Enjablog

For Squidgey:

What is your favorite Color: blue
Your favorite toy: Nintendo DS!
Your favorite candy and/or snack: cookies!!
Your favorite website: (for shopping) Amazon and CafePress
What thing do you collect: books, yarn
What are your hobbies:reading, crocheting/knitting, baking, sudoku, spreading gossip
Your favorite alcohol/beer/wine (if it matters): meh
Your favorite dessert: Cookies ‘n’ Cream Ice Cream
Your favorite sports team (if it matters): Hokies!
Your favorite movie, TV or game character: Gilmore Girls

New ones:
Favorite band
Sports/games that you participate in

I tried writing up new answers to my list this year and then I went to look at my responses from last year and they were mostly the same. Oh well. I tried.

So, this was another eventful Thanksgiving.

First Thanksgiving was at my parents’ house. It was raining, so there was no fried turkey this year. No worries, though. My mom tried out a brining technique and baked a turkey that even I had a second piece of. My sis made stuffing, as usual. Lenny and Steph brought their frozen fruit mold and some cheesecake. Both quite tasty, and the fruit was really good with ginger ale. Also on the spread: cornbread, green bean casserole, spare ribs, potatoes and mixed vegetables, lo mein, sticky rice, cranberry sauce, and a half-eaten loaf of wheat bread that my father offered up. On the dessert table: pumpkin cake, apple pie, pumpkin custard pie, pumpkin cranberry bread, and ice cream. I think I’m going to try making a sweet potato pie next year. I’ve been hearing lots of good things.

Other highlights: we had several copies of Thursday’s circulars, so everyone could decide where they wanted to go shopping on Black Friday. Wii!!!! Man, that was crazy fun. I also heard a rumor about Animal Crossing for Wii, where you actually fish and have to use the numchuck to reel the fish in. I’m very excited about this.

Second Thanksgiving at Ian’s parents’ place. Relatively quiet this year, compared to the past couple holidays where it was at his aunt’s place. Got a taste of some of the things I missed on my family’s usual menu: mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes. Mm! There was also turkey, of course, green bean casserole, stuffing, cranberry sauce, rolls, and olives (I’m making progress on learning to like these! I think I’ll like them next time I try them. That was #6, I believe.). And for dessert the options were home-made pecan pie and pumpkin pie, with hand-whipped cream on top. I’m disappointed because I was so stuffed by that point, I was only able to try one type of pie.

On the way back, I stood in line in front of CompUSA for about an hour and got inside to find no trace of the sale items I was interested in. Not even a sign and an empty shelf. I suspect they didn’t have what I was looking for. Cheaters.

Friday, I hung out at Costco for about three hours waiting to get 2 new tires. I wandered Costco for an hour, hung out at Borders for an hour, then read my new book (Are Men Necessary? by Maureen Dowd) in front of the tire center until I saw my car come out. I even talked to some strangers. Conversation spurred by the book.

Saturday night, met up with DW and one of Ian’s coworkers at Lost Dog. Fun time. Haven’t been there in a while. Got plenty of gossip too!

Sunday, I worked on the new blanket I started. Not sure what/who this will be for, but I had a pound of dark green yarn and I couldn’t think of anything to use it for. I don’t even know why I have it, since I’m not particularly fond of the color. Otherwise, spent a lot of the weekend watching tv and reading. Finally getting around to “studying” for the GREs. Yeah, it’s half-hearted, but at least I’m making an effort. That’s more than I did for the SATs and that actually had an impact on my future. Well, technically, it did.

Anyway, my only new recipe this year:

Pumpkin Cake
INGREDIENTS

* 1 cup vegetable oil
* 3 eggs
* 1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 2 1/2 cups white sugar
* 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
* 1 teaspoon ground allspice
* 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
* 1 teaspoon ground cloves
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 1/4 cup chopped nuts

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease one 10 inch bundt or tube pan.
2. Cream oil, beaten eggs, pumpkin and vanilla together.
3. Sift the flour, sugar, baking soda, ground nutmeg, ground allspice, ground cinnamon, ground cloves and salt together. Add the flour mixture to the pumpkin mixture and mix until just combined. If desired, stir in some chopped nuts. Pour batter into the prepared pan.
4. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Let cake cool in pan for 5 minutes then turn out onto a plate and sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar.

