Pondering the world

invitation to a birthday party in 2030

The other day I received an invitation to a birthday event 18 years from now. My friend Jim turned 84 on May 1st. Jim is a Marine ("there's no such thing as a 'former' Marine"--Leroy Jethro Gibbs), having served in the Korean war. He still looks like a Marine and walks quite a lot. Every year in April he walks the 15-mile Bataan Memorial March in White Sands, New Mexico, and always finishes, even when much younger participants are unable to complete it.

A while back, he learned that the oldest person to parachute out of a plane was 100 years old. Jim is determined that he will break that record 18 years from now and set a new record at 102 years old.

Several days ago he stopped by to thank me for the birthday card I sent him and to invite me to his very special event 18 years from now. I fully intend to be there.

Isn't "high speed chase with a school bus" an oxymoron?

Friday must have been a day for the crazies. Traffic was snarled up on I-40 for most of the day, which started with a high speed chase after a stolen school bus.  Isn't that an oxymoron? It doesn't seem like you can use those two particular phrases in the same sentence. Actually, that wasn't the guy's first attempt. He had stolen another school bus very early in the morning and crashed it soon afterward, so he had to go back and steal another. The chase was complete with the guy passing other vehicles with the red school bus lights flashing, tires blown out by tire spikes placed on the highway, the suspect being shot with bean bags and finally being shot three times with real bullets. He was persistent, if nothing else. He's had a number of previous convictions, but I think he just doubled the length of his rap sheet.

... and one thing leads to another. Apparently two semi trucks were trying to avoid the traffic backup and drove up Rio Grande Boulevard., only to get stuck at the low overpass at Paseo Del Norte. Think for a moment about two semis having to back up and turn around on a fairly busy two-lane road. Hours and hours...

That last incident reminds me of a song from 1975 by C. W. McCall, "Wolf Creek Pass." That's the one about the semi carrying a load of crates with live chickens, lost its brakes coming down a long downhill stretch and found out just how low that overpass was. Took the top layer of chickens right off the top.

"Well, from there on down it just wasn't real purdy: it was hairpin county and switchback city. One of 'em looked like a can full'a worms; another one looked like malaria germs. Right in the middle of the whole damn show was a real nice tunnel, now wouldn't you know?

"Sign says clearance to the twelve-foot line, but the chickens was stacked to thirteen-nine. Well we shot that tunnel at a hundred-and-ten, like gas through a funnel and eggs through a hen, and we took that top row of chickens off slicker than scum off a Lousiana swamp. Went down and around and around and down 'til we run outta ground at the edge of town. Bashed into the side of the feed store... in downtown Pagosa Springs."

Copied from MetroLyrics.com

 

Spinning plates and whack-a-mole

Any business owner will tell you that her life is like spinning plates--you have to keep them all going at the same time, and there can be a lot of them. If you don't go over and pay attention to one of the plates when it needs it, it will go crashing to the floor. Besides the stuff I have to do every day, there are the additional projects, all of which need a little touching or spinning. Let's see... I have to reply by email to the guy who's custom-building some beds... call to set up interviews for a housekeeper... get an estimate on the materials I need to put a new top on a table... update my website... put up that special offer for March... 

Of course, the flip side is that something always needs to be repaired or replaced, and it has a way of interfering with the spinning plates. The sink in one room is draining too slow... the ceiling fan in another needs to be replaced... I'm behind on the winter pruning and things are starting to leaf out already... that doorknob is coming loose... Just when you feel you have everything nailed down, something else pops up, like that whack-a-mole game.

As they say, my to-do list is so long, I can never die. And just to keep life interesting, unexpected issues will continue to pop up.

what does your natural state look like?

I laughed when I saw an Arkansas license plate when I arrived:  "the natural state." The first thing that popped into my head is what MY natural state looks like:

 

I hope the new owner likes kitties

While passing by a chic vintage shop in Portland, we passed by a store with a Victorian loveseat in the front window.... just as the shop cat leaped up and made herself comfortable. The sofa had a prominent "SOLD" tag on it. Let's hope the new owner isn't allergic to cats.

