Daily Life Stuff (Page 43)

Lynn on Christmas: Fillyjonk calls the week after Christmas “the quiet week at the bottom of the year.” I like that. It’s so much better than thinking of it as “the big letdown after Christmas” or the week of “thank goodness it’s over” which seem to be the two most common ways of thinking about it. I think a lot of people just don’t know how to handle quiet times when there’s not a lot to do so they start thinking too much about the wrong sort of things and get depressed. I don’t like thinking of Christmas as aDown the rabbit hole….

Yesterday I had one of those “When you think you’ve seen it all…” moments. I got a Spam e-mail from someone whose method of sending out their messages was to utilize the contact information left by people who sign the online guestbooks for people who have died. There are times when I don’t understand people. Who would think of harvesting a bereavement memorial site for contact info for Spam purposes??? Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

Hey, my alma-mater got a mention today in Gregg Easterbrook’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback column, under his “Obscure College Score” item: Double Bonus Obscure College Score: Wisconsin-Whitewater 34, Wartburg 17 (Division III playoffs). [Yay Wartburg! -Ed.] Located in Waverly, Iowa, Wartburg offers a course about the TV series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” The course description reports, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer has become a focus of cultural and feminist studies … showings of the series are a course requirement.” (Go here, then look under the Department of Inquiry Studies for course 101 04.) I’m not sure if he’s sneering at Wartburg thereDown the rabbit hole….

Lynn provided a link to a list of ten places you should see before you die, which she then helpfully supplemented with her own list of ten places you should see before you die. I cannot, of course, resist any such notion for myself, so here they are: the official Byzantium’s Shores list of ten places you should see before you die! 1. Route 20-A between Orchard Park, NY and the Finger Lakes region, in the fall. Route 20-A (the ‘A’ stands for ‘Alternate’) has its western terminus at a place called Big Tree Corners, about two miles down fromDown the rabbit hole….

How’s my day going, you ask? AARRGGGHHHHH!!! That is how my day is going. I’m going to wring someone’s neck for this. I’m looking at you, Tony Danza. UPDATE: HA!!! Got it. Take that, Flanders! How did I get rid of this thing? Well, I downloaded three different spyware programs: SpyBot, Malwarebytes, and Super Ad Blocker. After running all three of these programs in normal mode didn’t get rid of the item, I tried doing a System Restore several times, but the trojan in question somehow gummed up that process as well, so I couldn’t do the restore. Thus IDown the rabbit hole….

I’m posting this tonight, on Wednesday, before the day actually dawns. I can never decide if I’m an optimistic pessimist, or a pessimistic optimist, but generally when kvetching over whether the glass is half full or half empty, I usually — even if it takes quite a while — arrive at the conclusion that hey, at least I got myself a glass. I’m not sure what that means, but there it is. I’ll be taking a few days off from posting (not a few months, so don’t panic, you regulars who have returned); there probably won’t be anything new hereDown the rabbit hole….