As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had been given a $25 gift card for BestBuy from a coworker and had the remains of two Olive Garden gift cards as well. So today, I went down Wright State Way (my description of the area, not theirs) to use other people’s money.

I always like to start at the Bookery Fantasy, a great comic book store in Fairborn. They put my Doctor Who Magazine and DreamWatch magazines in a folder for me and when I come in every other month or so, I pick ’em up. There were two DWMs and one DW this time. (One of the DWMs – issue 339 – had a LOVELY picture of Sylv on the cover – proof positive that I don’t have enough pictures in my collection if there are still photos out there I’ve not seen…)

After my comic excursion, I went onto BestBuy. Lots of neat stuff that I’d like to buy (pondered a wireless 802.11g network for a good long while) but I ended up buying two CDs. Blue Man Group’s Audio and a greatest hits CD of Jim Croce. (I can FINALLY have a legal MP3 of “Time in a Bottle.”) After using the gift card, I owed all of 66 cents. And to pay that, I used a $1 bill that came in the mail accompanying a survey that someone wanted me to do. (The survey’s on my desk at work – I actually will do the survey as I love doing surveys.) Total cost to trinalin? -34 cents.

Finally, it was lunchtime and Olive Garden is right next to BestBuy. I had cheese ravioli with marinara sauce and melted cheese on it. Not the best thing for a gurl watching her weight, but as I just had a bowl of cereal for supper, I’m not too worried. Using the two gift cards, both with just over $3 on them, the remainder of the bill was less than $5, including tip. Woohoo! A successful day of spending as little money as I can!

Meanwhile, on the way to and from Wright State Way (and in case you’re wondering, I call it that because it’s near my alma mater, Wright State University), I listened to Big Finish’s The Natural History of Fear. Ah, finally, a Paul McGann audio that’s actually interesting and intriguing. I only got episodes 1-3 listened to. I only hope it doesn’t collapse at episode 4. (I really feel sorry for the guy – he seems to be getting pretty lame scripts.)

Most of the rest of my day was far less interesting. I either have a cold or a sinus infection so it’s just a dribbly day for me. Bleh. I’m hoping to lick it before the weekend is over so that it doesn’t affect me at work.

So last night I have one of those nights when you think you’re awake the whole time, but then you realize you were just dreaming that you were awake. And it’s the things that you recall thinking that convince you of this.

I had far more dreams than I can recall, but I do remember dreaming an episode of Dexter’s Laboratory. You know, Dexter & Dee Dee are the sort of characters that I might consider making LJ icons for. I could use an “It’s a fine day for SCIENCE” icon… Will ponder that for later. As for any plot details, I remember none – other than thinking that it was a rerun. (Of a televised episode or some previous dream with Dexter, I couldn’t really say.) I think Dexter’s only the second cartoon series I’ve dreamt of – the other being G.I. Joe (don’t ask.)

The more interesting dream, which I think took place in two parts (between snooze button hits) had the parentals and I going to a theatre (stage, not movie) to see Sylvester McCoy in a pantomime. The theatre was in a huge complex of theatres (if you’ve ever been to the Barbican in London, UK you know what I mean) and we were in one of the smaller ones. (Except that it had HUGE stadium seating for such an intimate stage.) Our original seats were supposedly top notch, only they were facing to the side (looking at more stadium seating, not the stage itself) and the entire theatre was painted in an evil light green color.

Well, during the second part of the dream, we managed to switch to better seats which are front and center (with a balcony seating). By now the theatre is actually a church. The stage is where the altar normally goes. But at least now the pantomime finally starts. We were expecting Sylv to be in a lead role, but according to the program he’s a two-bit part. Once the action starts, we discover that’s simply a ruse. Turns out he plays the key role of the android/vampired with laser eyes who can kill and reanimate Storm Troopers®. As the panto has progressed, the things looks more and more like a cheesy movie than a stage production. The enormous space ship is a giveaway. Meanwhile, Sylv’s saying lines which are funny and completely at odds with his character. And then I finally wake up.

Now just to reassure you, I don’t usually dream about Sylvester McCoy. They do occur, but they are rare. (And none of them are x-rated, so get your minds out of the gutter.) I’m more likely to dream about teaching than anything else. Indeed as it nears summer, I’m more likely to get those fun anxiety dreams. Usually some at the start of the summer and then some right before school starts. Joy joy!

