That Hobbit Lady

When giant ears of buttered corn suddenly appear floating above your head, you know that summertime is here.

I’ve moved my thathobbitlady Live Journal to this new site!

I went to the gym AGAIN today, and then had another salad for lunch. Doing the good stuff!

Russ and I have been watching Dark Shadows through our Netflix account for several months now, and we have at last gotten to the part where Willie Loomis releases Barnabas Collins from his coffin.

More good stuff! This is when the real fun begins on Dark Shadows.

Today I went to the gym for the first time in a long time. I did not go to my *usual* gym, because that gym no longer exists since the tornado four weeks ago. But I went to the gym at the Student Rec Center. I was going to cancel that gym membership because I didn’t need two, but now of course I only have one gym, and I figure as long as I actually USE it, it’s worth it, until the other one, Planet Fitness, is up and running again. (I just checked their website, and there’s no news about it yet.)

But it was good to spend at least a little bit of time exercising today. I’m hoping I can get back in the habit. And I’m also hoping I can get back in the habit of writing something in this journal every day. I know I’ve been really bad about writing here, but it’s really just a matter of being in the HABIT of doing something.

Once again, I reflect that bad habits are so hard to break, and good habits so hard to establish. Why does it have to be that way?

We have survived the tornado. Russ and I are okay, as well as everyone we know. The biggest losses I have to report are that one of my co-workers has lost her house (but saved her pets!) and Russ’ place of business is no more. It is a pile of rubble, with a few file cabinets standing up in the middle of it all, as if nothing had ever happened (or so we have heard). We will find out over the next several days whether or not his boss intends to rebuild, and if so, will Russ still have a job. We shall see.

President Obama is in town and touring the devastation even as I write this. A couple of hours ago we saw Air Force One pass over our house, about to land at the nearby airport. We have also heard on TV (now that our cable, phone and internet have been restored, just this morning), that when they brought President Obama to see the worst of the damage, they pretty much deposited him across the street from Russ’ former business. Obama and entourage traveled between a church and an elementary school, and Russ’ former business is between those two, on the same street.

If Russ and I had followed our regular routine on Wednesday, we would have been in Alberta City at 5pm, when the EF5 tornado descended, and we would no doubt be dead. Fortunately, we “made good travel plans” and were able to get home, batten down the hatches and go into the closet while the worst of it passed by us, a few miles to the east.

Many businesses we regularly frequent are gone. Our gym is gone (have to remember to cancel our memberships). Russ’ favorite donut shop, Krispy Kreme, is gone. As is CVS, Big Lots, Taco Casa, two gas stations, many homes, entire neighborhoods, and lots more stuff we don’t even know about yet, because you can’t get near the area. There are things we don’t even know about yet. My doctor’s office? Our vet? The vet’s office is probably gone, I just hope he and his staff and any animals there got out before it hit.

Obama is getting ready to leave Alabama. I’m going to go outside and see if I can get a picture of Air Force One taking off.

More later.

First some background:  Russ and I are watching House.  We are on Season 3 right now, which is a very good season, and  Hugh Laurie is a very gifted actor.  So gifted, that he almost makes me forget how I first knew him:  as Bertie Wooster in the British TV show Wooster and Jeeves.  I say “almost,” but not quite.  I don’t think I could ever really forget Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster.  Sure, House is dark and tormented, a compelling character, but when you come right down to it, he’s not very likeable. 

Wooster, on the other hand, for all his goofiness, is extremely likeable.  He makes me laugh.  And I love his accent.  Sometimes, when I’m watching House, I miss the British accent.  Hugh Laurie does the American accent so well, that it’s sometimes easy to forget he is as British as the day is long.

So today, missing Hugh Laurie’s British accent, and having a lull at work, I visited You Tube to get myself a dose of the Hugh Laurie British accent.  Yep.  It’s still there, when he appears on The Actor’s Studio with James Lipton, or on the Ellen DeGeneris show.  But of course, I am drawn back to the old familiar scenes from Jeeves and Wooster.

And so, without further ado, I present, for your viewing and listening pleasure, the Word of the Day, which is “What ho!”  Okay, technically, that’s two words, but never have two words been uttered so many times for such comedic impact.

Enjoy.

Why doesn’t some company make a container of frosting that actually covers an entire cake?

Every time I am frosting a cake, I find I’m always just a little bit short of frosting.  The sides of the cake don’t get as much as they should.  If you’re frosting the cake to bring it somewhere, and you need it to look good, you need to buy TWO tubs of frosting, just to be safe.  Which is probably why they portion it out the way they do, so you have to buy more.  But why not make a container that boasts "20% More!!!" so every cake could be properly frosted?    As long as it wasn’t priced more than 20% more, I would buy it.

It bothers me when I think about all the THINGS I have that I don’t use.  If you are alive long enough, you tend to accumulate a great deal of STUFF, some of it very useful…and some of it not so much.  And then there are things that are GOOD things, if you would just use them.  But for one reason or another — mostly laziness, or forgetfulness— you don’t really use those things as much as you could, or should.

Case in point:  Roomba.  I’ve had this Roomba for probably close to two years, and very rarely use it.  Except a few days ago, I decided it was time to start using some of these items that are just laying about the house, so I brought forth the Roomba and turned it on.  And it lasted for all of about six minutes.

I did some online research and discovered that if you keep Roomba plugged in, but never use it, the battery tends to wear out.  I thought I was going to have to buy a brand new battery!  And that’s not cheap.

But then I did some more online research and discovered this thing you can do with the battery to try to "reset" it and extend its life, so I did that, and got the performance up to about 20 minutes.  I’m running Roomba again right now, and hope to do even better this time.

The plan for the future is to Roomba at least every other day.  Want to keep that battery primed!  And it also cuts down on the time you have to spend actually pushing a vacuum around.

So that is my first stop in my new campaign to "Use it!"  Next will be my violin.  Or maybe my breadmaker.

My mother-in-law, Marianne, got a very nice birthday present yesterday—a dog!  She’d been wanting one for a while, and now here is the newest member of the family:  Sugar.

She’s a pretty little pup who’s seems to have made herself right at home!

In other news, our snow last night lasted through to the morning, completely changing the landscape.

It will probably be all gone by tomorrow morning, but it was pretty while it lasted.