Here in Katie’s Head

Some trick-or-treaters are cute.

But most of them are little bastards who just hold out their bags and wait for you to give them candy. No “trick-or-treat” and certainly no “thank you.”

The little kids get a pass on this one. They’re shy and inexperienced, and for that, they get extra candy.

But the little bastards with NO COSTUMES, well, I wish them upset stomachs and many, many cavities.

In other news, a guy from work lives down the street from me, which I discovered when I was giving his daughter (who is not a little bastard) a handful of candy and heard him say, “Katie?!?!? Is that you??!?” in a very “WTF?!?” tone of voice. Awesome. Eagle employees seem to live in clusters, and I think I’m in a pretty good cluster.

And the Halloween-crazed neighbors across the street? I put their address on the newspaper’s list of best-decorated houses (don’t ask how I ended up in charge of that), and they were totally pumped to have achieved that very small degree of celebrity. Their display actually turned out to be quite impressive. I have now changed my mental categorization for them from “questionable/weird” to “intriguing/weird” (which is, I suppose, a compliment because most of the people I date come from the “intriguing/weird” category).

Also, someone needs to take the leftover candy away from me. Please. Seriously, please.

Posted: 10:20 pm · Category: Duplex, Holidays · Comments: None

My faith in love is now completely shattered.

Posted: 7:12 pm · Category: Random · Comments: None

I just got home from the newsroom Halloween party. Most fun I’ve had since I moved back to Wichita.

Props to the hosts. Additional props to everyone who showed up in costume. Special props to my fellow costume contest winners. And final props to beer. And also wine.

Posted: 1:41 am · Category: Holidays, Work · Comments: 1

How long does it take a cricket to starve?

There are bugs in my house. Many bugs, and no two alike.

I should have expected this. After all, the previous tenant nearly burned the whole house down when she set off several bug bombs while a candle was burning in the bed room. (True story.) And she probably wouldn’t have been setting off bug bombs if there weren’t a lot of bugs.

Today, I had my first cricket. The other bugs have included moths and spiders, but no crickets.

I was happily reading aloud to myself — but that’s another story — when I saw him slowly walking across my living room. Crickets are usually hard to catch, but this one was having trouble with the uneven surface of the carpet, which slowed him down just enough for me to drop an upside-down plastic cup on top of him. But I’m fairly certain that if I lift the cup or try to transfer him somewhere else, he will escape and live. And I want him dead.

I first considered using a clear plastic cup so that I could see the cricket inside and might be able to tell if he had died. But then I reconsidered, knowing that I’d probably then spend the next month hovering over the cup watching my prisoner obsessively. So I opted for a Taco Bell cup that I can throw away once it has served its purpose.

So if I just leave the cup sitting there, hiding its insect prisoner from my view, how long should I wait? Are crickets indestructible like cockroaches? Should I attempt to slip some sort of poison under the edge of the cup? Will he start chirping at some point? Or do they not chirp when there’s nothing left to live for?

He started jumping around inside the cup, trying to escape. So I walked over to the cup and said, “You can’t escape. I will kill you.” And then he stopped.

Conclusion: Someone should plant hidden cameras in my living room because I am crazy and possibly amusing. If I’m not talking to myself, I’m talking to bugs. And either way, it’s silly.

Posted: 10:14 pm · Category: Duplex · Comments: 4

So at this moment, my dad still has the title in his name and he’s paying the insurance. Next week, we’re switching the title to my name and I’ve just purchased an insurance policy.

I will own. a. car. I don’t really think I should be trusted to own anything, so I’m thinking that there’s gotta be a trick somewhere.

And I feel really guilty that Dad’s giving me a whole car — but then I remember how they didn’t have to pay a cent of my college education and I know that would have cost far more than my car, so…maybe I don’t feel quite so bad. Still spoiled, but deservingly so?

Anyway, the real point: WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON WITH CAR INSURANCE? I don’t get it.

I decided to see if Geico and Progressive are really as awesome as their ads claim — if nothing else, I like the idea of getting a quote without having to talk to a real person, especially a real person who’s trying to get hundreds of dollars from me.

First I got a quote from Geico. It was a lot of money, but fair.

Then I got a letter from Liberty Mutual (because the fucking Alumni Association sold my contact info to fucking every company in the world) that said they’re offering a discount to recent graduates. So I called them up to get a quote. HOLY WHOA. They were asking 50% more. Why is there that big of a difference?

(I ended up buying a renters insurance policy from them instead. Hopefully they didn’t rip me off on that one — $13/month sounded like a deal to me.)

Then I went back online and got a quote from Progressive. Even cheaper than Geico — like 20% cheaper. I’m sold.

I understand that insurance is tricky because it’s about complicated risks and a fair amount of randomness, so of course not every company is going to offer me the same exact price. But shouldn’t it all be reduced down to a system that’s at least vaguely consistent? Shouldn’t someone have come up with a universal formula by now?

If Liberty Mutual wants to charge me five or six hundred dollars more than Progressive, how the hell do they stay in business? Are they ripping everyone off, or just new college graduates with a single accident on their records?

I’m sure someone could provide me with a detailed, rational explanation for why insurance companies are so dumb. Or maybe the answer is that Progressive is going to jack up my rates the first chance they get. But, damn, these companies are so dumb.

Posted: 8:28 am · Category: Cars, Rants · Comments: 1

So I was looking for an old document and decided it was time to re-file everything into something remotely organized.

And I found all kinds of stuff. Papers I don’t remember writing. Papers I wish I didn’t remember writing. Things that I think must have been high school English assignments, but they make no sense, especially with no context whatsoever.

And then I found it.

A diary. A really, really old diary.

So I start reading it. It begins the summer I got my very first job.

A lot of entries were about silly crushes. “Would you believe I’m falling for _____?” and then, two weeks later, “Okay, I don’t like _____ anymore. I like ____ now.” — ha! such a fickle 15-year-old I was. And most of it is so cryptic that I have absolutely no idea what it’s about.

And then I get to an entry that starts, “I made my own web page today! Can you believe that?”

rofl.

Posted: 10:56 pm · Category: Memories · Comments: None

I was thinking about participating in NaNoWriMo this year. And then I did the math and it comes out to writing more than 1600 words every day. Holy wow.

Maybe if I spend the last few days of this month outlining a plot…

I took a fiction writing class my sophomore year in college. It was one of the most challenging and most interesting classes I’ve ever taken. I had to write three short stories and keep a journal over the course of the semester.

My first story was some recycled old crap. My second one pulled together some totally random concepts and didn’t weave them together very convincingly. My third one was just me trying to work through the drama of that semester. It was probably the worst of the three (awkward exposition, awkward scene transitions, awkward everything else).

I will never have any sort of career in fiction, but the idea of churning out a novel sounds like the perfect challenge for me right now. I don’t think I’ve ever written anything much longer than 3000 words.

Whether I have time for 1600 words a day given that the only way I could ever finish a writing assignment was to blast it all out at the absolute last minute. A 10-page paper, due at 11:30 a.m., started around 7 a.m. THE SAME DAY? I got an A. That one was particularly insane.

Anyway. I’ve always wanted to try out NaNoWriMo, I probably won’t finish even the first thousand words, but we’ll see.

Posted: 8:48 pm · Category: Writing · Comments: None