HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY, MOM.

I went to JPG's birthday party today. It totally rocked. :)

Recently he tagged me for a meme. Hmmm, let's see now.

1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating!
2. Find page 123.
3. Find the first five sentences.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

*ouch! Just got a hella paper cut on this book, Photography in Nineteenth Century America*

Farther down the river "a small colony of Chinamen are engaged in washing gold from the sands of the river, and at Shoshone Falls also; on the beach of the cove which is represented in the immediate foreground of the picture there are good diggings" that, when exhausted, are miraculously renewed "by the agency of the river." Underscoring the beneficence of this entire landscape, Wheeler concludes with a warm, domestic scene: "Near the left side of the stream, just above the falls, stands Eagle Rock, and isolated boulder 60 feet high, on whose summit an eagle has established its home and built its nest, interweaving the branches of trees into a basket for the proteciton of the young." O'Sullivan's Shoshone Falls photographs thus present an interpretive problem.

So, um, if you want to be tagged, consider yourself tagged.

Blind bowler rolls perfect game in Iowa. Of course it doesn't make sense. Maybe it's like that old thing they used to say, something about when you have an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters, eventually, one of them will pound out a best-selling novel. It would have been so tasty if his name had been "Luke" or "Skywalker" and we could attribute his mad bowling skills to using the force or some such.

Jealous much? Uh, actually, yeah, occasionally.

Oh well. Here's a song for a Saturday:
Mushaboom by Feist

Wowsa!
It's Friday.
Nice.

Tuesday the intarw3bz was installed, and that evening I bought a power strip/surge protector which I finally got 'round to prugging in on Thursday night so I could finally have enough outlets to have sound. So I sashayed over to yootoob where I found this dusky gem:


What could be more metal than cellos?
I can't think of a thing. Very sexy instrument, that.

Anyhoo, this woman is Nina Hagen, right? Call me nutty, but I think she looks better than ever, and I just LOVE that thing she's doing with her hair. I have always loved her crazy energy, and her sublime flair for drama perfectly suits this setting. But what's up with them skull boobies? Not something I'd want to see/hear every day, but good for oncet in a while...

The following video, OTOH, should never be watched by anyone, but I can't help myself:

I went and applied to join the gun club on Wednesday night. I hope they'll let me in because I really want to play their reindeer games. The club president introduced me to a lovely gunsmith who is going to do the trigger on my .38. He said "we'll see what we can do for it" and I said "I got a bunch of mint chocolate chip ice cream in it-- that's okay, right?" and we laughed. He was charming and said he runs some of the competitive shooting matches, and would I like to compete? I said I was open-minded, but that I needed to get a lot of practice under my belt before I feel like I could do that. I told him that I'm really lazy, though, and I don't want to do any shooting where I have to run around. He laughed and said he wouldn't make me run around, just shoot accurately. Yeah, I'm going to love the gun club.

What did you say?

Oh! I'm so glad you asked! I wore my favorite black silk chiffon skirt with the wonky poky-dots. I suspect polka-dots are vastly underrepresented on gun ranges throughout the world, and I'm going to do my part to bring to the fore the prim and modest polka dot. I think I need to start a ribbon campaign or something. I also wore my black Steve Madden 4" wedge maryjanes which I found in a box I unpacked Wednesday morning. It's like Christmas, unpacking my stuff. Well, like Christmas before my axis shifted and I decided I liked shooty fun at least as much as I love shoes. That's really saying something.

Okay, so I'm nearly a total zombielet, so it's light blogging for me tonight, literally.

Did you hear about the 107 year old lightbulb in the firestation in Livermore, California? It is claimed this lightbulb has been turned off only a handful of times. Yet here it is burning on. This gives the lie to the proponents of new bulbs which have to be changed more frequently. What does this early bulb have that new bulbs don't??? Or, rather, what do newer, shorter-lived bulbs have that this century-old bulb doesn't have?

Why aren't manufacturerers emulating this very old, efficient bulb, rather than splitting hairs and involving mercury in the process?

This bug had to die. Shot with a .22 at 7 yards with a Ruger Mark II or a Browning Buckmark - can't remember which. Or maybe it was both?

