Month: March 2012

i just enjoy

I bought a TV. I can’t believe how cheap brainsuckers are these days, holy smokes. My laptop has been grumbling at its heavy use as an entertainment device, and, combined with the aforementioned cheep teevee prices, I felt a desire to jump in.

I also bought a Roku, enabling me to watch some (but not all) internet streaming content. “But not all”, I just said. I can’t watch Lifetime online (so no Project Runway) nor can I watch Logo online (so no RuPaul’s Drag Race), nor will I pay for the not-worth-it Hulu Plus (so no The Office, 30 Rock, Parks & Recreation), nor can I hook up a computer to the TV till I get a wireless keyboard (so no iTunes season subscription to Mad Men).

I vaguely remember being able to access cable from my room, 1.75 years ago before I stopped watching. I found the cord but I can’t get it unscrewed from my crappy old TV.

Not to mention the hugeness of the beast, a hugeness that will force me to move around all the furniture in my room so that I can be ergonomic about my not-watching.

Todd Margaret is as unenthused about my new television as I am. It looks wee here but it’s 32″ of mediocrity delivery system.

I think what my real beef is, is that I feel like I’ve depleted everything that I want to watch on Netflix Streaming. And I miss the ability to surf. Just flip it around the dial. Catch the shitty local news, fall asleep to the endless reruns of Friends, you know.

So that’s your exciting blog post, from me. I’ll leave you with a review, in its entirety, that a consumer left on the Amazon product page of this TV.

So I gave me, for the time being, at least. i am enjoying my television i dont know much about connecting to the internet what cables i used my son hamndles all that stuff i just enjoy

March 27, 2012
make funny pun replacing “so” with “sew”

I got interviewed by the VC Reporter for this article about the Craftcation Conference. The reporter writes a great paragraph about my giddiness about all the craftiness happening these days (as mentioned here):

February was a very good month for Port Hueneme resident Becky Haycox. In one prolonged moment of kismet, much of what had crowded her daydreams for eight long years had suddenly and almost magically manifested: An indie craft conference was coming to Ventura; superbuzzy (an online shopping oasis for Japanophiles who sew) had opened a storefront in midtown and the owner had formed a chapter of the Modern Quilt Guild.

“When I heard about Craftcation, I felt like the Mothership was coming home,” she said.

Love it! I don’t get to go to the conference yet (Saturday is my day — I do believe I get to take three two-hour sewing workshops .. for a start), so in the meantime I’ve been crafting my craftass off.

Four pillows and a quilt. I’m throwing everything I got to cover up the awful, literal chintziness of that couch. It is all part of the Great Office Reorganization and, since the office is also the guest room, it is also preparation for hosting the (THE!) Pollyanna Cowgirl, who is here for Craftcation. My stars. Polly! Yay!

Completed concurrently with the above projects: another quilt.

I packed it off as soon as it was done — it’s being exhibited at Craftcation! How many times can I mention Craftcation? — so photos of the completed quilt are still pending. Oddly, these two most recent quilts represent my favorite and least favorite pieces I’ve produced so far. As to which was which, that’s a post for a later date.

I am sad I’m only one of eight locals who are attending this sold-out conference, but I am going to shmooze the hell out of them! All over them! Ugh.

Anyway? That’s what I’ve been doing. Apart from a million other things. Did I mention sudden sad events, my brother’s visit tomorrow, my nephew’s surgery, my full time job?

Oy.

March 22, 2012
tiny groundhog day in my ears

I may have mentioned I have a lot on my plate these days (repeatedly!) and I feel like I can’t pack everything the time in which it’s all allotted.

This has been a most convenient excuse to drop the activities that keep me sane and healthy, things that reduce the feeling that everything is about to come crashing down.

Which brought me yesterday to my favorite beach promenade in my sneakers and newly-tighter (and totally threadbare) running clothes. And of course, my iPhone and cheapo dollar store earbuds*.

It’s been so long that I completely forgot that I had deleted my workout mix on my phone, so I had only my purchased songs to listen to. And that would be a total of two songs. Two songs for 36 minutes!

[link]

Solid Gold Hell by the Scientists. If you have a listen, you might be amused by the juxtaposition of the dark sounds in my ears and the sunny, beachy, so cal scene in which I ran.

