The prospect of warm, sunny weather this weekend is looking glum, which I guess is just as well, as I am working most of it. I would, however, love to take a long-awaited bike ride on Monday to a park for a lovely picnic. I'm envisioning a basket on my cruiser, which is presently not in existence, so I think I need to get that taken care of, stat.

I'm starting to feel as if I live in the actual Pacific Northwest, a term likely to spark images of Seattle and Portland, two cities regularly doused in wetness. Boise is, in fact, in the desert. It's high desert, but desert nonetheless. Though we do get more rain then, say, Death Valley, rarely has there been more rain than that which we've experienced in this month of May, at least since I've lived here. Since Boise is not used to such amounts of water, there is a little problem with runoff which leaves streams running down my street into rivers that converge and forge canyons in the road, overfilling the gutters, and forming lakes at intersections. At times, I'm afraid to drive my car through these monstrosities, lest I get stuck and have to be helicopter-rescued, clinging to the top of my car for dear life. Surely, I jest. And I apologize for taking up too much time (and space) by talking about the weather.

The time for my first "long" holiday is approaching quickly, and I must confess that I have a bit of apprehension about seeing the Midwest clan of my family again. I haven't seen any part of my family not residing in California in over 10 years. Whence I arrive in Detroit, one of two cousins will be picking me up at the airport, and I'm a bit afraid that she's going to be... well... lame. I haven't seen or spoken to either of my MI cousins since we were mere children, and the last time I did see them, I was forced to go to church camp for a week! I'm not finding much when attempting to internet stalk them; in fact, the only thing I can find on anyone in MI is my uncle, who played pro football for a while. So, I'm basically stuck not knowing these people at all until I get up there and am stuck with them for a week. The cousin who may be picking me up will get to spend a lovely 3 hours with me in the confines of a car on the way up to Grandma's. I guess we'll see how that goes then.*

As for everything else, blah blah blah. And that will be all.

*If any of my family finds this, I'm sure you're not lame. I mean, you're related to me, after all. You can send hate mail my way if you feel the need. Heck, we can even reintroduce ourselves before the trip!

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Today, I am going to rant about the most mundane thing in the world. If you don't want to read a rant about the most mundane thing in the world, then you can stop right here and do something else, because I don't want to be bitched at for ranting about the most mundane thing in the world.

Produce.

Living in California for over 15 years made me appreciate good produce. It seemed as if everything was lush at the grocery store, and even better at the farmers' markets. Everything tasted fan-fucking-tastic, as well as being easy to clean, peel, dice, whatever. The produce was PerfectProduce, known to leap buildings in single bounds; you know, just for fun.

Living in Idaho for 9 years has made me appreciate California's produce even more. The veggies here suck, kids. We don't even get halfway decent potatoes. The carrots are dry and flavorless, the broccoli gritty and tough, the courgettes small and acidic. Things aren't much better at the local Co-Op, where veggies cost 4 times more than the ones at Winco, and really don't taste much better. The farmers' markets are great here, but to tell you the truth, I'm just too lazy to go that far out of my way for a worthwhile pepper.

I am obviously a child of the 21st century, so I get rather peeved if things aren't the way I think they should be. Then again, I think I blame too many things I find annoying on the way people in general think these days. The want for instant gratification comes to mind, and having to wait more than, say, a week for something is not my idea of a good time. I want my oranges to be as large as the grapefruits here. I want the skins easily peelable, the fruit tender and juicy, and I don?t want it to taste like crap. Really, is this too much to ask?

Obviously so. Considering Idaho receives more than its fair share of produce from California, one would think that the options in general would be more gratifying. See, California, I believe, does a switcheroo. They take all of the really good stuff and sell it to their own people. Once that's done, anything that belongs in the litterbin gets shipped out to the other 49 states and many other countries.

(Learn A Thing Or Two About Potatoes!)

Idaho, on the other hand, does the opposite. The people making the money off of the potatoes (and whatever else they grow here) pick the best, shiniest, fluffiest, loveliest potatoes from the bunch, ship them off to the other 49 (and possibly other countries?). After that, they pick out the next-best potatoes and make them into French fries for McBarfald?' and other McRestaurants, instant spuds for the lazy, etc. After that, they just wrap up everything else and sell it to the home-growns, whom, I've found, can eat them raw. Seriously. Gross.

So I'm pissed about the produce. And if I get one more bag of salad that's already halfway rotted, I'm going to pop.

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Apparently, not only am I a 46-year-old pedophile, but I’m a 14 year old girl. This makes sense in many ways to me, as I fall pretty much right in between the two ages. I’ll be turning 25 in a few months, and I’m thinking that for some reason, I’m having some kind of mid-20’s breakdown or something. Well, maybe breakdown isn’t really the best word. I just seem to be reverting to these things that I had during childhood that are still so v. cool in my eyes.

I have celebrity crushes. This came upon me suddenly, like a ray of sunlight slicing through the clouds after a rainstorm. I really haven’t had anything like this in a good while; really, I can’t remember having a celebrity crush since I was in high school. Sure, I’ve thought that some of the guys and gals were cute up there on the big silver screen, or the teevee, heck, even the intersphereonet, but I haven’t really had a real crush. I’m up to the point of wanting to write these crushes, have their autographs, or just be able to see them from across the room, as it would totally knock my socks off. It’s to the point where I am halfway internet stalking these celebs, wanting to know more about them, wanting to find candid shots of them, wanting to see if I can find more information about their thoughts and dreams and definitely what kind of girls they like, and how to become one of these girls so that they will love me forever and ever.

