. . . Ephemerama

"Why do ya think they call it 'dope'?"

nobody@vox.com(Jan) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:27:35 -0600

Acting on a tip, officers found marijuana being cultivated in a wooded lot in the Florida Keys. They pulled up the plants and, in what was probably a "what the hell, what can it hurt" moment, left a ransom note for their return, with a phone number.

The guys actually calls -- I KNOW! -- and offers to pay $200 to get his stuff back, and is summarily arrested when he shows up to make the buy-off. Not only is HE arrested but his wife is too, and...AND...they found a bunch of Oxycontins and a wad of cash, along with four pounds of packaged marijuana (in the freezer) and 20 more plants.

So the answer to the question, "Why do ya think they call it 'dope'?" is: Because "dumbass" was already taken!

This is one of the funniest things I've heard about in a long time!

Here's the story on the arresting agency's blog (shortened URL): http://bit.ly/6bCIpg.

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Take THAT, Miley Cyrus!

nobody@vox.com(Jan) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:47:05 -0600

I'm one of the lucky ones. I have dental insurance. We get to have a checking+cleaning visit twice a year. I had one this morning.

I haven't had any problems since my last visit. My last visit, mind you, was in spring of this year, and involved oral surgery and a bridge and a bill for a bazillion dollars even with the insurance, but since then everything's been good. Of course, this did not stop me, while driving over to the dentist's office, from conjuring up all kinds of awful things they might discover.

It would be just my luck.

"It's very very rare, but your teeth are becoming radioactive."

"I'm surprised you're not in agonizing pain, given that monster abscess we see on the x-ray."

"We were wrong about how much you owe for the bridge. You won't be through paying that off till 2025."

But I got a good report! You have to understand that this is big news. My teeth are soft. Not marshmallow soft, but softer than most people's teeth. It's inherited from my dad. I've broken teeth on some of the damnedest things, including lima beans and lifesavers (not the same incident because ew). I'm pretty sure that if I smiled into a strong wind I'd break a tooth. This soft-teeth business explains why I have a head full of crowns, caps, build-ups, and fillings (plus the recently added bridge which thank goodness is in the back although it doesn't look half bad actually).

Ironically, when the Tooth Fairies were handing out soft teeth to me, they also made sure they all came in perfectly straight, so at least I didn't have to wear braces. There is that, and I'm grateful for it, Probably not nearly as grateful as my parents who'd have had to foot the bill, but grateful nonetheless, especially now that I've watched adult friends going through it.

So. Today. You know how the dentist or hygienist will gently poke around your gums to see how healthy they are, whether they and the bone beneath them are holding your teeth like they should? Well, gold star for me today! Mine were classified as okay last visit, but even better today. In fact, the tech told me, dead serious, "You have the gums of a 16 year old!"

She said this with a straight face and I do realize that, in her world, that's a legitimate compliment, and I accept it as such, but it also cracked me up, given how NOT EVEN 16 the rest of me is! Of all the body parts I could be rocking, it's my gums. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

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Does this mean I'm a grownup?

nobody@vox.com(Jan) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 01:54:45 -0600

Because of the general state of the economy and the fact that several in my family have incurred some serious expenses this year, we decided to have a light Christmas this year, gift-wise. Saying we're going to have a light Christmas has become a bit of a snicker in my family because we always say it and then we all go nuts, or as nuts as finances will allow, buying each other stuff. This year, though, for the first time ever, we actually did it.

I got two gift cards, one from Home Depot and one from Bed, Bath, and Beyond, both of which were on my list this year, since moving into the new place last month. And Mom, bless her, doled out cash to all of us. AND home-made oatmeal cookies which I LOVE, which is strange because, apart from hers, I don't like oatmeal cookies. But I digress.

So today I went to Home Depot and picked out two Christmas presents:

1. A good vacuum cleaner. The one I have is pretty weak and was never intended to tackle "real" carpet, just indoor/outdoor stuff. I'd heard good things about this particular vacuum from someone who has one and that goes a logn way with me. It was kind of hard to find -- maybe Hoover is fazing it out? -- but Home Depot had it. Score 1.

