adventures in vacationland

so i was toodling along the interstate today heading up to vacationville, a small suburb of vacationland, and traffic was fairly light the entire way, probably b/c it's a WEEKDAY in MIDDAY and i am ON VACATION!! so, i am working on being in the correct lane and going with the flow and not missing the exit and this goofwad pulls up on my left and wants to get over in my lane. in front of me. a quick glance in my rearview tells me there's like 3 miles clear behind me. get in back, buddy! so i tighten up a bit to the guy in front cause no way am i letting this goofwad in front when he should merge from behind. get in back, buddy! learn to drive! ha. showed HIM a thing or two. so then i am all la-la-la... driving along... and i look a little closer at the tanker truck i've tucked up under and la-la-la... hmm... h-a-z... hazard... wait. what? in order to teach the guy beside me a lesson in proper traffic etiquette, i have tucked up under a tanker full of hazardous materials. brilliant! i really showed that guy! yeah!

what did i forget? what did i forget? eh... i will discover what i forgot tomorrow, about 150 miles from home....

he wasn't an especially tall boy, maybe a bit over average height for his 11 years, but he looked taller somehow standing on the quad, sunlight burnishing his auburn hair to copper.

and, that's as far as i've gotten with that one.

the new killers cd - day & age - is a keeper. i have listened to it approx 526793 times. of course, that's just an approx. one thing i like about it is that it is the killers. i just happen to like them, probably b/c they sound somewhat like music from my rebel youth. there is a song on day & age that has a sax solo. i know, right? i mean, it's a tiny one, but still - the sax solo is like a lost art. it's beautiful, man! makes me cry. okay, not really. so, 1 = it's the killers. the next thing to like about it is that each song is different. it's not like one big moosh of goosh where every song sounds like every other song. each song has a character unique to that song - a guitar lick or a bit of drum action or the background vocals or the sax solo. i mean, in addition to each song having a unique melody and lyric set, each song also has something going on. i'd say it's mature, but that would make me sound somewhat of a dweeb.

i will be taking day & age on the journey tomorrow but might not need it because... the rental has satellite radio! whoopwhoop! i already found the blue collar - foxxhole - raw dog - laugh usa - laugh attack settings, so no worries there. in case you do not know or cannot tell, these are comedy channels. they play mostly cuts from live standup shows. of the 5, raw dog is the funniest, but of course also the raunchiest. sometimes it crosses the line into simply raw for the sake of raw, and that's not funny, but there's something about being that crude that generally lends itself to being funnier.

blue collar is next funniest. you'd think it's all lame-oh jeff foxworthy, but it's not. there are some really solid comix on there. next is laugh usa and laugh attack. laugh usa is... um... usa and laugh attack is canadian. actually, laugh attack is a wee bit funnier than laugh usa but they are both a lot the same. it's like the family channel. sometimes sort of okay but mostly trite. foxxhole isn't really stand-up, it's got more set programming. yawn-o-la.

1. raw dog
2. blue collar
3. laugh attack
4. laugh usa
5. foxxhole

enough comedy. time to pay the mortgage so the vacation can begin!

just call me kerouac nelson

i am going on a trip here in a couple days. on the road. or, on the road again, depending on whether you're talking to jack or willie.

finally finished john hart's the last child and the rate at which i read it should in no way reflect on its worth as a book. it's relatively solid, with multi-dimensional characters, realistic plot, good pacing, and with many surprises at the end. not rigged-up, deux ex machina type nonsense - but rather, revealed truths. so, it's a bit convenient to reveal a bunch of truths at the end, i suppose, but it worked b/c it was that type of book. the only complaint i had is that the two main boys were named jack and johnny. in case you aren't aware, jack is a nickname for john, and of course, so is johnny. so freaking distracting. why do editors let authors get away with mess like that? next up: water for elephants, specially gifted by mini-me. i have so far read one sentence. but...

i am going on a trip! which means reading! in case you didn't know!

also, going on a trip means i've been making mental lists for like the past three weeks. and writing them down on scraps of paper. and storing them on the phone and on the computer and on more scraps of paper. toothpaste. running shoes. phone charger. car food. chucks. crocs. book. cds. sunglasses. that sweater i like to have in the car and those socks i like to wear in the house. gah! i love to travel. i love to drive away in the car. i love to fly away on the plane. i love to paddle away in the boat. but way i get all nerve-wracked about packing, you'd think there weren't wal-marts where i am going. not that i could get that sweater at wal-mart.... note to self: pack that sweater. gah!

books 2010

currently:
water for elephants
[sara gruen]

complete:
the last child
[john hart]
the youngest templar: the keeper of the grail
[michael p. spradlin]
the last song
[nicholas sparks]
the magykal papers
[angie sage]
the memory of running
[ron mclarty]

in the pathetic pavlovian predictability box

so the crown prince sent an email and it wasn't much of an email really, more the type of thing another folk might twitter, but nonetheless, there on the one side was an email from the CP and there on the other were me & elvis & sweet baby james apparently just waiting for this email like we were dying of thirst and it was a vinegar-soaked sponge on a stick. we replied with a level of alacrity normally reserved for exiting burning buildings and with craftsmanship worthy of a hand-tooled corinthian leather saddle. predictably, our ripostes were met with deafening silence -- pebbles thrown in a bottomless wishing well. the CP sends out. the CP does not responday-voos. pathetic pavlovian predictability. we all learned early from the book of the shaman, chapter 11, verse 17 - thou shalst admirest best he who deservest least and thou shalst covet his attentions, lest thou receivest peltadation of footware upon thine scapula.

::SIGH::

yeah, i am just ticked on account of UT losing today in what was a bit of a predictable performance. tatum and goins got out of control, trying to do to much. chism sank some 3s but couldn't get anything going inside. williams got so worn out he couldn't run the floor. pearl hacked and clawed his way into a mediocre performance. hopson couldn't hit the ocean, even from the free throw line. prince got in foul trouble.

::SIGH::

i think i'll do something wacky & unpredictable like make a pot of javajoe and write in my freakin blog. woo. hoo.

i should be doing laundry but instead i am writing this.

i took off running this morning without a plan other than to go 10 miles, so of course the first decision i made was to head down the ginormous hill we live on. i am tootling on down wondering which way i'll decide to go when it sort of dawns on me there are subdivisions all around with their fancy-schmancy stone entrances off the main road. so turn in the first one. and, it's up hill. straight. up. like for a mile. great decision, ace!

these subdivisions go nowhere. there are a couple that connect in some way to each other but that's it - there's one way to the main road. period. one of them even had a "dead end" sign which i thought had all been replaced by the softer "no outlet". apparently not.

so, they have no thru traffic, ergo - they are quiet. very quiet. eerily quiet. maybe it IS dead end. gah! no, seriously... what's missing is the children. there are no children in these subdivisions. a few yards have swingsets and a few drives have basketball hoops and i did see three bicycles in one yard. but no children to play on the equipment.

one wonders, where have all the children gone?

i have a few theories.

