sylvar | Entries tagged with jodi

Three things I accomplished today:

Taught big boss how to use WordPress
Learned how to write interactive fiction with Inform 7 (it's a lot easier than you'd think)
Successfully navigated a dinner party hosted by someone I didn't know very well yet

Three things that made me happy today:

Vegetarian abenkwan (Ghanaian palm-nut soup)
Talking with a coworker about "How I Met Your Mother" (there are finally some good episodes again)
Jodi offered to watch a Star Trek movie with me soon, not because she likes Star Trek, just because she wants to watch things with me. (Though if she's going to make that sacrifice, I think we should at least wait until Amanda's back at home so she can enjoy it too.

Current Mood: tired

Three things I accomplished today, my second day of medical leave:

After a successful saving throw vs. constitution at 6:30 in the freaking morning, I got my car into the garage and arranged a rental while they're working on it (squeaking brakes are a lot easier to ignore than a check-engine light and an engine that idles at 800rpm, no make that 2000, no make that 1000, no make that 500, no make that 1800...)
Took Jodi to a followup appointment (it went well; that's all you're getting unless she feels like telling you)
Helped Jodi send out some transcript requests (if you've enjoyed this game, you'll enjoy dealing with Hillsborough Community College; meanwhile, Indian River Community College charges absolutely nothing for transcripts and accepts a faxed request for multiple copies on the same piece of paper -- and can produce them the same day, for double the price)

Three things that made the day suck less, or maybe even be enjoyable at times:

The rental car I arranged was, for no extra charge, a convertible, and the weather was perfect for it most of the day.
I managed to find a drink at Got Tea? that fit within the change from $7 after I bought Jodi's drink.
If I can put away all the groceries and scoop the catbox in record time and have a second beer, I might actually get six and a half hours of sleep before I return to the office and start catching up on everything.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Location: 8 meters from the bed, and closing fast
Current Music: "I Can See For Miles" (in my head)

Jodi's new 'do

She gave twelve inches to Locks of Love and ended up very happy.

Three things that I accomplished today:

Used smokeping to help convince our vendor that there was a network problem.
Explained to a totally unrelated vendor that now was not a good time for his call; hung up. Then, two minutes later, explained to the same guy that we were about to bring our entire network hard down for emergency maintenance and I needed to call all of my customers to notify them before it actually happened. (He got the subtle hint that time.)
Drove to the airport post office to send last-minute applications (and a few bills, some of which were overdue).

Three things that made me happy today:

Hanging out with Jodi, Jon, and Suzanne after dinner.
Cheap-ish chocolate in an after-VD sale.
Getting a free day off for tomorrow (now why don't I have an emergency fun plan?

Current Mood: happy
Current Location: 14305 Wedgewood Ct, Tampa, FL

Three things that made me happy today:

Seeing Jodi crack up as I read her bits of I Like You: Hospitality under the Influence by Amy Sedaris. (And cracking up when she said "Oh, is that a comedy book? I thought it was real.")
Getting complimented by the big boss (cc: to my boss and his boss) on handling a messy, frustrating problem at work.
Being able to log into our webmail server with no delays tonight, which makes me think the ISP might have finally solved the aforementioned problem.

Three things I did right today:

Avoided being rude to the totally unrelated vendor who called to ask me (repeatedly within one phone call) about the settings for a few machines, even though I explained to him (repeatedly ditto) that we were having a major network problem and none of the settings, even if I had them, which I didn't, would mean anything until I could get off the phone and solve the major network problem. (Not that I ended up being able to do much more than call people and make sure they were still aware that, yes, we have a major network problem.)
Cleaned out the fridge, taking nasty stuff to the skip immediately.
Went out to get Jodi some junk food around 11pm, despite the fact I'd already taken off my shoes and socks and had just opened a beer. (That is Valentine's Day for you.)

Current Location: 14305 Wedgewood Ct, Tampa FL 33613 (Home)

Three things that made me happy today:

Resigning from both chess games with honor, and realizing that I enjoyed them enough that it didn't matter that I lost. I'll probably return to those boards in a few days to analyze them.
Having an early VD with Jodi (dinner and a movie)
Specifically, watching Sweet Land (about which more later, probably in a day or two) and talking about it afterward. For now, I'll just quote without context: "Hallo, hems." And I want an icon of Brownie's "Have more pie" line.

