randomness

"…A Brand New Car!"

[insert “Price is Right” theme here]

[spoken in Rod Roddy announcer voice:]
That’s right, folks! Diana Cook and Aaron Schnuth are now the proud owners of a brand new 2003 Kia Spectra! Diana can now drive to work in style in this pepper-red four-door sedan! Complete with AM/FM/CD Stereo, Air Conditioning, and an Automatic Transmission, this gem is sure to make the happy couple into the talk of the town… [end Rod Roddy voice]

No shit. We are joint-owners of a car loan for the next five years. Along with it comes a damn spiffy new vehicle, though. 🙂 If our new car were to be fabricated inside The Matrix construct, it would look like this:

Anyway, this saves us enormous car-related stress when going on road trips (i.e. ‘will the car make it back alive’), it saves me cab fare (sort of… I think the car payment might be higher…), and it makes both of us mobile. We’re both insured on both cars, so whichever car is at the end of the driveway is the lucky winner of the moment.

Come visit on New Year’s, and you can see the new car… nudge, nudge…

geekspeak

Certifiable Tolkien Geek

I just spent two hours researching how to write my name in Elvish.

My latest idea for a tattoo is to get my name tattooed in Elvish on my shoulder/arm. So, I went off looking for Elvish runes. Eventually, after searching through the entire LOTR trilogy and all half-dozen supplemental texts Aaron and I have, I went online. Duh.

First, I could only find images of the letters, and descriptions of their respective phonetics (what sounds they make). So, I sliced up the images and made my name:

This wasn’t nearly as cool as I had hoped, being a bitmap image and all. Turns out it was technically incorrect, as well. I researched for a while more and found multiple Tengwar (Elvish) fonts, as well as multiple rules for writing English text using Tengwar characters. I downloaded my favorite font, along with the character mapping, and compared feverishly with my chosen online Tengwar/English guide to make this more correct version in Photoshop:


[D – i – an – uh]

The plan is to locate or fabricate some scrolly line-artsy things to create a band on either side of the script, and have it tattooed around my right shoulder.

If you’re a geek, too, and would like something written in Tengwar characters (read: English pronunciation using Elvish alphabet), I’m willing to entertain requests… for now. Considering that only about four of you regularly check my site, I think I’m safe from the galloping hordes of Tolkien freaks.

spirituality

What Religion Are You? The Belief-O-Matic Knows!

Oh, yeah — Merry Christmas. 🙂 As an initial side-note, I visited my Memaw in the crazy two-day Cleveland Christmas Extravaganza (more on that later). She was doing much better than on Thanskgiving, and insisted that she will dance at my wedding. — Now, how do I break it to her that there won’t be dancing…?

So, Beliefnet.com informed me in my daily Hindu Wisdom e-mail that the Belief-O-Matic knows what religion I truly am. Since I’ve recently been curious about this, I answered the 20 questions and awaited the results:

Other notable placers include Nontheism at 60%, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the religion I was raised in and have denounced) at 47%, Hinduism at 46%, Jehovah’s Witness at 35%, and Roman Catholic at a whopping 16%.

First off, I know the percentages are bullshit, because I checked out Match #1, and the Unitarian Universalists do not agree with all the answers I gave. Secondly, the religion I’ve been studying on my own, Pantheism, appears not to be represented at Beliefnet. On the positive side: though they sound particularly harsh to me now, the Mormon beliefs are laid out truthfully and correctly, which gives me hope that the other religions are represented properly, as well.

I’m still not convinced that there’s a religion out there that fits me to a tee. At this point, I’m content with picking and choosing bits and pieces from various religions that sound about right to me.

randomness

Local flavor experience

Got off work early for once. It was still light out. I was geeked. After chillin’ for a while behind the computer, I walked to Ben Franklin to find a Christmas present for Kris (actually, I just had to purchase the finishing touches). So, while I was downtown, I decided to stop into Grounds for Thought for some coffee goodness on the way home. Got my Milky Way (a mocha with a healthy dose of caramel and a couple dollops of whipped cream), silently approved of the R.E.M. playing in the background (must have been some album before Green, because I didn’t recognize it — sorry, Aaron), and planned to slip out the back.

The first thing I noticed was that the Children’s section had been moved. It’s usually there on the back wall of the cafe proper as you walk back into the happily cramped shelves of used books. Hmm… more books on the side wall. Neat. I turned to exit out the side door — to find it was no longer there.

WTF?

Yes, apparently Grounds purchased the store next door and tore out the wall, because the happily cramped stacks are now spacious and comfy. I made a dork of myself by wandering around, gaping at all the room. I believe I even marveled aloud. I must bring Amy to see this.

For once, a good thing is made even better.

family, randomness

Unrelated discoveries: one fun, one not-so-fun

We begin with the fun: wilwheaton.net.

actual photo from wilwheaton.netHe’s 30, he’s married, and he has blue hair. It’s freaky on some level, yet comforting on another. As much as it might disturb Wil to hear it, he’s kind of like a long-distance high-school or college buddy. That’s how he comes across on his page. Totally honest, frank, and certainly more than a touch dorky. (Hell, who isn’t?) His web-design skills are pretty middle-of-the-road, his writing style is familiar and fresh, and he has interests that “normal” people have. And he likes The Pixies. Plus, after watching his character Wesley grow up on Star Trek: The Next Generation (now who’s the dork?), it’s neat to see what he’s like in real life, and to know that he’s just as cool as you’d hope an actor (and aspiring writer) your age would be.

I know, I know… I’m not 30 yet. In the grand scheme of things, though, those four years don’t really matter much.

Now, to the not-so-fun discovery. Actually, it’s downright depressing.

On Thanksgiving, I went to visit my grandmother at her new nursing home. Beforehand, my step-Gary felt the need to call me and warn me of her mental condition. Seems she would be OK for a while, then start talking about feeding pet mice and stepping on cockroaches and all sorts of random things that may or may not have root in reality. So, I felt I was armed with the knowledge that my Memaw was going off her rocker, and things would be cool.

As one might expect, the visit was unusual at best. At least when I used to visit her before, she was recognizable. This wispy-haired, bent wraith of a woman bore very little resemblance to the Memaw that I knew and loved. True to form, she wasn’t wearing her hearing aid or her teeth, and she did indeed go off on random tangents. I smiled and nodded along, answering loudly when appropriate. Just to prove how erratic her behavior had been, when she stood up to show me how much weight she had lost, I discovered that the staff had her bed monitored; when she stood, a beeping alarm sounded. At first I thought her oxygen had been disconnected, but no. It was so she wouldn’t try to wander off and break a window to escape again.

Seriously.

I dealt well with the visit at the time. I even saw the humor in it. Memaw was going off the deep end. Funny stuff. I joked with Aaron about it on the way to Parma to visit my folks.

Later, though, the truth of the matter set in. I really don’t have a Memaw anymore.

Yes, I know she’s still alive, and I should be thankful for that. But my Memaw, the one that fabricated my imaginary friend when I was two, the one who made up lullabies that stood the test of time, the one who could cook almost anything I asked for, the one with the slightly warped sense of humor (one aspect of her I didn’t fully realize until I was a little older), that Memaw… she’s gone.

Maybe it’s easier to lose her this way, slowly, so I can come to terms with it. Maybe it’s better than just getting a phone call out of the blue, telling me I’ll have to cash in my Bereavement Days at work.

But she’s still my Memaw. And God, I miss her already.