1 - all the children have grown up. when mini-me was but a wee tyke, many of her cohort lived in these subdivisions. the kids grew up. the parents stayed. in all my travels this morning, i saw like 2 houses for sale. stable neighborhoods peopled with old folk who are too decrepit to remove the swingsets from the backyard.

2 - all the children have been raptured off to organized sports. i'll admit that when mini-me was but a wee tyke, she particpated in her fair share of organized sports, but in our defense, that was all the rage then. we didn't know about The Value of Unstructured Playtime. we knew about The Neighborhood Boogieman. we knew you couldn't just let kids outside to play. they had to be watched or someone might snatch them up. but now, it's simply overdone. there's too much participation and not enough sport. but, that's another argument for another day.

3 - all the children are inside playing video games and eating cheetos.

4 - there are no children in these neighborhoods. the swingsets are for the grown-ups but they were sleeping in.

5 - there weren't really any swingsets, basketball hoops, or bicycles. i premagined it all.

6 - all the children were playing on all the equipment, but they all hid when i came into view. or, they were disguised as play equipment so that they could go outside & play and not be in danger of a boogie-nabbing. or they all have invisibility cloaks. or they are all invisible.

7 - all the children blew away in a storm.

8 - there is a morning curfew on these neighborhoods, and the children aren't allowed to go outside and play before 10AM.

9 - all the children were still asleep.

10 - all the children have turned into flowers.

live blogging from the barrel

i can hear the guy across the room smacking his food. really smackie mcsmackerton? really?

i ordered the shrimp boil. i bet it's authentic cajun.

today the odometer in the little soldier rolled over to 144000. i snapped a pic but can't post it with this app. 144000. i am not a numerology expert but i believe that means she's one of the chosen ones.

tonight i was looking around the bath supply closet for some lotion and i found some juniper breeze! score!!

so tonight was futbol and we were playing this team that is reallygood and we are okaygood and sometimes have flashes of brilliance, but we are not reallygood. we are more like solid and reliable and that is how we usually win - by basically just wearing folks down with our solidarity. so it was going to be a tough game and in the past this team has like taken our butts and kicked them around and then handed them back to us like - here, have your beaten butts back, loooosers!! so, anyway, tonight the final score was 4-3 which really isn't all that bad considering that we won. heh.

after the game i stopped at chick-fil-a b/c that is the après futbol thang and i picked up for me & my old man our usual, two #2s. #2... heh. in case you don't know what is a #2... well maybe you should axt yo mama! haha! okay, so a #2 [heh.] at chick-fil-a is the grilled chicken sammich. i get mine with extra pickles. sometimes we get the #2 [!] meal and sometimes just the sammiches. if we get the meals, i get a coke zero with mine.

what? are you bored?

okay, so here's the controversy. chick-fil-a uses bags that are too small! i know, right?! why do they do that?! stuffing all that food in one bag, and the fries are all sticking out the top all like "hello! hello!" and you know they are getting cold sticking out there!! jeez!!! i am not going to eat them in the car - at least not ALL of them - and even if i were you could still put the stuff in a properly sized sack!!!! it's all with the stuffed-out-ness and the falling-over-ness!!!!! it's terrible, really!!!!!! a tragedy!!!!!!! tonight i was trying to get the bag to fold over, just even a wee tiny bit, just to keep the poor wittle fwies warms till i got them home... and the freaking bag TORE!!!!!!!! i know, right?! incroyable!!!!!!!!!

not tonight but during a previous visit to chick-fil-a, the ginormous suv in front of me placed a big order and then didn't drive all the way clear from the speaker and then took forever getting their food and i was all like - gah! but when they got their food it was 3 ice creams which the driver handed around the giant vehicle followed by a bag of food and so what i am guessing here is that they were having their dessert first and i just thought that was kind of cool so i forgave the driver for being a bit of a wanktard.

this concludes chicken chat. thanks for tuning in.

in conclusion, gerard butler is a bit of a wanker.

i am lately on a bit of a pita chip jag. i don't recall what inspired me to buy that first packet... lo those many days ago... last saturday. it's simply just merely too long ago. at any rate, i did purchase a packet of chips dela pita and ate the entire thing like at once. OMG! they are delishus! so i bought some more and then some more when those were gone. pita chips... it's an odd concept, really. chips of bread. they purposefully produce pita chips and bagel chips, but if it were sourdough, it would not be chips, it would be croutons. if it were roman meal, it would not be chips, it would be toast.

so i purchased them like last saturday and here's a concept i am never very good at - "next" saturday. like, if this is thursday, and you say «i will be running that 5k marathon next saturday» i would think you meant the next available saturday which will be occurring in 2 days, but [i have learned this through trial & trial] actually what you mean is the saturday which will be occurring in like... 9 days. right? 2 + 7 = 9. so with "next" whateverday i always have to think about it and then do a math equation which is quite a challenge.

speaking of challenges - i am throwing down the gauntlet, proposing the challenge, putting out the double-dog dare. okay, so here it is. tonight while i was fixing [surprise!] breakfast for supper i gathered up and carried across the kitchen in one trip:

1 bottle organic catsup
1 jar strawberry jelly
1 jar peanut butter
2 coffee cups [empty]
1 small pitcher milk
1 fork, 1 knife, 1 spoon
1 packet pita chips
1 pot coffee [full]

there really should be a guiness book record for this, but since there's not [their snot!], i am throwing down TO THE WHOLE WORLD! you will never be as great as i, not even if you always try!

so there.

this is a bonus post for today. you're welcome.

so first i went to steinmart to take back the stuff that didn't fit b/c you would think if you wear a 27 lucky you wear a 27 chinese laundry, but nooooo. sizes are wacktard. the last stop i made was at target where i found what i believe are exactly the sweaters i have been seeking - by which of course i mean the sweaters they have had for weeks have finally gone on sale - although because i waited for them to be on sale i had to settle for a small in the black, but then there's really not that much difference between a small and a medium. more evidence that sizes are wacktard.

