In honor of my thirtieth birthday, I present thirty random things about me you may or may not have known.

1. I have attended four universities.
2. I have very few female friends.
3. My niece and I have extremely similar thumb prints.
4. I caused my cat to have fans.
5. I think like my father.
6. I have been a vegetarian for nineteen years.
7. I make lists.
8. I have my mother’s creativity.
9. I didn’t walk at my high school graduation.
10. I am the baby of the family.
11. I was accepted to a university that I never applied to.
12. I have kept an online journal of one sort or another since 1995.
13. I used to take my cat for walks on a leash.
14. I like baking apple pies, but I don’t like to eat them.
15. I learned how to properly fold fitted sheets five years ago.
16. I have a favorite spoon.
17. I was fourteen when I realized not all homes had central air conditioning.
18. I remember conversations easily.
19. My first piece of certified mail was from George Stephanopoulos.
20. I love black and white movies.
21. My father named me.
22. I had the chicken pox at age 22.
23. I will eat onion chutney on almost anything.
24. I am a gadget geek.
25. All of my official job titles have had the word “Web” in them.
26. I had an Inspector Gadget doll as a child.
27. People thought I was gay in high school because I had gay friends.
28. I am directly related to at least one president.
29. My dream car is a fuel efficient version of Mr. Bean’s Mini.
30. I have the first letter Josh ever snail-mailed me.

Dear Neighbor,

Just because you want your yard to look “perfect” does not give you the right to blow all of your yard trimmings into my yard. Your yard is empty and all you have is grass. I’m sorry, but this was your choice when you purchased it. Again, you do not have the right to blow all of your trimmings into my yard. If you don’t like trimmings in or near your yard, please buy a bag attachment for your mower or a rake.

Please don’t try to tell me it was an accident. You live across the street from me. It would take near tropical storm force winds to blow that much of your lawn trimmings into my yard. Either I missed a tropical storm warning this morning or your blower is working properly. Please dont’ tell me the trimmings belong to another neighbor. Your lawn is an abnormal grass color for this area. Your lawn is the only one that matches the color of the trimmings left in my yard. Do the math.

If you choose to continue to blow the trimmings in my yard, please remember that I have dozens of trees in my yard. Their leaves will be falling soon. If you want to play dirty, I am prepared.

Thank you,
Your Neighbor

Overhead a minute ago, “Just because you’re hungry doesn’t mean you have to go eat.” AJ was referencing that Shalyn kept running into the grass while playing the cow race game on WiiPlay.

The kids seemed to have enjoyed themselves. The fact that I don’t have cable hasn’t deterred them from having fun either. The funniest part of the entire night, to me at least, was the fact that all of them insisted on having lights on in the rooms they were sleeping because it is too dark and too quiet in my house. I of course slept like crap due to a headache from H-E-Double Hockey Sticks. No medicine was helping. I was miserable.

The weather is overcast and threatening, but there are only a few sprinkles showing up on the radar. I am taking them home in about an hour. We have stuff to do.

Oh Gord. Shalyn just told AJ, “You pick the lame games, like fishing.” They’re killing me.

Brittany doesn’t want to get up. She’s already had ten hours of sleep. Good gravy.

So one nephew and one niece are required to wear khaki pants, shorts and skorts for girls with polo shirts. Unfortunately, there is only one place to get the particular pants and shirts that they need. That place is of course, Target. Well, now that the weather is changing, it was discovered that there weren’t enough pants purchased to get the kids through the chilly days. My mother went in search of pants at her local Target to be informed that “Those are seasonal items, no Target has them anymore.” When my mom repeated that to me I said, “Pfft, Bull.” I was looking right at them at my Target.

I purchased five bottoms for each of the kids and a shirt for each at 75% off. What normally would have been $162.81 came to $38.70. Yes, I rock. I just phoned my mother* to inform her of the grand total and she was giddy with excitement. Clothes for kids are expensive, but it is awesome when you can get school clothes for so much less.

*My mother is up north visiting my grandfather and while riding the subway from the airport she phoned me excitedly to tell me that there was fall foliage colors already. She’s slightly jealous of my trip next week.

I’ve managed to drive my cat crazy with two clicks: Itty bitty kittens on YouTube. Clicks one and two.

