This cannot be happening!

The word has come down.

I am horribly miserable about this.

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Spokane News Web Lives in the Dark Ages

Update: Sheryl @ stardust global ventures has a similar post, with similar thoughts on Spokane’s Local Media Web. She found it ironic that she and I had the same ideas, while not having ever crossed paths, and I have to say, I agree. Give her article a read!

Tonight, I was browsing happily from my iPhone. This is quite possibly the neatest feature of my iPhone for me. I love the ability to browse the web, and I really appreciate that most national news sites that I visit, such as Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, and CBS News all have iPhone friendly websites. These sites auto-detect that I’m surfing from an iPhone and load up a less graphics intensive version of the site that is easier to read on my iPhone and I assume that these sites work similarly with Blackberries and other mobile web browsing devices. I enjoy this feature so much that this very blog is set up to auto-detect iPhone users when they visit the site. It automatically feeds them an iPhone friendly version of randomgemini.com.

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Animal Rights?

As I sit here the day after Christmas, hugging my best friend and looking into his eyes as I scratch his back and comfort him because the arthritis is setting in, I am reminded again of why I adopted him. My husband spied him first, quietly napping while all the other dogs in the shelter were going insane. My husband bent down and said something to him and he woke up and immediately wagged his tail. Then he called me over and I saw this face straining to see me from behind the door to the kennel. He loved me from the moment he laid eyes on me and the second I looked into those chocolate brown eyes, I knew that we belonged together. He loved my kids from the moment we got him out into the yard to play. He loved us all and we had big enough hearts to love him right back. I knew all of this, and then I saw on the sign on his kennel that his 30 days were up.

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Merry Christmas!

And as proof that non-geek people have no business being married to geeks, please take a look at the second coolest Christmas present I have ever been given besides like my Commodore 64, when I was 13.

http://www.randomgemini.com

I love my hubby, he’s a wonderful man, and he really knows how to make a geek gal squeal.

Ever since he told me he’d registered it and I’d finished knocking the wind out of him with hugs, I’ve had this song stuck in my brain and I share it with you now, merely because I can and it seems appropriate, though I have absolutely no idea why.

Merry Christmas folks, and welcome to my new haunt.

A Rain to Wash the World Clean.

The title of this article is probably my favorite line from Cowboy Bebop. It comes at the end of Cowboy Bebop the movie, when Jet is talking about the aftermath of all of the exploits of Spike, Fay, Ed and himself where they use the rain to give the world a vaccine to protect them from a deadly engineered virus. That scene is probably one of the more poignant moments in the whole of anime. And after the year I have had this year, I have been praying for that rain.

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Reconciling Social Networking and Parenting.

As you folks can see on the sidebar, I use twitter. I never got into using myspace or facebook, those things didn’t really interest me, but I love the language challenge inherent in twitter. You have 140 characters to sum up what you are doing right now. Make your point quickly, get in, get out and have fun.

I love it. I use twitter a lot, and my twitter page is updated more frequently than this blog ever has been. But today I started thinking about social networking seriously for the first time because it occurred to me that social networking has become an integral part of our society and that hit me when a kid who was the same age as my youngest child started following me on twitter and revealed their age.

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Giving Thanks

The holidays have always been hard. My husband and I live on the opposite end of the country from my family, so I can’t go to my aunt’s house for Thanksgiving dinner and tell my grandmother how great her turkey and noodles were, or how much I liked the pumpkin pie. I haven’t had thanksgiving dinner with my family since my daughter was born.

She was still on a liquid diet then. Now she has braces and a flat iron. Yeah, it’s been a while and normally it’s no big deal. I call my parents, tell them I love them, wish them a happy turkey day and have a good time talking on the phone with them. After the phone calls, hubby and the kids and I start cooking, mostly hubby cooks and the rest of us watch while we watch some movie or show on TV. Then we’ll play video games until we get tired and we’ll all pass out in a puddle in the family room.

At some point, someone will call or text message someone else and we’ll wake up and then we’ll pack up the remains of our feast and go to bed.

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NaNoWriMo

I am participating in National Novel Writing Month.

If you are interested in details on NaNo, visit their website.

