Things That Grind My Gears

Since I’m a lazy blogger, I decided to institute a weekly, themed blog post that will keep me writing at least one entry a week. In honor of the fact that Mondays, essentially, just plain suck, I am going to call it “Things That Grind My Gears” (a la Peter Griffin from “Family Guy”). I will use these weekly posts to whine, rant, and otherwise complain about a couple of things that have bothered me in the past week, thereby getting them off my chest and hopefully delaying the eventual shooting spree (THAT WAS A JOKE, FOR THE GOVERNMENT INTERNET MONITORS THAT MAY BE READING, BECAUSE I KNOW YOU ARE OUT THERE, AND NOT JUST BECAUSE RICHARD BELZER PROBABLY THINKS SO. SHOUT OUT TO RICHARD BELZER!!!)

So, without further ado, I present to you this week’s Things That Grind My Gears.

1. When Husband and I moved to Danbury right over the Bethel line, I was ecstatic because this meant I could start taking back roads to my office in Ridgefield instead of plodding along on Route 7 – abyss of the ass-clown, passageway of the puerile, bane of Southwestern Connecticut – every morning, my blood pressure skyrocketing and streams of expletives flowing from my mouth as I struggled to get to work on time amid the thousands of damn idiots in this state who do not know how to merge from two lanes down to one. However, I did not factor in one thing to my glee over being able to take back roads, and that is school buses. I’m not ranting against buses in general – I know the kiddoes have to get to school, and I am all for that. Education = good. But what I AM ranting against are the parents, in Redding and West Redding, mostly, who insist upon talking to their kid’s bus driver for 47252874 minutes while the bus is stopped to pick them up. Dude. There are PEOPLE BEHIND THE BUS. WHO HAVE TO GET TO WORK. In the grand scheme of things, the bus driver doesn’t care about what you had for breakfast or what the score of last night’s game was or whatever the hell it is you are jabbering on about while the rest of us wait for 5 minutes until you’re done with your conversation, and neither do I. I would like to get to my office sometime before the apocalypse, thank you.

2. Anyone who knows me well knows my deep-seated hatred for commercials. I despise them with a burning, white-hot passion that rocks the heavens. I am convinced that DVR was invented for people like me, for whom watching commercials is akin to water-boarding. But the commercials I hate most these days, beyond the shadow of a doubt, are the Geico caveman commercials. Boy howdy, do they make me want to put my foot through the television. The gecko is annoying, the stack-of-money-with-googly-eyes singing “Somebody’s Watching Me” has all but ruined my love for that excellent song, but the more TV I watch, the more I realize that the cavemen are probably what will eventually send me to the padded room. I hereby IMPLORE everyone reading this blog to appeal to my husband and/or family to please sign me up for DVR for Christmas. It will prevent bloodshed.

3. My internet connection at home is very spotty and inconsistent, especially on the desktop in the guest room which is where I do any and all non-office work. It kept prompting me to install my Windows updates, so I finally went to the Microsoft Update page recently to attempt to install XP Service Pack 3. The install begins, and I leave the room to do something else (which was my first mistake), and when I return later, my internet has disconnected, meaning that the install was interrupted halfway through. Given that it takes like 14 millenia to install Service Pack 3, I was pissed. And then, since the computer is smart enough to know that it didn’t install all the way (but not, apparently, smart enough to know that it should remain connected to the internet long enough for the install to complete), it goes and uninstalls the SP3 components that actually made it. And that takes another 6 decades. I have now tried this install 3 FRICKING TIMES, and every time the same thing happens. I should have bought a Mac!

And that wraps up this week’s Things That Grind My Gears. Feel free to comment with any of your own!

99 Days Until Christmas!!!

...Well, actually, technically it's 100, but when I do my Christmas countdown I count down to Christmas Eve, so it's 99 days for me. I know it is probably terrifying to some people that I listen to Christmas music year-round, start shopping in September, and that my favorite movie of all time is Home Alone (which I consider to be a quintessential holiday film), but hey, that is me. There are worse things to have an addiction to than Christmas.

Another thing that is "me" is being obsessively organized to the point of absurdity. In this vein, for the last few years I've been taking part in OrganizedChristmas.com's holiday countdown plan. Starting in October, it is a six-week plan to get you ready for Christmas and keep you sane as the holidays approach. The key to this plan is budgeting and doing things a little bit at a time (like for instance, for each week of the plan you are supposed to buy gifts for a certain percent of your gift-giving list and write out a certain number of cards). I swear by this plan. I am telling you that it is the sole reason I can afford to spend so much time in December off the roads where snow + idiots driving = insanity, and instead be inside by the tree with some tea, the husband, the cat, and a Christmas movie. Without it, I would be lost.

In keeping with their plan, for the last couple of years I've been using a Christmas planning notebook to keep track of all the stuff I need to get done before the holidays, people I need to send cards to, etc. It's basically a red three-ring binder with sections inside it for all the categories I need to store info in (recipes, gifts, cards, etc). But recently, I went on Organized Christmas and saw that they had built a new sister site called ChristmasPlanner.com, so I went over there and basically reached nirvana. Christmas + organization + paper-craft project = happy Grace! Christmas Planner collects some really neat ideas from craft bloggers all over the web who have made nifty customized Christmas planners out of plain manila file folders, composition books, spiral-bound notebooks, and other things. These things are so cool. So, since I have infinite time to add another paper-crafting project to my life (can you detect the sarcasm up in here), I've decided to make one. I don't know if I will get it done in time for this Christmas, but I definitely want to have it finished by next year. Because in looking at the Christmas planner I've been using, while it is functional, it's not really "me". Yes, it has the lists and spreadsheets and stuff, but where are the sparkly scrapbook embellishments, fun paper, Home Alone and Christmas Vacation quotes, and photos to remind me of just how exactly I decorated the house last year?

So I am going to get started on this nifty project soon, hoping that my as-yet-incomplete wedding scrapbook, which is a HUGE project that I seriously need to devote more time to so I'll actually have it done by our 25th anniversary, will not fall by the wayside in the process. I'll try to post some pics as I work on it. Any suggestions or comments from people who have done something similar would be greatly appreciated!