Barb’s Burblings

Move–complete! Well, sort of. My furniture and Internet connection are all set up at the new place. However, I’m missing most of my dishes and all of my food. But as long as I have the DVR and the cats, I’m all good.

I just checked my horoscope, and this is what it said:

You need to make a radical change in some aspect of your life — probably related to your home. It could be time to buy or sell or just to move on to some more promising location.

Freaky!

(Sorry I’m somewhat incoherent. I’m pretty beat.)

So I’m moving on Saturday. I’ve made a fair amount of progress. My closets are basically empty, and I’ve brought over a bunch of kitchen stuff. But books, DVDs, other random crap? Still around. Walking into my apartment now, you wouldn’t know I was getting ready to move if you didn’t see the [empty] boxes everywhere. Tonight I get home from work with a whole list of things to get done. Naturally, this leads to me sitting on the couch until 7:30. (In fairness, I didn’t get home from work until 5:30.) At which point I force myself up and out, but still not doing all I wanted to.

But heck, once it hits 11 (hey, I couldn’t miss The Office or 30 Rock!), I’m all motivated. Let’s get stuff done! Woo!

OK, I’m off to box up the books in my bedroom. And maybe the desk.

OK. This right here is why I need to clean my keyboard WAY more often.

Honestly, I don’t know how all that fit in there.

There was a sweet article in the Post today about students in a 4th grade class sending nice notes to people who work at AIG. It’s really easy for people who’ve lost a lot of money to get mad at companies like AIG, but it’s gone a bit far. I mean, the teacher of the class in the story–who does a daily economics lesson in her school near Houston–wouldn’t give the name of the school because she was afraid people would be upset with her. And I don’t blame her. This whole downturn has been incredibly convoluted; I certainly have problems grasping what happened. So when people see that AIG has gotten a lot of money even after some, um, risky behavior, it’s really easy to blame them. And everyone who works there. Which just totally isn’t fair. For one thing, a lot of people who work there now had nothing to do with the problems before. And it’s not like everyone who worked there was doing something wrong. Seriously, this was just incredibly sweet. I mean, really:

The children adorned their messages with peace symbols and smiley faces, rainbows and vivid red hearts. “Hi AIG. Not all of USA hates you,” wrote one student. “We know you’re not villains,” wrote another. “Keep working hard, dudes! Keep eating your vegatabos!” advised a third.

Happy 266th birthday, Tom!

Becca said that they had cake at UVA in honor of the occasion. How cool is that?

I went to my second O’s game of the season tonight (Hangout Night at the Yard; fantastic times)–I also went Monday. You really can’t beat Opening Day. The whole thing was just a great time, particularly when it seems like the O’s shouldn’t have a chance…and then they blow out the Yankees. Talk about your reverse lock. And it’s always nice to see my boy doing so well. (He’s only hitting .429? Send him down! Why did we extend this bum?!) (Hmm, they need to update his bio, seeing how he’s no longer single.) (But at least his picture is better this year than in the past.)

In other exciting Orioles news, they now have a daiquiri vendor. It’s as though the O’ brass were like, “How can we make the ballpark experience more appealing for Barb? I know! Daiquiris!” Sadly, he didn’t quite make it to my section on Monday, but I am very excited about this development. I didn’t see him at all tonight, but that’s fine; it was chilly enough that we were trying to track down the hot chocolate vendor.

And naturally we’re all excited about Matt Wieters coming up…whenever that’ll be. I definitely recommend taking a gander at the comments here (”There are no sports curses, only teams that Matt Wieters doesn’t like.”).

Of course, it’s easy to get excited about the Orioles in April, when they traditionally do very well. Talk to me again in August…

Yes, my friends, it’s that most wonderful day of the year…the first day of baseball season. I’m heading out of work early and will be planted firmly in my seat at 4:05. Woo!

Which gives me the opportunity to link to one of my favorite commercials.

There was an interesting article in the Post Magazine today about Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris. If you somehow missed who these people are (and how could that be?), they’re the couple who attended Our American Cousin with Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln the night the President was shot. Major Rathbone tried to stop Booth from getting away and was stabbed for his efforts; the blood on Miss Harris’s dress that kept upsetting Mrs. Lincoln that night was most likely that of Rathbone–Harris’s fiance. Anyway, Harris and Rathbone got married, and, years later, Rathbone wound up killing Harris, then stabbing himself. (He survived.)

It’s amazing how far reaching one act can be–and beyond the obvious. The Lincoln assassination was a tragedy for the country; our history would be so incredibly different if Lincoln had seen out his second term. But you see its influence in this story. These two people, who are so associated with that event…it’s entirely possible that Rathbone’s insanity was helped along by the assassination. I doubt it was all PTSD; his medical history seems to indicate that he had problems before April 14, 1865. But the combination of shooting and stabbing that he used to kill her…it was too reminiscent of Booth going into that theater box with a gun and a knife.

Moving’s a pain in the butt, but there’s something really nice about seeing a new place and imagining how awesome it’s going to be. I think it’s the belief that the new place will be everything the current place isn’t. It’s going to be perfectly organized! It’s going to be nicely decorated! It’s going to look like a grown-up lives there! It’s all about potential, I think. You drive around the new neighborhood and see the shops and restaurants and picture yourself strolling around and sitting at cafes and so on. A year later, and you haven’t tried the pizza place 2 blocks away.

But I’m still in the delusional phase, so it’s all good. Except the packing part.