i ain't yo do-girl

the guy at the walgreens foto counter wears a yarmulka and leather pants. i would venture to guess he's an interesting guy but you know - a look like that could go either way. i mean - maybe the look is all there is of the interestingnessiosity.

the buzzkillword of the day from the office is "video sizzler". apparently i work in the year 1995. or in a porn studio. also at work today was this phrase used -- "the lower part of the spine is 'bunch up' ". perhaps i do work in the porn industry. worth investigating.

received via email -- "see if you know 0 new people in your communities". magically & without even logging in, i can attest to the fact that i easily know 0 new people in my communities. and i also know better than to send a wacked out email when the counter is at 0.

ace out!

i read the news today - oh boy!

"The explosion of MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and the like are challenging traditional understandings of community."

nobody tol me fb done sploded!!

beggars can't be choosers.

hobo encounter at the vanstop:

hobo [upon seeing my crutches] «did you kick your boyfriend in the head?»

ace «yeah, and he's got a hard head.»

hobo «heh. well, you be careful in this heat.»

ace «you, too.»

hobo «um. yeah, i'm homeless.»

ace «well, you could sit on that bench there in the shade.»

hobo «i am headed to get something to eat.»

ace «you going to the mission?»

hobo «eh. maybe. i get tired of potato soup.»

ace «well, if you're HUNGRY....»

hobo «yeah, yeah...» [grins, waves, walks away]

sunday night supper - where's my tuna & sliced cheese & pickle spear & deviled egg & olive & potato chip?

today's movie: doc hollywood. this one has commershies and one of the commershies was for a special clothes hanger called the "magic hanger". this hanger really gets you organized!! put your clothes on and wahlah!! organized!! it's like... um... magic!! at the end of the commershal, they provided the address to send your money and also this tidbit of information: you must be 18 to order. you cannot imagine what a relief that was to hear -- you must be 18 to order -- b/c heaven knows the last thing we need is organized minors.

text your name and your lover's name to 70777 -- and they will tell you if your lover is cheating. my, that's handy! the things you learn while watching old movies. i tell you what.

here's a headline from the google news feed: «To the risk of obesity and heart attack, the government had added yet another reason to avoid eating lots of fat, especially from meat and dairy products: pancreatic cancer.» why oh why oh why are scientists spending time studying the effects of poor diet? poor diet = bad for you. now, let's move along, my fearless science discoverists - let's study something worthy of your time & most likely my tax dollars. like -- the effects of old movies on promoting bone growth.

[not my ankle but like my ankle but... you know... not]

sitting on the couch watching teevee

in order to speed the healing of my ankle, i am sitting on the couch today. i plan to sit & sit & sit. i give me 2 hours to go completely stir crazy.

this headline from the paper: house passes bill on climate. whopp!whopp! i mean the climate is seriously out of control - wouldn't you agree? i wonder if we can get rid of all the weathermen now that there are some climate laws on the books. i know i will rest easier at night knowing that the climate is being held accountable.

sitting here watching mrs doubtfire b/c what happens saturdays that you are forced to sit around is that the same movies are on from the last time you were laid up. the kid in mrs df is wearing a shirt i have in my closet - one of my favorites. this movie was made in 1993 which means in just a few more years my shirt will be an antique. but would you look at some of the other clothes they are wearing?! sheesh. not everything holds its style value like my shirt, that's for sure.

wireframe buckets

the last trip i took required these 6pr of shoes which included the soccer shoes which are not always needed. 4pr shoes would appear to be the min for effective travel para mio. 2pr running shoes b/c must have backup pr in case primary pr gets wet or otherwise permanently or temporarily damaged. 1pr faux crox mainly for handy slip on-off during drive-time. 1pr chucks for daily wear. the last trip beavis made to my house required that he bring 2pr shoes. people who deign to be carried around require fewer shoes. 1pr apparently came to visit with our shoes, as shown in the shoe party pic, below.


i am going to start a drinking game at work. every time bossman says «wireframe» - take a drink! «wireframe» = drink! drink of coffee, ya dingbat. here's the problem: i'll be drinking so much coffee i will be spending all my spare time crutching between the coffee pot & the restroom. «wireframe»... «wireframe»... ::sigh:: a little technical vocab is a dangerous thing.

did you hear? turns out michael jackson was taking drugs on a daily basis. turns out if you are 50 years old & of delicate constitution & maintaining a grueling schedule & have access to medical fortification, you will make use of it. wow. who knew?

