This just in.

According to a public service announcement I heard a few days ago, made by a DJ who had a mature news-caster type voice, about an upcoming blood drive:

"People wishing to donate blood must be 18 years or older, weigh at least 110 pounds, and be in good health, so no heroin addicts or crack whores."

Yup.

With Apologies to David Sedaris

Welcome, folks, to my newest series, where I lovingly explore my memories of working at Santa’s Workshop, in North Pole, New York.

For those of you who don’t know, this is the very first amusement park in the U.S., founded in 1949. It's located near Lake Placid, New York. I worked there as part of the daily entertainment troupe the summer I was 17. By then, the park had fallen on tough times. Money was tight. Corners were cut. The patriarch of the family that owned the place was very old, and everyone knew it would probably be sold soon after he died.

Nevertheless, we soldiered on, with big, mostly fake smiles. Plus, let’s be honest. I was a teenager, working with other teenagers. I didn’t give a crap about any of that. I had a pretty damn fun time, despite the bleak horizon. So let’s take a look, shall we, at what the park was like when I was 17.

*************************

The entirety of the Santa’s Workshop experience can be boiled down into one feature: the North Pole itself. Oh yes, there is an actual pole made of ice, frozen all year round, located right outside Santa’s house. Every morning, the pole would be covered in frost from the frozen dew of the previous night. It was kind of pretty, if you think things like popsicles are pretty. Then, as the day wore on, visitors would make their way to the pole. Little fingernails would trace patterns and names in the frost. Little hands, already covered in maple syrup or candy remnants, would make handprints. Little tongues would inevitably lick the frost from the increasingly unhygienic surface.

By about 10:30 in the morning, the sun would hit the pole, turning whatever was left of the gritty frost into a slick, shiny, melting surface, the sharp edges of fingernail scrapings starting to wear down, the handprints dissolving, the tongue marks all disappearing into a thin ooze which coated the ice. Undaunted, children would continue to lick and touch the pole, all day long, some of them encouraged by parents, who apparently thought that ingesting the frozen bacteria of hundreds of dirty, wet hands was a great photo opportunity.

Everything in the park was like that. It looked great from a distance, but up close, the decay was more than evident. Aside from the occasional coat of paint, the park hadn’t changed much in fifty years. To add to the slightly nightmarish quality, every once in a while the sound equipment that piped holiday music throughout the park would overheat, causing the 1950’s-style jangles to start slowing down, until the music was about half as fast and twice as low as it should have been.

Try playing your favorite Burl Ives on half speed on a record player, you’ll see what I mean. Now picture yourself in a brightly colored wonderland, where every surface has been coated in untold layers of cheap high-gloss enamel, surrounded by pimply, sweating teenagers in stinky, fraying costumes. I ask you: what could better capture the Christmas Spirit?

With Apologies to David Sedaris, Part 2

We now rejoin our program, "A Look Back at Santa's Workshop", already in progress:

One little-used park attraction was Elmer’s wishing well. This was a fake wishing well that people tossed coins into. The money, what little there was, went to Toys for Tots or some other Christmas-related charity. Over the well, set into the gabled roof, was a little door. Inside was an “interactive” and “animatronic” puppet shaped like a little elf. I put these words in quotes because, on a regular basis, it was neither. The idea was that an employee would sit in the PA booth, several hundred feet away and down a hill, and operate the puppet electronically. When someone donated a coin, the employee was supposed to pop open the door, and say “Thank You!” into a microphone, while simultaneously operating the controls that made the mouth open and close and the eyes move around. The delighted child would then start up a conversation with this technical marvel, and the employee, who could see the visitors from the booth, would amaze the customer by complimenting the kid’s blue hat or whatever.

