Highs and Lows?

I constantly amaze myself. I didn't have a particularly good day, but I felt perfectly fine and in a pretty good mood when My Sweetie got home and asked how my day was. And even though I was majorly stressed at 4:30 with millions of racing thoughts about "what to do!? what to do!?" that had all passed and I simply said, "Oh, it had its highs and lows." He then asked, "What were some highs?" And I was speechless. I couldn't think of anything really good, so I sort of stammered, 'Well, uhm, I finally got the last piece of cloth I need to make the cat pillow."
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My day started a tad late, but not too late. I was about 5 minutes later than usual getting to the church to pick up the food. But there was a new sheet there. A sign-in sheet that had three sections. One for my signature, one for my route and one for the time I left the church. And there was a note on there that said, "Remember the food arrives at 10:30." I was all "Really? since when? No one told me!" I've probably been there 3 dozen times at 11:00 and had to wait 10 or 15 minutes for the food to arrive, so I always get there about 11:15 to 11:20. I saw on the sheet that two people had signed their time as 10:40, which made me think that the food must really get there now at 10:30. I felt like an errant child that had been caught at something. It wasn't a good start to my day.
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Then I caught the damn train:
Since I already felt LATE, catching the train just made me more tense. Everything went fine from there until I got to one house and got no response. I followed procedure, which ends with calling into MOW, and they said they had called in the cancellation to the church, so being the honest knucklehead that I am, I just blurted out, "Oh! Okay! I was freaked out by the sign-in sheet and didn't even look at the cancellation sheet. My bad!"
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Then I got a text from my daughter asking if we could have another goofy game afternoon and I said, "Sure, I'll call when my errands are done." After lunch I returned the printer cable I didn't need to Best Buy and then went to the fabric store. I called my daughter and she was on the other side of town. I was all, "I thought we were going to play games!" and she said "How about in two hours?" UHm, no. That would have been 5:30. I was pretty disappointed because we had so much fun last time and I had been really looking forward to it.
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So I grabbed a beer at Logan's and got two side salads to add to the dinner I was going to make (I'm addicted to their house dressing) and came home. I got home around 4:30 and saw I had a message on my home phone from my special MOW lady and the message had come in at 12:26. It was a very long distraught message about water all over her bathroom floor and she hadn't been upstairs in 4 days and had no idea how long it had been leaking, etc, etc,. So here it is, prime rush hour time, her house is 15 miles away, and I'm trying to come up with some good ideas and sort of panicing, but when I called her, she had already called her Thursday MOW guy and he had come and turned off the water and put towels down.
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And it was the toilet valve that was leaking. I had also been freaked out because that was one of her bathrooms that I had replaced a faucet, so I had worried it was something I had done, but I have not touched that toilet. (I had worked on her toilet downstairs.) Anyway her Thursday MOW guy will be there later today and he is going to help her out and if she needs me she can call me.
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So when he asked, "What were the highs?" I really couldn't think of anything. But I did finish my crossword puzzle in 30 minutes with only 7 writeovers (I use a pen).

Bar Joke 3

My brain has finally started processing information. I went on the old Mac today and was opening the old bar jokes to save them in a better format and realized they were originally done in Aldus Freehand, which is such an old illustrating software it's not even on Wikipedia. Oops, my bad! Anyway I finally looked at a window when I was opening one (I've mentioned many times how lazy I am) and it said something about "converting Aldus Freehand." So that's how I figured that out. Also, one of my problems is forgetting that when you go from Mac to pc you gotta tell everyone what sort of file it is. You have to actually type ".jpg" or ".tif" so a pc knows what the hell to do. Okay, I know this is boring the hell out of everyone so...
This is for VioletSky who commented on the last one that my comics "have definitely stood the test of time." Well, one of them had prices on it from 12 years ago. I hope all this exposition doesn't spoil the joke:

In The Bar 2

It's bad enough that I'm semi dylsexic, but all this going back and forth and formatting between Mac and PC is getting my brain all confusilated!

I feel like I've been doing this for two hours now. I wish I could remember what I did Saturday night!