So far, it’s been going well. I am working with my web programmer husband to get a graphic on my sidebar that will show my loyal readers what word count I’m at, but for now, when I hit a benchmark, I post it on twitter, and any readers of my blog can see my tweets on the sidebar, also a new feature added by my husband.

I don’t have a lot to share about this, other than to apologize for my lack of posting lately. Life has been fairly hectic and as a way to sort of blow off some steam about it all, I decided to participate in NaNo. This has put me in touch with a rather close knit group of local writers that participate in the event every year and these gals are out of this world. Super supportive, nicer than you would believe.

As soon as the novel is finished, I’ll post a note and a brief synopsis on my blog.

Until then!

Mementos of My Grandmother

First of all, I would like to thank all of my friends. When the news came to them that my grandmother passed away last week, my friends from all corners of the globe rushed to my side via the text message, twitter, IM, cell phones and e-mail to be there for me. There are also those that waited until they were able to tell me of their sorrow for my loss face to face. Thank you. I am so blessed to have all of you in my life, I truly am.

My grandmother passed away a week ago today. I was with her when she died. Earlier in the day I had talked to the doctor. He told me quite matter-of-factly that it was just a matter of time. To be honest with you, I was grateful for his direct nature. I don’t like it when people beat around the bush when it comes to things that are just going to break my heart. I’d rather hear it straight, feel the pain, deal with it and get on with my life. He told me that she was in a state of delirium, but he said that he was sure that she knew we were there, and that she understood us and that we could talk to her. I decided to take him at his word. I had the chance to be alone with her before she passed, so I talked to her for a bit. I told her that my cousins and I were all grown up now, I had figured out how to make her wonderful apple pie and that my children were doing well in school and that I was happy. Then I told her the thing that broke my heart to say, but I knew needed to be said, because I knew right down to my soul that she was waiting to hear it. I told her that if she needed to go, she could. I told her that I was a big girl now and could take care of myself.

It hurt so bad to say it, but I meant every single word and less than an hour later, she was gone.

My aunt asked me to speak at the funeral, and I told her that I would, but when I sat down to write a few things, I couldn’t even think. My grandmother was so many things to me. I was her only grand-daughter and because of this I was spoiled, but I was also so loved by her. She drove me absolutely crazy. Every phone call was heavily laden with worry for the health of my children, “Are you feeding them babies enough? They’re not sick are they?”. Her worrying and obsessing over their well-being was so bad that my husband jumped at the first chance he had to move us out of the state when it showed up because he couldn’t watch me cope with it anymore. But in spite of all of that, when she was gone all I could think about was all of her love.

When I was little, Grandma and I would watch musicals together. The first time I saw “The King and I”, my grandma and I sat on the couch in her living room and cried over a box of kleenex as the king died. It is still my favorite musical of all time. We would also sit on the couch and watch game shows, and figure out all the answers on Jeopardy, and Wheel of Fortune long before the contestants ever got their shot. She was a sharp gal, my grandma. She also made these amazing apple pies that will always fill my soul when I think about eating them, because there was love in every bite and no one will ever make apple pie like she did. No one.

All of these memories flooded into my mind at once, and even more because I spent so much time with her. Compared to my cousins, who grew up across the country from our grandparents, I was so lucky but at the same time I still feel as though I didn’t spend enough time with them. I feel like I missed out on way too much, but I know it’s not true. I was there when it mattered. I was able to give her the key that set her free from this mortal life that was filled with hard work, pain, suffering and loneliness. My love for her allowed her to go and be with my grandpa and my uncle. My love sent her home and it is this, more than anything else, that gives me peace.

I have managed to get my hands on a couple of things from my grandparents house. They didn’t have much, they were poor and they worked their fingers to the bone every day of their lives, but what they did have, they were so very proud of. My grandmother’s depression glass collection is on its way, and I have a box that I shipped to myself before I left my parents’ house that contains some of the most precious items of all.

