My best fiend: Darling Nephew as The Joker

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SPOOKY!!!

From the lovely and frightfully talented Puppini Sisters.

Sit back and enjoy the crashing waves of wrongness.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, I present Sexy and I Know It by LMFAO, in case you are like me and one of the last people on the planet who hasn't seen this.

*If you are of delicate constitution, you may wish to skip this one.*



Incredibly funny and actually cute in my humble opinion.

h/t to BlowFuzzy von Sassy

Where are you?

Yes, I'm at a really cool party in a Victorian building with a lovely man in new glasses. Life is sweet!


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Let's start a movement: UN-ASS WALL STREET, YOU FILTHY HIPPIES

I propose we bring a booger to a booger fight by infiltrating the Occupy Wall Street movement. I think it would be terrific if just regular folks walked up to these Hoovervilles and waited for the likes of Michael Moore or whomever to start out-gassing and that would be the ideal time to whip out the Vuvuzelas to *wink wink* show our support for the whole movement by honking mercilessly. Be sure to tuck into your range bag first and bring some good hearing protection, and maybe take some reading material for while you're standing around, mindlessly tooting your horn.

If your local Team Occupy is in a non-residential area, it might be fun to have flash-mob convergences of UAWSYFH at 4:20 AM, wade through the clouds of pot smoke to blast Vuvuzelas to athletically support the Occupy crowd and get their day off to a good start. I think it would mean so much to them to know how much we really care.

And isn't it time we toot our own horns, instead of letting them continue to use them as funnels??? Honestly.

You can join Un-Ass Wall Street, You Filthy Hippies over here on Facebook.

May I present Jazz In My Pants:

I love the idea of a UK-based Dixieland style combo lead by a guy with a red plastic trombone. And then they had to go and cement my eternal affection by calling themselves Jazz In My Pants. If that makes me strange, then I shall wear that mantle with pride.

Crazy Little Thing Called Love



Their other stuff is great, ranging from delightments such as Harry Potter to Dick Dale to a neato St James Infirmary Blues that goes all wonky-skifflesque in the middle. CLEVER!

FWIW, this is filmed in the city of Durham in North East England. Go there, if you ever have the opportunity. The cathedral is quite lovely, and sits atop a great hill, and the town's high street is one of the most dramatically slanted of any I've ever seen. Tiny shops along the road seem to have entrances several feet higher and lower than the ones flanking it. But be sure to wear your walking shoes, darlings. Then again, platforms are great equalizers, so long as you walk back downhill backwards.

Hero father brings his daughter's murderer to justice

30 years after a teenage girl was sexually abused and killed, her father kidnapped her murderer and brought him into France where he has been turned over to the authorities to stand trial for his crimes. Apparently, previous attempts to have the authorities extradite the murderer from Germany to France had been fruitless, so the father engaged goons to kidnap the accused and bring him into France. The father will be prosecuted for the kidnapping, but I can imagine that seems a small price to pay.

I love that Charles Bronson-style mettle, that he stuck with it and would not just let it go as long as his daughter's murderer walked free. I think no one would have blamed the father if he had simply put the man down like a rabid dog, so kudos on the restraint of having merely left the bastard bound and bleeding in the street after tipping off French police to pick him up.

Here's hoping the court goes easy on the father for his actions, and brings their most severe of punishments to the other.

Look out for fidotoxicity on your pampered lawn.

This is a serious problem that some lawns may be susceptible to:








Personally, I'd have no problem forgiving Fido.


The Dirt Doctor- Howard Garrett - Dallas area organic gardening guru. Howard Garrett has a radio program called "The Natural Way" which is fantastic He also has a whole raft of fabulous videos related to gardening over on YouTube. If you garden at all, definitely check out his site and videos. He has some great recipes for natural pest and weed control, and they are almost always cheaper and way less toxic than the storebought chemical versions of same.

This may be a little sick, but...

**UPDATE - it's too late for me, I can't UN-hear this song-- SAVE YOURSELF - don't watch the video below**

I can't stop giggling at it. I've only watched it about 20 times.



EVENING UPDATE: FWIW - I hate myself for having listened to this. I heard it in fevered dreams last night and I can't get it out of my head.

next up: free healthcare and money growing on trees!