At this point, I’m not even going to attempt to use sarcasm to describe how infrequently this system actually worked. The electronic system was decades old and failed frequently. Some typical outcomes:

1. The door wouldn’t open, so this disembodied voice would just kind of emanate from the roof of the well. This either scared the crap out of people, or was lost in the crowd noise and ignored.
2. The microphone/speaker wouldn’t work, so the employee couldn’t hear the people, or the elf would appear and soundlessly move its mouth and roll its eyes at the customers for a while before the door would close again without explanation.
3. The mouth would get stuck open mid-word, a scene that has been immortalized many times by the Simpsons, in basically every episode where they go to an amusement park. Funny in a cartoon, not so funny in person. More depressing, really.
4. To see the well from the booth, the employee had to practically stick their head out the window, and it was so far away it was impossible to see any details worth mentioning in conversation. For instance, “I see you have all your limbs,” does not make for lighthearted banter.
5. The employee in the booth also had to make periodic announcements, keep the music in the park from slipping to nightmare mode, and do the voice for Tannenbaum, the talking tree (same deal), not to mention go to the bathroom and eat lunch. This means that people were often knocking on the little door for ages, looking for the damn talking elf, while their kids stood in the hot sun, whining and/or crying, until they finally gave up and stormed away, swearing under their breath about how it cost friggin’ 18 bucks plus tax (plus tax!) for them to each (each!) get in, and for what? Jesus!

***************************

The park also had a few rickety rides, a puppet theater, a reindeer stable, and of course Santa’s House, where you could go in and visit Santa and get your picture taken, etc., etc. There were three Santas hired that year, and they each worked three days a week. If you do the math, you quickly realize that there was more than one Santa working on any given day. The extra Santa manned the reindeer barn, an important job which required him to sit in a chair outside the barn. To distinguish him from the Real Santa, he wore a green outfit and a different hat. His story was that he was Santa’s cousin Jimbo or something. Obviously that fooled practically no one but the very youngest. I felt kinda bad for the kids who were old enough to not be sure about Santa. Here they are, their parents drove them hours and hours with the promise of meeting the real Santa, at his workshop at the north pole, not like that guy at the mall, putting all their fears to rest, don’t you listen to what Brendon up the street says, Santa is Real. And after they do see Santa, here’s this other guy, practically the same guy they just met, sitting around the reindeer barn, sweating. You could just see in their face they weren’t buying it.

***************************

Well, wasn’t that fun! I bet you aren’t depressed at all now! Anyway, next time, I’ll tell you all about the ins and outs of my actual job, where I frequently dressed as a reindeer and danced around. Will the hilarity never end? Tune in and see!

When a lady's heart turns to sod

Ah, spring. C’mon, everyone, let’s all take a deep breath and enjoy the fresh air. Ahhhhh. Okay, back to work.

Since I work in the landscape design field, I get a lot of questions about yard work at this time of year. The questions from my colleagues all assume that I have a great big garden full of plants, just like they do. I hate getting into these conversations, because they turn into the type of conversation where the other person gets a horrified look on their face, and you can tell they just want to back away slowly until they are no longer in the same room with me.

This is because we bought a house at the end of last summer, so this is the first opportunity we’ve had to do any work on the yard. And while I totally love our house, it is definitely a fixer-upper. So, conversations tend to go like this:

Co-worker: We spent the weekend planting daisies and tending our precious, precious vegetable plot. What’d you do?

Me: My husband and his friend broke up 500 square feet of asphalt with a jackhammer, and then my dad came over to remove this lean-to which the previous owners used to shelter their ski-doos. We used the extra lumber to keep the barn from falling over. Maybe next week we’ll rent a dumpster to get rid of the debris.

Co-worker: [slowly nods and backs away]

The other type of conversation I have is with people who don’t work in the field. These people confuse “landscape planner” with “master gardener”. I mean, yeah, I know a little bit about gardening, but most of my experience with gardening came from the summer internship I had where I tried to keep a crew of developmentally-disabled adults from pulling up all of the plants in the Ithaca Commons.*

These conversations tend to make me nervous, because people have highly specific questions. Since I don’t really work with plants on a daily basis, my knowledge in that area gets a little rusty. And then, all of a sudden, it’s like I’m taking a pop quiz: Shit! This lady’s asking me about her tansy problem. What the hell is tansy again? Aack! This leaves three possible scenarios:

• I know the answer (this almost never happens, except for this weekend when I successfully identified some Artemisia for my mom).
• I sort of know the answer and give a good bluff, and am then filled with anxiety that I told them wrong and all their plants will die and they will think I’m dumb.
• I have no friggin’ clue. In this case, I say something like, “Really, I do more city planning type stuff… you know, like zoning.” This leads people to think I actually might not be sure what job it is I do, and they think I’m dumb.

