Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Six Random Things

Kyla tagged me for this, WEEKS ago, but I moved and had no internet and then went away, and ... you know, life.

Here's the meme:
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
5. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.
6. Let your tagger know when your entry is up.

1. I'm in the Starbucks near to daycare, and as I look up from reading a story online about the smartphone market, the founder and head guy at RIM--you know, that makes Blackberry phones--is standing next to me waiting for his cup of coffee. Hope he didn't see that 23% of smartphones will likely be Linux-driven by 2013.

2. Munchkin has been saying weird stuff: in the car on Sunday, she told me that "[Munchkin] is using the deer carcass." Yes, I confirmed with her. And she's been saying it a lot. I'm going to assume it's something from a book. Gulp.

3. In the past month, I have been carded TWICE at booze retail outlets, once at the Beer Store in a nearby town, as we were picking up a six pack of Alberta-brewed Big Rock Traditional for a barbecue. Then, about a week after that, when I popped into the giant LCBO near to my house to stock up on our house red, carded again! Dudes, I'm 35. I was wearing the same lime green sweater both times ... hold on, I'll find a photo. I wear it a LOT.

(this is October 2005--I'm about eight weeks pregnant, and making a face because everyone is drinking wine except me at Thanksgiving dinner)

4. Here are some appliances that are in my house but not functioning, because they need to be hooked up or retrofitted or replaced: furnace, stove, air conditioner, dishwasher, hot water tank, Munchkin's (new) ceiling fan. It's like camping, but in a giant, brick, expensive tent, in the middle of the city.

5. I'm reading a book called The Dirt on Clean, by Katherine Ashenberg--I expected to really like it, but I'm 50 pages in and getting annoyed. The text of the book is all blinged out with visual hoo-ha that you usually only see in magazines: pull quotes, side bar text, big shaded boxes with trivia lists in them, illustrations embedded willy-nilly. I like my magazines flashy, sure, but I like my books text-heavy and linear. I'm distracted and bothered to have to interrupt my reading of the main text to look at all the stuff all over the page above, under, and around the main text. Does the publisher think the book is just not interesting enough to merit reading in the old-fashioned way? Or am I over-reacting?

6. Evil, evil credit cards: we got the cheque for the profit on the old house yesterday, and last night, Pynchon and I ceremoniously paid off the credit card debt we dragged here from our Alberta student days, and lovingly nurtured through several moves and a wedding and a new baby and various financial derailments: card A? a little more than $12K (about 3K of that, I must say, was from this move, and another 2K is from my work). Card B? a little less than $9K. How did that happen to us? Never again. And it's paid.


Who am I going to link to? Patti, Cloud, Dawn, Cheryl, Naomicatgirl, and ManagerMom, because I don't know them very well, and how better than through random-fact memes?

Random fact 7: now that we have internet and I'm actually home, I discover that I have over 300 unread posts in my Bloglines. So I'm going to close my eyes, mark all as read, and start over. Forgive me if I missed something big: I'll try to catch up. I've missed this, by the way ...

19 comments:

Amy Urquhart said...

Ugh, I hate books like that. And, dude? Do you really not have hot water in your house yet?

Mimi said...

We have a little bit of hot water--the tank is old and crappy, and we're going to buy a tankless, on-demand (enviro!) unit to replace it. And until we do that, no furnace! Yay!

Bon said...

welcome back...and i'm with you about wanting my books to look, erm, like books. otherwise i feel like i'm in a doctor's office or something.

you can buy tankless hot-water units? do share this exciting enviro discovery... :)

carded? huh. i'm jealous.

cinnamon gurl said...

Wow, great job on eliminating your debt! When you told me you'd paid off your debt, I thought it was related to the overlap of the two houses...

I haven't been carded in forever... :(

When does the camping trip end?

Beck said...

I get carded every time the new worker is at the till in the liquor store. Apparently I am both young AND anonymous looking.

WE paid off the last of my student loans recently! WHOOOOO! And congratulations, you guys - paying that off must have felt GOOD.

kittenpie said...

-congrats on wiping out the debt - so worth it! Not paying interest, you'll end up with more money, too.

-My house curse right now is being jammed full of furniture and boxes. I hate it, but it too hall pass, right? Right?

-If I were you, I'd be wearing that sweater more!

Manager Mom said...

OK...although I am still not entirely sure what a "meme" actually is, I will give the old college try. But it may take me a bit because I'm getting ready to leave on a pretty long business trip. Is there a statute of limitations to these meme thingies???

Mimi said...

Manager Mom, nope -- no limitations. Kyla tagged me pretty much a month ago ...

Jenifer said...

Way to go on paying off the debt!

If I were you I would buy that sweater in every colour!

Anonymous said...

I now feel a little ashamed that I quite like books like that. I do like the linear, text-y books too, I'm just a fan of distractions.

motherbumper said...

The debt free dance is sooooo much fun (just don't think about the debt part - just think of the freedom). And do the purge, it is an awesome stress reliever, blogger guilt is no fun so set it and forget it!

Jennifer (ponderosa) said...

Hey, welcome back! I love memes like this -- random glimpses in people's lives.

Run ANC said...

I'm annoyed by having to read the sidebar thingies too. It takes twice the time!

Cheryl said...

Hey Mimi, I love that picture...and the sweater. I don't get carded at all because I'm in Greece...it's a free for all. I do like, however, that apparently I'm told that I'm not as fat as I should be for having 3 kids...and that I don't look as old as I am. :) Gotta love the Greeks and their tact.
Congrats on being debt free, it's a good feeling.
Your house sounds almost like mine when we moved in...except I got to run outside to pump the water every morning-an electric pump-but I still had to get dressed to do it!
I'll do my meme as soon as I get a chance. Yours was fun to read!

Patti said...

Hey Mimi -

I did the meme ... it was now or never, because I would forget pretty quickly.

Congrats on the debt elimination. What an awesome feeling.

Kyla said...

You have to bring the sweater to BlogHer so we can get carded together. I'm always the only one being carded. I was carded at dinner on my SEVENTH wedding anniversary. I'm going to say maybe by our twentieth I won't be getting carded any longer.

ewe are here said...

Congrats on paying off the credit card debt ... must feel really good!


And I like the green sweater ... one of my favorite colors. ;-)

Manager Mom said...

OK! I finally did the meme, kind of. Here's the link to the post!

http://managermom.blogspot.com/2008/06/some-housekeeping.html

moplans said...

I'm finding that move to make books read like magazines very annoying. It feels like an insult to my intelligence. If I wanted people magazine I would have bought it.
CONGRATS on paying off the debt. That must feel amazing.