When the box showed up on the kitchen counter, my son looked at me and said, “So what’s with the box?”
I said, “This is my grandmother’s life.”
My daughter looked disgusted and said, “No way! Great-grandma’s ashes are in there?” At this, my husband gave me a dubious look, and then smiled because he already knew what was inside.
I shook my head and said, “No. These are pictures, mementos of every moment of my grandmother’s life. There are pictures from when she was in kindergarten, until the day that her youngest great-grandchild was born.”
My daughter said, “Oh.” and went on about her business. My son nodded and went on about his business too. My husband hugged me and I struggled not to cry.

You see, it’s my job to catalog her life. I am going to scan the photos and send some of them back to my aunt, while others will go into a photo album to chronicle this small piece of my family’s history. Once they are assembled in the book, I’ll sit down with my kids and go over every photo in detail and pass it down to them when I am gone along with the mementos of my life.. and I hope that they remember me with all the love that I feel from my grandmother right now.

Test Drives: 2004 MINI Cooper, 2008 Honda Civic EX, 2008 Subaru Impreza

So I’m in the process of buying a car. I joked with my husband that I wanted a MINI Cooper and we thought it was funny. The closest dealership is nearly 300 miles away. Warranty service seemed like it would be impossible to get and it just didn’t make sense, then he found a listing for a used one at a local dealership and took me out for a test drive just because it was fun.

Well, that was exactly the problem. It was FUN! I have never had so much fun driving a car. I loved the car so much that my husband was in shock. He figured this car shopping thing was going to be like pulling teeth. I’ve driven the same car for ten years, and I like my car. I’ve never been in love with it, but it’s reliable and gets me from A to B, so I have no complaints. I’ve told him for years that I didn’t need a new car, or want one. But, when I got behind the wheel of the MINI, my eyes lit up. It was like I had been in a driving coma and suddenly, I was alive again.

Ever since then, I’ve been car shopping with gusto. So here are some results from the cars I’ve testhy driven so far.

2004 MINI Cooper

The handling on this car is amazing. When you turn the steering wheel, it turns the car as far as you turn the wheel. Steering is not guess work. This is the first thing I noticed about the car after putting it in drive. Sure, there are lots of other features, the cockpit in the MINI is this thing that is both complex and wondrous at the same time (I never did find the button for the power windows and the salesman had no idea where to start looking), but in spite of that the drive was fun. The acceleration is punchy, yet smooth. The car doesn’t jerk or stutter when accelerating, it just goes. Stepping on the gas does something in this car, unlike in my current vehicle, where stepping on the gas is followed by a 2 second delay and then a blank stare followed by the phrase “Oh! You meant NOW!” The drive of this car was everything I wanted it to be, but I passed on this one because it was close in mileage to my current car. Still, MINIs are way fun to drive.

2008 Honda Civic EX

I’m going to talk about the interior on this one for a second. The interior on the Honda Civic is pretty much one of those sorts of things where you get into the car, look at the dash and go “What the f***?” I’m not sure what Honda was thinking. Maybe they thought that Space Aliens were going to invade and their cars needed to be ready for the transition. That said, the layout for the dash, though strange and off-putting, turns out to be amazingly awesome when you’re behind the wheel of the car. The speedo is exactly where you want it to be, just below your field of vision, so you scarcely have to take your eyes off the road to keep an eye on how fast you’re going, and the drive in this car is so fun! The Honda doesn’t handle quite as tightly as the MINI, but acceleration is nice and smooth and sometimes gets away from you. Braking on the Honda is also smooth, but the brakes in the Honda are some of the touchiest brakes I’ve used so far. It would take some getting used to, but not an all together bad thing. Steering in the civic is also nice and tight.

2008 Subaru Impreza

I drove this car because I promised my father that I would test drive one of the cars he builds. The Impreza didn’t really impress me. It handles and feels nearly identical to a Corolla, but the seats were more comfortable than in my current vehicle. This is the biggest problem with Subarus though. You buy them for their reputation of being reliable cars, you buy them because they handle great on snow. You don’t necessarily buy them because they are fun to drive. I don’t have anything bad to say about it, but I don’t really have anything great to say about it either. It was just sort of… meh…

Tonight’s test drive will be the 2008 Scion tC. Wish me luck on finding a salesman though. Last night, I stood on the lot for twenty minutes and no one ever showed up. I’m thinking these guys may not want my business.