Weekend Wrap Up: Missed Callings & Twitterisms

I’m getting the wrap up done early. There are things to be done! The sky is clear for the first damn time in a week (literally, it has rained—poured—every day for the past week) and I plan to do something with that, even it is to stand outside and remind myself that the sky is blue and marvel at the lake in our backyard. Also, there’s this movie to go and watch and the farmer’s market to attend and a bridal shower tomorrow. And- Oh. My. God. Mad Men.

Yeah, that’s right. I actually have weekend plans that do not revolve around laundry. Which is a miracle, since the dryer broke on Monday, and it took until Thursday for us to get it fixed. So let me start with what didn’t hit the blog this week:

The dryer decided that it didn’t want to heat up any more. While I was angry with this inanimate object, I also felt bad for the dryer, because it’s been a good sport for twelve years now. A Google search told J and I that it could be one of four things—all easy to fix—but when J decided to start messing with it and forgot to unplug the damn thing from the wall (thereby electrocuting himself when he accidentally touched the fuses) I threw a red card and said that I would pay for someone else to come out here for thirty minutes and fix it. With the plug safely on the ground.

J can fix a multitude of things around a house, but anything electrical is his kryptonite.

R—the dryer fixing guy—was a riot. In 30 minutes he fixed my dryer, made Super-Sophie fall in love with him, and made me belly-laugh no less than five times. This man had missed his calling as a stand-up comedian. Or perhaps a psychic. He walked in our door, and had all five of us (including the dog) pegged. Which was quite a feat, given that J was at work, and Ant was at school. He had a whole repertoire of dryer related jokes and puns. And my dryer (for the first time in years) actually dries a load of laundry in one turn of the timer.

Which R told me it was supposed to be doing this whole time. I guess I forgot about that after twelve years. I tried to take a picture of him, but he wasn’t too keen about being on my blog. Sorry R. You’re too awesome not to share!

What I did when I wasn’t here:

Sprocket Ink is on Spring Break hiatus, (but I’ll be posting again there next week, once again), so let me tell you about #wineparty.

I know that many of you don’t get Twitter. Some of you may have tried it, and didn’t see the point of this seemingly random conversation facilitator.  Some of you are like me; you love the randomness of the conversation, and you enjoy being the first to hear about something, and you find the challenge of 140 characters or less to be a personal call to action. #Wineparty (that’s a hashtag, a way to track convos, if you are unaware) happens every Friday night (8pm central) and is hosted by @blogdangerously (that’s a handle, or username, for you newbies) and I have met my Twitter tribe. Every Friday night that I can, I get on there, and the conversation usually ends two hours later with all of us saying something along the lines of “I love you people!”

And the actual conversations? Well, it’s like a damn cocktail party (hence the hashtag #wineparty) and the conversation flows along weird and unexpected channels. Last night’s went like this:

NO talking about Hunger Games (for people like me who haven’t seen it yet)!

Spring weather!

What happened to winter?

Oh my God, the bugs! And spiders, and prehistoric mosquito flocks

And the other vermin…

Like weasels, raccoons, possums, and chipmunks.

You shouldn’t try to hug a chipmunk.

Chipmunk hug rape is wrong; respect the woodland creatures’ personal space.

Why aren’t the spam bots picking up on this yet?

Hooray! We’ve confused the promoted ad people and the sexy time spam bots and saved the Twitter!

It looks a bit like this:

Those "creepy little bastards?" Was a mention of the spider who shared our bed.

 Twitter fun makes me realize that all Facebook does these days is give me the chance to play Words With Friends and comment on my friends’ cute babies. Twitter is where the talking goes on.

Other awesome things on the interwebs:

Alex from Late Enough brought this letter to our attention. It’s the most awesome kid letter ever.

This list of the top ten reasons the Walking Dead should kill off Carl made me snort coffee out of my nose. At work.

Mama Pop writer Molly made us realize that Mad Men characters have some badass* parenting skills that we should all start using.

*This is called sarcasm.

And what was I nattering on about this week last year?

Ant debuted as a featured writer on this blog with his post on Plants Vs. Zombies.

Before I wish you a wonderful weekend (damn it, I just did) I want to ask you to comment about your first Twitter experience, if you have one-- for the newbies. What did you first think about the Twitter, fellow Tweeters, and what do you think of it now?