Holy cow! I’ve had a sinus headache since last night, the first full-blown one I’ve had since I was ten. I was walking around in a fog for most of last night and today, but I took some medicine (shoutout to Tylenol Sinus), so now I’m back to normal. I’ll have to take another dose around 8 pm, though.
By the way, LJ isn’t working for me, either. Not on Netscape or Explorer.
Thanks for the recipe, singular1. We decided to put off the roast in favor of something easy (like take-out!) until tomorrow, but I’m going to use that recipe tomorrow when I DO make the roast!
I can’t get on. The DDOS demons won’t let me. 
I’ve found ROTK stills that must be shared. I can wait just as long as you can, DDOS demons. And when I post them, there will be light and sunshine throughout the free world.
my lj is still down too! And I just knew that I would have written something really profound and eloquent 
My coworkers took me out to lunch for my birthday and showered me with presents. I received a couple of stuffed animals, movie tickets, a $25 gift certificate to Half-Price Books (Poing), some americana stuff for my bedroom, a turquoise and silver watch, six wire wine glasses markers, candles, bath salts, candle holders, and a bunch more stuff. Yep, my coworkers know how to do a birthday. They even let me order liver and onions for lunch. Yummy!
LJ is working for me, but for the benefit of my adoring fans who are unable to access it, I’ll repost my observation of the day:
Yesterday’s supermarket observation:
Last night I stopped in to the Gristedes supermarket in the basement of the Ansonia to pick up something for dinner. Unlike most supermarkets out there in the real world, this one has a small vestibule at street level with an escalator leading to the below-ground bulk of the store.
The store is rather cave-like. The escalator descends into just about the geographic center of the space, and the store is laid out around it. The space is divided by frequent pillars and architectural irregularities, and most of its shelves and displays go all the way up to the low ceilings, creating an interesting, maze to get through. It is, however, brightly lit, though with harsh fluorescent lighting.
After I had descended the escalator, I turned to the right to begin my circuit of the store. I was standing by the antipasto bar, glancing through the sale circular, when I heard from over my shoulder a toneless, “Ahoy Matey!”
I turned and saw that the voice came from over by the fish counter, and soon spied the source. Standing on a three foot pillar was a four foot high badly-anamatronic fisherman, dressed in a yellow sou’wester with a full white beard. In the pillar was a speaker blaring out the virtues of the Gristedes fresh fish department in a mechanical voice using a landlubber’s impression of sailor-like phrases.
I hid behind a refrigerated meat cabinet until it stopped, and then continued on to the cheese department. I was calmly looking for some Parmesan to grate, when I turned and was faced with a white apron covering spindly legs standing on a pillar containing a speaker. I nervously swiveled my head up, and saw a dark-haired figure holding a mixing bowl and spatula. While I was processing this, the spatula suddenly started to move slowly back and forth in the bowl, and a recorded voice began extolling the virtues of the Gristedes bakery department.
I dropped the cheese I was considering and backed slowly away. After collecting myself, I continued shopping. As I approached frozen foods, I worriedly poked my nose around the corner to see if a Yeti would be there to jump out and praise the store’s freezer cases, but the aisle was uninhabited by such monsters.
In fact, I completed picking up dinner without encountering any more of these promotional robots. Just after I paid for my purchases, I found out that I had been spared the final indignity.
By the escalator out was a pillar topped with the figure of a cow standing erect, dressed in a red, white and blue tailcoat and vest, holding in its fore-hoof an American flag. Fortunately, the cow was still, and I saw a detached electrical cord coiled atop the pillar. I went out onto the street thanking whatever force of man or nature had spared me from encountering this beast at large in the dairy aisle.
This is LJ for today? Okay. I have to confess I really didn’t miss it.
The governor finally issued her executive order confirming budget cuts, so our staff meeting was cancelled and suddenly everyone had new budget stuff to work on. I’ve been working frantically on a model which will tell us, ultimately, how bad we can stick it to the students. It’s exactly the kind of thorny thing I love so I’ve been in paradise even though I haven’t had much of a break all day.
Kyla, you should come over tonight and get your tickets and hang out. Or just get your cookies and run off.
Thanks, Billdo, that observation was definitely worth reading.
And since I don’t think I can get onto LJ either, here goes:
I had a terrible time last night trying to run an extension cord through the bathroom ceiling for an upstairs phone in our bedroom.
The battery on my cordless drill needed recharging, so I couldn’t use that, and I had all sorts of grief standing on a ladder which straddled the toilet and poking a straightened-out wire clothes hanger through the pre-existing hole in the ceiling.
I managed to feed it all through, though, and tonight I’m going to finish the job by drilling through the bathroom and office walls above the drop ceiling and connecting it all up.
Finally – a reliable telephone in our bedroom!
Good heavens, it’s still down.
I wanted to make a longer-than-the-Bible post about apartments, rent and my inability to get hired, but…
I’ll spare you guys that.
I’m so relieved to know it’s not just me that can’t get on. I will not, however, post here what I was wanting to post in a highly filtered friends-only entry.
It was working great for me all day at work (thank Buddha – what a dead day – deader than Elvis). Now that I’m home, it’s hit or miss at best.
Frustrating to say the least.
I just got in! How long this will last, I can’t say. But at least I got in.