6.27.07

fiddy

right. so. the countdown to the apocalypse or as i'm calling it, Julocalypse, is about 3 days. i need to buy a helmet.

here's the repair job:

and here's where i've written the date on the new pipe so when it screws up again we'll know when we replaced it the first time.

note: i wasn't thinking at the time and should have put pre-july 2007 instead of june.

here's the other hole in the other cabinet:

i don't know what it's there for.

here's Toonces Whorecat watching me blog about my woes:

she does not approve of my whining.

and lastly here's mr. fleegan eating an ice cream cone he stole from a little kid:

i tried one without the flash and told him to eat the cone more sexily:

he was going for "blue steel".

whoa back off, that geek is mine.

6.26.07
if you will recall, last year July tried to beat me down...and it did. it won. i gave up. i'm not proud, just human. and if you will recall, July actually started a little early...the last week in June to be exact. and IF. YOU WILL. RECALL. (and you will) it started with a shitload, if you will (and you will), of plumbing problems.

now i hate to get paranoid, okay? but i can't help but notice that it's starting up again. the exact same week and the exact same thing: plumbing. and all's i can say is if this leads to the death of one of my pets? i'm quitting.

"well here's yer problem, ma'am."

this is side A of a 15 inch section of pipe they cut from my sink.

and here's the other side of that 15" piece of pipe:

you can't see through it at all.

 Ceci n'est pas une pipe!

(the art degree was totally worth that.)

amazing in its grossitude, no?
but how does something like this happen? it's simple really. plumbing, you see, is all a matter of gravity. oh yes.
so if all is moving well (read: water is actually flowing through the pipe) then sludge and gunk and other such waste will flow through the pipe and out to the sewer which is also a system dependent on gravity...but it's the city's system so if that breaks it's on the city.

if, on the other hand, (the hand that is flipping me the bird,) IF say, instead of gravity working through my pipes to move the water along, and instead the water is pouring out a hole and into my walls, and then leaking, nay, streaming out the side of my house like a glorious waterfall of disgusting sewage spewing forth from the bottom of my vinyl siding...if THAT'S what's happening (and it is) well, then the water isn't moving the sludgegunk through the pipes and instead a perfect example of arteriosclerosis is happening to my pipes as well as a fungross rotting problem happening to walls that i can't actually get to.

i'm starting to think i'm cursed.

***

quick! here's a picture of roxy with a chewie (not chewbacca):

***

in other, better news:
i'm trying to learn to juggle 4 balls (4 clubs is next) and today for the first time i was able to flash four balls! well, actually i guess i did it last week synchronized, but i did it asynch today! i'm kinda proud and i can't wait to get better at this!
(the animation is Java so it might take a minute to load. then you have to hold the mouse over the picture to see it move. but it's a great way to see what i'm talking about.)

so to sum up:
July is on it's menacing way
plumbing woes
awesome dog!
juggle nerd

oh! and today at lunch i went through the BK drive thru and got a Mocha Joe...holy , those things are delicious! i'm sure they are made of chemicals and fat, but they're awesome.

6.25.07
and it appears that July is getting a headstart on me this year. the kitchen sink? the one that was stopped up? is stopped up? it's also the one with the leaking, dripping, broken pipe what's spilling nasty water...behind my wall.

i wonder how long this has been going on.

also i have pms and it's the emotional kind and i saw where chris benoit and his wife and son died, and i actually teared up and that was right before i found the horrible leak that set me off on a rampage of hate and murder. not actual murder, but just the pretend kind in my head where i take a sledge hammer, cartoon-sized, and beat the sink until it's just a funny piece of dead metal.

and i'm not EVEN going into deets about the giant limb that fell off the giant oak tree but managed to fall into another tree and i can't get it down and it looks like a dorkass beaver damn in my tree. or something. shut up. i'm gonna go eat some icecream.

ican'twashmyfuckingdishes!HATEHATEHATEHATE.