Anyway, I would love to discuss this further, but I have to make some calls about a dumpster.

* Ask me about the time someone put bubble bath in the fountain! That was the day I traded in my dignity. Good times.

Bring back the scat!

Singing, that is!*

Seriously though, this is an issue near and dear to my heart which I feel needs to be seriously addressed. Recently, on a certain nostalgia-based, talking head montage program on a certain used-to-show-adult-contemporary-music-videos channel, certain c-list celebrities were making fun of scat singing, and Bobby McFerrin in particular.

Ignoring for the moment the total wrongness of making fun of such a talented musician (yes, he just happens to be one of my favorite musicians in the world, but let's not forget he won ten grammies), the reigning opinion seemed to be that scat’s place in the musical pantheon was equal to yodeling, or accordion playing.

Of course, it’s easy to have misconceptions about scat when there’s so much bad singing out there. But, you ask, how can I tell good scat from bad? Relax, it’s easy. Just use my patented Awful Scat Recognition Formula (ASRF).

To tell if a scat singer is bad, count the number of times he or she uses the following words in a song:

1. Skibby
2. Dwee
3. Skwee/Skwiddly

If the singer any one of these words more than once in a song, they are in trouble. If two of the words are used, they are bad singers who have no right to use scat. If they use all three, they are the scat equivalent of Kenny G and should be shot on sight.

With this easy-to-use system, you should be enjoying scat in no time. And remember, scat’s not just for jazz anymore. Like folk and blues? Try a little soulful tune, by Taj Mahal. Want some heavy Beatles influence with your scat? Try 1941, by my personal favorite, Harry Nilsson. Remember, there’s no end to the fun with scat!

* Because scat also means poop! Ha ha, poopy!

Night Moves

As you probably realized by now, I am a happily married woman.

Oh yes, evenings with my husband are spent in matrimonial bliss, reading Proust to each other in the original French, sipping Bordeaux, exchanging witty bon mots, making up new pet names for each other (Puddly-uddly-umpkins and Mr. Snoogybottom are current favorites), and even, if we are feeling a wee bit naughty, watching a spot of television.*

But sometimes my husband has to work the night shift. Sometimes, he has to work the night shift for a whole week. During these times, I like to play a little game called, "What would it be like if Kate were single?" (Really, really, really pathetic is the correct answer.)

The rules are simple: wile away the hours doing things I normally wouldn't do in the course of a civilized evening at home. Join me for a brief rundown of this week's activities, won't you?

1. Cleaning up after Maddy. (duh)
2. Eating foods I wouldn't normally eat. These fall into two categories: Foods that Dan Doesn't Really Like (garlic bread, Chinese take-out, the occasional Steak-Um), and Meals Created from Nothing Because Kate is Too Lazy to Go Shopping (featuring eternal favorites like Pancakes for Dinner!, Tuna Something-or-Other, and As Long As It Contains Shallots, It Has to Be Good.) This category is often expanded to include cocktails and desserts.
3. Making up many new and dorky dances and songs which I sing to the dogs while doing the dishes.
4. Watching TV I wouldn't normally watch. This includes CSI, Poirot, and Tom and Jerry. I also have new favorite: watching Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away over and over and over again. If you haven't seen this movie yet, I command that you do so at once.
5. Having long, animated, one-way conversations with the dogs.
6. Hogging the PS2. Right now I'm inches away from defeating Rhapthorne, (the Lord of Darkness, duh) in Dragon Quest VIII. And no matter how many news stories I see saying how more women are playing video games than ever before, I still get blank looks from people when I tell them I spent most of Sunday on a Playstation. I’m telling you, it’s a requirement of my demographic!**
7. Getting totally freaked out because I’m in a big house by myself on a busy street. My main concern is that there are so many ways to get in the house, a wandering lunatic could be lurking around without me knowing. In my former abode, I would get freaked out because we lived in a small house in the middle of nowhere. My main concern there was that there were only two doors into the house, so I could potentially become trapped by a wandering lunatic.
8. Updating my blog.

