CafeChatNoir

Everything, and I do mean everything sucks.

and a damn good one. Actually, it was one I had suggested earlier this week, but my brother apparently hadn’t heard me when I said it.

Next year, we’re going to Phoenix. We can get there a day or so before Christmas, leave the day after her birthday, she’s in HER house, her comfort zone, doesn’t have to travel, doesn’t have to worry about ANYTHING, we can drive her all over town, take her out to dinner every night if she wants and everyone will be much less stressed out in general. (And we get New Year’s back. Bonus.)

Sure, traveling so close to the holiday will be a little nuts, but still MUCH easier for us to head out there than for her to come here.

My brother is going to be the one to broach the subject to her – I think it will go over better coming from him than from me. Cause everything goes over better coming from him than from me.*

I am so very, very happy that he brought this up this evening, cause it had been going through my head. (And I swear I said it out loud earlier this week, but it could have also been the voices in my head.)

*Case in point: Her coffee cup is empty. She’ll start to get up (mind you cane + coffee cup = mildly awkward), and my brother will say he will get it and she says, “Yes, I think I’ll let you get this one.” I hop up and tell her I’ll get her a refill and I get, “Oh, you don’t need to be jumping up for me.” I am starting to think that I am making crap coffee for her.

One week to go. Not sure I’ll make it…

Had some Festivus action here yesterday, my brother said the airing of the grievances actually went quite well and I did stay exceptionally calm. Hopefully I’ve gotten across to her that the constant second-guessing has GOT to stop, I am NOT like either of my parents and that she can’t expect me to be like them, and despite the fact that it doesn’t really look like we know what we’re doing, we actually do.

& , the headphone info is much appreciated, sadly, the suggestion would not go over well at all. (Have confirmed this with my brother, and he’s much better with anything regarding my grandmother.) I asked him if he was spending time in the basement popping Valiums off a forged scrip, as calm as he is, but no, he can just tune her out. God, I wish I could do that. But he also agreed that 13 hours a day of very loud TV is quite grating. It also doesn’t help that CourtTV (Her fav!) has the WORST volume control of any cable channel I’ve ever run into.

Tonight’s MO was “get gramma likkered up and to bed early” – well, not really, but it kinda worked out that way. (Note to self: Get more Jamesons tomorrow for more Irish Coffees.) Of course, this means she’ll be up that much earlier in the morning… Dinner was uneventful, with the usual dropping of some extra cash on the table as we left. Grandma tips like a typical senior citizen – not a judgment, just a fact. So, I make sure we make up for it appropriately, especially considering that the servers always seem to recognize the situation and are on top of things accordingly. However, given how she was chomping at the bit to get out to dinner before 5 PM, either a) she feels my cooking sucks, or b) we need to move dinner up earlier. The problem is that eating as early as we did, I managed about 3 bites and I was done – just not hungry. My brother was in the same boat.

I am freakin’ exhausted, and it’s certainly not like I’ve actually been DOING anything this past week. I can only attribute it to the fact that I haven’t slept for shit since she got here, since I am basically always listening to be ready for her to either come barging in my room at 2AM to inform me that there is a light on somewhere in the house, or that she’s up and around in the morning and the remote is basically nothing more than a freakin’ brick to her (not her fault, bad vision + remote she’s never used = worthless piece of plastic, it just is what it is.), so one of us really needs to be up so we can get the TV on, etc. I am very grateful to for the mornings he’s heard her first and gotten up and when I hear him downstairs, I know I can sleep a little longer.

She is usually up between 5:30 & 6 AM when she’s at home. Thank god she’s not adjusted to east coast time yet, cause 7:30 is bad enough. In my degenerate, irresponsible, unemployed student status, I’ve just let my sleep schedule shift a bit to fit where it wants to be – I don’t sleep until noon or anything like that, but I am not bright & shiny at 7:30 either.

My brother is also aware of the fact that we’re at each other’s throats and it’s because she’s here and we’re pretty much constantly spending time in the same room, which we don’t ever normally do. I told him I couldn’t wait to be alone in the house (even if he was here) – as he said, “Even when I’m here, I’m not really here.” – he’s quite good at arriving and just disappearing. :)

OMFG, now I am the very bad granddaughter AGAIN. Apparently there was a window open in her room and I never noticed it (hell, it was the same temp outside as inside when we got the room ready!) – I’m sure she thinks I’m trying to freeze her out or give her pneumonia.