6.24.07
another busy week has gone by. i worked every day except friday. friday was awesome cos it was a Baby Day. laura and i went out for mexican and had drinks and passed ol' Ben Catoebi back and forth so we could take turns eating. he was being a slight fusspot, but i think it's cos he wanted fajitas. who could blame him?

***

the kitchen sink isn't draining so well these days. yesterday morning i poured the last of our drain opener down it to see if that would help. then i tried to plunge it, but i only have one plunger so when i plunge it just comes up the other side...i need two plungers to do a better job, but it seemed to help. but then this morning the drain was being a douche again so i got out the Big Guns: the snake.

i messed around with that for 10 minutes and it's draining better but i'm sure it's not actually fixed yet. i probably just moved the blockage down. i keep running very hot water down it hoping that will somehow dissolve the grossness.

ah! so that's what a pipe dream is!

***

so. i made my girly juggling clubs, right? well mr. fleegan won't juggle them cos they are pink. that's what he says anyway. i think he won't juggle them because he's not good at it yet. s'anyway, i went back to Hobby Lobby and got some more paper (i tried to pick dude-ly paper, but it's scrapbook paper and there's nothing dude-ly about scrapbook paper.) i picked three patterns for him to choose from (and since one of them was a zebra pattern which he said would be ghey for him to pick) it was between black paper with white stars or the blue fun paper.

he went with blue fun paper.
so remember the old ones looked like this:

his clubs now look like:

close-up of that fun design? sure:

so now there's hisnhers props for all that co-ed juggling fun!

6.18.07
you should check out my little bro's band, The Last Straw.
they rock.
on their myspace page they have a couple of videos! you can see justin in them! but only a little bit cos obviously the person working the camera has no idea how awesome my brother is. the vocals don't some through on parts but the music sounds great! they're coming to gadsden sept. 8th and will be playing at the Blackstone Pub (antonelli's).

you will all be there. oh yes, you will.

rock!

6.17.07
wow. it's getting lame over here, no? let me make up my lack of updating with some pictures. i was messing with the digital camera and the memory card was full. i thought that it was strange to be full seeing as how i haven't used it in over a year because well, it doesn't work so well anymore, and then i got a new computer, and i didn't have Corel on the new one, and i don't know how to use any other programs to mod digital pics, and it's not like i'm about to learn a new way of doing something that i already know how to do just because i don't have the things to do it with.
Rambly Ramblerson.

so on the memory card was pictures of roxy and kaze. aw. poor kaze. so first, here's a smiling roxy:

and here's a pre-death kaze:

and here's an extreme close-up of the kaz eating:

right, and here's a picture of my lazy bum cat, toonces. i just took this picture and she was all, "gah, can't you see i'm busy?"

****

okay, enough with all the animal pics and on to the actual reason i got out the camera in the first place! some of you know that i have a passion for juggling. i love it. i love juggling and i love to watch people juggling. i could watch someone juggle all day long. lately i've been wanting to get some new juggling clubs because my old ones are beginner clubs which means that they're affordable and well, club-shaped...so i guess they've got that going for them. they're so warped that i can't even balance one in my hand. s'anyway, mr.fleegan ordered me some new clubs and i can't wait to get them. they're PX3s and supposedly they are the best clubs out there...in that they are very well made...not in their looks.

i did not want the PX3 vegas/deco clubs because they are quite pricey ($37 per club) and i figure since i'm not actually a performer i've really no need to have fancy props. so now i've got some fluourescent green PX3 pirouettes on the way. i must be living right.

but i'm really disappointed in the color choices for juggling clubs. it seems they're all too...i don't know...clowny? i guess that clubs need to be brightly colored because....they show up better? probably. but it doesn't mean i have to like it. so i thought about getting white clubs...but hello, like those won't show every scrape and dirt stain. and even if they are decorated it's always something shiny and just... no choices! and no girl colors! i realize that not nearly as many girls juggle as guys, but c'mon, there are other girl jugglers out there!

so bright green it is. orange is my favorite color, but jimmy and i agreed that the greens were a bit cooler.