Well, there you have it! It’s like a sneak peek into an alternate reality! An alternate, pathetic reality! Which reminds me, I think there’s an episode of Star Trek on right now!***

* All but the last one are made up.

** This is the 30-year old, Uber-geek, only-child female bookworm demographic

*** See above note

What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw

I saw something last week that was so rare, I almost didn’t believe my eyes. In fact, I wouldn’t have believed my eyes, except that I saw the same thing two days in a row, so there was no denying it.

I saw… God, how do I even explain this? I saw a little boy, about 9 or 10, sitting in his driveway, behind a large cardboard box, which sat on a wagon. There was a hole in the front of the box, and the barrel of some sort of nerf gun or super-soaker was sticking out of the box. The kid was looking very serious and fiddling with the barrel, probably aiming it.

That’s right, folks, I saw a little kid playing with a home-made toy, by himself, outside. At first, I didn’t believe it, but then the next day, I saw him again, this time pulling the wagon across the street. And here’s the most unbelievable part. I caught a glimpse, as I drove by, of another little kid, at the house across the street. He looked to be about 7-8 years old.

I know! TWO kids, playing outside, with a homemade toy! A toy, let me remind you, made largely out of a box and a wagon! A toy with no batteries, no video screen, no lights or speakers! Also, let me point out that this was a real toy – not a sports-oriented ball. I didn’t think that was possible anymore. How did these kids even learn how to build such a thing?

Well, anyway, I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to call the authorities right away. The school board has to know about this. I don’t know what pabulum they’re spooning into the kids these days, but it clearly isn’t bland enough to crush these two kids’ spirits. They probably don’t even go to school – probably “home-schooled” by their degenerate hippie parents. There’s no room in my America for kids to be outside by themselves, using their dirty dirty imaginations, playing! Sheesh!

Hypothesis Confirmed.

I know everyone thought I was just kidding around a few posts ago in the "Fun with Math" section. A mere jest -- a simple tee-hee. Oh, that it were true, my friends.

Oh, that it were true.

As further proof, Dan went away this weekend to spend Easter with his family. And once again, my dog Maddy took it upon herself to eat a sock and get sick.

I should explain that this dog is nine (9!) years old and has never before eaten socks in the entire time we have shared our home with her. Sure, she gets in the garbage occasionally, but that's it. Socks, never. Well, until now, that is.

My theory is that when my husband goes away, the dog senses something is different. What is it though? What could it be? Suddenly, a flash of insight - there are no longer dirty socks strewed all over the place!* That's it!

So, she takes it on herself to complete this important task. But how? Sure, she could carry them in her mouth, but someone might see her, which would ruin the mystery. Wait - what if she carried them in her stomach? Yes! Eureka!

* For those of you who have not had my husband as an overnight guest, his superpower is to mysteriously leave dirty socks in odd places, throughout the entire house or apartment, even though no one ever sees him take his socks off. Not much of a superpower, really, but there you are.

Perky Perks

The company I worked for recently moved from one office building to another. The details are not blog-worthy, as the process mostly involved lots of utterly stupid, annoying things happening because the new office building was (is) still under construction. Like I had no desk for about a month. Also, I had a sneaking suspicion that, if I told everyone all the petty, bitchy details about the move, I would later have to eat my words if the new place turned out to be good.

The sneaky suspicion was right. (For one thing, I finally have a damn desk.) And also because today, while my bosses were otherwise occupied, I got up from my desk and left the building to take a walk.* The fact that I can do this is one of the biggest perks of my job.

