Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 4:10 PM

Next Saturday, June 21st, will be my birthday. That is the same day that Harry Potter: Book 5 will be released. Friday night at 11pm or so, I'm planning to go to Wordsworth in Harvard Square, joining in the festivities and buying the book as soon after midnight as they'll let me. And I hereby invite anybody in the Boston area to join me there.

Even if you're not planning on buying the book there; if you've got a copy already on order someplace else, if you're free you can still come and take part in the fun. We did this three years ago(!?!) for Book 4, and it was a blast. I intend to enjoy myself thoroughly, including showing up in costume. No need to RSVP unless you'd like a ride^*

FWIW, after we get our books^†, I plan to go home and read until I'm done. [Who needs sleep?] Saturday afternoon, my mother-in-law will be throwing me a small Harry Potter themed party, and I'll probably go to sleep early to compensate for this all-nighter. And then on Sunday, we're going up to Vermont for our nephew's third birthday.

Here's Wordsworth's official announcement of the event for those who are curious.

I am such a geek. 8) And I mean that in the best possible way!

^*Jadasc, if you're working in Harvard Square Friday night and want to hang out with us afterwards, we can give you a ride home.

^† We're buying two copies so Ian and I don't have to fight over it. Once we're done and no longer need two copies for simultaneous reading (later Saturday) we're donating our second book to the public library. And then, of course, the British edition should arrive sometime later in the week via mail for my second reading.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:20 PM

I've been really busy with work, so haven't had much time to post, but today is the fourth anniversary of Ian and my wedding. We're going out to dinner in a little bit, but I want to commemorate the day by publicly reposting my wedding vow to him, as a way of affirming that I still stand by everything I said back then under the chuppah:

Ian, I love you. And I want the world to know!

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:10 PM

Since I've written several times about the pair of breeding swans in the pond outside my workplace, I suppose I should update y'all on what's going on. Today, we got this email from the property management company:

To All Tenants:

It is with regret that we share with you that our swan family is at a loss this year. The six eggs which the mother swan has been patiently sitting on for 45 days, failed to hatch. The cause could be improper fertilization or the abundance of rain and moisture which has hit the region.

Two other swans in the area, who had five eggs, experienced the same result, so we are not alone.

Regretfully,
(management)

Oh well. No baby cygnets to ooh and aah over.

On the other hand, in the days since whoever was in charge removed the eggs, the female swan is finally able to swim around the pond or sit on the grass with her mate and is no longer constantly brooding on the nest. [I had't seen her off the nest since the eggs were laid; this week, I haven't seen her on the nest.] And the male seems much calmer and less aggressive.

So, maybe this was for the best.

Expect more updates, in short bursts, as time permits.

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:56 AM

I was just looking at McDonalds' nutritional information, searching for the highest calorie items on the menu. Doesn't "Butterfinger McFlurry" sound like a cartoon character?

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:00 PM

One of my coworkers, I'll call him C, is offiically my mentor, but also seems to enjoy giving me a hard time. Playing gags on me like ringing up my extension 2 minutes before quitting time to say he's got a notoriously tough customer on the line demanding to speak to me about a complex problem with one of our most difficult-to-support products. Things like that.

So, this afternoon he told me that our supervisor was going to be out of the office tomorrow, and so he, C, would be in charge. That meant that I could finally be initiated in the ritual hazing. What that meant, C explained, was that I was responsible for all incoming phone calls during the day, all email support, I should show up at 4am, I had to buy them coffee in the morning and was expected to take them out to lunch. At one point, he raised his voice and asked coworker K (in the cube between C's and mine) how she liked her coffee. She told him and asked why -- was he going out to Dunkin Donuts? No, he told her, I was buying tomorrow. At another point he asked me if I made reservations yet for tomorrow...

It went on in this vein for a while. Then, near the end of the day, he IM'd me to confirm I knew he was hoaxing, because apparently K was concerned I might be taking it seriously. I told him that I knew it was hoax.

However, I just realized that now's my chance to get even. Especially if K thinks that C's taking advantage of me, if I play my cards right I think I can get K to go off on C for going too far, while simultaneously making it clear that I'm not actually that gullible.