looks like i'll be on crutches for at least a couple weeks and probably much more.

watching the new show merlin because they promoted this big harry potter promo but they showed the promo and it was just a wee little clip. maybe they are going to have another, but in the meantime, merlin's pretty good.

omg! just turned off the merlin from the tivo and discovered that michael jackson died. surprising. i mean, not like he was the picture of health but still surprising. appears he had a heart attack. he'd scheduled 50 shows in england. omg! 50 shows! he was probably gearing up for that tour and it was just too much for him. here's the thing about ol' michael - when he was a child, he seemed so happy, and he was no doubt talented as all get out - but what happened? he turned into a bizarre man. farrah fawcett died today, too. both giant icons of the 70s-80s - both nearly larger than life. and now not with the having of the life at all, eh?

and, here's a question about stars of the 70s. how did they whiten their teeth? did they just not? or, did they scrub them with pepsodent or something like baking soda or did they get them capped?

it's wednesday.

have you seen that commershal that says, basically, some people want to change the medical system in our country by allowing the govt [you, me, etc] to get involved and some people want to «do nothing». i posit that this is a false dichotomy. we don't need to choose between two polar opposites. there are myriad options along the scale from nothing to socialized medicine. we need to explore options & make a careful decision. we don't need to polarize the decision points.

just heard on the news that more fireworks are set off on the 4th of july than any other day of the year. would it be unpatriotic to say «no shit»?

in the smartest-thing-he-ever-said category: bill o'reilly had barney franks on and o'reilly said something to franks about "you said that? i never heard you say that." and ol' barney goes "i am not responsible for everything you don't know." hah! gotcha o'reilly! smartest thing ol' barney ever said.

in the stupid-things-said-in-the-news category: some official from washington dc talking about that train wreck from the other day said «because the driver was killed in the wreck we will have difficulty determining what happened» -- uh... how about «because the driver was killed her family will be missing her forever after». sheesh. okay, i realize these people are trying to solve the mystery, but jeezum, seems a little cold to me.

did you catch hawthoRNe on tnt? i meant to & didn't and fairly certain it's not getting tivo'd either. not the end of the world, but sort of wanted to watch it. did catch the very last scene, which was hawthorne sending up a little japanese paper hot air balloon with a small fire in the shallow bucket dish providing the lift. turns out she'd put some of her hubby's ashes in the bucket and was sending them off into the night. it looked cool, but i don't think that balloon was going to get too far.

started the next kale allerion title - dragon knight. fascinating how you can get drawn into some worlds and not others. it's nice to be back with the o'rant girl. there's a new septimus heap book coming out soon. yay!

worthy line

from donita paul's dragonknight "there can be as many wrong reasons to do the right thing as there are stars in the sky. there might even be more than one legitimate right reason. but there is never a right reason to do the wrong thing. not ever."

crutchtastic!

some advice from crutchville -

if you usually take the stairs, you might be unfamiliar with the elevator population. people who ride elevators are donut-snarfing fatties who delight in your injury because it confirms their hypothesis that donuts are healthier than exercise. resist striking them with a crutch. it will throw you dangerously off balance and they won't feel it through their fattiefat.

don't let the donut-snarfing fatties drive you from elevator and back to the stairwells unless you're an experienced crutcher. stairs are not the newbie crutcher's friend.

you cannot carry a basket of laundry and maneuver crutches at the same time. don't try. it cannot be done.

don't wait till the last minute to go pee. it will inevitably take you longer to get there than you thought it would and standing on your bum peg whilst desperately attempting to unsnaggle your fly can induce panic & nausea.

you can move a lot faster on crutches than you might think but it is a helluva lot harder to stop than you'd ever imagine.

crutches are specifically designed to cause pit-ache. this is to distract you from the injury pain.

keep your crutches close by. allowing your partner to "put them in the trunk for you" is tantamount to agreeing to wait in the car. it is imperative to maintain as much mobility as possible. [see "pee" info, above]

resist the temptation to decorate your crutches.

use a backpack. you'd be surprised how much stuff you are used to carrying around in your hands which are now otherwise occupied. your pockets were not designed to hold your lunch - and your briefcase, career tote, or laptop bag will skew your equilibrium like a sock tied around a cat. [note: that's "back"pack, not - NOT - "fanny"pack]

crutching around takes a bit of core strength. if you don't want to trumpet your arrival, avoid the beans.

