Calculations of Living Alone

Saturday I went to do my bills, so I gathered up the checkbook, a pen, and went to grab my calculator off my desk...

But the calculator wasn't there. It wasn't in the spot on my desk where I always put it after I'm done using it. I looked all around my desk. Not there. I often use the calculator on the coffee table in front of the couch while I watch TV. So I checked around the coffee table, under the cushions of the couch, underneath the couch. I checked the kitchen table, in the kitchen, the bedroom, the second bedroom. I even went into the bathroom, wondering if perhaps I took it in there to do some calculating on the john. I didn't, and no, that's not something I usually do.

The calculator was AWOL. My old, crappy calculator was on my desk, but the new one was missing. I could have just used the old one, but this wasn't really about calculating. It was a mystery: Where the hell did the calculator go?

You must understand something about me. I don't lose things. I have certain places in my house where things belong, and I always put them back after I use them. I know some people who spend 30% of their adult life looking for their keys. I am not one of those people. I never have to look for my keys, because I always put them in the same place as soon as I walk through the door.

So that's why I was going crazy about the calculator. Where did it go? I know the cats sometimes play with things and swat them behind the bookcase, but a calculator is too big to be a cat toy. Plus, I checked underneath everything. It wasn't there.

When I lived with Rebecca, every once in a while I would notice a pen missing. After a short interrogation, she would crumble under the pressure and admit that she had the pen in her purse or in her office. But since I live alone now, and Rebecca gave me her key to the apartment the week before, I couldn't blame the disappearance on her.

Or could I? My obsessive compulsive behavior gave way to my paranoia. Did she make a copy of the key and then come in while I wasn't at home to take my calculator? Why would she do that? That would be completely out of character. I know some maintenance workers were in my apartment the day before-- did they take my calculator? Just to fuck with me? What a bizarre theory.

But where is the damn calculator? I felt like I was going insane. Sometimes, I'll be absentminded and I'll leave a pen in the bathroom or my tennis headband in the kitchen, but I'll notice it immediately and put it back where it belongs. But in this case, I had scoured the whole apartment twice and couldn't find the calculator. This is it, I thought. I've finally cracked.

There are times in my life when I need to just Let It Go. I get obsessed with something, whatever it is, and I need to forget about it and figure it out later. So I decided to forgo doing the bills for a while. Either the calculator would turn up or it wouldn't. I'll find it when I stop looking. I went to sit down on the couch and watch TV.

Then I saw it. Laying on the back of the couch, against the camouflage of a patterned blanket, just chillaxin' with the cover open, as if it didn't have a care in the world, was my calculator. It must have been there for several days and I never noticed it. Huh. Mystery solved.

I guess I'm not crazy after all. Just hopelessly neurotic.

Earthquake!!

My sleep has been really uneven lately, but last night I did a pretty good job. I had played tennis before bedtime, which usually makes me wake up with wet sweat-soaked sheets in the middle of the night. But last night I took precautions, like minimizing the covers, and slept soundly, with lots of wild, vivid dreams. (I won't recount them here, because I hate hearing about other people's dreams and won't subject my readers to mine.)

At 4:30 in the morning I was literally jolted awake. The entire apartment was shaking. I heard something fall to the floor in another room. What the hell is going on? I asked the cats. They ran off the bed without answering.

My first thought was, earthquake! But then I thought, that's ridiculous. This is East Central Illinois, not California. But the New Madrid fault does lie in the Midwest, and scientists have been predicting for years that it could cause a major quake in the area. Could this be the one? I turned on the lights and walked through the apartment. If it was a major earthquake, would I still have power? Nah, I didn't think so.

A train was passing by. Trains pass by my apartment several times a day. That wouldn't cause the building to shake, would it? Maybe if a train derailed? I know the wind is really bad. Could the wind have caused the shaking? What about an explosion? Could something have blown up? Did Chicago just get nuked and I'm feeling the repercussions in Savoy? Is this the end of the world as we know it (with all due respect to REM)?

I walked through the entire apartment twice trying to find whatever it was that I heard fall to the floor. It definitely wasn't something that fell onto carpet, but nothing seemed out of place, or lying on the floor, in the kitchen or bathroom. One knick-knack on the credenza in the kitchen was standing partially off the edge, but it hadn't fallen. Finally I noticed that my bobble-head Buddy Christ was missing from on top of my computer:


Buddy Christ was laying on the floor behind my computer desk. I picked him up and put him back, then went back to bed, wondering if this was a sign. What if the wacko fundamentalist Christians are right, and this is the rapture? I'm reading a book about that. What if every "believer" had suddenly been whisked away to heaven and only us "sinners" remained? This thought actually excited me a little: a world without wacko fundy Christians ruining our government!

I didn't sleep well after that. When the radio alarm clock went off at 6:00, there was a news report that a 5.2-magnitude earthquake had hit the Midwest, with its epicenter in Southern Illinois. There were no deaths or major damage reported, though.

Me and Buddy Christ survived it unharmed.

What's an Icio?

There's a web address that I've seen a lot over the past few years, but I've always tried to ignore it. It's like a white noise, a nuisance, that keeps getting in the way of the hundreds of other stimuli vying for my attention at any one time.

But in the last week, I've heard one person talk about it and read another article in American Libraries about it. The web address is del.icio.us.

