Indiana is a foreign place. It used to be comfortable. It used to be familiar. It used to be home. It is none of that now. It is a foreign place, full of memories, hauntings, and longings of the past.

It's also where my dad lives. And my two best childhood friends. And as much as I run from this place, I keep coming back. Part of me wants to stop anything in the town from changing, keep it the same, keep it as my childhood memory had it. As if that would be a Good Thing ®.

I'm here to visit with Jessica. She recently had surgery and I wanted to visit with her, cheer her up if I could. I met her daughter Gabby for the first time. Damn, that little girl is cute! She's cute in pictures, but incredibly adorable in person. She likes posing for the camera, is a total girly girl, has lots of pink and purple clothing and the high squeaky voice of young girls. She's 5 and I can't believe this waif of a thing will be in kindergarden this year.

Jessica is doing well. She's still in pain from the surgery. Having never actually had surgery, I can only imagine how the loss of mobility can hamper one's disposition. Jess was definitely in good spirits, though, which is way more than I would be if the situation was reversed.

Jessica's husband David came home with Gabby while I was there. After Gabby and I played with the eyeToy (must get one of these, it's hysterical), and she wandered off, David, Jess and I took a trip down memory lane. And it was quite the entertaining road.

We talked about

Mr. Neitart and Jane Carter, the junior high school teacher caught having an affair with a 9th grader, Jane. Mrs. Neitart was my 2-4th grade art teacher

Anne Satterlee, her mom owns LifeStyles, some knick-knack store downtown. Anne was always matter-of-fact to me.

Donna Hardick, who is an office manager in town, and once told someone (and I overheard) that she lived on the fourth floor of the (now) Best Western on 30 near 2

Bonnie Nuest, who was a cute classmate of ours, but who is now overweight and nearly unrecognizable, not that I would be able to recognize her, as the only memory I truly have of her is of her with BJ when I went to pick him up from Kindergarden and walk home with him. That would make Bonnie and I all of 9 years old.

Loren Huck, who is now married and living in France, working as a chef. Jess's memory of him is from a field trip to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry (my favorite place when I was growing up!). He brought a sardine sandwich for lunch and was told he had to get off the bus to eat it. My memory of him was passing him on Joliet when I ran (literally) into town (I was grounded) to mail a contest entry (which I won 3rd place in). He was running the opposite way and waved as we passed. Odd that I can't find him anywhere on Google.

John Pinkerton, who Jess thinks died a few years ago, but I didn't realize. He was a good friend of my dad growing up, and I knew him as Pinky. Brother Chris had a class with him, though I didn't. Pinky's dog was Pepper. His wife was Jane. He had two girls and taught at the high school.

Pat S (hell if I can spell his last name), whose brother went to culinary school and opened the restaurant Dish in town.

John Walsh, who I had the biggest crush on in 9th grade. He dated a cousin of Jessica's that year. :\ Turns out, he became an EMT (comes from a long line of firemen, apparently), and was involved in an accident that killed someone. I think David said alcohol was involved, but he didn't say how. Walsh was unable to continue driving ambulences, and is now a mechanic, married somewhere with two boys.

To this day, I don't understand why I didn't have a boyfriend in junior high school. I'm sure someone will tell me what was up. Probably because I was incredibly shy, but only until someone talked to me. Bah. What a horrible point in life. I'm just glad I made it through (with my love of math and science still in tact).

Those were rough years, better left as memories.

I'm always entertained by what people think they would do if they had the equipment of the opposite gender. Men invariably say, "If I had two boobs, I'd never leave the house." Women say pretty much the same, "If I had a penis, I'd never leave the house." The assumption being they would be so thrilled at this new piece of equipment, they would just play with it all day, entertaining themselves.

Me? First thing I'd do if I had a penis?

I'd write my name in the snow.

I've had an American Express card since I graduated from college. It's been a great card. I liked the card. The customer service is great, and the card services are well worth the $55 annual membership fees. Never an unhappy customer.

Until today.

I have the card number memorized, so it's easy for me to use. I bill mostly online expenses to the card, and use only that card for online purchases. In case of fraud, I have only one card to cancel. Easy that.

