I took the OTW Community Survey!

I had placed an order a couple a weeks ago at ThinkGeek for Christmas presents, and one of the items was missing from the box. After double-checking that it wasn't shipped separately, I initiated the help chat on their website, and had the following conversation:

Please wait for a site operator to respond.
You are now chatting with 'Christa S'
Christa S: Hi Julie
Julie: Hi there.
Christa S: What can I help you with today/
Christa S: ?
Julie: I am missing an item from my order.
Christa S: Oh no!
Christa S: What's missing/
Christa S: *?
Christa S: darn I keep missing that question mark.
Julie: I ordered the [items redacted], and also [item redacted], but I only received the [items redacted].
Julie: Which was odd, because it came in a huge box, so there was certainly room for all [items redacted].
Christa S: They were supposed to be together. One sec while I check on this for you
Julie: Thanks.
Christa S: They are so freaking adorable
Julie: They really are.
Julie: I bought them for my nephew and for a friend's little boy.
Christa S: Okay Julie
Christa S: I've issued a new one to be sent out
Christa S: You should get an email with the confirmation
Julie: Thank you SO much.
Julie: You guys are the best.
Christa S: No problem! Sorry about that!
Julie: No problem. Thanks for making this absolutely painless. :)
Christa S: Huzzah!
Julie: I've shopped at your site for years, and never regretted it.
Christa S: We love you guys!
Julie: Have a great day!

It only took a couple of minutes, and Christa S set up a new order for the missing item without even asking me if I'd checked everywhere/if the dog ate it/etc. Also, Christa S is clearly One of Us. <3

via merriehaskell and others

A - Age: 30

B - Bed size: Full

C - Chore you hate: Cleaning the goldfish bowl

D - Don’t eat: Mayonnaise, tapioca pudding, many other things

E - Essential start-your-day item: A nice hot shower

F - Favorite board game: Monopoly

G - Gold or Silver: Gold

H - Height: 5' 3.5"

I - Instruments you play: none

J - Job title: Attorney

K - Kid(s): none

L - Love or lust: Love

M - Mom’s name: Mary

N - Nicknames: Jules, Iulia

O - Overnight hospital stay other than birth: none! *knocks wood*

P - Pants or pantyhose: Pants PLEASE.

Q - Favorite Movie Quote: "Smokey, this is not 'Nam. This is bowling. There are rules."

R - Right or left handed: Left.

S - Siblings: 1 brother.

T - Time you wake up: Anywhere from 4:30 to 6:45, depending on when and where I have court.

U - Underwear: I'm rather fond of underwear.

V - Vegetable favorite: Mmm, broccoli.

W - Ways you run late: *shakes fist at Chicago traffic*

X - X-rays you’ve had: I've had broken fingers, a chest x-ray here and there, dental x-rays--nothing especially memorable.

Y - Yummy food you make: Cornish pasties.

Z - Zoo favorite: Prairie dogs.

Today is the birthday of The Other Half of My Brain, dira!

After over fifteen years of personality cross-pollination (over half of my lifetime-to-date--the mind, it boggles), I can't even say who I would be without her, and today, and every day, I am beyond grateful to be able to call her my verybest friend.

I love you, dude.

So, one of the joys of watching hockey is the random-ass things that the announcers say. I present a representative sample of the wtf-ery from tonight's game-in-progress:

"stick dictation" by Nicklas Lidstrom -- They've used this one all series, and dira and I have yet to figure out what that it even means.

Jovanovski and Bertuzzi were fighting it out in front of the net "like rutting elks."

Bryzgalov made a "mastadonic pad stop."

At one point, Howard made a save that looked like it hit him square in the collarbone. I momentarily thought that the announcer said "powerball," and checked with dira to see if I had heard it correctly. While she confirmed that the announcer had indeed said "collarbone," the sad thing is that, because hockey announcers can be so random and nonsensical, you can't necessarily rely on context. So while "powerball" didn't seem likely, YOU NEVER KNOW.

Y'know, the broken Buffybot would make a fantastic hockey announcer. That'll put marzipan in your pie-plate bingo!

