Incoherent Scribblings

Even though my birthday isn’t for 13 more days, May 9 holds a special place in my heart because according to my mother and the doctor who delivered me, that is when I was actually supposed to be born. However, in accordance with what quickly became the story of my life, I apparently overslept and as a result, didn’t make it into the world for almost two more weeks.

Of course, two weeks later when I finally did decide to make an appearance I did it in literally the most ass-backwards way. You see, I was a breech baby. My mother always jokes that I presented my best side to the world first, but I suspect I was just being cheeky.

Anyway…

This morning I received a visit from someone who, at this point, shall remain nameless. After an encounter we had last weekend, I had been waiting for (and looking forward to) this visit all week. During my discussion with He-Who-Must-Not-Yet-Be-Named the subject of my birthday, which this year falls the Thursday before Memorial Day weekend and on the opening day of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, came up.

When I mentioned to He-Who-Must-Not-Yet-Be-Named that my plans for my birthday included a long holiday weekend in which I planned drive to The Big City to see the long-awaited fourth installment of the Indiana Jones movies in a fancy cinemaplex, his response was that he would hate for me to be alone while celebrating these two important milestones. In that case, I told him, he was welcome to come with me and after he confirmed he would love to do just that, we made plans for… dare I call it a date?

I just hope he doesn’t mind too much when I drool over Harrison Ford/Indiana Jones for the entire two hours!

I just got back from voting in today’s Texas Primary. If my calculations are correct, today marks the eighth time I have voted in some sort of election since I voted for the first time in the 1992 presidential election. I have voted in every presidential election since then, one mid-term election, two special elections, and now a primary.

Given that I am originally from Iowa and that is where I voted the first two times I voted in presidential elections, you might wonder if I have ever participated in that state’s caucus. Unfortunately, in 1992 I didn’t turn 18 until about five months after the caucuses were over, so I didn’t have a chance then. I am not sure why I didn’t attend the caucus in 1996, but I would guess that in addition to not being overly interested in the political process, since I was registered as a Democrat and Bill Clinton ran unopposed in the Democratic caucus that year I didn’t feel that it was necessary to attend.

2006 was the first time that I had ever voted in a mid-term election and it just so happened that I was living in Iowa again. In the run up to that election I thought about the mid-term elections that have happened since I was old enough to vote and wondered why I never voted in any of them. My excuse was, and I actually think that it does have some merit, that I have moved around a lot since 1992 and never felt qualified to vote in elections for representatives or congresspeople in states in which I didn’t really feel like a true resident. Sure I could have gone to the polls and voted for people I didn’t know that stood for issues that I didn’t think meant much to me, but I felt that it was better to abstain from voting rather than to cast a ballot as an uninformed citizen.

Nevertheless, although I had just returned from a four-year stint living overseas in the fall of 2006, I felt more qualified to vote in a mid-term election than I ever had up to that time. Living overseas had actually sparked an interest in the American political landscape that I had never had before and I had discovered that while mid-term elections may have certain foundations in state politics, they contribute to the big picture just as much as presidential elections do… if not more so. I was still a long way from being “political,” but I saw myself as an informed American who wanted to voice an opinion, so I did.

These days I try to keep up with the issues that affect me not only as an American citizen, but as a global citizen as well so that I can live my life as an informed individual, but overall, I must admit that American politicians have the power to make me tremendously apathetic.

Nevertheless, it is my hope that each time I exercise my right to vote it will serve to help shift things just a little bit and make this country a better place in which to live in the long run.

Today’s SBQ was suggested by Outi and is:

What is your favorite past time while stitching? Do you just enjoy silence, listen to music/audiobooks or do you “watch” TV/movies? Do you have specific favorites you listen to/watch while stitching?

Honestly speaking, I like to do all of the above while stitching. Depending on my mood, sometimes I enjoy the silence, other times I listen to my last.fm station or my music collection, and sometimes I “watch” television shows or movies. Since I don’t own a television, I only watch a few select programs like House or Heroes on my laptop so obviously they are some of my favorites to “watch” while stitching.

However, I recently discovered the joy of listening to audiobooks while stitching.

I quite enjoyed listening to Harry Potter 1 and 2 during my drive over Christmas break a few weeks ago, which made me wonder if I would like to listen to them while stitching.

After all, if one can entertain his or her brain by listening to an audiobook while performing a mechanical task like driving, wouldn’t another mechanical task (like stitching* ) work just as well? So I set up a somewhat odd corner in my living room consisting of my stitching, my chair, and what I have dubbed my “all-purpose entertainment center” (aka my laptop) and started to listening to Harry Potter 3…

… And 4.
… And 5.

* Before anyone gets up in arms, as a stitcher I know that cross stitching is a creative outlet, but the fact is inserting a needle and thread into a piece of fabric over and over again is a pretty mechanical task… I think we all know what I mean.

I will be the first to admit that even though I was an English (literature) major, my grammar is not always perfect. (I won’t even begin to discuss my spelling abilities here, but in word they are non-existent.) I don’t like being a grammar Nazi and in fact, after learning a second and third language I am pretty lenient on the grammar that I come across on the Internet because I know that a large majority of what I see is written by non-native speakers of English.

However…

The blatant bastardization of the English language that can be referred to as Internet speak has begun to bother me more and more every time that I run across it. I don’t notice it so much on the blogs that I visit, but it creeps up with ever more frequency on places like MySpace, Facebook, and the like.

I know it comes partly from the abbreviations that are semi-necessary when one uses text-messaging, but it doesn’t make it any less annoying. In particular, I am aggravated by im for I’m, ur for your, the idea that vowels are no longer necessary in words, this seemingly incessant need to add z instead of s to words to create the plural, the obvious misspelling of simple words such as the, and deliberately bad grammar such as i iz.

It isn’t that I can’t understand this pidgin language, I can. In fact, I am as guilty as the rest of us and readily admit that I (over)use lol, rotfl, btw and omg (to name just a few) when chatting with friends or posting to bulletin boards.

However, the point is when I write something of substance for the entire world to see, I (mostly) follow those maddening rules of English grammar and spelling that I learned in eighth grade English class and don’t understand why everyone else can’t do the same.

It really isn’t too much to ask, iz it?!

First of all, if you haven’t figured out by some of the cryptic blog post titles here and there, I am seeing someone. As I told my mom, it is not the dude from the laundromat, but the situation is complicated and I am still trying to sort things out. I am not sure where it is going or if it will go anywhere, but he makes me laugh and for now that is enough.

Of course, all the time I am spending with him has drastically cut into my stitching time. I take my stitching with me because we keep insisting that we need to work on spending time in “companionable silence,” but for some reason when something gets unzipped, it isn’t my stitching bag!

Nevertheless, I did get some stitching time in this weekend while watching Season 1 of House M.D. As you may or may not know, when I moved to Texas I left my $10 yard sale TV in Iowa. As a result of this TV-lessness, I have been totally jonesing for Dr. House and finally decided to join Netflix so that I can watch TV shows that I missed while I was in Germany or have never seen in English and movies on my computer.

Writers strike or not, with no TV I have obviously not yet seen the current season of House, but I am thoroughly enjoying seeing all the previous episodes in order. I figure by the time I catch up on the first three seasons, Season 4 should be close to being released on DVD.

Anyway, while I was drooling over Dr. House, I worked on Outi’s replacement birthday exchange piece. Though I have no pictures to share at the moment, you can rest assured that I did not drool on the linen.

And as I usually say when I have no pictures to do the talking for me and I am running out of things to say, the exchange piece is coming along nicely, I am enjoying stitching it immensely, and I believe it is on schedule to be finished and mailed by December 1.

TTFN!