I recently ran into a former co-worker in an electronics store. For about a year, we worked together in a call center for a health insurance company. Back then, he'd talk occasionally about how healthcare should be free and Obama would fix everything and insurance companies are evil and sometimes he just talked about moving to Canada. Mostly, though, he talked about his belief that healthcare should be a free-for-all entitlement. I knew he-- I'll call him Shaggy-- had some pretty anti-capitalistic ideas, but I couldn't help notice that he fell in with the ranks of the rest of the paycheck whores to collect his piece of that "morally bankrupt" pie. I wonder why he didn't refuse the pay on the moral basis that people should be doing customer service in the healthcare industry for free?

Shaggy left the company about the time I did, and when I saw him at the store last week, I asked how he was and what he was doing now, and isn't it great not to work in that pressure-cooker setting any more. He started talking about how it was terrible, the insurance companies in general, and that he's doing much better now, making more as a part time sales person and going to school full time with expected graduation in May. I asked his field of study, and he said it's marketing. He also made a point of saying that he'd sucked up to influential people at the insurance company-- whether he liked them or not-- so that he'd have politically well-placed people in his corner, should he need backup. I realize that is pretty typical-- to align oneself with the perceived power in a situation-- but I found that wildly hypocritical, considering his general stance was that HE has a higher standard of ethics than your average company (or ANY insurance company) or individual. I also sort of pictured him putting his marketing know-how to use with 12 monkeys style propaganda and attempts at social engineering, because it's hard to imagine him actually doing something constructive with relation to marketing.

I can't believe that anyone with more than two neurons firing in their brain can say that all healthcare should be free -- how do they propose that all the millions of nurses, medical assistants, janitors and lab techs be paid? Do they think that these people-- like all doctors-- should act purely out of altruism and with no personal regard to finances or securing their own futures and that of their families? Do they want to pay extra thousands per year on their utility bills to fund the utilities of health care facilities? Where the hell do they think all that money will come from?

And if healthcare should be free, then what about all the other fabulous crap in the world-- why should anyone have to pay anything for anything? The idea of anything being an entitlement is pretty much unsupportable, in my opinion.

Life is not fair, nor should it be. No guarantee of all the same opportunities will ever guarantee uniformity of outcome, because we each will make different choices in the exploitation of our opportunities in life. Shaggy may choose a part-time job based on lifestyle flexibility and-- presumably-- no drug-testing, whereas I need the stability of a full-time job with some access to the communal benefit of a shared group insurance pool. Call it whoredom or whatever you want, but I have to base my choices of jobs on what I know about my own life and my own needs. If I were very young and extremely healthy, then maybe health insurance wouldn't be such a high priority, but then again, I made sure I had insurance throughout my twenties, so I suppose it was a priority then, too.

I'm baffled by the general ignorance of people who don't understand how insurance companies function, and it's even more dazzling when you consider that some of those people have worked for insurance companies. A group of people- generally with a common employer-- pool their resources to make an insurance group which negotiates their own allowed rates with doctors and facilities, and in that way, there is a mutually beneficial arrangement. The drs and facilities know that working with individuals in this group and giving them a discount will offset the lower pricing by a lowered risk of not being paid for those services. Likewise, this insured group will have lower rates for premiums and services in part because they are statistically unlikely to be running around and getting involved in drive-by shootings and streetfights and holdups at the liquor store. Low risk, relatively speaking. Want lower premiums and lower rates on your insurance? When applying for jobs, act like a professional, use proper English and deodorant, eschew facial tattoos and don't apply for companies that hire gang-bangers or other reprobates and you'll be half-way there.

My sister says that insurance is all a gamble-- you are gambling you will need insurance, and the insurance company is gambling you won't need it. I'm not saying everyone should have it free, and I'm not saying everyone should be forced to buy it for themselves.
I am saying that I want the power to make career choices for myself in the marketplace based on the availability of health insurance as part of a benefits package between me and my own private employer. There is a price I pay in that this has an impact on what I am actually paid by my employer and I take that into account when making career choices. For me, this is worthwhile and I am willing to pay that premium, but I sure as hell don't want to pick up the tab for the premiums for the self-indulgent wastrel gangbanger thugs or the ne'er-do-wells who are content to sit idle in a park in some sort of Occupy brand of bushwa.

And as for the marketplace and capitalism-- that potential to make money on inventions or techniques of treatment has been one of the greatest incentives for people to develop new drugs and new technologies related to the medical field and is one of the primary reasons why the USA was the cutting edge of medical advancement for most of the 20th century. In nearly all cases, these same great scientific and engineering minds belong to people who are not independently wealthy and need to make money to support themselves and their families-- why should some addle-witted hippie's moral (in)sensibilities dictate that these brilliant people should be prevented from profiting (or even just making a living) from their efforts in the medical field? Else, why would they bother with the medical field at all -- they can make money elsewhere with less red tape and social pressure. Thank goodness anyone still feels inspired to enter that field.