in between steinmart & target, i went to dick's [heh...] to see if they had the black lady hagen skort i was wanting and yes they did. javalujah! i think i got a too big size, but i tried it on and it seemed right. it's a larger size than my other 2 LHs, but if we have established anything at this point is it that sizes are wacktard.

so i went to pay for the skort and the line was soooo slow and then the guy in front of me was all with showing the cashier these futbol socks that he was going to purchase. and by showing i don't mean show-and-tell fishing for compliments - i mean pointing out some dirt on the cuff of the sock. you could tell the cashier firstly had to really look hard to see the dirt and secondly was thinking this guy was a wacktard because if the socks are dirty, then just put them back and get another pair or for heaven's sakes take them home and warsh them. but then of course, the crux of the case of the dirty sock was that he wanted a discount. "how much can you give me off for this dirt?" she was like... "uh... 10% is the best i can do." he took the 10% which is a fairly solid amount for someone who was certainly standing at the sock rack stealthily stepping on socks.

when it became my turn, i approached gracefully, gently laid the skort on the counter, and whilst tenderly smoothing the fabric i looked the cashier knowingly in the eye and quietly stated, "there is absolutely nothing wrong with this skort, but i want a discount, too."

she smiled. she said she was glad to know "someone else saw that". she gave me 10% off my purchase.

the moral of this story is: 10% discounts come in wackatudinous packages.

who would do that to a rabbit??

back in the day, we didn't have velcro and we had to tie our shoes like real humans. i remember not knowing how to tie my shoes b/c there was this big chart on the kindeygarden wall with everyone's name and a bold notification of whether or not each could tie their shoes. i could not. then, i could. perhaps i osmosed the knowledge. or, it was an extremely traumatic experience which i have purged from the memory banks. or, perhaps i purged it simply to make room for something more fascinating, since this clearly is not fascinating at all.

so i could not tie them and then i could and i don't remember learning, ergo i don't remember being taught so i don't know who taught me, but they taught me wrong. the way i throw under with the left hand on the first pass makes the bow come out wonky and it invariably hits me in the ankle, so i have to do a double knot and run the lace back thru to make it leave me the hell alone. i thought that everyone had to do this. turns out, not so much. other people throw under differently and end up with a nice, flat bow.

i deduced this by trial & error and started utilizing a different throwing-under motion. i thought i would start doing it this new way all the time, as this way seemed better. but then i missed my old, wonky bows and my left-handed throw under, and i was afraid i would lose this primordial part of me altogether - this part of me from the mysterious nowhere, the lost memory of learning to tie shoes.

so i went back to the old way. i like my wonky bows - they are my heritage.

would a CIA agent really write in a little paper notebook with an inkpen instead of using a computer...? really...?

watching a bit of the march madness, i have formulated my opinion on two very important issues - the boys's basketball uniforms and the girls's cheerleading uniforms.

on the basketball court for quite a few years now the unis have been growing to become long shorts, some nearly to the ankle, and baggy tank tops with big loopy arm holes through which are sometimes visible the manboob and really, nobody wants to see that. during this year's tourney i have seen something amazing - basketball players's knees! shorts are actually short[er]. this is a good thing because surely they can run faster than in those gaucho style britches. there is also a new style of jersey that came out a couple years ago and is getting more widespread use. it's tighter with more-fitted armholes. it's overall a better, more tailored look and has got to be easier to move in.


on the edges of the basketball court for quite a few years now the cheerleaders's unis have been taking the opposite tack - they've been getting smaller and smaller to the point where some of them look like bikinis and while this may be visually appealing to some folk, i contend that's simply not the sort of appeal that needs to be part of a basketball game. sorry. it's just not. this year i've noticed quite a few of the cheer girls wearing sequined halter tops + black pants. it's just as appealing as the bikini in a not-completely-in-your-face way. this world could do with a bit more subtlety.

thought for monday

on the oprah show promo spots for today, she is saying in a really somber voice, "her husband was peddling human flesh" and i am fairly certain this poor woman's husband is a pimp, but there is that outside chance il est un boucher, eh?

gather ye rosebuds while ye may

back in the day, i was quite proficient in the français. i once won an award for reciting a poem with the proper accent. or, i guess, no accent at all since the goal would be to have the recitation sound as if one were a native speaker de la français which now that i think about it doesn't make too much sense because there are all sorts of different accents within the range of normal language so i guess what we need here is for me to get specific and say "no accent of the teenaged american varietal".

anyway.

i won an award, so i must have done it correctly, and there is really nothing like winning an award to inspire you to further heights of success so i continued to delve into français and imagined i might one day be a translator at the UN. i took français classes in college and took up smoking clove cigarettes b/c nothing says "i am a true intellectual of the european varietal" quite like holes in your clothing from the sparks of a burning cookie spice.

in college we read candide in français and i thought at first that i just didn't get the français quite like i thought i did, but then i realized that candide is a stupid book and i felt better about my français skills. of course, after school i allowed my skills to lapse but just as of-course, i fancied myself still fluent in français.

pan forward 15 years to a time when i am visiting montréal on bidness and i was all excited to use my skills de français. i attempted reading la presse which is montréal's newspaper de français. you can probably not deduce this so i will tell you that la presse means "the press" in english. see how fluent i am? so i was reading la presse and was horrified to learn that a guy who had chopped up some kid with an axe was loose on the streets of montréal. this was really frightening to me, so i tuned in to the local english speaking news to get the latest details on the manhunt and realized after a few moments that i had the story prigzactly bassackwards and the guy was not loose but had been nabbed. it is possible that i was wrong about the axe thing, also, and that his crime was maybe robbing something perhaps like a gas station.

the poem i memorized is ronsard's pour hélène. my memory holds the paltry quantity of the first two lines but i can still recite those two lines to perfection.

Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la chandelle,
Assise auprès du feu, dévidant et filant,
Direz, chantant mes vers, en vous émerveillant :
Ronsard me célébrait du temps que j’étais belle.

Lors, vous n’aurez servante oyant telle nouvelle,
Déjà sous le labeur à demi sommeillant,
Qui au bruit de mon nom ne s’aille réveillant,
Bénissant votre nom de louange immortelle.