i know. this is boring. but wait! it gets better! ish!

so i was looking at my old clubs:

and i thought, "blah. they're so lame and circus-y." and i never liked that they weren't all uniform in color. so i figured hey, i have an art degree somewhere, right? i'm pretty crafty and clever at times...i think i can decorate my own props! yeah! why have i never thought of this before?!

so mr. fleegan and i went to Hobby Lobby to see if i could find anything to cover my clubs with and i came home with pretty paper that i found over in the scrapbook section (there were only about 900,000 choices! finally! choices!) and mr. fleegan managed to find some stickers to decorate his new wireless guitar controller for Guitar Hero II (Cookie, you will LOVE it.). so. pretty paper.

then we headed over to Lowe's to see what i could get in the form of vinyl tape. SCORE! turns out i had choices there too!
see? it's all about the choices. and since i'm an ol' art nerd from way back, i had scissors, x-acto knife, and high-dollar clear contact paper (the good stuff).

materials:

i know! BROWN tape! EEEEEEEEEEE!

so i took off the shiny circus-y decals and used them as templates and KA-BLAMMO! i now have very pretty, girly, juggling clubs!

let's see a blurry close-up of that pattern, huh?

how cool is that?

i've got some more paper that's kind of a gun metal blue color that i'm going to put on the other set i have so in case mr. fleegan wants to juggle (he doesn't usually juggle clubs though) he doesn't have to use my girly props. i'm reasonable like that. i'm all about choices. and best part of all, when the decoration gets scuffed up and torn or whatnot i get to pick out different awesome pretty paper! they had seasonal paper! and some really cool stuff that i didn't pick cos i wasn't sure what color tape i could get but i bought brown, white, and black tape so now i'm ready for some awesome dec'd out props!

6.10.07
it's been quite a busy week. not only have there been many funs this week, Cookie's Pampered Chef party, Blues and BBQ on Wednesday, and a Barons baseball game on Friday, but i've also been getting up early to go paint for a few hours before i go to work at the library. it feels like this past week has actually been two weeks.

***

mr. fleegan's shingles are starting to clear up. we're all very glad for that.

***

Guitar Hero II still manages to be fun. this game has brought so many people together it shoud win some kind of humanitarian award.

***

i started playing Myst Uru Online Live again. i've not played in a month and a half. they've added a bunch of new stuff since last i played. a new age even! a new, crazy, strange, maddening age!

Gametap has also released the new Tomb Raider Anniversary game. i want so much to play this game but i can't seem to control Lara very well...she moves too fast and it's really awkward. it's awkward anyway (to me) to use a keyboard to move a character around. but i thought i'd be better at it what with all the Myst playing. but no, she's not easy to move around. it's really jerky.

***

fiddy

finished another book. i'm hoping to at least get to 25 in June as it's the halfway mark. but really, i'd like to have more than 25 read by the end of june. will it happen?
it's possible.

pig.

6.03.07
mr. fleegan has shingles. so, if you've not had chicken pox be sure to NOT touch his horrible seeping rash. poor guy.

of course, when he was diagnosed on friday my first response as The Loving Wife was, "shingles?! oh no. i'm so sorry. it sucks to be you. say, that's like the chicken pox, right? so i'm in the clear OH NO WHAT ABOUT BEN? *GASP* AM I CONTAGIOUS TO BEN? CAN HE GET CHICKEN POX FROM ME LIVING WITH YOU AND YOUR OOZING LESIONS?!"

ok, so my over-reaction wasn't quite so over the top, but it was close.

mr. fleegan seems to have a very mild case of shingles. mostly an itchy rash with grossness. i've heard it's very painful but his doesn't seem to be painful. the doc said that sometimes it isn't painful. so i guess jimmy is thankful for that.

***

do you know what happens if you click here?

you get to see a picture of my brother with his band and read a very positive review of one of their shows! the reviewer says my little bro is "tighter than a tiger."
toit as a toigah!