The Lost Comics

Wow! The coolest thing happened tonight. I was looking for a particular graphic and used the old Mac and then needed an IBM floppy to bring it in here. I found my old floppy box and found my old comics! I think I made them in 1997. I had seen some interesting static comics and thought, "Well heck, I can do that!" Since I can't draw I realized I could do some clip art static characters and then it's just about the writing. I wish I had kept my rejection letter from the comics rag that I had sent some to. Anyway, I thought these guys were LONG gone. Not only did I find them but was able to unstuff them and open them and everything. And this will sound very egotistical, but some of them actually made me laugh out loud. I'm guessing you will have to click on it to read it, but here's one I liked:

A Woman's Prerogative

There's an old saying: It's a woman's prerogative to change her mind, but are you like me and have done a complete 180? Or as they say in the modern political era: totally flip-flopped on something? Well one of mine is that for over 30 years I was an obsessive tucker. (Yes, I meant to type "tucker.") No matter what I was wearing, the shirt had to be tucked into the pants. It was ridiculous. In this first example, not only is the top tucked in but I'm wearing some sort of stupid belt. (I'm the one on the right.):

1982

This next one is just as stupid. The top is a really cute cotton shirt (the type with eyelets and whatnot) that was even cut to indent at the waist and fall in an elegant flair at the top of the hips. And I tucked it in. I wonder what I was thinking. Oh yeah, "I have to tuck this in."

1988

This next one is really just incomprehensible. It looks like I am wearing cotton knit house shorts and yet, I have tucked in my shirt!:

1994, I think

Well, what happened was, I read an article in TV Guide (yeah, of all things) and never tucked in another thing. It may have been the 40th anniversary of Breakfast at Tiffany's or something, but TV Guide had an article by Audrey Hepburn's main designer guy about how he dressed her. I'm guessing it must have been Hubert de Givenchy because he styled a lot of her outfits. He said something like, "She was short-waisted and smaller at the top than the bottom so I always put her in long shirts and drop waist dresses. It made her look taller and longer." And it was one of those moments for me. A "Personal Duh" if you will, and that was that.

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Do you have something in your life where you did a complete turnaround about food, friends, fun, fashion, family (what the F? Why does everything start with F?) or anything else?

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Some Side Notes:

Although I have always detested Andrew Dick Dice Clay, the current ad for "The Apprentice" where he calls Mr. Worst Hair Ever "Donny Trump" really gave me quite a chuckle. "Donny." heh heh heh.

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"Survivor" went all tricksy tonight making us think that "coach" had been thwarted, but then we saw at the end that he had voted for Jerry. That was annoying. I only got to be thrilled for a minute or so.

Birds and Stuff

It's kinda funny that in my last post I was saying how I talk on the phone a lot when My Sweetie's out of town, but I really wasn't in a chatty mood this time. Oh I talked to Carole and Lo a little bit but I always talk to them. I didn't even call Mom. I just puttered around and watched some movies and of course the Buffy Musical which I was able sing along with really loudly and not have to worry about offending anyone's ears. This is one of my favorite songs.
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Today I noticed some odd birds in the backyard. Basically I get about 6 types of birds here. No variety at all, so these birds really stood out. They were in a smallish group, maybe 20 or so and they were really flitty. I kept trying to catch one in my binoculars but they never stayed still long enough. Finally I noticed they were hanging out in the holly tree by my bathroom windows so I went in there and sidled up to a window and got a really good look.
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Then my brain's all, "I wonder what those are?" I came in here and googled "bright yellow tips on tail feathers" and the very first link gave me an answer. They are Cedar Waxwings. They would not stay in a tree if I was at all close and they move so quickly I gave up on trying to take an individual picture and just started snapping pics of the tree. After opening about 10 pictures and playing a sort of "Where's Waldo?" I actually found some birds in the pics. The first one is blurry, but the second one's not so bad:

I'm not a real birder or anything, but I do like to look at birds, especially ones I don't see all the time.

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I must have posted about a hundred times last year about how hot I was and my hair was too short to put in a ponytail, but this growing my hair out is so not working for me. I really hate my hair right now and decided to get it cut short again. I'm going to make an appointment after MOW for this Saturday. I'm going for a very retro look. Tyler is pretty good about following a picture and I found this on the internet:

When Carole and I did MOW last December she said my hair looked like "old Hollywood," and I had thought the same thing, so I know my hair can do this. Unfortunately, I can't make my face do that. Heh heh. But I really like that haircut. And my vow to myself and to you guys is that I will not complain once this summer about not being able to put my hair up. I will still complain about being hot though, because I imagine I would do that even if I were bald.

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So today I was telling Lo about brushing my teeth and my toothbrush slipping and socking me in the nose and she laughed and said she does that sometimes. Does everyone do that? I guess that falls under the category of "stuff people do but never mention" so I'm mentioning it now. I wonder if crazy foreign billionaires hire a dentist to show up and brush their teeth three times a day? You never know.

