well, this is exciting...

Space signal studied for alien contact.

i'm surprised that this, on the other hand, doesn't happen more often.

tired.

i overexerted myself yesterday, and today i'm paying. i'm working from home (which is easy, since right now i'm just editing anyway) and giving myself a break. and watching the hurricane coverage on the weather channel, of course.

my fingers are crossed that the mayhem is minimal, but i just can't help getting excited about a really big storm. good luck to those of you living in its path.

the cleaning follies continue

i had to reject the cleaning service's first offer -- they'd reduce the cost of my cleaning to $59 and give me a free extra hour of cleaning with a future service. after i thought about it for a while, i realized what that actually meant was that in order to have my bathtub clean, i'd have to schedule another $59 service with them, and the extra hour would be meaningless anyway because now the place is tidy and doesn't need a major overhaul. i'd be effectively paying $118 for the $99 service they fucked up, which is ridiculous.

so i called back and talked to them again, and they're going to send someone out to do the job right at no cost to me. unfortunately, since it's a holiday weekend, they can't fit me in till next week, but i can polish the furniture myself and vacuum the area rug the cleaner mysteriously vacuumed around, but left covered with cat hair and dust. (i mean, what the fuck? it's a 5x7 rug, not a bathmat. it needs vacuuming.) next week, i'll have the next person they send deal with wiping down the kitchen cabinets, scrubbing the bathtub, mopping the floors properly, etc.; it shouldn't take them all that long to do, but the whole point of having someone else come in to clean for me was that things had gotten much too bad for me to deal with myself. once it's clean, sure, an occasional swiffering and wiping the bathtub with Scrub Free is fine -- but i can't grip a sponge and scrub with it, or get down on my knees to scrub away things that are stuck on the linoleum.

this time i'm going to make a list of exactly what i want dealt with, since the service evidently didn't pass along what i requested when i spoke to them the first time. but i'm still incredulous over the use of the swiffer in place of a real mop. i mean, the floors don't even look clean. yeesh.

and now, i will polish the furniture. because it's been driving me nuts since last night.

wy i am ridiculous

at the end of a cranky, achy day, i find i have potatoes and ground sirloin. simple enough ingredients.

i made a deviled hamburger on whole wheat toast with the oven fries from "the best recipe", y un mojito. i fry up the leftover couple of tablespoons of meat for Daddy-O.

quite excellent. Daddy-O agrees.