robglazebrook.com

There are reasons I should not be left alone in front of a computer. One is due to my super mad hax0r skillz… I’m like that kid in the “Hackers” movie that got banned from using a computer until he was 18, except I haven’t ever made out with Angelina Jolie (…yet). Another is my tendency to pile more work for myself on top of my already tottering tower of busy-ness.

To that (second) end, I’d like to announce yet another awesome web project! That’s right, from the people that brought you CSSnewbie, please welcome I Can Has Hope!

If that name doesn’t cause a lightbulb to turn on over your head, please check out ICanHasCheezburger first. If that website makes you laugh, then you’re good to go. Please proceed happily to ICanHasHope.

So what’s the idea? It’s pretty simple. Take the simple, snarky, and sometimes witty humor of ICanHasCheezburger, and bash it against a mess of political commentary. Or, as I’m dubbing it, LOLitical Commentary.

And then to make things better, I’m going to donate 50% of whatever I make through advertising on the site to Barack Obama’s campaign, up to the legally allowed $2,300 in the primary election and $2,300 in the general election. After that, I’m going to find a deserving charity and donate proceeds to it instead. Or perhaps I’ll rotate through the charities, so a lot of people get the chance for a little bit of Hope.

And that’s the basic premise: Hope through Humor. If you like that idea, then please visit the site, share it on your own websites, link to it on Facebook… the whole shebang. This idea has the chance to do a lot of good. And if you’re into that sort of thing, I’d also ask that you submit some photos/captions of your own. I would really prefer if this site weren’t All About Me.

And while we’re on the Obama track, if you’ve considered donating to his campaign and just haven’t gotten around to it yet, now would be an awesome time to get it. As the graphic to the right states, Obama is just a few thousand donors away from becoming the first candidate in history to have over one MILLION individuals donate to his campaign. He’s hoping to hit the million-mark by March 4th, when Ohio and Texas go to the polls, as a very visible sign of his appeal to the masses. I’m already one of those near-million, but I’m hoping ICanHasHope gives me the means to help his campaign even more. :)

Amanda and I didn’t make it into work yesterday due to the weather. We tried, though. We really did. But we both drive rather small cars with low clearance, we had eight or nine inches of snow and lots of drifting to contend with, we live in a very hilly neighborhood, and our street wasn’t plowed until a good 30 hours after it stopped snowing. So here’s what happened, near as we remembered it:

We left our house in my car, at point A. We were already in trouble, because the roads hadn’t been plowed and we were one of the first cars out on our street. But we soldiered on.

My car got stuck in a drift at point B. After a minute or so of effort, I got it unstuck and pointed in a downhill direction, which would swing us back around to MLK.

By point C, we were slowed nearly to a crawl, because my car kept getting high-centered on the snow and I couldn’t pick up any speed. We suddenly realized that, even if we did manage to make it all the way down the hill, there was no chance we’d make it back home, as we live very near the very top of the very large hill. We decided to give up on going to work, and salvage my car and our dignity. We hung a right on Sherwood to loop back home.

We made it to point D, but my car couldn’t make the turn back onto Dosh due to the incline. Worse, I was now stuck in the absolute middle of a T-intersection, blocking both lanes of traffic on two roads at the same time. As it turned out, I was stuck in a drift about 20” deep and couldn’t get enough momentum in any direction. After about seven minutes of rocking the car back and forth (and perhaps a little swearing), I got it moving again, but I was pointed back down Sherwood. I decided to go with it, and try to loop around on Madison again.

I got high-centered again at E. At this point, I realized my car wasn’t going to make it home. Every road to my house inclines upward, and I couldn’t even make the gentlest of the inclines at point D. We decided to just abandon the car in an out-of-the-way spot and walk back home.

We left the car at F, just south of the corner of Sherwood and Madison. We walked back home and warned our respective bosses they wouldn’t be enjoying our company.

So. This morning, we walked back down the hill to grab my car and head in to work. Only… my car wasn’t there. And the road had been plowed. I realized my car must have been towed. So, we walked back to the house, took Amanda’s car in to work, and I called the Des Moines car impound.

They couldn’t find my car. They had no record of my car being towed. At this point, I’m getting a little nervous. The lady at the impound let me know that sometimes, during bad weather when they need to plow, they simply move cars to an already-plowed side street instead of impounding them. Annoyingly, as you can see from the map above, my neighborhood has about a dozen block-long side streets, all with weird curved, high hills, and funny angles blocking a view of any distance. I resigned myself to a long lunch spent looking for my car.

At noon, Amanda and I drove around looking for my car. And we found it! Here’s the kicker, though: we found it exactly where we had left it.

So here’s what really happened:

Most everything was correct in our memories except for the most critical part: the location of point F. Instead of parking south of Sherwood and Madison like we’d thought, we had parked south of Sherwood and Glennor instead. Huh.

In our defense, all of those streets look pretty much the same when they’re under a foot of snow. But I think this spring we’ll endeavor to take more of our walks in that direction, because we really have no idea what our neighborhood looks like. We always walk northwest of our house. :)

I’ve spent the last few months living in a shadowy, red-hued world. Which sounds a bit like a symptom of severe depression. Which in turn sounds not at all like me. Luckily, there’s a much more physical culprit: the big halogen lights above my cube at work have been slowly dying over the last few months. And as they’ve died, they’ve created less and less light, and what light they were putting out was tinted redder and redder with every passing day.