Notes: Replaced half the oil with apple sauce and made without nuts. It had a very dense, moist texture. Baked in a cake pan instead of bundt pan. The middle kind of sank, so I probably didn’t bake it long enough. The edges were cooked through though, so it probably needs something that would distribute the heat more evenly. If a bundt/tube pan is unavailable, these would probably do well as loaves.

Served with vanilla ice cream instead of the suggested cream cheese frosting. Might try making cupcakes next time for more variety… nuts, chocolate chips, frosting, etc.

QOTD: “you should start preemptively farting at the boys”

Woo! I am officially registered for class. Now I just need to pay up… ;)

I’m signed up for AOE 5144 Boundary Layer Theory and Heat Transfer. This shouldn’t be too bad for getting me back into things. My options were pretty limited, since I’m only looking at the courses offered on the virtual campus. I’m probably going to have to take a course taught by The Hand. And I couldn’t bring myself to start with a structures class, even though that’s a required course and this is in the list of electives (pick 2 of 6 listed). Hopefully, my options will be better next semester when I’ll be wanting to take more than one class.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

I just took a quiz to find my Autism Spectrum Quotient. Score: 34.

I told Sonny a while back that he probably had Asperger’s but didn’t even consider that I might. This is what DSM-IV has to say about Asperger’s:

A.Qualitative impairment in social interaction, as manifested by at least two of the following:

(1) marked impairment in the use of multiple nonverbal behaviors such as eye-to-eye gaze, facial expression, body postures, and gestures to regulate social interaction
(2) failure to develop peer relationships appropriate to developmental level
(3) a lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interests, or achievements with other people (e.g., by a lack of showing, bringing, or pointing out objects of interest to other people)
(4) lack of social or emotional reciprocity

B.Restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests, and activities, as manifested by at least one of the following:

(1) encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus
(2) apparently inflexible adherence to specific, nonfunctional routines or rituals
(3) stereotyped and repetitive motor mannerisms (e.g., hand or finger flapping or twisting, or complex whole-body movements)
(4) persistent preoccupation with parts of objects

C.The disturbance causes clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

I always felt like I had some kind of social deficiency. I had considered social anxiety, but I was never nervous about social situations and meeting new people. I was mostly apathetic and uninterested in making smalltalk with strangers.

My latest project, complete:

My first attempt at following a pattern! It was a good learning experience. I think I should try something more pastel-y next time. I had some trouble getting the border started because I’ve never crocheted perpendicular to stitches before. I figured it out after a bit, but you can tell on the other side that I didn’t do the stitches quite right. This is a pattern I can use again though. Very soft. :)

Internet Addiction:

I have had people who are so disturbed when their families have taken their Internet away that they have been totally unable to function.

How much is too much? Does it affect your family relationships? Are you losing sleep? Are you unable to manage your time? Why are you doing this in the first place?

This is like everyone I know, myself included. Ok, everyone… Back away from your computer. Put down the mouse and get some help.

Haha. Yeah, right. I’m still blogging. At least I’m not in denial though, right?

Woo! I finished a report yesterday and had to sit on it the rest of the day because all the managers were in a training thing. This report got assigned to the wrong group and is probably going to end up getting turned in about a month late. This is ok because it nowhere approaches being my fault. ;)

In any case, I gave an estimate of just over a week to get it done. This, of course, was an outright lie. I had to run some of these analyses for a different project and it took me an afternoon, including my learning curve in there. Including writing/updating the report, getting it through the QA process, etc., a little buffer time in case anything looks funny and needs correcting, an extra day in case the managers are busy, and it should be like 4 days.

