beta

The first time I can remember hearing the word "beta" was at a slumber party. I was in fifth or sixth grade and we wanted to watch a movie that someone had brought to the party. The birthday girl had a sad face and said that we couldn't watch the movie because her machine was in beta. Whatever that meant; to me it meant we couldn't watch the movie. Beta must be bad.

Around this same time we went to Memphis for Thanksgiving with my aunt's family. She had a son a couple of years older than me (although at the time that seemed like an eternity). He had two or three beta, and each of them was inside a little bowl. I remember asking why they were separated. They were beta, I was told, and they would eat each other if they were together. Weird. Beta must be carnivorous.

And then there were high school algebra and trig classes where we used alpha and beta and sines and cosines. I hated math classes. Beta must be complicated.

Tra-la-tra-la...

Time passed. The Hater and I became a thing. He was sucked into the beta fish-and-plant gift combo. Fluffy the beta ate the roots to the plant that sat on top of my book shelf. I liked holding mirrors up to the fish bowl and shining a light so that Fluffy would strut her stuff and get mad. That fish lived for about a year and a half without me changing the water. Beta must like muck.

I joined a Greek theater fraternity and had to learn the Greek alphabet for pledging. I could say the whole thing in about nine seconds. (Thank goodness for rote memory.) The powers who decided that clowning was enough to be considered "theatrical" also were so impressed that they made me say the alphabet again so that they could time me. Epsilon always threw me off. Beta must be simple.

Learning the Greek alphabet threw me off when it came to my summer of ROTC. It was bravo, not beta, which you have to admit has a better audible ring. (Although the Drill Sergeants were less than impressed and more than willing to assign push-ups when you called bravo the wrong name. I know this from personal experience.) They divided us into groups for several things. The Alphas were always the best groups and the Echoes were the worst groups. I stood proudly in the echo group for most things, except for shooting an M-16. I was the best female shot in my platoon, which made that the ONLY alpha group to which I could belong (with the exception of the book-learning stuff because I'm a natural nerd). I averaged delta and echo, and I was okay with that; I was there to endure, not excel. Bravo, much less beta, would have been an over-shot.

There may or may not be more beta memories lost in my brain. The point is that I don't have a great association in my head for beta... and now the blog is exactly that. This is my first beta post, and I'm not entirely sure what that means. But here it is. Ta-da: betafied.

I hope that everybody can still access and read it. Else beta will forever be known as FUBAR.

holding my breath

I interviewed for another job Monday night. It's with my current company. There were four applicants, so I'm excited for pretty good odds...

I have no idea if I'll get it or not. No clue. I'm more than qualified for the position, but I can't fake seniority or years with the company. So we're just waiting for now. I'm afraid they're halfway looking for a puppet, and I'm afraid they know my strings aren't easy to tug.

We'll just have to wait and see, but until we find out, let's all hold our breath.

the deal-breaker

I had a crazy dream last night. Surreal crazy.

I dreamed that The Hater was trying to convince me that he should let these people cut him up and put him in a stew. And while they were doing just that I was trying to decide if I could confide this drama to a family of trapeze artists.

This morning I woke up and told The Hater he didn't have my permission to let someone cut him up for a stew. I told him that I didn't think reincarnation worked that way. He assured me he didn't want to be stew meat.

I made it clear that if he ever thought that being cut up alive for a stew was a good idea, that would be a marriage deal-breaker. We decided that was fair; it's healthy for our marriage to know exactly what is expected of each other.

tech: good or bad?

We had no electricity last night for eight hours. It cut off after The Hater came home from work and didn't come back until after midnight. The Hater was at a total loss without his technology.

We folded and stuffed Christmas cards by candlelight and went to bed early. He hooked up the splitter to his iPod and we listened to a "Coast to Coast" radio show as we tried to stay warm under several quilts.

We went out to eat for supper and killed some time walking around a few stores before realizing that we'd have to entertain ourselves by candlelight. Even in such a desparate situation I still could not talk him into playing a game of candlelit Scrabble with me -- so that box remains unopened on the toy case.

So we couldn't watch Monday night football (instead we would just hum the theme song for it). We couldn't check our email (or play blog games). We couldn't even listen to Christmas music or the radio. The Hater had some seroius technology Jonesing and almost broke out into hives for some remote control action.

We ended up finding an alarm clock we liked this past weekend after my trusty buddy of twelve years passed on to the big dump in the sky. But we couldn't set it to alarm without any electriciy. The Hater set his cell phone alarm, which did not snooze this morning.

The cat kept showing off that she could see better than we could. She attacked her strings and hid on her blanket. We lit all kinds of candles. I thought it was neat for a change. We even broke out my old ROTC green flashlight.

The Hater was less than impressed. He's more dependant on the tech than I am, although I admit that I was grossed out this morning when the wireless wasn't working on the laptop and I had to come into the other room to use the Mac to do the important email checking and blog posting.

We wouldn't have made it in the Amish flock.

a house divided

The Hater and I can't agree. There's been much banter today.

He thinks I should support the Titans under all circumstances. I think he should support the legacy of Tennessee football under the same circumstances, which means cheering for Peyton under all circumstances.

He says it's not the same. I disagree. He says we'd have to cheer for any Tennessee alumni if that was the case, which means most games would end in a "push". I disagree. Peyton's the trump card. He knows that, but he still disagrees.

But today they played each other despite our disagreement... and in the past we've cheered for both teams together, but this year The Hater is cheering for the Titans instead. He says that Peyton can take another loss and still have the best team in the NFL. I say that if the Titans win, it's not going to change this season, and Peyton needs the padding now for the ring later.

We've argued about this all weekend, but to no avail. A 60-yard field goal within the last seconds of the game secured a W for the Titans. Sorry Peyton.

We'll go back to cheering for each team individually next week. Go team go.

the bleak midwinter

Yesterday was an interesting day. Early in the morning, after being told that my work would not be open, The Hater and I decided to slide out and get some groceries before the big snow came. Slide we did, but not into anything, so that was okay.

The Hater grilled hot dogs for lunch. I made mac and cheese. This might sound boring, but really it was a big deal. We've not had hot dogs since we moved here, and mac and cheese has NEVER intentionally landed on my plate. I'm slowly trying to appreciate the world of cheese, albeit fake cheese, and although I ate some of the macaroni, it's not a culinary masterpiece I plan on making or eating again.

I've wrapped all of the Christmas presents that we'd already bought. We watched movies. I made Nana's cornbread dressing for supper.

Sometime after I sauteed the goodies for the dressing and before we decided to mull some cider for supper the stove top died. Fortunately the oven still worked. We ended up microwaving the mulled cider, which we admit was a redneck solution, but we really didn't care.

We took some of the dressing to a neighbor who lives on the other side of the complex. It was still snowing, and we found it to be between ankle-deep and shin-deep. By the time we made our way back to the apartment we had lost a scarf. The Hater told me it was too yucky in the parking lot to go to work today.

So I called my boss. She said that was fine. It's not supposed to get above freezing until 2 this afternoon. I've seen some people sliding around the apartment complex, and saw one person slide into the gate. I woke up The Hater to tell him I was feeling guilty, that maybe we could make it into work.

So far the plan remains to stay here. Even as I type I can hear people spinning wheels and scraping ice outside. They're braver than we are today.