picture pages, picture pages! time to get your picture pages! time to get your crayons and your pencils!

i am down with the chicken philosophy of communication.

---

hey, now... no need to call names.

---

go autism! hup hup hurrah! hup hup hurrah! [trumpet fanfare] for it's a jolly good spectrum, for it's a jolly good spectrum, for it's a jolly good speeeectRUM - that nobody can deny!

---

can you see this? it's a set of passover puppets. PASSOVER PUPPETS!

okay, see at the top we have blood - ew! then going clockwise, there's frogs and the little froggie doesn't look too menacing. what's your problem, pharaoh, it's just a little frogger. next there at 3:00 we have lice and that louse DOES look menacing. following lice we have wild animals, portrayed by a lion who appears to be cousin to goofy and pluto. next up, cattle plagues by which i am sure they mean plagues ON the cattle and not plagues OF cattle, although the latter would be a bit disconcerting. next, boils, represented by one of the three stooges, followed by hail, a.k.a. bozo. at 20:00 we see a locust looking for all the world like larry the cucumber, followed by the penultimate plague: darkness. nothing says "ooo - scary!" like a sleeping house. and in conclusion, the final plague, the firstborn, is in no way funny and should not be joked about.

---

please don't make me explain why this is funny.

and, when i came home, the heater was on! hahahahahaha!! oh, man, THAT'S funny right there, i don't care who you are!

this morning i turned on the television so the local weatherman could tell me whether i needed to wear a jacket and learned that it was a bit overcast but a nice day, really... in LONDON. where the freaking ROYAL WEDDING was taking place. JEEZ people, can't you confine these things to a weddings channel or something? and what's with the adoration - didn't we throw some tea in the river over the thought of having to kowtow to the suzerain?

okay, okay. the royal family generates like $800 million a year for britain in tourist dollars alone. i know, right? unbefreakinlievable. the group who tracks this stuff (who are called, in typically british unimaginative fashion, 'visit britain') said, in typically british understated fashion, the benefit of a royal wedding year is likely to outstrip that. ya think? yeah, well, the point is that the royals are no longer traipsing around the hinterlands roughing up the serfs for sport. they're actually a large business enterprise. as a comparison, i found this about the walt disney company in the first fiscal quarter of 2010 - Disney said after the markets closed that it earned $844 million, or 44 cents a share, compared with $845 million or 45 cents a share in the year-earlier period. that's not just the theme parks, that's the entire disney enterprise. extrapolate that to a year and you get $3376 million. or, is that $3 billion? i don't know how that works. anyway, the POINT here is that the royals generate nearly 1/4 of what the entire disney empire does in one year.

but, all the hooplah aside and all the money aside, the two kids getting married today appeared to be just that - two kids, getting married. lots of smiles, whispers, winks, and kisses, and all their family and friends around to share the love on a balmy british day. quite right, that, eh?

this is one of my favorite pictures from the day. william's whispering something to kate and harry's looking over at his new sister-in-law... i don't know... something about it looks like they're just a bunch of kids heading into life full of hope.



what? you think i am being sentimental and soft hearted? well, why'nt you come over here say that to my FACE!!

imprudent

i had a fight with prudence.
(the stronger will prevailed.)
she said that i was out of line.
i admitted that i failed

to care about her strictures
and all her silly rules.
"you are not the boss of me!"
alas, i am a fool

to think that she would listen,
or that my words held sway.
yes, i went against dear prudence
when i outside today.

don't cry for me belladonna

the world says daytime
sunshine
chocolate
chocolate
oh how the world says chocolate

but i say no
no
like a toddling child
always no
no
you cannot make me
you cannot make me

you cannot
make me
be you

i am nighttime
i am rain
i am vanilla

do we choose to be different because it allows us to remain separate? or do we choose to entwine while our differences pull us apart? because we are different, do we draw lines around ourselves and lines around others and delineate the separation? or do we draw lines because we are all the same and in the sameness we see our mutual collective reflected selves and we are disgusted by the sight of the very thing i hate in myself, in you. get away from me!

