Duchess Jane

My Identities, Including but Not Limited to Peth Bananahamm

nospam@example.com (Jane) — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 20:48:03 -0700

When I first purchased Louise, my pre-Android-lifestyle Blackberry, I briefly entertained the idea of changing my phone number to something that would spell a word. Choosing my phone number was not an option online - I could only choose the prefix. I decided that whatever my phone number ended up being, I'd call and customize it after the phone arrived.

This next part of the story makes more sense if you know that my real name is Beth, not Jane. (Don't worry, this multiple names thing only gets more confusing from this point on.)

When the Verizon package arrived and Louise was unboxed, I learned that her phone number was 555-PETH. Close enough, I said. I passed out my new phone number. I told people it was PETH, as if it was intentional, and met their puzzled looks with a blank face. It worked. I know of 3 separate instances where somebody with a fried phone or misbehaving contact list remembered the 555-PETH story and didn't lose touch with me.

I've been using my local Starbucks as a frequent satellite office since May or so, spending a lot of time here (I say here because I really am here right now) on my netbook, writing and whatnot, away from home and the distractions contained therein (lately: DOGS EVERYWHERE). Because I was spending so much time here, I whipped out an old gift card somebody gave me for Christmas of 2008, reloaded it, and registered on the Starbucks site so that I could rack up points and earn free beverages and officially welcome our new soy overlords.

I received the email announcing that I had achieved Gold Card status, and at the bottom, it showed a picture of the Gold Card with my name on it, followed by a link telling me to CLICK HERE if my name was not correct.

So of course I clicked.

That's when Starbucks came to know me as P. Consuela Bananahammock. I hoped that my name change took effect in time to get printed on the card, which would arrive in 4-6 weeks. A week later, I received a free drink card addressed to P. Consuela Bananahamm, which was bittersweet. Because even though I'd already sacrificed the Princess, my name still didn't fit Starbucks system, apparently, but the new version was kind of awesome in its own way. I resigned myself to being P. Consuela Bananahamm forever, noting that at least there were two M's. Like Jon Hamm, really. Mrs. P. Consuela Banana Hamm.

Well. The Gold Card arrived.

Apparently the punctuation in the first name REALLY messed up the Starbucks arbitrary name-shortener system. WAY TO JUDGE MY NAME, STARBUCKS.

I showed it to Dano, who knew how much I was looking forward to baristas addressing me by P. Consuela Bananahammock, and he laughed and said "That's perfect!" I asked why.

"P for Peth! Won't they feel awkward about calling you Beth all this time?"

Weather Report: New Digs

nospam@example.com (Jane) — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 19:07:42 -0700

Shiny new floor in the shiny new race shop. BLC will appreciate.

Sent from my Sweet Mobile Internet Robot.

The Noun Game, Illustrated

nospam@example.com (Jane) — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 09:38:38 -0700

A year and a half ago, Dano and I went on a road trip to Ohio. It was the first extended period of time we spent together. Hours in the car, traveling to and from, hours in grandstands, restaurant booths, and walking ghost tracks and city streets. In a booth at the Steak 'N Shake in downtown Indianapolis at about 1 am, Dano held up his fork and said "Fork! Tell me a story about a fork."

His theory, after hours and hours of listening to me talk, was that I have a personal story for any noun in the English language, and that many of them involve a near-death experience. So now, occasionally, when things are quiet, he will look at me and say "Port-a-potty." And I will tell him about that time I almost died in a distant city, because of a port-a-potty.

Mr. Zero, our hero, is the proud new owner of a DSLR camera, the same body as mine but eleventeen versions newer, and therefore more jaw-dropping in its quality. We spent Saturday night in a park, walking and shooting and occasionally shouting things at each other like "~bleeping~ wind!!" and "AAAGGGH BUG!" The result is that many of our photos are similar, but the best tell a more interesting story when viewed together.

(Dano photo)

(mine)

(Dano photo)

(mine)

Take No Prisoners: September 2nd

nospam@example.com (Jane) — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:05:57 -0700

Today is the first day of a mini-vacation for me, a 5 day weekend. I started it off by waking up to the overpowering stench of skunk, courtesy of my roommate's dogs. Wrecks was, of course, cuddling up to the other dogs, so now he smells like skunk as well. Awesome.