Another perk is the new location of our office: downtown Saratoga Springs. We're in an old school building in a residential neighborhood, so I spent twenty minutes looking at all the jaw-droppingly gorgeous Victorian houses around here. I don't know about you, but I rather enjoy walking around these rich neighborhoods because it gives me a chance to pretend I have money. Also, I get good ideas for how I'm going to restore my own yard once I hit the lottery. I'll miss the little plastic gnomes, though. (Note: I unfortunately do not have actual little plastic gnomes in my yard. They are imaginary.)

Anyway, just as I rounded the corner to my building, the restaurant across the street, which has been closed for months, turned on its new neon sign: Little India.

That's right, I work across the street from an Indian Restaurant. Cue the chorus of angels.

Also cue the sound of many alka-seltzers hitting many glasses of water, because it's not a good Indian restaurant. But still.

P.S. Here is a picture of the office building's parking lot when it was being constructed last fall, which I sorta kinda helped design, in the sense that I put my boss's drawings into the computer!

*I should specify that this was technically during my lunch break, but it felt like I was sneaking out, since I didn't say where I was going. I guess it's sad that it was a little thrilling for me.

Hail Britannia: Introduction

So, as many of you know, my husband and I spent most of last week in London. To make the requisite travel blog easier to bear, I’ve split our trip into several topic areas so you don’t have to read the whole thing. First, we explore the reasons why we went in the first place.

I’ve wanted to go to England since I was a little girl. However, when I say that, I get a lot of blank stares. Don’t little girls like England? Well, I did. I blame my mother, and my maternal grandmother.

My mom started reading The Hobbit to me when I was in first or second grade. She reached into the depths of her teenage Beatle fandom to give the characters various British accents. The Trolls were cockney, as I recall. Anyway, by this point in my life, I had been reading for about two or three years, and I got impatient with listening. So I started reading it on my own, despite the fact that I was seven and only knew about every other word. Of course, I loved it, I cried my eyes out when Thorin Oakenshield died, and my fate was sealed. Soon after I got my first box set of Narnia, and started in with Roald Dahl (my favorite was Danny the Champion of the World). It got to the point where I thought the correct spelling of a mix of black and white was grey, and insisted on showing it in print to my long-suffering teacher so I could get the extra two points on my spelling quiz. Yes, I was a little know-it-all bastard. Don’t tell me you are surprised.

The seeds had been sown. But they didn’t sprout until a few years later, the summer before 7^th grade. We moved that summer, and there was a lag between the old place and the new place. So we spent a few months in the apartment in my grandparent’s house. I only had a few boxes of books and whatnot, and my other grandmother (my mom’s mom) felt bad and gave me a shopping bag full of her old Agatha Christie paperbacks. (This also explains why I watch awful mystery movies on the Biography channel.) When we moved in to our new place, I spent the rest of the summer watching old reruns of Monty Python playing on MTV or PBS, which I had never seen before.

So, when I turned 30 this year, I wanted to do something really special. I thought about taking the trip, but it felt too selfish to go. Little did I know the wily Dan was planning a trip to London in secret. This is why he is the best husband ever.

Anyway, now you know the background. Next stop: the sights!

Hail Britannia: The Sights

Here is a list of some of the things I saw in London:

1. A woman wearing an enormous gold ring, with a big, pyramid-shaped top. I swear, it stuck up at least an inch and a half from the back of her hand. It looked like a slightly less dangerous version of the ring from the Leech Woman. Maybe she was on her way back from a Nipe-hunting safari?

2. A man on the Underground drinking black currant juice from a juice box with a very serious look on his face. A juice box, people! WTF?

3. A fit-looking guy jogging on the street, wearing black knee socks pulled way up.

4. About 17,000,000,000 French middle-schoolers on holiday. Oh yes, they were a delightful bunch.

5. Many, many fat Americans wearing sweatpants.

6. A pigeon with one foot.

7. An Underground busker playing the clarinet.

8. Every one of the 25 train stops between Oxford and London. Yes, I know there’s a faster train. Well, I know now, anyway.