sleepy sheep plod like lumbering lemmings,
tumbling bumbling barrelling stumbling
ever madding maddening herd of hogs
over the cliff and into the sea.

belladonna, belladonna, who is that on the other side?

so you search out the dusty tome
and you laugh at yourself
dusty tome
what an idiot
you shake your head
but you find it in a plastic bin
with the mixtape from freshman year
and that postcard jenny sent from paris
and you wonder
can his words express my thoughts
you find it in the index
page 1000
and there it is again
just like you remembered it
a little life with dried tubers
who was it that said
i've loved these days
(i think you know)
and you sigh
and you read it all again
and like the scent of grey flannel and marlboros
and jack
those words bring back all the memories
memories and desires
waking the dull roots of your emotions
and the blood flows back in those sleepy appendages
and you're on pins & needles again
and it hurts
so you cry
and you shake your head
what an idiot
this was all folly

pattern recognition

there is something askew between me and springtime.

everyone is so hahahappy and all woohoo sunshine. makes me want to poke out their eyes. where's your sunshine NOW, bichez?!

when this happened three years ago, i thought it was a fluke. when it happened last year, coincidence. but this year makes three, a pattern. see how well trained i am? i can identify the pattern. one. two. three. sort of begs the question how long has this been going on, but i am not one to go around picking the scabs on the wounds of my soul. i am more of the type who slathers a poetic metaphor over it all.

so come find me in the autumn. if you're still interested, that is.

books 2011

currently:
land of a hundred wonders
[lesley kagen]

complete:
swim to me
[betsy carter]
princess academy
[shannon hale]
the angels game
[carlos ruiz zafon]
they almost always come home
[christina ruchti]
lifeguard training manual
[red cross]
the broker
[john grisham]
queste
[angie sage]
the things we do for love
[kristin hannah]
physik
[angie sage]

this bee flying around here is bothering me.

what is the deal with vacation? why is it always vaguely dissastifying? if you make a list of household chores to accomplish, and you get those done, well that's satisfying in a traditional sense but not satisfying in a restful sense. if you just sit around, it's the opposite problem.

this vacation i am on right now is supposed to be the sitting around kind. the only thing that i really wanted to get done was to figure out how to use this online newsletter service called mailchimp to send out a note to my fellow brigadoonians, and i accomplished that. it wasn't precisely what i had envisioned but at least i rescued it from being deleted by elvis. for a guy that knows a lot about computers, he's a bit of a klutz. HAHAHAH!! haha.

what?

i'm here because elvis said i should come up one more time before they move to another city but from the looks of things they are not moving any time soon. still and all, it's a nice place to vacation. there's plenty of coffee. free wireless. cute little hotel shampoos. there are walks to the grocery on the corner, the parc, the bookstore, around the block, to starbux. there's playing with the kiddos, with their puzzles and trains, throwing the miniature pillow petit-fours from that tea set geegee sent, throwing them at each other's heads.

i went to the parc, to the discount store, to starbux, the chinese restaurant, the bookstore, the rose garden. i stayed with the kiddos while elvis and priscilla went out. walked to the corner store. ate pizza while watching the spurs game. i did everything you're supposed to do when you come to elvis's house and now it's time to go home.

boo.

am i feeling a dissatisfaction with the vacation? is there something else i would have liked to have done? or am i merely disappointed with its being over? would i like to do this every day or would the relaxation take a toll, would i get restless? i will never know.

i just noticed a really hilarious thing about yesterday's post's title was that i was in the same house as an actual yappy dog at the time.

elvis & i went for a walk today and we stopped by an estate sale which is sort of like a garage sale, but sort of not. a garage sale is generally when folks select from their own belongings and put a portion of their stuff out to sell. an estate sale is generally when someone has died and someone else is selling off the dead person's belongings.

