January 31, 2002
Wrong Again

numericize: To put in numerical order
Example: The invoice numbers need to be numericized in order to be filed correctly.

i use this word all the time when i am telling trainees to put all their magazine cards in numerical order, and people always laugh at me and say "did you just make up a word!?" and i am always like "no!? that's a word, people use that all the time."

but as i was writing scripts for next training cycle i actually thought that people question it so much that i would look it up before i put it in the actual script (cos i always say it but i have never actually written it down) so i looked on dictionary.com and nothing, then on the merrian-webster online and still not there. i just did a google search for the word, and while there is lots of examples of geeks USING it, there's only one example of it being a real word - in the slang dictionary. dammit.

Posted by ash at 10:39 AM

January 30, 2002
Bloody Wednesday

derry solemnly remembers those lost 30 years ago today; today i woke up remembering a friend i somehow lost when she went to derry a year ago.
a friend, the most magical friend you could imagine, left america to go home to ireland last april. now i'm not even sure how to find her. i have only received a few sporadic communications from her, all of which only leave me worried and confused. the last was a christmas card wishing me love, but with no return address. i miss her so much. i have lain in bed awake at night, thinking of how i might just go to derry and look for her. or woken from a dream, mind racing over what sort of trouble she must be in not to have called. or is it that i've made her angry? round and round i twist it on long commutes home and when i should be paying attention.

reflecting on my own track record as a friend, sometimes i think i might be getting what i deserve. i've not been the best friend to other people. the ten year anniversary of my high school graduation approaches and i am in touch with exactly zero persons from my high school class. only a handful from my entire high school, even if i include my own brother. moving on to college, it's even worse. i can't remember the surnames of two of my roommates, and i can only remember the third because i was married to him. i certainly never kept in touch with any of them long after i left stillwater. same thing with graduate school. in short, with me it's pretty much out of sight, out of mind. so it's interesting that i am finding it so painful to be on the other side of the same game. i guess this is the reason that i don't like extending myself.

Posted by ash at 11:30 PM

January 27, 2002
Pretty Ears

Don't Burn your ears from hot curling irons, use PrettyEars, Ear Pro Tek Caps.

i got spam for the crappest product the other morning. "no more ear burns!" bleated across the top of the page, and for some reason it stood out as i was deleting the porn shots and get-rich-quick schemes from my inbox. i scrolled through the ad and was treated to some nice shots of models wearing prettyears. better than the unbelieveable fact that this product actually exists and some company agreed to manufacture it, i forwarded the email on to several friends and co-workers for a laugh, and one replied over the cubicle wall that it was the greatest thing! "i burn my ears every morning! i'm buying this thing RIGHT NOW!"
holy shit.

big weekend for fish! i got four new flametail tetras, four harlequins, three australian rainbow fish, two panda cories, and four neons to keep the one lone neon company after all his mates were murdered. all these wonderful tiny fish have been made possible by the untimely death of my huge and horrible oranda goldfish "carrot top". rip you hideous beast - terrorist of the tank. speaking of which, i think the australians are already picking on the little guys. who's surprised about that?
bloody aussies.

Posted by ash at 01:38 AM

January 23, 2002
Wet and Weird

last night i dreamt a dream about water. i know that means something but i don’t pay enough attention to dream study to know what. in my dream i was in a water park, one of those theme parks where you ride water slides and there are wave pools and big tubes and lazy rivers. but i only wanted to ride one thing – which was this long, raging rapids combined with an obstacle course in the water sort of thing. in the dream i kept riding it repeatedly in an effort to master it…there were places where you were supposed to leap off your rubber dinghy and grab a bar as you passed, or navigate your way through a channel. each time i would miss the bar, or be thrown from my dinghy as i went through. at first people were giving me advice, but it seemed that the things that worked for the other people would never work for me, either that or they were deliberately trying to sabotage me. at one point someone told me it was better to abandon the raft and go through the rapids without it, but i only ended up sputtering and bouncing against the rocks. as i was climbing out to try it again, a woman told me she had a shortcut back to the beginning, only to send me down a staircase into the locker rooms, where all i could find was the park exit. i felt cheated and excluded.

