Divine Providence

I've just got a new TV/entertainment system cabinet because my cousin is becoming a nun!

Uh... I haven't bought it in celebration of her upcoming novitiate.

In August she's entering the convent for her three months of contemplation/extra meditation/xtreme nunning and as such she's been busily giving away her superfluous worldly goods*.

I expect I'm supposed to say I was surprised when she told me what she was planning but I honestly wasn't.

That's not to say I've ever looked at her and thought 'girl is gonna end up a nun'.

She's an attractive, accomplished and personable woman with all sorts of life paths open to her and whilst she's been a practicing Catholic for years she's never been overtly religious or expressed any prior intentions in this direction.

But I can see how it makes sense for her.

And she's one of the few people I know who has the personality, the temperament and the sense of moral responsibility to carry it through.

She's been a teacher for almost 10 years and in that time she's helped a heck of a lot of people, in the course of her work at the school, within her community and parish, and by donating her time to teaching disadvantaged children in other countries on working holidays.

She's been on several pilgrimages with our Grandmother** which I thought she was undertaking predominantly as an aide/chaperone to help 80-to-85-year-old Grandma get around the less accessible parts of the Holy Land, but they obviously stuck with her personally.

She's always been a spiritual person, not a preachy person but an introspective/meditative one and she has a firm sense of social justice.

When I said 'moral responsibility' I didn't mean it in the self-righteousness or blinkered morality way that some might use it, I meant that she is the kind of person to take responsibility for her own actions, to act for the good of others and to take a religious position seriously as an act of service to the community as well as to the church.

I think she'll do well in the vocation if she chooses to take vows and she'll do a lot to help others who need help without asking anything of them in return***.

I'm happy for her.

I am also not unhappy for me and my new TV/entertainment system cabinet.

I've been meaning to get one for ages but never really got around to it...



*most of her furniture, kitchen bits, books and DVDs, anything without deep emotional or personal meaning

**who has entered the pilgrimage phase of being an Italian/Irish matriarch

***up to and including not expecting people to pay lip service to religion in order to receive help, that is not her style

Dear Lady At The Sandwich Shop

You are pretty awesome.

You're always friendly and efficient and even when it looks like you're having a cruddy day you don't take it out on your customers and you genuinely seem to appreciate it when we try to cheer you up.

You aren't stingy with the ingredients but you know how to hold back on the mayo so it doesn't taste like our sandwiches or rolls are drowning in eggy death unless that's what we've specifically requested.

I like the way you call me 'darl' as if you're about 50 even though you're probably a few years younger than me.

I am very glad that you respect the health code enough to wear gloves when you prepare our sandwiches and rolls.

But the thing is...

You should take at least one of the gloves off before you accept the money for the sandwiches.

Because otherwise, sure you aren't touching our sandwiches with your hands but you are touching them with everything the money you just touched has bumped up against.

I was raised at the tail end of the glorious immune system boosting 'oh Lord, she's eating the dirt out of the pot plant/dog biscuits/something she found behind the couch again, get it off her and rinse out her mouth, she'll be right' era so I'm fairly sure I'll survive whatever money-glove-sandwich contamination might result but others may not be so robust.

And it's also still a sort of gross idea.

Other than that you're perfect and so are your sandwiches.

Yours sincerely,
Ricochet

The Vimeortex

Guys, I haven't written anything for this week.

I meant to.

But every time I got on the internet I ended up immersing myself rapturously in the 5 Second Films archive.

Sooo... instead of a real post here is a selection of my favourites.

That I culled down from 40 to six*.

There are over 600 videos so you know you should stop and do something else but... they're only five seconds long...

I regret nothing.

Planking from 5-Second Films on Vimeo.

Clark Kent's Close Call from 5-Second Films on Vimeo.

The Day Before Yesterday When Everything Was OK and There Weren't Any Zombies from 5-Second Films on Vimeo.

Late for Work from 5-Second Films on Vimeo.

Absence of the Towels from 5-Second Films on Vimeo.

Brothers from 5-Second Films on Vimeo.

*OK, seven, I had to include this one for the badass moustache. It isn't on vimeo so I couldn't embed it.

