Errrr.... Iron Ethel Bonney?

My pirate name is:

Iron Ethel Bonney

A pirate's life isn't easy; it takes a tough person. That's okay with you, though, since you're a tough person. You can be a little bit unpredictable, but a pirate's life is far from full of certainties, so that fits in pretty well. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
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Newt, not puke

Just so you don't have to look at the cat puke anymore. My sister really didn't like that... Ahem, "How do you know it was cat puke? What if it was some guy walking by?"

cat puke thursday

An entertaining thing happened at some point in the wee hours of thursday morning... a cat puked on the hood of my car. Not Nice! And, just to demonstrate how far I've sunk in paparazzi documentation, I provided a picture. Not Nice! Just be grateful I didn't touch the macro setting. Anyway, I made the discovery on my way out the door to work. Hoping to find an appropriate car wash (the ones with the do-it-yourself pressure hose), I went a different way across the city and out to no-man's land. I found no acceptable car wash on the way. Not Nice! What do you do when you're at work but you can't concentrate because the cat puke may or may not be eating away at the paint job of a much beloved and well traveled automobile? You leave work because you have a mission, obviously. Have no fear, I found an acceptable car wash and spent about $4.00 making sure all the calcified bits were gone. The whole situation was most entertaining.

Poor kitty. I hope it didn't puke from the crazy contaminated cat food out there. Not Nice.

Sun

My friend M. was telling me about a blog she saw yesterday. This blog, apparently, did nothing but list 3 entertaining things that happened every single day. One entry focused on a dog that rolled off the bed while sleeping. It seems that the dog woke up, shook its little dog head, got back up on the bed and went to sleep. The whole blog seems like an interesting experiment. Maybe the guy needed to remind himself of the good in life, or perhaps they always see the good and wanted to share. Could be a mixture of both.

3 good/entertaining things from yesterday:

• help from friends - always a good thing
  
• the story of a lost earing back discovered again, told with laughter - The earing back was somehow stuck in the teller's ear canal. When she asked her doctor how on earth an earing back could get lodged in her ear canal (the least of her medical worries), he simply replied: "I think you can figure that one out on your own."
• The Adventures of Mr. Pickles and Secret Squirrel - the story shall be the source of my retirement nest egg.... if I could just develop the story...
  

a not-so-happy birthday

So, my mom called me yesterday because a gal I had played soccer against in high school and once or twice in college was hit by a car and killed while running in Seattle last weekend. The driver was a 16 year-old girl who drove too fast in the rain and lost control in a turn.

Anyway, today was to be her 27th birthday.

Unexpected things, accidents happen. Go hug your people.

good times: some documented, some not so much.

Matt-O came into town this weekend as part of his mini-roadtrip before heading out to the edge of Wyoming to begin his work. We packed some serious stoop BBQ action into the only sun of the week on Friday. Fantastic. Good food and good times... Err, due to an unfortunate camera blunder by yours truly, all of the photographs from Friday are gone. Oopsy-daisy. Friday highlights: afternoon beer outside, stoop BBQ, excellent food (well done M!), good company, youtube, Matt and pink bike.

Yesterday we went up into the woods, along the Mack. It rained the entire time (an authentic trip up, methinks) but we didn't let that stop us. Little hike here, little stop there... followed up with some Deadwood, games of pool, and a birthday cake for Bob-O.

After breakfast we sent Matt down the road to Northern California to Fernando. A feast prepared by Fernando's momma awaits him there. I have to say, I'll be really jealous if she's made tamales for him.

Huzzah!

Huzzah! Matt-O is comin' to town! Pool and good times are sure to follow!

Three Good Days; or A Post, A Response

This post is in response to KFR's Three Bad Days of note. I thought I'd offer up 3 good days worthy of note. I've got some bad days I could throw out there, but we need to get the cosmic balance back in line.


1. Hiking in the German Alps I did The Sound of Music spin/twirl. Never-you-mind that Maria twirled in the Austrian Alps to the northwest of me. This day was really a culmination of many, many other good days. We could think of the twirl as part of an interpretive dance that encompassed the phone tag-team of cheap ticket hunting between my mom, my adviser, the travel agent and I, a visit from my brother and sister, as well as the fantastic people I met and friends I made while there. A good day of camping, hiking, eating, and drinking.

2. Perhaps it is a tad cliched, this listing of graduation day as an example of a good day. I don't care. It was a great day, even with a migraine. I didn't actually participate in my undergraduate ceremony as I was out of the country. (That sounds even more entertaining and snooty if I disclose that I was actually camping in the Alps... again.) The point is, my family hadn't been to any sort of ceremony that also acknowledged their hard work, patience, and support since I graduated from high school. These sorts of acknowledgments don't always happen organically as much as they should. It was a good day.

3. This last Saturday I had a good day. I went to the Farmers' Market and tooled around some art stores with the fabulous Morgan. We saw pretty things, smelled fresh basil in the air at the market, and spied people dancing at bus stops. Later in the evening I heard some fantastic poetry and speakers with C. and E. of the BCC, witnessed a fine presentation of "That Takes Ovaries," and topped it all off with wine and dessert afterwards. Goooooood. Additionally, I took this ridiculous photograph. Yes, the shades are C's. I'm not allowed to purchase hip things. Seriously, alarms go off.