My Oscar Musings and

It's always ironic that sometimes there is nothing on TV and then.... Well Duke's game was scheduled for 6:45 tonight and with the exception of hospital visits or birthdays, Duke games always take precedence, so we sort of watched the Academy Awards backwards. And although none of you care two figs, I must mention that Duke played GREAT and we had an important win three ways: 1) Another ACC win, 2) Retribution for when they beat us in January and, 3) Defeated a higher nationally ranked team. Woot woot Go Duke!
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Every year My Sweetie and I fill out Oscar ballots and every year he kicks my ass. Except this year, and still I did not win. We tied. It almost felt like a win though. I really liked the ceremony tonight and loved all the change 'em ups they did. And I only heard the orchestra play someone off one time. That part was really nice. There was only one dress I didn't like and I think it was Reese Witherspoon. Yes, I just googled it. There was a lot of humor and Ben Stiller's take on Joaquin Phoenix was so hilarious - and I'm not even a giant Ben Stiller fan. One of the weirder moments was when Jennifer Aniston was presenting. Just as I formed the thought to say, "At least they are showing some class and not cutting to a shot of Brad and Angelina" They did! Ooof.
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I give the whole show a thumbs up though. Hugh Jackman is wonderful and they had John Legend sing, which always relaxes the hell out of me. His voice is like butter. I bet this show wins the Emmy this September for best variety special or whatever that category is.
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Saturday night my daughter came over for dinner. This is becoming more of a regular thing which I think is very nice. And she always helps in the kitchen.
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My Sweetie leaves in 12 hours to go to Arizona until Wednesday night. I'm so jealous because he gets to fly on the corporate jet. The closest I've been to a jet was when a Vegas cabbie pointed some out to me through a giant chain-link fence and said, "That's Janet Jackson's jet." At least I'll finally get to have cabbage. He doesn't like cabbage and I always fix the foods that I love that he doesn't like while he's away. And then I'll probably end up talking for hours and hours on the phone because I always seem to end up doing that when he's out of town. I'm glad I changed my phone plan to unlimited long distance. Speaking of that, if you live in the U.S. and want to talk to a crazy person drop me an e-mail and I'll give you a call. And you won't even have to worry about my cabbage breathe.

(Computer Technical Advice: Your computer will not recognize a flash drive if it is just sitting on top of your computer desk.)

Lazy Be Gone

My few days of the lazies went right out the window today. And as you can see, I broke in my new camera with a few pics of Barney. But instead of talking about all the stuff I did today, I should start with yesterday. And by yesterday I mean Wednesday because I am a night owl and this will officially show as a Friday post although it is Thursday night to me. This does get confusing sometimes.
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I was actually running a little late on Wednesday morning. It's a running joke with myself that no matter what time I get up on Wednesday morning, when I get in my truck it is 11:03 (which is really 10:59. It's a clock thing). Wednesday morning when I cranked up "ol' trucky" the clock said 11:07. My first thought was, "This is no good. The whole day will be bad." And the highway was insane. I'm surprised I'm not dead. People were total loons. But I made it to the church and everything went smoothly after that.
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Too smoothly. Halfway through my route I stopped and checked my list and counted my food because everything was going too fast (in my head). But no, it was all normal. When I stopped at the two beers bar, I only had one beer because I was actually hungry. I went to the other Chili's and by "other" I mean the one that does not steal cameras. I really love the bartender there. She has the same name and is the same age (or close to it) as my daughter and she's just really sweet. Every Wednesday I get a USA Today, and after I eat, I do the crossword puzzle in ink. (I count my writeovers.) Kate the bartender does them at night and on the days I go there I give her mine because she likes to "cheat off of it" as we say in the south. We have a running thing with the puzzle. I time myself and always loudly proclaim "Tah Dah!" when I am finished. In case you are confused because I mention so many other places that I eat lunch, quite often after eating lunch elsewhere, I will go there to do my puzzle.
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Okay, I'm getting so off track. After lunch and puzzle time, I went to Best Buy to get a new camera. (Oh and way earlier My Sweetie had called and told me to also buy a printer. I think I mentioned in another post that after our computer died our printer was not compatible with the new computer or the Vista or whatever it was.) I cruised all around the camera section looking for my camera and their camera display was bizarrely organized, but I finally found my camera. Just about the time I finally found it a sales guy ran up to help me. I was wearing shades and chewing gum and for some reason started channeling the guy from "Saturday Night Live" that plays the a-hole.
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He was all, "Are you finding everything okay?" and I said, "Yeah, this is the camera. Where are the memory cards?" Just as we get to the memory cards, I said, "And a printer. I'm gonna get a printer." This next part was funny. He asks what my printing needs are and I tell him I just need a basic printer. Then salesguy starts telling me about a fax/printer/scanner/copier on sale. We were walking this whole time and I just stopped and he almost smacked into me and I said, "Seriously, I just need something to print airline tickets and recipes off of the internet, and that's it." Maybe they get commision there but he was not happy with this and led me to a very basic HP printer. Which I bought.
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When I got home, I called my daughter and she came over for her beach rocks. She was very generous and gave me more than my share. I then brought out my microscope and we looked at a lot of the rocks and they were FASCINATING! Some of them had what looked like veins of silver or gold. One of the black rocks was composed of lots of small circles which I think was ancient coral. My very favorite thing was several of the mostly "clear" rocks had black specks inside that I like to think is ancient carbon from The Big Bang. But I'm a romantic like that. (ha ha when I just proofread this I had typed "Bog Bang.")
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Okay now I'm caught up with Thursday and my lazy going away. As soon as I started setting up the new printer, I got an idea:
The printer is so small I thought it would be a cool spacemaking idea to put that metal rack over it. But that metal rack had been in my kitchen cabinet. So I put this metal rack in the kitchen cabinet:

