Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Putting the TMI in absentminded

Month: February 2021

  • Okay This Makes Two New Buzzwords

    I was in a department meeting when a visiting speaker said, “I mean, that’s what’s you expect. It’s table steaks.” Then she went on, but I was still hung up in this new phrase. Table steaks? Like … table wine? Kind of a lower-grade steak you get a restaurant, not a fine steak/wine, but a…

  • Rewriting the Novel: Writing a Treatment

    A friend who writes knows I am working on the novel, and offered a peer critique, so I am first presenting her with a … a précis? A summary? It would be a treatment if it were fifty pages long, but it is only five. And wow, if you want to highlight how puerile your…

  • Oregon Trail

    Okay, there’s a new buzzword at work. Or buzz phrase. Or buzz cultural reference. It’s the Oregon Trail computer game. It was designed in the seventies, but it didn’t become a popular technique for teaching the perils of the Oregon Trail until the Apple 2e version came out, just a few years after I graduated…

  • Continuing on With the Skip Principle

    Skipping Thanksgiving and Christmas was vital for getting through the holidays. Evidently it worked so well that we are also skipping the observation of the Feast of Saint Valentine. It’s interesting to me how Gary’s expression of love have changed so much of late. Gone are the days of 21 gifts for my 21st birthday.…

  • Been a Year, Was Bound to Happen Sometime

    Last night it was 3:30 am and I hadn’t been able to sleep yet, so I just decided to get my work laptop and start working. I worked until oh, 11:30, when I needed to have an urgent video conference with my coworker Benjamin. Frankly I am astonished this hasn’t happened before today. Here I…

  • Basement Life Hack or Bad Idea?

    It’s been hard painting in the basement now that the weather is below twenty degrees. I’ve got a space heater (it’s okay, it’s not a fire-setting space heater) and it just isn’t doing the job (probably because it’s not a fire-setting space heater). Back upstairs, I got in to bed the other night and plugged…

  • Weekly Paint Progress: 2/11

    This week the peonies went from this: … to this, which I hate. No more peonies ever after I lighten things up on the left. And maybe knock down the intensity. It looks like a couch. I like the top right corner and that is it. Also, as I was painting, my big easel decided…

  • Human Petri Dish

    From NPR, February 5th: An immune suppressed man in Boston caught Covid and didn’t get over it. He couldn’t, because the virus kept mutating inside his body. They sequenced the genomes while the poor man took five months to die, and they found twenty different mutations. Now that the global mutations are in the news,…

  • Extra Bonus Impeachment

    President Trump is being tried in the Senate today. Of, course, he won’t be convicted. For every seditious thing he said, he said the opposite, because that’s what he does. And his lawyers will be justified in saying the entire Senate should recuse themselves because they are biased, having been in fear for their lives…

  • That’s All They Needed to Say

    I swear, last week I was watching the debate over Marjorie Scott Greene staying in her special House committees, and I keep hoping just one Congressperson would throw the prepared notes in the air and shout: JEWISH? SPACE? LASERS? … and stomp off. Why was there a debate? Why wasn’t she evicted entirely, immediately? If…