Je serai sous la terre et fantôme sans os :
Par les ombres myrteux je prendrai mon repos :
Vous serez au foyer une vieille accroupie,

Regrettant mon amour et votre fier dédain.
Vivez, si m’en croyez, n’attendez à demain :
Cueillez dès aujourd’hui les roses de la vie.

all things being equal, today is the first day of spring.

so like last august i sent off for these free prizes that were offered as part of a promotion for the book the magicians by lev grossman. i was all like wooowooo free prizes! and then they didn't show up.

so i emailed to check on it, and the pub coordinator was like, "oh yeah i'll get right on that sorry!" and so i waited again and then nothing and then emailed and got no reply and no prizes and kept emailing and then after a while i started emailing "hello? is anyone there?" type of emails and then suddenly a few days ago i received another "oh yeah i'll get right on that sorry!" and then yesterday i received a package containing the promotional item which is these buttons that i took a couple pics of for you - 1 above & 1 below. they are buttons like the kind that you pin on your jansport but they represent buttons like you secure your fly with. buttons apparently play a part in the book.

also in the package was... the actual book!

the. actual. hardback. book.

and it's got those rough-edged untrimmed pages that are the ultimate cool and so i am opening it up & looking and all, like totally smelling the paper which is probably TMI but too bad. and there on the title page - is mr grossman's signature! omg! a signed copy!

of course, his signature looks like that drawing in the little prince of that snake that ate the boy or the hat or whatever that drawing is, and i don't have a veri-sign subscription so i cannot know for sure, but i am just going to accept this on faith that it's mr grossman's siggy and say that the moral of this story is that if you pester a pub coordinator you will get something great.

tinker tailor beggarman thief richman poorman indian chief

the other day at the 5k i saw elvis's friend teacherman. i would venture to say if you axt teacherman he would say that ace is his friend and that's fine, he can say that ace is his friend, but i wouldn't go so far as to say teacherman is my friend. you might say it doesn't have to be so complicated but i am here to tell you that it's not that simple. the concept of friendship has been facebooked. it's like this: i know teacherman. i like teacherman. when i see teacherman, i greet him with a big "teacherman!" and because i am just that way i will hug his neck. but i don't exchange emails with teacherman and i've never been to his home. we don't call on the weekend to see whuzzup and we don't go for a run or meet for drinks at the pub or travel together for a beach vacation. teacherman is solid good guy of the old-fashioned good guy variety and would be a valuable asset as a friend. i would not be ashamed to call him my friend if he were, but it's a shame to devalue the concept of friend by assigning the label to those who are something less.

* ^ * ~~~

~
i am not your marionette
when you say jump
i will not ask how high
i am not your do girl
when you beck
i will not answer the call
i am not your golem
~
you are not the boss of me
no one died and left you king
you don't tell me what to do
i don't answer to the likes of you
~
you are not my geppetto
when you say dance
i will not move my feet
you are not my solomon
when you command
i will not obey
you are not my frankenstein
~
you are not the boss of me
no one died and left you king
you don't tell me what to do
i don't answer to the likes of you
~

you are what you are

she wanted a drink but she had 30 minutes to make a commute worth 45 and a lucrative deal waiting on the other end. not to mention it was 8AM. she felt a piece of her slipping, careening out of control, but it was not the piece that said don't start drinking at 8AM. she placed the ring back more gently than she meant, into a soapdish that had never held soap... yet another destiny unfulfilled in this house... then turned and left the bathroom, jogged up the stairs to the third floor - the "second storey" she reminded herself. what a farce, what a focking farce. "second storey". he was from goddam pittsburgh, for crissake. pittsburgh. she grabbed her jansport and looking to the dresser for her keys, finally realised what else he'd taken and knew for certain then that he wasn't coming back.

bleed out

the first cut is the deepest
how long till i bleed out
bleed out
a gallon of blood wrapped around these bones
how long till i bleed out
what will it take till i bleed out
till i bleed you out
of me

what have you got to lose

that damn ring. it had always meant more to him than it did to her. what was the point of leaving it? why? she spiraled from anger to sorrow and back again but didn't stop until she was laughing, hysterically, uncontrollably, to tears. it wasn't the time they'd spent together, the places they'd gone, the memories they'd built, the friends who would now be pestering her for answers, explanations that she could not even begin to grasp for herself, much less supply to others. it was none of those things because theirs was not a relationship of memories or time or shared friendships. theirs was a relationship of pushing, pushing against each other, always pushing. and without him there to push against, she wasn't clear about standing up at all.

remind us of what we are not now

as she moved through the morning rituals, coffee, run, wash... she began to understand. he'd taken the corpse of their relationship from where it had been lying on the floor and left in its wake only the stark truth of the chalk outline. what he had taken was gone and she couldn't name it except by inventory of what he'd left - the khakis, the oxford cloth, the tie she'd bought him to wear at dinner that night in the poconos. if he had taken books she wouldn't know it because she never knew what was on those shelves at all. absent the form of whatever had existed between them, there was so little to bear witness to its ever having existed at all. he had taken their cash, his guitar, that stupid jacket - and had left the ring, in a soapdish by the sink in the guest bathroom on the 2nd floor.

tuesday mourning

it wasn't until tuesday that she noticed he was gone and while that said a bit more about her weekend than it did about their relationship... any relationship that lent itself to those sorts of weekends couldn't be called "solid". first it was his guitar that was missing but then it was also that jacket she hated so much, and while someone might have stolen the guitar, no one would steal that jacket. she wondered what else he'd taken and realised she did not know enough about what belonged to know what was missing. not that it mattered, any of it, all of it, it was just crap really. she had more on her mind than things, and more on her mind than him or even the "them" that had gone missing with his guitar and that stupid jacket.

karma baskets

yesterday my old man won his golf match and i had a great footrace in which i would have to say the concept of winning is a bit complicated, but still & all it was a good day for our personal athletic prowess so in return karma punished us by making UT and vandy both lose their basketball games in the SEC tournament. we agreed that we would rather win ourselves than have our teams win - because, you know, we get to make that type of decision.

i am now going to try to explain my thoughts on a particular facet of basketball so if you aren't into basketball, you are welcome to not let the door hit you on the way out.

in basketball first you have fouls to give b/c unless it's a shooting foul the other team just gets the ball. then after 7 fouls you go into the 1+1 which means if it's not a shooting foul, the other team gets to shoot two free throws but they have to make the first to get a chance at the second. then if you keep fouling after 10 fouls you get into the double bonus where for a non-shooting foul the other team gets two free throws and they get to shoot the second even if they miss the first. then that's it but sometimes towards the end of the game one team will start fouling in order to stop play and regain the ball, and there's no further consequence besides the double bonus so i propose the 2+1 and the triple bonus. the 2+1 would be like the 1+1 except you get to take the 2nd shot even if you miss the first one, but if you miss the 2nd you don't get to take the third. then the triple bonus is three free throws. the 2+1 could go in at like 14 fouls and the triple bonus at like 18.

i think this is a super idea but i don't know how to implement it. thanks in advance for taking care of the implementation for me. you're a doll.