So, to try to gather all this mud back up into a ball-- I don't want the healthcare/insurance choice made for me, and I don't want to spend thousands of own money every year on health care and insurance, only to have more of my money confiscated by the government to cover the healthcare for someone who spent their thousands on spinning rims or a crunked grille. I'll stand by my choices, and I expect other people to have to stand by their own, as well.

Is that so much to ask?

Say Anything [else]

le sigh.

On the mend...

Still sickly, but improving. I went back to the dr on Saturday and got a steroid shot to reduce inflammation and hopefully unswell my eustachian tubes so the fluid could drain out. Also, they xrayed my lungs and I have inflammation on the right lung. I won't be terribly surprised if they call me tomorrow when the radiologist is in and tell me I have a mild case of pneumonia. They also gave me an injection of rocephin. I looked that up and it's a prime treatment for gonorrhea among several other ill-health issues. Goody. Any the who, I am much improved now, despite a sleepless night on Saturday. I blame the insomnia entirely on the steroid shot. Wired to the gills have I been these past 36 hours. It's nearly 1:00 on Monday morning and I have to be to work in 6 hours. Here's hoping I can cram in at least a little sleep.

Meh.

The good thing is the cough has been productive and I'm feeling generally better. I'm desperately eager for the fluid to drain from my ears, though, because I'm having to ask people to repeat things because everything sounds as if I'm hearing it from down a tunnel. I'm tired of this illness, and as of tomorrow, this will be two full weeks. I'm just glad I went to the dr on Saturday, rather than waiting until Monday.

Made some incredible turnip and rice soup, an Italian dish that is a favorite of mine. Bacon features heavily in this relatively simple dish, and it's very soothing. The recipe is nearly identical to this one, except that you put in chopped up bacon with the butter in the first step, instead of olive oil. You can also use pancetta, but bacon-bacon is more readily available, and I've never been unsatisfied with the results. They also say to slice the turnips very thinly, rather than cubing them as called for in this recipe. I find the slices are easy to coat with the bacon/parsley/buttery goodness, and they are pleasingly soft in the soup, and probably take less time to cook properly. This is a simple meal that's quite savory, and very satisfying. I recommend it highly, but not without the bacon!

Have a great week!

Sunday, Puppy Sunday: puppy posteriors in repose

Teh puppehs make no bones about the fact that they take a dim view of me staying up past sundown, and to that end, sometimes they just give up on me and go to bed without me. I found them in bed this way last night and had to snap a little photo. I know I'm biased, but I thought this was so incredibly cute!

Sitting in the dr office lobby (yes, again)...

...it strikes me that shows with laugh tracks of supposed studio audiences pretty much make my skin crawl. One-liner hell. It was one thing when the show was "The Honeymooners" or somesuch, but the dross tv churns out right now looks, from this small sample, like the death-knell for a civilization.

Meh.


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Istanbul

I've done a decent bit of traveling, and there are only a couple places I really long to go and mean to go in my lifetime. One is Venice, one is Prague, and the other is Istanbul. Soundtrack for Steam is definitely worth investing in, if you like such exotic flavors.





Yummy.

Remind me not to move to Louisiana any time soon.

Louisiana legislators have passed a law that people who buy and sell second-hand goods can not use cash for those transactions, because cash is not traceable. They reason that the paper trail will help authorities to apprehend criminals who fence stolen goods to junk store sellers and the like, but I think the law will instead be used to fine small time junk dealers who routinely transact business with cash. There will be junk dealer stings. As a dyed-in-the-wool fan of the Great American Junk Store, I resent this encroachment on my future potential transactions between me and a junk dealer, which happens to be nobody's business but my own, and you lovely blog-reading lot, on occasion.

I gather from the article that this is purportedly aimed at folk who buy scrap metal, as this is a growing problem with thieves stealing wiring from utilities and homes throughout the country, but I think there are already controls in place governing buyers of scrap metal that require identification for those types of transactions. I don't foresee Charlie with his shopping cart of freshly harvested copper wire from the local strip mall showing up at Farmer Barleymow's Junk Palace for a cash tradeoff any time soon-- he'll go to a metals dealer with their scales and such. However, the encroachment of more gubmint regulation may drive my beloved Farmer Barleymow out of business entirely, and then where would we be? Trust me when I say that if you've any interest in anthropology, junk stores are one of the most fecund fields to explore the recent century and a half of our culture. Plus they have the most fabulous crap.

