The Clueless Child

So that's me just starting out and I was clueless about the world. My brother actually looks pretty happy, but maybe they said, "Hold her so we can take a picture and you'll win a prize!"
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I've been very introspective lately and the more I think about it the more I realize what a strange child I was. And I think I was just very lonely. I was always going to people's houses and inviting myself in to just "hang out" from the time I was three. I guess because I was an easy kid and my brother was the troublemaker, I was pretty much left alone. The reason I know I was three when I was wandering around the neighborhood, is because we moved a lot so it is easy to verify dates from where we lived.
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My brother had a friend that lived up a dirt road hill from us and I was enamored with his mom. I was always walking up there and knocking on the door. As an adult, I can imagine how annoying that must have been for Mrs. C. But she was very nice.
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Mom worked nights and slept during the day and a large black lady kept house and was supposed to be watching my brother and me. My only memories of her are of us sitting on the front porch and she is sprinkling salt on lettuce. I asked her if I could try it and she looked around and let me have a bite. I thought it was good. I wonder why she was so chubby if she snacked on lettuce?
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Another memory from that time was coming home from something with my Mom and brother and my brother saying, "You have another name, you know? You have a middle name." For some reason it was like he said, "You have horns growing out of the back of your head and you smell like dog poop." Because I went crazy yelling and screaming, "I DO NOT! I DO NOT!" It took me a while to accept the fact that I had a middle name.
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I used to go around in the various neighborhoods I lived in and knock on doors with a coffee cup in my hand and ask, "Can I borrow a cup of sugar?" When the lady would ask, "What do you need it for?" I would respond, "Oh, I don't need a cup of sugar, but this is how you meet people on TV."
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When my Dad became a Little League coach someone got the idea to sell Krispy Kreme donuts to raise money for the team. They didn't have them in our town, so Mom, my brother and I made the drive to Raleigh, N.C. and filled our car with boxes of donuts. I went out on my own with a little wagon full of donuts at the age of 6 and sold more than anyone. I didn't get why everyone was so surprised because I "knew" everyone. I'm guessing those people bought the donuts because they were relieved that that was all I was there for.
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When I was in school, teachers were always sending me to the teachers' lounge to get coffee and I became depressed knowing I could never be a school teacher because I knew I would never drink coffee. For some reason I thought you had to drink coffee.
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When I was 3 or 4, I used to think that the music coming out of the radio was all being performed live by all those different bands. It was sort of thrilling to think they were all just down the street because the local radio station wasn't far from our house.
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When men would visit our house and say how cute I was, I would always ask them if they had a quarter. (And my parents never told me that was wrong.)
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Every Christmas I would wish for a magic wand. I never got one and thought Santa didn't like me.
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When I was in daycare, I wet the cot during naptime and didn't have a change of underwear. My first cousin had a spare pair so they put those on me and he was more embarassed than I was. He also broke his arm out on the playground and it was so gross I blocked it out of my memory. I may have fainted.
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When my parents went to parties where everyone took their kids, I wouldn't go in the back room and play with the other kids. I would curl up in a corner under a table and pretend to be asleep and listen to the "grown-up talk."
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I learned about hot and cold in relation to skin and pores from reading some weird serial comic in the back of Playboy magazine. I think it was "LIttle Annie Fannie."
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My brother and I could hear the TV from our bedroom and would discuss the shows from what we heard and that's why I think TV is more of an aural than a visual experience for me.
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Speaking of that, my brother and I shared a room until we were 8 (me) and 12. For years I was very embarassed about that, but I got over it.
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So what are your weird childhood memories? Did you think Bozo the clown looked like that 24/7? Did you think fast food was modern and scientific like the Jetsons? Were you ever clueless?

Weather. We Like It Or Not.

(ice, ice, baby.)