Wrecks had an adventure yesterday afternoon, when he gave his security detail the slip and escaped from the walls of the compound. He was on the loose for 30-40 minutes, during which I was driving home from work in a panic and DuMom was designing his MISSING PRESHUS BABEEEE WE HAZ REWARD flyer.

But he was found. And now that he's gotten a taste of the world outside that really solid fence, he spends most of his outdoor time sitting next to the gate, staring up.

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Earl is a great name for a hurricane. That said, be safe, eastern friends.

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More soon. I promise.

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This week, years past:

2009: A big jump.

2008: 11 Hooters passport stamps in one day, Chicago by Motorcycle

2007: Awkward cohabitation moment

2006: I accepted red velvet cake as a bribe for Reader of the Month/Millennium

Letters to Country Music Artists: Luke Bryan

nospam@example.com (Jane) — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 06:48:25 -0700

Dear Luke,

Your "Rain Is A Good Thing" has been a topic of conversation many times for me this summer. First, because it's rained a lot here. Secondly, because of the central idea: rain makes corn, corn makes whiskey, whiskey makes your woman allow you to have sex with her.

Now, there's obviously much to be said about that, but my friends have focused mostly on the part about corn making whiskey. Because by and large, my friends prefer rye or malted barley.

So if you could record an alternate version of the song using other grains instead of or in addition to corn, that would be great. That would really help me tap my toe along to you getting your lady friend drunk for the purpose of sex.

Oh, wait. Shoot. I forgot something. There's apparently a third choice. Elderly diabetic urine whiskey. Don't forget those whiskey fans. Rain makes something, something makes you pee, pee makes whiskey, whiskey makes your baby feel frisky? Obviously, I'm not the songwriter here. Get to it, professional.

Thanks,

Jane

Typo Hunting

nospam@example.com (Jane) — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 12:50:04 -0700

Sent from my Sweet Mobile Internet RobotÂ®.

Take No Prisoners: August 26th

nospam@example.com (Jane) — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 09:08:21 -0700

This website seems to have become an entire summer of Weekend Updates followed by Take No Prisoners, with nothing in between. Wait no, not nothing. Just a lot of living, and some of it can't be spoken of here for awhile. I'll come back to it. I promise.

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Last night, Jim said to me "Your weekends . . ." and then just shook his head. He'd made that mistake, the one where you ask me what my plans are. Silly kids. There are 9 different plans, with 12 different possible wrenches in those plans. This weekend is more of the same. There is one plan that I'm hoping to make work, and that's the one where I get to feast with BLC and Amy.

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Despite contrary rumors you may have read on Twitter, I did not cause any of Jack Roush's plane crashes. To the best of my knowledge, I haven't caused ANY plane crashes. Yet.

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I will be in East Lansing and Ann Arbor, MI near the end of September. Frenemies in those areas, please let me know if you'd like to hook up. And I mean that in the "you bring me Blenheim's Ginger Ale and I put your picture on the internet" sort of way, not the Biblical sense.

My October is going to be wild and will involve a LOT of travel. If you are in the Indianapolis IN, Grand Rapids MI, or Duluth MN areas and want to meet up, please let me know and I'll give you more details about the dates and reasons that I'll be in/near your fine cities.

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I can't stop watching this. I've tried. It just keeps playing and playing and playing.

I ganked that from somebody's Facebook wall. I'd give credit but I think it was posted to every one of my classmates' walls at some point in the last week.

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This week, years past:

2009: I addressed some issues the internet was creating in my offline life. A year later, I'm happy to report that I've solved those problems, with a combination of expecting better of people (giving more and getting more back, because that's how love works in the Church of Wags), Clowns In My Coffee and blissful ignorance. I've never been more surrounded by love and peace.

2008: Hope. It got audacious there for awhile.

2007: I cleared out some bookmarks and waxed poetic about Super Dave.

2006: I became the Rockefeller of pessimism and found a sock monkey dress.