Well, it’s been an interesting day, and we’ll just leave it at that.

My grandmother has this great habit of, “Here let me fix what you cleaned wrong” thing – she used to do it to my mother constantly and it always infuriated me when she pulled that crap. It’s not your house, so sit down and shut up and do whatever the hell you want in your OWN house.

Today is was, “Oh, I am going to fix this countertop, it’s sticky.”
Whatever, it’s where we make coffee, it’s wiped down at least once a day and gets sticky again within minutes, it just works that way – I don’t fret about it, cause it’s gonna get cleaned up again soon, it always does.
So, I hold my tongue and she suddenly is going, “Oh, this is AWFUL!!!” and I can’t tell exactly what she’s doing but I can hear that whatever it is, it’s scratching the holy hell out of the countertop.

That was when I threw her out of the kitchen.

I swear, if she tells me one more time not to “put myself out” doing things like making coffee or dinner, she’s gonna get her wish, cause I’ll be spending the remainder of the holidays in a very nice hotel, preferably in another state. I can only think she truly believes I live on nothing but frozen dinners when she’s not here.

My brother & I are also on the verge of killing each other as well.

So yeah, tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and I just really, truly couldn’t give a shit either way.

The carport has a 2 light/bulb fixture. went to great lengths (or heights I suppose) to replace the one bulb that had gone out last week.

Tonight, I went out to turn off the Christmas lights and turned the carport light on and…yes, of course, the other bulb blew out.

Of course.

Now is so NOT, NOT, NOT the time for the deep sink in the basement to overflow.

NOT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!

& I got it running again, but NOW IS NOT THE TIME FOR THAT SHIT.

Fortunately the backup was from linty pet goodness from dumping the dog & cat-hair-filled gunk from the carpet cleaner vs. nasty sewage backup or anything truly gross, so anything that got wet can just be washed again with no worries, but SERIOUSLY, NOT NOW.

1. Any semi-decent voice recognition software out there that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg? Doesn’t have to be perfect by any means, just something along the lines of dictation software with a crappy transcriptionist will be OK, I can edit later. I’m not looking for super cheap, just not insanely expensive.)

2. Are there are any “good” headphone/mike combos out there that would work for a laptop? (I’m hoping the networked gamers that read can help me.) Really looking for something that will eliminate or at least minimize feedback issues. (Again, basically looking for middle of the road priced products.)

3. When the hell did the Daleks come back on Dr. Who??!? I thought they offed the last one last season! (Guess what is on TV at the moment?) Nevermind, I watched the rest of it and I get it now. :)

Somehow my brother is convinced that “everything is going fine!!”

I want to know what fucking drugs he has and why the hell he is not sharing them with me.

She’s convinced we’re within days of being destitute and in the gutter. No clean washcloths last night. (Any other linen you could possibly want…) Her pajamas weren’t in her room and I had to go hunt them down. Pair of socks she apparently left behind last year – whereabouts unknown. Dinner tonight – “oh, no need to put yourself out” – WTF? It’s dinner, not remodeling the kitchen, and I DO cook on a regular basis when she is not here. Oh, and there is something wrong with the radio in her room. (Something w/the switch on it – it works, but little bro knows the details of the issue, I don’t.)

She’s got this incredible talent at making me feel like a complete and total fuckup. I really don’t need help with that, thankyouverymuch, I can do that on my own. But, it’s quite literally been this way FOREVER. I have tried and TRIED to get to the point where I can blow it off, but just still haven’t mastered it and frankly, I probably never will.

I just downed an entire See’s Bordeaux Bar and it doesn’t seem to have made a difference.

They really need to start selling Valium over the counter.

Picked up my grandmother today and got the gate pass* to pick her up. Last year it was an actual multipart form that was filled out and I took to security. Today it was a boarding pass for a flight to Boston that said “Void without attached flight coupon”…which obviously was not attached, but had a gate number in the same security section.

The first security stop only made sure the name matched my driver’s license.

The second security person only wanted to see some piece of paper in my hand. (I shit you not, I had it folded in quarters – it could have been ANYTHING and I held it up and they waved me through.)

I forgot about the shoe thing. Note to self: Don’t wear the Timberlands when going through airport security – they don’t exactly slip on & off easily.