Twins? not quite

This picture didn't come out as well as I had hoped. Steve already had this shirt, and I bought a shirt for me that, close up, looks nearly identical. It's so close that the first time I did laundry, I hung it up in his closet with his other shirts. When he was trying to put it on, he said, "What happened to my shirt??? Why did it shrink so much?" That was not the only time I hung it up with his shirts. Now when he tries to put it on and the sleeves are too short, he just takes it off and hangs it back up with MY shirts. Funny how the plaid does funny things in a photo. It doesn't really look the same, does it?

His father has taken up beading and made us these nearly matching hats for Christmas (mine has a couple of beaded flowers on it).

I thought it would be fun to take a photo of us as "twins," but we're twins just about as much as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito.

a chorus of Chihuahuas

You know about the names of groups of animals, right?  For instance, it's a colony of ants, a troop of baboons, a herd of bison, a clutch of chicks... I have a new one as the result of a neighborhood walk last week.

It was in an older neighborhood, rather tired and sad-looking with lots of padlocked driveway gates, "no trespassing" signs and many, many dogs. In fact, the walking guide I was using very definitely said "be aware of lots of dogs on this street!"

As we were approaching one house, the buzzing noise began, sounding like a swarm of angry bees. It morphed into half a dozen furry little bodies hurtling toward us, growling and yipping as loudly as possible just inside the fence. They tracked our progress along the street, protecting their turf and chasing those big, bad strangers away--all except for one puppy who was making off in the opposite direction with a red knitted hat. I wondered what happened to the person who had been wearing it.

The noise proving the group was doing its job continued until we were out of sight down the street, and a new term was born:  a "chorus" of Chihuahuas.

 

auto-corrected on my first text

My husband got a new iPhone4S and I got his iPhone4, which is much better than the older Blackberry I had. I didn't have a data plan on it by choice, so I didn't have email, texting, or any kind of internet capability. He said I had to come into this century.

I love my "new" iPhone. After I set up contacts and figured out how to make a phone call, I discovered Angry Birds and spent two nights staying up entirely too late playing it. Then he said I needed to learn texting, so I tried one. I told him "I love you" in transliterated Russian. The word for "you" is "vas," which it promptly auto-corrected.  I told him "ya lubyu bad."

Ack--I've been auto-corrected!

tongue-tied exhaustion

First, I have confess that I've stayed up VERY late for the past two nights playing Angry Birds.  It's addictive! So when I visited our artist friend David Behrens this afternoon, I was really tired and my speaking skills were somewhat impaired. 

He's currently working on a new painting, "Remember the Alamo."  He has finished painting the Alamo at the bottom and has three men sketched in across the top. The man on the left is almost done, but I didn't recognize who it was--Jim Bowie.  I didn't know the man in the middle, but I guessed at the one on the right.

"I think I know the man in the connskin... coonsk... coonskin cat... coonskin crap..."  By this time I was laughing so hard I could hardly speak at all.

"Is that Davy Crockey... Crockey... Crockett..?" By that time, David was laughing at me.

I went home and took a nap.

"What part of the chicken is popcorn?"

Every time I hear KFC's most recent commercial, I have to ask that question.

Here's how their commercial goes, just in case you haven't seen it:  "What part of the chicken is nuggets?  Here at KFC, our chefs don't make nuggets--they make popcorn chicken!"

Which, of course, makes me ask, "what part of the chicken is popcorn?"

Remember the days of Bewitched when Darren Stevens was in advertising and his company would have these meetings where they sat around and critiqued the ad ideas? Do ad agencies even do that any more? I'm not the only one who wonders this.

At least it gives me something to discuss in Spanish class:  Que parte de pollo son las papitas?  Aqui en KFC, nos jefes de cocina no comen las papitas--ellos comen las palomitas de pollo!"

Or something like that.