I placed an order online last week (on December 31st for tax and accounting reasons) and used my AmEx card for the purchase. I could save all of $20 by shipping to my house instead of my post office box, so, eh, sure, no problem, I listed my home address as the ship-to address.

This morning I received an email saying the ship-to address is not a valid delivery address for the AmEx card, could I please add it? The last time I tried to add an additional address to my AmEx, it was a horrible, horrible experience, one I remembered well, so I was absolutely positive the address was already on the card. Just to be sure, I called up AmEx.

Turns out, my home address wasn't an authorized address on the card (WTF?) and I needed to create a password for the account, too. Fine, transfer me to the password change department.

Here's where it gets creepy. In order to identify I'm who I say I am, I had to answer some questions (their apologies if the questions were redundant).

The first question was the last four digits of my Social Security Number. Standard question there, no problem.

The next question was "What was your first elementary school?" Now this one was kinda weird, but sure, I'll go with it. As near as I can tell, they can't verify that one, so I tell them. Which they spell wrong, after I tell them, so I had to spell it for them, too. It's a good thing they asked for an elementary school, because that's significantly different than the first school I went to.

Great! I'm flying with passing colors. So the next question comes. "What address did you use previously?" Oh, that's easy. I gave her my previous post office box. Because I have used nothing but post office boxes for the last 10 years. Before that I lived at other people's houses, so should be no records of my address. And before that, I was at school. And before that, my parents house. So, that P.O. Box was the most correct answer.

Nope.

"We use public records to obtain a list of addresses where you might have lived. We just need one of these addresses."

Might have lived. Might have lived. Might. Have. Lived.

Not, "you lived at." Not, "your address." Not, "The address you had with us before the current address."

Might have lived. According to public records.

WTF?

Okay, fine, since I couldn't answer that question, I had to ask the next security question: "What's the name of a relative?"

Blink.

Blink. Blink.

What? You want the name of one of my relatives? shrug I said the full name of one of my first cousins.

Not on the list. Of course not, I think. What do you have, my whole geneological tree? No, no, no, she says, she wants me to give her the name she has in front of her on the screen. I can't help but think, "That could be one of six BILLION people, how the fuck do I know what is on your god-damned screen?" Instead, I said, "I don't know what's on your screen. I've given you enough information to identify me a hundred times over and steal my identity. I'm not interested in this password, I just want to add a shipping address to my card. That's it. Just an address." To which the customer service rep (Juanita?) replied with a lecture on how I should be interested, because this password is the most important password, blah, blah, blah.

I hung up on her.

And called back. I tried again, with the same results. I couldn't add an address without a password. And I couldn't get a password because the records they have to match me are incorrect. Fine, I'll cancel the card, switch me to that department. "You can't cancel the card without a password." Transfer me anyway.

The woman in the card-cancelling-department asked for my password. Okay, I've had enough. I'll admit to a bit of hysteria here. All I want to do is add a fucking shipping address, an address on their fucking public records list, if they bothered to look it up, and I can't do it. Cancel the fucking card.

They do. Then hang up on me.

And after I hear the dial tone on the other end of the line, I realized I could have paid the extra $20 and had the online order shipped to my post office box.

I'm sure anyone with a pet will create nicknames for the pet. Given the number of cutesy-wootsey names people give each other, giving pets (you know, the even cuter animals?) nicknames is only reasonable.

Here are some of Bella's.

1. The Bella
2. Bella-Girl
3. The Little One
4. The Lump
5. The Furnace
6. Broken Bella Beagle
7. Stinky
8. Bella of the Long, Soft Ears (Karen gave her that name)
9. Clicky Girl
10. Big Kitty Cat
11. Wiggle Bottom, Wig for short
12. Bella Butt
13. The Cute One, Cuteness

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around and look for the "coolest" book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.

The nonworking edge of brick stitch looks exactly like a working edge of peyote stitch and can be used as such.

From Erik Thauvin's Blog on December 23rd.

Heh. Let all my programmer friends figure out where that one came from.

After nearly 4 years of talking about it, 3 years of much of nothing, ultimateteam.org has finally launched.

It needs a lot of work. It's based off an old version of the open source release of sourceforge.net. I think I'd like to switch it to a drupal code base eventually.

However, it's up. It's running. It might actually be working. We'll see.

Ultimate teams out there: enjoy!