* Yes, Virginia, you can still go to the gate to pick someone up! Just go to the ticket counter and tell them you need a gate pass**. You need to present ID, and tell them who you’re picking up so they can check it against the manifest. You can only get 1 pass per incoming person, but it CAN be done. It may help that I walk up there and announce “I have to meet an elderly woman in a wheelchair” and I seem to have a massive protective attitude when doing it, but I don’t know of any actual “reason” that is required to get one.

** If you’ve lived in Japan, don’t go with the natural instinct of calling it a “platform pass” (pass to get to the train but not on it) cause they won’t know what the hell you are talking about.

Good News: Randy was moved to Fairfax Hospital, had surgery this morning to remove blood clots(??) and will probably be able to go home on Friday. Merry Christmas!

6 hours into Grandma’s visit, and it’s going…well…as well as could be expected I suppose.

First some things I have convinced myself I should not be concerned with, even though maybe I should. When she’s stressed about a particular issue, she repeats herself. At first glance, it kinda freaked me out, but then I realized the couple things she was repeating were things that were freaking her out. The more frazzled I get about any issue, the more I tend to obsessively focus on it. Second, poor Snoopy cat is going to be only known as the “pretty black kitty” cause she’s said she can’t remember his name to save her life. She remembers Mox and Target, but Snoopy is screwed, cause she says she keeps thinking it should be some elegant name cause he’s got such an elegant look about him – and he is so NOT elegant in real life, and well, Snoopy isn’t the name you think of for a cat anyway.

She’s got friends who want her to move to the Forum (assisted living) and she doesn’t want to. She likes where she is. I did manage to get her to promise that if she starts to feel uncomfortable on her own, she’d consider it. (This is a woman that gave up her license voluntarily, so I am not too worried.)

She had a crappy day starting with her cab to the airport showing up over 45 minutes late, which I can understand throwing her into a tizzy from the get-go. She made the plane, and while picking her up I near had to punch out a US Air rep who kept saying, “I need this wheelchair” as I tried to take over. (She always gets a chair at the airport cause hoofin’ it all over National when you have a cane and have been sitting on a plane all day is NOT FUN OR EASY.) I pointed out to the rep that a) it’s not like it would fit in my car and b) she’d have to wait until we were damn well good and done with it, meaning through baggage check and until the car came around. She finally relented and let me take over when she realized I was dead serious and if necessary I would body check her skinny ass into a wall and go along my merry way.

Apparently last year some things were stolen from her house (she assumes while she was here) – haven’t been able to get out of her if it was someone who had access to the house or someone quietly picked the lock knowing she was gone… The things that were taken were things she doesn’t use regularly so she didn’t even know things were gone until much later. If I ever find out who did it, there is going to be such a fucking beatdown. She drives me up a wall, but you don’t fuck with my family.

She is NOT happy that my brother hasn’t secured work yet. She has absolutely no concept of what it is like to be completely burned out from a job – he’s needed this time off, and I certainly don’t begrudge him of it. She’s still convinced that he can’t possibly afford to be out of work for a while.

Despite this, I went ahead and told her I am going back to school. She wanted to know how long it would take and when I would be working again… I pulled 2 years out of my ass. (Cause I didn’t see the question coming, cause I am an idiot.) I pointed out that the proceeds from my townhouse would more than cover my expenses for multiple years, but I don’t think she believed me. I also pointed out that one of my coworkers had a freakin’ HEART ATTACK and maybe it wasn’t the healthiest place to be.

The next two weeks will likely contain a lot of “you don’t not have to worry about us financially” reassurances. We let her know that the bulk of the estate, though in our names, is with our broker, who is a good friend of the family and honestly feels a level of responsibility towards us (he’s sort of the good uncle who is also a broker) so if we need money, we have to go through him and he’s not gonna let us do anything stupid. (I did not mention that I am separately saving for a condo at the beach. My one smart move of the evening.)

The lamppost came up again. At least we could say the wiring is fixed (and at 1/2 the price of the estimate!) – we just have to find a replacement lamp fixture for the top and hook it up. (I honestly thought I could get it from the electrician the way I buy replacement stuff from the plumber…)

Almost every request this evening has been directed at – seriously, as if I didn’t even exist. I caugh two – 1) “Can I open the linen closet door?” (This stems from it being the same style door as the broken entry hall closet door – yes, but one half swings out at you, which it shouldn’t) and b) washcloths…of course all the ones I have are in the laundry. Guess who is doing a load of whites tomorrow? (Hell, all the bar towels are in the laundry and I need those more anyway.)