2005: Installed some software and officially converted this space to a blog, after years of posting one essay at a time, old school HTML style, and taking it down when the next one went up. SinginInTheRain contributed some Accidental Haiku via email.

Xtreme Race Blogging

nospam@example.com (Jane) — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 12:39:16 -0700

Last night, Dad and David took the pavement winged sprint car out for the first time in a couple of years. It was a TV Race for the Must See Racing Xtreme Sprint Series, so if you're a Comcast Sports Net viewer, you may see it cross your screen at 4 am sometime in the near future.

Dano and I thought we arrived late, but because the ambulance wasn't on site yet, the practice session that was supposed to begin at 3 didn't get started until 5 pm. Our first two hours looked like this, queued up with nowhere to go:

The ambulance arrived and practice was under way.

One thing I love about the Hoosier Outlaw Sprint Series is that their initials are HOSS and I'm a fan of them on Facebook, so once every couple of weeks, I get an email that says, "Jane, you have a new message from HOSS."

How many of YOU get regular communication from Hoss, huh?

It became obvious very quickly that David's prediction of a sub-10 second lap on the quarter mile track would be coming true, and it did. During qualifying, three cars got under the 10 second lap officially, one unofficially (Jason Cox bobbled on his 2nd lap and ran a 3rd unofficial lap that was under 10 seconds, but didn't count for anything but pride).

I hereby declare that I will no longer be referring to a racer's "game face" or "race face". It is now officially known as the Ray Face. The kid means business, yo. He may put his pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us, but once his pants are on, he wins races.

Here is proof that Dano is some sort of ethereal extraterrestrial entity. Or his head, burdened by being known only for that hair, has decided to emit light to attract attention.

One of the other divisions on the card was the mini cup cars, which are tiny tiny little NASCAR looking things where the driver crawls in a hatch on the roof. They are tiny. And walking around them always makes me feel like I'm totally high and have turned into a giant. They also make the track look like a real superspeedway (a name that I reserve for 2+ mile tracks but Slinger uses to describe its 1/4 mile).

David started 12th in the A main and finished 7th after 60 quick quick laps.

Wags came up for the race and quickly joined the cult of people wearing this exact same shirt.

My real camera battery died and the last half of my night was taken with LLoyd the Droid. Not obvious at all, huh?

One picture that I didn't get but wish I had is with reader/commenter Scott, who was there to announce the night, and gave me a couple of shout-outs on the PA, which cracked me up like crazy (and made the people sitting next to us in the stands give me the wary "who is THAT" stare).

Had a great time and can't wait to knock some more dust off of that sprint car wing!

Take No Prisoners: August 19th

nospam@example.com (Jane) — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 09:05:20 -0700

Next best thing to making it to the NYT bestseller's list myself? Oh, probably THIS:

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It is a week of highs and lows for us. I spent Tuesday afternoon at the doctor's office again and I'm pretty bummed about my brain right now. It's there, don't worry. It didn't go missing. It's just not working right again, but I'm working on it.

Wrecks is also bummed. He got to spend a week with some other dogs and now life is back to normal, but he far preferred being the little guy in the big pack. I've never seen him quite as heartbroken as last night, when he realized what was going on, and ran from room to room searching for his pals, howl-sobbing, before finally collapsing into my lap with a sigh filled with longing and confusion.

That paragraph broke your heart, didn't it? If yes, please consider donating to my Buy Wrecks a Pet Monkey fund. I'm not sure I have the energy to deal with another dog full-time, but if I had a tiny monkey and a saddle, I'm pretty sure this blog would turn a profit in no time, and then I can afford to put Wrecks in therapy.

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I was watching a movie last night that had a boat in it, and as has been happening often lately, I got hit with a long-dormant memory. This one was a series of books that I read as a tween, about a group of children abandoned by their mother who strike out to find their grandmother. The oldest is a girl who ends up restoring and building boats to support them. There is a boy with a reading issue. A stranger they trust who robs them. Eventually they find the grandmother, who is slow to warm to them. The mother dies and is cremated and the boatbuilder builds a box to hold her ashes.

No matter what I google, I can't come up with a title or author. It's killing me.

