This Post Is Sponsored By Isaac

I just asked Isaac to give me a topic to blog about. With nary a nanosecond, he said "peanut butter and jelly sandwiches" (which, incidentally, he and Sammy are eating for dinner because it's too darn hot to cook properly). So. Let's see how this goes.

I have a complete love affair with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Complete and utter love affair that has not diminished through time. There have definitely been times that I didn't love it AS MUCH, but really? It's just the best quick dinner in town. So great, in fact, that I buy peanut butter by the case. Especially since that glorious day that I finally convinced Sammy it was not going to kill him to try it (praise be that day!). However. A very odd phenomenon has occurred. Our case has just past its expiration date. And I'm baffled how that happened considering Sammy and I eat one several times a week and since getting warm, Isaac has been indulging as well. My only clue is that I must have gone through a "eh" phase with them and not eaten as many as I thought we have. Or got overzealous with my food storage and bought one too many cases. Or something.

Here's hoping that "best by" date really IS just a suggestion!

Speaking of things I just never tire of:

(gin blossoms, hey jealousy)

Crap. "They" WERE Right...

This was my facebook status this morning: "As much as I can't believe I'm 36 (!) I'm seriously so happy that I'm no longer in my EVERY!THING!IS!IMPORTANT!AND!DEEP!AND!MEANINGFUL! 20s." And then people started commenting and I started thinking, Oh. Hey. That really IS true. Everything in the 20s seems SO!IMPORTANT!AND!MEANINGFUL!. It's exhausting, but I remember that feeling well.

One of my favorite scenes in Reality Bites is when Lelaina gets home from the disastrous film screening and she's complaining to Troy (!) how "I was really going to be somebody by the time I was 23". And Troy, all deep, says, "The only thing you have to be by the age of 23 is yourself." "Yeah, well, I'm not sure who that is anymore..." And then BEST. SCREEN. KISS. EVER happens here:



But I digress...

I remember watching that scene over and over, thousands of time and thinking (and, probably saying!) how true it was. If I didn't have XYZ totally figured out by 25, that was it. Life was over. This scene is one of the many reasons this movie is one of my favorites, honestly. Because I felt it GOT it. That's exactly what it was all about. I would watch Oprah or whomever and they would say things like, "You really don't know anything in your 20s, when you hit your (30s, 40s, etc) you finally get it" and I would laugh, assuming it's what old people told themselves to make the aging process easier.

But then something happened. I started aging and getting more comfortable in my skin. And the things that were SO!DRAMATIC!AND!IMPORTANT! in my 20s weren't so dramatic and important and there really WASN'T meaning to everything said and done. Huh. Who knew? Being deep was a recreational thing, not an everyday living and breathing thing. And I started realizing that I LIKED this new thing. I liked having days upon days that were stable and normal. I liked doing what I truly loved and saying no to what I didn't and actually KNOWING the difference. I relaxed. I realized that whether my career gets started at 25 or 35 or 45, the happiness is that it happens. Not when.

I'm still not all the way there. I still feel the dramatic and impatience sometimes. But I'm getting it. They were right. This age is SO!MUCH!BETTER! That, or I'm just an old person trying to make the aging process easier.

Speaking of DRAMATIC!:

(u2, all i want is you...man. i do not hate this song, even a little bit. and i'm sorry? but if i were that girl from the audience i MAY have sworn. just a little. and then died. in a very 20s dramatic fashion. or just laughed...)

You All Are Going To Be SICK of This Soon. I PROMISE.

So. Bookmarks, smookmarks. I'm over it. Wanna know why? Because I can't get my iTunes back to normal. That's why. So, the way I see it is this. Once you HAVE an iTunes account, losing one is next to...I don't know. Losing half your brain? I reinstalled iTunes and my entire library is gone. Fine. All my music (minus two Neon Trees bonus tracks) is backed up. I just need to but it all back into iTunes. So I plug in my iTouch to sync it and get this message "this iPod is already linked to another iTunes library. Do you want to purge and delete or transfer purchases if this is an authorized computer?" Um...yes, please. Transfer. Right? That's what I was supposed to do? So I do. But now I keep getting a "not enough disk space on your hard drive to sync" message, even AFTER I compress files. BLARGH. So I'm thinking that the few things that don't show up in iTunes right now WILL be transferred over eventually once I can figure out the disk space issue. Right? And then will the annoying "this isn't your library" message in iTunes stop? Right? Or will it just go on reminding me of the crash heard round the world every time I sync? ENQUIRING MINDS, PEOPLE!

And then there is the matter of Amazon previews. I can no longer hear them! I'm assuming at some point I HAD the right equipment installed for this blessed phenomenon, but now? POOF. Vanished like...well, I don't know what. Vanished like a twisted joke in a computer crash, that's what. Stupid pop up circle of hell...

In other news, my overall font and icons are way smaller than before and I think I kinda hate it. But not sure enough to try to fix it, yet. And my Amazon music purchases that I hadn't transferred yet are now safely downloaded a second time and transferred. Loss casualties going down! Computer recovery is slow, but going. And I have mentioned in the last 30 seconds how stinking grateful I am for my external hard drive? Man. So grateful.

ANYWAY. We apparently forgot to take a tax credit on last year's taxes. So yesterday we got a pretty little (BIG!) and unexpected check in the mail. So I need all of this computer crazy to GO AWAY NOW so I can go pick up my Nook tomorrow (take that far away August anniversary!) and start playing with it. Please, please, please!


(blur, there's no other way)

For The LOVE.

So. Saturday I was hit by pop-up thrid circle of hell. Fun. I shut down the computer and thought I would have Isaac look at it this weekend and see if he could fix things. Last night, about 6 pm, it's time of death was called. Factory reset, anyone? I turned it off and refused to deal with the fall out until this morning, when I took stock in what this REALLY means. Here's what I found.

I have to reinstall EVERYTHING. ITunes, blurb book software, the ability to play youtube and amazon previews, my photo software, everything. However. The true tragedy of all of this are my bookmarks (SOB!). I was smart enough to not have anything truly important on the desktop (that's what flashdrives and external hard drives are for!) but my bookmarks. I cannot even begin to tell you what a blow it is to lose them. I had hundreds, all categorized: Sammy stuff, recipes (SOB, SOB!), craft ideas, writing stuff, shopping sites, CSA links, daily stuff, etc. Oh holy cow. All gone. I have a hard copy of some of the links circa 2005ish, but nothing more recent.

I'm not a big "fresh start" kinda girl, I don't know if you've noticed. I like the status quo. Always have. So, needless, I'm truly gutted. There is a teeny tiny part of me that is happy my "clean up bookmarks" line can be scratched off my to do list, but it's very teeny. And having my to do list this week be usurped by all things computer kinda stinks.

At least I have my "Top '80s One Hit Wonders" tivo'd and ready to keep me company...(#59 is Outfield's Your Love, in case you were wondering. #60 was NuShooz...)


(it's over, lisa loeb)