That rack had been in a bathroom cabinet (yes I cleaned it) and has an extra tier, so worked well with those dishes. And where I removed that rack from the bathroom cabinet I put a wooden box on its side as a shelf and got that stuff more organized. I also took all that Guitar Hero Band stuff out of the box that has been in the library for months and put it in a large plastic storage bin and put it in the random room. I still want to play those drums.

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There's more stuff I did like taking two fans outside and compressed air blowing them. (Sorry, I didn't know exactly how to word that). And I also did my regular chores and a little redecorating. It's always funny to me after I've been a slug for a few days that I get a burst of energy like that. I also got a bunch of blog post ideas that I hope I don't forget. And now for a few sidenotes:

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(Jazz, were you irritated that "Coach" orchestrated that vote?)

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(Ian, I thought of you tonight when an anchor on "Sportscenter" called one of my team's players "Freshman Elliot Smith." Elliot Williams is the frosh. Nolan Smith is a sophomore.)

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(Ticknart, do you watch "Voyager?")


So now that I got my energy back, I hope to get a lot more done around here. Or maybe I'll just get lazy again. And Barney says, "hi!"

Lazy Rocks

I've been in a lazy phase for the last two days and thought maybe it was the weather. It's been mostly overcast. But I think what it really is is that I had too many out days last week. I went out Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. That's a LOT of out days for me. If you are a normal person feel free to roll your eyes which you probably already did, but going out is very stressful to me except for Wednesday Meals on Wheels day, which for some reason is fine or maybe just habit after almost 9 years. I've actually gone for weeks at a time when the only time I left the house was to do MOW. Don't feel bad if you are making fun of me in your head because my own mother always says I'm "just being silly." Anyway, I think that's why I've been kind of veging out these last two days.
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And it seems to be affecting my cat. I've noticed that Barney has been sleeping almost round the clock in the other computer chair for the last two days. I never thought that my energy levels would affect my cat. I'm thinking that on Thursday I'll spend a lot of time playing string games with him. That will get us both moving.
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The Beach Rocks are DONE!
This picture does not do them justice, but they are beautiful and shiny and I will be sad when my daughter takes hers because most of them are hers. But that gives me serious incentive to collect as many as possible during my May beach trip.
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I was in such a hurry to start my next batch, I only remembered at the last minute to take this picture:
You can't tell by that picture that these rocks have lots of shiny glinty parts, but I'm expecting them to polish up very nicely. And there are 5 agate pieces on the bottom that came with the rock kit. These rocks I found at Mom's house when I was clearing stuff out. I guess she was using them for potted plants.
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When I started this new batch of rocks it seemed much quieter than the first rocks and at first I thought I had just gotten used to the noise, but then I realized that beach rocks are relatively flat and therefore clack against each other whereas these quartz rocks are rounder and roll around each other. Or maybe I've just gotten used to the noise. I'm no rock expert.
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OH. MY. GOD. This just in: The radio station, my FAVORITE station, an R&B station which I mentioned in the last post is now a Latin music station. WTF? My radio in the garage that always stays on was playing Latin music today and I tuned it to another pop music station but I thought it was because it was an old analog radio and 107.5 had gotten weak for some reason. But my stereo in here is digital and I turned on 107.5 and whaaaa? So I googled it and it is now a Latin music station. It's like a bad episode of of Frasier! Damn. I finally found a station I loved and now it's gone. Why am I not too surprised?
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Well at least I get to pick out my new camera later this afternoon. Then I think I'll take a week of IN DAYS.

