Ridiculous Thoughts

So Kelly made it to DC, beat the big storm and got the job. She also managed to find a place to live and shop at Ikea before her first day on the job as well as visit Matt the Cat at the XM studios for a wrap-up interview. Well done kiddo 🙂

My lovely friend Corey wrote a nice message about her in his blog that made me swell with pride for my sister. It’s been an exciting trip for Kelly and for me even and a testament to the power of both radio and the Internet. Thanks XM Radio and thanks Charter 😀

Hehehe… We’ve been having a blast chatting with Matt the Cat at XM Radio. We emailed back and forth a little and I told him Kelly ended up getting a job as a result of a phone interview she had as she drove through Utah and he seemed really chuffed about that 🙂 During his show tonight Kelly called in to tell him herself and give an update on her progress. Later on she called me and told me she ended up chatting with him for about half an hour (which would explain the weirdly long succession of songs played at that time 🙂

Oh yeah, I’m listening myself via the ‘net. So I got to hear the “Cross-Country Kelly” update. Later on the kidlet gave him a call to request a song for Kelly and he ended up playing their call on the air, which Shan really got a kick out of (ok I did as well. That was neat! Hope Kelly caught it!)

Anyway it sounds as if Matt the Cat will be a cool friend for Kelly to have once she hits town and he seems to really care about making sure she gets off to a good start in her new life out there in politicsland.

Anyway thought I’d give a bit of an update 🙂

Aaaaand Kelly’s on her way East. It was so lovely to see her again. I always forget how much I miss her until I get to see her. We have our limits though, as sisters do. Usually we last about 4 or 5 days before we start to annoy each other and a few claws come out 🙂 But it’s normal and we can laugh about it.

This time her visit was all to short and I find myself wishing she could have stayed a bit longer.

The kidlet really enjoyed seeing her again as well and I think we’re going to need to make a trip out to see her. I wish it was just a case of finding the time but no, of course it’s also a case of finding the money. But I don’t want to write about money. I’m sick of talking about money. But anyway, yeah definitely want to go see her out there very soon, mabe once she’s settled in and back to some semblance of stability.

Anyway, my lovely best friend is letting Kelly crash at their place in Indiana tonight, I just hope Kat won’t kill me because I forgot to mention Lacey the very old and cranky cat travelling with Kelly. But Kat’s so great.

Okay in between the last paragraph and tis one a few cool things have happened. I’ll give a bit of backstory first though:

Before Kelly arrived here she was tooling along in Wyoming, listening to Matt the Cat’s 50s show on XM radio and she decided to call in a request. Well because my sister can talk your ear off, she got into a long convo with Matt the Cat and told him she was currently driving across country, with everything she owns and one cranky cat to start a new life in D.C.

Well Matt seemed very taken with the idea and proclaimed that Kelly is carrying out the American dream. Soon after the convo was over Kelly rang me and replayed the whole thing. We agreed it was really cool and giggled about it. Soon after she was here and we went on to other things.

So as you know Kelly left today and I’m all sniffly about it. Several hours later she’s outside Des Moines and calling me to play more XM radio for me because apparently Matt the Cat is doing “Kelly Updates” 🙂 and plaing really cheesy music in the background as he lets listeners know where she is on her trip and how she’s doing. Apparently he started getting emails and calls from listeners wishing her luck and safe travels.

Isn’t that fecking cool? It made Kelly cry and I feel somewhat better knowing a load of people are sending good thoughts her way.

So should Matt the Cat ever read this – thanks for looking out for my sister 🙂 You rock!

>>>Edited to add a little email exchange I had with the DJ himself:

—–Original Message—–

Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2005 10:04 PM

To: fifties@xmradio.com

Subject: Matt the Cat Re: Kelly Updates

Hi Matt the Cat!

My sister just called me to play me a clip of the Kelly Updates you’re doing as she makes her way across country to move to D.C.

Well, Kelly happens to be my sister and I just wanted to say a huge thank you for doing that and getting all the well-wishes for her as she makes her trek. It brought a huge smile to my face which I needed because she left my house earlier this afternoon (in Nebraska) and I miss her already.

So if you happen to do another update before she hits Chicago, would you tell her that Stephanie and Shannon love and miss her and wish her much luck in D.C. and maybe play a Bobby Darin song for her?

Thanks again!

Stephanie

P.S. If you could play a few cat sounds for the cranky cat that would be awesome too 🙂

Matt the Cat’s reply:

Hey Stephanie,

I just sent out your well wishes across the country to Kelly. That’s so amazing how radio can bring people together. Thanks so much for your email. I told Kelly that if she ever needs anything or advice to let me know. I moved to DC 3 years ago from Boston, not knowing a soul and I know how it can be.