Anyway, this new law is seriously hosed-up. What next? Will SWAT teams descend on yard sales and wallop hausfraus with big fines for selling their used tupperware for a quarter, cash, not check/money order/credit card? This may seem ridiculous, but it's a slippery slope. And from the sound of the legislator in the video on the linked article, Louisianans have been firmly in that handbasket for a good long while already.

Browsing through home design and renovation sites online...

I came across several things which sort of jumped out at me. One was the conceit of a smug article on downsizing your home. I realize the average home is over 2000 square feet in the USA right now, but there I was, looking for articles on making my under-1000SF home more space-efficient and I was struck by the conceit of an article admonishing people to pare out the excess and how to live well in 1200 SF. I only WISH I had a whopping 1200 SF. The truth of it is, if you can swing a larger home in an area you'd like to live, why wouldn't you? It's certainly more comfortable, especially for a tchotchke queen like me. Meh.

Another pet-peeve is space-saving design and devices. I suppose these things are primarily designed for folk for whom space and not money is the premium, because a lot of these little gadgets and decorative flourishes would send my budget reeling, quite frankly. I suppose one thing that is frustrating is that like most published magazines, their sites are funded by companies who are selling design concepts and rely on you shelling out bucks to have a very proscribed look to your home. Unfortunately for me (or moreso for them as I'll not be shelling out my hard earned dosh on their products), the only thing I've an excess of is elbow grease and that is limited by the confines of my schedule.

There's much that remains to do on my home to make it presentable. I'm still in baby steps phase, but fortunately, I have friends who seem to have grasped my design direction and are wonderfully supportive and encouraging to that end, so I don't have to wait until it's "done" to have friends over to visit. I have to consider the value of my home on the market and how long I am (or am not) likely to live here, and the cold hard realities of how likely I am to see the cost of renovations back out of the home when I do sell it one day.

To be quite frank, if I felt I would be living here for 20 years, I would be spending probably about $30,000 (more than half what I spent on the house) on the kitchen renovation, and it would be well worth it to me, as a cook and entertainer. Living in the real world, though, when this house sells one day, my future buyer will most likely be a single professional who doesn't need multiple bathrooms, or it will be bought by a small family with a very modest budget. I need to spend here accordingly, because those buyers are not going to be able to afford my long-term taste.

I'm currently vexing over the floor situation. The house was a Sears kit home from the early 30s. The flooring throughout is fir and in varying states of condition. The kitchen has an awkward step up ont decking of 3/4" plywood with shoddy (and torn in places) vinyl over it. I'm marinating ideas of how to address the overall situation in a way that doesn't have a huge outlay of cash. The simplest idea seems to me to pull out the vinyl and replace it with yet more vinyl. I wonder what host of horrors the floor is under that decking? Yes, sounds like a holiday for someone who espouses the Elbow Grease school of renovation, but the problem with that type of challenge is that peeling back old layers often reveals greater problems that require more money than elbow grease. So-- do I put down more vinyl? Or linoleum tiles? or just some cheap laminate flooring in the kitchen that will show traffic wear patterns in just a few years? Or do I just man-up and pull up the vinyl and decking and face the music of whatever is under there? I'm having a hard time deciding.

What would you do?

As you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.

An heroic firefighter saved a family's yellow Labrador Coda by peforming mouth-to-nose resuscitation.

Awwwwww.

For some reason, that's so much easier to countenance than mouth-to-beak resuscitation, isn't it?

I have created a monster!

At Blogorado last week, I kept singing (badly) that eardrum-piercing melisma from Minnie Riperton's 70s classic song Loving You. One morning at breakfast, we were all at the tables and Ambulance Driver was missing. One after another, several of us called him to ask where he was(just running a little late). I peeled some paint off the ceiling with that distinctive run of notes from Loving You, and he (on the phone) and the entire room around me fell completely silent and I said "don't be self-conscious, AD-- nobody's listening to us." More laughter. Yes, just one of those special moments from Blogorado. It was even better in person(except for my singing - ugh).