so. elvis & i, we stopped at this estate sale which just happened to be taking place in a house on the street where we were walking. that is to say, we didn't go out looking for it. the woman in charge appeared to be the daughter of the now dead householders, knew most of the shoppers by name, and bustled around the house trailing an aura of authority in her wake. she was equipped with a fanny pack full of dollars.

on the ground floor, besides the costume jewelry, a plethora of hummel figurines, and the silver & crystal detritus of a lifetime of house parties, there was a complete electric train set that looked to have been fairly savagely pulled from its mounting and crammed into a box. the way the pieces of track were broken and stuffed into the box really made me wonder about the story behind that train.

another interesting piece was a box of bronze flatware. bronze? yes. the set was a complete service for like 8 or maybe 12 people, including different sorts of forks and knives for different activities. into the handle of each piece was fashioned a buddah and the buddah was sitting on the word "siam". i have never seen anything like it, and i do wish i had asked the price. (i googled to find you a picture and was amazed to find many dozen pictures. google siam flatware. do it!)


the basement appeared to have been used as a ceramics studio but the typical basement moisture had caused the unfired pieces awaiting glaze to become a bit moldy and soft. in the upstairs rooms, it began to be obvious that the grown children of a dead doctor and his wife had just opened up the house and proclaimed everything to be for sale without bothering to sort or establish any order. partially used toiletries, clothes piled on the beds, dusty shoes, books, stationery, record albums, costume jewelry, toys, momentos, blankets, paperwork, journal articles.

so it was a complete mess, but also a bit of a time capsule - fascinating and pathetic at once.

in the corner of the basement, a ceramic christmas tree like the shaman had made back in the day. post-a-notes like we all had at summercamp. ashtrays. gerber guide to raising your baby, dated 1962. an open bottle of old spice. a bridge set like they sold at ye olde book shoppe. fountain pen nibs. and, all that crystal and silver. there must have been a dozen silver trays, a testament to the sort of life where dinner parties and luncheons were commonplace.

there were 50% off signs posted everywhere, so one would assume that the offerings were well picked-over at this point. and, it wasn't a retail outlet or even a thrift store or even a garage sale, so there was really no reason to expect organization. it was an adult child of dead parents trying desperately to offload her parents' belongings on their neighbors.

well, somewhat desperate. really desperate folks don't price a mangled electric train set at $100, discounted to $50.

if this yappy dog doesn't shut the hell up, i swear i will kill her with my bare hands.

hero: a large sandwich made of a long crusty roll split lengthwise and filled with meats and cheeses, tomato, lettuce, onion, and condiments.

i cannot think of one single person in my life that i ever thought - hey, i would really like to be like [insert name here]. i mean, sure, when i was a kid at summercamp the counselors were all The Coolest People Ever, so i guess you could say there was some level that i wanted to be like them. but, i didn't think about it to myself - didn't say to myself, "hey, i really want to be like her." i wanted them to like me, accept me. i wanted us all to be friends. they were way too old for that, obviously, but still. that's what i wanted. i don't ever remember thinking that "when i grow up i want to be an imitation of them". i didn't want to be sort of them. i wanted to be one with them. i wanted for me to be me and for us to be friends at that present time, that's as far as i went with it.

i never studied anyone, imitated anyone, emulated anyone. that's the sort of behaviour you engage in when there is somewhere you want to get to - some goal you want to attain. i guess there was just never anywhere i wanted to be.

humour is never inappropriate.

the commercial says - advair is not for people whose asthma is well-controlled by an inhaled corticosteroid. what the hell is an inhaled corticosteriod and how do i know if it works for me? is this something i am supposed to ask my doctor about or is this something my doctor is supposed to ask me about or is this something that the asthma medicine company is trying to foist on me? from the commercials, the logical deduction is that advair is something "more than" the inhaled corticosteriod. i use advair and i would like to use the least amount of meds possible, so maybe i would prefer the inhaled corticosteriod instead of the advair. on the other hand, the advair works, so why fix what's not broken? on the other hand, just cause it's not broken now doesn't mean it won't be broken later. is the advair causing a potential longterm issue? i was having trouble breathing and was in pain, and a doctor suggested advair, and that fixed the problems i was having. should that be the end of it? i would like to simply accept the solution and be done with it, but i wonder if i should be wondering. am i overmedicated? should i try other things or is trying other things more trouble than it's worth, more effort than payback, more investment than return? should i be concerned that i am questioning the advice of doctors based on a television commercial, or should i be thankful that a television commercial enlightened me?