2. A wet/dry shopvac. This can be viewed as either preparation for disasters to come or a purely superstitious response to the Great Kitchen Flood of the Summer of '09. I may have overbought, though. I had it in my head I'd just get a small one, and the smallest one they had was a 2.5 gallon one. I ended up with the next size up, 6 gallons, mosly because it has wheels and wouldn't have to be carried. Since I haven't completely decided I want to keep it, it's still sitting in the car, along with the receipt. I probably will, though.

So anyway, when I got to the register, I got all that for only about $30 out of my own pocket and felt very grateful (alright, smug too). Yes, I could have asked for a gift card from somewhere else, and could have spent the cash on any number of frivolous things, like BILLS, but no, I went for utilitarian. How very . . . mature . . . and that's a kind of good thing . . . right? Actually, one of the reasons I did this the day after Christmas, was so I wouldn't fritter away the cash on other stuff. I know me when it comes to things like that.

I came home and put the vacuum cleaner together and . . . well, alright, all that was involved was sliding piece A onto piece B and putting in one screw, but I did it. And then I surprised the living room carpet with a real vacuuming, which must have been like a deep tissue massage when all it was used to since I moved in was a minor tickling once in a while. I even have those just-vacuumed lines in the carpet. (And a boatload of cat hair in the vacuum's canister. Very little actual dirt, but lots of cat hair. Win/win.)

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Merry Meltdown!

nobody@vox.com(Jan) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:48:22 -0600

I had a major meltdown yesterday. A started-crying-and-couldn't-stop meltdown. This is very unlike me! I mean, I do cry, it's not that, but this one kind of snuck up on me. It was about 6PM and I was still at work although, mercifully, no one else was. I was waiting till it was time to leave for a 7PM meeting somewhere else, so I was just noodling around on the web.

I miss my dad, so many things about him, and especially at Christmas. He was one of the linch pins in our family's Christmases because he just got into it so much. Since his death in November 2005, Christmas hasn't been the same. It's good again now, but different. That's life, things do change, I know that. I also know it's permissible to get quietly emotional at least once during the holidays, just remembering. But I had no idea the tears were as close to the surface as they were last night until I read something online about children who couldn't be with their parents, and I was off.

First I got a little choked up. Then my eyes started to leak just a little bit. Then, before I knew it, I was face-down in a handful of kleenex, with great wracking sobs, crying so hard I wasn't even making any noise.

It was weird because, while that was going on, a part of me was detached and thinking, "What the hell...? Get a grip on yourself!" but the rest of me, the parts that were dissolving into puddles, had the wheel. It went on for like 10-15 minutes! When I finally ran out of steam, I was exhausted.

Thinking about Dad at Christmas definitely triggered it, and then the general holiday stress contributed to it, but there's the extra and considerable stress this year of having just bought a house a few weeks ago and then doing the big move, etc. I don't know when the last time was that I bawled my eyes out, but apparently I was overdue. Better alone in the office one evening than to lose it at the Christmas dinner table!

Dad seldom smiled in photos. For whatever reason, he preferred to present a more serious face when his picture was being taken and usually couldn't be cajoled out of it. If all you saw were those photos, you might think he was a stern dry humorless character, and nothing could be further from the truth. He was animated, charismatic, and loved to laugh. But because of the way he was about not smiling for the camera, the photos there are of him with his natural grin are highly prized in our family. Here are three:

Dad75-93

The first one is from about 1975 or so. He was sitting with his mother and sister and all three of them are laughing at something no one can remember now, but that doesn't matter -- it's the laugh that matters. The second one is from about 1988 at home. The third is from 1993 when he and Mom were on a cruise that stopped for half a day in the town I was living in at the time, so I met them at the dock, and we all had so much fun. (I have a few others, but these are the ones I could get my hands on real quick.)

