Author Archives: bubbo

2014 Mid-Year Course Guide

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These are the courses provided by the Greater Bathroom and Hallway Community College this semester

Computer Knowing 105 Class ID: 80085 Instructor : Maddie
Schedule : Weekly – Tue Breakfast:00 AM – 12:00 PM; 8 sessions; starting 6/15/2014, ending 8 weeks later
Location : In the bathroom, by where the toilet paper is.
Learn important computer related skills like how to stand on a keyboard, the right way to spill water into a laptop and how to be okay, as well as simple basics like scrolling up or down, right click vs left click, how to tell if your computer is on and how to do ctrl-alt-del. Two sessions will make use of the parachute. Plated sandwiches and whole milk provided on request.

Tuition: $27.00 Materials Cost: $8.75


How to know stuff 30009 Class ID: F4rt84ll5 Instructor : Chester 12Pound
Schedule : Weekly – Mon 11:00 AM – Snack treat time PM; 8 sessions; starting 6/sometime/2014, ending 8/something/2014
Location : In front of the wine rack.
Do you know things? We can all agree that we should know things. Chester wants to explore all the ways you can know things and give you the guidance to start your own journey towards knowing the thing that is all of the stuff. Chester’s mantra “KNOWING IS A THING YOU SHOULD DO!!” will permeate the entire course. This class has multiple field trip sessions where you will start to know things like how to scream ‘NO NO NO’ at people at intersections, finding inside out toads, and understanding that Bick Stickerson has the stupidest dumb face and he should go cough into his own dumb face!!

Tuition: $93.00 ($21 if you hate Bick Stickerson) Materials Cost: 3 peanut butter biscuits


PANIC SHITS!! 101 Class ID: 5m3ll Instructor : Maddie
Schedule : Weekly – Thu 4:00 PM – 8:45PM; 8 sessions; starting maybe next week, ending when we start to feel good about our skills.
Location : the bedroom floor
We’ve all had times when we were left alone or the phone rang unexpectedly or the food bowl was empty and it had lots of food in it before and maybe Chester is eating all the food. Anyone can shit on the floor but it might be time to take it a step further. Maddie will share her almost encyclopedic knowledge of the art of the panic shit emphasizing nuance and artistry. Topics covered with include placement, size, how to get the maximum effect, consistency and smell. This is more than just putting poop on the floor, come prepared to work hard and learn. The final class will touch on how to hide your panic shits using laundry, papers, a lamp or any other easy to find materials as a brief introduction to next semester’s PANIC SHITS 201. Students will be responsible for making their own shits, feces will NOT be provided.

Tuition: $19 Materials Cost: $0

To spin and spin again

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I will tell you a story from my teen years. It’s a thing about which I still carry much shame. It is a thing that still happens now, and I am 40 years old.

I lived in a foster home, a pretty awesome one. Getting your own room is the holy grail of foster living. It’s arms in the air butt times! Your own room, you don’t have to share it, you won’t have a parade of short staying kids cycling in and out. There’s privacy and you can secretly experiment with make up and high heels and seeing how short you can make your skirt. Is good.

I got my room and the deal was that if I kept it clean I could keep it. Totally a good and appropriate situation. In the beginning it was perfect. I bought posters for my wall and made a little make up table, set up my little stereo and everything (and I was going through a ‘phase’, it was the public radio classical music station all the way). And then my brain caught up with me. I stopped cleaning. I didn’t know why. I was given many warnings, probably way more than I deserved.

It was totally an easy thing to do. It was a pretty small room, most of the mess was dirty clothes that could be scooped up and put in the laundry room. Dirty dishes go upstairs, the rest of it just needed some sort of attempt at a meaningful pattern.

And on the last day, the very last warning, the get-it-done-or-else day. I stood in my bedroom right there in the middle of the room and I sobbed because I just could not clean it. Think about that, think hard. I stood in the middle of my room and with fully functioning limbs and hands I could not do the task that I knew how to do and all I could do was cry. But I didn’t clean it up. I moved down the hall to a bedroom with 2 other girls (it was a big room, we weren’t crammed in there at all).

Most of you are thinking, “damn, JUST DO IT!! Just pick something up!!” You can’t even comprehend this, can you? It just makes zero sense to you. “JUST DO IT” is exactly what my mind was screaming, it was why I was crying so hard, my head was so very loud.

I know most of you just can not wrap your brains around this. I am 40 years old and this is the damage that I carry in my brain. This is one of the reasons I am always trying to find redemption. Maybe if I can apologize enough my brain will stop skidding and find some traction. And this is not up for debate. You do not get to tell me I do not have to do that. I will not discuss it. I want you to see that this is what it is like sometimes You don’t have to understand it, you just need to know it is there.