felix the cat, the wonderful wonderful cat - whenever he gets in a fix, he reaches into his bag of tricks.

on the way here i passed through a county that had posted one of those generic green-with-white-letters highway signs that stated it is a "certified clean county". huh. clean as in vacuumed or clean as in devoid of crack houses? clean & sober? clean as a whistle? clean broke? and then, who does the certifying, what are the criteria, is there a committee carrying clipboards holding forms filled with check boxes? does every certified clean county get a sign, and if so, why haven't i ever seen another one? are all the other counties between my house and elvis's dirty?

anyway.

as previously stated, the packing required for a short trip is not proportionately smaller than the packing for a long trip. that is, going off for a couple days requires a lot of the same stuff as you'd take for a couple weeks. that is why i have brought like three bags on this four day trip.


another thing about packing is that there are sort of two ways to go about it. okay, there are probably a million ways, but i am going to discuss this dichotomy: organization versus chaos. organization is when you know where you are going, what you will do when you get there, what the weather will be, and you take all this information and turn it into a planned outfit for each day. you might even consolidate some outfits so that you'll be wearing the red shirt on tuesday with the jeans and on friday with the shorts which you wore on wednesday with the blue shirt. you know, garanamalizing your wardrobe.

the other method of packing, chaos, can either be an extension of your personality or an outcome of the trip planning. not that your trip has to be completely chaotic, but maybe you don't know for sure what you are going to be doing every damn minute. you could go for the minimum and wear the same thing every day or you could do what i do and just lop some of everything into the bag, which results in a bulging bag of lop. a bulging bag of lop in which there is nothing suitable to wear.

tied to the track in front of the training train.

just now i booted up my wee tiny netbook, and it had nary a skitter of battery left. either i am not charging it up correctly or it's not sleeping correctly, but somehow it's always hungry for power. also, there are 25 Important Windows Updates to install, to the tune of 67MB. in case i didn't tell you the story of the first pc we purchased for junior and mini-me, it had 40MB of hard drive, and i proclaimed loudly to all & sundry: Windows Is A Fad! Windows Is A Fad! turns out my prediction was askew and now the windows which was not at all a fad wants more room on my HDD than i even had in that whole first computer. it's just a wonder, isn't it now?

speaking of computers, today i sat in training all day for a computer system, and i'll just say that i didn't get anything out of it and leave it at that because i found out that others did get something out of it so before i am too hard on the instructor, i really must consider the possibility that i am so brilliant that i have nothing left to learn.

but as i was sitting there, i thought about the time i was wasting and wondered about recapturing it. i believe in the future we will be able to capture time and spend it more than once, and even now we could actually be recapturing this time that we are wasting today, harvesting it in the future when it's ripened and ready for the picking, and reusing it to some more worthwhile ends.

yes, i just drank a coke zero and now i am drinking coffee and i really don't see whythat wouldbe aproblemwhy wouldthatbeaproblem whywhywhy why wh

so i took the initiative to download a bunch of new music today, by which of course i mean i asked my old man to do that for me, and one of the songs was paul simon's "the afterlife" and so i just logged on here at starbux and that song is of course their free download of the week. WHATEVER STARBUX. jeez.

at the next table over, a woman is Talking Very Seriously About Her Life, and while i am certain it's as worthy of her friends's attentions as any other Serious Life Issue is worthy of anyone's friends's collective attention, there is something about discussing Serious Life Issues at starbux that just pokes seriousness in the eyeball. starbux is to serious as jello is to dessert. it's just pretending.

