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at some length
August 13, 2010
A few months ago, when Paul Ryan's name was being batted about as a possible running mate for Romney, "my" congressman released a statement detailing how he didn't want to be the veep, and he was in a much better position to affect change where he was.
Yeah, well.
Speaking as somebody to whose face he has addressed his untruths...he's a lying bag of shit. He's also a leading proponent of the savaging of civil and fundamental human rights for women, LBGT, the poor, and in brief--anyone who is not rich, white, straight, "christian" and male.
Basically, he's a festering pile of dog shit.
So evidently Sprint decided they don't want to lose our business, because they gave us this thing called an "Airave" (pronounced air-rave). We went into the sprint store last week and told them about not getting a signal in the house, and the clerk told us about this thing Sprint could send us--for free, if we played our cards right--that would boost our signal in the house. What it does, I guess, is allow you to use your internet connection to get your signal through wi-fi, or something. Anyway. They sent it, it seems to work, and so we went on Friday after I got of work and picked out new phones. The reviews we had read of everything they were offering for free were total suck, so I finally broke my long-standing rule and said I would pay for a phone.
And I broke down and got a fucking touchscreen smartphone, because there isn't anything much left in the world of dumb ones. I really didn't--and still don't--want one, but the choice is going away. If you want a decent phone that you can talk on, text on, and do minimal web stuff on, anyway.
I absolutely hate it, by the way. These are NOT made for the vision-impaired, nerve-damaged hands, bare-bones style, "I hate it when my technology thinks it can anticipate my desires" likes of me.
So. What we ended up with. Here's a mouthful: it is a Sprint Samsung Galaxy SII Epic Touch 4G. They were running a BOGO on it that brought the price-per-phone down to $50 apiece, and once I knew I wasn't going to be able to get what I wanted, I really didn't give a flying fuck as long as it wasn't an Apple product. So Spouse picked these out. He got black, I got white, and a half-hour and $175.00 leter ($75.00 of that is supposed to be rebated) we had new phones. The clerk transferred all our data for us and stuck my micro-SD card in the new phone for me, filled out all the rebate paperwork, and even figured out how we could lower our monthly bill by 10% (If you use a credit union, they give you a disount. Who knew?). And she was the same one who had told us to call the company and ask for the Airave, so absolutely no complaints in the customer service department.
Spouse is in a little whirl of discovery, reminiscent of when I finally got him to try the internet back in 1997. It pleases him to lord it over me whenever he discovers something he can do with it, but I can usually shut him up by something I do that I just kind of knew how to do without knowing how I knew--google stuff by speaking to it, downloading an app by scanning the QR code off my laptop screen, etc. Really, if you have been paying even minimal attention to this kind of stuff, it gets in your brain without you even trying very hard.
Anyway, he's happy. I guess he was ready for a new phone. As for me, once I finally got service in my house, I fell in love with Flora (my little red LG Lotus Elite) all over again and would have been perfectly happy to keep her.
Don't get it in your head he was happy enough to leave me alone for the rest of the weekend, though. No, since the weather was going to be absolutely perfect for Saturday (mid-seventies, sunny, low humidity) he decided he wanted to go to the Wisconsin State Fair. All rested up after a week of unemployment & had energy to burn, I guess. Or maybe jsut a real cream puff jones.
He hauled my ass off the mattress pointlessly early, at 4:45. He'd sworn he was not going to keep me from sleeping in, and I guess he figured that extra 15 minutes meant he was keeping his vow. I made damn sure I got a real breakfast of raisin bran, english muffins with jam, and a glass of milk first, then got ready to go. We drove up to College Avenue & I-94 and took the bus, as we almost always do. Cheaper, easier, and closer to the gate than trying to get parking at or near the fairgrounds.
Every time I've ever gone to the fair with him, he has thought that he absolutely has to be on that very first bus from the Park & Ride. And every time, we get there an hour before anything opens. He will never learn that the busses start that early to accommodate the people that are working the fair. Well, at least the cream puff place opens early. For Spouse, the fair boils down to eating stuff. And exerting his shitty little control freakiness by trying to keep me from eating the stuff I want to eat, of course. Once again, I got cheated out of my fresh-cut fries and my corn dog.
Anyway--I have to drag him kicking and screaming to go look at anything you actually go to a state fair for. He almost let me see everything I wanted in the competitions exhibit--didn't keep his patience long enough for me to check out jams/jellies/preserves, but I did get to check out a lot of other stuff. But then he'd decided we had to go visit what I call "Huckster Hall". That's where all the people selling crap are set up--the headset douches with miracle mops, revolutionary rug cleaners, and amazing adhesives. He did have a goal in mind, though--he was looking for a vendor with cheap cellphone covers. Damned if he didn't find her, too! We each got a cheap Chinese cover to protect our phones a bit. I though 2/$20 was a bit steap for the dollar-store grade covers, but I wanted something with a grippy finish so the damn thing wouldn't shoot out of my hands like a bar of soap, and covers are not cheap ANYWHERE, if you can even find one that fits your particular make, model, and carrier-specific version.
