Serious about Practicality and Chivalry is (Apparently) Not Dead

First off, who knew how thoughtful the Altoids people were? I broke open my new tin of peppermint flavored Altoids, which are generally awesome for freshening breath as well as clearing sinuses, and look what I found! A bonus item—almost the best Christmas surprise I got this year. You can finally surrender without being concerned about the dreaded battlefield breath—not easy to get rid of after weeks of eating field rations. Nicely done Altoids guys.

Second, I can not say that chivalry is dead. I thought it was. Frankly I haven't seen much of it lately, but now I have to take it all back.

I didn't have to work today. (No one called) This morning I wandered out of bed and to my car about 8:30am. Not to early, thank goodness. For whatever reason our parking lot did not get plowed today. My roommate has the garage this week, so my car was sitting out in the snowy, cold December weather. Not usually a problem. However, this morning I was in a dress. Not only was I in a dress but I had a bag and my purse.

Now I did put some low boots on for the parking lot. I'm not really into wearing ankle boots with my jean skirts, so I had a change of shoes in my bag. Let's just say I probably looked pretty pathetic bundled up with a skirt on and ankle boots. Frankly I didn't think about it. I opened the passenger side door to put my junk in, half crawled over the seat to start the car (mind you I'm in a skirt) when I heard someone talking behind me. Of course, knee highs and ankle boots along with who knows what else hanging out.

I quickly (and somewhat gracefully) crawled back out, trying to look nonchalant. The voice belonged to a nice man named Jeff who works in the little rock building next to our apartments. He not only helped me clean off my car, but he trampled a path to the door so I wouldn't get snowy. Little did he know that I suffer from the snow flinging curse. Any snow that gets flung off a car ends up on me. Oh well, it was very nice of him. Even if I suspect that he was sitting in his office bored out of his mind, possibly playing Farmville, just waiting for something to do. Either that or he had to get a few more service points in to make his quota for the year. Thanks buddy!

I am NOT blogging about this being the last day of work for 2010

If I did that, along with some rubbing it in your face and a rather awesome victory dance preformed by NNK (name changed to protect the not so innocent), someone will call. It will be early, I won't be showered—heck I might not even be out of bed—I'll have bad hair, there will be a foot of snow on my car, the roads will be one giant ice skating long track (I'm talking the I-215 loop here) and there will be a blizzard warning. They'll call anyway.

Work will call and say “Whine, whine, whine . . . no one else can make it in . . . blah, blah, blah . . . schedule . . . we-oo, we-oo, we-oo . . . just for an hour . . . NOW!”

So I'm not blogging about how excited I am that today was my last working day for 2010. You see, that would be downright foolish. Silly. Bordering on insane. I'm blogging about something else entirely. When I figure out what that is, I'll get back to you.

Oh, look at that. My cell phone battery is dead. How tragic.

Upgrading

The bottom picture is the first (and only) digital camera that I've owned. Kodak Easy Share—when 5 megapixels was all that and a jar of pickles. Unless you don't like pickles, in which case substitute pudding instead.

Now I've read that Kodak digital cameras aren't much to sing about. Especially for the last few years. However, this little baby has been around the world. I've dropped it on four different continents (five if you count New Zealand as Australia). It got stuck out in the rain in China, made it through the jungles of Peru, didn't freeze in the winter in Russia, and lived to tale the tale after the nieces and nephews have played with it. The camera still takes awesome pictures—especially outside! It's slow and the screen is only about an inch square and it's old . . . but I love it. Heck, you could say it's been to a galaxy far, far away because it went with me to Star Wars Celebration V a few months ago.

That's actually where I dropped it the last time . . . Right on the cement floor of the Orlando Convention Center. The front section of the camera popped out and somehow ended up overlapping the back section. Lucky for me, I was with costumers who had little, tiny screw drivers so I could get the camera apart and then put it back together again.

So technically I didn't NEED a new digital camera. But I bought one anyway! My latest purchase (thank you after Christmas sales!) is water proof, shock proof up to five feet (I'm short, so that should work) and has almost 3x the everything of my Kodak.

I feel kind of bad retiring the old Kodak. I always thought he would go out in the line of duty. Perhaps I should try to take pictures while on a roller coaster or something. He'll always hold a special place in my heart.

Merry Christmas!

I've decided that my family is simple. We don't have any elaborate traditions for pretty much anything. We aren't up in each others faces all the time. We're not terribly high maintanance. Like I said, simple.

This morning we had Christmas breakfast. It's really the only tradition we have for Christmas time. When we were kids, there were two sets of presents. One set was the stuff that was supposedly from Santa. Our stockings would be filled with gum, life savers, candy canes and sometimes little toys. If I remember right there were also bigger presents that were from Santa. (Now don't get me wrong, when I say bigger presents, I mean like the doll I got—Kimberly was her name if I remember right—who had roller skates. Nothing huge, we never got stuff like that.) Oh, all of these presents were wrapped in color coding. Like all of mine were in orange paper, the oldest in green and the middle sister in purple. The colors changed every year. If I recall, it was usually tissue paper.