Cheers.

Raise your hand if you ever.....

woke up in the morning only to find your reading light still on.

oops.

street dancing

So far today I've seen 4 people dancing while waiting for the bus... at two different stops. It has been a good day thus far.

Friday the 13th

Happy Friday the 13th everyone! Go find your favorite black cat and ignore it.

Cheers!

Thriller

"It's close to midnight, there's something lurking in the dark."

When I was little one thing scared the bejesus outta me. A snippet of the song Thriller, the smallest glimpse of the video, I was done. Oh sure, plenty of other things frightened me, but Vincent Price and Michael Jackson sent me over the edge.

Standing at the top of the stairs to the basement I'd call to my parents to perform their Duty as Card Carrying Parents: they had to escort me to bed. Though they weren't necessarily bigger than the monsters under my bed, they obviously possessed some magical power that kept the sneaking monsters at bay. Their denials were almost as torturous as the song.

There I stood, top of the stairs, mentally preparing for the gauntlet that stretched before me. My feet forced me down before I could back out. About half-way down, maybe six stairs left, I hurled myself forward into the air. An echo from the friction of my hand lightly grasping the rail reverberated up the stairwell. Not only did the rail provide stability, as I landed my grip tightened while I pulled myself sharply to the right. At that point I faced the most difficult and arduous task: the 15 feet from the door to my bed, flanked by a closet to the right and my sister's bed to the left. Monsters everywhere. I ran and leapt as though competing in the Long Jump. The final moment in the air, just before I landed in a pile of stuffed animals and blankets, stretched just a bit longer than the rest. My peripheral vision assured me that the closet door remained shut and no knobby arm emerged from under my bed.

Safe for another night.

Washington, Woot!

My oh my. I feel like I'm now just getting back into the swing of things. Made a quick trip home over the weekend. Had a fantastic time, notwithstanding a migraine. Saw the fam, ate at our family Mexican restaurant, and had 3 (yes 3) Easter and Easter-esque meals over the course of 2.5 days.



Highlights:

• the Fam.
• Scruffy, Harley, and Bosco.... observe Scruffy striking a Glamour Shot pose
  
• Yard Sale Deal of the Century: a $120 Le Creuset Specialty Eggplant Casserole dish nabbed for $20, never been used.
• More loot: a much cooler iPod stereo and Eurythmics: The Ultimate Collection (sometime I'll write about how Annie Lennox used to scare the bejesus outta me)
• Grandparent Quote: "I suppose your parents will get these back when I die."
  

Random Cussing Post*

Yesterday I had an entertaining reminder of the fun of cuss words. Curse words, though maybe originally marked by some slight against or contempt for the holy or sacred, have a larger definition in my world. Because when you get right down to it, the meaning of any word, or the power of any word, is inherently linked to the feeling behind it. You can make just about any word profane depending on how you say it. So says I. Thus I present a small list of non-cuss words that are, in fact, cuss words:

• Poof! - This word set me down the path yesterday... it was little Sophie's own 3-year-old version of a cuss word. Anger & frustration brought it out of her. I don't know how V. kept a straight face when she said it (accompanied by a hand motion).
• Balls. - It passes muster just enough for regular use without being considered particularly vulgar by rational people.
• Tofu - Say it with the same feeling and emotion of a well placed "buuullllll-shit.
• Horse Feathers - It ranks right up there with "poppycock." I can't figure it out, but I enjoy it. It must be acceptable as well, I heard Dan Rather use it in an interview....
  

There are many others. In fact, I invite you to leave some of your favorites in the comments section. I'd also like to give a shout-out the words that add extra zing to old curse words or phrases. I'm thinking of KFR's excellent use of the word "unmitigated" to spice up ever popular "horse shit." KFR: "That, my friend, is unmitigated horse shit."

* Interesting. Immediately after I wrote the title to this blog post I had a vision in my head of a post stuck in the ground of some deserted old-west town. On this post remained the carved remnants of cuss words past. Wee children of middle class families on vacation now point and ask, "Mommy, what's a 'hooplehead'?", while their mothers try to cover their eyes and shoo them away.

Richard Milhous Nixon

Why I love to despise Nixon, in list form:

• he wore dress shoes at the beach
• he had the best environmental record of any President... frankly, he looks like a saint next to W.
• his excellent foreign policy, pragmatism might be an understatement
• a secret plan to win the war in Vietnam; peace with honor... for the better part of 5 years
  
• House Committee on Un-American Activities, helloooooooooo "pumpkin papers"
  
• his own dog hated him
• Addendum for KFR: Don't forget his virulent racism and antisemitism!

Yes, yes. Nixon. What to say? The man was fantastically paranoid. Interesting creature, that one. A big thanks to C., who gave me the great gift of a Nixon bobblehead. He's now hangin' out with my miniature Lincoln bust and my Matryoshka doll that has all the major General Secretaries of the Soviet Union (in appropriate hair/no hair order). And yes, Putin is the last and largest doll... tee hee hee.

Further proof that I remain, as ever, a Nerd.

April Fool's Day