The chair I happen to be sitting in had a wine box next to it… One that I brought home w/ 5 bottles of wine some time ago from Il Vino. I was quite sure that I’d taken all the bottles out and the box was empty and just happened to be sitting there and we’d not gotten it out to the trash. Nope, 3 bottles in it! So, took them out and was putting them on the counter and said, “So, this one is for Thursday, this one for Friday, and this one for Saturday?”

The notebook that has my brains in it has disappeared. This is not good. This is SO not good.

Grandma is totally panicking about Christmas. She wants to get me a sweater, and I know the shop she wants to get it from. It will be fine, but frankly, I’d rather have another thermal top or even better, an Icebreaker top… So…do I let her get me what she wants to get me (with me driving to said shop and checking sizes) and keep the tags/receipt, or have run interference and go to REI for her/me and lie about the cost? (Amazing how when and I do shopping on her behalf, she gets some freakin’ amazing deals on things… We figure the white lie is way better than the sticker shock of what some things cost – we tend to stick with circa 1990 dollars…)

The “D’OH!!!!” moment of the night. (Well, one of many…) When the new 4 door Wranglers came out, I was ready to go jump on one IMMEDIATELY. But – how do you explain to Grandma that the color of your car has changed? (I wouldn’t necessarily expect her to remember the exact style.) Well, as we were waiting for to bring the car around she turned to me and said, “You know, I can’t remember what color your car was.” Dammit!!! I could have pulled it off!!!!! Maybe next year.

I seem to recall saying that if anything in the house broke within 24 hours of my grandmother’s arrival, I would be packing my bags and leaving town. Well, so far we’ve had the vacuum cleaner die, and the entry hall closet door is broken. Can I go now?

By some miracle, things are at least in a state of “good enough” – I will be quick to point out to my grandmother that we just got a ton of stuff out of storage and are still getting organized.

2 weeks.

Things still suck mightily in general. The past 4 days have been massive karmic retribution for something horrid I apparently did in a past life.

No word on my friend from work, either.

Foamy the Squirrel’s Letter to Santa.

Top 10 3D sidewalk drawings

I’d seen one of these before recently – very cool stuff.

Link courtesy Fark.com

I just got a call from a former coworker – my best bud Randy at Deltek had a heart attack at work this afternoon. Nothing else known besides he was taken to the “nearest hospital” and nothing on his condition.

Shit.

We have to leave here to pick up my grandmother in approximately 20 hours. Now is not the time for the vacuum cleaner to break.

I’m in a completely foul mood and it will likely not change for the next two weeks.

I honestly can’t remember at this point when this time of year was actually about Christmas, instead of being about surviving my grandmother. Christmas is just this additional piece of stress on top of it that gets really no attention because everything has to be focused on her.

If I thought that she would ever accept that I have different priorities and just be happy to be here, it would be nice. Instead, it becomes putting aside everything that I care about to cater to her damn whims.

Makes for quite the meaningful holiday.

So, Christmas is in a week.

I’m still sick as a dog and trying to slog my way through getting things ready around here, with pauses to debate, “Pass out or throw up?”

I’ve been fucked over by a couple people I trusted. (You would think I would have learned with 34+ years on this planet to not trust people, but apparently not.)

My grandmother is pissed at me and she’s not even here yet.

What I need is about a week of uninterrupted sleep, which obviously, I won’t get.

Shit, and I JUST remembered that I have to meet with a contractor at 2PM. Rescheduled due to car trouble. Never thought I’d be happy for someone’s car crapping out.

God, I hate this time of year.

Everything sucks.

I’ve been sick all weekend. I have another contractor to meet with tomorrow. Still don’t have a replacement light for the lamppost. My DSL crapped out again and they are just sure it’s the modem and sending me a new one, which won’t arrive until Tuesday, so I am stuck on dialup or a hijacked connection. The earliest I would be able to switch over to cable would be January.

My grandmother called and gave me her flight info today. If she hadn’t done it before now, I would have asked her today anyway. Apparently I should have asked ages and ages ago from the attitude I got on the phone.

So help me god, if for some reason the storage container doesn’t get picked up on Tuesday like it should, I’m gonna have an aneurysm. I have a research abstract due on 12/31 – looks like I’ll be writing that during the wee hours of the nights over the next 2 weeks given that I don’t imagine my actually doing any work on it during the day will go over well.