9. A man who appeared to be a dirty hippie but was, in fact, an organic chemist.

10. Dan pointing at things.

Oh, yeah, and Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s, Hyde Park, etc., etc. That stuff too.

Things we did not see:

1. Madame Tussaud’s

2. Changing of the Guard

3. Anything from the top of a double-decker bus

4. Harrod’s

5. The inside of any palaces

6. Nearly enough empty pint glasses to suit my taste

7. Dan or me punching any of the French school kids; a remarkable display of restraint if I do say so myself

Hail Britannia: Comestibles

One of the biggest jokes about my going to London was how excited I was to eat British food. I was particularly excited because we had the chance to go to St. John’s Restaurant. You may have seen this place on TV. It serves locally raised food prepared in the most old-school British way possible. That means trotters, kidneys, tripe, and a variety of fish with comical sounding names. Frankly, I couldn’t wait.

My goal for the trip was to eat one thing every day that would gross out my sister-in-law, she of the no bacon. Also, we both wanted to have some great Indian food, many pints of ale, some real tea, and a full English breakfast. So here is what I ate:

1. Steak pie (no kidneys though!)

2. Sushi from a conveyor belt

3. The meal at St John’s: Roast Bone Marrow, Veal Tongue with Butterbeans and Anchovies, and Honey Cake for me; Pea and Ham soup, Saddle of Rabbit with Dandelion, and Eccles Cake and Cheese for Dan. I had to stop Dan from gnawing on the bones of the rabbit, by the way.

4. A crappy microwaved scone from the Hotel for tea (lousy hotel!)

5. Some of the most delicious chicken tikka I will ever eat

6. British bacon and mushroom sandwich

7. Many chips with Malt vinegar

Also, we discovered that the beer was not as warm as we thought it would be. And we didn’t drink nearly enough.

Finally, on our way home, we bought a bottle of Absinthe at the duty-free shop, just because. It tastes exactly like Nyquil. Lucky for me, I like Nyquil.

Hail Britannia: Transport

We flew into London on British Airways. It was absolutely wonderful. See, last time I flew to Europe, I was on “Pierre and Armond’s Great Canadian Charter Flights, Eh?” Airways and it totally sucked. I was expecting the worst from this flight as well, since we got a super-cheap deal through British Airways. But it was awesome. They even gave you a toothbrush and tiny tube of toothpaste so you could freshen up before you landed. Also, they upgraded our seats on the way back, which was very nice.

One of the biggest kicks I got on the trip was taking the Underground. As someone involved with urban planning, obviously I am a proponent of mass transit. But there is none in my area. So I got way to big of a thrill to ride the tube. It was all I could do to not squeal and clap my hands when the “Mind the Gap” announcement came on. Lucky for Dan, I kept my excitement in check and we did not get robbed or beaten up.

And we took a train trip to Oxford, which was lots of fun. We had a great time, and had lunch in a 500-year old pub. Except we missed our train on the way back by like two seconds. A chipper British lady standing near us commiserated a bit, and said another train would be coming in a few minutes, but that it wasn’t a fast train. But we figured, the next fast train was another half-hour wait. How much slower could the slow train be?

The answer of course, is very, very slow. In fact, I am still on the train right now, living on potato chip crumbs and chewed gum. Seriously, there were about 25 stops, some of which seemed to be only two train lengths apart. Dan got caught up on his jet lag, and I got a great view into some of the little towns between London and Oxford. Guess what, they look a lot like Utica. Take my word for it, wait for the fast train.

Fun with Math!

Hey kids! It's time for "Fun with Math"!

Last night I workied on this little propositional logic problem. Let's take a look:

Where:
P = Dan is home
Q = Maddy ate a sock
R = Kate made delicious, delicious Thai chicken curry
S = Maddy got sick all over the freakin' rug
T = Kate has to clean it up

1. ~P
2. Q v R
3. ~P ^ (QvR) -> S
4. ~P^S -> T
Therefore:
5. ?

All right everyone, break out your truth tables! What? You solved it already! You ARE smart!
That's right, the answer is T.