I believe my cat telepathically said “WTF” to me when she saw this.

I am liking Radiohead’s In Rainbows. It was a bit of a pain in the arse to download, but I imagine that is because they are getting swamped with visitors. I can see remixes in the future and includes in soundtracks, especially with Weird Fishes. It calls up a cliche driving scene or something. 15 Step makes me think of Starsky and Hutch mating with Led Zepplin. Thom Yorke’s vocals have a somewhat Jimmy Page on Stairway to Heaven kind of feel to them and the underlying beat reminds me of the music in Starsky and Hutch.

In other entertainment news, I signed back up for a Blockbuster membership. Honestly it was just for the game rentals. Unfortunately, they were out of the one game I really wanted to rent. The lady in front of me got the last copy. Wah. They had WarioWare: Smooth Moves but I’m not sure I want to rent it. Maybe next week.

The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs has passed a resolution (H.Res 106) to call the deaths of a million+ Armenians by members of the Ottoman Empire, genocide.

Calling upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide, and for other purposes.

…

The House of Representatives finds the following:

(1) The Armenian Genocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923, resulting in the deportation of nearly 2,000,000 Armenians, of whom 1,500,000 men, women, and children were killed, 500,000 survivors were expelled from their homes, and which succeeded in the elimination of the over 2,500-year presence of Armenians in their historic homeland.

I have a question. Didn’t the U.S. Government do something similar if not the same thing to Native Americans? Just something for you to discuss with your family over dinner tonight.

My main point of this post is this. If you are going to criticize or label the actions of others, you’ve got to own up to your own actions first.

Edited to add: The news reports are reporting that the resolution states that the massacre was carried out by Turkish forces. It is when errors like these make it out that the shit hits the fan. There is a distinct difference between those of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey of today. The Turkey of today is the product of a rebellion against the Ottoman’s. You wouldn’t call Republicans, Democrats or vice versa would you?

This edit is just me ranting about a lack of editing in the news rooms today. Not cool people. Not cool at all.

I bought two one gig memory cards for my camera. I expect I will be taking a lot of pointless pictures soon. Finally. I had hemmed and hawed about what card to buy when I came upon some for dirt cheap. Luckily for me, they were the brand and type I was leaning towards. Destiny I think.

My biggest reason for wanting/needing more memory cards is because next week I am heading north. I’m attending a wedding back to New England, in mid October. If you don’t know what that means… here’s a hint… peep. We should hopefully be there during the peak. No guarantees though, it’s mother nature we are talking about.

Yesterday Eric and I went shopping. Since I have graduated and he lives closer to the school, I don’t get to see him everyday like I used to. So we had lunch and went looking at stuff. We ended up at a Harbor Freight store. While I was there I picked up a Kill-A-Watt energy consumption meter. I have discovered that my refrigerator is a freaking energy hog. In three months we will use more energy than a newer model uses in a year.

I do believe that we will be upgrading the fridge before anything else. I’m tempted to skip getting the DDR and put those funds towards the fridge. Perhaps I am overreacting, but it is just crazy to crunch the numbers and realize how much energy is being used.

Next I suppose we’ll measure the computers usage. That is going to be interesting.

I want cookies. Unfortunately, the last time I bought sugar free cookies I had a really bad allergic reaction. I don’t know if it was the cookie, but the only things that changed were the bread I ate and the sugar free cookies. The doctor said it could be environmental, but I’m still cautious until the test results are back. It doesn’t stop me from wanting a cookie though.

I’m having the kids over this weekend. They are going to stay over and play Wii. They haven’t stayed over yet, so this will be interesting. I’m not sure they will be able to handle the silence. Oh and the cat.

Hold on a sec… Cate Blanchett is reprising her role as Elizabeth? I thought that was a joke. Oh my.

Back to the cat. We have an electronic feeder that automatically feeds her. It is currently programmed to feed her one meal a day at 4pm everyday. We used it when we lived up north. She learned how to hack it and force it to feed her. I ended up building a table to mount over it so she couldn’t hack the controls on the top. I took the table apart because we weren’t using the feeder. Now that we have started it again, I think she has remembered what to do because after returning from the store, I found the control panel asking how many meals to feed a day. I think I interrupted her in the middle of hacking it. Notty kitty.