drunk crutching is a whole lot less funny than you've been led to believe.

got a fridger in the tree

i am just going to say right now that there has been at least one time during the past week that i have pulled something out of my nose & deposited it in a hidden location on a piece of my clothing like under a cuff, and if you are going to sit there & tell me you have never done that at all when i'd bet you've done it at least one time during the past month then i will tell you to your virtual face you are a lieyah!!

from the wee tiny honda odometer, i bring you: 044440. suh-weet!

so i went to the doctor today on my own two feet & left with crutches and it's probably b/c when he explained about the stress fracture and how it formed and i nodded & nodded & nodded and then i said «can i still run?» he just looked at me for a moment then ordered a ginormous boot and crutches and said if i wanted it to get better i'd stay off it.

nocyclingnoswimmingnorunningnowalking.

If I had a million dollars
I'd build a treefort in our yard
If I had a million dollars
You could help it wouldn't be that hard
If I had a million dollars
Maybe we could put a refrigerator in there
Wouldn't that be fabulous!
~~ the barenaked ladies

this song is a canadian classic which was written as a singalong song by 2 camp counselors who grew up to be the barenaked ladies. they had a really good idea here b/c what better use could there be for a million dollars than to build a tree fort with a fridger in it!! not that someone with crutches can climb a freakin tree. sheesh.

a little cream in my coffee

been drinking coffee since i was 15. at brigadoon, only the big girls were allowed to drink coffee, so as soon as i qualified i bellied up to the coffee pot. didn't want to mess around with figuring out sugars & creams - just drank the stuff straight. drank it straight for years. and years. and years. then last year i saw elvis putting cream in his coffee and «i was like why are you putting cream in your coffee» and he was like «with the amount of coffee i drink if i drank it all black it would burn a hole in my stomach.» and i was like okay i don't want a hole in my stomach. so i tried it and it was okay, but here's the real bonus - if the milk's cold, it will cool down the coffee enough to drink it right away. no more messing with ice coobes!

crappy green team won 2 today to put us in the finals of the tournament next weekend. tomorrow i am going to the dr and i hope he says - here, do this and you can play next weekend. and that the «this» he prescribes is like wave a majix wand over it and it's all fixed.

watched part of the usa vs egypt soccer today, and every single man on the egypt team is named ahmed except this one guy that was mohamed. sirrusly. okay, not. i looked it up and 9 out of 21 are named ahmed. 6 are named mohamed. so like over half are named one or the other name and it's not like half the usa guys are named joe and schmoe so i think it's unusual that these guys all have the same name. do they only have like 10 names in egypt?

little birdie eggs

lately i've been seeing little broken birdie eggs on the sidewalks, and i was all like, man this is sad how many little birdies are dying when their eggs fall to the ground and also thinking how weird it was to be seeing little eggshells everywhere just all of a sudden-like. then i realized that it was probably not a rash of egg-bound birdie deaths -- the eggshells were probably being discarded by birdies being borned. heh heh. durr.

the commercial on teevee just said -- nissan: look closer. but i think it should be -- look more closely. what do you think? nissan: look more closely. okay, well that sounds like a command to the nissan. so, maybe -- nissan: look more closely at it. which sounds idiotic. nissan: take a closer look. there. wahlah!

so yesterday i made an appt to see the dr about my ankle on monday, and since the time i made the appt, it's improved about 500%. of course.

bookkeeper committee balloon vaccuum

so we met a couple days ago to hash things out about this project, and i was given the task of sending the email to the vendor to explain what we wanted. i crafted the first draft and sent it around the dept for review - boss had a couple correx, everyone else was a-okay with it. the vendor received it and anxiously requested a conference call. he immediately called into question our good judgment, challenged what we requested, proposed what he wanted, and i listened to my boss fold like a house of cards. clearly, the vendor won him over with the cool factor. you would not have known that the boss was actually the one who spearheaded the meeting to hash out the request that i emailed - not from the way he disavowed the request and by association, the group. earlier this week, he'd commented on the confusion of the vendor - how the vendor didn't understand our needs. glorioski, man, could it be b/c you are letting the vendor dictate the agenda? just saying.