So… I finished ahead of schedule! Granted, it’s for the delayed, “whoops we forgot about this” schedule. But I’m very pleased with my trickeries. I’m sure I’m the first to think of this too.

I’m a little slow up on the uptake, but whatever. I finally wrote up my will for everything that was claimed at our last will-writing party. Let me know if anyone wants anything. There’s still time to add you in!

I had an appointment with a neurologist today to further investigate my excessive daytime drowsiness. I know there are a lot of wacky disorders out there and drowsiness is probably a common symptom of everything that could be wrong with you, so you have to start somewhere, but parts of the exam were weird. Not like, inappropriate weird, but “what kind of disease would I be suffering from” weird.

He had this doohickey. It was like a metal rod that was pronged on one end and cylindrical at the tips. I had been looking at it earlier before he came into the examining room, wondering what it was for. So he took this, pulled up my pant legs, and put the metal thing on my shin. “Does this feel warm or cold?” Well, seeing as the room was cold and I was wearing my coat until you made me take it off, of course it’s cold!

Then he asked me if I was scared of him because I was giving him a funny look. No, that wasn’t a look of fear. It was a look of perplexity. Why have a fancy metal thing to ask me if it’s cold, when you could just as easily have used the fancy not-mallet thing you used to test my reflexes? It looked like a meat thermometer the length of my arm.

He also did the same thing my primary care physician did: had me hold my arms out in front of me and close my eyes. I think they do that to see what you’d look like as a sleep-walking zombie.

He had me look at his nose while he held his hands to the side and had me identify which finger he was wiggling. It was kind of cheating though because as soon as I’d point to one side, he’d switch to the other side. So, I couldn’t actually catch the finger that was wiggling, but I also knew that he was just switching back and forth, so i didn’t really need to see.

Anyway, it was all very exciting. He gave me some samples of the new drug my primary care physician tried prescribing it for me! My insurance wouldn’t pay for it, and I was unwilling to pay for it out of pocket. He thought that was the medication I should be on too. I came home looking like I went trick-or-treating at a drug store. Woo!

I have an account on Friendster. A lot of people do. It was cool, like, 5 years ago. And then it was orkut, then myspace, then facebook…

Anyway, I signed up ages ago and never really sign in or look at it anymore, but every once in a while, I’ll get emails reminding me of people’s birthdays or the very occasional friend request. No big deal. I also have about a dozen email addresses, so I don’t really pay attention to which email address I use for each account. For the most part, I have a personal gmail address, a professional/personal gmail address, a yahoo account that I use when I sign up for things and check occasionally, and a handful of email addresses that are completely overwhelmed with spam.

I started receiving Friendster emails on my yahoo account a few months ago and, since I already have a friendster account, didn’t think anything of it. But then they kept sending me emails telling me I had a new friend. But… I didn’t add any new friends. I never clicked on your emails. I don’t know these people. Finally, I went to log in and see what was going on. My standard passwords didn’t work.

Hm…

Well, they’re sending me emails, so I can have them send me my password. Interesting because it’s a stupid password. No way I picked this. Maybe it just automatically makes a password when you forget yours. I log in and find… this.

Some girl decided to use my email address for her friendster account. No, the email address isn’t verified. You get that verification screen when you log in as her. But they continue to send me email. (I blame Friendster for that and have contacted them. They have been useless thus far.) There’s no other contact info for her on there, so I can’t email her and tell her to go find someone else’s email address to spam. I did go in and change the notification options so it’ll never contact me again.

Simply because you have to type in your email address to log in each time, I know this isn’t a simple case of a typo. My email address is my full name and, surprisingly, her name is not my name too. She is doing this intentionally and I’m feeling mean today. So, what do I do?