When my sister and I were little, every Christmas Eve, Dad would do "The Night Before Christmas" with the first letters of the words swapped out (I think that's called spoonerizing, but am not sure), so it started, "'Twas the chright before Nistmas and hall through the ouse, crot a neature was stirring, mot even a nouse." He could rattle off the whole thing without thinking and my sister and I would be on the floor laughing so hard.

So Chrerry Mistmas, Dad, and Yappy Hew Near! ;)

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the next day

nobody@vox.com(Jan) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 04:14:20 -0600

My last post was all about how I get these out-of-nowhere and almost always completely groundless anxiety things. If nothing's obviously wrong, I find something. Yesterday I fixated it on Piper who had acted just the tiniest bit out of routine.

Well, as you can see, Piper's fine. She was fine yesterday too -- it was ME who was off the rails.

Tonight when I came home, she met me at the door. The level in the water dish is normal. Her appetite is fine. She even spent quite a bit of time playing like a kitten. Then she decided she wanted some lap time. I was working on a project and tried to dissuade her, but she was persistent and I relented.

img978.jpg

The fact that I was working didn't get in her way at all. As you can see, she curled up into a purr-ball... across my forearm. I kept working, although my typing did suffer for it for the 20 minutes or so I had this 14-pound accessory draped over me. That's okay. ~8)

This proves to me, once again, that whenever the anxiety train runs me down, things are almost always still fine in the clean world. It''s still such a PITA when this happens but I am grateful for the fact that it doesn't happen nearly as often as it used to and that I'm better at recognizing what's going on instead of just caving into an emotional flail-fest!!

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working against my own self

nobody@vox.com(Jan) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:35:55 -0600

Every once in a while, too often to suit me, I find myself dealing with free-floating anxiety. Something's wrong or about to be wrong, and I won't be able to stop it. It's made worse when something really does seem to be maybe going wrong.

Take tonight. I came home from work and was not greeted at the door by Piper, my older cat. When I say "older", that's relative to Lydia who's about 2 -- Piper's about 6 or 7 now as far as we can guess. Anyway, she usually greets me at the door, often enough that it was pretty obvious when she didn't yesterday and then didn't again today. She was on the bed in "her spot". I sat down in the living room and watched some TV and she came up for a little lap time, which was nice, then went right back to the bed. Then she had to be coaxed to eat her dinner. She did eat all of it, but again went right back to the bed. Then I realized that one or the other of them (both?) had been drinking a lot of water today, going by the level in the water dish from when it was changed last night.

So now the anxiety is starting to churn that maybe she's getting sick. Then I remind myself that she doesn't meet me at the door EVERY night, and that there have been times in the past when she's had to be coaxed to finish her meals, and that just a few weeks ago she was at the vet for her annual exam, shots, etc., and they ran bloodwork and everything was fine. And it's been cloudy and rainy and yucky looking and maybe that affects cats like it does us. (That may be a stretch, I don't know.)

And the house is very dry inside -- even with all the rain and damp today the indoor humidity is only 31%. That could explain the water-drinking, IF it was her and not Lydia (who, by the way, seems to be her usual 2-year-old incorrigible self), except that the house is always dry inside, which is why I run a humidifier in the bedroom, so maybe that's why she's liking it in there. But usually at least once in the evening, she'll come out to socialize for a bit and maybe even play briefly with Lydia. Not tonight or last night.

See?? My mind conspires to drive me NUTS. There was a time in my life when this was happening much more often and with a lot less to go on. Realizing it was "all in my head" helped a little but didn't make it go away completely. So now I guess all I can do is see how she does tonight and tomorrow and if she seems no worse, maybe I'm imagining it and just looking for something to hang this worry on. Good lord. How warped AM I?

Something of note is that this is the first time this has happened to me since The Move. I guess, up till now, I've been too preoccupied to look, even subconsciously, for problems I can't stop or fix. That's proof of something or other, right?