today i went for a walk outside & when i returned to my desk found in my inbox an email from the vp of hr. she wanted to tell everyone not to go outside without great caution b/c a most-wanted man had escaped the FBI sting at the bus station - less than 50 yards from our building. would have been nice to have known that before i went outside, because jeez... i went the other way and missed all the action!

stopped by big lots after work and found they had big honkin bags of mary janes, and at first i was excited, but then the bags were all... sort of compressed. like, they were vacuum packed or something. i couldn't figure out if they were vacuum packed or if they were just wacked-up packs. i ended up purchasing a package, so i will be sure & let you know.

speaking of vacuums, at some point during my grade school career, the teacher had printed up on those big sheets of ruled paper some words that had 2 or more double letters in a row. balloon. bookkeeper. committee. vaccuum. vaccuum? eh? yeah, she frogged me up on spelling that word for-evah!

today is thursday.

today at work i spent the day cleaning up someone else's mess by doing something i have never done before - graphic design of a product cover. let me just ask how sorry a designer are you that someone who has never done graphic design is assigned to clean up your mess?

after work, i did a little grocery shopping, came home, and spent like an hour cutting up fruit. eating healthily is quite time consuming. while i was rinsing & cutting & trimming, i was watching harry potter & the chamber of secrets and i was reminded of many questions about the whole world of hp that were not answered before the end of the series. ::sigh:: most disappointing, don't you agree? at any rate, the new hp movie is coming out soon, and i have seen one commercial for it which was very very impressive and so i am looking forward to seeing the continued adventures of the high school aged harry, ron, & hermione while ignoring that they are being played by actors who are pushing 30. right.

karma is kind of a butt.

changing clothes to go on a lunchtime run always reminds me of that clothes changing relay race. did you ever do that? there are 2 versions - wet or dry. you put a set of clothes on over your clothes [or your bathing suit] and run [swim] to the other end of the course where you remove the clothes and the next person puts them on and so on. if you ever play the swimming version, do your best to be first in line.

on npr today, a reporter said of strom thurmond that he is «so moderate he recently became a democrat» and i feel compelled to point out here that the dems are no more known for their moderacy than the gop'ers are. mr thurmond claims he considered himself a moderate republican and was stranded by his party as it continually moved to the right, so he changed parties. sounds reasonable. oh, and then there is the fact that his electorate changed from virtually all republican to virtually all democrat over the past few years and so mr i-been-here-since-before-you-was-bornded was going to have a wee bit of trouble getting re-elected. perhaps he changed parties because he feels the dems platform is more representative of his core values. or, perhaps he changed parties because washington dc is the only home he can remember.

okay, so here is something i hate - when i open a new tab in i-e and click on the address bar before the new window is finished loading, the entire i-e will lock up. i don't know if it's this computer that's wack or i-e, and not that i wouldn't put it past either one, but i blame i-e. this computer is sweet & kind & loving. i'm not saying anything bad about this computer. but, i-e is busted up when it does that thing it does.

speaking of busted up, my ankle is better but still hurts. i realized i told no less than three people in completely separate situations - one soccer mate & two running buddies - that i was bored on the soccer field and then bored during long runs. karma bit me in the ankle. «bored, eh?» said karma «okay then how 'bout you take a wee little break! bwah-hah-hah!»

last night at soccer while i wasn't playing, one of the other players was saying to one of the otherer players -- «girl get out there & play!» -- and the otherer one said -- «just a minute i am trying to catch my breath.» -- and the first one said -- «you are 22 years old, girl, get out there!» -- and the otherer one said -- «i've got pleuresy, you jackass!!» HAHAHA. okay, pleuresy=not funny. jackass=funny. and, yes, you probably did have to be there.

there was something i was gonna say...

but i cannot remember. i sewanee i am kindly flushtrated and will half to start righting things down too remember all them things i warranted to say.

in the meanwhile i will go play soccer.

monday evening

so i balance the checkbook every couple of weeks, and for about the past month, the bank has thought we have a few hundred more bucks than i think we have. this is obviously the good side of imbalance, but i am not sure how to repair it. add it all back in at once? add back a fifty or hundred dollars each week? write a check for the overage & put it into savings? thoughts? input?

in a few weeks there's a possible trip to brigadoon in the works. on the pro side, it's brigadoon & sleeping outside & fire-cooked food. on the con side, it's a bunch of people that i do not know who think they do know me and not only do they think they know me... they think i know them. but the reality is that they don't know me and i don't know them and i am not who they think i am and one thing they think is that i am like them, but i am not like them - i am different. ::sigh:: it's baggage like a footlocker. but yeah, i'll probably go and when i go i will enjoy it. ::sigh:: whatever. get over myself, eh?