[link]

Get Along by Mikal Cronin. This one worked well, but only as a song on a two-song playlist could work.

*One of the activities that keep me sane and healthy: buying things that I need, like running clothes and good earbuds (and not game apps and pizza.)

March 14, 2012
insert that frantic plate-spinning music

Hi blog. Big high-five to 2011 Becky, who managed to blog every dang-doodly day. 2012 Becky can’t imagine having that on her plate, with all the other towering, wobbling, heaps of non-delicious nonsense on that selfsame plate.

An even bigger high-five (and by “high-five” I mean a gesture of appreciation that isn’t stupid, dorky, and doesn’t make my hand hurt) to my lovar Lamar who, though he has his own towering plate of nonsense, has been patient, receptive, loving, and friendly. I know I have to (and will) get through all this, but having him to talk to, commiserate and have fun with, keeps me going with more cheeriness that I thought I could ever muster. Jump, smack, ow!

I’m not going to count the ways, but there have been gnarly situations in which I’m embroiled. One of the situations I will touch upon is the Elderly Relative, who has been steadily declining. This has forced me to work from home more often. This has been making me unhappy, because I hate the office here in the house in which I live. Packed with too much furniture, too much insanely heavy 80’s oak furniture. Ugly, not fun, too many faded photos of too many damn relatives on the wall.

So now I’ve been adding the office to the Great and Toxic Reorganization Summit already in progress.

And so it goes. There will be no Apartment Therapy-level fabulous Before and After photos (there’s no way that mighty oak will leave), but I will show you a lamp.

So there you go. Sometimes heaving some furniture around and then posting a crappy iPhoned vignette can be all I can offer you from my plate.

March 12, 2012
[the only sad thing: she didn’t go get the dress]

I staffed a resource table at a local college today. The lady at the next table had something small cradled to her chest, covered by a tiger print fleece blanket.

It was Sally the turtle!

I was excited and started making that weird growly cooing sound I make when confronted by tiny and/or cute.

Until Sally’s owner said “oh, I should go and get her dress from my car!”

It was then I started feeling faint and breathless. Spots swam before my eyes.

Then Sally’s owner said “For Halloween? Sally dressed up like my family’s chihuahua, and the chihuahua dressed up like Sally.”

That was the point I exploded into a starshower of tiny Becky cuteoverload atoms.

Then I proceed to take approximately one jillion photos.

Then posed her with brochures from my organization.

Sally ran, literally ran, wild. She used the advantage of starting at the top of a small hill to book towards a large event. A large event consisting of cops, a motorcycle, many spectators and young people wearing goggles that simulate inebriation, some of whom were driving an obstacle course in a golf cart. What could’ve possibly gone wrong?

Nothing, as we all learned to keep an eye on Sally. I like this one of my friend gently turning Sally around, as the turtle tried a risky, Bill Bucker ball-style, through-the-legs manuever.

Sally likes being stroked under her chin. It was a chilly, very windy day (which explains the turtle running for sunnier fields and for awful hairdos).

Not photographed: Sally slipping out of her owner’s backpack, and spending a few undignified moments on her back, doing that adorable flailing thing that turtles do.

I don’t have a lot of contact with animals, since I’m a hopeless city mouse, I don’t have pets and I have a self-imposed ban on visiting anything zoo-like, so this was the best day!

And a lady on flickr just commented:

BEAUTIFUL ……
Red-Eared Slider turtle….
Used to have many as a child…..one grew out of a 40 gallon aquarium he got so big.

[happy sigh]

March 7, 2012
scrolling down, down, down

I love and blame my darling Tristy for hipping me to the Internet K-Hole. Huge long scrolling posts, composed of nothing but the best photos ever. I cannot look away. And before you look, be warned there are some sexytime images.

If you lived through the era of washed-out photos with curved corners, you will experience the same thing Tristy and I did — as you scroll, you’ll have these PANG! moments of “was that just me?”

I love the fact this site has photos only. No snark, no editorializing, no trying to force the images into a cubbyhole agenada.

It’s touching, weird, real, fake. America!

Tantalizing. Who are and were these people, caught in the best kind of amber?

March 6, 2012