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all washed up

nobody@vox.com(Jan) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 01:34:13 -0600

At least I have that. I'm clean.

brrrrr

Ah, the joys of living in a new-to-you place. I stepped into the shower tonight, adjusted the hot and cold water the way I've found gives me what I want, turned on the shower, and stepped in. I got my hair washed and then realized the water wasn't as warm as it should be and, come to think of it, the water pressure wasn't what it should be, so I cranked up the hot water, figuring I still didn't have the mixture down pat yet.

Then I realized I didn't have the "thing" that diverts the water from the faucet to the shower all the way up. When I fixed that, that fixed the water pressure, big time, but by the time I finished washing my ample self it was obvious that I was running out of hot water. After I dried off, I checked other faucets and got tepid water at best. I checked the setting on the water heater and it was where it should be and where it has been since I moved in.

A brief backstory: I had been pounding away on a database for work, something the boss told me on Thursday had to be ready tomorrow (Monday). I had reached an impasse, a situation where I knew I know how to do this particular thing but it kept not working, so I had decided a nice hot shower would help things line up in general . . . or at least I'd be still confused but nice and clean.

So anyway. I hastily finished up and completely blew off the hair conditioning phase of the event, and got out before I found myself showering in ice cubes. For the next few days, I shall be incognito as Frizz Woman.

The story has what I hope is a happy ending. I remembered a plumber telling me once that the water comes out in much greater quantities from the faucet than it does from the shower. I don't remember the ratio, just the factoid. I waited a while and checked those other faucets and got nice steaming ouch-inducing water. What I'm fervently hoping is that most of the hot water was coming out of the faucet before I adjusted the diverter.

Lest you think me an alarmist, I've already had to have plumbers out here twice in the short time I've been here, and it looks like there's a third time coming soon. I can't say I'm shocked -- I knew when I bought the place that it had sat empty for over a year and I was pretty sure the selling agent hadn't been real johnny-on-the-spot about keeping the plumbing going, turning on faucets, flushing toilets, etc., from time to time, so I was expecting the plumbing to have sufffered some from that. Hopefully I'm getting close to the end of those problems.

And just as I was finishing up this post, I caught "Inside the Actors' Studio" and it's the cast of "Family Guy" and now I am so totally going to be up till 2:00 AM! I'll be sleepy all day tomorrow but I'll still be laughing all day tomorrow too.

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Trolley Molly don't love Harold.

nobody@vox.com(Jan) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:27:45 -0600

There are two kinds of people who will have read the above title. One kind of person now has a question mark floating over his/her head and is wondering what in the world I've been drinking. The other kind is laughing out loud, having recognized the line.

Long ago, there was a great comic strip calle "Pogo". Its characters were animals who lived in the Okeefenokee Swamp. It was one of the first strips to be directed more at adults than at children; sometimes it was outright political. Mostly, though, it was funny.

Being animals, and swamp dwellers at that, they could be forgiven if their spoken English was a little... different. It was one of the funniest parts of the strip. At Christmas they sang their own version of "Deck the Halls" which became the stuff of lore.

My family always sang the Pogo version of "Deck the Halls" at least once every year, and even now I can't help but hear it that way in my head. And so, I give you "Deck Us All". It is to be sung with great gusto -- being enthusiastic is more important than staying on key!

Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla-walla, Wash, and Kalamazoo!
Nora's freezing on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower, alley-garoo!
Don't we know archaic barrel,
Lullaby lilla boy, Louisville Lou?
Trolley Molley don't love Harold;
Boola booa, Pensacoola, alley-garoo!

There's more -- you can see the rest of the verses here. Leavn it, and then, the next time you hear "Deck the Halls" on the Muzak, break into song with this version and see who might join in. You might be surprised! Or you might just be embarrassed. What the hey, it's Christmas!