Proximity

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Sometimes I want to take my computer and turn it around and yell, ‘it’s right fucking there’ while pointing at the wireless router. RIGHT THERE!! Why can’t you connect??? I would rub them together if I thought it would help.

Of course, the reality is that while it takes some seconds to connect it’s really not that long and I need to patience my ass down and remember that it’s not necessary to reload the news and check my mail in the first few micro-seconds I have my computer open.

But, still, RIGHT THERE!

It died and then we lived again.

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I did it! I did go back to Minnesota and it was a wonderful trip. We were gone 3 weeks and many good things happened and there is much to tell. But that will come later.

Mostly, one of the reasons I hadn’t updated things and shared pictures and told you banal stories (I often use the word banal instead of inane because I worry that people will think I just misspelled insane and am being lame. You can trust that most of the time, when I use banal, I probably also mean inane) is that we had a spate of computer deaths, one after another. Our desktop pc had died in the spring. It wasn’t any sort of emergency or anything, mostly we used it for playing games. It was dead so I couldn’t play Sims 3 which is a minor emergency, but easily triaged to the waiting room.

I had 2 secondhand Mac Books that had been hobbling along, screen cables and keyboards slowly malfunctioning. One died right before the trip and the other died upon our return. The second one had a lovely and dramatic hard disk death and just as that was happening, just as I started swearing about the hard drive not being recognized I spilled coffee into the keyboard. More swearing. Lots of swearing. But it didn’t really matter. The keyboard was malfunctioning anyway, I’d had to connect a keyboard to be able to type certain letters and symbols and the hard drive was most assuredly dead before the coffee spill.

This left us with David’s little netbook (which is cute and good and small and portable). Since I could not waste my days reloading npr and tut-tutting about the news I managed to get a ton of reading and cooking and crocheting done. Five quarts of chicken stock pressure canned, 7 or 8 pints of salsa verde canned, 2 pints of pickled jalapenos, I wound my way through much of the Discworld series, I recalculated and restarted a purse pattern I made, went to the library, kept the kitchen clean, drank a lot of beer. Good stuff.

But, all unintentional productivity must come to an end and we got a new computer.

I have owned only Macs since 1995, since I started working at MCAD in 2000 I used only Macs at work with a few pc side projects. I love Macs, they are easy to use and nifty and awesome and I don’t think I will ever buy another one. I love the Macs but we got a pc.

When we sort of mapped out what we needed the new laptop to do we found that there was just no way in hell we were going to be able to justify buying a Mac with our budget. Not at all. So, do you whittle away your expectations and get a weaker computer or do you look elsewhere and find what you need? I have other issues with Apple, like the fact their products are less and less user serviceable, you can’t get into them to upgrade or make repairs. You have to bring them in and repairs are expensive as hell and there’s always the ‘you should probably just upgrade’ culture. I’m just not doing it anymore. No more Apple stuff.

Instead we got a Lenovo IdeaPad. Windows sucks, Windows 8 moreso, but I’m willing to slog through it to have a computer that is awesome enough to allow me to play Sims 3 with all the settings on high! Seriously, this damned thing has 2 graphics card-something-or-other and a butt of RAM and a terabyte hard drive and in 5 or 6 years it will be obsolete and need to be replaced but it was a 3rd of the price of a similarly powered Mac laptop. There are FOUR separate control panels relating to the mouse and track pad. Four. That is a giant waste of resources and incredibly inelegant, but I don’t care. The track pad is going to take a lot of getting used to, but I don’t care. I know all of butt about Windows and I have a hell of a time navigating and Windows 8 is truly perplexing, but I don’t care. All of these things can be learned and dealt with and I can spend my time with these guys…

The Haube Boys

A hot dog and his child stand in the rain outside the diner

Caged Wombat

Splashback Falls

Milqeshake Ford

I am a 40 year old woman and this is what I like to do in my spare time and finally, I have a reasonably priced computer that allows me to do it to the extreme!

More of my Sims 3 photos can be found on Flickr. And if you play you can download them from my studio.

Other marginally more interesting stuff will be posted soon, now that I can post again.

Adios, here we come

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We leave tomorrow morning for Minnesota. Anna is getting married to a delightful young man and I am thrilled for her. Is a wonderful thing.

We have a pretty tight schedule traveling to Minnesota, but we are ambling a bit on the way back. Going to do some camping and sightseeing and, most importantly, visiting with friends and family. And we’re swinging south to Philadelphia to meet up with Pantsters. I love the Pantsters!

So, it’s all packing and cleaning and the dogs are freaking out because suitcases mean someone is leaving and I can’t tell them that they are also leaving with us. There is much anxious cuddling.

We’re staying with my mom up on Mille Lacs and will be driving in and out of the city a few times. We’re doing pancakes at the OPH, send me a message for details. Pancakes are delicious.

His and hers