SIX NAMES YOU GO BY:
1. Julie
2. Jules
3. Iulia
4. Jules Farkle (if you're my 7th grade teacher. idek.)
5. Julio (if you're my friend Tim)
6. Jewlie (if you're my friend Doug)

THREE THINGS YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW:
1. jeans
2. blue socks with white polka dots
3. my Blue Lantern shirt

THREE THINGS YOU WANT VERY BADLY AT THE MOMENT
1. another day of weekend
2. to have a fluent knowledge of Spanish directly downloaded into my brain
3. for All Clear by Connie Willis to come out RIGHT NOW

THREE THINGS YOU DID LAST NIGHT
1. watched Doctor Who with dira
2. played rather a lot of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 on my Nintendo DS
3. ate a Cadbury Orange Creme Egg while driving, and didn't crash my car

THREE PEOPLE YOU LAST TALKED TO ON THE PHONE:
1. helaaspindakaas
2. dira
3. my mom

THREE THINGS YOU ARE GOING TO DO TOMORROW:
1. conduct two arbitration hearings back to back tomorrow morning /o\
2. watch Castle (<3 <3 <3)
3. play Sonic & Knuckles

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE DRINKS:
1. chocolate milk
2. Cherry Coke Zero
3. Orangina

THREE THINGS THAT MADE YOU SMILE TODAY:
1. looking at the new shiny on my right hand
2. watching my puppy growl at and chase his tail
3. taking a walk at sunset with my boy and my puppy

The above is a photo of the feet of vidensadastra and I after we got back from the mani/pedi that she got me for my birthday. I learned something valuable about my feet today: I am intensely ticklish where pumice is involved. (I totally get points for not splashing/kicking the pedicurist, I'm just saying.) The awesome leopard print flippy floppies were included, and let me say, flip flops in February are very...bracing, but it was well worth not smudging the polish. Meanwhile, my fingernails shine like justice. \o/ Also, vidensadastra got me my very own giant exercise ball, so I no longer have to covet hers. (As an added bonus, I entertained both her and B-Dawg by randomly falling off/flailing on said giant blue exercise ball.)

All in all, it was a fantastic birthday, spent with my vidensadastra and helaaspindakaas. We ate fantastic food and played some Guitar Hero. The mani/pedi was an oasis of girlyness today, as we watched hockey before (yay Caps! Fourteen in a row!) and football after (yay Saints!). Ollie was supremely confused at all of the shouting and clapping during the football game, and spent most of the evening laying a safe distance away, warily watching us.

Also, I have now officially known vidensadastra for more than half of my entire life. <3 <3 <3 ilu dude.

Gacked from dsudis, the "Be Pete Wentz" Poetry Meme works thusly:

1. Put your music player of choice on shuffle.
2. The first lines of twenty songs = a poem; the first line of the twenty-first song is the title.

For bonus points, see how many sources you recognize!

( schizophrenic poetry ahoy!Collapse )

So, dira was telling me earlier about a meme that she had seen, in which you have to list fifteen books that will "stay with you" or somesuch, and you can't spend more than fifteen minutes or so pondering it. Here's my list, in roughly chronological order, with brief explanations for each.

( Here be booksCollapse )

So, I finished reading Sense and Sensibility yesterday, and I have to say, I greatly prefer the movie. I had first seen the movie years ago and loved it, and always meant to read the book, but never quite got around to it. Same thing with Pride and Prejudice. When I first read Pride and Prejudice a while back, I absolutely loved it, since it seemed to be as wonderful as the mini-series, only there was more of it. I was expecting more or less the same experience with Sense and Sensibility, only I hadn't quite realized how much tweaking Emma Thompson had done to the story. I spent much of the book wanting to hit various characters in the face with a brick, and wanting to shake Marianne until candy came out.

Completely unrelated to the above, I went to the doctor today for my yearly physical, and was explaining the phenomenon I've been experiencing the last several months in which I experience weakness, lightheadedness, and sweating when I raise my arms above my head for extended periods of time (I hadn't ever noticed it much before until I started, um, having to blow-dry and style my hair every morning). The doctor thinks it may be a condition called "subclavian steal," and is going to refer me to a vascular surgeon to get it checked out further. What will likely happen is that the vascular surgeon will inject me with some sort of contrasting medium and see what my arteries look like. I feel sort of vaguely worried about this, and yet fascinated at the same time (can I watch, I wonder?). My mother-in-law has this and is evidently fine, so it's not like it's the end of the world or anything, but the information available on the internets seems rather...dry. And not even remotely aimed at patients. Anyone else out there have this condition/know something about it/etc.?