commonplexities

• I've had a song, a little bit of a song, a guitar riff of a song, stuck in my head for two days. The twist: I have no fucking idea which song it's from! It's about six seconds, this little song clip, with no lyrics attached, and it is killing me that I can't think what it is, because I know this song! I know it very well!
  
  I'd thought it was by Mazzy Star, but playing the collected works of Mazzy Star has yielded nothing, and so I guess what is going to happen is I am just going to let the song fade out naturally (who knows how long that's going to take), and then maybe one day the song will pop up randomly on itunes and I will give a scream of delight and listen to it thirty times in a row SO I NEVER FORGET IT AGAIN.
  
  Wish me luck with that.



• And having said that, I will go on to add that because I am just no good at letting these things lie fallow, in an attempt to find this one song, I've been letting itunes shuffle music at me, and actually listening to every song, rather than tuning in only on the songs I'm in the mood to hear, which is usually how shuffling works for me. I've discovered a couple of things about myself in the process: (1) I really, really have to be in the mood for McLusky, because if I'm not, their music acts on my nervous system something in the nature of a taser (uncomfortable, to say the least), and (2) if I'm really listening to everything, my OCD kicks in as I'm listening and suddenly the muscle underneath my left eye is twitching and my fingers are trembling because everyone knows that "See America Right" has to come after "No Children" or terrible things are going to happen. Seriously, I never realized that my brain has been deliberately protecting me from the hazards of shuffled music all along. I guess I should be grateful for that.



• Over the past month, I have researched, priced, and bought five laptop/netbook computers, none of them for me, and none of them for anyone I'll get to see unwrapping presents. And I'm okay with that -- I love buying techie stuff, matching people up with their pc requirements, and when it's not my money being spent that's just an added bonus, and I've even gotten to install extra software on a couple of them, gotten to boot them up and stroke their shiny widescreens, so I'm happy -- except I'm now suffering from the (expected) side-effect of feverishly longing for a new laptop of my own, despite the fact that my once mighty and still perfectly serviceable Harriet is as healthy as a five-year-old-going-on-six laptop can reasonably be expected to be. I mean, with three working laptops in the house and one scavenged for parts, not to mention the desktop I built a couple of years ago and the wireless internet mp3/video player, not only do I not need a new laptop, but a new laptop would be a ridiculous and wasteful extravagance that I cannot justify when I still have a ceiling that needs replastering.
  
  Knowing this does not make the longing any less acute, though. Does it ever? I don't think it ever does.



• And! Speaking! Of! Ceilings! Oh man, I have the best friends-and-relations, and thanks to their (or, you know, her, really) spectacular generosity, not to mention their (her) innate understanding that what a girl really wants for her birthday is protection from the elements, I no longer have a leaking roof! Guys! Shingles have been ripped up and wood replaced and shingles replaced and flashing remade and recaulked and nail-holes filled, and it has been raining off and on for a week with no sign of water and GUYS. This makes me so happy I can hardly stand it. I am in love with Bachelor No. 2 all over again, just in time for his centenarian birthday. (You are totally invited to the party, by the way.) And it is good to be able to know that rain is on its way without requiring sedation to get through the storm.



• I don't usually drink coffee -- the caffeine makes me jittery and sick to my stomach -- but I guiltily drank some this morning when one of our subs brought like a gallon, and we are all suffering for that now, aren't we? The point is that I'm going to stop palavering in just a moment, but while I'm palavering, it seems a good time to mention that yesterday, while I was waiting impatiently for the office manager to retrace her steps and try and give me a calculation formula I needed (which, by the way, I never actually got, and so I had to make up my own, sorry Mr. Carpenter whose Christmas Bonus got left out of the original list so that it was left to me to recalculate an amount without the right formula), I created a twitter account. I am cambiloquy, and I think you should friend me in a place where I can't go on and on in overcaffeinated disarray, I'm just saying.