Tvindy

So Good for my Self-Esteem

It's been nearly six months since I last checked my FICO score. In September of last year it was 766 (according to Experian). In the meantime, it has shot up to 839. (850 is the max.) That was unexpected. I'm now in the top 1% of the population in terms of creditworthiness!

This news comes at a good time for me. Lately I've been down in the dumps about not being in school, not having a job, suffering from crippling back pain, and, most importantly, not keeping up on my blog entries. But all this time here I was sitting on top of a major lifetime achievement. After all, some people strive all their lives for such a credit rating and often fail to achieve it (especially with credit card companies trying stunts like this).

So what should I do now? It's too bad points aren't transferable. Otherwise I could give some to Snowball and perhaps sell the rest on the black market. I guess all that's left for me to do is stop in at my local bank and take out a loan for one billion dollars. Yes, that seems sensible.

If you want to know your credit rating (and are willing to pay $14.95), go to myfico.com.

Christmas Shopping

I pride myself on being a pretty good gift buyer, but this year was a little more challenging than usual. As always, I'll be spending Christmas with family. Here's what I got everyone:

• For the third year in a row, my parents and brother will each receive a Shutterfly calendar. The previous two years were filled with pics of family members I had taken over the year. This year's calendars will be different. Over the past several weeks I've been raiding my father's old seldom-seen family photos. He keeps them in a filing cabinet in his study (as opposed to an album). There are images in there that he himself probably doesn't even know he has. I picked out the best 13 for the calendars.
• My aunt will be spending Christmas with us too. What does one buy for an aunt? Well, I know for a fact that she has an enormous sweet tooth. I once brought home an enormous quantity of candy, and she ate nearly all of it. After reading this entry from Bakerina, I knew just where to shop. My aunt will be receiving a Santa Tier Set.
• A calendar, of course, is not enough, but my brother is hard to shop for. Last year I gave him my old iPod Mini, which he has yet to even use. And by that, I mean he's never even turned it on, let alone install iTunes on his computer. So no more electronic gadgets for him. He's getting a bag o' buds.
• But that's still not enough, so I'm getting him this DVD based on the fact that he once e-mailed me this link but has never seen the film. (As far as I know, he's also never operated a DVD player, despite having one in his computer, so this gift may turn out to be another dud.)
• Parents also need more than just a calendar. My father likes eggs, so I've ordered him a big honking ostrich egg on eBay. That should make for a pretty large omelet. If he's willing to share, maybe the rest of the family can use a portion of it to make ostrich eggnog.
• A calendar and an ostrich egg are not enough, so my father will also be receiving a deed for property on the moon.
• My mother will be getting a porch swing. She's been planning to buy one ever since she moved to my neighborhood but has never gotten around to it. My original plan was to pick one up for her at my local Lowe's. I forgot that despite the enormity of the store, they believe in being seasonal rather than comprehensive. They don't carry porch swings in winter! (This is even worse than the time I tried to buy space heaters from them in July.) Fortunately, there's this thing called the internet which lets you order just about everything (even chihuahuas). So I went over to PorchSwings.com and got her this, paying well over twice as much as I would have at Lowe's. Anyway, the plan is to set it up at three in the morning on Christmas (early enough so my parents are still in bed but late enough so there's no danger of my being awake when Santa comes through). If the stupid Muncie police try to fark with me, I'll give them something to fark about. Anywho, I was originally planning to snap a photo of the installed porch swing, print it out, wrap the print and place it under the tree with the other gifts, but now I see that there is a window looking right out onto the porch where it will go, so I'm sure it will instantly be noticed. A calendar and a $200 porch swing are more than enough, so no more presents for my mom.
• Now we come to the cats. As usual, they'll be getting their annual bowl of catnip, so they can entertain us while we open presents. But that's not nearly enough. They need actual presents. Fortunately, I read Kimberly's blog, so I've known since April exactly what to get them.
• But that may not be enough. I believe Kimberly has also spoken of the Crazy Circle, although I can't seem to find her entry on it. Anyway, that's what the cats are getting.
• But just in case that's not enough, the cats will also be getting one of these. Back in my day, a cat would be grateful just to have a flashlight beam to play with, but these modern felines want everything to be hi-tech. (It's all fun and games until kitty fries an eye.)