speaking of starbux, did i mention i am going to visit elvis et cetera? here is what i am packing: jeans, plain white t's, LIFEGUARD HOODIE!, andrew henry's meadow (don't tell beavis - i got him a copy of his own), pjs, socks, and a toothbrush. i think that'll just about do it. oh, and a book to read. and, my computer. and, some of those banana cookies the kids love (surprise!). but that's it. except the fig newtons for the car ride and probably my swimsuit in case of the Y having a pool and a pair of bermuda (triangle!) shorts and a couple workout outfits in case we go to the Y not for swimming and my chucks and asics and crocs. but that's it. unless you think i should take a sweater? maybe a sweater. and what? what did you say? um... durr... of course clean panties. JEEZ! who mentions that? who? you are such a doofus. why do i even put up with you?

jar of first time lazy day rolling in the deep heart songs

the local indie radio station, lightning 100, 100.1FM, has turned completely wack. they are playing more oldies than jackFM and their new stuff is mostly not good. they were really getting it for a while, so i don't know what is going on. they'll still play some adele, avett brothers, mumford & sons, but still - not enough good stuff. now. i understand. indie radio. you're supposed to get some stuff you wouldn't hear on other channels but c'mon - some stuff doesn't need to be heard anywhere.

well so i've been cruising the dial and turns out there's this black eyed peas song i like, and a pink song that is really good, and there's one by hot chelle rae which i think might actually be a local band, and i heard a plain white t's song, and bruno mars, the black keys, christina perry, amy winehouse, and this song called 'for the first time' by the script which i really like.

i am declaring independence from indie radio.

MEH

last night we watched the movie "elizabeth" with cate blanchett as elizabeth and the delicious clive owen as sir walter raleigh. i am certain these forays into history play it fast and loose with the facts, plus this one tended to be long on Significant Poses and short on Actual Acting, but it was good enough entertainment. the costumes and sets were magnificent and clive owen - who can look a bit dragged out and pasty at times - was all swarthy and swashbuckley as the dashing privateer mr raleigh. (there was talk of the new land, a state named virginia, a city named for mr raleigh.) papists, traitors, and the spanish armada all made appearances, as did mary stuart, queen of scots (looking very spanishy), and others whose names i am sure i was supposed to learn in MEH. yes, MEH as in modern european history (which encompasses eras that i would not technically classify as "modern"), not "meh" as in whatever, although there was often a general feeling of meh in MEH except the day coach (most of our classes were taught by coaches, but that's another story) banned purple looseleaf paper (oh, the humanity!) and the day my classmate showed up with a walkman. a CASSETTE playing walkman - one of the original breed. purple looseleaf + walkman -- talk about history!

books 2011

currently:

complete:
princess academy
[shannon hale]
the angels game
[carlos ruiz zafon]
they almost always come home
[christina ruchti]
lifeguard training manual
[red cross]
the broker
[john grisham]
queste
[angie sage]
the things we do for love
[kristin hannah]
physik
[angie sage]

5000 words (plus)

in case you cannot see it, this says "coming soon: better ads in gmail". well, now. seems unlikely there could be anything better than a link to a story about some wacked out russian beauty queen on drugs.

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in case you cannot see it, this says "your name is no accident" which is untrue because my name is ace. google might be good for some stuff but ESP is not one of those stuffs.

---

why is the credit score ad girl wearing a veil?

---

1 new? none new? yahoo mail demonstrates schitzophrenia. (sp?)

---

no, i do not like your hat.

