I saw the new Casino Royale last night, and I actually thought it was good. I think I remember hearing it soundly panned at the time it was in theaters? I wanted to see it then, but was simply too busy. This Bond is way more physical, and the first 20 minutes or so are a lot like a free running exercise. It was almost exhausting. I kept waiting for Bond or the bad guy to sprain an ankle.

Daniel Craig is always a badass in films, and in this one he continues his trend of getting totally nekkid. He seemed to spend a lot of the film in various stages of undress (all germane to the plot, naturally), but he does have presence and I think he makes a good Bond. I'd like to see one Daniel Craig film where he doesn't get totally naked. OK, well, he was a monk in Elizabeth, but he ends up naked when he's being tortured at the end, dun't he? Anyway, I'm seeing a trend-- I wonder if he has a rider in all his contracts requiring that he be shown naked? I think he digs it.

Anyway, good film, longish. At one point, Bond drives a *gasp!* Ford. The times, they are a'changin', but not all for the worse.



(here's a video of free-running, but I recommend watching it without the sound)

clear!


I read this post by Babs RN and things seem a little more in perspective. Check it out.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

If I didn't already love Amy Winehouse, I would be smitten after finding this little nugget, which details her heckling of pompous git Bono's acceptance speech at a British awards program last October. Nice.

Dogs with cones is such a cool site, and now they have the cutest little old lady dog over there. Rock on, doglet!

Pease River west of Vernon


Mkay. Today is the day I sign with a realtor. I had wild dreams all night and kept waking up. The doglet couldn't seem to find a wallow to suit her on top of the covers. Perhaps it was the satellite dish/lampshade she has to wear right now. She's licking her paw until it's raw, so for now, she has to wear it. No doubt, we'll be going to the vet again soon. Poor lamb.

Last night I filed my nails all to the same length, and painted them the rocket red I generally prefer. This morning, the tips of my nails chipped while washing my hair. HOW does this happen? For my protection, tolulene and formaldehyde have been removed from nail polish, and now it doesn't stick for beans. *harumph* This has me in high dudgeon, because now I have to do a bomb-shelter layer of coats to get it not to chip. This is madness, I say. Bette Davis always had her talons immaculately lacquered, and she lived to be, like, a thousand or something, and I don't see where nail polish impacted her health or quality of life. Hell, the colors were probably lead-based in her heyday. I'll have what she's having.

Orly has a product called "Won't Chip," a top coat that for some 10 years did what it promised. Perhaps a year ago, this product stopped being effective at not chipping. Now that is just messed up. They should at least give us the option of buying the carcinogen-laced product, don't you think? Put a surgeon general warning on it, for goodness' sake. Make me sign a waiver. I don't give a crap. *grumble*

Last night's dinner with my friend was at Amuse, on South Lamar across from Poor David's pub. I had the Carolina Brook Trout with hazelnuts, french beans and blood orange butter. It was amazing. When I first talked on the phone to L, I felt like we had been living parallel lives. Now, two years down the road, I still feel that way. We're not close friends, but we definitely speak the same language. Love her.


Speaking of fabulous women whom I love: best wishes today to my dear friend Holly while they operate to put her finger back together in the proper order. Take care of yourself, petal.

Barb wire and wildflowers. Can you spot the Jackrabbit? He was hunkered down, thinking "mama said if I don't move, no one will see me." Their long legs look kinda gawky and odd, but with those outrageous ears, they manage to be cute, still.

I'll try to do the table picture tonight, but I'm going to dinner with a girlfriend and tomorrow night I've got to go get my hair did, and you see how busy I am. I also want to do another coat or two of my lemon oil/beeswax polish before it's ready for its closeup. I'm probably going to be at my first open house this weekend with my mentor, which is really cool. Kinda excited, kinda nervous. No doubt, I'll be in a state of high chihuahua disquiet before it's all over.