the big fun this week is the slowing improving tendinitis condition and the coming visit from beavis this weekend. whoppwhopp!

this & that

so i pulled off the interstate & into a gas station to get some snacks. chose a gas station that the bus had stopped at once when i was on a greyhound bus trip. as i pulled into the parking lot, a comedy routine started on the xm and the subject of that routine was greyhound bus trips. weird.

crappy green team won today, so yay for that, but i didn't play so boo for that. i thought i could have & perhaps i should have insisted, but the rest of the team was like «we don't want you to get hurt worse» and i couldn't exactly tell if they were meaning that or if they were thinking i was not going to be up to par. so, i didn't play, and it's probably for the best, but verrrrry frustrating.

i got an email notice from the liberry today and i was all like yipee-ki-yay b/c i thought it was going to be a notice that the next dragon keeper book was waiting for me, but it's a notice for the new grisham book, and it goes to show you how much i am captivated with the adventures of kale allerion that i am disappointed the new grisham is waiting for me.

two new nurse shows coming on teevee this fall -- «hawthorne» with jada pinkette smith and «nurse jackie» with edie falco. wonder what's up with the nursie focus? wonder if these shows will be similar? wonder wonder wonder....

did you watch the nascar race today? man o man! right at the end, jimmy johnson & greg biffle ran out of gas, and mark martin - 55 years old - passed 'em both and ran out of gas himself but managed to glide to the finish. jeff gordon started the race 32nd and finished 2nd. jimmy johnson led the entire day and finished 22nd after running out of gas on the last lap. biffle tried to blame his & johnson's running out of gas on johnson's challenging him on the last lap - but really, biffle didn't have to get sucked in & play johnson's game. it was a very exciting finish, and i'm happy for ol' mark martin. he's won 3 races this year, and not like i follow nascar all that closely, but i think it's been a while since martin's done this well, and i know for sure that he's the oldest guy out there. good for him!

drive & laff & drive & laff & drive

went to pick up the rental.

-- rental guy -- which car would you like? you can pick the cruiser, the avenger, the rondo, or the sonata.

-- ace -- i'll take the electric blue pt cruiser, if it has cruise control.

[rental guy goes to check cruiser]

-- rental guy -- no, sorry. no cruise on the cruiser.

-- ace -- okay... hmm... i'll take the dodge avenger.

[rental guy looks up avenger on computer]

-- rental guy -- the avenger needs an oil change, and i'd hate for you to have any trouble out on the road.

-- ace -- okay... how about the kia rondo?

[rental guy looks up rondo on computer]

-- rental guy -- the rondo needs an oil change.

-- ace -- are you kidding??

-- rental guy -- no.

-- ace -- okay... how about the hyundai sonata?

-- rental guy -- okay! looks good. i think you'll be really happy with this car. it's got a sun roof & a satellite radio. let me get it washed up & vacuumed & you'll be good to go.

SHEESH! JUST TELL ME TO PICK THE HYUNDAI IN THE FIRST PLACE!!

so, the sonata is enjoyable to drive and it goes really fast, which is of course not at all what i want to be doing. not at all. no no. i would never want to go really fast.

right. so, it's a good thing it has cruise control.

and the satellite radio is the bomb [or, insert more appropriate slang here]. i have found a section of comedy channels - blue collar comedy, the foxxhole, rawdog comedy, laugh usa, and laugh attack. blue collar is of course jeff foxworthy & friends, but they play kathy madigan and paul rodriguez and all sorts of good stuff. foxxhole is jamie foxx's channel so they play jamie foxx standup and his singing but they also play redd foxx and richard pryor and eddie murphy. you know, eddie murphy has really changed from the cutting edge comedy he used to do to his current kiddiecom stuff. let's see... rawdog is probably the funniest b/c for some reason the funny guys curse a lot. the xm display shows you who's on, but most of them i've never heard of anyway. laugh usa is more of your good clean fun type comedians and old school stuff -- and by that i mean it's not very funny. laugh attack is canadian comics, and they are hit or miss.

so, i found this section of comedy channels & i am very much enjoying them, but i wonder what else is out there, especially if there are more comedy channels.