Whew!

Wishlist

I used to be very critical of bloggers who published their Amazon wishlists. That seemed kind of tacky to me. But then I started reading some of them and found it  fascinating to see what people wanted. You can learn a lot about an individual by perusing her wishlist.

After the birthday vacuum cleaner fiasco, I decided to whip up a list to help my parents out this Christmas. I've been fairly good this year, so I'm hoping Santa brings me everything on it (quite unlikely, what with him being on a budget and everything).

http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/30PNC1QPRC8EC

Another Meager Update

I fear my posting frequency this summer is going to continue being abysmal, but I'll keep it going as best I can until get back to Oregon in September. In the meantime, here's a brief update on my life.

I'm still jogging on a regular basis. So far, I've managed to keep myself from getting injured. Last week I did my first 8-mile run. At the end of this week, I should be able to get in a 10-mile run. At this rate, it's quite possible that I may be in shape to run another marathon in October. I'm very excited about this.

The only setback I've had is that one of my new running shoes suffered a huge tear in the lower heel. Fortunately I was able to take it back to the store this morning in exchange for a new pair. I certainly hope that the new shoes hold together much better. I'm still a bit suspicious of the flimsy feel of the design, but Nike must know what they're doing.

My extremely low-fat diet combined with jogging has allowed me to lose a grand total of nineteen pounds since returning to Muncie. The first fifteen were easy, but these last four have taken forever, and I still need to take off an additional thirteen pounds to reach my arbitrarily selected target weight.

Is yard work interesting? Should I blog about that? Probably not, but I will anyway. I have a monster hedge growing at the side of my house. It's the type of thing only a professional with a large chainsaw can handle. I've finally found someone good to tackle it. He's even successfully removed some of the trees that had somehow become part of the hedge and grown extremely thick trunks. In the meantime, I've planted some gourds next to my porch screen. I try to do this every year. The results can be quite spectacular. The vines grow up the screens and then blossom into large orange flowers which then become colorful gourds. Anyone coming to my front door gets to walk behind a sort of canopy of vines and flowers. And I've also got sunflowers coming up. Perhaps I will post photos later in the summer.

More Drive-In Adventures

I went to the drive-in again. Actually it was a different one located in Winchester. The features were quite a bit different from what I had to sit through last week. This time I got to see Willy Wonka and then War of the Worlds.

Willy Wonka is not bad and may be as good as the original. I thought the pacing was a bit slow, though. A movie like that really needs to be a bit more dynamic. Also I was confused by the scene with the oompa loompa harvesting chocolate from Chocolate Mountain. It had already been established that the oompa loompas could not tolerate the cold, and here was this little fellow going at it with a pickax in a blizzard. Of course, it may have just been a coconut storm. Also, the cow-whipping scene wasn't really necessary. Willy Wonka strikes me as a cross between Dr. Who and . . . well . . . er . . . Michael Jackson.

As for War of the Worlds, there is no way anything I write about it will do justice to Orionoir's review, so I'll just throw out a few points:

