Schadenfreude, Football, and Elections.

We all have our dirty little secrets or what should be dirty little secrets but aren't because we write about them in our blogs. One of mine was how often I find myself rejoicing in the suffering of others. Not all the time of course as I am not without compassion. But man, sometimes when some boastful jerk gets taken down a peg, I swear I get giddy in my toes.

I first noticed this tendency a few years after I moved to Ann Arbor. You see, Ann Arbor is the home of the University of Michigan which has a football team...a good football team...a football team that wins most of the time. Winning football games is a big deal on Saturdays in the fall. It is what Ann Arbor does. In fact, if you arent especially into football, you hardly notice it except for the occasional bragging by people who seem to think that being a Wolverine fan makes them a better person (because they have the good judgment to be a fan of a winning team I guess) The team wins and everyone goes about their business as usual...UNTIL...

They lose. Then, the whining begins. And it is serious whining. It is whining mixed with anger and rage. And I love it. There is something about watching someone get enraged over a FOOTBALL GAME (ferchissakes) that fills my heart with joy. I hardly ever watch football but when I do, there is a part of me that always roots for the team playing Michigan only because I know that if that team beats Michigan, the fans will sulk and pout and rant and rage and so on.

It turns out that I get the same feeling after elections. Not towards everyone who voted for McCain. I actually like McCain and can totally understand why a reasonable person might vote for him. But there are people on the right who just were jerks in the weeks leading up to the election, who are now rivaling Wolverine fans in the sore loser department. And I love it.

I keep reading craigslist because they keep entering rants like this one. They are losing it and I LOVE IT!!! I keep hoping that someone will interview that mean lady in Grosse Pointe who wouldnt give candy on Halloween to Obama supporters or their children. How do you feel today lady? That's what I want to know.

So that is my secret. If you see me grinning and all giddy. That's why. These guys might rant for four whole years. Elections are way better than football as it turns out. boo yah!

Blogging

I know that I havent been updating this blog much lately. It is weird but I just dont feel much like writing in the evenings for some reason. Part of it is that most things are going well.

Tasha, the new dog, is settling in. She's still destroying things when I go to work but usually very minor things. She has been re-potty trained for the most part. She likes going to the park and she likes going to the lake.

My job is still going well. I love having windows to look out of. Especially this time of year. The trees are in full color and I can see tons of them from my desk. I am keeping on top of all of the work. As I learn more, the work gets easier. On the days when I do get stressed, I use the Y membership they give me as a benefit to go swimming on my lunch hour. There is nothing that de-stresses me as well as swimming.

The Thanksgiving Report

It pretty much went well this year although I had *another* pie incident. I told my mother that she would have to give me complete pie autonomy if she wished me to cut the pie and to her credit, she did just that. This year however, my cousin swooped in and decided that I wasnt cutting the pie correctly. I just let her take over though so it was no big deal. Later, when I was describing this all to a friend, she said “I don’t understand, how can you cut a pie wrong”. My only answer was that obviously I am not the one to ask. Maybe next year I will take a video of me cutting pie and take a video of my mother or cousin cutting pie and then post them online to invite the internet to compare our techniques and perhaps give me some pie cutting tips ;)

Otherwise, it was a fabulous dinner. There were 22 people there and we all manged to sit together at the same very long table. That was interesting. After dinner and after dessert, we had a bonfire outside. It was a shame that I had to work on Friday because I was having fun sitting outside around the fire but I guess that is life.

Gearing up for the holiday

Thanksgiving dinner is going to be at my parents house again this year. My mother always gets really stressed out when she hosts and I think that is going to be especially so this year because there are going to be 22 people there (and five dogs*). So I have a plan:

1. I am going to go to my sister’s house early in the day because she is having before-dinner drinks over there. We are going to give our three dogs a very long walk so they will be good and tired before the excitement of the turkey dinner and all of the people.
   
   
2. I have bought 15 bottles of wine and 4 bottles of Asti (my mother’s particular favorite holiday drink). After my sister’s thing and as soon as I arrive at my parents’ house, I am going to uncork some wine and then I will do my best to make sure my mother’s glass is kept filled up. Some people get mean when they get drunk but luckily for me, my mother gets NICE when she gets a bit tipsy. What the heck, I’ll make sure to have a couple of glasses of wine too just so that we are all on the same page.
   