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trivial Wednesday

nobody@vox.com(Jan) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:55:24 -0600

I'm a trivia nut. Love it, all of it, but with a soft spot for pop culture trivia. No telling what wonderful things might fill my head if that space weren't already occupied by knowledge of things like how Winona Ryder was named for the town where she was born in Minnesota, or how the wedding of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore that was performed by Little Richard was actually the second ceremony, for family and friends, since their "official wedding" was a small one in Las Vegas.

I realized earlier this morning that I had not refreshed my 2009 Trivial Pursuit Pop Culture calendar since July (!!). In doing so, I found a few questions I thought I'd post here. The answers are right after the questions BUT they're in white so you'll have to highlight them to see them (for those who may want to ponder a given question before seeing the answer).

What actor's many death scenes include ones in Platoon, The Last Temptation of Christ, Shadow of the Vampire, and Spiderman? Willem Dafoe
Who declined the lead in a John Hughes Brat Pack movie to play three scenes as a blind girl in Mask? Laura Dern
What 14-year-old from Napanee, Ontario, got to belt out a duet withi Shania Twain after winning a radio contest? Avril Lavigne
What NBC newswoman wrote of her battle with bipolar disorder in Skywriting: A Life Out of the Blue? (Extra credit: What cartoonist is she married to?) Jane Pauley (Gary Trudeau of Doonesbury)
What was the very first letter Vanna White ever turned on a Wheel of Fortune puzzle? T
Before he landed the role of Otter in Animal House, what cartoon character did Tim Matheson voice? Johnny Quest
What appliance did the government of Kenya give each of its 2004 Olympic bronze medalists? A washing machine
What Fortune 500 company was named for a Herman Melville character? (Extra credit: When that book was made into a movie, who played the antagonist?) Starbuck's (Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab)
What sport's groupies are known as "Buckle Bunnies"? Rodeo

There were, obviously, a lot more, but you're busy and so am I and this was just for fun. Maybe I'll do some more later.

Happy Wednesday to one and all!

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It's beginning to smell a lot like Christmas...

nobody@vox.com(Jan) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:06:25 -0600

Do you love the scent of a live Christmas tree but don't have the money/space/time/inclination to go the lot (woods), buy it (chop it down), shlep it home, put it up, decorate it, keep the dogs/cats/kids out of it, get up in the middle of the night to make sure it hasn't caught fire, admire it, enjoy one memory-making beautiful morning around it, and then have to dispose of it? I have the answer!

MMMMM...Mistletoe

Yankee Candle's "Mistletoe" scent. Oh my god, you guys, it smells soooo good. Don't pay any attention to the name -- it doesn't smell like mistletoe (does mistletoe even have a smell? if it does, it's not this), but maybe all the tree names were already taken when they hit on this scent which completely nails the smell of Christmas, to me anyway.

Yes, I'm the same person who posted a shrieking diatribe against Yankee Candle a couple of years ago, but that was because of their god-awful customer service and totally inept shipping on something that was only available online. This stuff, this Mistletoe scent, you can just about anywhere that sells Yankee Candle stuff. I got mine at Bed, Bath, and Beyond.

I've used the Mistletoe wax "tarts" and they're sublime. Then I decided to try the plug-in diffuser and it's every bit as good.

If your Christmas memories include the smell of the tree, you really owe it to yourself to try this stuff. I have one plugged in in my office and all day long people have been wandering in with smiles on their faces and just breathing it in. "It smells so good in here!"

I will, however, warn you to avoid the Yankee Candle holiday scent called Siberian Winter or Siberian White -- Siberian Something. It smells like PineSol. Stick with the Mistletoe and you can't go wrong.

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Mere moments after initially posting this: {{sigh...}} Well, that didn't last long. Someone just came into my office and immediately started coughing and complaining of the "perfume" smell in the room. It's weird because I used it last year and it didn't bother her but oh well. They're big on "no 'offensive' smells" around here and it only takes one person to decree something "offensive". So the nice smell is gone and my lower lip is out. (I'm so mature.)

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