5k 2day

tendinitis flare-up in my ankle last wed put an end to any big plans i had for this 5k so i volunteered to sweep and ended up working my way thru this mildly technical trail run with a 60 yr old man who'd had a stroke back when he was 29. worst "race" time ever. unforgettable experience.

owch

trying to post from the iphone. hello? hello? is this thing on?

1. my ankle hurts
2. my ankle is swollen
3. i am registered for a 5k on saturday
4. the 5k is on trails
5. trails are tricky on a good day

these are your givens. solve for x.

new shoes! new shoes! ace has got on new shoes!

she used to operate a preschool & when a kid showed up in new shoes, she'd lead them all in the new shoes song. «new shoes! new shoes! ace has got on new shoes!» yeah.

here's a pic of my new shoes. clearly not to be confused with anyone else's shoes, eh? heh. i LIKE 'em! they are SNAZZY. and, they are comfy, and that's what really matters. a few too many miles on the current work pair has resulted in a wee bout with tendonitis. owwch! so, i was all like - «i am getting new shoes TODAY!» and, i did.

see i have a «work» pair and a «home» pair b/c i run so much but i run more at work so they get more miles on them more fasterly which is also how i run -- fasterly.

[aside to mini-me: the « » are what i have been twittering. snazzy quotes. snazzy, and aparently not text friendly. snazzy!]

books 2009

currently:
the archbishop in andalusia
[andrew greeley]

complete:
dragonquest
[donita k paul]
dragonspell
[donita k paul]
the spiderwick chronicles, vol. 1-5
[tony diterlizzi & holly black]
devil bones
[kathy reichs]
irish tweed
[andrew greeley]
the paradise war
[stephen lawhead]
hood
[stephen lawhead]
scarpetta
[patricia cornwell]

coupla things

started reading the next in the dragon keeper series, and it sounded vaguely familiar and a few pages in i realized it was the one i'd just read. doh! so, i got the other one out of my liberry bag and started reading it, and discovered that it's not the next one in the series. there are 5 in the series. i thought there were 3. ::sigh:: now i have to wait on the next one to be available.

speaking of available, stopped at dollar general tonight for something else & found they had maryjanes! whopp!whopp! they had only one pkg, but who needs more than one pkg? okay, i do, but one is better than none, eh? yeah!

bye-bye! have fun! behave!

so tired of the that internet commershal for the «mom who got whiter teeth». her yellow teeth are gross and quite frankly so are her white teeth. simply tired of being forced to view her teeth.

it's the end of an era - today we sold the jeep. actually witnessed the odometer turn to 215512 - beauty! sold it to a nice man who is a shade-tree mechanic. followed him home to remove the license plate and when we got there his compadres came out to view his great bargain buy. it was all so sweet and okay i am probably seeing it thru rose colored spectacles, but he was happy & we were happy & by golly you cannot convince me that jeep wasn't happy too.

ford c-e-o on tivo'd today show said «we recently reduced our debt by $10bill.» that's right - $10BILLION. zoinks! if they reduced it by that much, and it's still in existence, how the freaking much is it?

nott cobb saladd

in 1937, the owner of a los angeles restaurant went into the kitchen and scrounged up leftovers to make a salad for a late-night customer. he found hard boiled eggs, avacado, roquefort cheese, bacon, chicked breast, and tomato which he arranged in individual lines on a bed of lettuce and over which he drizzled a vinaigrette dressing. in 2009, panera bread has introduced the chopped cobb in which all the ingredients of the traditional cobb and tossed together with the dressing so that «So you get every smoky, savory, cool flavor in every bite.»

::sigh::
the cobb salad is specifically a salad where the ingredients are arranged in rows. the ingredients in the panera creation are tossed all together.

::sigh::

yo! panera! that's not a cobb salad. it's a chicken avacado egg bacon cheese all mixed up with tomatoes & lettuce salad. it's like a california chicken slaw.

kyle busch smashes unique trophy

kyle busch smashed the geetar trophy from his win at nashville superspeedway yesterday. this trophy is a painted guitar - a unique piece of art. he was disrespectful of the artist and of the race. who smashes a trophy they just won? criminy. what an eejit.

greetings from the outdoor office

this is where i am working today. suh-weeet!