Well, we are having weather again here. That's a table on our patio. I'm sure all you northerners scoff at the piddly amount of ice, but Texans take weather VERY seriously. I took that picture around 11:00 p.m. and that's all there was, but all the schools are closed and I imagine Meals on Wheels will be closed tomorrow too. And if you think that's extreme, our local channel 8 pre-empted "Oprah" today from 4:00 - 5:00 p.m. just to talk about the weather. OPRAH! I know! I can't begin to imagine the amount of ad revenue they gave up. But they know that Texans love their weather.
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My Sweetie went out to turn on the spa pump so it doesn't freeze and practically repeated exactly my knee/ice incident of almost exactly a year ago. He fell the same way and everything. Fortunately, he is built differently than I am and did not wrench his knee out sideways. You'd think we would know by now that the deck is a lot slicker than the patio.
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Meals on Wheels doesn't announce closings the night before so I have to set my clock for the normal time this morning and then call in. I'm pretty sure they will be closed, though. I cooked a whole cut up chicken tonight and made a great soup with some of it which was perfect for the weather, and tomorrow night I am using the rest to make a chicken, artichoke and Havarti cheese casserole, so I am all good for being iced in. And I have plenty of beer.
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I think I'm going to shave one day off of the first round of my rock tumbling. If you could see how rough the rocks that came with the thing are and compare that to my beach rocks, I think you'd agree. Plus, they're beach rocks. I mean, they've already spent their whole life being tumbled by coarse grit and water. Heck, I probably could have just cut out the whole coarse grit round altogether.
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We had our house appraised recently and it really blows me away how inexpensive housing in Texas is. I watch "House Hunters" all the time and see these clapboard, one bathroom homes in some towns going for $193 a square foot, or a one bedroom condo going for $200 a square foot and I'm all "WHAT?!?". Our house comes out to only $77 a square foot. I remember a while back when My Sweetie was looking for jobs all over the country, we never saw the salary offered as a stand alone thing. We always looked at housing prices and cost of living. If he were offered double his current salary to work in California we could probably afford only half this house. I wonder why more people don't move to Texas. Oh, yeah. The weather.

Trying to work up my nerve

The rock tumbling video took hours to figure out. I had to get out the book that came with my camera to find the format that blogger would take. So now I want to do a video of myself, but here's the thing: I have a HORRIBLE voice. And I'm a voice person. I love good voices and make fun of terrible voices. Yeah, that's already bad, but factoring in my horrible voice makes it worse. I've heard Gnightgirl, Naomi and Scarlet on their blogs and they have great voices. Also I've met Jazz and Jammie J and they have great voices, both live and on the phone, and I've spoken to Ticknart on the phone and he has a nice voice. So Jazz, Jammie and Ticknart have already heard my horrible voice, but I'm afraid for the rest of you to hear it. I want to tell a simple joke or something, but I have to figure out what, plus I only do "hair and make-up" when I have to go out into the world, so I'd have to have a day that I'm going out, plus gather a lot of nerve. All in one day. And beer. I'll need lots of it. So maybe I should wait until I've come back home from being out in the world. Or something. I'll be thinking about it.

Rock On!

I finally started up the rock tumbler I got for Christmas. It said to set it up in an out-of-the-way area as it can be quite noisy, so I put it in the very southwest corner of the house in my "random room." I didn't have enough beach rocks to fill it, so my daughter brought hers over. And she has LOTS. I probably won't be able to tell them apart but I took a picture of my rocks before I put them in. At least I'll know how many are mine.So I added the grit and water and got it going and much to my surprise, it has a very pleasant sound. It reminds me of a heavy steady rain on a skylight or metal roof. Here it is in action:

So in a month I'll have the after pictures. Yes, it takes a whole month and you do it in four stages. So far, so good.

Make Your Own Dishwasher Magnet

Years ago, I made my own dishwasher magnet using a business card magnet. I printed the picture on an inkjet transparency and then used a spray adhesive to attach it to the business card magnet, leaving the white peel-off paper on the magnet.
Here it is turned the other way. It's an easy way to tell if your dishwasher is clean or dirty:

Feel free to use the picture to make your own.