Matt can't get it out of his head now, poor man. Tsk tsk. He told me "Wife has been unhappy 'bout the song, too. Apparently, I just don't have the range. :)) "

Practice, practice, practice, Matt. Carnegie Hall will see you yet! And we all want to hear you sing that again.




btw - did you know that Minnie Riperton was the mother of Maya Rudolph? At the end of this song she sings "Maya, Maya". It's rather sweet.

I want my fence to look just like this one

Or, reasonably close, anyway. Lovely Lin came up with this gorgeous design for her fence and I'm determined to do something similar one of these days. Love it!

In which MattG said with simian zeal...

Q: Why is this monkey in jail?

A: Because it has no place in polite society.

This is a true story and I told a truncated version of it on the blog around that time, but because I'm not in the same professional situation that led to the monkey encounter, I will now make free to tell the whole, nasty truth about the day a lady brought a monkey into my office.

I was managing a group of lofts in Dallas, and due to the concrete floors, we had no size or breed restriction on dogs and were quite pet-friendly. We generally found that with the large deposit required and the price point of the lofts, most dog owners were of the responsible stripe and not inclined to ruin a home with pet filth, etc, and generally it was a peaceable kingdom when it came to pets.

One day, a woman called and asked if we allowed people with monkeys to rent there. I told her that I had no experience with that, but so long as general pet regulations were adhered to, I could not see any impediment to that, so long as the monkey was sufficiently small and at all times well-contained. She made an appointment to come see the apartment for later in the day.

When she arrived, the monkey was perched on her shoulder and seemed impossibly tiny-- maybe 2 or 2.5 pounds. She sat in the office and filled out a guest card, and we chatted a brief while. She asked had I seen her on the news recently, and I said that I had not watched the local news, and she proceeded to tell me she'd been in a custody battle with the SPCA for her Capuchin monkey, who was designated as a service animal that helped her focus. She said she'd recently been in a rehab facility for her nerves, and had left the monkey with her brother, who turned it over to the SPCA after a day or two, and thus had she the dickens of a time getting her pet back from the SPCA. She said she was convinced this was because the head of the local SPCA wanted her darling little monkey for herself.

For the purposes of this story, I need to give the monkey a name, so I'll call her LucyFur.

As the woman and I chatted, LucyFur was almost instantly all over my desk and into everything. How surreal is that? Emily Post wrote the book on responding to any manner of odd or unpleasant occurrences in social encounters from belches to any myriad other faux pas, but never does she advise how to address the thorny issue of asking a potential customer to control their bloody monkey in your office space.

I am a damned good salesperson, and I had a great track record at closing a deal with people on rentals, but unlike this potential renter, the monkey inspired something quite the opposite of focus for me-- I could not follow the conversation with the woman. I was trying not to be mean to her or the monkey, yet I needed to remove someone's rent check from LucyFur's maw and LucyFur at one point climbed atop my head and proceeded to rearrange my waist-length hair much as one would toss a salad. Many papers were torn, including my desk calendar. Meanwhile, LucyFur's Mommy [LM for short] never missed a beat and prattled incessantly. Fortunately, LM's monologues rarely required a response from me, so I was free to enjoy a sea of crashing waves of WTF about which the monkey buffetted me wildly.

Let me tell you a little more about LucyFur: she is smelly and sports a diaper. She's tiny, and the little black hands boggle the mind. The astonishingly teeny fingernails replete with long nail beds, the articulation of each digit are so like human hands and so impossibly small that I found her hands (nearly) the most disturbing thing about her. Yes, I'm trying at this point to focus on LM, but the monkey's into something else again. LucyFur hugs her body to my iced tea glass and grips it with her thighs and gloms her rubbery monkey lips onto the straw as I sputter to LM that she's drinking my drink! LM chuckled and said "that's okay, she LOVES coke!" as if this would be wonderful news to me. The point was not that I was concerned that little LucyFur would ingest aspertame or upset her little tummy with my carbonation in beverage of choice-- my concern was that her monkey was ruining MY frelling beverage!!! This fact was lost on LucyFur's Mommy, though.

I heard all the things she said to me, and some of them I processed later, but at the time, I was transfixed on LucyFur. Now, if someone came into your office with an unruly child, you would -- at some point-- ask the person to settle the child down - to keep them out of the drawers and such. You might give the child a pen and paper to draw, or perhaps a pack of razor blades, but how do you tell someone to control their monkey? I still don't know, but I hope I am never in the way of needing to know again.