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Late last night, I got an email from Google that I've been granted access to the Android App Inventor beta. I will soon be building my own Android apps in their WYSIWYG environment, limited to no coding. Hello world.

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Wrecks and I will be at Slinger Super Speedway in Slinger, WI on Saturday night for the winged sprint car race there. Dad and David are taking the pavement sprint car, Dano is going to be slinging wrenches and splashing fuel (and probably dropping hints about the 9th car on Mom's 2011 Chili Bowl team, I'm guessing), and it's going to be a blast. Looking forward to catching up with Scott there and seeing what I believe is my first winged pavement sprint car race. Dad will have to correct me if I'm wrong on that.

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This week, years past:

2009: Beer started following me on Twitter

2008: Mo and I ask some hypothetical rhetorical questions

2007: Lydia came to visit!

2006: The most popular post in the history of this website - Where Have You Gone, Doug Wolfgang? - was published. It has a dead image and some dead links now and definitely needs to be updated, seeing how I still get dozens of google hits daily on that post.

Like Orion Hunting Pleiades

nospam@example.com (Jane) — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 14:45:02 -0700

I am going to apologize for the language in this post ahead of time. I wish I could tell this story without so many of the curses, but I just can't.

So a couple of weekends ago, I got a message on the online dating site OKcupid at around noon, from a guy who was offended that I had not responded to his message from 7 o'clock that morning. He told me that I'm 29 years-old, OKcupid is a place to talk to people, not a place to ignore people, and that I should start acting my age. He wrapped it up by calling me an "ugly muff-diving cunt" and telling me to change my profile from "bisexual" to "gay" because obviously I don't really want a man, seeing as how I didn't respond to him, a man.

Obviously, this was not something I took badly - I laughed, blocked him, and "ugly muff-diving cunt" became a bit of a term of endearment amongst my friends to whom I told this story. Because nothing really better exemplifies the absurdities that one can run across in dating, on the internet or not, than somebody flipping their lid over a four hour delay in responding to a message.

On Monday of this week, I stumbled across a car that fit almost every single requirement I had of a car, which is pretty hard to do. I made an appointment for a test drive on Tuesday night, and minutes before I walked out the door on Tuesday, I got an OKcupid instant message from a different guy. I told him that I didn't have time to chat as I was going to test drive my potential new car. He responded with "Oh! I'm a car salesman! Let me sell you a car."

I groaned in my head, but said, okay, see what you can come up with for X, Y, and Z models (all of the same make, the ONLY brand I was shopping for), with L, M, N, O, and P features. He responded back with, "You don't really want any of those. You need a Jetta." I responded with "Dude, if I just walked onto your lot and told you what I wanted, and you said ANYTHING pertaining to ANY other kind of car, I would turn around and walk away." He again continued to extol the virtues of the Jetta, and I finally said "Have you ever lost a car sale and a date at the same time? Big day for you."

Some of you may be familiar with my history of naming my vehicles, my trucks Butch and Gina (long i), my love of lady parts euphemisms, and my friends and coworkers who love to comment on the stereotypes associated with a girl who drives a full size truck. Well, I tell all of these fun stories as a means of introducing you to the new love of my life, which I purchased without the assistance or opinions of boys, and which is most definitely not a Jetta.

I present Muffy:

Muffy, the only car on the planet more stereotyped than my trucks.

Muffy is a Subaru Forester 2.5XT, so that cute little hood scoop there is signifying the presence of a turbocharger. Muffy will take me from 0 to 60 in 5.3 and will eat up a quarter mile in 13.8 seconds. At high speeds and sharp accelerations, her engine sings a sweet little melody to me, and the AWD cornering is a new and truly beautiful experience. There are other wonderful traits in her corner, her leather interior, premium sound, massive amounts of space, and ridiculously low odometer. But every time I start thinking about those things, the light turns green, and I remember what the XT stands for all over again.

And no, she didn't come with a pride sticker. I'll have to buy that myself.

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A note on the title of this post. Pleiades is the constellation in the Subaru logo. Pleiades were the "Seven Sisters" of Greek mythology. From Wikipedia: "After Atlas was forced to carry the heavens on his shoulders, Orion began to pursue all of the Pleiades, and Zeus transformed them first into doves, and then into stars to comfort their father. The constellation of Orion is said to still pursue them across the night sky."