Thanks again,

Matt The Cat

This is so much fun! It really is amazing how radio (and the ‘net) can bring people together 🙂 Kelly called me not long after I got this email and played me the message. I got all sniffly again 🙂

So this is new.

After months of wanting to whine but not feeling like I have a right to whine so I kept it inside as much as I could, I got my new ‘puter from work and it’s a shiny laptop. It’s a shiny, lovely, wireless, spanky, gorgeous, I’m-in-love-with-it laptop and it was very much worth the wait.

The day I got it I went out and bought a wireless router and spent 3 days trying to configure that so that one day, I could be online while snuggled up in bed. Finally worked it out and so here I am 🙂 It’s a real novelty let me tell you. When I first got my own computer for the home, it was 1995-ish and I’d just discovered this new thing called the Internet, was going to college etc. etc. and of course it was a desktop which I hooked up in the living room. My computers since then have all been desktops and all out in the living room or desktops at work. I’ve never experienced the joy of portable interneting.

I feckin’ love it though. Last week I wrote my column in bed à la Carrie Bradshaw. It rocked.

The kid’s loving it too because this means she doesn’t have to fight me for internet time. Though now we do fight over the laptop. It is rather nice to use I’ll admit. I don’t know why I never wanted to get one before – whenever it came time to buy a new computer I always felt… I dunno, safer with a desktop which these days is just plain silly. Maybe I felt like I wouldn’t be able to do all the things I want to do without a desktop. However, this baby is about a thousand times better than my current desktop so I don’t know what I was thinking.

Enough gushing about the laptop. What’s been going on lately seeing as how I’ve not been able to blog for a while… My poor host’s server finally died on him and it happened to be the server most of my sites are on so I was down for almost a week and wouldn’t you know it happened just when “24” premiered so I had frantic Kieferettes wigging out about the forum and I was unable to do my show recaps in a more timely fashion and now I’m just procrastinating on them. The show started off with 4 episodes in two days and combine that with having to meet deadline on my column and the server downtime well, I just have to sit down and catch up. Probably this weekend.

My sister’s on her way to GI right now, driving in from Cali. Moving to D.C. to hopefully begin a meaningful career in politics *smirk*. I smirk at the idea of a meaningful career in politics, not my sister’s venture. I hope for the best for her and wish I still had the courage to pick up and move across the country to start a new life. I had my chance I think when I upped sticks and moved to England. I like to think that if it wasn’t for the stupid immigration laws I could have made it work too. But alas. Now Je suis stuck in Nebraska, probably for a good long while yet and I’m resigned to it. Having a great job helps though. I find myself feeling more tolerant of life here than I used to feel.

But yeah, looking forward to seeing Kelly. It’s been a good long while since we’ve seen her and after this visit it will probably be another long while before we see her again. Though I don’t think the drive from here to D.C. is all that bad and if we can stay with her I’m sure I could work out a trip to see her. I’ve never been to D.C. before and would like to check it out. I know the kid would enjoy it as well.

But biodad would like us to travel towards his neck of the woods at some point. There’s talk of meeting halfway around Mount Rushmore and hanging out up there some time which would be great. I’d love to spend more time getting to know Nora my new-found half-sister. I’ve only met her once and it was during my first meeting with Gary as well so we were all a little shy that night I think. I’m over that now with Gary at least so hopefully hanging with Nora would go a little better. She just sounds like a fabulous person from everything Gary tells me about her.

Hmmmm digging the being in bed and blogging thing because I don’t want to stop writing even though I don’t have much to say. I’ll just carry on rambling.

Today at work Tonya and I were discussing the issue of blogging and privacy concerns. I think she was looking at a poll somewhere that asked if people felt blogging was somehow an invasion of privacy. Or something. I think I mentioned my friend Corey’s blog where he talked about a journalist who was fired because of the things he wrote in his blog about his job.

That was a bit scary but then again if you’re going to rag on your employers on such a public place then you’re sort of asking for it. I don’t see what’s wrong with having a private blog so long as you exercise caution and common sense in the things you write about. I’d never use this blog as a place to bitch about my job (not that I have anything to bitch about mind you 🙂 I can talk about personal things but it’s always in the back of my mind that people might actually read this and so the things that I don’t want made public tend to stay in my head 🙂

I can see how someonee from our office who has more of a public face should be wary of writing a personal blog – a reporter for instance. Gary has a blog now but I don’t think he’d use it to write anything more personal than his running jaunts. He’s an editor at a newspaper. Can you imagine what would happen if he wrote about his personal life online and readers of is paper got a hold of it? Especially if he wrote about sensitive stuff.

So yeah, I can see why this reporter was fired over is blog.