---

these sorts of things generally resolve themselves - given time, a bit of salt water, and a bagpipe serenade.

so i am working at home today and whereas some people would take this as a great opportunity to have a lie in and generally mess about, i am unable to disengage my sense of obligation thuswise. in other words, when i am working at home, i am actually working. well, when i am not taking a break or making coffee or blogging or playing scrabble. but if you will just try to bear with me here you will see that i simply mean that i accomplish more at home than i do at the office. it's a bit pathetic, really, how i have to beg for this time to increase productivity. you would think they would be leaping at the chance to have me effectively working as opposed to my usual affectedly working. perhaps they think the self-imposed work ethic will wear off, but that only shows how little they understand what motivates me. that being said, i am knocking off early to catch the football match down to the senior high.

sitting across the table from my future

when we had lunch today i noticed
he had missed a patch of whisker
right under his nose
(ironic?)
and wondered what the hell is up with his hair
did he give up brushing it altogether
he talked about his first wife
in a way that made me
made me feel completely at home
made me feel
completely
alone
and he asked about the salmon wrap
is it good
and i just couldn't tell him
that is what you ate when we were here before
so we talked about his grandchildren
and his face lit up
lit
up
up
and i knew then i was sitting across the table
from my future

why are people going to see charlie sheen's show and then complaining about how terrible it is?

so we got these logo shirts at work, and we rarely get logo anything, so everyone was all woooweeee, we be gettin' the logo shirts! mighty exciting. today i decided to wear mine, which in the women's version is a white button front with point collar and 3/4 length sleeves. i paired this with black capris and thought i looked tailored and polished, if a bit like a food service professional, which i am not, but i powered through and carried on and arrived at the office. by 9am i was in the monday morning staff meeting when i realized that there i am in my 3/4 length sleeve logo shirt and capri pants looking like the giant longarm girl who outgrew her clothes overnight. so i pointed this out to everyone who all thought it was hilarious and i did a little doopdie-doo face with accompanying hand and arm motion to show what an idiot i am. i know you wished you worked with me, because i am fun like that all the freaking day long.

well, not tea actually. it's coffee here.

today was one of those pretty spring days that everyone's all like "let's go outside!" and so i spent the entire day inside because i will not be dictated to by the masses. cleaned the bathroom and hung the new shower curtain. did all the laundry. finished one book and started another. cleaned out a junk drawer. spent all morning looking at my watch and marvelling at how much time i had, the whole day ahead of me, time moving nice & slow, then we rounded noon and suddenly it's tea time. weird.

mediocrity bites

it's been an almost great day. everything is just a touch off, but the only context for my complaints is that my life is easy and fabulous.

i woke up at 6:44 and woke up my old man and axt what time did he want to get up and he said 8 which should have been great for me because i am the one who likes to sleep in, but when i woke up again at 8 i felt worse than i did at 6:44. should have got up at 6:44.

made some breakfast of eggs and oatmeal and bacon and coffee and toast and it was all good and fine but not really what i wanted which was pop tarts but that's just wacked out because who prefers pop tarts over a home cooked meal? me, that's who.

did the dishes and aslo balanced the checkbook and paid the bills, and while none of that can be categorized as 'fun' it's all 'satisfying' so it's good stuff, but not quite hitting the saturday spot.

i decided i could handle a two mile run so i got dressed and headed out. i wore my skirt to cheer myself up with thoughts of how pretty i am and also how miss tonay's head would be spinning. i took off and after about 1/4 mile realised i was wearing the wrong shoes, they were the heavy ones, and pluswise, i forgot to use the puffer, which who the hell forgets something that important? me, that's who. it was hot, and i was immediately tired, and my leg hurt, and so i lollygagged around a while and went home.

while i was stretching i remembered i have a merlin on the tivo, so i dialed it up, and that made for good company while i was stretching and doing all that stuff from therapy like the dead bug and the bird dog. the merlin was good, but the conclusion was too easy. of course, it's a television show, so what to expect. oddly dissatifying, but at this point, i was beginning to think it was just me.

i showered and got dressed and i knew what i wanted to wear - this jean skort and just a white tee shirt - and i thought it would feel all summery but it just feels like last years clothes. or, like five years ago's clothes.