23:42 on my watch, 23:44 on the chip

the alarm went off at 5am and my first reaction was 'isn't it saturday?' to which i replied 'yes. you are the dork who signed up for a 5k. get your arse outta bed.' so i obeyed myself which is generally a good rule of thumb. got up, drank a glass of water and ate a banana and sipped some coffee and took a shower and got dressed and suddenly i was late. gah!

getting dressed could possibly have contributed to the lateness because it was cool enough to wear the compression tights. yay! but i put them on a little wonky and if you have ever been trapped in wonky compression tights you know this is Not Good. the compression has a bit of a mind of it's own and when the tights aren't on straight, you just better hope you're racing in a circle. i couldn't decide which shirt to wear but when i got out the shirts - there was the day-glo yellow! perfect! that shirt is the perfect weight for the weather and plus, who doesn't like day-glo? i did wear shorts over my tights and if you think that is dorky then just see paragraph #1 b/c i have clearly already established myself as a dork. the shorts protect the tights if i need to sit on the curb and pluswise they have a pocket for my car key. i'd rather be dorky than stressed about carrying my freaking key.

so then i was still sort of on time but gathering all my stuff together took forever so then i was really late. should have done that last night. yeah, well, I DIDN'T SO SHUT UP. a bonus of running a bit late is that it's the perfect excuse to drive 85mph to get there. not that i would do that or ever advocate speeding or breaking any laws of any kind ever. i am just saying it would be a good excuse.

got there. checked in. received bib, chip, tee shirt. i tend to be a bit angsty about the chip so i was glad to get someone else to tie it on my shoe, specifically dr monkey - the guy who was going to pace me in this auspicious event after phastguy bailed. dr monkey was being a sport but wasn't approaching things with quite the same enthusiasm as phastguy because he had been sick and wasn't sure he could even keep the pace for himself. some of his lame anxiety was wafting all over me which didn't bode well but then he was like - finish getting ready, you have some work to do.

work? me?

turns out that having someone pace you only means they will run with you and try to help you stay on pace. it doesn't mean they are going to bodily carry you across the line. who knew? dr monkey wanted to warm up. okay. great. no problem. we yogged around for like 20 freaking minutes! who warms up for 20 minutes?? wearing me out before the race even gets started!

no seriously, this little 20 minute jaunt sort of highlighted for me in bright day-glo letters that having someone pace you is a committment on both sides. the pacer commits to help but you commit to be real about trying. seeing as i have no problems with committment of any sort, as soon as i realized what was expected of me, i was completely on board. which of course means i just about bailed right there.

but it was too late for bailing because dr monkey brilliantly executed the warm up to put us at the start line about 2 minutes before the gun went off. 'bout as well run, now that we're here. jeebux.

so we took off and had to weave in & out and around just a few people then we found a place and we were off & running. he said we were going too fast, which was quite a relief to hear, but it turned out "going too fast" meant like 10 seconds too fast. trust me, unless you are really experienced you are not going to feel a 10 second slow down in pace. the first mile is a lap around the stadium and we passed the first mile at like 7:30 or so which was still a little fast.

we had gone only one mile.

i thought maybe i had bit off more than i could chew here, axt for too much. we had not even gone halfway and i was already worn out. freaking stupid 20 minute warm up! freaking stupid 5k! freakin stupid wankette in her sports bra! nobody wants to see that, you wankette!! everyone here is stupid and this is the stupidest thing ever and i am just going to quit!

apparently i started maybe hyperventilating a bit b/c dr monkey was all - control your breathing, control your breathing. and i was all OKAY FINE and so i did try to relax and breathe and at this point my legs were still moving which was good and he wasn't just running off and leaving me... and then he was sort of running off and leaving me. so i am trying to keep up and he's all - don't slow down, don't slow down. and of course i can't talk because there is not enough air in the world to simply maintain my breathing or else i would have pointed out that maybe he was speeding up or something. and then he goes - this is mile three.

wait. what?

we have only gone two miles?!

no way. i cannot run another mile-point-one. no. cannot do it. i am just going to lay down here and die. right here. die. and he's all - don't slow down and breathe easy and just breathe & run, that is all you have to think about and look at all those people we are in front of, you are beating all those people and keep it up, don't slow down, breathe. i managed to gasp - i am dizzy, and he's a dr and all so he's real helpful with that, he goes - you can fall down after you cross the finish line. thanks, doc.

so we make it back to the stadium and at this point there's a problem with my legs not paying attention anymore and i am thinking, like hell you are going to quit on me now! and i am focusing on the breathing and the moving and the not falling over and dr monkey is all - you are stronger than you think. and i am thinking, if you want to know how strong i am let's just stop this nonsense right now and throw down b/c i will punch your freaking lights out for this!

and then THANK HERMES we are at the stadium entrance and down the ramp with dr monkey still with the "go faster" crap and out into the stadium for the loop around the grass so i suck up what little there is left, just suck it up, and i finally pass that idiotic 9 year old girl and that old guy that must be her father. there is nothing like passing a child on the last lap to really make you feel STRONG!

and so then i crossed the line and it was over. all the fretting and planning and imagining is over just like that and no matter how many different ways you had imagined it, the concrete of time has set around this event and it is what it is. for me, it's a lifetime PR, it's knowing that i put in a maximum sustained effort, it's knowing that i can do it... although not without help. not yet at least. maybe not ever. that's another decision for another day.

i did learn a bit about having a pacer and it's different than i had imagined. this person is sacrificing their race for your race, and even if they weren't going to race-race, they are sacrificing their time, effort, strength, and sleep for you. they are making a donation of themself in the bank of you. the return on their investment is that you will get your goal time. so they are going to protect this investment by making you warm up properly and keeping an eye on you during the race, not let you just sort of drift back unnoticed. they can't physically pull you so they pull you with words, a stream of unrequited chatter b/c you're too frogged to talk, and while most of what they say to you is encouraging, there's an element of bullying in it. that sounds a little harsh maybe, but they are committed to not letting you quit. that's the bargain: you say, i will try my best to do this and they say, i will not let you quit.