What the Heck?

I've been feeling really crabby lately and I don't know why. I just had a great little vacation, I saw Carol Burnett, we've reserved the beach cottage and Pres. Loony B is gone. I should be really happy, and I was yesterday all day while I was watching all the inauguration stuff. But Xup's post the other day and the news about the Texas School Board and the teaching of evolution have gotten me all riled up.
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What I said on Xup's post was: "Well at least we shower, use deodorant, brush our teeth and go to the dentist." But what I WANTED to say was: I don't think a bunch of stinky rotten-teethed pansy-assed Europeans should be dissing my country because if it weren't for us they'd all be speaking German. But that's SO WRONG. And so base. An intelligent argument would have been that Americans are so fat because of really poor city planning. Most European cites and towns are more village-based, with homes being located around the shops and what not, which encourages walking. I would almost be risking my life to walk to either of the two grocery stores nearest my house. Walking somewhere to buy clothes is unimaginable. Even if there were sidewalks and some safe way to cross the busy streets, it's usually 100° all summer. Anyway, if we're so horrible, why do they watch all our movies and TV shows?
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The Texas School Board is being asked by the teachers (teachers of SCIENCE) of Texas to take out the mandate to teach the "strengths and weaknesses" of the theory of evolution. Their main opponent, a "social conservative" said something like, "If they are afraid to teach the weaknesses, what are they afraid of? That sounds like a hidden agenda." What? WHAT? The hidden "agenda" is 1) We do not teach religion in public schools and 2) We do not want our students to go out into the world and be thought of as ignorant. Not only that but this "social conservative," on THE SCHOOL BOARD, home schools her kids!!!! Why on earth is she on the school board if she doesn't even use the public schools? Everything about that is super retarded.
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I understand that some people are Bible literalists, and my goodness what faith, but I am not, and the science is out there all over the place. It's even in our DNA. I say we keep the schools secular and let the parents teach their children religion at home. And not allow people to be on the school board who do not partake of the public school system.
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I feel a lot better now. Maybe my crabbiness will go away.

January 20, 2009

Yay, us!!!

celebrate with fireworks!!

The Reign Of Error has officially ended. We are free at last.