Anyway I could go on about that but I just lost my train of thought and I’m now getting sleepy. I guess I’ll sign off. But now tat I can do this from bed, I bet I blog a lot more now 🙂 Good news for the one or two of you who read me! 🙂

Last blog of 2004 🙂

I’ve just chopped about 6 inches off my hair and I justified it by looking at it as a new year, new hairstyle kind of thing. It’s a nice style… just… shorter than I’d asked for. I asked for an asymmetrical bob that was shoulder length so i’d still be able to shove it all in a pony when I didn’t want to hassle with it. Well, it’s considerably higher than shoulder length. *sigh*

Anyway… So this ended up being a pretty good year. This time last year I was watching ROTK over and over in the cinema. Now I’ve got it on DVD 🙂 I was whinging about money and my lack of it. Season three of 24 was keeping me enthralled. I blurted out “Mmmm… Feet.” at a department meeting as we chatted about that German cannibal who found his dinner – err victim online. I found it hilarious, my coworkers just looked at me strangely. I bemoaned the fact that I’m a liberal lost in a sea of conservatism. I whinged about my lack of moula. My daughter entered her final year of middle school *sob*. We spent a lovely couple of days with my father when he and his fabulous girlfriend were in town. The kidlet got a few guitar lessons from him that she thoroughly enjoyed…

What else… I’m just going through past blog entries because to be perfectly honest, I need the help 🙂 Ah yes, I took a number of “artistic” black and white shots of the kidlet posing in various places around town. As I’m typing that I’m realizing that could be construed the wrong way but rest assured, by artistic I mean stuff like this. I wouldn’t want anyone to equate me with Jessica Simpson’s dad weirdo dad.

I suppose the biggest thing to happen this year was my job shift. I held my breath and took a chance and landed myself a swell new job at the paper and apart from getting to work with good people, I get to write for the paper once in a while as well. One step closer to the dream 🙂

Things have definitely improved since starting at the paper. It’s been nice for the kidlet as well. The year has ended on a happy note (a sure sign that rotten things are to come eh?) and in four hours it will be 2005. I hope it’s a great one as well.

Twelve years ago today my dad passed away without warning. I try not to think about the whole ‘anniversary of their deaths’ thing because it’s just depressing. I miss both mom and dad very much, especially around Christmas time as we had such great holidays together growing up.

But the weird thing is there’s this uber-loud ad rep sitting on the other side of my cubicle yakking on and on right now about what she plans to do with her body when she dies. I don’t know why or how the subject came up but it really was odd when she said she wanted to be cremated and have her family take a trip to California and release her ashes into the ocean.

That’s exactly what Kelly, Shannon and I did with mom and dad’s ashes.

And yesterday my grandparents gave me a beautiful picture of my mom they had gotten blown up from a snapshot and I have it now on my desk at work. I think it’s oddly fitting to have it here instead of at home because she was working here when she died. Well, not when she actually died – you get what I mean.

It’s as if I’m supposed to remember the death anniversaries and not push them out of my mind. I’ll try to I guess… but probably sitting at my desk at the paper is not the best place. Wish loud ad rep would shut it.

Bow before me, I have conquered my computer’s guts.

Since I only have one computer and it’s a few years old, and I can’t afford to just pop out and get a new one, I sometimes have to face my fear of opening up my hard drive and fiddling with something in there. I live in fear of blowing it all up and then I’d be screwed.

Several months ago my CD-ROM drive went wonky and began opening and closing all by itself over and over and over again until it drove me to duct tape it shut. As you can imagine, that’s not good. Eventually the drive got tired of whacking itself against the tape and I think the motor burned out which means I’ve been CD burner-less for quite a while now.

Recently on my grandad’s 80th birthday we were over visiting him and he got to talking about his old war stories when he was aboard the USS Daly during WWII and the Korean War. I love listening to him tell these. The idea came up somehow that I could record him and burn his recollections onto disc for the whole family. GREAT idea! Except my burner is fried.

So after a few attempts to buy one at Wal-mart and Radio Shack (but chickening out because it would mean cracking open my hard drive) I had a talk with one of my coworkers who’s a bit of a geek himself and he a) told me I could get a burner mucho cheaper at a place like Staples rather than Wally World and b) seemed fairly certain I couldn’t fuck up my computer by installing it.

So I held my breath, sauntered into Staples and bought one. I anticipated a long evening spent cursing and crying while trying to fit the drive into place or download some obscure driver needed to run the burner that the manufacturer neglected to include.

But I’m happy to say that after a few false starts while trying to remove the old burner I managed to get it all done in about 45 minutes and it works a treat! I burned a new CD just for kicks and I’m just so damn pleased with the whole process. Now I won’t be so scared when the next thing craps out on me.