God, things had better take a good turn here soon, cause I am at my wits end today.

So, I call the credit union to get decedent accounts to clear 2 accounts and get the final mortgage payoff amount.

Operator tells me there is 34 minute hold time. I tell her to go ahead and put me through anyway, after nearly blurting, “What, is there a run on dead people today?” (Reason #287 why I’m going to hell.) After a couple minutes oh hold she comes back on. Apparently the long wait time is because there is only one person answering the phones in that department, and all she is doing is answering the phones – the rest of the department is in a meeting that will last the rest of the day. (Read: Holiday party.)

Argh. ARGH.

She was at least nice enough not to leave me on hold for a half hour to find that out, and did offer to take my info and have someone call me back. Everyone I’ve ever dealt with at Navy Fed is very nice and helpful, but damn, they are understaffed – every time I am on hold for what seems like forever.

And the pods website is busted again – ever since they redesigned it, it’s near impossible to get logged in. I’m on with some poor woman from live help who is more customer service than tech support and well, I still can’t log in, but at least she’s getting me the info I need.

And people wonder why I like beer.

Today was at least a net-zero effect day as far as the chaos in life goes. The storage container is EMPTY – and get this – all the boxes have been unpacked. I SHIT YOU NOT. All the pieces of furniture have a place to be. (Granted there are 2 dressers in the upstairs hall until I rearrange a couple things in my room tomorrow.) I was completely sure there were only 2 dressers in storage. Forgot about the 2 nightstands and the cedar chest.

It’s been a very long week. It’s still not over, but I am going to go treat myself to a beer and some time with my guy.

Regarding registration of hedge funds…

– “Oh, I see where this is going. First they have to register, then they start putting them in camps…”

Amazing how some time in the kitchen resulting in a good dinner and a glass of wine can make up for stupid days.

I wouldn’t put it up with Zum Rheingarten, but it was pretty good Goulaschsuppe, and I will be enjoying the leftovers. Found a recipe that looked pretty good and tweaked it. A little time consuming on prep, but overall pretty easy.

Goulaschsuppe
1# flank or sirloin, cubed or cut into whatever bite sized pieces strike your fancy
1/2 chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, minced & divided
~1 T butter*
2 medium white potatoes, peeled & cubed
1-2 medium carrots, peeled & chopped (if you can find whole baby carrots [not the pre-peeled kind], they are sweeter.)
1 14oz can beef broth + splash of red wine (or 2 c beef broth)
1/2 c water
1 t paprika (sweet hungarian if you can get hold of it, regular should work otherwise)
1 1/2 t sugar
1/2 t salt
1/4 t pepper
1/8 t red cayenne pepper
1 bay leaf
14 oz tomato sauce
3 oz tomato paste (garlic infused if you can get it)
1 t caraway seeds

Melt butter and brown the beef, onion & one of the cloves of garlic in dutch oven/stock pot/whatever. Drain and return to pot, add everything except tomato sauce, paste and caraway.

Bring to boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer 25-30 minutes.

Add tomato sauce, paste & caraway. Bring to boil again, reduce heat, cover and simmer another 25-30 minutes. Remove bay leaf & serve.

Makes around 4-6 servings

* Olive oil or vegetable oil can be substituted for the butter
Original at http://allrecipes.com/recipe/beef-goulash-soup/Detail.aspx

, you need Christmas ideas? 4 more red wine glasses. Wegman’s has them in the downstairs wine shop for a reasonable $4 a pop. (Thing is, I almost bought 4 of them today when I was over there.)

Yes, I busted ANOTHER wine glass and again couldn’t do it in anything resembling a quiet incident. This time I was just trying to handwash one from last night and managed to drop it in the sink. And this time I managed to have a piece of it hit my finger and I had to have help me tape it up…

Of course, there was a bit of miscommunication when I called him up for assistance. Somehow all he heard was the part about “be careful with the garbage, there is broken glass in it” and missed the “I need help with not bleeding out” part – he is dutifully getting the trash bag tied up and out and I am standing there going, “Um, thanks, but I’m still bleeding.” “Huh? OH!”

And being the sympathetic sort he truly is, his next concern was that I had not somehow bled into dinner. No, dinner is safe. Goulash soup, tastes pretty good at the halfway point and smells heavenly.