Hot Damn

So anyway, I was catching up with my webcomics and traipsed over to Coelasquid's awesome Manly Guys Doing Manly Things, as I routinely do, and saw this...


I don't always recognise all the characters Coelasquid portrays due to my low-level involvement in actual game playing and in these situations I of course turn to my old friend the search engine to make sure I'm getting all the nuances.

OK, there's a guy called Vassic...

He's from Dragon Age II...

I'm guessing it's a bit of a talking point that he has a bit of chest hair...

Let's see what the ole image search turns u- Phwoar!


Phwoar!


Phwoar!


So, uh yeah...

Apparently he's a dwarf...

And he's known for having a bit of a hairy chest...


Phwoar...

The Bag Lady

I have a tendency to take things with me 'just in case'.

This often serves me well as 'just in case' turns up every once in a while and sometimes I or somebody I know benefits from the bandaids, pens, maps and miscellanea that I have on hand.

I've pared down the amount of 'just in case' items from a previous status of 'ridiculous' to their current status of 'not too bad but probably still a little too much' but there's one thing that seems to be slowing me down quite considerably.

My laptop.

Watching with thinly disguised jealousy as a coworker glanced at her watch, swung her bag onto her shoulder and disappeared into the distance in the blink of an eye I wondered why I couldn't be like that.

As I unplugged my power cord.

And disconnected from the internet.

And clicked on the Safely Remove Hardware icon.

And removed my internet USB.

And shut down my laptop.

And put it and all its paraphernalia into its shoulder bag.

And swung that bag onto my shoulder.

And my handbag.

And picked up the little cooler bag I'd brought my lunch in.

'Well, poop on this!' I thought! 'I can get by without my laptop at work!'

I mean, all it does is let me listen to whatever music or talking book I like, allow me to check Twitter/my email/any other websites banned by our work network, hold an array of items that I can transfer across and email to coworkers to enhance my points during arguments or offer distraction during the boring parts of the day...

I can do this...

So starting tomorrow I'm not taking my laptop with me to work.

For a fortnight.

I'd say a week but I already spent Monday wrapped in its loving embrace so that hardly counts* and seems a bit weak.

I'll just put a bunch of music onto a USB and take that instead.

I'm sure I'll be fine.

And even if I'm not this will probably be good for me.

I need to detach a little bit before I pull a full on Serial Experiments Lain or whatever the less technologically proficient version of that might be.

It should also save me about half an hour of farting around per day unpacking/packing up my laptop and I'm going to use that time to go for a walk or something.

If all goes smoothly and I don't crack like an addict who didn't realise just how hard cold turkey was going to be, I may very well make it a permanent arrangement. I expect Future Me and her back/shoulder would thank me for it.



*The fact that next Monday is a public holiday and technically doesn't count also factors into the equation.

Jaws Unbound

Almost two years ago I slouched along to a consultation at the orthodontist to see if I needed braces, a meeting that ended with me getting the dang things applied that same day in a blur of glue and metal.

Those 21 odd months have passed alarmingly quickly and a couple of days ago I entered The Chair once again to have them removed.

And it feels... a bit weird but not in the way you might expect.

I get used to certain things ridiculously quickly.

Within a week of having braces put on I couldn't quite remember what the interior of my mouth had felt like without them and just shrugged and got on with things.

Now they're off and I'm already forgetting what it felt like to have them on.

At the moment it feels a little bit like somebody smuggled somebody else's teeth into my mouth whilst I wasn't paying attention but that sensation is fading in some sort of advanced rate in proportion to how terrifying that concept is.

My new best friend the '24/7 for 6 months retainer' has made its introductions and wearing it is fine.
There's some discomfort when I take it off or put it back on, which I'm sure that will fade as my teeth get used to the idea that their support network is gone and start standing on their own two roots.

So it isn't my actual teeth that are feeling weird, it's... well, I think I developed some kind of Stockholm Syndrome for my braces.

Towards the end I was nervous to have them removed because I kept envisioning my teeth as having grown dependent upon them and coming loose or wobbling about, falling out or deserting me if I bit into anything firmer than a doughnut because the position they've been gently shifted to was too far for the human tooth to bear!

That fear proved to be what some may refer to as bullpucky.

But for the moment I kind of miss them.