Crazy Week

Andrew Jackson Hotel

What a strange week it's been. Lots of highs and lows. Worse than having my camera stolen was my team losing two very important games. We've been in the top 10 all season and were even #1 for one week, but we will not be in the top 10 next week. My very favorite show - "Survivor" started a new season Thursday and that was a big high but the best part, even better than getting money to replace my camera, which I did, Yay!, was this: My Sweetie gave me the go ahead to make my reservations for Lo's and my Halloween New Orleans trip. We're going to stay at the Andrew Jackson Hotel this time. I like to stay at a different place every time I go to New Orleans and this one looked good. It's on Royal which is a great location and after I looked at it on Google Earth I saw that it is only a block from the little grocery store where I buy my beer. Bonus! I found this Dorothy costume on the internet:

And it's only $35.99. What a deal! If I want to buy the shoes they are only $32.00. I was going to buy dyeable shoes, have them dyed red, and make my own, but for only $32 I think I should try these out first. Of course being a costume place, maybe stuff is not returnable. I could always buy them a little large and stuff them with Dr. Scholl's gel things if they are not very comfy.

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Back to the camera, the manager was very nice and when I took my paperwork in on the cost to replace the camera and memory card, he just gave me cash right then. I had all sorts of stuff rehearsed that I was going to say, and was in a foul mood because my team had just lost, but he was all "Okay!" And that was that. I have to say that being a blogger makes life a lot easier when you lose things. Because I'm a blogger, I download pics all the time so every single pic that was on that camera is on my computer. Also last year when our computer crashed and all my downloaded pics were lost, all of my blog pics were still there as well as the ones I had downloaded on flickr. Who knew that blogging would have these extra benefits?

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On Valentine's Day we were going to see Taken at 4:45 and then run by the grocery store and come home to catch up on our DVR'ed shows and watch Saturday Night Live. I planned to make my deluxe chicken nachos because we knew restaurants would be insane. Little did we know that the whole day was insane. We pulled into the Movie Tavern parking lot a little before 4:30 and the lot was so full, My Sweetie dropped me off to buy tickets and there was a long line for tickets. When we were still about 6 feet from the ticket window we heard "Front row only for Taken!" I walked up and asked if I had heard correctly, and yes I had so we left and drove around the building to a fun looking bar that we had never really noticed called "Boomer Jack's." We hung out here for a few beers and hit the store and headed home.

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I keep the radio on in the garage 24/7 and as I was sitting out there having a smoke I called the radio station that I listen to and asked if they had been playing Outkast's "Happy Valentine's Day" song. Well the DJ was all crazy friendly and asking what I was doing for Valentine's and I told him I was making deluxe chicken nachos for my husband. He kept asking me questions which was weird and then I realized he was going to play it on the air. Sure enough about 40 minutes later I was out there smoking and an edited version of the conversation came on the air with my hinky sounding voice. It was pretty funny. At least my laugh sounded okay.

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Since the DJ kept asking what made my nachos "deluxe" I will show you. I made a slide show:

Visit www.moblyng.com to make your own!