Sunday afternoon I had some shooty goodness with Holly and a fabulous shooting instructor, who gave me a lesson. It's really great to get instruction from a variety of teachers because it seems like I hear something completely new every time. After a bit, I said I needed to rest and I hoped I didn't seem wimpy, and she said I'd been shooting for over an hour, and that wasn't wimpy. It was also nice to get instruction from a woman for a different perspective. I did an okay job of shooting, generally.

I have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to friends -- JPG and Holly are starting to remind me of the old jokes about Zeke Smith knowing everyone-- remember those? Anyway, I'm joining a gun club really soon and then I'll be able to go and shoot more regularly. Wednesday I'm supposed to meet a gunsmith to get my J-frame trigger tweaked. That'll be nice to have done. The sneaking suspicion is dawning on me that I have a new passion which will seriously put a dent in my shoe budget, but what a way to go, eh?

Yays!

I has teh Intarw3bz in my apartment. The internet guy came early today. :)
The free wi-fi thing didn't work out - apparently there's too much brick and stuff between me and the source, or maybe I just found the one black-holey spot in the apartment for my machine. I finally had to pony up and pay for it.

To the folks on my blogroll: expect copious comments from yours truly effective toute-de-suite, since I don't have to comment from my cell phone with no caps any mo'.

Yip yip yahoo!

There's a price to be paid for playing loosey-goosey with the language.

Being the juvenile sort I am , the low-brow arena of the bad pun thrills me muchly. Further, when I have to give the same spiel a million times, I look for ways to enliven the task for myself.

True story:

About a year ago, I listed an apartment on the market with a huge, tree-shaded deck in the back. It was a perfect setting for parties, in my opinion, so I made free to capitalize on the added value of the extended outdoor living space. In short order, when describing the apartment to prospective residents, I would always mention its "big, swinging deck."

[you know what's coming here, don't you?]

So, one day, having gotten it right about , oh, say, 30 or so times, I was showing the loft to a couple of men who seemed quite keen. Feeling confident, thinking "they really like it/ They look like they throw great parties/ I think they're going to rent it" I let my inner dialogue totally futz up my game.

Yes, I said the apartment had a "big swinging dick."

They laughed uproariously, knowing what I meant.
I blushed profusely.

They rented the apartment.

Sometime in the late 80s, I had a friend who had a roommate named Ted, an artist guy who skateboarded. They lived in a big industrial space, so everything was out in the open. Well Ted had this incredible book case which I was convinced was the coolest piece of furnture ever. He'd built it from a nice grade of plywood, having been inspired by the wonky fireplace surround in the film Beetlejuice. It's a trifle under 8' tall, and nearly as wide, and it's a trapezoid with erratic frontspieces on the shelves to make them look slanted, even though they all are level.

One day a year or so later, someone mentioned to me that Ted was leaving Dallas for San Francisco, and I thought of that bookshelf, and wondered about it. Oddly enough, I ran into him at a laundromat a couple days later and said "I heard you're moving to San Francisco. Are you taking your bookshelf?" He said no, he'd been living in a small place with his girlfriend and had it in storage, and they were just moving with his wee Toyota pickup. I said "If you'd like to sell it, I'd be keen to know how much you'd want for it." He thought for a second and named $300 as the price.

Sold.

He delivered it to me and said when he took it out of his storage unit, he felt a twinge in his heart and really regretted selling it. I think he'd be pleased to know I've been a good steward to his bookshelf and mean to be for a bit yet to come.

So it's been mine ever since, this Coolest Bookshelf Ever™.

So, anyway, sometimes you have something for a long time and you forget how wonderful it really is. I spent Saturday cleaning, organizing, trying to get the chaos down to a dull roar when I sat down for a break, and I looked at the bookcase I'd been filling. I confess it contains a lot of books less elevated than the bookshelf deserves, but it's still a wonder to me, and it's nice to have a fresh perspective on it. It works well with the concrete floor and high ceiling here.