it's humbling, in a way. not humiliating. no one is there to make you feel bad about yourself. it's all about helping you achieve a goal. but the co-dependence of having someone else involved that way, it's humbling. like training wheels. i came in 9th place woman and 2nd in my age group and most of all achieved my goal of sub-24 so it was a good race, but if i had known what i was asking when i asked someone to pace me, i never would have asked. never. i cannot imagine how painful it must be to have someone do something real for you, like save your life, and i am amazed that people stand it.

i realise that 5k is running competition not fashion competition but don't you think the raspberry-coloured sniglet will make me run more fasterly?

for my next trick, i will grab some things that i didn't know i wanted to read.

ridicularious
today i made up this word: ridicularious. it's a combination of ridiculous and hilarious, as in "that's ridiculously hilarious!" - "that's ridicularious!" you are welcome to use this anytime you want b/c i have opted not to register it as a trademark. the only requirement is that when you use it, you think of me because i could really use some gold stars in my karma bucket.

as a general rule, i refuse to provide that which does not exist.

one ringie-dingie
i have lately been getting calls at work from a collection agency. i don't answer them and they don't leave messages - but i know it's a collection agency b/c i reverse look 'em up. today, they finally left a message -- for adelicia roadhouse. my name is not adelicia roadhouse. my name is ace. clearly ms roadhouse faked the number on her credit app. i would venture to say with a name like adelicia roadhouse that she faked the name, too. my phone's on a trunk line, so you wouldn't even know the number existed. you could say her choosing my number was serendipitous but only if you didn't know the meaning of that word because what she did is pretty much the opposite of serendipitous.

never put a ladybug in your mouth. they are not as tasty as you might have been lead to believe.

snack facts
today at the non-food-vendor vendor meeting, the non-food-vendor vendor brought malted milk balls in vanilla & strawberry, which i lurve, and izzes which i thought were high in sugar but which are in fact fruit juice with no added sugar, and a chocolate cake from zoë's which when they cut this cake the icing made a marvelous crunchcrunchcrunch because unlike the izze it was la-ho-ded with sugar. but i didn't eat it b/c i don't like chocolate. she is really good at this food thing and if she ever lost her job as a non-food-vendor vendor she could probably be a food vendor or she could be a caterer for non-food-vendor vendor meetings.

there is no i in stupid.

3312
today at the non-food-vendor vendor meeting, coworker found in the sample book the item she wanted. it was #3312. vendor axt for the number. this convo ensued:
--
coworker - «three three one twelve.»
vendor - «three three one twelve?»
coworker - «yes, right below three three oh two. three three one twelve.»
vendor - «three three one two.»
coworker - «yes, three three one twelve.»
--
from my perch, i could peruse vendor's paisley-patterned project planning pad, so i observed her record the order thusly: 332. 3.3.2. between the all of us, it's a wonder we can produce an order worthy of ladybugs on toast.

because water ends up in the valley, we believe it naturally flows downhill... but we don't know what it's doing while we aren't watching.

say for instance you've just gotten out of the shower and therefore you have water on your skin. you want to put your clothes on without getting them all wet because then they'll stick to you and that's just annoying. how will you remove the water from your skin without getting it on the clothes you want to wear?

you could air dry, but firstly, that can take quite a while so maybe you don't have that kind of time and perhaps also let's say you wanted to have a cuppa javajoe right then, well sorry but you cannot just take off traipsing thru the house with your air drying self unless you live alone in a house with no windows because to be perfectly honest, no one wants to see that. lastly, the air dry method is not recommended in public places such as locker rooms, prisons, or grocery stores.

a sort of extension to the air dry method is to use an air accelerator [aka, blow dryer] to heat and velocitize the air. this is really a superior idea if you ignore the fact that you are soaking wet and standing in a puddle and reaching for an electrical appliance.

another option would be to put on some clothes you don't want to wear and allow them to desorb the water from your skin, and then change into the clothes you wanted to wear. this sounds like a great idea, but it doesn't really pan out because besides that terry romper from 1974, clothing is just not that absorbent.

you could waggle all around and shake off the water like a dog does, but trust me, this one doesn't work.
so really what you need is a device specifically designed to remove the water from your skin. i suggest: the towel. wah-lah! the primary purpose of a towel is to increase the dryness of the surrounding area by increasing the wetness of itself. a towel causes liquid to desorb from its existing location into the towel. a towel also doubles as a stellar piece of temporary clothing for traipsing thru to get that javajoe.

HOWEVER

not all towels are created equal.

in the realm of hotel towels - those big, fluffy towels that you'll get in a fancy hotel are wacked out. you touch your wet skin with those things and i swear those towels are like - "oh, no you di'nt!" they don't want to have anything to do with being wet because they are delusional and think they are too good for water. much better are those skinny little towels you get in a motel6. they are all like - "so... thirsty... so... thirsty..." like they are crawling across the towel desert. they can't wait to soak up some soapy skinwater.

then you have your beach towels - those brightly-coloured decorated items with the one side all soft like velvet. these are useless desorbers. aluminum foil soaks up more water. they are, however, nice to sit on, so they really belong less in the "towel" group and more in the genus "furniturea".

there is an inverse relationship between the cost of towels and their performance of the basic towel duty of absorption. of the 5 towels i have that are the most bestest at being towels, 3 came from big lots and 2 were free. the ones from big lots i got many years ago before big lots went upscale. yes, they did and if you think they didn't then you have no idea what you are talking about. these towels are well propotioned & well behaved and they cost like $1 each. a towel like that at big lots today would cost you $8 easy. upscalers! the two free towels i got by saving & mailing in bit-o-honey wrappers. they were billed as beach towels but they aren't that useless velvet kind, and they have a big bit-o-honey splashed across with a picture of a bee there buzzing around. i mean, c'mon, who doesn't love bit-o-honey! plus, having that giant-sized bee right there keeps the other bees away. it's like your personal scarebee. what? you don't believe me? well, i use these scarebee towels all the time and i am never bothered by bees, so there you have it.

serendipity in the age of convergence

cleaning off the desk last weekend, i found a piece of paper filled about 3/4 with my handwriting, this date at the top: "4/27/98". 27 april 1998. it's the thesis for that book i was going to write. it reads thusly:

The future of information dissemination is the customized information supply specially designed for each information consumer. Each consumer selects information they want to receive or areas they want to be updated on. This will change the breadth of knowledge. In today's newspaper with its wide mix of stories, consumers see headlines covering a wide variety of topics and may learn about things they would never have known about to request information on. With the customized information delivery, the burden is on the consumer to decide what information they wish to receive. But by setting up filters for information they receive, consumers will reinforce existing belief systems and stereotypes by selecting information they need to support their existing points of view. Each consumer will become more isolated and more convinced that their view of reality is the "real" reality.

