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January 01, 2008

Hm...

Can I post?

Edit: apparently. I attempted to upgrade MT a couple weeks ago - an endeavor taken upon sometime after midnight, when I was tired. And got no further. The last couple hours have been trying to cobble together a work-around to enable me to simply use MT at all - upgrade or no upgrade.

I am not sure how I managed it, but, yikes.

sarae at 10:09 PM |

January 07, 2008

Political

As found on Jen's blog
93% Chris Dodd
92% Barack Obama
90% John Edwards
89% Hillary Clinton
85% Joe Biden
81% Mike Gravel
79% Dennis Kucinich
78% Bill Richardson
47% Rudy Giuliani
35% John McCain
27% Mike Huckabee
27% Tom Tancredo
25% Mitt Romney
17% Ron Paul
15% Fred Thompson

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

Chris Dodd? Um, okay. Figures that my best match has already withdrawn from the race.

sarae at 08:05 PM |

January 19, 2008

Silenced

When I first moved into my apartment, I was jarred by the train horns blowing at any hour of the day - the tracks run one property behind my apartment complex, and cross my street at the end of the block. There would be a night when three trains would pass after midnight, and then there'd be a stretch of days on end when I would not hear a single one. It was irksome at first, and I would wake up every time one blew.

It quickly moved from annoying to pleasing. Growing up, I would hear the train whistles from several blocks away, muted by the night. It became a fun game, and led to me exclaiming "Traaaain!" I even did this a few times after being woken by one at four A.M.

Alas, the city has once again made it so that trains cannot blow their whistles in residential areas. This means no more happy exclamations of trains come to rumble by. Sad.

sarae at 03:36 AM |

January 21, 2008

Revenge

As I previously mentioned, the train whistles are set to be silenced in a little over a week. What had been premature nostalgia over the oncoming lack of whistles has quickly turned to sheer annoyance and a general feeling of hurry-the-fuck-up,-February. What changed?

Well, I think the conductors are pissed at the new ordinance. Instead of the two toot horn, something short and sweet and with a long pause before blowing the whistle again that has been the norm, they now send out long, steady whistles. Three seconds, a half second pause, then repeat. And repeat. It's nearly endless sometimes, and I can hear the whistle fading in the same whistle, not in consecutive ones that get quieter. And at 2am, that's annoying.

sarae at 09:42 PM |

January 24, 2008

It took so long

Tonight, for the first time in my life, I have seen the familial resemblance between my brother and I. Not similarities like the love of sarcasm or odd little things, those I have known about (and in some instances, tried to cultivate for many years.) All my life - or rather, all his life, people have made comments about how we look alike, but I never saw it. Yes, we were both blond when younger, and we both chose the same half-smirk face for our Miis, but beyond that?

All it took was looking at my passport photo, taken when I was sixteen, and thinking about he looks now at nineteen. And I can see it - I can't name what it is, it's not the nose - it's just an overarching similarity. Which is kind of neat.

sarae at 10:00 PM |

January 31, 2008

Tally

Tonight on the drive home, I spied (in order):

  • one car-meets-snowbank accident (intersections are icy!)
  • one out-of-state driver making maddening driving decisions
  • one stalled car in the middle of traffic, getting a jump
  • one ambulance, headed away from the hospitals.

I haven't had any issues driving in the snow this year, and while having a new car with new tires and all that is helpful, I don't think that it's the only reason. It's beyond me how in the state of Wisconsin, at the end of the month of January in the middle of an exceptionally snowy winter - we've had over 55" already - a relatively small snow of an inch (at the time) could cause so much headaches. Shouldn't we be proficient at maneuvering in that much snow, before the snowplows have gone through?

sarae at 10:36 PM |