for supper last night had excellent chickenpot-chickenpot-chickenpotpie at the local irish pub. then collected the 50¢ popcorn bucket and went to the movies to see the hangover which was hifreakinlarious and starred bradley cooper whom i would pay to watch just sitting, so there's a bonus that he was moving around. really a very funny movie - there were times i was laffing so hard tears were squoozing out.

at breakfast while we are reading the paper, my old man will hand me the lifestyles section first before he reads it and then hand me the other sections after he reads them. this morning, he did not hand me the lifestyles first, and i thought that was odd but whatevs. i read the sports. got up from the table & came back, and he'd set the lifestyles on my placemat. opened it up, and inside was a receipt from where he'd ticketmastered 2 tix to the wallflowers! whoppwhopp! he goes «happy saturday!» heh. he doesn't even actually like them that much, but i do, so here is documented proof of his wonderfulosity.

here's a pic of what is going on in my outdoor office. maybe you cannot really see much, but this guy is grinding up a stump in the back 40. all work has stopped in order to observe the process. i was all for just leaving the stump, but my old man pointed out that we do not live in the forest, we live in a suburb, and people in the suburbs do not have stumpy yards. ::sigh:: conformity. okay, seriously, he had to mow around the stump, so i get that he wanted it gone. circle of life.



speaking of circle of life, we are selling the jeep. end of a era. the odometer reads: 215511.5. almost 215512, eh? sweet.

skubala

so i read back through a few of the more recent posts here and would like to say «blech». i am not going to unpost them b/c that is lame. they is what they is. it's just that they is skubala. that's right - i said it skubala. not in the sense that i don't own the thoughts, but rather in the sense that the thoughts are just slapped on the page like so much digested sauerkraut.

take the reuben sammich - or, better yet: the turkey reub - a nice dark seeded rye touched with a wee bit o' spicey mustard then layered with a loose mound of thinly sliced turkey and topped with a generous portion of kraut. there. turkey reub. now, eat the reub and a few hours later it's sitting in your potty no longer recognizable as a reub.

and, that's what's going on here, see? all these great thoughts & concepts & ideas are flowing around inside my head so beautiful in their completeness. i grab a hold of some of them and gnaw on them and digest them and wahlah - out they come!

skubala.

the discipline of writing daily is worthless if wasted.

.must. .do. .better.

just a couple things

so today i was wearing that dress with the blue flowers - you know the one, and officelady said «you look garden-y.» i didn't know what to say to that. then, coworker said «ooo what a pretty dress. i like those colors. i can't wear dresses like that with... you know... 'full' skirts.» now to that one, i did know what to say «why? b/c you have a large ass?» but i didn't say it.

listening to steve martin play the banjo on the fallon show w/ paul simon on geetar. this is true: i enjoy banjo music. and, bagpipe. and, xylophone. and, harmonica. and, accordian. all those odd instruments that most other people don't like. i like them separate and i like them together. you don't really get all of them together often except in zydeco music [where you still don't get much bagpiping] which is like the best assortment of jangling bangling happy dappy music. yes, i have zero zydeco albums and another zero zydeco songs on my ipod. that's how much i like it.

wednesday

the point of yesterday's post about the korean language was that we ugly amerikans cannot do it justice. it is nasal & atonal, but we firstly cannot appreciate this sound and secondly make things worse by attempting to speak it through our wide amerikan palates. when spoken correctly, it's beautiful. the commentators on npr do not speak it correctly when saying pyongyang as if they had a caramel stuck in their collective teeth. that is the point i was trying to make.

went to walmart tonight and it was an utter disappointment. looking for one thing - compression shorts. yeah, yeah. i know. welcome to 1979. whatever! welcome to long distance running is more like it. the compression shorts reduce chafing, okay?? so, walmart has this kind that i really like at a reasonable price, like $6.83. went tonight and found they no longer have that brand. they have a new kind that is $10. okay, not a terrible price, but still - different brand and different price. sort of a foul ball. i picked up a couple pairs and kept looking for the other stuff on my list. pantyhose? check. windshield wipers? um... they have something but it's not the right thing, so that's like another foul ball. pj shorts? stee-rike - nothing. ::sigh:: makeup brush? another foul ball. still working from the list, i go to find the soy milk creamer. another stee-rike. i've never played baseball, but this was enough fouls & strikes & stuff to count me o-u-t. i set down the basket, took the pantyhose, grabbed a powerade zero, checked thru the u-scan, and left. spent like 45 mins to conduct a 5 min transaction. zoinks! really need to remember to quit going there.