Take No Prisoners: August 12th

nospam@example.com (Jane) — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 14:37:11 -0700

Happy Thursday! This will be a short one, as I'm trying to assemble a longer piece about the biggest event of my week. I'll give you a hint. Her name is Muffy.

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Other excitement in my week: Rosanne Cash's memoir was released on Tuesday. Squeee!

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It has been a busy month in HVACland, as you can probably imagine. Long days of talking to really hot customers. So nice to be busy though!

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Cat Safety Propaganda. Watch it.

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This week, years past:

2009: I dreamt about my hair getting cut off in my sleep

2008: I lost my grandfather.

2007: A conversation with Wrecks

2006: I tried to teach Wrecks to balance a biscuit on his head

Under the Sea

nospam@example.com (Jane) — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 13:14:17 -0700

It wasn't until I finished writing this post that I realized that almost every paragraph has a reference to some sort of aquatic life - crab, lobster, whales, shrimp, tuna, and Swedish Fish. I think that's the Universe telling Meaddows that it's her turn to visit me.

It turns out that getting callously stood up on a Friday night can be the beginning of a truly great weekend. Weird, huh? Life handed me lemons and I chose to make lemon margaritas. Screw lemonade.

Instead of the date that I'd had planned for a week, I got a chance to catch up with my brother, Wags, and his girlfriend, Pipes, at the Olympic Tavern over cherry lambic and some really great crab ravioli. I took a few photos and will update this post later with them. Because I'm disorganized. Wags and Pipes were loading up their cars with stuff to move into their new place in Roscoe Village, which is exciting as heck and I only hate them a little for it.

After dinner, I headed home and stopped for coffee, where I was met by Jim and my new pal, Starbucks Guy. Starbucks Guy will be providing a lot of blog fodder in the coming months, I predict. Jim and I closed down the Starbucks, because we're rock stars like that. And because it closes at 10pm, and even in my advanced age, I can stay up that late.

Saturday morning and afternoon were remarkably low key, mostly spent sleeping. On Saturday night, Dano and I somehow managed to convince Colleen to party with us again, lord knows why she'd do something that stupid twice. We spent some time at a bar talking about lobster bisque of all things and then headed over to UltraPal's house for beers, boating, and surreal cosplay conversation where I was told that I'd make a good Meatwad. I think I'm going to test Colleen's limits, because she seems to tolerate anything in order to hang out with me even though she tolerates absolutely nothing from her other friends. Next time I'm taking her coon hunting. I mean, look at her.

While I'd like to report that I slept late on Sunday as well, a Freelance Whales pre-Lollapalooza 10:30am appearance at the Hard Rock Cafe in Chicago was more important to me than sleep, so I was on a 9 am train downtown with Dano. We hailed a cab and arrived after they'd started playing but saw way more of the show than we expected to see, and it was so worth it.

We heard a new amazing song and got rained on and for some reason, I have an urge to buy Ray Bans now. Inexplicable. Ray Ban sunglasses. Buy some. Ray Ban.

In a shocking twist of events, I desired a hot tasty coffee type beverage after the show, so we slopped our slopping wet slopness into the nearest Starbucks to regroup. Then it was onto the L for a quick trip north for food. We happened across a sushi restaurant, where we had tuna and shrimp but I fell in love with and eventually married some sweet potato maki. We lived happily ever after.

After lunch, I rolled my Meatwad-esque self towards a movie theater, where we saw The Wildest Dream, a documentary about George Mallory and Conrad Anker. Natasha Richardson was the voice of Mallory's widow, Ruth, which was obviously unexpected but reminded me just how much I loved her voice and miss her.

Oh! I almost forgot the most important part! It was the theater that stocks Swedish Fish in the ASSORTED flavor. I mean, really. Can my life get any better than this?

Take No Prisoners: August 5th

nospam@example.com (Jane) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 09:41:32 -0700

Hey friends, happy Thursday. A groggy one for me. I was at the late Tributosaurus show at Martyr's last night, where they became Johnny Cash. For those keeping track at home, I was deliriously happy from 10pm to 1am, crawling towards bed at around 2:15 am, and cursing my alarm clock at 5:15am.

