Where My Husband Spends His Time

When My Sweetie went out of town on Wednesday, he flew out on the company jet from another airport, but flew back in to DFW on a commercial airline Friday night, so today (Saturday) we had to go get his car from his workplace. I had driven by there, but never been inside. Today I got to go in and see the place. It looked like a fun place to work. I posed with Spiderman. And there were Girl Scout cookies on his desk. And a stuffed cuddly Homer Simpson for me. It was a good day.

Why Not To Stay Up Until 7:00 a.m.

I woke up all happy dreamy thinking, "That was so cool! I met Bruce Willis." Then as I was starting to wake up, I started remembering more about the dream. Yeah, I met Bruce Willis, but I sort of surprised him and shoved a previous autograph that he had given me (in silver ink, no less) at him, saying "Remember this!??" So I guess the dream wasn't really about me meeting Bruce Willis, it was more about me being a creepy Bruce Willis stalker.
~
Later, after I got out of the shower, I was wondering how many brain cells I had killed by staying up all night. Usually when I take a shower I think deep thoughts or make good plans or something like that. I may compose whole blog posts, or grocery lists in my head or come up with funny things to say to My Sweetie. But today when I took that shower all I did was play the Meow Mix song over and over in my head. That's probably not good. Meow meow meow.
~
I actually accomplished some things today and I was somewhat recovering but then I went out to dinner with my daughter and her friend. And then I wanted to take my daughter to my lunch place (a sports bar) because she had never been there. And then they talked me into doing a shot of Jager. And then they actually downed them. I don't down anything. I sip my shots. But anyway we asked the bartender to take our picture and I told the girls to say, "Hi!" and draw it out and we would all look like supermodels with our mouths open like that.

I really shouldn't stay up that late again. Good night!

Why I shouldn't be left alone

So after chatting it up with Carole until 3:00 a.m., I was going to do some little spot cleaning on the carpet with vinegar. Then I turned on the overhead light, which I never do, because it's like surgery certified lighting up there and, oh my, there were paths. Dirt paths all over the place which are not easily viewable under non-surgery certified lighting. So I pulled out the steam cleaner and an hour and a half, and four or five water refills on the steam cleaner later, my forearms are killing me and the TV is on and the remote is in the middle of the room with the wet carpet.

Cat Trains Man

Barney at the back door

~
~
Since Barney became a garage/outdoor cat, he's been very good about it. He never tries to run in the back door or garage door when we go in or out. But he has trained My Sweetie to let him walk through the house from the back door to the garage rather than just walk around the house and go in through the pet door.
~
I took that picture on the day of the 9 inch snow, but it was very early in the day. Barney is pretty smart, but I guess he didn't realize that My Sweetie was at work. I don't think he has put together the presence of the car in the garage with the presence of My Sweetie. So he ventured around the house, through the cold and the snow, expecting his usual walk-through. And then stood there looking at me for quite some time.
~
If My Sweetie had been home, he would have opened the door and escorted Barney through the house to the garage door. Barney is very good about this and goes straight to the garage. Unfortunately Barney has not trained me to do this particular trick and so he was left to find his way back to the garage through the snow.

Stupid Things I heard Today

1: It's supposed to snow again:

2: Some company added radioactive material to dirt to put on a lady's face in the 50's to prove the efficacy of their cold cream:

3: That electric repair company has a new TV commercial offering $50 off! ha ha ha ha

A Detroit Story: Toilet Misadventures

I must start out by saying that I generally do not care to discuss peeing, but I feel like I must preserve this goofy story and it would be hard to leave it out.
~
When we arrived in Detroit last month, I grabbed a map that was on the shuttle bus to our car rental hub. I showed it to My Sweetie and asked him what route he usually takes. He said he always took the route marked in blue:

I suggested we take the route that I have marked in orange (above) because it seemed a bad idea to go right through the city during rush hour. I know it would be here. My Sweetie questioned the shuttle bus driver and she agreed with me. It was a pleasant ride and we were able to stop at a nice convenience store to get beer, mochas and even a diet decaf Pepsi which is unheard of at convenience stores. And the bathroom was very clean. My Sweetie seemed to think it was a longer route however. So on the ride back to the airport, he took his old standby blue route even though it was rush hour again.
~
My plan, after we left the restaurant where the post-funeral gathering was held, was to stop at a convenience store, pee, buy a pack of smokes and change from my new flat boots to my comfy tennis shoes. No way was I going to walk the 92 miles through the airport in my new flat boots. I may be goofy, but I'm not stupid. I had left my tennis shoes and a pair of white cotton socks out of my suitcase in a plastic bag. But there was no place to stop.
~
Starting out on that blue line we were passing through a dreary land that Eminem sang about in "8 Mile" and then we were downtown and then heading out of downtown was all Urban Blighty. Like this:

We finally saw one gas station in a very sketchy neghborhood, so we exited, and I ran in and bought smokes, but no way was I going to use the bathroom in there. Some dude tried to stop me and asked if I would take part in a "survey" and I replied in my thickest southern drawl, "No thanks, I'm from out of town." I walked very quickly back to the car and said, "Hurry! Get us out of here!" And then there was nothing else, so I just figured I would have to use the car rental bathroom.

~

We got there and I ran to the bathroom and there was big yellow caution sign because they had just mopped. The floor was SOAKING wet. I stood there with my pee-addled brain and got the idea to grab a bunch of paper towels. I sat down and balanced my tennis shoes and socks on my thighs and then carefully removed one boot and started drying the bottom to place it in the bag. The boots are suede and I did not want to place them in the bag wet. Then my nice clean white cotton socks fell right off my leg onto the soaking wet floor.

~

I was very irked but realized I would just have to wear the dark polyester socks that I had been wearing all day with my tennis shoes. That was annoying and not my ideal, but I continued with my balancing act and boot bottom drying and made it out of there. (My Sweetie was starting to worry about me as he did not know about the floor.) I packed my bag of boots in my suitcase and stuck the wet socks in a side pocket, and we hopped a shuttle back to the airport.

~

When we got to the airport, we saw that our flight was delayed and began to relax. We went to an "Irish pub" and had some beers and ordered dinner. After dinner, I went to the bathroom to floss. I pulled out my floss and set the container on my right thigh. The same thigh that had lost the socks. Just as I finished flossing I heard, "PLOP!" I was all, "Whuhh?" and quickly stood up to peer into the toilet and there was my floss in the toilet. Just as my brain registered this, the electric eye, noticing even before I myself had, that I had stood up, quickly flushed the toilet. And there went my whole big plastic floss container into the plumbing. I use the woven floss and the container is pretty large. I felt bad, but then realized I probably would not have fished it out anyway.

~

So those were my two goofy toilet mishaps in one day. When I got back to the restaurant, I was laughing. I can still picture that dental floss container rushing away.

What's With Names?

I bet on some planets people aren't legally represented by their names. Maybe on some planets you are designated by the coordinates of where you are standing. Then your legal designation might be: 37°53'N X 122°35'W. Or your designation may be where you fit in your family tree and that might be 483K of 1.6M Glorp. Or maybe you just have a particular sound and you go by: Ting! or Snork! I just think it's a shame that our names are all legalized because it would be fun to randomly change them depending on our moods. Like lately I was thinking I would like my name to be "Snappy Tibbets" for a while. I like the way it sounds.

Mardi Gras in Texas

Since it was Mardi Gras I decided we had to have Cajun food for dinner and because I suck at cooking Cajun food (I tried to make dirty rice from scratch once and it was like dirty athletic socks), I decided to head to Razzoo's (disclaimer: no compensation) because it is the local fun Cajun place. Here are some fun broads:
Here's a girl keeping with the true Nawlins tradition of making crazy shots in a metal tub:

I think this next girl was trying to sell T-shirts. I bought a T-shirt there once and it didn't fit right so I gave it to My Sweetie and he said it fit funny too. I guess they buy their T-shirts from aliens or something. But she was really nice:

I posed for a picture with this next guy because he was KING OF THE BEADS. He must have worn every bead he owns. I have a bajillion beads but I just wore one each of gold, purple and green which I think are the official colors, but what do I know?:

Oh yeah, I also have the red beads on because that picture was taken after the girl in the video down at the bottom of this post threw them to me.

~

This next picture was my "location buddy" meaning he happened to be next to me. He reminded me of Jeff Bridges in the movie Crazy Heart. The craziest thing was this guy was 64. I didn't believe him and bet him $3.00. He showed me his drivers license and sure enough, he was born in 1945. Even after that I argued with him because, counting on my fingers he was only 54. I showed him twice. Then he showed me how to count on my fingers and sure unough, he was 64.:

I asked him why he didn't have any wrinkles and he didn't have a good answer. And I forgot to give him the $3.00.