so first i went to target looking for a new shower curtain for my newly painted bathroom and i knew just what i wanted - something with grey and black and red - and it didn't even matter what the pattern was, just the colours, and unbelievably, i could not find anything at all. so i got some tee shirts because this one today is making me feel so perfect i just need some more of that. haha. and i got some listerine and deoderant, and those are just party party fun fun.

then i went to bed, bath, and BEYOOOOND! and i was just sure they'd have a shower curtain exactly what i was looking for, but no, they really did not. i ended up getting one that will look okay, but after all that, i forgot to get the curtain rod to hang it. stupid. stupid.

then i am thinking, let's just go to starbux, shall we? but it's only me, so i am talking to myself, and that's an excellent sign. i came on over here and had my bag for a free cuppa, so i ordered that, and while she was getting it i was all back and forth about getting the mini vanilla scones. i decided what the hell, so i axt for three of those, and by the time she got everything together, someone had taken that nice table in the corner but OMG THEY JUST LEFT.

okay, now i am sitting at the corner table with my coffee and my scones and things are really looking up. i have fulfilled my blogligation with this diatribe of angsty suburban woe, i can sit back and play a little scrabble, sip my cuppa and munch my scones. this is gonna be great!

oh. except i have to pee.

livebloggin from the football pitch

i saw this lady the other day typing on her iphone with the one-finger method. i thought what a complete dork! loser! idiot! doesn't even deserve an iphone.

then i realised i was looking in a mirror.

tonight's supper: rotini, mushrooms, roasted grape tomatoes, salmon. mmmm! here is a picture. no, i am not going to provide pictures of my supper every night from now on. hey, don't cry, you baby. sheesh.



just saw a commershal for that new jake gyllenhaal movie "source code" and to my eyes, it looks just like "déjà vu" with denzel washington. hero has limited amount of time to fix a life-or-death problem and keeps replaying a short bit of past over and over to get it right while falling in love with a girl who actually died in the past and defying this short history to save the girl. "source code" may be different than "déjà vu" but the premises are very much the same.

speaking of déjà vu and life-or-death, did you hear that there was another earthquake in japan today? a 7.4, which sounds small compared to the last one, eh? jeez. this one hit off the coast of miyagi, by which of course i mean the prefecture and not the karate sensei.

do you think it's important in a blog post to tie everything together, have a conclusion?

adventures in suppermaking

so it was my turn to make supper and i was fixing to fix some scrambled eggs. i got the eggs from the fridge, set the carton on the countertop, opened it, and selected an egg. when i made to pick up the selected egg to remove it from the carton - boof - my thumb went right into the egg. just a wee boof, see?


i elected not to use that egg in the making of supper. would you have used it? i don't know why i was shy of using it, as it was simply a thin shell. the membrane inside the shell was intact, the egg was surely in fine form inside its thin skin, but still, i deemed it defective and disposed of it.

when i approached the stovetop, i noticed a THING stuck to the burner. see the THING?


i am fairly certain the THING is a piece of oatmeal that somehow became encrusted onto the burner, but i am not 100% certain of that. i know you are thinking, ace, with your unequalled housekeeping skills, how could an oat become encrusted on the stovetop? well, probably someone is breaking into the house to sabotage my housekeeping. my skills are just that badass.

the oat looks a bit ominous, does it not? is that the correct spelling of ominous? did the ominous oat deter me? it did NOT! i thought it might smolder and smell, but it did not. i overcame the ominous oat's oafishness.

yes, my stovetop is harvest gold. thank you for noticing!

tuesday night and it's time for headlines!

these are the actual headlines from my actual yahoo portal page. portal? what? even IT people don't say portal anymore, ace, you complete loser! okay, whatever it is that people are calling these aggregated home page conglomerations, i use yahoo, and these are the headlines from that page today.



firstly, strongman? what is this, a circus? from 1905? and what the hell is he doing in a bunker? what happened to the freak show tent, did it blow away?

budget, blah blah, nothing funny there.