So worth it, though. I was absolutely blown away by the performances, how each singer took on their own little corner of Johnny. What an amazing group of musicians - the guitar work on "Girl from the North Country" made me want to weep. And of course, "Hurt". I mean, it's gutsy enough to play Johnny Cash. But Johnny's version of "Hurt". Impressive.

Tributosaurus is taking on the Moody Blues next month. Anybody in?

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Before Martyr's, Dano and I hit a Lou Malnati's for some deeeeeep dish pizza, sausage and garlic. Chicago-style pizza is growing on me, I have to admit it. Never thought I'd see the day.

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In other music news, I'm itching to see Nitty Gritty Dirt Band live. A few county fair type things in Wisconsin as options, as well as the Old Town School of Folk appearance on 8/21. Again, I ask, anybody in?

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Rosanne Cash's Composed was reviewed in the Trib today. Okay, now, Rosanne. Come visit us on the book tour. I'll still come to Ann Arbor too, I promise.

Speaking of Rosanne . . . she thinks I'm cute. In her own words! Right there on the great big public internet! BFFs, people. WE ARE PRACTICALLY BFFs.

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This week, years past:

2009: Watched Melky Cabrera hit for the cycle

2008: Had a party to celebrate cake and fire. Served cake. Had a fire.

2007: The Greatest Country Western Song DuJane Manatee Joke Photo

2006: Dead Kennedy sex toys (comments always get off track pretty fast in anything from 2006)

MMScandalous

nospam@example.com (Jane) — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 14:57:00 -0700

V4M: In light of today's Brett Favre news I'm going to assume women are all routinely on the receiving end of cell phone dong pictures from celebrities. So which celebrity has been sending these to you?

Jane: No comment.

V4M: I guess my assumption is more correct than I ever figured. Given Favre's age, naked cell phone pictures are the new Facebook. Once an activity for the young, now everyone's doing it.

Jane: Gah! Again! No comment.

V4M: I'm so behind the times.

Jane: I'm not giving you my phone number to help you catch up.

V4M: Oh well, the camera on my 4+ year old phone is crappy anyway.

Jane: In my experience, the blurry camera might help. Also, strange angles. And strategically placed objects to establish a false sense of scale. I mean . . . no comment.

Reboot

nospam@example.com (Jane) — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 13:11:47 -0700

So yesterday I needed to reboot my brain, do a little defragging on the stress hard drive, and where do I usually do that?

Hell yes.

The last time I was in the Great Hall at Union was in January, on my way to Michigan, BLC, Amy, Janet, Marc, and Rosanne. Yesterday, it was frighteningly silent. It took me a minute to realize why. I was wearing my VFFs and there was no thunderous clacking of my cowboy boot heels. I liked it better loud.

Yesterday was about Louis and Richard. I started the day with a few hours at the Art Institute, and then did some walking. Had some moments.

I'm growing concerned, however. Richard spent his life chasing the legacy of Louis. I have spent a lot of time in the last few months chasing the legacy of Richard. This is quickly turning into an architecture fanboy infinity room. I mean, what if somebody starts following me around while I'm chasing Richard chasing Louis?

Oh, crap.

But that is a damn fine Android phone you have there, sir.

That, my friends, is the tethered balloon that led to my plunge from the sky.

I found my boat. It's not pictured. It was quite a ways out. It had a helicopter pad. So I'm looking for a helicopter pilot. I mean, that's the weak link in this plan, right, finding a helicopter pilot?

Ooops. My bad. Send me the bill.

What can I say? Shit happens when you have a hot car like mine.

Take that, you hippie preservationists.

I'll show you Magnificent Miles here in a second, boy.

Dear Jesus. Thanks for Sunday, August 1st. Enjoyed it. Also, I totes didn't see you there because I always walk down the other side of Madison and holy heck, I briefly became one of those people who doesn't look up! I promise not to do that anymore, especially if you put Chicago back together before I return again. Kthx. -Janey.