~

Here's the video of the gals dancing on the bar and I got beads!:

Okay, for some reason, it won't imbed here so here's the URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFY21AHFs20

Anyway, the funniest part is it looks like I was at this big ole Mardi Gras party, but I was only there about an hour and a half. I ordered my food to go and had a couple of beers and then I was gone. And I made some girls really happy when I directed them to my parking spot. It was fun and our Cajun food was delicious!

Fat Tuesday, Ya'll!

Happy Mardi Gras to everyone! Woot woot! I know it's supposed to be a religious holiday, but that doesn't mean I can't celebrate it. Not being the religious type, I don't follow the whole thing, just the Mardi Gras part. Mardi Gras is all about getting your ya-ya's out before Lent. I'm all for partying full out and getting your ya-ya's out. And as for the Lent part, I'm cool with that. I have these:

Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez!

Hodgepodge B'Godge

We had a nice Valentine's Day. Just puttered around and watched the Olympics. My Sweetie gave me two nice flower arrangements and a little stuffed puppy. I love those tulips and I love the swan bud vase.

This next picture was taken very late Thursday night. That's the table top out on our deck:

Early on Thursday afternoon when the snow was still fun, I went out and made a snowlady. When I came back in for the camera it took me a while to find it. I had left it in the pocket of a different coat. When I went back outside, snowlady had fallen flat on her back. I took a picture anyway:

My Sweetie took this next picture on Saturday. I love it!:

If you looked at the video in the post below this one, when I point at the deck and say that the Crape Myrtle had been laying over the bench, I was referring to this:

I'm glad the crazy snowstorm stuff is over. We still have some snow out there, but we've gotten used to it. It should be gone in a few days, hopefully. I will put My Sweetie's funny bird video up in the next few days.

~

We went to the grocery store Friday afternoon to get groceries and I got large shrimp and two lovely artichokes to have for our Valentine's Day dinner, but by Saturday afternoon, I decided that we do not follow convention, so we had our yummy butter feast Saturday night instead of Sunday. Seriously, what difference does it make?

~

We saw the weather report for the week and it will not get above the 50's. I'm really tired of this weather and would like to get some sun. Maybe next week the weather will return to normal. That would be nice. In the meantime, I will be watching the Olympics and enjoying every minute.

After The Snow

I tried to upload a video of me showing the mess in my backyard, TWICE and after wasting HOURS of my life, I decided to just drop it on youtube and paste the link here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQT-xtJ7hA0

You can't see the other three raw wood/open tree wounds on the big tree in that light, you can just see the big one. I had also written some other stuff as well as added a Star-Telegram story about the power outages and whatnot and that is all gone now and I am very tired. But later I will have a funny video that My Sweetie did when the backyard was insane with a giant flock of migrating robins stripping all the holly berries from the bushes. It's been a weird couple of days.

Oh My Snow (From the Fort Worth Star-Telegram)

Snowfall sets single-day record in DFW
By ALEX BRANCH
North Texas hasn't seen a winter this white in 32 years.
The 9.4 inches of snow that had fallen by 9 p.m. Thursday at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport topped the previous record for snowfall in one day of 7.8 inches recorded in 1917 and 1964.
Thursday's snow also catapulted seasonal accumulation to 12.6 inches, according to the National Weather Service in Fort Worth.
That ranks as the fourth-snowiest season ever.
It's far below the 17.6 inches that fell in 1977-78, however, which is still the snowiest on record in Dallas-Fort Worth.
That year, 13.5 inches fell in February alone, also a record.
As snow appeared to taper off Thursday night, the winter of 2009-10 seemed unlikely to rise on the list. The system was supposed to move out of North Texas on Thursday night.
The fourth-snowiest season had been 1976-77, when 10.4 inches fell.
The ingredients for a snowy season are simple: multiple upper-level storm systems supported by temperatures low enough to turn moisture to snow.
Those two elements have collided more than once over North Texas this season.
"It's definitely one of those winters," said Bill Bunting, a meteorologist with the weather service. "You never really know when you'll get one."
~
~
It's all fun and games until someone loses a giant tree branch. The power has popped off several times so I'm going to conclude by saying, "More later."