well, let's just overlook the stilted style and the preposition-ended sentences and the repetition of the word "information" and let's focus on the fact that i predicted the future. not only is there not serendipity, which implies a sort of pleasant skipping through the newsday and stopping when we see something ooo-shiney, but there is indeed an increased isolation and polarization. but it's not totally caused by the siloization [my blog, my words] of the news sources and not only due to consumer self-selection. it's also caused by the sheer dearth of topics covered by all sources.

google news is supposably an aggregator of the top stories. firstly, that begs the question of who gets to say what stories are on top. secondly, if you ever click on one of those news stories, i am sure that google grabs your IP addy and tags it as a reader of that particular storytype - so there is some self-description going on which likely narrows what's offered. but the front page of google news contains a variety of stories on a variety of topics in a variety of sections. at least, it seems that way, but when you dig a little deeper you'll see there just isn't that much there. for a given headline there are thousands of "related stories". haha. related stories? it's The Same Story over & over again in thousands of newspapers.

where are you supposed to get the variety? even if you seek it out, it remains elusive. try listening to fox [news, not opinion] and listening to npr [news, not opinion] and you will hear the same stories, same headlines. who decides these things are universally important? aren't different stories of interest to different groups?

i am not talking here about opinion, interpretation. there is no shortage of opinion. if you're not able to form opinions you can get plenty of ready-made ones complete with supporting evidence. say for instance i am capable of my own interpretatilizing. where am i to go for the variety of inputs? what i need is a custom designed news feed that will deliver me some serendipity by email.

crayons du numéro deux

today we received this letter and i was all excited thinking it was the censeless survey but alas, not yet. this is the censeless heads up telling us that the censeless survey is on its way and that we should fill it out when it gets here. now, i have it on good authority that the postal service is being bankrupted by the mailman union and is thinking of cutting out saturday delivery because the weight of the burden of the mail is just getting to be too much altogether, but i'd have to say it's a good thing that the censeless bureau didn't hear about that because hows elses would they have gotten this very important heads up note to us?

how do i know it's important? well, jeebux, isn't it oblivious? you can tell it's important because of how they've included instructions in many languages there at the bottom, languages such as korean and russian and of course espanglish but of course not french because everyone knows that the only place they speak french around here is in canadiana.

of course here's another thing they didn't know - they really didn't need to specially ask me to fill out the censeless because i am an avid filler-outer. i like the forms with their little circles all in columns and their "black or blue ink only" stipulation or even better - "#2 pencils only". ooo! #2 pencils! [heh... #2....] seriously, i love me some forms. mmm... forms... with their _______ and their ◘ ○ ◙ and their ░▒░▒ and their "none of the above" "all of the above". i enjoy writing my demographic facts in little boxes. forms are like a hobby to me. you could call me a hobbyjotter.

in that song "tonight's gonna be a good night" - they say 'saturday' twice - friday saturday & saturday sunday -- twice!!

it's monday night!! chuck+24!! a little funny play spying followed by a little serious play spying. nothing like a little spy monday to hold ya over until football season rolls around... six freakin long months from now.

speaking of football, next football season is going to be a bit strange. i really haven't followed it all that closely, but something is up with the financial aspect. no salary cap? no salary floor? everyone's a free agent? i don't know. all i know for sure is that kyle vanden bosch is gone to detroit to be a lion. i will try to figure this out for you and update you appropriately. i know you're concerned.

speaking of concerned, i am having some serious pain in my right pinkie and i am fairly certain this is caused by too much tetris. wait. what? too much tetris? there's no such thing as too much tetris! pluswise, you don't use your pinkie in tetris, so maybe i am wrong about the cause. exceptwise, it kind of hurts when i am desperately clutching the DS2 machine turning those little blox and turning and turning and turning them and turning them and blox turning blox and turning them turning turning turning....

hey, speaking of blox, tonight at the publix i was perusing the plastic cutlery and there beside the non-silver silverware were these little paper cups in a shrink-wrapped stack and on the stack was the label: gelatin shot cups. oh me goush!! what has the world come to when right there in the piquenique aisle is some sort of drinking paraphernalia?? next thing you know they will be selling beers in cans and wines in boxes. oh me goush!

obsession redux

she wears her affectations like a crown
cold and polished
distant
sparkling
they are so pretty and they are hers
she is theirs
together they travel through life
side by side, hand in hand they walk this path
they have each other
they always have each other
they only have each other
you say familiarity breeds contempt
but she has never been more in love
than tonight
in the lights
alone

obsession

he wears his affectations like an old tee shirt
familiar and stained
comfortable
dirty
they are not pretty but they are his
he is theirs
together they travel through life
side by side, hand in hand they walk this path
they have each other
they always have each other
they only have each other
you say familiarity breeds contempt
but he has never been more in love
than tonight
in the dark
alone

livebloggin from the barrel

got a lot to do today so of course we slept in then headed to the barrel for some breakfast. trying to get motivated to accomplish all the paperwork but you know the further it deteriorates the harder it is to dig in.

wait. they are singing happy birthday in the next room. i didn't know they did that at the barrel. don't you have to pay a royalty to sing that in public?

hey do busboys get paid by the decible?! jeebux.

----

later that same day....

i just reread this and realize that it sounds like i am saying the busboys were singing loudly and that was not the case. they were loudly crashing dishes into their little busboy tubs. and, i really did think there was some prohibition against singing "happy birthday" in public. perhaps that is an urband legend.

taking your shoes off when you enter the home doesn't make you japanese.

in my town there is a store called batteriesPLUS and this store sells only batteries.

except for those of freebird and hotel california, guitar solos are pretentious acts of soul-destroying boredom.

coworker is sick. coworker sent an email to several folks earlier this week to name the illness and explain the absence. this raised a sort of reddish flag. a pink flag, if you will. it was borderline TMI but forgivable in light of the febrile state. the following email followed the following day: «if i make it in today at all, i will be in around noon. i finally got some sleep last night so i know i am getting better. please prioritize what you want me to do so that i can make the best use of my time.» jeebux. firstly, what is with the whinging? poor pitiful you. do you really want to play this victim card? i mean, we are all going through something, and you don't know what we are going through would make your illness-bel-grande look like the common cold - b/c we have enough discretion not to talk about it. bottom line - you're making a fool of yourself. secondly, you are asking us to prioritize your work and i can't think of a single situation when it's a good idear to put a committee in charge of your to-do list. ask people who officially answer to committees, they will tell you what a bad idear this is.

my boots arrived, but my killers cd did not. where is it? where? where?

the local teevee station of which we watch the newscast has on staff 5 meteorologists and 1.5 sportscasters. obviously they put a higher value on weather than sport. we put a higher value on sport, so i am really not clear on why we are watching this station. oh, i remember. inertia.

today the non-food-vendor vendor showed up with a tub of butter mints. i am fairly certain these are made with crack.

i forgot to put a title so i came back by and added a title. a title. a title title title.

