Lest you get too comfortable....

At the end of this glorious day, I am always reminded of the words of my immortal grandmother...."It's disGUSTing how we eat like gluttons like this every year!!" Thanks grandma, now not only am I physically uncomfortable, I'm emotionaly uncomfortable.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Let me tell you what you can do with that gravy...

I’ve said this before, but I feel like saying it again. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. No gifts. Well, kind of no gifts. I spend more on Thanksgiving than I do on Christmas (dried cherries are expensive and oddly, cranberries aren’t cranberries without cherries) but I’m also more confident that people will like what I’ve spent the money on.

If you haven’t made a turkey before, you wouldn’t believe how easy it is. That’s what the advertisers are counting on; that you think it’s hard so you’ll buy all this specialized crap to go with preparing this one bird this one day of the year. All you really need is salt, butter, some oranges and something that can be used to tie two knobby legs together.

The only thing that is tricky is the timing and that will depend on how much extra stuff you want to make and your day job. I go absolutely ape-shit over side dishes. I have no less than seven sides that I feel must accompany the caged, injected, oiled-up bird. I’m not going to tell you what they are because I want you to be surprised if you ever come over.

Other highlights of the holiday include football and then football…and pie.

The one thing I hate about this holiday is gravy. I HATE GRAVY. Always have, always will. I hate eating it, I hate smelling it, I hate looking at it, and I most certainly hate making it. I hate the stupid custom dish it has to be in. That stupid dish never fits into the hutch just right, you always have to move other dishes around and then the aesthestics are all off. Gravy ruins fung shui.

Gravy has stupid sayings too, like “It’s all gravy”. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN??? Are they implying that gravy is easy? It’s not. You have to remember to add all this crap to the bottom of the roasting pan and then pour that little amount of liquid out of that big, heavy roasting pan into another one of the advertisers specialized pieces of crap to skim the fat off of the top which is replaced with more fat and some flour and then wisked in back in the huge roasting pan and then it has to be poured into the stupid fung shui-ruining dish and served right away because it sucks if it gets cold.

My potatoes are so stunning that they don’t need gravy. None of my life needs gravy. I have worked everything out so that I never have to utter the words “please pass the gravy”. I am the 1% that doesn’t need any goddamn gravy.

You can join me. We can increase to 2% and then maybe 10%. Take that first step, refuse to buy the fat skimmer. Next, throw out the gizzard and neck. Then, when you’ve gotten the proper amount of rest and have eaten three nutritious meals, bypass the package of gravy mix and the ready-to-eat gravy in a jar. You have to be at your peak condition to master this last step. This involves not only passing up a few food items, this involves changing the precepts of society.

You can do it. I believe in you. Just keep saying to yourself “NO FUCKING GRAVY!” Put gouda and heavy cream in the potatoes instead. You’ll thank me for it. Colors start to look brighter, aromas are more intense, laughter of children is more enjoyable with no gravy in your life. We can have a world with no gravy; a world with balanced china hutches and no stains on the table clothes (It’s always the gravy). It’s a glorious world I can see and I want you to join me in it. We’ll procreate and raise an entire community that knows nothing of gravy! Gravy-devouring countries will bow before us. WE SHALL RULE THE WORLD!

Okay, I gotta go boil the wild rice…

When I was young, we had to sit there and hold our broken bone until it healed...

So Dominique Barber broke his foot and the technical term is Lisfranc fracture where all the metatarsals are displaced from the tarsus and I know that’s right because it’s on Wikipedia and it reminds me of my friend Linda’s fracture but anyway I was noticing that Mr. Barber had a red cast on but then allegedly changed it to blue and white which I have to admit left me speechless for a moment as I pondered how that could be possible since a cast is supposed to be super protective and should then be not easily taken off OR CHANGE COLORS so where does he get off being able to change colors like that or even get to HAVE colors in the FIRST PLACE unlike his predecessors like me who have broken my foot although not the tarsus unless my tarsus is located on the side of my foot where that bump is which it is not so it was my talus bone that I broke which is close to tarsus but only in spelling and which my doctor at the time gleefully referred to as my “foot bone!” and put a plain white plaster cast on it leaving only my toe nails poking out thank goodness because I could at least still paint my nails and impress my seemingly easily-impressed doctor but by not telling me the correct medical term I was forced to say that I broke my "foot bone!” instead of getting to say “talus” but that wouldn’t have changed the color of my cast but it does lead me to wonder if a red cast itches a lot because a white one sure does and I know my doctor told me not to stick anything down there to scratch no matter how much it itched but I think it had been some time since he had his own plain white cast on and forgot how absolutely annoying that little itch can be so when no one was looking I grabbed my mom’s canister of knitting needles where there were a ton to choose from and I first reached for the pretty pink metal ones but then I felt a little bad about using the pretty ones because she used those all the time so I grabbed the ugly plastic ones and rammed one of them down there where I was able to get really close to my itchy “foot bone!” but I got a little carried away with the motion and all of a sudden out of nowhere it broke WHILE STILL IN MY CAST which is just what my doctor told me would happen and I didn’t believe him but now there was evidence that he was right but I was still stuck with one broken plastic knitting needle in my cast and I began to panic has I imagined my foot turning gangrene just like my doctor said would happen if I stuck anything down there and then I imagined the look on my mother’s face when the cast came off yelling OH MY GOD and then THAT’S WHERE THAT NEEDLE WENT as the broken needle fell to the cold hard hospital floor and the doctor turning to grab the skill saw to saw off my foot since it was gangrene and just as I got to this point in my imagination I managed to grab hold of the little flat top edge of the stuck needle with its free partner and yank it out but not without leaving what felt like a long wide scratch on my leg that I was certain would turn gangrene so I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t but all was well when the cast finally did come off and there was no yelling or sawing or gangrene. Just a stupid white cast on the floor.