The Friday Phenomenon

Hello. Professor Geewits is here to explain the Friday Phenomenon. This is the phenomenon in which you feel that it takes longer to get from Friday to Friday than it does to get from, say, Monday to Monday. You are right. It actually does take longer and I will explain it to you.
~
Most people just assume that each day is basically the same length. Like this:We have clocks and we slavishly believe what they tell us. But in fact, the clocks are also victims of this phenomenon and so are unreliable. Always trust your instincts - you know that the days are not the same length. I recently discovered this when my Meals on Wheels route was changed from Wednesday to Friday. When my route was on Wednesday, it felt like Wednesday came around about every 4 days, but since it has moved to Friday, it seems like two weeks have passed.
~
The oddest thing about this is that unlike the normal Monday through Friday worker, I am not craving for Friday to hurry up and get here, so you'd think it would seem to come around more quickly for me and yet it does not. This proves that it is not a matter of desire/relativity. Not for one person, anyway.
~
After much study, I have found that these are the actual length of days in relation to each other:

So yes, if you always thought the weekends went by too quickly, you were correct as they are the shortest days. And I can explain it. Einstein, in his Theory of Relativity explained that when an object is moving at a speed approaching the speed of light, time slows down. Every Monday morning millions of people start wishing that Friday will get here. A thought is an electrical charge which is a wave and this wave moving so quickly amongst millions of people begins to approach the speed of light therefore causing time to slow down. This thought continues moving at this great speed until Thursday morning. It then loses momentum and time begins to speed back up. By Friday morning, the thought has waned to such a fraction of its original force that time speeds up more rapidly, making Saturday and Sunday the shortest days of the week. Here are the week lengths in relation to each other:

That's how the Friday Phenomenon works. So quit thinking about it.

Dis Is What It Is

For some reason I woke up yesterday thinking about words that start with "dis." I've disassembled things that had been previously assembled, and I've dismantled things, but I don't recall them being mantled.

We've all heard of disgruntled postal workers, but you never hear about the gruntled ones.

When you were a kid and you wanted a pony for Christmas, and you didn't get one, you were disappointed. But if you wanted a pony and you got one, did you feel appointed?

I've been disturbed by news, but can't remember being turbed by it. Although I'm sure I have been.

And when was the last time you were mayed? Hopefully you are not always dismayed.

On that funniest video program, when I'd see a baby puke up on something I'd think it was disgusting, but when I'd see a cute kitten video, I don't remember thinking that it was gusting.

Many adults are disillusioned when they find out their pet did not in fact go to live on a farm, but if that farmer were able to show them pictures of Tippy playing happily on that farm for years, would they then be illusioned?

You may want to distance yourself from old friends, but if one of your old friends happens to win the Nobel Peace Prize, would you want to tance yourself to them?

On the other hand, many "dis" words have a counterpart: Agree and disagree, entangle and disentangle, appear and disappear, organize and disorganize, passionate and dispassionate, inclined and disinclined, favour and disfavour, obey and disobey, to name a few. I just think it's weird how many of them do not.

So I hope I have not distressed you and made you feel discombobulated because it's much better to feel tressed and combobulated. I guess.

Missions Accomplished!

On Thursday, the electrician arrived around 10:45 and he was gone by 1:15. I knew it! I knew that was an easy job. I still can't believe that stupid Milestone Electric had quoted me at $1200. Anyway this other guy from Keiser Electric was awesome. He was very efficient and pleasant. And he had red hair! (And no, I did not get a discount or anything for saying that. Not even the red hair part.)
~
So can you see the difference between this picture...:

And this picture?:

Yes! It's that tiny little doodad on the ceiling there:

It's a little can light and I love it!:

Look how it brightens my "work station":

That's my little spot where I stand to do all my mixing, tossing, chopping, slicing and dicing. It's a perfect little spot and just over my left shoulder I can look through the "window" over the sink and see the TV in the living room.

~

The electrician also replaced the ballast in the overhead fixture and now my kitchen is BRIGHT!:

I took that picture with no flash at about the same time in the evening as I took a similar picture in my February 01 post. But now you can SEE. I think that ballast may have been bad for a long time, because the overhead light is really freaking bright now. We don't remember it ever being that bright.

~

The third thing the electrician did was replace the old heater fan/light fixture in the bathroom with a new one that also has an exhaust fan. If you are wondering why there was no exhaust fan in the bathroom, join the club. But actually it was because the bathroom has a window and the building code is that if there is a window you don't need a fan. I know! How stupid is that? You're going to sit there and use the bathroom with the window open? "Hey neighbor! Don't mind me, I'm just reading the newspaper here."