oh, there's a headline: Japan sets new radiation safety level for seafood (AP) japan is having a wee containment issue over there and the best possible solution is to dump some of the less harmful water that was used to cool the meltdowning reactors back into the ocean, to make room in the containers for the more harmful water. this less harmful water has some sort of iodine isotope in it that will degrade in a few months. i thought iodine was that orange stuff you put on cuts, so i was a bit surprised to hear how dangerous it is. but anyway, the safety level used to be fairly strict, but the new level is all, hey, it'll put hair on your chest! and, your tongue, and the soles of your feet....

storms kill 7. not funny.

libyan rebels. not funny.

then we get to the white house raps. this is an interesting approach to resolving the budget stalemate but i am fairly certain rhythmic rhyming is not going to get us anywhere.

and, last but not least, the italian prime minister silvio berlusconi could lose his job over a sex scandal. my first thought was all, haha - only in italy could the leader keep his job in the face of a scandal like that! and, then i remember ol' mr clinton, and that shut me right up.

jeté

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this is really a very good book

Envy is the religion of the mediocre. It comformts them, it soothes their worries, and finally it rots their souls, allowing them to justify their meanness and their green until they believe these to be virtues. Such people are convinced that the doors of heaven will be opened only to poor wretches like themselves who go through life without leaving any trace but their threadbare attempts to belittle others and to exlude and destroy if possible -- those who, by the simple fact of their existence, show up their own poorness of spirit, mind, and guts. Blessed be the one at whom the fools bark, because his soul will never belong to them.

[p 13, the angel's game]

an eye for an eye. the eyes have it. eye, eye, captain!

i've worn glasses since i was like 9 or 10, but of course my vision was poor before that. as is generally the way with these things, it took having a schoolteacher tell my parents that i was having trouble getting close enough to the blackboard to copy down my work before anyone thought to have my eyes checked. upon donning my initial pair of spectacles, i had that typical reaction about being able to see the leaves on the trees. i thought everyone saw the great fluffy mass of green atop the brown trunk - like a kindergartner's drawing of a tree. turns out, that's the ur-tree. the actual real live trees have leaves, and yes, you should be able to see them from quite a distance away. who knew?


this morning i went to the optometrist for the umpty billionth time since that first time. when i was a kid, they took me to an eye doctor called "lashlee"... lash... eye... no fooling. anyhoo, now my dr is called taylor and i believe dr lashlee has gone to that great eye chart in the sky.

eye checking hasn't changed in all these umpty billion years. the machines are the same. the charts are the same. the questions are the same. except lashlee used to do "a... or b...? a... or b...?" and taylor does "one... or two...? two... or three...?" but they are doing the same thing. i am always like, whoa nelly slow down! it's not that simple. i need some time to discern which is clearer. it's like they already know the answer and they're just moving me towards it. what if my eyes contain a surprise this time, eh? slow down!


dr taylor suggested i try these daily wear contacts. unless they are like 50¢ per pair, i will not be using them. i have worn this pair since i got them from her this morning and i will agree they are comfy, but jeez, who can afford to wear a new pair each day? that's got to be expensive. plus, think of all that waste. pretty soon, our landfills will be brimming with lenses.

i wear glasses most of the time and put contacts in just for sports. one typically blinks about half as much while staring at the computer screen as one does while not doing that, and i star at a computer screen about 6 hours per day, so i can't reasonably expect to wear contacts all that time. you have to blink while you have the contacts in or they will dry up, ergo they get more dry in front of the computer, ergo they are less comfy that way.


my old man went to see about having his eyes lasik'd. he's not a candidate, for some reason which i cannot recall. thick corneas or somesuch. i am probably a candidate, but i can't bring myself to even check into it. what if it messes up? that's got to happen at least part of the time. my eyesight now is not good, but it's correctable. what if i end up with uncorrectable vision? egad, what a nightmare.

so i will be getting some new glasses soon, and it looks like the ones at the eye doctor's office will be approximately umpty billion dollars, and that's after the insurance pays its part. i think i will check at walmart.