Here's the problem worked out: If Dan is not home, and Kate makes curry or Maddy ate a sock, Maddy will get sick. If Dan is not home and Maddy gets sick, then Kate has to clean it up.

See what fun math is? WAY more fun that cleaning up after a sick dog, I can tell you!

Well, that's all the time we have today for "Fun with Math". Tune in next time, when we caluclate the decibel levels of the hornking sounds the dog makes when she gets sick! See you!

DVR Roundup

Many people ask me, "Is it worth it to get a Digital Video Recorder?". My answer: Hell yes!

Just feast your eyes on the bounty that is my DVR list:

The Simpsons: For when I want to laugh, but don't want to risk getting grossed out.





Family Guy: For when I want to laugh so hard I risk wetting myself, and am not afraid to get occasionally grossed out.





Wonder Showzen: For times when I am willing to risk getting totally grossed out to the point where I have to get up off the couch and shake my hands around and go "Ew! Ew!" like a sissy.





Poirot: For when I want to watch a Belgian fop mince around making witty bon mots in french. Oh, and he solves mysteries.






Project Runway: Just in case I didn't fill my "fop mincing around" quota. Also, I don't get to witness enough bratty designers arguing in my current job.





Star Trek TNG: Because who doesn't love to see problems solved using some sort of quantum particle stream emitted from the deflector dish? Also, I am a geek.


Bobobo-bobo-bobo: Because this is a Japanese cartoon about a guy who does karate moves using his nose hairs. And because that is the least weird fact about the show.



Doctor Who: Also, I am a geek.






So you see, how can you afford not to get a DVR? Go get one right now! Do it!

This message sponsored by Time Warner Cable of Albany, NY.

Not really though. Get back to work.

Wow. Just wow.

I'm not even going to attempt to embellish this story.

The other day, I saw a lady walking her dog. She had a little baggie in her hand for the dog's waste. When the dog squatted down to do the #2, as they say, instead of waiting till he was done and picking it up, she proceeded to, well, ...

Okay, I was wrong. I'm definitely gonna need some caps for this. Here goes (deep breath)...



She proceeded to HOLD THE BAG UNDER THE DOG'S ASS AS IT TOOK A DUMP.



I didn't think there was any way to make cleaning up after your dog more humiliating, but there you go. Maybe this is de rigueur in other places, but not here, folks.

Obscure ways to make me happy

WARNING: EXPLICIT MUSIC GEEK CONTENT FOLLOWS.

So about 10 years ago, I heard a piece of renaissance choral music on the radio. I thought it was pretty.

Then I heard it again a few months later. Wow, I really like this piece, I thought. I wonder what it is?

You know where this is going. Over the years, I kept hearing the thing but never managed to figure out what it is. (stupid not-back-announcing DJ's!) Of course, it became a low-lying obsession to find it. This blossomed into a full-on obsession around last Christmas.

As you may or may not know, there are approximately 1,000,000,000 pieces of renaissance choral music. Between them, there are maybe a dozen titles. It's the equivalent of the Japanese phone book. The only thing I had to go on was it was a sad-sounding piece with a really high note in the middle. Not much, really. The most I could figure was that it was sad when Jesus died, so maybe it was a "miserere" from a mass. You can tell I'm a great Christian, I know. Also, that only narrows the field down to like 5 million pieces.

So, I listened to hundreds of 30-second samples of people singing in Latin. Sometimes they sang in Old German or Old French. This was the most boring thing I've ever done in my life.

I began to lose heart around the middle of January. A few weeks ago, I resigned myself to never hearing the damn thing again and stopped trying to find it.

Ready for the music-geek punchline? Of course you are, my extraordinarily patient friend. It turns out I downloaded the piece in January and never listened to it. I just heard it today. It's the Gregori Allegri "Miserere", for those of you who haven't nodded off from the tedium of this story by now. Oh, and happy birthday, Matt.

But no Foreigner

I've noticed an interesting phenomenon lately. I have a very, very high tolerance for bad radio.