Carol Burnett and the Weird Event

The reason I've been such a blog slacker is because I'm in an organizational/cleaning energy spell and you've got to go with those when you get them. I'm surprised I got the Florida post up.
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We got home on Monday around 3:15 or so and the show was at 8:00, so I wasn't in a giant hurry. I unpacked my make-up and other things I would need and did little things like checking my e-mail, phone messages and setting up the humidifier. Barney was calmly sleeping on one of the barstools in here and didn't even freak when we came in. (Is barstool one word? Probably not.) Anyway, I got myself showered, and fixed my hair kinda cute and put on my Carol suit. Then I walked down to Carole's house to get my mail and garage remote and gather compliments. (My bad.) We drove downtown and then unfortunately a crazy wind picked up and blew my hair all to hell. As soon as we walked into 8.0 for dinner, I went straight to the bathroom to try to repair my hair. Since I had a tiny metallic silver clutch purse, I didn't have much to work with. We had a nice dinner and found we still had some time to kill so decided to amble down to The Flying Saucer. My Sweetie had one of his weird foreign beers and I had a tangy hard cider. Pear, I think. We then made our way back into the wind for the third time to go to Bass Hall. I got a glass of wine and tried to tidy up my hair one last time. Then we found our seats. This is the view from our seats:
I knew cameras weren't allowed, so I took this really quickly before the show started. I was getting all emotional about seeing Carol Burnett and decided that even though I had about 4 questions in my head to ask, I wasn't going to ask one. And I must not have been the only person too shy to ask a question. It seemed sort of slow going there for a while. She had a giant screen behind her and would eventually turn a question into a story that led to the clips she had brought. I actually slipped out during her clip segment about all the famous singers that she had had duets with because I can only go so long without "going." One of the questions I was going to ask was "Do you still watch the soap 'All My Children'?"
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Carol actually started saying at one point that she watches a a soap and that she had missed it that day because it comes on so early here. She asked does anyone watch "All My Children?" and some lady down front had raised her hand and when Carol asked her what happened the lady said, "I recorded it." Well, being Miss Information over here, I jumped up and started talking. At the same time a microphone person ran up and Carol said, "Speak into the microphone." I said, "We're on a one day delay here so the episode that aired today would have been the one you saw on Friday." She said, "Oh, well let me tell you what happened." and everyone laughed and I sat down and was all OH. My God. I just spoke to Carol Burnett!!! My Sweetie was looking at me and laughing because he knew how freaked out I was.
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There wasn't a lot of show left after that and she ended the show by showing the classic clip of her last show when she sang "I'm so glad we had this time together." Then she was lit up and sang along with the end of the song. She was gorgeous and funny and I'm so glad I was there. The whole ride home, we were talking about how shocked we were that we woke up in Florida, flew home and went downtown for a night out. And still felt fine.
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~ THE WEIRD THING
So here's the weird thing that happened about two and a half weeks ago. I was sitting on the couch watching TV after My Sweetie had gone to bed. That part is all normal. I think I was watching "Frasier." Suddenly I saw a bright flash up in a place that has no light and heard a POP!/TING! sound like when a lightbulb blows. My first instinct would be to think I had a ministroke or LSD flashback or something, but Barney (my cat) was between me and the "flash" and jerked his head up and was staring up there where the wall meets the ceiling. Where the phantom flash happened. It sort of reminded me of the old cube camera flashbulbs from the 70's.
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I was really weirded out and kept looking at Barney, who had actually stopped licking himself and walked forward to study the spot. I'm so glad he was there or I would have thought I had some sort of brain flip. Since Barney had reacted to it, I knew it was real, so concluded that I would be able to find a rational explanation. I checked every lightbulb within 20 feet in every direction and nothing was blown. Not only that, but after thinking about it, a cat would not be fooled by an echo but would have turned toward the actual source of the sound. Here's my "artist's interpretation" of the event:

I've thought about that a lot since it happened. I have absolutely no idea what the heck it was, but I am so glad Barney was there to see it with me. Have any of you ever experienced an odd flash from nowhere like this? It was my first and I hope my last.

The Florida Trip

Don't get me wrong, I'm as sad as everyone else about the current state of the economy, but being a bit of a social phobe, I have to admit how much I really enjoyed the relative emptiness of the resort we visited. It was pretty obvious that the whole place is set up for crowds. Here are some examples:
1-The bathrooms at Citywalk were down long wide halls and had like a gazillion stalls.
2-The restaurants all had lighted signs announcing seating time and all said "0"
3-That book in the hotel room that explains stuff had "reservations recommended" for all of their restaurants and that was just silly.
4-I never had to wait for a beer, restroom or food anywhere.
5-We had outstanding service everywhere like they were so darn glad to see us.
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You know how when you have great expectations, you seem to get more easily disappointed? Well, to be quite honest, I was all, well it's not San Diego but I'll try to have fun. In other words, I had NO expectations and I had a GREAT time. Even my flight was fine and seemed short. And I loved my driver. He sounded just like Thomas Hayden Church (The cheater in Sideways) and I love voices and I loved that guy's voice, although I couldn't think of the actor's name at the time.
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The hotel was fun. It's like all these little buildings grouped around a large piazza with a little harbor with boats and ducks. The ducks were real. You'll see the "buildings" in later pictures. On the inside were a trillion photo op spots, so I narrowed it down to just a few:

After we walked around and explored the inside, we went out onto the piazza and settled at The Thirsty Fish. We were sitting outside enjoying all the great live music when these ducks came running up:

At first we couldn't figure out why they were so interested, then I remembered that My Sweetie had a got a bit of lime pulp on his lip and had grabbed it and tossed it. I guess that's all the ducks needed to see. We finally went to Sal's and had a light dinner and went to our room to watch "Saturday Night Live." Sunday morning, we went down to eat at the main place and this was my view from our table:
The birds were quite aggressive and one tiny bird settled on top of the seat next to me. I held up a thin french fry thinking he'd fly away, but no! He did a crazy hop toward me flapping like a madman and grabbed the whole fry! My Sweetie laughed and laughed at my shocked expression. Fortunately, the giant glittery silken ravens waited until we left the table to attack it. I would have taken a picture but My Sweetie took the camera back to our room to drop off a shot glass I had bought for Lo and to take some pics of me from our window. Here's three of them (I'm the tiny white line in front of the corner of the restauarant in the first one):

That left set of stools in the picture above is where we sat the night before with the ducks. The music was really great Saturday night. They had just played some song I loved and I thought how perfect it would be to hear "The Girl From Ipanema" and then thought better of requesting it since we were in Fake Italy and not Fake Portugal, then they played it. That was great. After lunch we walked over to the dock to take the boat to City Walk

City Walk was fun. They had music blasting all over the place and lots of fun things to look at and more photo op places like this giraffe:

There was an NBA store/restaurant/bar place that we stopped in for a beer and this was in the bathroom:

Mostly we hung out at Margaritaville although we did stop in at Bob Marley's bar. This is me looking indecisive on the "Porch of Indecision" at Margaritaville:

We were pretty buzzed when it was time to head back and when we walked up to the boat dock there was quite a crowd so we decided to walk all the way back. This was looking back at City Walk from the path:

And those two ducks in the lower right? They were on a boogie board! What the heck?:

We rested a bit after getting back or maybe went to the bar, then we ate and My Sweetie crashed. I watched The Queen on TV and went to bed. The next morning as we packed, I said, "I wish I had called the car service to get that cool man that sounded like that actor." He even let me smoke in the car. Then as I sat on the stone bench out front drinking my last beer, a car pulled up and it was him! And exactly at that moment I remembered the actor's name. We had a nice ride to the airport and a pleasant flight and had plenty of time to get ready to go downtown to see Carol Burnett. That will be my next post.

Ready to Roll

I'm pretty much packed and ready to head out in 9 1/2 hours to go to Orlando. It's supposed to be very gusty tomorrow so I hope my plane doesn't flip over when we're taking off. I sort of wish I hadn't watched the weather report. But I had to because I was going to leave Barney in the garage since we I will be gone only 52 hours. Unfortunately it's supposed to get down to 30° Saturday night so I will have to leave the cat door unlocked. I hope he doesn't do anything foolish. Orlando weather will be in the 70's and in the 50's at night. That sounds good. It was 84° here last Saturday and I got a lot of sun. Then Monday there was ice in the trees and we had freezing rain. I think it was 30° during the day and then on Wednesday it was around 70°. That's Texas weather for you. I'm looking forward to goofing around and doing nothing in particular in the Universal resort this weekend. I hope you all get to goof around and do nothing in particular this weekend too.

Almost Horrible

One of my worst fears is finding a dead person, and being a Meals on Wheels delivery person sort of puts me in a higher category for that event. One of my ladies that died about 5 years ago died on the MOW person's watch that was either a day ahead or a day behind mine. I was just glad it wasn't me. For about 4 minutes, I thought today was the day.
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I don't go into the houses of all the MOW people. Some people just open the door and take the food, but some you walk in and take the food to some designated point. I have this guy that I'll call Sid Parker that is one of those that you bang on the door and let yourself in and keep announcing yourself because they can't hear very well. And those are the same people that always have their TVs on very loud so that doesn't help.
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So I walk in all "MEALS ON WHEELS!!" and then notice how quiet it is. Usually Always, his TV is blaring. My little brain alarm went off. Then as I reach his kitchen and look over the counter into the family room, I see he is not in his chair. He's always in his chair. I'm all "oh no oh no oh no...." in my head and then notice a bedroom door and a bed and what looks like a knee.
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I walked up sort of close to the door and loudly inquired, "Mr. Parker?" nothing. Again, "Mr. Parker? Mr. Parker?" and he never stirred at all. Then, "Sid?!" "Sid?!" and I was thinking, I do not want to go in there. Then finally he stirred and mumbled something like, "I fell asleep in my chair last night." I was SO relieved. I think I said something like, "I'm glad you're okay. Your food's on the counter and I brought in your newspaper." Then I practically ran out. I was so happy that he was okay. And happy today wasn't that day I have dreaded.