A girlfriend from music school invited me over for dinner last night, and she made a traditional South African dish called bobotie, which is kinda like a savory meatloaf and a lot like a shepherd's pie. Made with minced ground pork/lamb/beef or any combination thereof, savory spices are added(she includes pumpkin pie spice) along with dried fruit. The dish is served with a curried rice, and she said it's perfect with an orange chutney from S.A. which can't be found here, apparently. Actually, I already thought it was perfect without the marmalade, so I didn't miss it. Beside shepherd's pie, flavor-wise bobotie also reminded me of a Greek moussaka, only without the eggplant.

She had needle-woven bead napkin rings and I surprised her by knowing they were from the Ndebele people. They have a very distinctive method of needlework, doubling back through previously threaded beads to cause the beads to stack up at obliques to each other, creating a herringbone effect.

I grew up with no idea where my forbears were before Arkansas. My great x 3 grandfather who fought in the Civil war married a girl from Kentucky, and that's as far back as I know on Pop's side. On Mom's side, someone at a family reunion last year told me we're descended from a Highlander named McCord who fought at Killiecrankie and then crossed the pond. So, in light of my own murky notions of my family's origins, I was amazed when I asked when her family came to South Africa and a crisp "1688" popped out in her lovely accent. They were a winemaking family, Protestants escaping persecution in France. It's ironic to think of the French chasing out vintners. Now France is largely Muslim and they're still chasing Protestants out. Oh well.

Well, that turned into a rabbit-chase, didn't it? I'm having a lovely week, and I hope all of you are, too. But it's suddenly turned horribly hot, innit?

Crap. The doglet has Kennel Cough. And after I went to all the trouble of having her bordello shot two weeks ago. (thank you, I'll be here all week.) Poor pup. Back to the vet we go, I suppose.


Oh, um, the photo is of the ruins of the no doubt once magnificent Chief Drive-In Cinema on the outskirts of Quanah. What could be better than going to watch a movie in your own car with the whole family, bringing along food mom made at home? Anyway, I rue the demise of the drive-in theater, particularly now that car seats are so incredibly comfortable. What have we lost? Pi-tee-full.

It's great when you can go back to work still feeling some sense of joy left over from a trip away. Tuesday was fantastic and I concluded the day by contacting a realty company and letting them know I'm ready to dip my toe in the pool and they were the ones I want to take to the Prom. WOOHOO! I'm kind of anxious and freaked out at the same time - surely I'm verging on mania. Things are going well at my job, and I'm sorta transitioning my duties, although I continue to manage the property. The thing is, I'm weary of dealing with the same few un-manly men over and over again, and the needy unrealistic women, all the while trying to gently teach them I'm not responsible for their feelings and am not paid enough to hold their hands for an hour each day. I am there to solve problems, but the irony is that other people are too shy to come forward and tell me about a mechanical problem, and heaven forbid someone let me know if their hard-partying neighbor is disturbing them when he cranks Tool at 4am -- I could fix that, but only if I know about it. I need shorter-term business relationships - not ones that drag out over years. Single-serving clientele. (hat tip to Tyler Durden) I can invest an intense amount of focus on a task for just so long, and then I'm ready for what's next. Ferreting out the minutiae of hot water heater (mal)function and slapping wrists that have flushed q-tips and let their dogs crap at the mail kiosk wears a bit thin on the Queen's nerves. We are not amused.

VERY COOL ANIMATION WITH DICE. NEAT-O.

Mail call comes to West Texas...

This was in an art-deco period post office on the trip last weekend. A long, tall, west Texan was flipping through his mail at the table against a wall, and I snapped the photo of his keys in the door of his open mailbox. He asked me where we were from and I told him. He told me his family has had this mail box for about 100 years. His grandparents, then his parents, and now him for the past 40 years. I asked if he got junk mail for anyone else in the family, and he laughed and said no. He went on to say, in fact, that he would always fill the junk mail reply envelopes with their own garbage mail, and they finally left off sending him anything. Nice fellow. He told us where the local jail was and a nice area museum.

I felt honored that locals would be so generous and take a minute to talk about their town and its history. The lady at the checkout desk at the motel was the same, telling me about her brother who fought in Korea and several tours of Vietnam, and about how the arched bridge I mentioned yesterday was his favorite place. She said he passed away a bit ago and she'd go there to feel close to him. What a lovely and intensely personal thing to share with a complete stranger. I felt like she was kinfolk.