Hearts and Stuff

Valentine's Day sort of snuck up on me this year. My favorite MOW lady wished me a "Happy Valentine's Day!" on Wednesday and I felt terrible that I had overlooked it. I would have gotten her a card. Today I was thinking about the date a lot and I was thinking about my favorite memories and I thought I would share two of them:
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When I was in third grade I picked this boy named David to be my boyfriend. My girlfriends teased me because he wore black horn-rimmed glasses and had crazy unkempt hair and big freckles, but there was just something about him I liked. And he made me laugh. Well, that was probably the thing about him I liked. We would talk on the phone every night for an hour and it was really annoying to my parents but I guess some part of them found it amusing because they didn't put a stop to it. Once I even arranged for my Mom to drive me over there for a visit (they did not live close) and we sat on the couch in the "front room" which is a southern traditional room from back in the day that was like a fancy living room that was never used. (I'm pretty sure I should have used a few commas back there but I read somewhere that people use too many commas so I'm trying to restrain myself.)
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Our relationship was very long term for third graders and we even had big fights and make-ups. I still own the piece of paper that got me sent to the office and caused my parents to be called to the school. I had written "David is a sun of a bich" and tossed it in the trash just as the teacher walked in. By the time my parents came to the school, David and I had already made up. I'll always remember the principal asking, "Is this the language she is learning at home?" and my Mom cooly responding, "Is this how she is learning to spell here?"
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As I mentioned before, our whole relationship was a big shocker to my schoolmates. I was the most popular girl in third grade and I can brag about that now because that was it for me. Who peaks in third grade? Oh yeah, me. So anyway, Valentine's Day rolled around and all my friends got the regular valentine card (from the box set) from their cute boyfriends and what did I get? I got a HUGE and I'm guessing it was maybe a 18" x 10" valentine card from David and the big pink heart had felt on it! Not only that, but I got a little box of Whitman's Sampler chocolates. Those girls were so jealous and I hope they learned something about picking boyfriends. (I tried to use that story to help my daughter in her young years but it didn't help.)
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Another favorite Valentine's Day memory happened in 7th grade. In December of my 7th grade year we moved to another town, so by the time Valentine's Day rolled around - just two months later - I really didn't have any friends or know many people. On Valentine's Day I got a large (not David large, but big) Valentine's Day card in the mail. It had a padded satin heart and was just a gorgeous card. I think I have it in a scrapbook. It was signed "from your secret admirer." I was all excited thinking about every cute boy in school. I walked around on cloud 9 for a while. It really perked me up and made me feel special. I didn't find out for a long time that my Dad had sent it. How sweet is that? He must have been having a hard time keeping a straight face for that week or so that I was talking about the card and wondering who my secret admirer was.
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I hope this post brought back some sweet memories for you. Happy Valentine's Day!

The Bad News/Good News Debate: Now with cameras!

I have a lot to talk about and some is very good and some is very bad and after a lot of thought I figured it is best to start with the bad news so that we all end on a happy note.
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In the 6 hours between the time I called Chili's and showed up there, my camera disappeared. I was not happy. The General Manager is out of town until Thursday and he is the person I will have to deal with. The manager in charge apologized to me profusely. She said she was standing right next to the guy in the office this morning when I called. They have admitted they had my camera so I will make them replace it if it does not turn up.
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I felt all naked without my camera and wanted to do a post tonight on my fun Hobby Lobby finds and my awesome neighbor Carole lent me her camera. And she is way more awesome than that, but that is the happy note this will end on, so you will have to wait.
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My best friend Lo asked me to make her an amusing dishwasher clean/dirty thing and by thing I do not mean magnet because her dishwasher door is not metal. Being all McGyver minded like I am, I came up with the idea of a suction cup, so I found some at Hobby Lobby that have a hook (hee hee, I typoed "hoof" instead of hook!) Anyway, I have a plan which I will not reveal here and will save that for another post. This is all you get to see now:

I also found this really neat metal sign:

It's 15 1/2" x 5 3/4" (39.3 cm x 14.6 cm for you metric junkies). I really love it but there are two different places I want to put it and it is only one thing. I suppose I could put the nails in both places and take turns. I wish there had been two of them.

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On the rock front, today was the end of round three, which was the pre-polish and I started the last round (polish) which will go for 7 more days. I thought they were gorgeous today so I can't imagine what they will look like next. And since I was nearing the end of the rock polishing I bought this:

(It says "ages 10 & up." That's right.) This refill kit has all this jewelry making stuff and the new rocks are much smaller than the ones that came with my tumbler. And they are prettier. But they will be my third round because I already have rocks I want to do for round 2. And at the rate this is going they should all be done by summer. For round 2 I am doing agates and quartz. Or is "agate" the plural like "deer?" And should it be "quartzes?"

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Last Wednesday one of my Meals on Wheels ladies answered the door and it was so sad to see her head. Her cancer has returned and she is doing chemo and I guess most of you know or have seen someone with the sad patchy clumps. When I got home I called Carole, who is into knitting and has just started experimenting with caps, and asked if maybe she could make one for this lady. And she made this:

It is the softest thing in the whole world! I really love it and can't wait to give it to the lady later today. Isn't Carole the sweetest person ever? Whenever I start thinking about my camera and getting irritated, I'm going to think about this cap. And it will make me happy.

Well That Bites

Here I was all ready to do my post about the stuff I bought at Hobby Lobby and my camera is MIA. When I left Chili's my purse tumped over onto the floor of my truck so I assumed my camera was out there and it is not. I did pull it out at Chili's because the guy I was talking to wanted to see a picture of my lobster. Of course Chili's is closed so I will have to wait until tomorrow to see if they have my camera. I sure hope they do.

!!!!~~Update~~!!!!
I called and they have it. Whew!

