Moussaka!

I decided, in alll my mental glory, that since I like moussaka so damned much, I would learn how to make it. And as first tries go, not bad. I have a few things I would like to fix of course, but thatll have to wait until, well, three years from now :P

But the thing that really gets me, is dishes. One simple casserole, and I used every single pan in the kitchen, three different spoons, two spatualas, and maybe seven bowls. And of course, no measuring devices, cuse, pfaa, who needs em? You see, I bake, and cook, like I do chemistry.... measure as little as possible, add stuff until it looks right, and hope I dont blow anything up. I try to say... less to clean... but grrr I still end up washing everything in the kitchen. I swear things just hop out of the cabinets, and drawers into the pile of dirty dishes.

Sigh.

Im sure there is some equation that equates the number of dishes indirectly in proportion to the difficulty of cooking, but hey Im not a mathematician either. Oh wait, there is something wrong there... eh I cant think about math while trying to remember all the words to Mammal by TMBG, which by the way, is a great song, educational and catchy.

Im scatter brained today, it seems.

Taxes and Death

Since the evil efile-ing morons from Aldeberon VI sucked out my brain, I am now deceased. Yes I spend all my daylight hours avoiding garlic and sunshine in my plushie fyarl booties and matching green leopard print lounging wear while absorbed in the pages of Martha Stewart's Undead Living, or waiting for Alton Brown to tell me why my blood mayonaisse keeps collapsing.

My poor roomate is also convinced that I am a vampire, being as she hasnt seen me in the light of day for almost two weeks.

What is this nonsense Im spouting? Well, I decided, you see, to file my taxes online, and since Im paying student loans, and have basically no income, I felt hell, I could prollly do this whole shebang for free. I, like a good spawn the beaurocrazy, go to the IRS webpage and see what options I have, and after a couple of clicks and buttons pushed, I find myself answering some questions to see if I qualify for a free efile, you know the standard... "were you injured? are you married? are you blind? are you deceased?" and I happily was pushing the no buttons, until woooops the page refreshed, and hrmph it seems I just died, and now I have to fill out more information, because I cant very well be filling out my taxes if I am also dead, so I just must be someone else filling out my taxes.

And I say wait a min! Im not dead! And then I think... heeey, was I filling out my taxes? I hate taxes, there is just something about them, that makes perfectly intellegent people, with high IQ's, and decent problem solving skills, devolve, (err deevolve?) like that episode of ST:TNG were warIv tuns into a big cockroach, Dianna into a guppy and Spot's an iguanna, and Data uses Nurse Ogawa's uterine fluid to innoculate the crew. Yeah, eww.

Dialects, and moussaka

Over dinner, suz and I discussed the dialects of midwestern buffy watchers, who happen to have grown up in Chicago land. I know I havent mentioned suz before here, cuse, well although I live with her, at times we clash so hard that all I can think of is grumpy things to say about her, but she is not mean, or evil, but in fact one of the coolest people I know. And tonight we were having one of those conversations that you have with a long time best friend, half in a language only the two of you share, and only a third out loud, about something as inane as Chicago-English.

Now I love languages, I love to taste them, feel them on my tongue, play with the grammer, compare one to another. Things like the similarities between the word puppis, which in latin means prows, as of ships, and the norwegian word for breasts, pupper, tickle my funny bone. Hell, its not like Im a trained antro-linguist, or what every they call themselves, I dont know if they at all relate to one another, but its still funny. So when suz started talking about the Chicago accent, I more than willingly began to mumble along with her, words like Minnasota, and thirty, and shut up, and shit, and cant over moussaka and greek fries. She had pointed out that although the classic "Chicago-accent" is portrayed as something along the lines of "'ey you, go ge' me da pehper!" or "da baihrs, and da buhlls" a level to which normal chicagoans dont normally stoop, one does hear a lot of softened, or non-existant internal and terminal t's. Yes, people, if you fit in that, "Im from Chicagoland" bracket, I want you to say to yerself those words I previously mentioned, and Im sure you can think of more. They sound more like d's to you? And dont forget all those funny vowels, hrm try cars, or milk, for example.

I dont myself know if this is just Chitownish or midwestern, or what, but think... if yer from Minnesota, how do you say it? Yeah, nice hard t.

Another ideosyncratic dialect marker, as has been pointed out to me by my brudder-in-law, bubu, we of the midwest love to use inappropriate, and unnecessisary, prepositions. Prime example, "Im goinging to the store, wanna come with?" That with is entirely useless, but without it the sentence seems obscenely naked... a point on which both suz and I agree. And I am avidly against missusing prepositions, they are the bane of my existance, as well as people who missuse whom.

I will not rant about these gramatical errors, cuse, gosh, Im just as bad as the next schmoe, and its not really important in the light of the rest of my problems. Just yesterday, I recoded someone's webpage, so I could read it.

Sigh.

Wil Wheaton signed my book!

Yeah? so? Im a geek. I fully except my geekitude. But I bet you dont understand the full depth to which Ive fallen.

I just got my selfpressie, you know, the kind that is sponsored by a generous grant from some wonderful aunt/uncle team, a splurgerific splash into commercialism, possessionism, and capitolism. The three C's... err... so here we go. Three CDs, one which was the new TMBG kid's ablum, "Here come the ABCs", the other two being just some oldtime stuff. Then TWO buffy books, and then TWO, count em, one, two, books by Wil. Wheaton.

And one is signed.

I did not expect that. Hell I was just excited about reading the books, but hehe, look, it was signed. I whooped. WEll okay it was more of a WOHOOOOOOOOOOO.

But Im sad that I did not get to see him in person :(

Did I mention that Wil, one l by the way, not two, changed my life, well just about as much as Neil Gaiman, and CJ Cherryh, hrm and Paddy. Yes, Patrick Stewart... And Mark Orkrand, and Baudelaire, and Colin Dexter, and Professor Scurvin, and Darwin, and both Adams' (sorry had to use the oxford apostrophe)... Richard and Douglas... no I dont think they are related, and Roget, yeah him with that cool thesaurus... Hmm now that I think about it, there are alot of people that changed my life, and mr. wheaton is only my current infatuation, I suppose the enamel will wear off... punny eh?

Hey, yer supposed to stop me rambling... back to the subject. Me the geek. You know, although I feel superubergeekie, there are just so many ways, so many directions, geeks can go. I mean besides the classic example of the techno-babbling-spectacled-unwashed-pizzabreathed-computer-geek, are techno-babbling-spectacled-in-erlenmyer-flask-tea-making-science-geeks, and pastey-rumpled-spectacled-book-geeks, and all sorts of others, like just plain old music-archivist-geeks whose holy grail is just some old recording of Cousin Emmy playing Peartree, which by the way I really would like to hear. I think the true stamp of geekitude is a childlike awe of things, an insatiable thirst for knowledge, a mad curiousity.

Here's the truth kiddies, you dont have to know things to be a geek. Although, sure, that helps one spring into action along with your fellow knowledge parched travelers on the road to enlightenment, geekdom is that spark in yer eye when, like a toodler faced with pressents on Christmas, you are faced with something new, or a puzzle, or maybe a hunt for information. And like that same toddler, if you hang with the analogy for another min, you have to unwrap and fish, and research, and experiment, cuse thats the best part.

Geeks just get to have Christmas everyday.