Three things I accomplished today:

Configuring the assistant director's new Treo smartphone to connect to the Exchange server
Taking some pretty good photographs of one of the new employees, for our website
Finding a supplier for custom compounded medication for Pied, and then finding an even better supplier after she started drooling, Turner and Hooch-style, following the administration of 1mL suspension p.o. (apparently the fish flavoring is what did it; the better supplier makes their own fish flavoring from scratch)

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: 14305 Wedgewood Ct, Tampa FL 33613 (Home)
Current Music: "Music for TV Dinners" in my head

Three things that made me happy today:

Helping the people looking for Jim Gray
Playing chess with a stranger and with a friend I went to high school with
Thinking about my friend Toad enjoying a hoppy birthday

Three things I did right today:

Put photos of Pied onto Jodi's iPod
Got the car to the garage and back again (even though I'll have to do it again tomorrow, since the brakes still squeak sometimes, and the steering pulls to the right)
Cooked Yukon Gold potatoes marinated in 1/4 c lemon juice, 1/3 c olive oil, 2 Tbsp Penzeys Greek Seasoning, and 1 Tbsp rosemary

Current Mood: tired

Lots of people I know seem to be enjoying this, so I'll give it a try.

Three things that made me happy today:

Seeing BzzAgent's new site, which is wonderfully informative and well-designed
Teaching Jodi the basics of chess at Kaleisia
Overcoming her beginner's luck twice, both times somewhere around her KB2.

Three things I accomplished today:

Diced celery, onions, and sweet potatoes, and minced carrots in preparation for dinner tomorrow
Played chauffeur for Jodi and Amanda so they could see Because I Said So
Got three more books ready to send out to PaperBackSwappers

Current Mood: tired

Jodi's out with some friends tonight, and despite her recent suspicion about the GRE, she says she's okay at the moment. I read her parts of the first three comments, and she seems cheered by some of them.

I'm going to bed soon so that I've got a halfway decent chance of getting enough sleep to do some coding tomorrow. Yesterday I got about five hours of sleep and could never get into the flow.

I saw Harry Frankfurt on The Daily Show recently. I imagine that my stepfather would be like that in a fast-paced interview, too; he, too, has the virtue of thinking before he speaks. Talk-show interviews are no less formulaic than ballet or Noh, but so many guests have been so well-groomed that you don't notice until a normal person is a guest.

Today I shuttled back and forth from the testing facility to make sure Jodi was well-supplied with whatever she needed (Mountain Dew, lunch from Chik-fil-A, an iced tall Americano one-shot-classic with room, and a bottle of water). I walked across campus to drop off a Unite for Diabetes travel bug in a geocache and got some johnson-grass-like scratches for my trouble, along with some needed exercise. I wished a few times I'd had my camera with me, but the cookbooks I was carrying (to transcribe selected recipes -- which I basically didn't get around to), and which I'll need to return and then check out again, were heavy enough.

Great exchange on yesterday's Jeopardy!:

ALEX TREBEK [to a contestant who works as an auditorium manager]: It says here that your stagecraft students have a special name for you. What is it?

NATHAN CRANE: Uh, they nicknamed me "Jesus". [pause] I have long hair and carpentry skills.

[audience laughs; cut to Alex shielding his face with his hand while he laughs; audience continues laughing as each member of the audience, in turn, gets the joke]

ALEX TREBEK: [pause] ...let's go on.

Now it's time to fold a bit of laundry and go to bed...

Current Music: A cappella cover of "Save A Horse, Ride a Cowboy" in my head

Devin stunned me with an amazing Christmas gift: Guitar Hero with the guitar controller. I was just telling Jodi that I wanted to play Guitar Hero while I was in Stuart, since I can't play it at home. That's when Devin sprung the gift on me. Man, I can hardly wait to play this at home. *fierce grin*

The iPod is back up to $349.99, though -- I'm kind of upset about that. When I sold the 30GB iPod, I accepted an Amazon.com gift certificate as payment because I figured I'd be getting the best deal at Amazon. Now that the sale's over, though, I'll just wait and see. Maybe it'll be a better idea to buy one at a retail store, if I see a better deal (no more than $327+tax), but I doubt I'll be able to beat Amazon's price anyway, what with the lack of sales tax.

Well, still, it's hard to complain. I'm so blessed. This morning I said "God, this is gonna be a stressful trip; be with me. No, fuck that, be with Jodi; she's under more stress than I am." And five minutes later, at Burger King, the woman at the drive-through offered Jodi a free coffee that someone had mistakenly poured five minutes ago; Jodi accepted gleefully and smiled for the first time of the day. And the woman said "Merry Christmas, have a God-blessed day!"

Thanks, big guy. I noticed your impeccable timing.

Current Mood: grateful
Current Location: 34994

Free dinner at Trang Viet Cuisine.

Watched a Babylon 5 episode ("Sic Transit Vir") with Jodi, who rarely has any interest in it, but put up with it for my birthday -- and Amanda, who is watching the whole series with me (we're on S5E02 next, which I think has the Declaration of Principles).

Will watch an episode of Buffy (S2E01, whatever that turns out to be) soon.

A bit of drama, but that's how LJ is sometimes. I might should have put my birthday stuff into a different post. Ah well. I know y'all wish only the best for us, and I love you for it.

