Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Putting the TMI in absentminded

Month: December 2021

  • Covid Antibody Treatment for the Immune-suppressed

    I am dismayed that I keep hearing Breaking Vaccine News for the Immunosuppressed from the Late Show. (Evocative of Garrett Morris and News for the Hard of Hearing from early SNL.) If you didn’t hear, they will be giving a year’s mega-dose of monoclonal antibodies to those of us who are essentially immune to the…

  • Snow Queen

    Years ago our department re-framed the Christmas Party into a “Festivus” party. Now that we have merged with the HR department, we attend a “Winter Celebration” party. I was excited about the Winter Celebration, because the invitation encouraged us to wear winter-themed costumes. I planned on donning my tiara, my rhinestones, a white boa, and…

  • Weekly Paint Progress: 12/9

    This week the Ball pitcher went from this: … to this: Oops. Should have taken off the scotch tape that’s in there to give a straight line for the upper wallpaper. Also, I think the glass vase needs a white line on the right. I don’t know why. I can’t see it in the original…

  • Language Uptick

    It seems like everyone in my Facebook feed is learning Spanish or Portuguese or some language. DuoLingo is this year’s sourdough. I am really enjoying learning Russian. It reminds me of Latin: they strip out all the useless articles and “helper” words. “The taxi is there?” Not four words, but two. “такси tam.” In high…

  • The Root Canal: Second new thing of the day

    Yesterday I did two entirely new things: I made a fruitcake. I got a root canal, which, like the fruitcake, was better than I expected, given what it was. I asked for and got a view of myself in the dental dam. It looked a lot like this. I have become tooth. I didn’t get…

  • Christmas Ornaments

    On the right is my ornament, the Hot Wheels car to commemorate the purchase of the new car. On the left is Gary’s ornament, to commemorate … well, to commemorate a side effect of the pain medicine he took for his recent root canal and tooth extraction. I got to see a new … side…

  • Zoom Protest: A New Form of Business Communication

    There’s a new thing going on at some Zoom meetings at work. Let’s say the leader of a Zoom call drops some bad news. The team in the call behaves with utter professionalism, no one breaks stride, but one by one their zoom backgrounds turn to: A Kermit-sipping-tea meme with an annotation referencing the bad…

  • This Post Brought to You by the Letters Bird-Legs and P-Duel

    I’ve been using DuoLingo to learn Russian (as you do). They do a really good job switching up the challenges so you are asked to interpret what you see, what you read, and what you hear. What You See: New nouns are introduced with an image of the noun, which feels like cheating. I try…

  • Weekly Paint Progress: 12/2

    This week the Ball pitcher went from this: … to this: Why is that pitcher so damn hard to paint?

  • In Which We Mock the Terrifying Power of the US Military

    I was watching Fail Safe. I rarely catch the start of this movie, so it was nice to see it on DVD. The ban on commentaries continues, so I had to go to IMDB, where I saw this trivia: The US also declared DEFCON 2 at the start of the Gulf War in 1991. The…