Like many other journallers, September crept up on me. I meant to have my redesign ready for September. Oops! The Real World summary and the supergush site have taken precedence. Maybe it'll happen later this month. It's practically September 2 as I write this, but I figured I'd put something up before I go to bed, if only to force me to do the new September index page, etc.

I learned today that I am not cut out to be a housewife. I started out the day with the best of intentions. I was going to do laundry, clean up a bit, and have a hot dinner waiting for Jim when he got home. As soon as I got up, I started the laundry, so that went well.

I think I forgot to mention that our landlord sold our house. So we have a new landlord, and he moved in upstairs along with his wife and kid. They seem pretty cool so far. One good thing about having a live-in landlord is that he is a bit more dedicated to keeping the place up. Already they cleaned up the basement, which was a mess. My old neighbors (in addition to doing laundry constantly) would throw the lint from the lint trap and used dryer sheets on the ground and leave their empty detergent bottles all over the place. I even went down one day and picked most of the crap up, and left a garbage bag down there as a hint. No such luck. But the new landlord cleaned some of the miscellaneous crap out of the basement, such as an old fishtank and some broken chairs. He's also ripped out the carpet from their stairway. So I'm hoping the home improvements continue. I think they did something to the plumbing as well as our water pressure seems better.

Anyway, I started some laundry in our newly cleaned basement and then started doing the Real World summary. Between watching the tape, taking notes and typing that up, that takes about 4 hours. Somewhere in there, I also called Syracuse University's payroll office. It seems that someone forgot that I'm not GA'ing this semester, and paid me anyway. Tempting though it was to keep the money, I knew somebody would figure it out eventually and want it back, and I would've already spent it.

Did I mention I didn't get up until noon? So I continued to do laundry, but suddenly it was time to start dinner. I had decided on spaghetti and meatballs, and I'd asked Jim to pick up some bread so we could have garlic bread. Then my mom called, to let me know they were going to swing by (they're on a golfing vacation) and drop off a shirt I left at their house. So I was making meatballs, trying to do dishes and keeping an eye out for my parents. I got most of the meatballs made and cooked, and put them in some sauce to simmer when my parents showed up. I ended up talking to them for a few minutes, then remembered I still had meatballs frying. I got all the meatballs in the sauce and started the water boiling for spaghetti. Then I got out our new electric knife (a hand me down from Jim's mom) to slice the bread for garlic bread. I asked Jim to come in and put the spaghetti in the boiling water, and keep stirring the sauce so it didn't stick to the bottom.

I got the bread all sliced and buttered and garlicked, and went to put it in the broiler. Then I helped Jim check on the spaghetti, but we had put too much pasta in too little water and it was sticking to the bottom. I added more water and tried to scrape off the burnt bits, and turned the heat off under the sauce so I had one less thing to worry about. As I was reassuring Jim that the pasta problem was not his fault (I had told him to put the whole package in, and I know better), I smelled bread - oh shit, the garlic bread. As you can imagine, at this point it was garlic charcoal. Damn those broilers! I threw that out and prepared a fresh batch, while finding the colander for Jim to strain the pasta.

Finally I had semi-edible garlic bread, pasta and sauce all ready (with no small amount of help from Jim). We ate (it was pretty good, I think) and I put the leftovers in the fridge. Then I still had more laundry to work on. And I still hadn't done a journal entry. Plus I still have to make Jim's lunch, set up the coffeemaker for tomorrow, give Grendel her medicine, possibly take a shower, answer a bunch of e-mails, do the dishes from dinner (including the yucky pot that had the sauce in it) and I never did vacuum or anything.

Have I mentioned lately how much I admire my mom? She did all this stuff, plus had 2 kids around (and she babysat my cousins at various times as well), and she had a homecooked meal on the table at 5:00 every single night. I am such a failure as a house wife. I hope when I graduate I get a high paying job and then Jim can stay home with any potential kids, because I just don't have what it takes. Thank God for Pepsi One. It keeps me going.

Warning: clicking on these links will launch a new browser window.

I don't know why I got such a kick out of this, but Bell Labs and Lucent have a process where you can type in text, choose a voice, and hear it spoken. I had fun making it say "It's like buttah" in the raspy voice.

If you're having a baby (and no, unlike Diane, I have no big announcement to make), this calendar looks pretty cool.

How dare this guy dis Janis Joplin? I note that he talks about how she never lived up to her promise, and yet he doesn't give examples of songs that exemplify that opinion.

Just for Jim: Rolling Stone has an interview with Ian Anderson.

Oh no! I just heard the F bomb on this CD! Quick, pull all the copies from the shelves before my kid hears it! Don't these people have more important things to worry about?

I really hope George Clooney comes back to do some episodes of ER at some point. When he was on the show, I wasn't crazy about him, but after he left, I felt his absence.

I like the idea of putting censored movie scenes online. Maybe if enough people go see them, they'll stop forcing the movie makers to make stupid cuts in the first place.

On the same page as above, ABC has been forced to pull their Gap spoof ads for Good Morning America (basically it was the "Mellow Yellow" ad, except they were singing "Downtown"). In one night I saw that AND a Blair Witch parody on ABC. Maybe they just need to get some original ideas.

Kevin Spacey denies that he's gay. The funniest part of this story is the picture they chose to put alongside.