brunobaby

Not the weather; just me.

I woke up with a temperature of 101-point-something, a flu that somehow slipped past the flu shot. So I'm at home right now bundled up with the windows closed, trying to scare the fever by making the room hotter than it is.

I may have to postpone the snorkeling class I was going to take on Tuesday night, preparation for the resort vacation I'm going to take if my renewed passport gets here in time. But I'm sure there will be people at the resort who never snorkeled before. Do I have to be so prepared for everything all the time? It's not as if I'm going to be Diver Dan. (How did Dan and Minerva the Mermaid, like, do it? He had to wear a diving suit and she was half-fish.)

At any rate, it'll be fun to see all these tropical fish and pet them, except they'll edge away from me and I'll feel rejected.

I think I'm delirious.

In fact, here all too often, which is in my office working overtime.

I'm planning a vacation, which seems to involve more equipment every day. As always, I will need a vacation from the vacation.

I'm here in my cubicle, where I've got a semi-choppy feed coming in from C-span.com. Semi-choppy, because whenever I do something else on the computer, I lose the feed for a second or two.

I'd wanted to watch on CNN.com, where you can comment with all of your Facebook friends, but the Firewall equipment in my company has deemed that both CNN's live feeds and Facebook are too much fun and would distract us from being good boys and girls.

The former vice presidents just entered. I love this pomp and circumstance.

Update, 11:15 AM

There's the march of the former presidents. Poppy Bush looks like he's having trouble walking, and he's saying to Barb, "I thought they'd have a handrail here."

There's Jimmeh and Rosalyn. There was a New York joke during the Carter Administration. It went "What do Jimmy Carter and the Long Island Railroad have in common?" "Every morning at 7:45 they both pull out of Rosalyn."

Gotta love those '70s.

Update, 11:30 AM

Damn. I'm getting kicked off every live feed in the universe. The whole world is watching...except for me!

Update, 11"45 AM

Ah! Just got CNN. For now, anyway.

BTW, did you know that at exactly 12 Noon, Obama becomes Prez? Nobody has to say the magic words or anything, he just automatically becomes Prez. Not just him, the president in general.

I did not know that.

NY1's "Weather on the Ones" has been predicting temperatures of eight degrees for Thursday night, and they've been predicting it every ten minutes for the past three days, striking the fear of God in my heart. So when I saw this faux fur, faux leather hat in a little store on Bleecker for only twenty bucks, I happily made it my own. Even though I have other hats.

I also stopped into an outdoorsy clothing store where the guy sold me this fleece thing that goes over your nose like a bandana and makes me look like a ninja. And now on Thursday night I'll be nice and cozy warm and look like Elmer Fudd, Ninja.

And then put a video from YouTube of Bart Simpson saying "I didn't do it." I'm so funny. I'm such a funny liberal.

But then, would you believe this...there is no video on YouTube of Bart Simpson saying "I didn't do it."

Yeah, it's hackneyed, but sometimes you gotta go with the hackneyed.

The temperatures are expected to get into the single digits at night this week, which means it's time for the Annual Furnace Break-Down in my building. This time, it sends up heat for five minutes every five hours, and the cold water shuts down indiscriminately, or when you're in the shower and/or getting ready for work.

The Super keeps saying that he called "the man." The man claims never to have been called. Perhaps the super was simply, like Lou Reed, "Waiting For the Man."

Meanwhile, I gave in and bought an electric space heater. We never had them when I was a kid because my parents deemed them "too dangerous." My only experience with one was when I was first out of school and sharing an apartment. My roommate was spending the night at her boyfriend's and let me borrow her space heater. As I got dressed the next morning, I had this brilliant idea that I'd stay really, really warm if I draped my underwear over the heater before I put it on. My favorite brassiere disintegrated instantaneously.

This time, I got the little contraption pictured above, which comes with a little safety booklet that I read obediently before I turned the thing on. Within five minutes, it made the room toasty warm and comfortable for the first time in days. That, and the big pot of stew I put on the stove.

So here I sit, huddled by the fire: Primitive Woman. And when my Con Ed bill comes in, I'm sending it to The Man.

I added another link to my "Useful Stuff" on the sidebar. This one is Truth or Fiction.com. It was passed on to me by a friend and it joins Snopes.com and The Straight Dope, proving that I'm either extremely naive or a raging paranoid.

It's them Comminists. Yep.

I get this e-mail newsletter from a "noted veterinarian" every week. It has advice on cat care and some funny cat videos from YouTube.

One of the videos this week was "Cat Saying Hello."

"When we played this for the clinic cats, they started howling!"

I think it sounds more like the noise Pongo used to make when he ate too fast and was about to hurl. But, in the interest of pure science, I played it for Chico and Ashley to see if they would howl. They were in a deep REM sleep on the bed, and suddenly sat up and swiveled around in alarm. After the track played out, they quickly decided the danger was past and the talking hurling cat had been attended to. They put their little fox heads down and went back to sleep.

If you have cats or dogs, do you ever play them videos or recordings of cats and dogs to see what they'll do?

I'm starting off the New Year with a cold, or, more specifically, half a cold. It's only affecting one side of my face, which feels like it's sliding off my head.

Last night, loaded with antihistamines, I went to the deli counter of my corner supermarket. The guy had a sloppily hand-lettered sign that said "Happy 2009," only the first "0" looked like a capital "D" and the "9" looked like a lower-case "g." In my brilliant state of mind, I started giggling.

"I thought your sign said 'Happy 2Dog.'"

The guy looked at me strangely.

"Which, of course, doesn't make any sense," I added, lest he think I was crazy. I knew 2Dog didn't make any sense, by golly! Can't fool me!

Meanwhile, I was repressing bursting out laughing until my lips were stretching like a balloon. The guy finished slicing my cold cuts and handed me the packages.

"Thanks! Happy 2Dog!" And I cracked up, while the two people on line behind me watched me walk away, obviously deciding I was starting my New Year's celebrating a tad too early.

I've been watching the Twilight Zone marathon most of the day, because it's not New Year's Day without it. And every year, it's..."Martian and the Diner, yeah, Talking Tina, yeah...wait a minute, I don't remember this one." Every year there's one I don't remember. Or sometimes, I don't remember whether or not I remember it. Maybe it's stress--Good riddance, 2008!--or old age. But I think right now it's just antihistamines.

Happy 2Dog.