Here's my idea; tell me what you think. I will show up at work early tomorrow, hopefully before K & C so they won't know precisely how early. [Remember that 4am thing?] I'll put a steaming hot cup of coffee in K's cube the way she likes it, so K thinks I fell for it. Meanwhile, for C, we're right now experimenting with coffee and gelatin. In his cubicle, I'm going to leave a cup of what looks like coffee, but is actually utterly undrinkable. I'll also leave a post-it note that I've got "reservations" for lunch. [When he asks, I'll riff off the Robert Aspirin joke: "Well, I'm not wild about the neighborhood..."]

What do you guys think? I don't have too much time (gotta be at work in 11 hours to pull this off) and don't want to spend too much money on this. On the other hand, this seems like the perfect opportunity for some playful payback, so other ideas and suggestions would be most appreciated.

Postscript: Graaaagh!

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:39 AM

Administering the drugs went so easy the last three times Ian and I double-teamed her that we must've gotten complacent. This morning was a nightmare.

So, we had already filled the eyedropper-like-thing with the requisite dose of medicine. Ian grabbed the cat and wrapped her in a towel. I tried to insert the teeny-turkey-baster into her mouth, and Boopsie started foaming at the mouth! Not just drooling heavily as she had in the past, but actual honest-to-goodness foam. After two more tries, we gave up without doping her, but by then her muzzle was sopping wet.

Then, to demonstrate her displeasure/distress, she spit up three times on the floor. [Not a reaction to the medicine -- I barely got two drops in her -- more likely stress.] Then she walked over to my bag and started pawing at it in a way I didn't like. I took it away from her and she started trying to pull papers out of my nightstand. I yelled "no" and she hopped up onto the bed, started scratching at the comforter like it was her litter box and began to squat.

At that point, we threw her into the bathroom (where we keep one of her litterboxes) and locked her in there so I could get to work with a little piece of mind.

<sigh>

To answer some of the questions folks have asked (in comments and in person):

• We do scoop her up with a towel. One person (Ian) holds her body, the other (me) tries to pop open her mouth, stuff in the injecter and squirt it in. Impressively enough, she didn't scratch, but she does squirm and twist and tuck her chin into her chest to make it nearly impossible to get to her mouth.
• We did try using a syringe; the syringe we had was broader than the squeezy-eyedropper-thing and thus harder to put in her mouth.
• In the past, we've tried mixing this medicine with tuna juice and with gefilte fish broth/gel (two of Boopsie's favorite treats). She can smell or taste the meds and won't touch it.

Boopsie isn't dumb, which is a cause for both pride and problems.

[This is written partly in response to this comment to yesterday's post, although I was already thinking of blogging this on this morning's drive to work.]

PS: Public reminder to myself: No matter how compelling the book, I should not stay up until midnight reading when I have to be at work at 8:30 the following morning.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:44 PM

Okay, a couple nights ago Gollum/Andy Serkis won an MTV Movie Award. The video clip of the acceptance speech is available online. The language is foul and obscene, it's a slow download (because it's so popular), and it's incredibly, hysterically funny.

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:10 PM

It drizzled all Saturday, so we assumed the Festival of Fire would be postponed. Instead, we decided to finally see Two Towers before it left the theaters for good. I'll save my impressions of LOTR for the end of this post, since I know at least one friend (who I think may be reading this journal) who still tries to avoid spoilers for the films, and I don't want to either ruin her experience or bar her from reading the rest of this)

After the movie, we hung out with some friends who live near the theater and then headed into Harvard Square. Luck was with us, because we found parking fairly easily. Unfortunately, we got there shortly after Pandemonium closed. [I thought it was open later.] So we hung about the Square for a while, eventually ending up in WordsWorth Books. To my delight, I found three books I simply had to own. Two were new paperbacks in series I had been reading (Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire mysteries and Tanya Huff's Keeper's Chronicles). I hadn't even known that they were planning new books, so to describe them as pleasant surprises would be an understatement. My third discovery was that Dover Thrift Editions came out with the complete poems of Christopher Marlowe! I've had a cheap paperback copy of the complete plays for a while, and I had been long hoping to get the complete poems, but I didn't want to pay a lot for them. So, I've been flipping through his Ovid translations all weekend. They are so definitely the work of a college kid! At any rate, I was Squeeing about my finds the rest of the weekend.