Finally LucyFur, having drooled upon or coon-fingered everything within leash-length at least 3 times and apparently bored, locked her eyes upon mine. I must say I was in a near-hypnotic state, my brain's system completely short-circuited. I didn't bother to wonder what it would do next, I just sat and watched. LucyFur crept closer, about a foot from me, looking intently into my eyes, unblinking. I stared back. LucyFur flopped down on my desk on her right side, never breaking the stare, and shoved her left hand into her diaper, and appeared to be manually addressing herself quite vigorously. As she did so, her mouth went through an arc of expressions from a large open racetrack-oval to a wrinkly sphincter-like little circle, occasionally flashing teeth. Rinse, lather, repeat. [Am I dreaming this? Did someone slip acid in my breakfast burrito?] It was not strange enough already that I had this out-of-control pocket simian going ape-shit on my desk, but now she was masturbating to boot. LucyFur's Mommy staunchly ignored the 800 pound gorilla in the room and kept talking as if nothing unusual were happening. There I sat, lady talking on and on, monkey getting busy with herself on my desk, and I was absolutely reeling. I think my mouth must have been hanging open, thousand-yard-stare style. Then again, I'm sure LM didn't notice this, because this sort of thing must happen to her all the time. At last having talked herself out, LM asked for an application for the apartments and took her leave, and I crossed my fingers that she'd find something she liked somewhere else, because I just didn't know how I was going to deal with an ongoing relationship with such a client. My day derailed utterly, I tried to collect the tattered remnants of my sanity and get on with my work, picking up the pieces, because let's face it: after a monkey spanks itself on your desk, your life is never going to be the same, and you will thenceforth face each new day with a new sense of the possibility of unrealized horrors which may yet unfold in the day ahead.

A few days later, I spoke to a friend who managed other apartments in the area. I told her what a trying week it had been and she said "oh, you think yours was bad? A couple of days ago, a lady brought an insane monkey in here. It drank my coke!" I quipped "but did it masturbate on your desk?" Turns out LM had been visiting a lot of local apartments with her LucyFur, trying to winnow out the attention from the local news story and had dropped into the friend's community as well while making the rounds. Monkey-housing syndrome, perhaps?

SO... I googled LM. I found the news story, but it said not that she'd been in a rehab facility for her nerves, but had been in jail for writing hot checks. Um. Wow. Apparently after a day babysitting, the monkey had been too much for her brother to manage and he'd turned it over to the SPCA in hopes that they could do a better job. I must take a moment here to say that as eerie and disturbing as I found the monkey to be, I think the little devils should never be mistreated, but I do seriously question their appropriateness as pets. And if 2.5 pound of monkey can wreak that much havoc and chaos, can you imagine the challenges of a larger monkey or a chimp? Heaven forbid.

Lingering over breakfast at Blogorado one morning last week, I told the above story with monkey facial expressions and the whole nine yards, and Tam and MattG were practically doubled over with laughter. It IS a funny story, and I still can't quite wrap my entire brain around it, but it is such a singular experience that even though I still don't understand it all, I feel better for talking about it. Just when the laughter was ebbing and everyone felt somewhat recovered, MattG quipped "well, there's one off your bucket list: have a member of another species masturbate while thinking of you." And fresh gales of laughter erupted.

Sunday, Puppy Sunday: ickle bruvva makes a good pillow

Praline lives dogpiling Chuy, and from the look of things, he doesn't mind a bit.


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Overheard at Blogorado: we like the "BOOM."

Standing in FarmFam's driveway chatting with Tam and MattG (hey, it's not bragging if it's true!), I mentioned that out at the range I'd told aepilotjim that his .50 gives good KA-BLOOEY.

I think then Tam said "we like the BOOM" at which point I started singing "we like the boys with the guns that go BOOM", yadda yadda, additional lines, morphing into "My boomstick brings all the boys in the yard and they're like it's better than yours..." This was probably made much more funny by my white, middle-aged self shaking my arse in broad daylight singing crap lyrics made more palatable by the good, honest reference to guns.

Matt was all astonishment at how much of the we like the boom lyrics I knew and I realized that all my crap lyric library was made for that moment.

Oh, and we like the boom, just for the record, but we don't leave that just to the boys, either. :)

squeeee!

Tam has dubbed me the Goddess of Tchotchkes. I'm all about the gew-gaws, always have been, but now it's official! SQUEEEEEE!

Home, Sick

I'm on 3 scripts from the dr and seem on the mend, but, generally, I feel like 7 lbs of hammered poop in a 4 lb sack. Ugh. Teh puppehs are a great comfort, though.