For the record, Jodi is quite capable of handling graduate work; she's taken many graduate seminars and been graded as a graduate student (and earned good grades even by grad-student standards), and the organizer of the PIKSI all-expenses-paid trip told her that her references are glowing. And we do regularly discuss the job prospects available in this area that don't involve four hours a day waiting for hourly bus routes to connect. But she's gung-ho on GRE prep, to which the thousands of filed index cards for vocabulary study will attest. And that's going to not only get her into graduate school, but get her fully funded somewhere. She's not as dumb as I look. ;)

I didn't like the idea of selling the camera. At first, I downright hated the idea. But it gradually dawned on me that it was the single most powerful thing I can do to move in the right direction, and now I think it's a darned good idea. A bit humbling, but wise. When I have enough free time, I'll write some more crossword puzzles or sell some articles, and I'll use the proceeds to get a decent digital with some sort of optical zoom. I really don't need pro-am gear, I just 'shiny' it.

The road trip is still on; Dad's paying for gasoline and we're gonna use CouchSurfing.com to find places to sleep. (If you know someone in Nashville, St. Louis, DeKalb, Milwaukee, Kalamazoo, Oxford OH, Cleveland, Kent OH, Boston, Blacksburg VA, or Atlanta who would like some polite houseguests who plan to bring a gift like some key lime juice or other Floridiana, let me know!) So it's basically just food for an expense, and we were planning to eat some of that anyway. (Though not necessarily the likes of R. Thomas, Giordano's, or equivalent legendary foodstuffs of the cities we're visiting. For that matter, if you know a must-eat food along the way, speak up! We're already planning to have some frozen custard, too.)

And by the way, we DO have air conditioning in the car; it was my dad's graduation present to Jodi and his birthday present to me, and a very generous present at that. So it's all good.

We should really have some sort of get-together so people can hear more about our lives than I have time to post. Who's interested?

Current Mood: content
Current Location: in bed on Jodi's laptop (hush, you)

Jodi Geever, USF Graduate

See lots more photos in the complete Flickr set -- including hand-drawn announcements, if you're logged into Flickr as one of my friends or family.

Current Mood: proud
Current Location: 14305 Wedgewood Ct, Tampa, FL

I'm getting pretty good at coded crossword puzzles -- I finished this one in 1m17s after about 32oz of beer (Double Chocolate Stout and organic weissbier, both from Wild Oats).

I've been looking forward all week to The Pirates of Penzance. I got it on tape from the library. But since Jodi didn't watch it with me last night or tonight (which I'd been looking forward to), and says she'll watch it Sunday, I may have a chance to get the DVD version from another library -- if we can manage to get to Casa Tina during lunchtime, the only time their food is affordable for us. (It's still WORTH what they charge at dinner, but we don't have it.)

The week has gone fairly well, I think. Last night I went all ninja in the kitchen and made stuffed mushrooms (stuffed with spinach and tofu, baked in tamari and topped with mozzarella), insalata caprese, and an apple-cranberry tart/cake/pie thingy from the Penzeys catalog. Only a fraction of the dessert remains. The rest has been devoured, and I'm looking forward to doing it again. Perhaps stuffed zucchini tomorrow...

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: 14305 Wedgewood Ct, Tampa, FL
Current Music: "When the Foeman Bares His Steel" (ln-s.net/Cb1) in my head

As soon as I got home, I saw that the Sears repairman had come and fixed the dryer. The labor charge was $120, and the parts (a genuine factory-approved drum belt) cost $20. That didn't include hooking the dryer up to the exhaust vent properly, as I had chosen a vinyl hose a year or two ago, and he said it'd be illegal for him to work on it.

Then ( ...click here for the full story. )

So good night, LJ readers. I'm sure I'll be complaining/bragging again tomorrow.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Location: 14305 Wedgewood Ct, Tampa, FL

Jodi's flight to CVG is in the air. Her flight to State College seems to be running on time.

I got about four hours of sleep (she got none). We got to the airport, checked her large heavy bag, and got to the security gate. This is where she and I parted ways last time, but last time we'd asked for assistance. This time I had to run (well, jog) across the airport, down the escalator, back across the airport, explain (gasp) the situation (pant), get a gate pass, jog back, explain it to Jodi and Amanda (who had to wait at the security checkpoint for me), and both of us proceeded through the security line.

I'm stunned I didn't get a full strip search because I was sweating like crazy and probably acting a bit odd due to stress and exhaustion. But we got through quickly and I saw her onto the plane before dashing back to get Amanda. We drove home, I had a shower, got dressed, left a note for the repair technician, and headed into the office. I've got at least two dozen cans of diet cola, so I think I'll survive the day.

Once I get Amanda to work, though, I may just go to sleep for the night. We'll see.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: 1202 Tech Blvd, Tampa, FL