By late last week, I noticed it was getting tough to read the documents on my desk, as all my papers were shadowy and pinkish. And it was kinda annoying. I mentioned this in passing to my boss, and he must have mentioned it in turn to our facilities guy, because I came back from my morning meeting to find a bit of a change.

My. Cube. GLOWS. It is far and above the brightest cubicle in my department, and after a bit of walking around, I’m pretty sure it’s the brightest in the building. Holy monkeys. Suddenly, I can see every speck of dirt in every corner of my office – as well as the deep, ominous shadows those dirt-specks cast. And I’m suddenly very self-conscious about the mess my cube has accumulated over the last couple of months, now that my so-euphemized* “creative disarray” has been thrown into such (very literal) sharp relief. I’m thinking I’m going to have to buy a pair of sunglasses to keep in the office for when my eyestrain gets too great simply from the reflection of the light off my beige desk.

My coworkers keep stopping by to comment on the halo of light surrounding my work space, as they laugh and squint in my direction. I’ve decided to refer to it as the aura of my greatness. Coworker Justin suggested it was a little more like the Twilight Zone, only with far less twilight. I suppose that interpretation might have merit, too.

* So euphemized by me. And only me.

You know, I’m really starting to think that I need to do laundry more often. I’m supposed to be going on a Christmas-themed pub crawl tonight, weather permitting. I’m going as Jesus on his Birthday — a long robe, sandals, and a birthday hat. But I wanted to wear something warmer underneath the robe since if you’re anywhere in the vicinity of Iowa today, it’s a bit chilly (what with the ice storm and all).

So anyway, I was looking for something warm to wear under my robe, but all my white long-sleeved shirts are dirty. So I threw in a load of whites. And then I heaved a heavy ol’ sigh at how little difference that seemed to make to my laundry pile. So next, I think I’ll do a load of greys. And then a load of blacks, one of blues, a set of reds, one of tans, and then maybe a load of miscellaneous just to catch the stragglers.

Or at least, I’ll get as much of those done as I can before it’s time to start dressing up in funny outfits and drinking heavily. Priorities, people.

Also, forgive me the memory-infused photo above. It’s the only photo I have of the robe I’ll be wearing tonight. Also, I think Amanda technically can’t disown me for it, because Dana and I weren’t dating at the time the photo was taken. There’s gotta be a rule in there somewhere for that sort of thing. Sides, I think it’s a cute pic. ;)

Whew. This weekend, Amanda and I successfully hosted our first-ever dinner party. Or party of any sort in this house, actually. And although it was a lot of work, it was totally worth it.

The final and official menu turned out pretty kick arse:

• For Dinner:
  • Turkey (brined & roasted) (via Amanda and I)
  • Chive Mashed Potatoes with Turkey Gravy (Ditto)
  • Apple-Herb Stuffing (Same)
  • Green Bean Casserole (Us again)
  • Cheesy Carrot Casserole (Sara!)
  • Homemade Cranberry Sauce (Anne!)
  • Dinner Rolls (Amanda and I)
• For Beverages:
  • 5 bottles red wine (via Amanda & I, Kate, Lindsay, Megan, and Anne)
  • 2 bottles white wine (via Amanda & I and Julie)
• For Dessert:
  • Four-Layer Pumpkin Cake (Megan)
  • Pecan Pie (Hannah & Toño)
  • Apple Crumble Pie (two of ‘em) (Amanda & I)
  • Flan (Hannah & Toño)
  • Chocolate & Vanilla Cupcakes (Sara)

So, Holy Crap, in other words. We had a lot to eat. :)

We had 11 people in attendance in total, counting The Hosts with the Mosts. People started arriving around 5:30pm, we all sat down to eat shortly after 6pm, and people filtered out slowly until pretty close to 11pm.

Dinner-Related Happenings of Note:

After peeling five pounds of potatoes what for the mashing, we tried sticking the peelings down the garbage disposal. The intense vibrations from the disposal unit trying to handle the extreme overabundance of ‘tater peels actually managed to shake the drainage pipe lose from the wall, causing a small flood of extremely starchy water all over the new floor. I got the pipe reattached, though, and after a bit of plunging, it didn’t cause us any more problems.

Smaug was being his usual social self during the meal, hanging around the dinner table and playing with anyone who happened to glance his way. At one point, he got bored and jumped up onto the credenza under the window. The only problem with that was, the credenza was covered from end to end with our desserts. He realized his mistake at the very last second and managed a mid-air course correction, missing the caramel top of the delicate Flan by a quarter inch and then stepping carefully around the pies before I caught him an inch from the side of the cake. He spent the rest of the evening locked in the basement.

Miles spent the majority of the dinner outside, because he was just a little too excited by all the new people and smells. Around dessert time, we felt sorry for him, and let him in while we ate our sugary snacks. He happily galloped around the table for a while, saying hello to everyone, and then wandered off for a bit. A few minutes later, we realized that while we were stuffing our faces with cake and pie, Miles was in the kitchen finishing off the turkey left on the platter. He managed to eat a good pound and a half of turkey before anyone noticed. Luckily, I hadn’t finished carving the bird, so there was still some left for leftovers.

But other than that, things went really smoothly. We’re calling the party a success, and are hoping it turns into a yearly tradition. :) And if you would like to see my photos of the evening, you need go no further than right about here.