The rest of the presents were under the tree. These were the pretty presents—nicer paper, bows and tags. But . . . before we could unwrap them Dad forced us to have breakfast. No, it was not cold cereal. It was always a hot breakfast with pancakes or waffles and bacon and whatever else he decided to cook. That thirty minutes to an hour felt like six days—it was excruciating!

So, as punishment for torturing us when we were kids, we decided that Dad gets to make us breakfast every year. I help (mostly because I lived there for so long) with the bacon, but he does most of the work.

I guess the only other tradition we have is that when the time comes to open the presents under the tree, we take turns. Starting with the oldest, we unwrap presents one at a time. Being the youngest, and therefore last, for so many years was only consoled by the fact that I usually had the most presents. Hey, I'm the youngest. I'm spoiled.

That's it. We have an unrecorded tradition of saving bows and boxes to be used through entire life times of Christmas wrapping, but that's just for fun. Nothing official. Still, I like our simple traditions. Anything more and people start to get a little crazy. And who needs more crazy this time of the year?

What makes you tick?

Today I had the privilege of having lunch with a woman who used to work with me. Well, us. She worked in the sales department. A bunch of us went to The Park Cafe (which was fabulous by the way) to meet her for lunch.

This lady is awesome. She's 70-something years old and swears like a sailor. I am absolutely certain that she could make grown men, let's say hardened prison inmates or a pack of drill sergeants, cry like little girls and cower in the corner. When she talks about an event in her life, she always remembers exactly what she was wearing. Believe me, she's exponentially better dressed than I am, and I'm half her age. She's grouchy, she's funny and she takes crap from no one. Oh, and she loves her little dog. I should use her as a character in a story.

Earlier this year she retired and moved to Florida. She was only partially happy about this, because she loves to be in the thick of things, and retiring made her sound old and decrepit. At lunch today she was telling us that she plays shuffle board (she had to try out for the team, but since she can walk she made it!), paints and bikes through her neighborhood. Lunch was enjoyable. Sadly there were no “F” bombs launched from the old lady (never tell her I called her that, I'm half her age but she's well over a foot taller than I am).

When we got back to the office she'd sent an e-mail. She said (am I'm paraphrasing because I don't get my work e-mail from home) that she loves where she's at, but she misses working with younger people who have so much to look forward to and so many things to work towards. I wish I could remember how she said it, because it was quite poignant.

After I read it, I asked myself—why do I do what I do? I'm not sure I have a good answer right now . . .

TRON

Seeing anything Sci-Fi and awesome at the movies is cool. Seeing TRON:Legacy in 3D on opening night was fun! Certainly not the “coolest show I've ever seen!”, but definitely worth it.

First off the movie oozed resonance all over the theater. There were Star Wars moments, Star Trek moments, old TRON parts . . . loads of good stuff in there. They beefed up the special effects and someone obviously had a great time flexing their imagination and coming up with new gadgets. The motorcycle scene was probably my favorite, oh, and when the old Flynn takes out the club. The glowing monk robe . . . I liked that.

Either the acting was bad or the writing was bad. I couldn't decide which. I wasn't there to analyze the movie, so I didn't really delve into the problem, but it did seem labored at times. Downright slow at moments, actually. The entire plot was totally predictable, but that's not so bad. The movie was fun to watch and it took us away into a new world! What more can you ask? Oh, and there was even just a bit of fan service for both the ladies and the gentlemen.

If you loved the old TRON (in all its cheezy glory) then you'll surely appreciate all of the bits and pieces they threw into this movie. Good times, good times.

Blond(e) Moment

Last night I went to water aerobics. Water aerobics involves chlorinated water. Chlorinated water gets in my eyes and bugs my contacts. So this morning, when I put them in and couldn't really see out of them, I wasn't surprised. Usually a few minutes will resolve the problem, but it didn't. I drove all the way to work, trying to blink them into submission. No luck. Well, the lucky part was that I'd brought my glasses and a contact case in my bag. After two minutes at the office, I plucked the contact lenses back out and stuck my glasses on.

The sun was out this afternoon—so bright and so shinny—so I thought I'd be cool and wear my sunglasses home. This required putting my contacts back in. I figured that after eight or more hours out they'd be glad to go back in. Uh, no. Blurry, gritty, yucky . . . no.

Then it dawned on me. Grumbling, I took one out and put it in the case. I moved the one left in my eye to the other eye and blinked a few times. Bingo. Had them in the wrong eyes. I don't even remember the last time I did that. Hello, blonde moment. Yes I have them and yes, I realize that when I am eligible for senior blonde moments life will get infinitely more interesting. Of course at that point I'll probably forget everything I do after ten minutes, so maybe it won't be so bad . . .