The strangest things come into my head while I pootle about in the kitchen or while doing housework. (Or while driving or while just sitting there doing nothing, if I want to be perfectly honest with myself.) So today, while I was making my No Pudge Fudge Brownie, I got to thinking about way back when they didn’t have standard tablespoons or other measuring equipment. This particular recipe doesn’t require standards of any sort. It’s 2 parts brownie mix to one part vanilla yogurt. For a 2 point (WeightWatchers) brownie, it’s 2 Tbsp of mix to 1 Tbsp of yogurt. And I once made a double sized one as I was finishing off the mix (and yogurt).

But if you think back to the days of your grandparents and great grandparents (or even further back for some of you) you get to a time when one person’s tablespoon wasn’t necessarily the same as someone else’s. Where mom’s “dash” and Aunt Edna’s “dash” weren’t the same, thus their cherry cobbler’s never quite tasted the same. My Grandma Anderson was one of those who never used any sort of standard measuring devices for her most popular recipes. So when I decided to do the family cookbook several years ago, I ended up following her around the kitchen one day while she was making some of her popular dishes (tapioca pudding, an all day ordeal, and, while we were waiting for it to cook, stewed ‘maters and fried taters). She’d pour something into a bowl then, before she could lose her rhythm, I’d quickly pour it into a measuring device and record the amount before letting her put it where it needed to go. In this way, I was able to quantize her recipes. And I even once made her tapioca pudding – which was nearly right! I was so proud. 🙂

Nowadays, standardization is almost taken for granted. We in the sciences love the standardization of things (though I would love it if the USA finally came into the 21st century and embraced the Metric system). It’s even given lay people comfort in strange places. I mean, if you go anywhere in the world and order a Big Mac from a McDonald’s, chances are it’s going to taste the same. (OK, maybe that’s not as comforting for some as for others… I tend to avoid McDonald’s when I’m out of the country. But by golly, when I do, rarely, get a hankering for a Big Mac, it doesn’t matter which MD’s I go to, I know it’ll taste the same.)

So, um, this concept rambled on for much longer while I was making the brownie (and making it doesn’t take a whole lot of time – shows just how quickly my brain processes strange thoughts). Just be glad that I’d rather get back to watching Babylon 5 than writing more of my standardization thoughts (or rather, my thoughts on unit conversion and proportions, which quickly supplanted the standardization thoughts) in the journal. 🙂

Ok, just cuz I’m feeling like a stinker, here’s the info on that computer salesman who hung up on me yesterday.

Dean Clarke of Action Computer Supplies. Website is http://www.actioncomputersupplies.biz. Cheese or no cheese, the guy’s still an ass. 😉

(OK, so it’s a short post. I think I was going to talk some about Leo and how cute he is when he drinks out of the kitchen sink. Wouldn’t you know, the stinker stops as soon as I get the camera near by!)

Working in the tech department at school means that sometimes I get to talk to salesmen. The CDW-G folks are always very nice and understand that, as an Ohio school, we have no money. But since they go out of their way to help us, when we can put business their way, we do. Today, a different salesman did the WRONG thing in order to maintain the sort of relationship that we have with the vendors that we like.

This salesman was for Action Computer Supplies or some such company. (I have his name and company info written at work should anyone seriously be interested in knowing this fellow’s particulars.) He was friendly on the phone and rambled on and on about the sample items that they sent us (they asked if we wanted to try some free samples some time ago, and who am I to pass up free samples?) Turns out I hadn’t had a real chance to try the products – they were for cleaning monitor screens and laser printers. (2 separate products, in case you’re confused now.) But no matter, he continued talking with me, asking if I liked cheese. Well, yes, I do like cheese. Turns out one of their clients is Wisconsin Cheese Board or somesuch and they gave the company cheese to send out to their Testing Pool or whatever it is that he called us. Cheese is good and I wouldn’t say no to cheese…

But as he continued his spiel, I became a bit concerned. He was talking about an Educational Kit containing 4 cleaning sets and each set was only $XX and the total cost would be $200+. And we’d have 60 days to pay, yada yada. So I slowed him down and double checked – he was going to send us stuff along with a bill. But I didn’t want to order anything from him. Honestly, during the summer, my priority is getting old computers working, not dusting off the monitor screens. His products just won’t help us out. What’s more, I explained to him, we have no money. We won’t get the levy money until 2005. Well, he said that perhaps he could make up a smaller batch – surely we could afford that. (He suggested “petty cash” and I almost laughed out loud.) No, I explained, and I was going to tell him of the summer priorities, of which monitor cleaning comes in behind pritnear everything else. But I didn’t need to say anything more because the bastard HUNG UP ON ME!

OK, now THERE’s the way to get repeat customers!