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Happy Birthday...

...to the best little sister in the world. :) It was a wonderful day when you were born and I hope your day is wonderful today.



I love you.

This makes me miss classical singing

I don't know why, but something about the Russian language and composition shows bass and basso profundo to best effect. This young man is tremendously talented.

a tempting indulgence...*

Someone on Etsy [ rockmyworldinc ] will make a necklace in sterling silver of your dog's nose. I actually would have to have a pair, so that would be a pretty expensive indulgence. Still, it's tempting, since I have two of the cutest little noses on earth living with me. They have some other pieces that are simply dog nose texture, which I think is cuter than bees' knees. I may have to settle for just having the actual noses around, though.

*I'm sick. Like major cold/ear infection with 3 prescriptions-sick. I'm forgiving myself for embarrassing typo in title of post. That is all.

chillng news

I always hate hearing this sort of thing, and I reason that someone could have acted to stop him before he killed so many, or any. :(

Where's Chewie?

Before Tam got to town, we got her a little wookie on a snaplink that you can squeeze to hear your favorite Wookie phrases. She has hung the Wookie on her Turse and he wanted his photo taken with Cadillac Ranch, so I obliged. I think Chewie wants his own "Where's Chewie" blog. What do you think?

Blogorado version 3.0: getting there is half the fun

Blogorado III was filled with the usual good shooting, good conversation and good food, and a few things were different this time, too.

Wednesday night, Matt G and the lovely Tam (much jubilant inner squeeing on my account) arrived and spent the night at my house so we could caravan out early on Thursday. Thursday morning, Ambulance Driver arrived in time for coffee and I got my crap together and we hit the road, stopping at a fabulous junk store in Quanah (where Himself gallantly secured for me my blue goat) to comb treasures of times past. It was like the Smithsonian of junk, srsly. Ambulance Driver tastefully exercised the time-saving measure of killing a deer with his car a couple days before the trip, so that was already out of the way this time.

We sallied forth and got to Amarillo where we joined OldNFO and aepilotjim for lunch at a steakhouse, of course, despite my whining to go to Kabuki Bonanza (don't ask). Our caravan having grown to 4 vehicles, we pressed on through the Panhandle where we were sandblasted at a gas station stop. The weeind! The Weeind!** The remainder of the drive was uneventful, but punctuated with the occasional road work delays. Passengers switched occasionally, and I enjoyed a pleasant chat for the last leg of the drive with OldNFO, who is a dear gentleman and always a charming conversationalist.

We arrived late afternoon to Sooper Seekrit location where we were warmly greeted by Farmmom, FarmDad and MeMaw. My wicked cohort Holly and her dearly beloved JPG hit town a little ahead of us. Later, Sci-Fi and his Mrs. and Christina arrived. Then came Salamander replete with knee-beards, FarmGirl, Spear, Atomic Nerds and Evyl Robot and Jennifer with chirrins in tow.

To name one singularity of this Blogorado, Lord Humungus of Mad Max fame was scheduled to make an appearance as channeled by Stingray. Stingray's comely wife, LabRat, mentioned to me she was considering a show of solidarity in the costume department, and more of us thought it would be fun to dude up for a photo with the BattleBot. In the months leading to the event, texts, phonecalls and emails were exchanged with breathless queries of "what are you gonna wear?" and "I dunno, what are you gonna wear?" We generally settled on a non-theme theme of post-apocalyptic to steampunk. Generally, though, there was no unifying theme to the cozzies, save the mental unwellness of those sporting same. We had a red-shirt, a pirate vixen and a host of other costume delightments to please and befuddle the onlookers who abstained from making a spectacle of themselves but made free to laugh at those of us decked out in our ridiculous finery. I made a chemise and of course had my fabulous new boots for that, but the corset I ordered came in the day before we left for Colorado and I thought I wasn't going to have an outfit to join in the madness. On Friday, the adorable Mrs. Sci-Fi helped me to fashion a duct-tape Brunnhilde get-up with the assistance of the ever-fetching Christina. The resulting duct tape piece was even better than what I'd envisioned for the other outfit, so all's well that ends well.

To much ceremony, AmbulanceDriver presented MattG with a kilt on Friday night and that was a lot of fun to see. Matt bore up manfully and went into the house and changed into his kilt, which looked right fetching with his pith helmet and size 18 feet. Wow. Saturday was windy on the range and I'll bet it got a bit ooshy for him, but he never complained.