BOOTQUESTE2010!! purchased, received, and wore these today. they are pretty much exactly what i was looking for except that they have soft silent soles. i would rather have that sharp clickity-clackity sole, but for $30 i'd say they are keepers.

update on things i will never do or be: treehouse resident and corps of engineers member. update on things still possible: hiking the appy trail and getting a tattoo. stay tuned for continual updates on these and other riveting ace-life issues.

currently, ace is watching the vandy wimmens playing arkansas in the SEC tourney and this one arkansas player has a sort of odd free throw motion. she dribbles a couple times and then kinda holds the ball out as if she were receiving a pass and then she goes into a normal motion and shoots her free throw. what's with the mime passing? is she playing secret basketball charades?

imdb lists movies that you could possibly be charading by doing "pass":
pass the ammo
pass the mic
pass the time
pass the buck
pass the gravy
pass the dumplins
pass the prunes
pass the sugar
pass the salt
pass the biscuits, mirandy!
pass the apples, eve!
pass the hash, anne!
the forward pass
the lateral pass
the rainbow pass
hall pass
heart by-pass
shotgun pass
khyber pass
ningwu pass
weekend pass
outlaws of stampede pass
raiders of sunset pass
attack at rocky pass
dance at eagle pass
horseman pass by!
press pass to the world!
over the white pass
over the under pass
panorama of ute pass
legend of secret pass
marshal of gunsight pass
myth of jamasha pass
road of elephant pass
this too shall pass
thou shalt not pass
pass
pass
pass

yes, there are three movies listed in imdb simply called "pass" so i am going to have to go with that for her charade because she was just doing that one pass motion.

can you call it a failure if you didn't die doing it?

so sometimes shit happens and you buy a motorcycle. does that mean you have to be stuck with the focker like a freakin albatross around the neck of your life?

fine, you thought it would work out different, but hell that could be the epitaph to the world. «we thought it would work out different.» falls in the category of things that make you go "duh". it goes without saying. OF COURSE you thought it would turn out different. if you thought it would turn out crappy and you did it anyway, well you're a complete idiot. you thought it would turn out different - you're not a complete idiot, you're just kind of a ignernt naïf.

but there is the albatross, sitting in the garage, condemning you daily for your failure, your weakness, your inability, your stupidity, your lack of patience and balance and determination and sheer חֻצְפָּה. daily reminding you that not only are you not at present who you thought you were - you will never be who you thought you already were. will never be. who you thought you already were. will never in the future obtain what you believed you already owned. never. never.

it's not so much that you thought you would be that person - no, it's not so much that as you thought you were that person. you thought you were that person and that all you were missing were the props. but now you have the props so you know what's missing - you are not that person.

and you never will be.

for the sake of the trees

yesterday i heard a story on NPR about this science experiment involving beetles. now in the spectrum of the flora and the fauna, beetles don't rank high on beauty or cleanliness but they are sturdy and i must say they have a certain old-school dignity. beetles, however, are rampantly tearing down the trees so the experimentors are looking for ways to drive the beetles out. this of course begs the question of where the beetles will go, but hey, it's an academic experiment, not a real-world solution.

this particular experiment had to do with trying to disturb the beetles with sounds. the experimentors tried blasting backwards the rantings of rush limbaugh and blaring guns-n-roses "music". neither of these disturbed our stately hard-shelled nemesiseses. then the experimentors tried the aggression calls of the male beetle and found this sound drove the beetles to absolute distraction. the beetles would tear through anything, including plexiglass, to get away from the sound.

they tried playing this sound to a mating beetle couple and found that to get away from the sound, the male would resort to chewing through the female. he literally destroyed his mate to get away from the sound.

if i saw a beetle indoors, i would scoop it up and flush it away. if i saw a beetle outdoors, i would avoid it. i don't like beetles and don't want them near me. if a beetle were on me, i would flick it at the least and stomp it at the most. i don't have a problem with killing beetles or with other people killing beetles.

but there is something savage and just a little sad about driving a guy to kill his mate. i mean, after it's over and they turn off that sound, mr beetle is left looking at his bloody pincers wondering about the magnitude of the blackout that caused him to rip his lover apart.

i don't understand all this talk about the weather underground being radical. i've always found the weather underground to be rather mild.

i like caves. they are cool - 55º all the time. they are also cool as in fun & enjoyable. i have slept overnight in the same cave 2 different times - once with scouts and once with summer camp. sleeping in the cave is especially cool. and, cool.

with summer camp we went on the wild tour and our tour guide was seriously hugenormous. like, he probably weighed 25 stone [that's britspeak for 350 lbs which is britspeak for 159 kg]. so we would crawl through these tiny places and he would walk above us in the wide space and yell down stuff about don't be afraid he'd fall through onto us because the rocks were really strong. i am not sure that without experiencing this yourself you can fully comprehend what an assish thing this was for him to say.

one time i took mini-me and cousin racetrack to a local cave for a day tour. we really had a good time. well, i had a good time and they at least pretended to be enjoying themselves. the highlight of the day [besides the lovely cave sights] was this guy that kept like worming his way into our little group. he was old enough to be my dad and he was there with his wife, but he sort of latched onto us like creepy granddad guy. no, really. he kept acting like the kids's granddad. i wish i could find this one picture i took where the kids were standing about 10 yards away, smiling, and he is like rightthereinfront sort of leaning in from the side with this manic grin on his face. "Hey, Look At Me! Hello!" ha! he was freaking hilarious.

stalactites are on the ceiling and stalagmites are on the ground. "c" for ceiling and "g" for ground. sometimes they grow all the way together. they're formed by tiny little drips of water over the course of billions and billions of years. also found in caves: bats and blind fish. the blind fish will pretty much leave you alone, but the bats can be a little crazy and are likely to poop on you if provoked. hence the phrase: gone batshit.

anyway, here's a picture of the blind fish, for your enjoyment. i was going to do the stalactite-stalagmite picture, but those things look disgusting.