Sunday we made another trip into Harvard Square, since the stores we were hoping to visit were closed the previous night. Again, parking luck was with us. Ian picked up some GURPS books, we grabbed a bite to eat, and then we headed over to the Japanese market in Porter Exchange to get some miso.

I don't think it's a slur to say that the Japanese culture has produced some really odd things. It's hard to top things like the Kikkoman superhero, Tissue-san and friends and CatPrin kitty costumes. But I just saw plushie stuffed-animal sushi. A quick web search reveals that they represent the Sushi Seal family.

Cuddly anthropomorphic food. How... bizarre.

In the evening, we went to Mystery house for a quick game of Munchkin, and then home again. All-in-all, a very good weekend. I had fun.

Boopsie's health:

Several people have been asking how Boopsie's doing. Well, the vet's comments from her initial checkup (before she got sick) were that her liver levels were high, but still within normal range. After she got sick, we were asked to collect a urine sample from her. We did, and they found some blood in the urine, an elevated white blood count, and some bacteria. Now, because of the collection method, the bacteria may have been environmental. The vet wanted to collect another urine sample in a more sterile method (in other words, they removed it from the cat). They did that on Friday morning, and we'll have to wait a few days for the results.

The vet also gave us a liquid medicine to administer to her twice a day. That's been fun.

First of all, who had the bright idea to prescribe banana-flavored medicine to cats?? What happened to flavors cats naturally crave, like tuna or chicken? I mean, I like bananas and even I think it smells nasty. I can imagine the appeal to a carnivore. [I know, I know, the medicine was probably designed for humans, but still...]

Secondly, Boopsie is crafty. She tucks her head down into her chest so we can't get at her mouth. She opens her mouth wide and twists her head, sending the medicine spraying. She starts drooling and spitting afterwards to try to expel it. In short, she doesn't want this drug and makes it really annoying to dose her. Fortunately, her walnut-sized brain is no match for two humans both with coconut-sized brains, opposable thumbs, and more leverage. We've finally managed to get the entire dose into her each time, but it takes both of us to do so -- Ian holding her down and me giving it to her.

She has to keep taking the meds until its finished. I think we're halfway there. And thus, twice a day I find myself plaintively singing:

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers:

• I did enjoy the movie, but about a third of the way through the movie, I also found myself wanting to check my watch and hoping it'd be over soon. I don't know what it is. I was never able to get through the books, and the movies are moderately entertaining, but just don't do much for me.
• I still can't tell Merry & Pippen apart. Every time one of their names is mentioned, I try to fix it in my head, but by the next scene I've forgotten again which one is which.
• I've definitely read too much slashy fanfiction. Those long soulful looks between Sam & Frodo. Merry & Pippin's cuddliness. Gandalf and Balrog tumbling through the air as I recalled some tale which explained their fight as a lovers' spat. Maybe if I found the movie more engaging, my mind wouldn't've wandered in these ways. The worst moment for me was [WARNING: moderately squicky material hidden behind white text on white background -- read at your own risk: when Elrond was pleading with Arwen, "Don't you love your father, too?" and my mind was screaming "I don't want to go there!"]. I don't regret reading any of it, but it did lead to some inappropriate thoughts.
  For the curious, link to the Very Secret Diaries and Cassandra Claire's LiveJournal which has some more recent entries
• I also kept coming up with instafilks. I don't know why or how I do this -- I'm not terribly musical. I guess it's an offshoot of my punster nature. Anyway, after the first movie, I realized that "Uruk-hai" would scan to "Bali Hai" -- the song from South Pacific. Ian took it upon himself to write that up.
• This time, when Treebeard started walking, I just couldn't help myself. And it seemed so obvious that I'm surprised nobody else had written it:

  "Oh when the Ents
  Go marching in
  Oh when the Ents go marching in
  Isengard is gonna crumble
  Oh when the Ents go marching in!"
  

• Just like the first movie, seeing Two Towers really clarified Nethack for me. Wargs, mumaks, lembas wafers... The game makes so much more sense now.

And, I guess that's really about all I have to write about the film and my weekend.