Mostly because I'm a compulsive fiddler and I'd built up a complex little set of games which involved tapping or flicking different protrusions or attachments with the end of my tongue in odd little sequences.

Without braces on that kind of behaviour looks a bit weird.

If I'm honest with myself I'm sure it looked plenty weird when I did have braces on but at least people could work out why I was doing it.

Because I agreed to braces on structural grounds rather than cosmetic* ones I wasn't particularly thrilled or disappointed by my teeth in their new configuration as their old configuration had looked OK.

Because I didn't have to avoid any foods I couldn't bear to live without I haven't gone into a glee-spiral of reacquaintance.

Because they didn't change my self-image or make me feel self-conscious or less attractive I wasn't fussed when they were there and don't feel particularly fussed on that point now that they're gone.

All of which seems to slightly miff all the people who have been saying "I bet you're glad they're gone, hey?"

"Meh" is not the response they expect.

Luckily I'd already had my wisdom teeth out way before this adventure began so I don't even have to worry about those coming in and pushing things about and undoing all those months of good work like some of my friends did**.

I know I'm going to get used to this whole retainer malarky and quite, quite soon I will have a new set of weird tongue flicking games centred around the little wire glued to the back of my bottom teeth to keep me occupied***.

I'm not even sure what I'm trying to say here. It's more musings than anything else.

There was a thing, then there wasn't, doodily doo doodily doodily doodily do.

So, uh, I guess to give some sort of educational value or something I'll say: never forget to floss.

You might think you've brushed your teeth adequately to keep everything clean and shipshape but there are always bits of food squirrelled away in those little gaps and crevices and if left there they rot like corpses jammed into a ravine. Except unlike the putrescent vapours of ravine corpses, the tooth graveyard allows you to waft the stench of death and decay over friends and bedmates. Also it's bad for your gums. So floss your damn teeth.
I promise to stop talking about ravine corpses if you do.

Oh and my apologies to those who might have thought this post was going to be a wicked ass saga about a shark.



*The way they were sitting would have gradually caused severe wearing that would have left me stumpy and steak-less in my autumnal years.

**Imagine wearing braces for almost five years and then having nothing to show for it because your wisdom teeth rolled into town like a gang of outlaws and started shoving all the law abiding citizen teeth around and Sheriff Braces is so long gone that there's no hope of reprieve or order.

***Uh, the wire was glued to my teeth to keep them from ever trying to wander back into their old positions, not as a means to keep me occupied. That's just an unintentional benefit.

Delectable Deduction

I've been re-watching the beautifully pale and angular Bendedict Cumberbatch and the ever squeezable Martin Freeman in the excellently updated Sherlock and not only has it made me almost pathologically unable to stop scattering adjectives, adverbs and superlatives over everything I write about them, it also got me thinking.

What would Sherlock be able to discern about me?

I wouldn't present much of a challenge I expect but the moment the thought entered my head a little monologue began writing itself.

You have one fingernail shorter than the other nine, a breakage that you've filed smooth but haven't cut the others to match which indicates that you're either pragmatic enough not to care about the length of your fingernails overmuch or you're too vain to shorten them all.

The state of your hair argues against vanity for although clean and uniformly dyed, it isn't styled with any particular care, you've used no products or aids and have bound it back in much the same way you have since you left school.

The ink on your right index finger marks you as someone who works with words, your workplace operating under some terribly archaic practices, but the instinctive tilt of your hands suggests a certain proficiency with touch typing. This either bodes well for them updating their procedures or for your chances of getting work elsewhere when they go under for falling behind the times.

Your slacks are hemmed by the expedient method of turning and securing them with safety pins. As your height is unlikely to be changing at this late juncture and the pants have been hemmed in this fashion long enough to develop a pronounced crease, this is another indicator of your tendency towards inertia.

The collar of your blouse is presentable but not pressed, you've never taken it upon yourself to learn how to iron. This is less laziness and more a point of pride. You don't hide the slight rumple of the fabric but you haven't left the garment long enough for it to become pronounced. A strange rebellion to enjoy as much as you do.

The narrowing of your eyes speaks strongly to how annoying you're finding me right now but the quirk at the corner of your mouth says that you're still going to offer me a cup of tea. I don't suppose I could press you for a biscuit as well?