As mentioned previously, my birthday was Saturday and the crowd presented me with a gorgeous pair of lacy spike-heeled booties which I can't wait to wear. Thanks again to all you sexy people for the shoes. I love them!

The shooting was a hoot, but all the other elements of the event are superlative to the degree that the shooting is almost an afterthought. I love my new Judge revolving rifle. I wanted to shoot some clays with same, but there were too many things to fit into the precious time at the range. I shot a lot of .45 through it, and it's a scream. I am glad to have the rifle version, rather than the handgun, because it's easier to aim. I didn't shoot the .50 cal, or the Tactical Schmoo™, but I did look on as they were being put through their paces and I was satisfied just to watch.

Farmmom's cooking is absolutely gorgeous. Her gravy is amazing, her fried chicken is amazing, her chicken-fried steak is toe-curlingly good-- not enough can be said of the glory that issues forth from her kitchen. Thanks, Farmmom!

I'm sorry if this sounds like bragging, because it probably really is. We are a disparate lot of people in every sense, but we are a big family and I know we've all gotten into the habit of looking forward to the next gathering. During the event I got text messages from absentees Carrie, Gay_Cynic and TD and we all hope they'll be able to come again next year, along with all the other folks who could not join us this time.

*diphthong pronunciation of wind

Oh. Em. Gee! They fit!!!

My dear friends at Blogorado gave me this lovely pair of shoes for my birthday. I didn't try them on until just now and I'm SO excited that they fit. Can't wait to wear them someplace. [yes, it's afternoon and I am in my pajama britches (I am still on vacation and lazing about with pups)].

Thank you to my lovely Blogorado family for the lovely birthday celebration!!!

Teh puppehs have landed

At home mit puppehs, lazing on sofa, relaxing. It's good to be home. I miss all my friends, though. Post-Blogorado post to come soon. A simply splendid weekend, it was.


Best vacation EVAR!





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Getting my puppies back

In the morning. I'm so excited!







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Cadillac Ranch

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Birthday duct tape Valkyrie

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Happy birthday to me

Yays! I got lovely shoes, a Rossi Circuit Judge revolving rifle, a Magnificent Blue Goat, and I get to go to the range to shoot with a lot of fabulous friends.


Good times!

Oh noes!

The Noes family may have one of the cutest houses ever. Love it!


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Plumb tuckered out

Trip to blogorado went quite well. Lovely little caravan picked up more wonderful folks as we went along. A tiring but enjoyable day of travel was richly concluded with generous helpings of great conversation and FarmMom's glorious fried chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy. Warm reunion with dear friends.

I'll close for now, but I want you to see the lovely blue goat Himself got for me. Squeeee!



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I was in gloat mode...

I was waxing euphoric over the sight of Tam's tactical spork at my very own dining table, and then she informed me she has another spork that is tactical-er. Still...


...SQUEEEE!

I love Megan from Bridesmaids

This movie is so funny. If you like tacky, it's supremely funny. It's sort of a female version of The Hangover. *hee*

Computer is back up. WHEEEEEEE!

I've gotten a lot done when it's been down, though, so it's not been all bad. Thanks to Tolewyn for getting it recombobulated. :)

I've sewn a bustle (which I'll probably show here soon) and a chemise, and I may make a couple more small things tomorrow.

The weather has been gorgeous and it's generally been a relaxing vacation so far. Thursday I head up to Colorado with Himself and other friends to hang with the cool kids at Blogorado. The one cloud to spoil my silver lining is separation from my pups, but I think I've found a nice doggie place to board them. They will be able to have their own indoor pen with an outdoor run to share together. The boarding at the vet's wouldn't allow them to be penned together, and that seems going a little far and to add unnecessary stress to the separation from their people. Anyhoo, I hope they'll be more comfortable at this place.

Good to be back online. :)

Something big blew up in the Dallas area about an hour ago

Here's praying no one was hurt. :(

Update: traffic gridlocked as my sister scrambled to pick my niece and nephew up from their school in an evacuating area. Most unsettling, indeed.






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Sunday, Puppy Sunday: emotional rescue

"I will be your night in shining ahhhmor!"



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Lovely vacation thus far

...but my computer is still crapped out. Hopefully will get that sorted later this week. In the mean time, I'm getting quite a few nagging tasks marked off my to-do list. Good times.

I'll get a puppy post up in the morning if blogger will allow it from my phone. Sometimes lately it doesn't want to post the ones with pictures.


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