gotta go find some compression shorts online. i will be sure & let you know how the saga plays out.

ace's got a brand new bag

got a bag from r-e-i to carry my workout stuff to work and it's an oddish bag b/c the handle is on the bottom, see? the string pulls from one end and the handle's on the other end. so you pull it up tight and then turn it over to carry it which i must say is a wee bit disconcerting b/c you're just pretty sure all your stuff is going to come unstuffed & be on the sidewalk, but sure-nuff it holds the stuff. pretty cool, eh?according to the r-e-i website, this item is «imported». hrm... imported from where, one wonders? one suspects somewhere in asia. china most likely. hrm... speaking of asia, north korea sure has been in the new a lot lately, eh? «nkorea» as they call it in the press. ol' kim jong-il is a freakmaster and is over there sploding nuquelar bomps. what a complete eejit, and isn't it comforting that the rest of the world is just putting their collective foot down & putting ol' kim jong in time-out. yeah - that's the way to show him who means buziness - tell him we all «disapprove». hey! news alert! kimmy jong jong don't give a ping-pong what the rest of the world thinks. our disapproval is not going to stop him from sploding up things. we might want to consider sploding up him! he's now named his son kim jong-un as his successor. well, good, because the world needs fresh it some fresh kim jong jong to keep rolling along-long.an offshoot of nkorea's celebrity as a country is the renewed reporting from & about its capitol - pyongyang. now, clearly, the word in korean is not «pyongyang» b/c they do not write with the same letters we use. that's the representation in our language. pyongyang sounds similar to but should not be confused with phnom penh - the capitol of cambodia. here's a map of southeast asia, which is scrotumesque in shape. oh, it is, and you know it so just stop laffing. this map does not include korea - which is further east of china. here's a map of korea. see how it's sort of hanging off there... from the end... like... uh... right. whatevs. like nothing. like korea.now - if you want to pronounce pyongyang correctly, and by «correctly» i of course mean how they do it on npr, this is what you do -- hold your nose and say «peeYOON-yehng» sort of shooting out the YOON part after a short "pee" and sort of holding the yehng for a count. «peeYOON-yehng» -- try it. try!it! here's the thing about korean - it's very different from english. it's nasal & atonal. one would venture to say it's unattractive & easily mocked, but that's just xenophobic. so, one will say it's unfamiliar. and, atonal. and, nasal. so, we will not mock the korean language. we will mock kim jong-il! kim jong a ping pong ding dong! don't worry - making fun of k-j-i is not xenophobia b/c he's a freaker. so, it's freakerphobia. and, when it comes right down to it, who's not afraid of the freakers? it only makes sense to be afraid of the freakers.

ace OUT!

watch the decemberists on a tivo'd leno since leno doesn't make shows anymore, but seriously liking the decemberists.

from the world of politics - uncle joe! did you hear what ol' joe biden said the other day? he was giving a speech out-of-doors, and the teleprompter blew over, and he said «what will barack do now?» heh. unc'a joe, unc'a joe. always saying the funniest things.

and, from business - so general motors is going bankrupt because the reality is that was the only way to break the union. those workers were getting exorbitant wages and quite overly-beneficial benefits, and that's what was breaking the back of that company. so, millions of workers in g-m and in all sorts of support industries will be out of work, and whose fault is that? if the workers had made concessions all these years, maybe more of them could have kept their jobs.

and, this from the entertainment world - about the trailer for the new twilight movie - «"I've watched the trailer so many times, I have it memorized," MTV reader MissyTwilighter32109 wrote.». omfreakingee. for real? goodness gracious, but missy twilighter needs some good solid volunteer work for soak up some of this free time she has weighing so heavily on her hands.

and, this from the world of science - a new study by the univ of washington shows that constant television exposure is detrimental to the development of intelligence in infants. one is tempted to say «no shit» to that, but then one considers the amount of govt [me & you & a dog named boo] money spent on this type of research, and one says instead, «oh, shit».

and, this from sports - vandy baseball lost to louisville in the ncaa regionals. they lost the sec championship, but got into the ncaa's. then, they lost right away and landed in the losers bracket and fought valiantly but lost today. i actually met tim corbin, vandy baseball coach, once at a luncheon. he is a fabulous guy - a real gentleman - caring, compassionate, and competitive. he's driven to succeed but genuinely cherishes people & relationships.

that concludes tonight's news.