Say I'm listening to an okay song on the radio. It ends, and a bad one comes on. I will often listen to the entire bad song and be well into the third commercial afterwards before I realize I am listening to the most utter crap ever to be broadcast, or a mattress commercial. Either one.

And after hearing the regular stations cycle through the "scan" at least three times in my car, "I Love a Rainy Night" by Eddie Rabbitt starts to sound pretty good. The only exception to this is Foreigner, which triggers some kind of allergic reaction/muderous rage in me immediately.

Whereas my husband will change the station within 0.02 picoseconds of hearing a bad song. Or even a mediocre song. Or a pretty good song. In fact, he flips through radio stations with blinding speed. Sometimes, my brain has barely registered the fact that a musical sound just came from the radio before he flips the channel.

I blame satellite radio, which he has in his car. With Sirius, it's easy to think that there's always a better song playing somewhere, because there usually is. So he sails right past songs that I would normally listen to, much in the way a gourmand scoffs at the fast food hamburger that a starving person would gladly eat.

Which leads to the following scenario on a regular basis: I put on a station in the car. He is itching to flip the channel, but he doesn't say anything because he is afraid I actually like the song. Sometimes, I can actually see the thought bubble over his head: "What happened to my wife? When did she start liking this crap? She used to be so cool - why is she listening to this? Maybe she hit her head and has brain damage! I am now filled with anxiety!"

Whereas I am thinking "Hey, I haven't heard this Hall and Oates song in years!" because I am desperate to hear anything that is not Nickelback or a preacher.

Sometimes I start singing along, usually just before he can't take it anymore, which of course prolongs his agony, knowing that there is an Elvis Costello song playing RIGHT NOW that he can't listen to.

And of course the downside to not listening to commercial radio is that you don't get to wallow in just how bad Top 40 can be. Example: somehow, Dan completely avoided hearing "My Humps", by the Black Eyed Peas. Of course, I rectified this a few weeks ago by making him listen to the entire song all the way through, which filled me with sadistic glee.

Well, come on. Everyone needs to know about the lady lumps. They are located in the back AND the front.

You know what they say!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bad things happen in threes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Seriously!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, sarcasm aside, this week I found out that a family member needs serious surgery. It could be worse, and there's no immediate danger from what I hear, but still, major stress/worry all around.

Then, yesterday I found out that BOTH my dogs have lyme disease. Freaking great. Again, nothing immediately dangerous, but come on. A month's worth of antibiotics all around.

You ready for the kicker, big ol' world of internets? On the way out of the vet's office, I sprained my freaking foot. Jesus. So I'm on crutches like a gimp.

Yes, that's right, I'm lame.

Well, lamer than usual.


Be nice folks, my foot hurts.

P.S. Also, in the best tradition of Alanis Morrisette-style irony, my wonderful new boots arrived today.

Well, FINALLY!

So, as many of you know, I have bad taste in shoes. Not that I don't appreciate a nice shoe when I see it, but I don't tend to buy a lot of shoes, and the shoes I do buy look like I picked them out of the dumpster of a wolverine-training facility run by indigent lesbians.

My excuses for this are:
1. I am cheap, so my shoes must be multi-functional
2. I am lazy and hate shopping
3. At any time, I might need to go to a construction site for my job. Granted, this only happens about three times a year, but it is inevitably when I am wearing dressy/open-toe shoes. And I tell you, it ain't easy to look professional and in control of a site inspection when you're mincing around in the mud.

But, pretty soon I will be taking trips to some actual cities, where my pathetic, gnawed excuses for footwear just won't cut it.

So, I bit the bullet and bought THREE WHOLE PAIRS of shoes. And I satisfied all three of the above conditions by getting shoes on sale, online. I even bought some funky boots with HEELS. I have to say, I love starting out my day now, putting on my brand new shoes. When Dan isn't around, I sing the "new shoe song", which goes like this: "I got my shoes... I got my shoes", sung to the tune of the "S-M-R-T" song by Homer Simpson.

It's the little things, folks.