Here's one interesting bit of trivia I picked up on the trip - the reason why towns along highway 287 are all approximately 30 miles apart is because back in the day, the steam locomotives had to stop for water about every 30 miles. Cool, eh?

I picked up the doglet from the spa, and got her home. Funny thing is that she is not accustomed to a very social, busy environment, generally, so I suspect she's awake and alert the whole time she's at the dog place. I think she fancies she needs to manage every living creature in the surrounding acreage, and watches all the people and dogs intently. Thus, upon returning home, it is necessary for her to nap for days. We came in the door Monday afternoon and she went to her water bowl and drank for about 2 minutes straight, and then I let her out. Not 5 minutes later, she was snoozing like Rip van Winkle, all settled in for a multi-decade sleep event. Reluctantly, she has awakened a few times since, but generally, she's just snooze city. It's good to be a doglet.

Through a windshield, bug-smearedly...


The trip to the Texas Panhandle was nice. There's been an unusual abundance of rainfall there this year, and the wildflowers are making a rather lurid display of themselves, all tarted up and ready to go to the dance.

Driving out on Friday night through an intense storm was rather exhilarating, with lightning striking all around. Despite my plans to leave early, we left Dallas at about 8pm, so we spent the night in Wichita Falls. Saturday broke splendid and clear, and we headed on up the road.

Right after Vernon, you cross the Pease River, which was wide and rich with swirling red dirt. It looked like red dirt coffee- incredibly thick. One of the cool things about driving through this area of the country is that during and immediately after rain, the rivers swell and look large and rather violent. If you drive through during a dry spell, some river beds will be just that: a broad, sandy swath of ground that it seems senseless to have built a bridge over. I would imagine all West Texas soil right now is about as saturated as it ever gets, but one characteristic of these arid climes is that even during a heavy rain, there is low absorption in the soil, and most of the rain runs off to the nearest, lowest crevice, from whence it sluices into a creek or river. So, anyway, this is the second time I've been privileged to see the Panhandle in a rainy state, and I love it.

There were also these massive dandelions, bigger than a man's fist. I've never seen any like them - they were grand.

Saturday, we drove up into the Panhandle and across to Oklahoma, and then back down to Texas, crossing the Red River a couple times. It was flowing and rather intense, but it seemed not so dramatic as the Pease had, for some reason. The Pease flows up toward Oklahoma, eventually joining the Red at some point East of Vernon. Anyway, we went through some nice small towns in Oklahoma, but a couple towns made me sad, as all the old downtown buildings were completely empty and/or boarded up. I hate to see that, but I suppose that's the way it goes.

Saturday evening, we went for a drive along a dirt road and came to a neat old arch bridge over a neat little mini-canyon type thingie. We drove for miles and didn't see another car, but we saw loads and loads of Jackrabbits. We even saw a baby bunny. There were loads of roadrunners, and I saw the blazing fuschia breast of a purple finch sitting on a telephone wire. I didn't know that area is such a birder's paradise - perhaps it is owing to the incredible recent weather, but I'd venture that someone who knew which birds I actually saw would be impressed by the variety.

We drove that little dirt road until we hit a larger, paved road in the country, which turned out to be Texas Farm Road 1166. We got to a large open stretch, and pulled to the side of the road at sunset, killing the engine to listen to the birds get ready for night. That is when and where I took the above sunset photos. I couldn't decide on color or B&W, so I gave you both. This huge wedge-shaped cloud formation is the beginnings of a storm system which barreled through West Texas on Saturday night. The real storm hit this area about 4am.

Sunday was fine and beautiful again, and after collecting my table and other goodies, we made a little excursion to the Copper Breaks State Park south of Quanah.