I think the only disappointment I have is in the lack of cheese. But I think I could probably buy some decent cheese and spend considerably less than $200 of my employer’s money. (I think I could spend $5 of my own money and get some nice smoked gouda. Mmmmm.)

(Oh, and see my new icon – which I hope I never have to use since it’s perfect for when I feel sick. Or hungover. And I *know* I’ll never need it for that!)

(Or should that be moron music?)

MusicMatch doesn’t have a nifty way to display your playlists or music collection, but since I can print my music collection from MM, I can print to PDF file. So, to give folks an idea of what sort of music that I already listen to, I’ve made a .pdf file of my current list of tunes. (This doesn’t include my Christmas songs or my audio stories.) Click here to access the big-ass file. (Actually, it didn’t take long to open up on my machine – perhaps it won’t be so difficult to preview?)

I’ve gotten some suggestions so far to my request for new groups/songs to listen to. I’ll get to those, and I’m asking for even more beyond that. So once again, anything you think I should try, lemme know and I’ll see if Rhapsody has ’em. Thanks for the suggestions so far and for the ones yet to come! 🙂

Anyhoo, off to bed! Leo’s raring to go!

Well, I’ve listened to all of my MP3s and found the ones which need repairing. And I’ve listened to groups on Rhapsody that I’d been interested in hearing. But what I’ve discovered is that I need more stuff to listen to. Used to be I’d get into groups because of Amy, but now that we no longer live with the ‘rents, I don’t get to listen to her music anymore. So here is where you can help me. Suggest to me some songs or artists that you think I should try. If I can listen to them at Rhapsody, I will. If there’s a website around with samples of the song/artist, let me know. I’m not terribly fond of country music, but that doesn’t stop me from having some Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, or Kenny Rogers in my collection. I like dance, hip-hop, anarchy (well, Chumbawamba), classic rock, Latino, Bhangra, African, Celtic, trance and novelty tunes. And I am willing to try new stuff. So go on, educate me! And later I’ll post my thoughts on the suggested tunes, if I can find ’em to listen to ’em.

Oh – thanks in advance!

I’ve been meaning to make this icon, and finally did it. 🙂

In other good news, I finished mounting all of my McCoy photos onto their cardstock. Now I get the unenviable job of putting them in some semblance of order in the binder. Mmmmm, looking at photos! Fun! 🙂

Click on the image for the full-sized version.

I’ve been meaning to do this meme (as done by versaphile, redstarrobot and others), but only just got around to it. It seems to be that you take a snapshot of your desktop at the time and post it. I had to minimize my screens so that you could see something other than me looking at my LJ page, and that lets you see me talking to Judi and me listening to MusicMatch. What is *also* lets you see is my Sylv decorations. And that I have a geeky desktop. And a relatively clean desktop – I don’t like a whole lot of icons on my desktop. I could remove Documents & Recycle Bin since I never access them from the desktop, but I just never got around to it. Cyber Songs is MusicMatch. Playlists is a shortcut to the folder that my playlists are (so I can just drag and drop them onto the Cyberman’s head). And the Portion Control Project link is to my Excel spreadsheet.

In addition to my lack of icons, note the lack of programs playing in the tray. Gah, I hate having TSRs running, so I use msconfig a lot and only allow certain programs access to my tray. From left to right, the icons represent my external HD (where my MP3s are), volume control, Zone Alarm, Trillian (for talking to judiang), and finally Mail Washer (my spam filtering program).

Now to get the TRUE feeling for Trina at her computer, you need to imagine a big fluffy cat sitting in front of the monitor. 🙂

We’re working on Light and Color in physics right now, so today I had fun showing the students various Optical Illusions. I started with how our brains can put individual images together to make “movies” in our heads. I have a cool toy that I bought at Disney during our New Years trip. It has 8 LEDs that light up quickly and if you spin the toy, it spells out words in the sky. Well, I actually managed to take a picture of judiang when she was spinning it, so I started the class with that picture. (Now all of my physics students know what Judi and hergrace look like.)

Cool Magic Floating Words!

I then did a demonstration that I saw last night at the Dash & Dine session where you wave a white stick in front of an out-of-focus projector and people see the entire image – sort of like how the toy works and how TVs and monitors work. They were suitably impressed.

Then it was time for the PowerPoint presentation of Optical Illusions. I found a few websites with cool illusions. I used several from Optillusions and many from Akiyoshi’s illusion pages. But I think the one that they loved/hated the most was the Checker Shadow Illusion. Even when I showed them the two blocks were the same color using PaintShop Pro, they still didn’t want to believe. Heck, I didn’t want to believe it either! If you don’t believe it either, copy the image into your favorite drawing program and see for yourself.