Maybe my hormones are off or something, but it actually may have more to do with watching a teevee show on the ol’ computer last night. I’m a big fan of BBC teevee, and (to digress) I have this fear that if I ever move to the UK, I’ll gain 500lbs. from sitting around to watching the beeb, because the beeb rox, and I could totally become addicted. There’s this show on the BBC (or at least it used to be on the BBC) that’s called The Office. This show kicks ass. I hate a lot of teevee, so for me to say that I love The Office means that it’s better than 99.9% of the teevee that I’ve ever seen. Ever. I own the series 1 and 2 on DVD, but was disappointed to see that the series 2 DVD did not include the Christmas Special that ran last year (2003 – the show originally aired in 2001). So, the boy downloaded the special so we could finish up the series, as the special is really the true ending for the show.

Last night I laughed, I cried, my heart broke and was made whole again in 2 hours. Watching the 2 parts of the Christmas special was possibly the best time I have spent on anything recreational in a long long time. I highly recommend downloading it, of course, as it is not available in the US at this time (rumor states that the beeb will be releasing a DVD of the special around Christmas this year). However, if you have not seen any of The Office series, do not watch it out of order! To do so would be a grave mistake, and a total waste of your time.

To regress, one of the main actors in the show is what I consider hott. He is so totally my boyfriend, only I have a fiancé who is so totally kickass. Sometimes this is setback, though; it keeps me from hopping on a plane and stalking my crushes overseas.

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I have this sinking suspicion that I am very strange indeed.

All morning, I have been chanting to myself in my head. And this isn’t the first time. I do this quite regularly, as a way of remembering things. Whether it actually works or not is questionable, as usually I only remember half of the things I am supposed to remember. Today the chant has been, “Ohhhhhhh, birth control is my friend, friend, friend, friend. Birth control is my friend, friend, friend, friend.”

Seriously.

And I still haven’t taken my “friend” pill yet. So I really have no clue why I continue to soften my brain with such atrocities.

So I also have a sickening feeling that I’m impossibly lame. Sometimes I’m just too damned tired to really think about doing anything but sitting on my fat ass and watching The Office. Or, when I go to the bar, I really can’t think of anything to talk about with everyone there, so I feel like I obviously have no life to speak of. I get all excited when things happen to other people, like getting hooked up, or moving, or traveling. It’s almost as if I’ve resolved to living vicariously through other’s fortunes instead of creating my own. That’s just so fucking depressing.

Erm, I’ll write again when I’m not in such a funk.

Oh, and yeah, everything’s all moved over. I’m with powweb for hosting now, and they rock the party that rocks the party on the partywebosphere, dig?

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this is a test of the file upload utility.

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So I've finally taken the plunge to change my webhosting services. Not that I hate my current host, but they just don't offer what I need. So, I will most likely not be posting for a couple of days while I get things set up on the new server, and the whole site may be down for a day, but I'm really hoping it's going to be seamless. So yeah, have fun without me.

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So I've been miss-blogging-lazy-ass lately. For no apparent reason. Besides the fact that I was going nuts all week.

Internet was indeed back up on Monday when I got home from work. I immediately started downloading stuff like I normally do, and pretended like it was still down for the rest of the things I normally do, just because I was too unconcerned to do them.

I have had so much sugar today that my heart very well may explode while I?m attempting to sleep. I have been through such a wide range of emotions that even the best of actors (you know who you are) would be amazed and jealous. Right now, of course, I am sleepy as hell and just wanting to do nothing but read (sidenote: I purchased 5 good books this week! Score!). Why I am not doing this, I don't know. However, I am sitting here, listening to Postal Service and fixing up the pictures I took last weekend during the camping trip.

I'm rather disappointed in these pictures, as I only took a few, and none of them feature any of the wonderful people I went camping with. They're all nature-y and like I'm trying to be Ansel fucking Adams or something, only in color. So forgive me my trespasses, and I'll ignore the perfidious comments:

For more camping goodtime descriptions, you can check out Amy's entry about it, as she actually took time to be all nice and illuminative. Unlike me. Because I'm just a bitch today.
I profusely apologize for the obvious use of a thesaurus in this entry.

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I came from a fantabulous mini-camping trip sporting a light sunburn to a house devoid of internet access. I guess my DSL stopped working on Saturday, and has yet to start working. So, for now, I am relying on the kindness of friends and internet cafés (of which I only know of one in town) to be able to do what I could normally do comfortably from home (and am still paying for). This, indeed, made me rather upset yesterday, as I had plenty to catch up on, being away from technology (or at least the webosphere) for well over 36 hours. I spoke with Qwest tech support for over 2 hours yesterday (most of which was spent on hold), while putting away camping gear and doing dishes.

I am normally v. v. nice with tech support peoples, as I know it’s pretty much the luck of the draw when I get someone on the line. The first guy I talked to, though, was making me seriously want to go down to where they are(conveniently located about a mile away from my house – yes, I know where you are) and smack some shit up. However, I kept my cool, and was only outwardly mildly irritated by the time the call was over. I do have to give props to the second person I spoke with, as she actually seemed to have some brains, and I feel confident that she will actually smack some of that shit up for me, else feel the wrath of the geek without the W’s.

So, as far as I’m concerned, my home computers are 95% useless to me at this point. Hmph.

Living in a country with so much instant gratification has obviously blurred my reasoning, as I really do want some stuff done NOW. After paying ridiculously high rates for a telephone (which I don’t use) and DSL, I’m jaded to the monopoly of Qwest in the fine state of Idaho (and Oregon, and Washington, etc.), as well as the poor-me attitude the major corporations tend to have for themselves around here.

It is also time, I think, to blow out my pilot light on the heater. My gas bill for last month is almost $10, and I didn’t turn it on once.

Back to the main point, camping was fucking fun and awesome and rad and all of the above. Pictures will be forthcoming once Qwest gets it’s head out of it’s ass and fixes my fucking issues. Grrr.

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