Welcome 2009!

I'm looking forward to the start of this year: All the TV shows coming back like "Monk," "Psych," "American Idol," "Lost" and "Damages" and a better school schedule for My Sweetie. He had Saturday classes last semester and it sort of dampened Friday nights because he had to study or do homework. This semeseter will be Monday thru Thursday, so we will have our weekends back. Yay. "Survivor:Tocantins" (pronounced TOKE-un-cheens) starts in February and looks like it will be a tough grueling trial for the crazy people that do this show. I LOVE "Survivor!!" I'm also thrilled about seeing Carol Burnett Monday night. And we have our reservations for our beach cottage in May so I'm very excited about that.

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But the biggest thing of all? In October I am taking my dream vacation of all time. Lo and I are going to do Halloween on Bourbon Street as Glinda and Dorothy!

We've talked about it for years but this year we are finally going to do it and I think it's going to be awesome. Welcome 2009, indeed.

Rethinking

So after my last post I am rethinking about seeing my old friend. I guess most people go through this at some point. I was in the shower today and I was wondering if they would even show up. First of all, we won't have a car. They would have to come and see us at the hotel. Secondly, his wife is the one I talked to last month and she didn't seem all thrilled about meeting me or anything. My friend, D, had throat cancer and almost died and not from the throat cancer, but from detoxing from alcohol while he was in the hospital. So he doesn't drink or smoke anymore. His wife said, "He can't go in a bar." Like she was his mom.
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And what would we talk about? Our history together is just that: History. And it's a partying crazy history. I doubt his wife would like to hear the Champagne Jam* story, although My Sweetie has already heard it and thinks it's funny. And now that I think about it D hates that story. As far as recent stuff, I sure as hell wouldn't ask something like "How did you guys meet?" because I know how they met and it's not pretty. We could talk about how smart we were in QPS**, but that would take about 15 minutes and then what? We certainly wouldn't reminisce about the story where the two of us cleaned up the beach house in 1978 while everyone was out because you would have had to have been there.
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And all that "So what do you do?" stuff would be uncomfortable because while My Sweetie has a nice job, he doesn't own a telecommunications company that his dad gave him. I suppose we could talk about Dad because that's the last time we saw each other, but D's wife never met Dad. As usual I'm sure I'm overthinking this. If they show up next Sunday I'm sure we'll have a pleasant visit and if they don't that will be fine too.
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*Champagne Jam was a concert in Atlanta in maybe 1979 that was one of those all day multiple band concerts. My high school boyfriend, myself and several other guys including D all went in someone's pick-up that had a camper on the back. It was a Saturday concert, but we left from North Carolina on Friday night. At some point we stopped to change drivers, pee and whatnot and shortly after we left the gas station, D was driving and everyone settled down to sleep. I was in the bed/camper part but for some reason started watching the road through the connecting window when I noticed some sign saying we were going north. Instead of sliding the window open and tapping D and telling him, I slid the window open and started yelling "D!! What are you doing??!!? You're going NORTH!!???!! Atlanta is SOUTH!!!!" I woke everyone up, freaked D out and he gave me hell about that for years. I still think it's funny.

**QPS (Quantative Physical Science) was an experimental science class in 9th grade that was the brainchild of some Duke University professors. Unfortunately, we were randomly placed in there and D and I were the only smart people and lab partners. We made like 112 on every test and everyone else made like 56. They probably discontinued QPS after that year.