ETA: This was all before any wine was actually consumed…

3 accounts to fill out paperwork for yesterday. Of course, one of the three has no known account number that I can find as it is a spinoff from one of the other accounts (just last month), there has been no printed statement for it yet, so I can’t get it from that, and the online information has the account number masked for my security and frustration. (I called, they won’t give me the information, so I get to wait 7-10 days for them to mail it to me.)

Electrician that was supposed to come on the 28th, then rescheduled for today due to a cancellation, is now coming on Friday because of the rain…which has stopped. And I suspect they will come out, take one look and say, “Oh, we needed to have this all marked ahead of time.”

Whoever did the first estimate on the paining neglected to write down an actual paint color, so now they have to come out Monday and basically take a chunk from the walls and trim and just take it back and match it.

The HOA wants a “product brochure” for the windows. Well, the company I’m using doesn’t really have one. (They have one framestyle they use and then grids and size are all custom.) Guess I’ll just print stuff off the website. They’re not fly by night, they just don’t have a shiny piece of paper with pictures of windows. Don’t know how I am going to convince them that the trim color I picked is in fact an exact match to the existing trim. (I think that may end up being my Christmas miracle.)

My grandmother arrives in a week. Decorating? Shopping? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. ‘Nuff said.

And to top it all off, we damn near ended up with nowhere to stay at the beach next summer thanks to my completely forgetting about it. (It worked out OK, we have a place that will even take the dog, but damn.)

Now I’m going to go find out if you really can get a dog license at the animal shelter or not. (Note to self: Do not go look at the animals.)

I swear, I get on a roll and things are all looking good and then everything decides to fall apart for a while…I’m ready for things to start going right again. And people wonder why I am so fond of beer.

String of 3 Slayings Startles Authorities (Sorry the WP website sucks so badly.)

The first in the list happened about 2 miles from where I live and the Glory Days that the victim’s friend drove him to? Yup, mine. From talking to folks at the bar last night, it was definitely drug related, possibly self defense, and that the shooter has already turned himself in. Basically, this guy got himself killed over a dime bag.

The downside of a roommate is someone seeing how fucking clumsy you are.

Normally, if I’d managed to somehow flip a corkscrew on to the *perfect* spot on a wine glass to break it, no one would be the wiser but the animals. Instead, I have an actual person coming upstairs after hearing said breakage and asking if I’m OK… Yes, just still as much as a putz as I ever was – I just never figured anyone would actually know about it.

Several hours and a couple hundred bucks later, I have a new ignition cylinder. Not surprised given that the cylinder wasn’t even engaging at the lock point. I was in such a daze when I left the house this morning that I didn’t even remember to bring a book with me. I do not do well when bored, and frankly, there aren’t a lot of places that are as boring as a car dealership.

I know it’s quite calculated on their part to make you wait while bored to tears. You’ll start thinking things like, “Maybe it would be faster if I just bought a new car at this point…” Which I did think, but only after things like, “What can I set on fire for entertainment purposes?”

I’ve been mad at Jeep ever since they discontinued the Cherokee, but this new trim line for the Commander did redeem them a tiny bit in my eyes: ( is cringing at this, but I loved the old Wagoneers.)

Unfortunately, that particular model was listed for 42K, which is a touch out of my price range.

No matter, I’m still in love with the new Wranglers. Dirty sex on wheels.

Well, there is an “whatever of the year” for everything else, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that there is a word of the year. And for 2006, it’s “truthiness”. Guess more people watch the Colbert Report than I would have thought.

Colbert, who once derided the folks at Springfield-based Merriam-Webster as the “word police” and a bunch of “wordinistas,” was pleased.

“And what an honor,” he said. “Truthiness now joins the lexicographical pantheon with words like `squash,’ `merry,’ `crumpet,’ `the,’ `xylophone,’ `circuitous,’ `others’ and others.”

If I had to use a fountain pen in school, I think I’d be up to my elbows in ink…

And, I don’t think this is a coincidence:
Venice’s St Mark’s Square under water
Vast African lake levels dropping fast

Links courtesy Yahoo! News

I can’t remove the key from the ignition of my car… It will go into the various modes of off, start, accessory only, but the ‘lock’ position where you can actually remove the key, seems to be gone…

I’m thinking this is something best left to the dealership rather than calling a locksmith. Of course, service at the dealer is closed until Monday.