~

Since the new fixture had the extra electrical apparatus, I had to change out the switchplate. Which meant I had to take down the lovely one that Carole made me last summer:

Fortunately, I had just enough paper left, so I covered the new one:

And as happy as I am, I'm going to have to call the electrician. I told him how I wanted the switches set up and he got those two new middle ones backward. The one on top was supposed to be the exhaust fan and the one on bottom the heater fan. So hopefully he can just come back and flip the thing over. I tried to do it myself, but it doesn't just pull right out and besides, electricity makes me nervous. Besides that, I'm as happy as a clam. We have the heater back in the bathroom as well as an exhaust fan, and I can see again in the kitchen. It's all good. And it was all less than $400. Ha!

On A Light(er) Note

Speaking of lights and notes: The Detroit airport, in an attempt to distract you from the fact that the actual airplane you are either trying to get on or have just gotten off of is 92 miles away from check-in and baggage claim, has surrounded one of their people movers with funky music and a light show. (Note to Jazz and Xup: the moving part is divided down the middle with one side marked "stand" and one side marked "walk" so don't go all wacky on me. It wouldn't say "stand" if you weren't supposed to stand there.) Anyway we made a goofy video there.

Also notice how I sweetly wave "bye-bye" at the end and My Sweetie doesn't get it and I get sort of bitchy shrill all of a sudden. It's kind of funny.

A Summary of Days

Living just a handful of miles from the airport, I forget that not everyone does. Although we landed in Detroit almost a half hour early, with the combination of distance + rush hour traffic + driving in cricles in Troy, MI because you cannot turn left there, we had just enought time to brush our teeth and change clothes before we had to venture out into the North Pole-like air to go to the funeral home for the viewing and small service. We were a few minutes late for the service part and since it was SRO we watched through the door windows and could hear everything. It was mostly Rita's kids telling stories about her. It was sweet and touching with lots of funny thrown in. I told you Rita was funny. After that it was people milling around with me trying to guess at or remember who was who. We made our way after that to My Sweetie's fave aunt and uncle's house where we visited with a few folks for a few hours then returned to our room to crash.
~
Although the room was relatively nice and we had been upgraded to a suite, the mattress was horrid. It was overly soft and mushy and seemed to tilt downhill toward my feet. And the air was dry as a bone. A desert bone. I did not sleep well and woke up to the coldest day of their season so far with an expected high of 14°. Here's a picture of our "egg" from our hotel room that morning:
I called that tiny rental car either "the egg" or "the capsule" the whole time. But the good news about a tiny car is that it heats up pretty fast. I can't even imagine how long it would take to heat a large car in that weather.
~
At the church, I somehow ended up in the very front pew right on the center aisle. And since I am not Catholic, I do not say any of that stuff they say or sing or anything. All I did was stand and sit when told and shake hands during the "peace be with you" segment. This apparently made me stand out to the priest because he looked at me 90% of the time when he was preaching. It was like he was trying really hard to convince me of something. And when the handshake part started he practically ran right to me to shake my hand first. That must have really confused him because A) I was wearing the really really old St. Mary pendant that Granny had given me when I was a teenager and B) When he said "Peace be with you," I did know to say, "And also with you." My Sweetie did a reading and was really good. Many people remarked on it later. After that we got in line with a flag on our car and drove to the cemetery chapel. I loved the stained glass there:

That part was short and then everyone headed to a pretty cool restaurant on the very golf course that My Sweetie's grandpa caddied at as a boy. The food was great, it was open bar and it was a big party atmosphere with lots of catching up. The last time we had seen the majority of these people was at Rita's husband's funeral back in 2002. This is me after about 100 beers:

We had to go straight to the airport from there and I have some pics and stories about that but I'll get to that another time hopefully.

~

And now to back up a bit, the night before we left, My Sweetie smelled something burning and noticed smoke coming out of the bathroom heater fan. Then when we got home from the trip, our kitchen light was out. We bought new bulbs but they never did fire up - just flickered like the "bad" bulbs, so I figured that the ballast had gone bad. For three nights I have been cooking pretty much in this light:

It's not really that dark, but it's way too dark for cooking. So when I wake up later today, I'm going to call the electrician. We already bought everything we need except the ballast because I just figured that out today with the help of Carole's husband. And since the electrician will be here anyway, I am also having him install a can light over my kichen work area, which is that part that sticks out in the left foreground of that picture. That will be really nice. And that bathroom heater fan was just a heater and light but we are replacing it with a light/heater/exhaust fan. Hopefully everything will go smoothly and since I bought almost everything including wiring and switches, maybe it will cost us only a leg instead of an arm and a leg. I'll keep you posted.