The good news? I got one that is a gorgeous, deep rich red matte finish. And now that I have another red phone, I feel a little better. :D
We did do one fun thing we'd never done before at the fair. Since we didn't have a kid with us for once, we did the wine-tasting at the Wisconsin Wineries pavilion. Now Wisconsin is never going to be a top wine state; we don't have the climate. We run to sweets and semi-sweets. But Spouse quite enjoyed himself, trying the wines. His taste really does run to a sweeter wine, even though he likes a reasonably dry white for a dinner wine. He found one raspberry/white grape blend he just loved. This wine was just "Annie Green Springs, gone big-time stylie", but he liked it. For that matter, I found a blackberry/cabernet blend called "Black Cab" that I thought was the bomb, and it was fairly sweet, too.
Once he'd found phone covers, and tried wines, and eaten all the things he'd wanted, it was all of 11:45 in the morning and he was done. Final list of state fair cuisine:
Official Wisconsin State Fair Cream Puff (it's a "thing".)
Roasted Corn from the New Berlin Lion's club (also a "thing".)
Lemonade Shake-up
Wisconsin Cattlemen's Steak Sandwich
Rupena's Smoked Kielbasa
And this year's official deep-fried-food-on-a-stick: Rupena's Stuffing Balls with chicken gravy "dipping sauce". TOTAL YUM, by the way.
Oh, and the wine, of course.
So by noon, we were on the bus heading back to the car...and coming every closer to whyme's revenge...bwahahahaha.
I made him drive over to Greenfield and go to Casual Male XL for some new jeans. He had a job interview today, and I was NOT going to have him go in looking like a refugee, in pants that were falling off his body. But you have NO idea what a screaming, whining, 2-year-old he is when you ask him go clothes shopping. Multiply it by 10 if you make him try things on. Crybaby.
Stubbornly clinging to control, he bought the 50 waist jeans. Yep. He actually went down three pants sizes, but in some kind of spiting the nose on his face, he refused to buy anything lower than two pants sizes down. Can somebody please explain men to me?
Then we went home and I read a book while he took a nap, he watched TV while I attempted to go swimming, and failed, due to OMG COLD. (idyllic weather means pool water at 76F.) And then we ate cold meatloaf sandwiches from the leftovers of Friday's supper--I'd made a rather splendid meatloaf, with mashed potatoes, gravy, and peas.
Sunday ended up being a fairly relaxing day. To me, the weather was even more perfect than Saturday. Still low humidity, and temps in the seventies, but overcast, so the sun wasn't glaring in my eyes all bloody day. There was laundry to do, but other than that I just puttered around. I did shower and dress, but drew the line at wearing shoes. In my opinion, a day without shoes (or my partial!) is a little bit of heaven.
Had a bit of peace while Spouse spent four hours in the driveway, detailing the Ford. He was terribly proud of himself, and I was too--until I got in it to go to work this morning and found that every piece of glass (mirrors too) in the car was a mess of smears so bad I could scarcely see. Oh, Spouse, m'dear--if you were thinking of taking up a career in car cleaning-my advice is "don't quit your day job" (oops.)
Dinner was mostly off the grill--Spouse did the steaks, the baked potatoes, and the garlic bread outside, while I threw together a salad inside. Made a very nice dinner. After, he puttered on his laptop in one room, I puttered on my laptop in another room, and we both went to bed early.
Reading: I just finished "Living Up to Billy" (1915), by Elizabeth Cooper (Author of Drusilla with a Million). Epistolary novel consisting of a woman's letters to her sister who is in prison. The narrator/correspondent is a dancer. The prisoner is a pickpocket, and her husband is a burglar. Both women come from the streets; their father is also a petty criminal. Nancy, the narrator, has assumed responsibility for the care of her sister Kate's 2-year-old son while mom is in prison for a two-year stretch.
Also just finished reading "The Girls of Highland Hall : Further Adventures of the Dandelion Cottagers" (1921), by Carroll Watson Rankin. As the subtitle indicates, it is a sequel to "Dandelion Cottage". This story covers the girls going to boarding school in Indiana.
And getting ready to start: "Gigolo" (1920) by Edna Ferber. I only know one thing about this--it is by Edna Ferber. So I actually know two things about it--it is going to be good.
Listening: Jack Jones, Phoenix, and OMG WHO EVER THOUGHT PEOPLE WHO ENJOY PROGRSSIVE ROCK WANT TO HEAR COMMERCIALS WHERE EUROTRASH SPOUTS INANE ODES TO FAST FOOD COFFEE?! McDonalds, if I have to be exposed to your commercials as nauseum (and believe me--nauseum comes pretty quickly!), at least make the damn things endurable! And WXRT? Just so you know? Every time you play that, I turn Lin's show off and pop in a CD.
Surfing: .
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