Rants and Raves

My last post on the things I love and the things I could live without was in September. Today, seven months later, I have another 7 of each.

Rants

People leaving toilet paper on the seat

I get it. You want to be hygienic, so you cover the seat with toilet paper before you sit your skin on it. I think you're being a little paranoid, but you have that right, if you insist. But are you so hygienic that you can't even pick up and flush the toilet paper that your own butt sat on, after you are done? You have to leave it for someone else to touch? Where's the hygienic in that?

Loud sudden noises 

My propensity for worming my way to the front row at concerts indicates that I don't really mind loud noises (the ringing in my ears afterwards indicates that maybe I should), but sudden noises are another matter entirely. They don't even have to be that loud, but if they are unexpected, unintended, and especially if they are inadvertently caused by myself, I just can't abide them. For example, there is something about glass plates crashing together when I'm putting away dishes that instantly trips my rage trigger.

People spitting on the sidewalk

Do I really need to expound on this one? That's just gross.

Satire "news"

This one has really only come into being since certain people started taking everything amusing they find online and posting it on Facebook. One thing that turns up there fairly regularly is some "news" story or other from an outlet like The Onion. These are completely fabricated stories that are supposed to be "funny." Except that usually they're not. And sometimes, they are right difficult to distinguish from a real story. I don't really have any legitimate reason for hating these stories, but I do. And sometimes lists of things that annoy me just have to contain things that annoy me. So there.

When my housemates cook bacon. And turkey.

Gosh, that stuff stinks up the whole house.

Syncopated traffic

You know what I mean by this? It's when you're waiting to cross a street and the cars just keep coming from your left. So many cars! Coming from your left. Finally they stop coming from the left, and you look to your right, ready to finally cross the road, and there's a new  whole line of cars coming from the right! This might be the world's worst form of teasing.

Feedback beggars on eBay

I buy and sell a lot on eBay, so I interact with all sorts of people on the site. By far the most annoying people that I've encountered are the buyers who message me shortly after I've sold them something, begging for positive feedback. I, like many sellers on eBay, think the buyer feedback system is a sham (you are not allowed to leave a buyer negative feedback), so leaving feedback after a sale is not very high on my priority list. Nonetheless, I do do it. Eventually. Maybe a month or two later, depending on how motivated I am. I just don't understand why so many buyers are so anxious to get their feedback right now! Patience is a virtue, and begging is not.

Raves

The smell of wet dirt 

I used to love thunderstorms. Living in a neighborhood where limbs fall on houses and the power goes out every time there's a gust of wind has kind of mitigated that love somewhat, but I still enjoy the rain's aftermath—the musty smell that seeps up from the soggy earth. It smells so fresh and clean! You can get this same olfactory pleasure from watering your houseplants, which makes it a very cheap thrill!

Being drunk

And now for a not-so-cheap thrill! It took me a long while to appreciate the benefits of alcohol consumption. I was a hard-core teetotaler until 2006, and was still pretty reluctant to drink the stuff for a good six years beyond that, but time and peer pressure slowly converted me. Turns out it's a lot less obnoxious being drunk than it is being sober around other people who are drunk—in fact, it's downright fun. And considering that a glass or two significantly relieves my crippling social anxiety, I don't feel bad at all that I have crossed over to the dark side...except sometimes the next day.

Exploring empty houses

When I was young, I lived in neighborhoods where new homes were being constructed left and right, and on the weekends you could waltz into any number of them in varying degrees of completion, walking through their skeletons, stomping around in the gravel beds that would one day be their basements, climbing their stairs without banisters, and standing on the second floor looking straight up into the sky. Nowadays, thanks to my (sort of stalled) search for a permanent home, I mostly find myself walking through completely constructed homes, but they are no less interesting. It's fascinating to open doors, discover all their nooks and crannies and little quirks, and imagine what it would be like to live there. Searching for homes is stressful, but touring homes never tires me.

Fitted sheets

So underappreciated are fitted sheets. People seem to get hung up on the conundrum of how to fold them (solution: roll them into a ball and stuff them in a drawer!) but can you imagine how life would be without them? Somehow trying to tuck a flat sheet under your mattress and have it actually stay there? Fitted sheets, your shape may be ungainly, but you will forever have my admiration!

Drush

The other day, I walked into my coworker's office and announced, "I hate working on a command line." Well, I take it partially back. One of my favorite tools for Web development is Drush, which allows you to do many of the management tasks for a Drupal website on a command line! At first, I was a little leery of it, but now that I actually know some commands, it makes everything so amazingly fast! I'm not much of one for graphic T-shirts, but if someone gives me a shirt that says "I heart Drush," I will wear it.

Warm weather

Well, here's a shocker for you. After numerous posts complaining about the cold, this time I'm going to flip the script and rhapsodize about the warmth. Every spring, there are a few days where the temperature suddenly rises from frigid forties to sunny sixties, and during those days, my heart is as buoyant as the pollen. As a bonus, I am one of what seems like only 3 people in the DC area who doesn't suffer from spring allergies...so there is no downside to this upshot!

The distant sound of lawnmowers

Since I love spring and summer so much, it should be no surprise to you that I get a little lift from a sound that goes hand-in-hand with them—lawnmowers! Mind you, now, I don't feel this same ebullience when walking behind a mower (I could write a whole post on how much I dislike mowing the lawn), but the sound and what it signifies are music to my soul.