I'm going to have to tweet this....

So, this whole social media thing still bugs me sometimes. People have loved to attribute incredible commendations to it when it’s played a part in movements like in Egypt, other Middle East and N. African countries. I guess if you’re in prison and you have access to a smart phone, it’d be great to let someone know you’re there to see if they can come and get you out.

To me, it seems that social media is currently having the same integrity issues that we had to deal with when the internet first came on the scene. When I started my college career, the internet didn’t exist. We had to go and sit in a mold-ridden library and page through little cards (while standing) to find the volume of a certain journal we needed and then, after searching through 50 articles, try to scrounge through our laundry coinage to find enough change to copy the pages we needed, and then walk home barefoot, uphill, through snow.

When I went through the second phase of my college career, the internet was up and running but many journals were still in the process of converting their entire libraries to online sources. The search engines were mostly adequate, but the keywords were hit and miss (at least you could sit while doing this). It didn’t take long for professors to get savvy about this and devote some substantial time to educate students on how to tell the difference between a reliable internet source and Wikipedia. You can now really get some good work done using internet sources.

Just when I get used to the idea that Satan doesn’t really live on the internet, along comes Facebook and Twitter. No, I do not want to tweet my thoughts to a news program to be recited in real time. A commentator just stated that tweets are “quick and to the point”, which is true, but many stated "facts" are unreliable, unsubstantiated, and simply untrue. Comments are posted at such a quick rate that I don’t understand how there’s time to do some fact-checking. It doesn’t take long to google a sentence and come up with what looks like a good article supporting your opinions, but how do you know that’s right? The reason why it takes so long to make scientific progress is because of the very definition of science - you have to replicate experiments to make sure the results are valid. This takes time. It should take time.

The pro of communicating strictly through electronic media is that you can hide from people. The con is that people can hide from you.

It allows me the luxury of taking on more projects because I can work on them in bits and pieces when I have time and then email results. The recipient can read them when they have time and then can respond to me when they have a moment. If that moment is 11:00pm, I would much rather get an email than a phone call. I hate the phone. Let’s not rehash that conversation.

Siri is what is really scaring me. Are we now going to ask a phone to answer questions only we can answer for ourselves? In a commercial, a guy asks Siri if he can walk to the hotel. If the man has legs and they are functional, then yes, he can walk to the hotel. Is Siri programmed to automatically know the weather conditions, the best route to the hotel, the amount of foot or automobile congestion, and then decide if this is the best option for this particular individual? I see this as a ripe opportunity for villains like Gargamel or Mojo Jojo to take over the world by instructing us to keep going straight instead of taking that left turn at Albuquerque. That might get me lost on my way to find this guy who can help me survive after the sun explodes in 2012.

Ring Ring! Are you going to answer that?

I hate phones. Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve always hated the phones I’ve owned. There are plenty of phones out there that I love, but I’ve never been fortunate enough to own them. When I was about 10, I remember going into the AT&T Bell store at Minnehaha Center (back when “Bell” was still attached to the AT&T brand). They used to have the coolest phones. There was one in a big, oval sea shell which I had planned on putting in my bathroom in my apartment in Manhattan (I had big dreams when I was 10, which included a red corvette). My favorite was the French-style phone. I think Katherine Chancellor had one on “The Young and the Restless”. I found one years later in a Hello Kitty store but the base was way to light and it would fling around everywhere whenever I tried to answer it. Plus, there was plumage wrapped around the receiver, which always stuck to my lip gloss.