The Organized Credenza: Slow or Steady?

I woke up Thursday morning feeling all organizey, but it wasn't organic. Earlier that morning, while I was sound asleep one of those charities called and asked if I could have a bag or box for them on Valentine's day. Out of habit, I said "Yes!" Because that's how I control my clutter.
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They usually ask, "Will that be a bag or a box and I always say, "Yes!" Because it will be one or the other. But back to Thursday. I didn't do anything organizey on Thursday. I'm sorta like a crockpot when it comes to doing things. Actually, "Slow and steady wins the race" is my own personal motto. Okay, I didn't not do anything. (Huh?) I actually decided on Thursday to tackle my T-shirt problem.
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I have about a million T-shirts. My closet has a built-in cubby-hole shelfy thing (which you will see later) and that's where I've always kept my T-shirts even though they never fit in there quite right. And for a while now they have been really spilling out. As in, piles of stacked T-shirts on my closet floor. So Friday afternoon I pulled out all of my T's and stacked them on the bed:

(Don't laugh at my quilt - my Grandmother made it!)

After giving it a lot of slow and steady thought, I realized that I should move the contents of the green thing to the cubby hole shelves and put the T-shirts in the green thing. This is the green thing:

I had been storing all my house pants and favorite sweatshirts in the green thing and realized they would fit much better in the cubbies. And they did:
I left the top cubby-hole open because most of my heavier (okay, yes they are sweatpants!) house pants were "in the wash." But as you can see, there was lots of room:

And all the T-shirts I kept fit very nicely into the green thing:

And if you are wondering why I call it the green thing, it's because I didn't know what it was. After giving it a lot of thought, I guess it may be a credenza. But we can't call it "the credenza" because this is what we call "the credenza":

I can see the similarities. Both have a top surface and doors with shelves inside, but it pretty much ends there. Besides, if we called them both credenzas we'd have to differentiate, like "the green credenza in the bedroom" and "Mom's fancy Italian credenza that we couldn't sell last year." And that would be too much trouble.

Consumer Alert: Touch-control Lamps

Several years ago, HGTV told me my bedside lamps were wrong. They were too wide and too fat for my bedside tables (and I won't even mention they were brass). Yeah, I know HGTV is always telling me stuff. Like my kitchen needs updating as well as my floors and bathroom countertops. But I can't do everything they tell me. The lamps, however were do-able. I went online to Lamps Plus (and by golly they will never let me forget it!) and picked out two tall thin lamps. I found this picture on an old blog post because I can't go in there to take a picture because My Sweetie is asleep and I took the one out here apart.:
I really liked the lamps, but they were the touch-control type, which I wasn't crazy about and believe me, when you reach for a Kleenex at 4:30 a.m. and accidentally touch that thing, you are in for quite a shock. Anyway, one of them stopped responding to touch after a year or so, so I just ordered a third one. We took the "bad" one over to my FIL along with one of those rolling switches and he put it on the cord for us and then it worked. Now it was just on and off instead of the high/medium/low when it was a touch lamp. Not long after that, we thought another one had gone out but realized we had put the wrong bulb in it. So of course I wondered if that was what had happened to the first one. See, even though it goes high/medium/low, it does not work with a 3-way bulb.
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The one with the switch ended up on My Sweetie's side of the bed (the one in the picture at top) and the third one ended up in here by the computer. A few weeks ago, when I came in here one night, the lamp was unplugged. I asked him why the next day and he said the touch-control had gone out and it would not turn off. It's plugged into a surge protector, so I asked, "Why didn't you just flip the switch on the surge thing?" That's what we've been doing now for several weeks.
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Tonight when I came in here to turn on the lamp, the bulb popped. I unscrewed it and sure enough, it was a 3-way bulb. I had a good laugh and went to get a correct replacement bulb. But it didn't work. The touch part, I mean. The bulb worked, but there was no off or medium or low. Oh, well, I figured back to business as usual with the surge switch.
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Around midnight tonight I was finishing up my TV watching and noticed there was no light on here. I came in here to see what was what and smelled a melty plastic smell. I yanked the lamp cord out of the surge box and sure enough, it was the lamp. I removed the bottom of the lamp and this is what I saw:

That bumpy looking area on that little black box? That's melt. And here's what the top of that little black box looked like:

So the lesson here is if your touch-control stops working, either switch out the innards to a rolling switch cord or throw it away. It still smells bad in here and I sprayed the hell out of the room with Oust. Melty plastic plugged in things are never good.

~~3/17/09 UPDATE: Please GO HERE for more helpful information.