   
3. As soon as dinner is over, I am going to get up and start clearing the table and getting the coffee and pie ready. My sister is also going to take this approach and most likely our sister-in-law and brother will also help us - my sister-in-law because she is helpful and my brother because my sister and I have always made it clear to him that if she and I have to help after parties, he has to too. Consequently, he has not grown up to be the kind of guy who would go watch football (or whatever) after dinner while the women-folk get to clean up the great meal that they cooked. I hope my sister-in-law appreciates it *snort*
   
   
4. I have to work on Friday so I have a perfect excuse to leave early.
   

*Which reminds me of last year. Some of the neighbor dogs had come over and someone let them into the house by mistake which got all of the other dogs really excited. So there were seven or eight dogs running through the house and barking as some of tried to shoo them outside. My Dad was standing in the living room with his glass of bourbon talking to my cousin. He says to my cousin: You know what? I don’t even own a dog!

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween everyone!

Chadwick Florest (I think)

Fall used to be my favorite season because it is hands down the most beautiful time of the year here in Michigan. Plus it is the season that has Halloween in it and that is a whole holiday that revolves around dressing up the way you really want to and eating CANDY. Lately though, I think that summer is my favorite season but Autumn is a close second and even though the days are shorter and colder than in summer, there are moments of breathtaking beauty that almost make up for not being able to go swimming and see sunshine.

I pretty much drive the same route to and from work every day and I have driven that same route pretty much every day for years. Every fall, I notice this place because I drive by just at the time when the sun strikes the red leaves of this bush in just the right way. I kind of like old signs too. Every year I tell myself that I will stop and take a picture of it but I usually either forget my camera or am too eager to get home after work so I dont. This year, however, I finally took the picture. I am glad I did too because I have learned that old signs like that can disappear overnight and then they are lost forever.

BRRRR

I didn’t quite do all of the things I needed to do in order to get ready for the cold but I did a lot of them. Enough that I know my furnace is working and all my windows are shut and the room air conditioner has been put away. I still ended up scraping some ice off my car with a credit card this morning but hey, that’s life right?

Today we had our first snow and some of the snow even stuck to the ground for a bit. That is soooo Michigan. It was in the high 70’s on the weekend and now, just a few days later, it is snowing. We will probably have a few more warm days before winter sets in for good. But then it is darkness and cold for months.

I have been pretty busy lately and exhausted after work. So I haven’t been blogging much. It isn’t really that I don’t have the time, it is that I am usually mentally gone at the end of the day. I still think about all kinds of things but seem to have trouble putting them into words.

I will try to do a more meaningful post though. I have some interesting thoughts kicking around.

Getting Ready for Winter

I am getting ready for winter. I have a lot to do. I did one thing this weekend but an important thing. I went to Costco and bought enough toilet paper to last me until Spring. It might seem like a silly thing but trust me, there is some kind of weird thing that happens around here whenever a heavy snow is forecast: People run out to the store and buy toilet paper and water. It is weird. I might say that I dont get it except I can imagine that one time a person simply doesnt want to have to run to the store because they ran out of toilet paper is when there is a foot of snow on the ground!

So now that is done. The rest of my list is just more chores:

• Bring in the air conditioner from the bedroom window. I think I am safe and wont have need of it until next summer.
  
• Close up the upstairs bedroom. I am going to put plastic on the windows up there and also close off the vents. No point in heating it more than I have to. It didnt even occur to me to do those things last year. I hope doing that will make my heating bills a little lower.
  
• Put up plastic sheeting on all windows except the front window that the dogs like to look out of.
  
• Change the furnace filter and turn the furnace on to make sure it works. Yup, once again, I had all summer to change that darn filter and once again, I wait until the last minute :)
  
• Mow the lawn.
  
• Find the snow shovel
  
• and maybe find the ice scraper for my car. I know I wont get around to this one but I always put it on my list in the hopes that maybe one year, I wont find myself trying to scrape frost off the windshield with a credit card on the first big frost.
  

Sometimes when I look at my list, I have to remember to be grateful that I dont have nearly the preperation for winter people in the past used to have. I dont have to put up food for the whole winter. I dont have to cut and stack enough wood to heat my house for a whole winter. I dont have to do a lot of things. Yup, things could be a lot more difficult for me.