out, honest). To the more interesting, like letters from my good friend Monica, written when she was in the peace corps in Morocco. And a cheesy little notebook I bought the last time I was in Iceland. And adorable little handbags handed down to me by my grandmother. And the truly odd, from my dear old pack-rat of a Dad. Long before I knew of News of the Weird there he was, scanning the newspapers daily and clipping out whatever articles struck his fancy. These he would save up in little yellow envelopes, and, when one was full, he would entrust it to me. Today I came across one such packet…from the mid-1980s. Many of the articles are just plain depressing. Some are interesting, in that he was following a thread about the ozone layer (circa 1986) and another about the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, while others are just plain quirky. Those are my favorites, of course. A full photoset can be found here.
Bonus: This 404 page made me laugh.
Plus: Apparently the “Amazon Connect” program has been around for a while now, but my personalized weblog or “plog” content just showed up yesterday. Part of me wants to resent the intrusion, but the post was from one of my favorite illustrators, Danny Gregory, and the content seems to differ from what he posts at his Everyday Matters weblog.
And: When the heck is this Angel box set going to come out in the states? It was released in the UK months ago. Grrr.

Two words: stomach flu. Ah, hell…a few more words. Who am I kidding? I’m more verbose than all that. So, this morning’s violent retching has made it feel as though I’ve dislocated my right shoulder. I am unable to find a comfortable position in which to be miserable, but I suppose that only serves to heighten my state of miserableness.
Footnote: This post was typed entirely with one hand. Look ma, no typos!

It’s all bonus material today…with a few random items I’ve been meaning to post, along with some newer ones.

• This year’s Geek Prom is moving from Duluth…to my own backyard. I can almost see the Science Museum from my house.
• Last week I started drinking coffee again, regularly, for the first time in months. Stopped by the co-op and picked up some fair trade beans from a brand I hadn’t tried yet called Just Coffee, out of Madison, WI. I’m quite pleased with the heart palpitations it’s been causing.
• The other day a flickr friend was boinged. Bully for him.
• Last night a real life friend was in the St. Paul Winter Carnival Torchlight Parade…juggling fire while unicycling. I knew we should have gone down there. The little man would have gotten a kick out of it, even if the husband hates parades (with a passion).
• In the always disheartening department…the Department of Homeland Security is at it again, ever-vigilant against the vegan menace. Sigh.
• And, as expected, the husband hates my new eyeglasses (he told me straight up that they are ugly) but he is in the minority. And the new prescription, wow. It’s amazing to see everything so crisply and clearly again.
• After picking up the new glasses, I stopped by Saint Sabrina’s Parlor in Purgatory for some new jewelry. The place was flipping packed. Instead of having a piercer pop out my captive bead rings and stretch my lobes for me I was sent away to do it myself, with a pair of pliers and 8 gauge crescent rings. Getting my old jewelry out was the easy part, but I wussed out on the second step, and am going to have to go back to get my lobes stretched properly. Then maybe I could get summa these.

The boys didn’t leave the house yesterday (and I only stepped out briefly, to have my hairs cut). I think we should go somewhere today, but don’t have any exciting ideas. A co-op stop would be good. And I’d like to swing by Big Brain, to pick up the new Hellboy (thanks for the heads up Joe!), but that could potentially turn into an all-out spending spree, which is the last thing I need. But if I bring the little man along, that should guarantee I’ll spend less, as I won’t be able to focus my energies on browsing as much. Hmmm.

This morning I was up early, bathed and dressed even, testing out the “Fronch” toast recipe from my new Vegan with a Vengeance cookbook…all before 10am. After breakfast I offered to take the little man to the Walker’s family day festivities. But it was a no-go. And who can blame him, after rushing off to school first thing in the morning, five days a week. So instead he’s been lounging in his pajamas all day long, watching movies on my laptop. Hey, that’s my job! Buh.

Now the husband, he is often skeptical of these new-fangled cookbooks that make their way into our home. And, not unlike many high school home-ec teachers, he prefers an older edition of The Joy of Cooking to all other cookbooks. But he dutifully thumbed through Vegan with a Vengeance and saw that it contains a recipe for biscuits, one that was veganized from an old school Betty Crocker recipe, so he thought he’d give it a go. He is the starch king after all, so he whipped up a batch of those, along with mashed potatoes…while I made the batter-fried seitan and gravy (one of our standards). Mmmmmm, starch-y. We will be making those biscuits again. But I do want to try something from the cookbook other than carb-laden goods. Next on the list, the white bean and roasted garlic soup.

Bonus: I love it when the little man spontaneously bursts into song. It’s especially funny when it’s “I like to move it, move it” from Madagascar, a movie we’e seen exactly once.
Plus: Right now I could be at the Is This Art or Is This Punk? Fest. And I really should be there, considering how close it is to our house, and how rarely anything of interest happens near here, but instead I am watching as the husband plays more DragonQuest VIII. So sad.

It’s safe to say that last month saw the absolute worst start to the new year possible. But it’s a fresh month now, with a clean slate, right? And I’m not on the drugs anymore…but you’d be hard-pressed to tell, judging by some of my behaviors. The other day a considerate neighbor came to the door, with some of our Netflix envelopes in hand (this isn’t the first time mail has been misdelivered around these here parts, so the poor woman asked if her Blockbuster movies had come to us - sadly there’s no telling where they wound up). So far so good, I had my movies. I watched one and was ready to send it back. Then yesterday I actually got a number of items on my To Do list taken care of, and had a stack of bills and thank you cards to send out. But this morning I realized I’d made a mail snafu of my own. The Netflix DVD I sent back was the one I hadn’t watched yet. What’s more, that envelope wasn’t even sealed. So 2009: Lost Memories is likely slip-sliding around loose, lost in some postal service facility. We’ll see if it makes it back to the mothership, but I’m not holding my breath.
Update: Oh thank you, intrepid mail carrier! My errant mail was returned to me today, and even though the envelope wasn’t sealed, the DVD was still inside. Who woulda thunk it?

The other night James reminded me to listen to one of my long-time crushes, Colin Meloy, and his recent performance that was recorded for NPR. But the All Songs Considered guy was so annoying. The way he was gushing about Mr. Meloy you’d think he wanted him to be his boyfriend, but he’s mine, all MINE dammit. Still, it was a mighty fine set.

Bonus: Neil Gaiman’s site has undergone a spiffy new redesign (which is something I should be undertaking with this here site, right here, right now, but I’m easily distracted).
Plus: This photo makes me happy.
And: Also turning that frown upside down, Chuck and Lori’s reaction to the State of the Union address. There’s a Bush protest going on right this very moment not too far from here. I’d be there…umm, if I weren’t so lazy. Yeah.