My Comic Strip & Slide Show

I made this on toonlet.com. It's a Beta version and has some kinks to be worked out but it was fun to do:

I call this: The Life of a Jigsaw Puzzle

Visit www.moblyng.com to make your own!

Speaking of .....

I thought I had posted about this before but I did a search on my blog for "creditors" as well as "debt collectors" and got nothing. So here's the thing. When I left my second husband I did not want my girly name listed in the phone book, so instead of Geewits Lastname it was listed as G. Lastname and we kept my account all these years. Although I did change the last name after I remarried, it still just had my initial. So what happens is every person with my same first initial that has the same last name and owes anyone money is called at this number. And when they call here looking for Gina or Gary or Greg Lastname, they are rude and don't believe me. And because I generally don't answer unknown phone numbers I get lots of messages, which would be okay except when any of them call before 11:00 a.m. and wake me up - then I just get mad. I hadn't had any in a while until recently. I kept getting messages saying "This is an important call from your jeweler, please call...." and it was a recording which is even more annoying. I finally called and said "I want these sales calls stopped!" I thought they were trying to sell me jewelry. I didn't even realize this one was a debt collector. But they were, and I realized I had finally had it, so I called the phone company and had our listing changed to "My Sweetie and Geewits Lastname." I hope that's the end of that.
~
Speaking of unwanted callers, I was thinking about making a small sign to put on the door which would state:
I do not want my trees trimmed, AT&T internet or TV service, to hear about your religion, or have the dents hammered out of my truck, so unless you are wearing a UPS, FedEx, USPS or GSA patch on your shirt, I suggest you try the next house.
My Sweetie thought it was funny but said it would be too rude.
~
Speaking of rude, tonight on "American Idol" Simon Cowell told someone "That was indulgent nonsense." I cracked up and said, "That describes my whole life!" That probably should have been the name of my blog. Although I am trying to fill the unforgiving minute, I pretty much fill up most of my minutes with indulgent nonsense.
~
Speaking of that, today I made a lobster out of modeling clay:

My Usual Disjointed Rambling

I've been a little blogger lazy lately. For no particular reason except I'm just lazy in general. A lady name Fightin' Mad Mary left a comment a couple of posts back and so I went to check out her blog and over on the right in the "about me" section she said "I only read blogs with pictures."
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I thought that was interesting. For some reason it reminded me of when I was a little kid and "Bewitched" would come on and I'd be all excited thinking it was a cartoon. And then after the credits, it was just regular people and I would be all disappointed. And it took me several times before my toddler brain put it together and realized it would happen every time.
It also reminded me of an article my newspaper had some time back about "how to be a popular blogger" or something to that effect. I remember it said "Always have a picture." I usually have pictures because I like to show people what I'm talking about but sometimes I post without a picture, because it doesn't seem necessary. To me anyway. Besides, I don't want to be a popular blogger. I think I'd get brain damage if I had even 20 comments. I've never gone around finding blogs to comment on so they would find me. In my early thinking about blogging, I thought you found people from comments. That's how I found people. I found Jammie from her comments on Jay's blog and I found Naomi from her comments on Jammie's blog and Scarlet found me from my comments on Naomi's blog. I think I found Jazz from her comments on Ian's blog and Ticknart from his comments on Jazz's blog (same with Big Brother). I can't remember how I found Ian or Ian found me. Same with some of my other peeps. I just forgot how it "went down." Sorry, I'm listening to an R&B station. (I didn't link these people because they are right there in my sidebar you lazy weasels.)
~
Does anyone else have a bunch of memory sticks like this?:

My Sweetie keeps bringing them home from work and they are all laying around and I want to do something with them. Usually when new stuff comes out, someone invents a container for them but I googled it and so far there doesn't seem to be any sort of container/organizer for these guys. Maybe I should just put them in a pretty glass dish?
~
After round one of my rock tumbling, my beach rocks look like this:

I think they look very nice but they are wet, and rocks are always prettier when they are wet. I had just rinsed them for round two. I already have a different set of rocks I want to do next, but I will have to wait out the process. Besides, my tumbler came with only one set of grits and polishes so I hope to get more at the local hobby store. I'm sure most of you are wondering what's with the rocks, but I love rocks. Rocks are the very core, so to speak, of our planet. And I really love our planet. I'm a huge astronomy buff and the more you know about other planets, the more you love Earth. Earth rocks. And I mean that both ways.

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."
~
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.
~
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.
~~
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.
~~
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.
~~
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.
~
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'?"
~
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.
~
~ 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.
~
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.