Everywhere in the area, crews were out cutting and baling hay. I saw lots of fields of steers who seemed like they were just taken from their milk supplies, standing in tight clusters in the middle of sprawling pastures. There would be the occasional oddball steer off by itself, perhaps smarter than the rest. I realized yesterday that I've always thought of cows as profoundly stupid, but they are smart enough to get under cover when it's raining, aren't they? Then again, if the cover they got under is a tree and it's struck by lightning and they all expire, well, that wasn't very smart after all, was it? Poor pre-cooked beeves.

Oh, my table - I'll try to photograph it tomorrow. I was wrong -on closer inspection, the surface of the table is not one contiguous plank, but is three incredibly well-joined planks. I'm cleaning it today. Being pine, which is a soft wood, there are lots of dings in the surface, but that's just character, right? The base is married to the tabletop by these marvelous bowtie/butterfly-shaped mortise-and-tenon joins. Anyway, it's beautiful and I'm so pleased to have it. It was made in northeast New Mexico, and I'd estimate it's about 70-80 years old.

I also got a couple of crocks from Love Field pottery. This was a pottery that operated from 1923 to 1948 in the area of Dallas where the Love Field Airport is. The cool thing is on the logo, LFP had a little bi-plane. Neat stuff.

Anyway, it's good to be home. Today I'll fetch the doglet from the doggie spa, and it'll be back to life as usual.

Trips to West Texas are becoming my favorite excursion, these days. I've heard friends say the drive to Santa Fe is so dull, but I think only a dullard would fail to see the beauty here. The terrain is beautiful, the people are nice, and considering the changes of the seasons - it can be brutally cold and icy to wicked-hot to the Spring idyll I experienced this weekend - this place has it all. I wish you could see it.

Spending the night on the way to the Panhandle.

Drove through the most spectacular storms between Fort Worth & Wichita Falls. Took some video on my phone, which I'll try to get posted online by Wednesday. The lightning was amazing.

Cool thing - less than a year ago when I got my whizz-bang camera, I bought a 1 gb memory card for $100. Friday at Wolf/Ritz camera, I bought an 8 gb card for $190 and got a $50 rebate. Oh, and my camera cost $900 less than a year ago, and now it's $700 - that's the March of technology for you, isn't it? One minute you have the hottest thing, and the next moment, it's an embarrassing dinosaur-era relic. Well not quite - my camera is still fabulous.

I had a Nokia cell phone that I had a hard time letting go. I had a Power Puff girls face plate on it, and it was super-cute. One time I went with friends to a hotter'n'snot trendy restaurant in Dallas, and my phone weighed more than the 3 of theirs combined. I made a comment and the waiter said um, actually, my phone looked ancient. I'd had it, maybe, 2 years. Sheesh.

Wow. This is some guy's idea of a perfect last meal on earth. He describes a steak as thick as a fat guy's arm, charred on the outside and bloody inside-- sounds glorious, except the charred part may be a little too well-done for me.

______________________________

You know that guy with the virulent strain of tuberculosis, a breath-borne highly infectious and still deadly disease even in the less antibiotic-resistant strains? What a selfish twit. I saw a photo of him online, presumably with his wife whom he traveled by airplane to marry in Greece. I hope he is prosecuted, but he looks like John-John Kennedy, so the more vapid set who seem to be running our country lately will probably give him a pass on the whole thing. Ironically, his thoughtless navel-gazing reminds me of the arrogance of a newbie pilot flying through bad weather and into a fog bank in a small plane and not trusting his instruments. Not us, we're Kennedys. We're too beautiful to die! Actually, if he'd just have been a drunken lout and a Kennedy, survival would have been a cakewalk.

I wonder if the TB guy's mother interned for the JFK administration?

Black Milk by Massive Attack featuring the lovely ethereal Glaswegian chanteuse Elizabeth Fraser

This video is random clips compiled by a Brazilian. They fit the music, but I'm just posting this because I like the song so much. It's incredible to me MA's Mezzanine cd came out 9 years ago, and now this music is popping up in popular culture. I sorta resent the cheap co-opting of the exquisite music I've been keeping tucked away and enjoying on my own. Still, it's nice if they are compensated in some way for their brilliance. Ms. Fraser also sings on their track Teardrop, which is the theme to the tv show House.

Good stuff.