I had no idea what it was about or what it did, but I refused to visit the site because of its obnoxious URL. It felt like whoever created it was trying way too hard to be clever, using the .us domain to create a cutesy word. The parsing of the word into different nodes makes no sense to me. Why is the server called "del"? And what the hell is an "icio"? In my mind, I had always pronounced the website by its separate parts, "del-icio-us" and figured the word-play was in the spelling. But then I heard someone speak it out loud, they pronounced it like the word, "delicious." That made me nau.seo.us.

What about this site makes it "delicious?" That is not an adjective to be used for nerdy librarian websites. It should be reserved for pizza, chocolate, or irony. Today, for the first time, I actually visited the site. It is in no way "delicious." It is a "social bookmarking service", whatever that is, but I can guarantee you it has nothing to do with how tasty food is.

I don't know why this bothers me so much, but it does. It's like fingers on a chalkboard.

The address is neither clever nor relevant to its content. It's
o.di.us.
pre.sump.tuo.us.
pre.cio.us.
scur.rilo.us.

See? I can be clever and irrelevant, too!

Butt-Kicking Awesome

I knew I had pushed fate too far when I changed the license plate on our Prius to TIMBKA. Not even counting the headache I had trying to physically put the new plates on the car (the emasculation of not being able to manage four screws, an appointment at the Toyota dealership where they wanted to charge me $100, endless trips to the hardware store, much cursing, etc.) I was uneasy about pushing the "Timbecca" thing too far.

I should have heeded that unease. Perhaps if I had not taunted fate by advertising our union on our vanity plate, Rebecca and I would still be together. But since she decided last week that she wants to separate for good, now I am left with an obsolete license plate that taunts me daily. I've ordered a new one, but that will take 6-8 weeks to get here.

In the meantime I need a new explanation for what TIMBKA means.

The best suggestion I've gotten so far is:

TIM Butt-Kicking Awesome!

Other possibilities:

TIM Brave Kitten Avenger

TIM Bores Kids Away

TIM Best Kisser Around

TIM Boron Krypton Arsenic

TIM Barely Knowledgeable Asshat

TIM Better Karma Awaits

TIM Babes Keep Away

Any other suggestions?

Another Great Email Address

A few weeks ago I posted about funny email addresses that people have when you combine their first initial and last name. Examples there included S. Lutman (slutman) and S. Avery (savery.)

Today I came across another awesome one: S. Laaker (slaaker.) That one was so good I was convinced it was intentional misspelling of slacker, but that's really the person's name.

In this age of electronic communication, I guess this is something parents need to consider when they name their children. Mr. and Mrs. Utz should not name their son Pete (also off-limits for the Eckers and the Erverts), and the Orons really should reconsider calling their baby girl Michelle.

Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting...With Your Tivo

I don't know how I feel about TiVo yet.

Our relationship did not start well. I spent three and a half hours Saturday night trying to hook it up to my rather modest entertainment center. Three frustrating, unnerving, cursing hours. I called TiVo every mean, nasty name I could think of.

Either setting up a TiVo service is just an inherently tricky business, or they simply have sucky installations instructions. At every turn, I would follow the directions for about two sentences and then get completely lost. I had a hundred decisions to make, all based on things I didn't know yet. I had questions on top of my questions. Rolled inside a question. In addition to the setup manual from the box, I spent hours on their website trying to search for answers to my questions.

Should I use the phone or the Internet to connect TiVo to the mother ship? If it's the latter, do I have to use my wireless modem (which requires an additional $60 adaptor, conveniently sold on the TiVo website) or can I use an Ethernet connection? But what if my wireless modem doesn't have an extra slot for an Ethernet cable?

When I tried the phone option, it turns out it doesn't work with Vonage (my internet phone.) That wasted about an hour. Then I couldn't hook up my wireless modem to TiVo with the USB port. In desperation to get TiVo to function, I unhooked the internet cable from my computer and hooked it up to TiVo. I was able to go through TiVo's initial setup, then had to unhook it from the Internet to hook my computer back up. Then I went to bed, feeling defeated.

After letting things marinate overnight, Sunday was a much better day. I figured out a solution to the cable problem that did not involve spending more money or wanting to rip those floppy antennae ears off of the cute little TiVo mascot. I still have yet to figure out how to get TiVo and my DVD player hooked up to the same TV. (They had directions on this, but they were woefully inadequate.) So that will be a project for next weekend.

But I was finally able to start playing with my TiVo. I was able to navigate through all the menus, enjoying that famous TiVo "bloop" noise, and set it to record stuff. It's also filling up my box with shows it thinks I will like. I come home from work and see the red "record" light on, and think, "Oh, TiVo, what are you saving for me now? You're always thinking of my viewing pleasure, aren't you?" (There's an old joke about a man complaining that his TiVo thinks he's gay, based on all the things it records for him.)

Unfortunately, I haven't watched much with TiVo yet, because I haven't had much time at home. I've been so busy with tennis and other social engagements that my poor TV has been severely neglected since Rebecca moved out. This is probably a good thing, but it makes me wonder if getting TiVo was a wise decision right now.

I already feel a deep sense of responsibility to watch all my Netflix, now I have a huge list of shows on TiVo that I need to watch before it fills up and starts deleting things. I don't know if I need that kind of pressure right now.

[Bloop]