1) Be nice — Leave a comment for her from herself or add her as a friend and let her know.
2) Ignore it. Now that they’re not sending me any email, there’s no harm being done.
3) Start changing her profile: who she’s looking for, things about her, etc.
4) Leave, um, nice comments for her friends.
5) Change her password. (and then change her profile and leave comments)
6) Other. Suggestions are very welcome.

P.S. Her password is the date she started using my email address.

It takes me about 20-30 minutes to get to work every day, depending on traffic and which route I use. This morning, around the 20-minute mark, I was a few lights away from my office and I got a phone call. At the next traffic light, I pulled out my phone to see what was up. One missed call from my condo. Interesting… I wonder what they want.

*blip* 1 voicemail message.

Ok, listen to the message. Blah blah blah… “Your car is parked in the lower lot facing the street and needs to be moved for the tree trimmers.” Hm, I don’t remember seeing a notice for that. But the more interesting part is that I was in my car. Maybe she called the wrong number? That wouldn’t be surprising from the people working in my building.

I call back. Say that I’m currently in my car and suggest that perhaps they called the wrong person. She looks up the info and it is indeed for my car. I confirm that it’s my car and she reiterates that it needs to be moved immediately. Gotcha.

Rest assured, my car has been moved.

*DISCLAIMER* Skip today if you are uninterested in my political opinions. *DISCLAIMER*

From the WaPo today:

“The message yesterday was clear: The American people want their leaders in Washington to set aside partisan differences, conduct ourselves in an ethical manner, and work together to address the challenges facing our nation,” Bush said.

“I’m obviously disappointed with the outcome of the election and, as the head of the Republican Party, I share a large part of the responsibility,” Bush said.

Right, the message was clear. He’s obviously disappointed that Americans want to set aside partisan politics and expect politicians to behave ethically and collaborate. Good one.

And another:

“I didn’t want to inject a major decision about this war in the final days of the campaign,” Bush said. He added, “Win or lose, Bob Gates was going to become the nominee.”

Oh, yeah right. Why lie about it if you were going to replace him anyway? I’m kind of glad that he did, since that might have been one of the few things that could actually have helped the Republicans. But it’s a stupid thing to deny now.

I was mostly kidding yesterday about beating Ian up, but apparently it’s actually true. It’s old news in Ohio, but something to think about since it’s new to Virginia: Domestic Violence Charges Can’t Be Filed Against The Unmarried

Domestic violence charges cannot be filed against unmarried people because of Ohio’s recently enacted definition of marriage, a judge ruled Wednesday.
…
Frederick’s public defender, David Magee, had asked the judge to throw out the domestic violence charge because of the new wording in Ohio’s constitution that prohibits any state or local law that would “create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals.”

Before the amendment, courts applied the domestic violence law by defining a family as including an unmarried couple living together as would a husband and wife, the judge said.

Now courts can’t do that because of the gay marriage amendment, Friedman wrote.

Apply to insurance, medical decisions, wills… This isn’t to say that I would be for this if they actually went to the trouble of specifying same-sex individuals, but this is writing into our Bill of Rights that we are to take away rights currently upheld in the Commonwealth. If I understand this correctly, my company could be prohibited from offering health coverage to my domestic partner. They weren’t required to before, but this would be offering rights/benefits and recognizing a “relationship of unmarried individuals”. *Gasp*

People who are gay already knew that they weren’t welcome in Virginia, but now we have it in writing! Thank goodness we now have protection for people like Britney and Kevin to uphold the sanctity of marriage. Right. Thanks.

QOTD: “Did you vote today?”
“No, but I gave blood.”

Webb’s ahead by about 2300 votes (about 0.1%) right now and absentee ballots in Northern VA haven’t been counted yet. Continues to be “too close to call,” but there’s most likely going to be a re-count, which we don’t find out about for another 2 weeks. So, I guess it’s safe for me to go to bed now. I can’t believe VA is turning into one of those states that matter. My vote finally means something!

In other news, I still have 6 months to beat Ian up before he’s covered by domestic violence laws. Woo!

Please go vote today!