Sometime soon I'll post more pics, but for now it's embarrassingly chaotic. I confess that being a creative type, chaos is my natural state, but I like to start with it all clean and then let it devolve into a natural sort of mess which reflects my creative arc. That way it's more gradual and logical to me, rather than just everything dumped higgledy-piggledy like it is now.

Oh, finally got the tub looking white(ish). Thanks for all the tips, you wonderful people!

One thing I'm really appreciating about the space is how like a lake house it is. Though they are mostly painted white (except the steel frame which is black) the rafters and beams are exposed, and when it rains the corrugated metal roof is absolutely wonderful. I've always wanted to live in a barn, minus the animal muck. This seems a nice step in that direction.

Well, the new computer is here and put together, but it doesn't have the wireless thingie (Dell Vostro for networks, I spose?) and I need to get a router to hook into the free wifi in the neighborhood here. Maybe tomorrow I can get hold one of those.

My computer is the coolest, though. It's really cute, and I love the monitor.

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The doglet has made a brilliant recovery since her initial tumble down the stairs Monday night. Now she goes leaping up them like a gazelle with that little soundtrack effect *plink! plink* like Pepe La Pew gamboling through the daisies. She seems to have a rhythm with it and she looks suspended midair sometimes. It's really cute. She's loving walking the beat in the apartment, too, I think, and pacing, keeping an eye on things. Even though she's a power napper, she likes to stay busy when she's awake.

Unpacking. *ugh* Saturday should be a good day to get a lot accomplished, but we'll see. It'll be great to have some more boxes cleared away and be able to get into the fridge or the pantry without scooching aside a tower of crates.

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Something cool I noticed last night on Blogger - if you pre-load your posts (I generally post late at night for the following day), blogger will not throw the post up until the date and time you specify in "post options." Nifty, eh? I think so.

SOrry I'm such a dullard lately. Kind of wiped out. I'll bounce back, though. Have a great weekend!

Find of the day: Adam Rex

Clever illustrator. Me likee!

Yay - my new computer is sposta be delivered today, and then it'll just come down to getting the internet connection sorted, and then I'll be able to make my blog rounds again. I can't wait to catch up with everyone.

Wow. Is today really Friday? Nice!

TTUB UGLY...

So, anyhoo.
One of my big pet peeves in home design: that embedded non-slip surface on the floor of bathtubs. Grrrrr.

(that's not my tub in the photo, btw)

It doesn't matter how fastidious you are, eventually, that stuff will turn a dookie-esque, mealey-mouthed gray color and it's a bear to get clean again. I HATE that. yeah, I understand the principle, but it seems so filthy to me. I'd rather have a handicapped rail in the stall than that crap on the floor of the tub. Hell, give me Rubbermaid Daisies. I'll take my chances on busting my lily-white arse. Even in nice hotels you visit, you see that nonslip stuff and it always seems on the grimy side to me- like there's no getting ahead of the dirt.

Anyway, getting settled into the new place, but I want a proper bath, but the tub has that grid of the yuck of former residents. I got some Mr. Clean bleach scrub pads and scrubbed and scrubbed. Well, at least they are a lighter gray now. Anyone know how to get those really clean?

Next house I have, I don't care if it's a tar-paper shack or a van down by the river, first thing I'm going to do is go out and get a proper bathtub and install it (myself, if I have to, with some hired muscle). If you ask me, being able to take a decent bath is the very mark of civilization, and one of the only consistent restoratives available to humankind. Of course, by "decent bath" I mean with an endless supply of hot water and a selection of bubbly soapy products that smell all nice and flowery.

Check out this tasty 1960s Calgon commercial:

Having a rough day last week, I went to the Starbucks drive-thru for some of their delicious black iced tea. The line was really long, so it was going to take a while. I picked up my next Terry Pratchett book from the passenger side seat, Maskerade, and began to read, almost distractedly. Unexpectedly, I found myself howling, laughing out loud, nearly to the point of tears. You know a writer is brilliant when they thrill you from the very first paragraph:

The wind howled. The storm crackled on the mountains. Lightning prodded the crags like an old man trying to get an elusive blackberry pip out of his false teeth.

That right there is pure-dee funny.