• The aliens seemed a bit overly thorough. Are we supposed to believe that they actually spend forty-five minutes conducting a search of every single basement in the world? And what was with that mirror trick? Do they not have reflective surfaces on their planet? I mean, why waste so much time examining your own reflection? And how about actually checking behind the mirror rather than just peering over it? Why aren't they equipped with infrared sensors, so they can see people in the dark? And if they can't locate the people, why not just throw in some kind of grenade and blow up the basement? Oh, they might also want to consider investing in ax-proof equipment.
• If the aliens planned the invasion a million years ago, why didn't they just invade then? It's kind of strange that, with all those deeply buried tripods, not a single one was ever discovered by humans. And wouldn't it have occurred to them after a million years of planning that germs might be a problem? Couldn't they have just sterilized the insides of the tripods and kept them hermetically sealed (and thoroughly cooked the humans before sucking on their juices)?
• I like that they went after the Ukraine first. Way too many movies have the aliens going after New York first, or even exclusively.
• I think the writers showed a lot of contempt for the masses. People couldn't possibly be that stupid. The scene with 10,000-people-fighting-over-an-SUV was a bit over the top, but it was nothing compared to the arrival of the aliens in New York. The people just had no sense of self-preservation. First everyone goes outside the watch the odd and menacing weather pattern. Then, after lightening strikes the same spot twenty-six times, they all rush over to that exact spot to have a look, even picking up the super-cooled cement pieces. Then the hole starts to get bigger. Then it gets really big and implodes. Then a car is hurled a hundred feet into the air. Now, at this point, it's perfectly understandable that people would just continue standing around watching, since there haven't yet been any indications of danger, but one would think that the emergence of a gigantic extraterrestrial tripod from the hole would cause them to flee. Nope, they have to wait around until it starts killing people with its disintegrator ray. Then they run.
• How come the tripod that got bazookaed at the end didn't have a basket of people attached to its underside?
• Now that the situation is under control, will the military be sent into Iraq as part of a full-scale assault on that country in retribution for the alien attack?

New Shoes

I bought some new shoes today. My old ones are completely falling apart, and, now that I've started jogging again, I figure it's time to refresh my footwear. I hope I made the right choice. These are unlike any running shoes I've worn before. (They actually feel a lot like slippers.) My old pair was designed specifically for feet that pronate, and these offer absolutely no support whatsoever. In fact, they're supposed to simulate the effects of running barefoot. I could be in big trouble. But my experience has been that I'm fine when I'm barefoot. Pronation seems to only a problem when I have shoes on.

The other problem is that Nike is evil. In my defense, I must say that I don't buy Nikes because of the brand name. I actually have abnormally narrow heels, and only Nikes fit me snugly and don't ride up the back of my foot whenever I take a step. If other shoe companies had a similar heel design, I would be more than happy to never buy another Nike ever again, but the only company I know of to do this was the short-lived Customatix, which I think was founded by an ex-Nike-executive.

And, of course, there's the issue of leather. I strongly oppose the wearing of it in any form. Leather is evil. Down with leather!

To Do

Even though I'm technically on vacation, I've still got a million things I need to get done over the summer. Above is the to do list I made for myself as soon as I got back to Muncie. These are only the things I plan on getting done this week. I realize that most of it will be incomprehensible to people who are not I, but that just makes it more fun.

Animated Evil

Here you can take a photo of a person or animal and animate it. Inspired by Kimberly's tale of her kitty's evil twin, I took its photo and created this.

Time Travel Convention

Well, tonight was the Time Traveler Convention. I wonder who showed up.

3 Things

Good news. My ethernet connection reestablished itself. I guess it was a problem with the dorm's connection, although it is strange that the computers in the lobby never stopped working. Another day of this and I was going to rip out the motherboard and replace it with the one from my previous computer. This is not advisable. Although I know how to replace a motherboard and have done it about three times before, my computer inevitably dies of motherboard failure about two weeks afterward. The operation is always a success, but the patient invariably dies. It's quite sad really.

Will is being interviewed. Today he talked in depth about the book project. I'm so glad he hasn't lost faith that I will get it finished. And I will finish it. Unfortunately, I go through periods of being swamped by schoolwork, interspersed with periods of recovery. I've been sidetracked far longer than I ever expected. The thing is I try not to bring it up if I have no progress to report. In my experience, the more a person talks about doing something, and the more emphatic their reassurances, the less likely it is that the will ever actually accomplish their stated goal. It's far better for me to prove that I'll get it done by actually doing it rather than by constantly apologizing for the delays. (I do apologize, by the way.) Plus such entries would quickly become tiresome to my readers. It will get done. Please bear with me just a tad longer.

In other news, I just rented a great movie from Netflix. I very rarely give anything five stars in my Netflix ratings. (The last time was Donnie Darko.) Therefore, I think it's blogworthy that I gave that rating to Spanglish. I'm not really up for writing a review, but you might want to check it out.