2009 and I'm all Blabby

Happy New Year everybody! With all the news of Caroline Kennedy saying "you know" every three words it made me look at myself and I think we all use our own "padding." I call it talk padding. My own personal ones are "so" and "well" and because I pretty much type on here like I talk, I know you know I use those words A LOT. I guess the republicans are just getting back at the dems for the Sara Palin stuff. Oh and I also say "A LOT" a lot because of Stephen King's story about the horrible clown. I love that line in the show when the creepy dad says, "I worry about you A LOT." So blame Stephen King for that one. I don't know where "so" and "well" came from. (On a totally unrelated note, when my daughter was young she also started sentences with "well" except she always pronounced it as "wool" which always made me laugh.)

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Barney finally has figured out the cat door. It's been a long process. First, he thought it was a portal to hell. Then he thought it was a one-way door. Then he thought it was a one-way door the other way. Lolo and I have figured out that there is a direct correlation to a cat's stupidity and their sweetness. And, well, Barney is very sweet.

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I mentioned a while back that the San Diego trip wasn't happening this January. Three years in a row MY Sweetie has gone there for a MLB golf thing and then I join him for the weekend. This year it is in Orlando, Florida. This is a good thing. I have an old friend from junior high school that I've known forever that lives there. I haven't seen him since Dad died in 1998 and since then he had a bad cancer episode and surgery and barely made it, so I can't wait to see him. Also we will be staying at a fun-looking place. I'm sure it won't be as cool as the Gaslamp District in San Diego, but it will be nice to see my friend.

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I had a nice surprise Tuesday night when my daughter called and said she wanted to do Meals on Wheels with me. First of all she works nights and that requires getting up very early for her and second (of all?) she had just done it with me last Wednesday so I figured she was tired of me. But she showed up and we had a very nice day except for the grocery store which was like the 3rd level of hell. We joked about it afterwards saying "How many people would say that visiting someone in a nursing home/rehab place would be a million times better than going to the grocery store?" Just us I guess.

That's a picture of Kate outside of my tailor shop. There is a dog grooming place next door. She really loves dogs. She didn't get that from me. The reason we were at the tailor shop is I was getting some new black jeans hemmed. On January 12th we are going to the Bass performance Hall to see Carol Burnett. I had to get an "outfit" for the show and the black jeans are part of it. And if you are rolling your eyes about the jeans part, then you don't live in Texas. Black jeans are dress clothes here. Plus, the whole outfit is cute, but hard to explain, so you will have to wait.

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Scarlet tagged me with that six random things about yourself meme although I never follow the rules and tag other people and whatnot. I'm going to go ahead and do it here since I feel all writey.

1. I have severe social phobia anxiety and take medication for it. I was very close to being a complete shut-in until I got the right medication. When people meet me they always laugh and say "No way!" and it sort of irritates me. Yeah I'm very gregarious in person but it's the medicine and the beer.

2. My favorite celebrity moment was being onstage with Rodney Dangerfield.

3. I was mistaken for a boy a few times when I was a kid and although I dressed like a boy it was still somewhat traumatic. I always say I grew up in the Marcia Brady era but I looked more like Peter Brady. The worst moment was when one of my Dad's superiors asked, "Oh, is this your other son?" Dad said, "NO! This is my beautiful daughter!" The weird part is that I was embarrassed for my Dad. It was a very awkward moment.

4. This one is REALLY ODD: I've had several plastic surgeries (abdomen, upper eyes and breasts) but I just don't get fake fingernails. I don't even paint my nails. What's with the nails?

5. I love people and hate people. I'm a human-loving misanthrope. It's like I despise people as a whole, but love individual people. And I'm the same way with dogs.

6. Speaking of people, I used to have an "all or none" mentality about people. I've been working on that and have gotten better.

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Well it's 2009 and I need to go to sleep.