Posted by ash at 10:57 AM

January 22, 2002
DIAL C.A.L.L. A.T.T.

super fabulous comedian carrot top was just on television in a hockey mask doing one of those C-A-L-L-A-T-T ads. he has about 20 of them. who in the hell is making all these collect calls? most of those ads have pretty big stars in them: david arquette, alyssa milano. well, okay. not *big* stars. but at least people you've heard of.
i can't remember the last time i made a collect call. it just seems so presumptuous. i mean, i don't want to pay for people to call me. and who doesn't have a cell phone, or a calling card, or at least some change? what situation would you have to be in before you would make a collect call? i would guess i would have to be in some sort of emergency - crash landed in a field where my purse was ripped from my body or something. mugged perhaps. but the number of ads and the amount of money phone companies are spending on them suggests that somebody somewhere is making collect calls. maybe it's just me.

Posted by ash at 10:13 PM

January 21, 2002

very dramatic episode of Sex and The City last night. feigned indifference as mike drove me out of my head flipping back and forth between it and the golden globes, although it was crap of him since he has his own television in his room. he will say he thought i wanted to see them, though.
in any case, it scared me. my fear of commitment seems somehow ok now, i'm not even thirty yet. but hearing all my arguments coming out of carrie's mouth last night was upsetting. was aiden right when he said "If you don't want to marry me right now, you'll never want to?" the show ended with carrie saying they spent their one and only night on the other side of the wall (in their new apartment), and the next day aiden moved out. for christs sake! i'm not one to get so emotional about a television show, but i do get stressed about my life. people always have questions about why i am not making the tough choices. why fraser and i still live in different countries at this point. and at some point i know one of us has to change something.

Posted by ash at 01:21 PM

January 20, 2002
Funk

i've not done a lot this weekend, other than watch football and clean house. we got some snow but i didn't even feel like building a snowman, for once. i just haven't gotten over being sick since i was in london.

Posted by ash at 10:05 PM

January 14, 2002
Choking the Idiot

is it me or did the president almost choke to death at a really convenient time to draw attention away from the extent of his involvement with the enron affair? and besides, how is that a good diversion tactic? are we supposed to just pretend it isn't weird that a grown man can't eat a fucking pretzel without falling to the floor in a dead faint? this is the same guy whose father puked on the leaders of japan? what is it with this family? how is it that we think they are qualified to lead our country? they can't even properly digest food, for christ's sake.

Posted by ash at 06:49 PM

January 05, 2002
Home Again Home Again

i am home from my holidays safe and sound, not too much damaged after the hard living that always ensues when i spend time with fraser. aye, he's the devil, he is. it's clear by looking at him, idnit?
honestly though, after the first four days or so i was sick in bed for the remainder of the trip, all fraser did was sit patiently at my side, reading a book, waiting for my next croaked request for a cup of tea, a newly warmed hotty, or yet another walk to tesco in search of overlooked cure-alls. it's been our bad luck to find that i seem to be somehow allergic to fraser when taken in large doses. that is, i get the plague anytime we see one another. people will try to blame it on the flight, but you see, i fly all the time, and it never makes me crook. only when i see fraser do i get sick. the good news is, the times that we are together for extended periods of time, i seem to get over being ill after a few weeks, so our extended forecast seems to be positive.

we were lucky enough to be joined in london by the ever-present flatmate (and yes, i like it that way) mike, as well as by my brother jon michael and his wife, chance. (they eloped last summer and didn't even have a proper honeymoon yet! not that traveling to london with your sister and two blokes would qualify in that respect, really, either). so anyhow, we were a good and proper crowd. we all arrived on christmas day, albeit in two seperate airports - three of us at heathrow, and the rogue mike at gatwick. met up at fraser's place later on and he actually made a christmas dinner where marinating meats was involved - very traditional - leg of lamb and a ham. we opened presents and somehow books were the order of the day. we all got london guides and a-to-zeds. i got a very tiny l'espion digital camera which is no bigger than a matchbox. you can see some of the pics i took with it here. not bad. also, the name rhymes with lesbian, which is a bonus.

having all those extra people around, we did lots of things that we don't normally do when it's just us. which is to say, we didn't just lie in bed having sex all day this time (sorry mom). so i guess it was rather good to have company along, as we actually saw some of the sights. monuments, markets, museums, even things that don't begin with an m. i was thwarted once again in my quest for beef wellington - at the wellington, where it is their trademark dish, they were *fresh out of beef wellington* on the night i dined there, and when fras and i returned to a cafe where we enjoyed it once before it had been removed from the menu. no worries.

we did see the charming amelie, also lord of the rings, and harry potter. we went to mdme. tussaud's and while i was posing with wax graham norton i found out the real graham norton was there!
so anyhow, i'm sure there's more but although i am back i am still a bit sick and i am exhausted from all this typing. the rest will have to wait.

Posted by ash at 06:47 PM