The phones I owed always had a loud, horrid ring tone; never a pretty, dainty, pleasant one. It was a kind of ring that sounded like I was already being yelled at by the caller before I even answered. You may be thinking to yourself that now, in this modern era of choosing anything one wants for a ring tone, why haven’t I found a nice ring tone yet? Because I have the plan that doesn’t allow me to. In order to get the nice ring tones, you have to buy the large plans with tons of bells and whistles that I never use. I have the basic plan with 300 minutes per month (voice only) and I barely make it to the half-way mark. They’re not going to give a nice ring tone to someone who won’t hear it often enough.

Texting on the other hand…..I am starting to go off the deep end with texting. At first, I hated it because I don’t have a normal keyboard on my phone, it’s a number pad and trying to type words on a number pad is excruciating to someone who can type an average of 92 wpm on a normal keyboard. I didn’t like the general idea of texting because I thought it wasn’t personal enough. I was also a bit annoyed with others around me who would text while just standing at a bus stop. For some reason, this really really annoyed me. No one was looking around anymore. There was stuff happening all around, people to see, eyes to make contact with, squirrels to watch duke it out over a French fry out of a U of M garbage can, and no one was catching this great stuff.

A few things started to change my outlook. First, I realized how convenient a cell phone could be. I still needed a landline to let people into my building, but being able to call people while outside of my apartment was a feeling much like the first time I was allowed to stay home alone – total FREEDOM. If I had one while I was on jury duty, my spring break would have been a lot better.

Second, I realized how even much more freeing it was to be able to respond after having time to think through my answer and then type it out accordingly, which is a wonderful option for a stammerer to have.

So now I’m sold on texting. I want to do it all the time. I wish I would have come to this conclusion when picking out my service plan. I chose the voice only plan where texting was extra. Now, my texting charges make up the bulk of my bill.

I am currently in the interesting position of either upgrading my service plan (which will lock me in for 24 months), or finding a new phone and starting fresh. I’m considering getting a phone with a camera, so I can take pictures of squirrels duking it out over a French fry at a U of M garbage can. Seriously, you have to see that because it is hilARious!

So a new phone is probably in my future, but this leads me to another thought – am I setting myself up for a series of arguments and misunderstandings based on the content of my texts? What I think is funny and what others think is funny can sometimes be two TOTALLY different things.

There is a group of people who know me well enough to be able to understand my meaning, but I sometimes forget that there is a much larger group of people in the world who don’t. Lately, I’ve been forgetting this when I send emails at work and when I tweet. Or maybe they are laughing and I’m just not “seeing” it. That’s one big downfall with this worldwide communication change. You don’t have the immediate facial expression/reaction in a text message. Many times I really miss that. Emoticons are not a human face.

I believe I'll go with All Lacquered Up...

So here I sit, in my backyard, on an October day that is still in the high ‘70’s. The only use I can find for this weather is that it helps dry my nail polish more quickly.

I’ve always loved to do my own nails. Having to go without for 47 days, once a year, is excruciating because I’ve convinced myself that men don’t want to hold hands with a woman who has dirty nails. So you’d think I’d be very happy to paint them again. I am, sort of.

Being able to paint them again means that fest is over for another ten months. Seven years ago, I didn’t know what this feeling was like. The end of fest meant that I took all of the pictures off of the wall, dusted them, put them back into the plastic bins in a very anal-retentive way (which is right down my alley) and then packed the plastic bins into the back of the huge automobile in a very anal-retentive way (again, no objections). I would then drive down the dirt road out to Highway 41, usually crying like a baby. Those tears were for the loss of an opportunity to experience the magic I saw outside of the booth every day. Wanting to be able to say that I knew those performers I saw out there, making people laugh, smiling all day long, even in rain.

Six years ago, I started a new tradition at this time of the year. I was granted the rare opportunity to be a part of what I had watched for seven years past (in case you’re confused with the counting at this point, I started working in a booth in 1999, then joined the cast and “worked” starting in 2006 through present. That’s where I get the seven years past [1999-2005] and seven years ago [2005] and six years ago [2006] and if you use numerology, you end up with the number 2, which has nothing to do with anything). Where was I? Oh yeah, six years ago, I started a new tradition of being able to come back on the day after and eat and laugh and pack up one more time with everyone. There would be the long fest/Minnesota good-byes, some tears, some inner thoughts of “Damn, I should have hooked up with him. Maybe next year”. There would then be a good week’s worth of depression. I never seem to appreciate at the time, how much I would miss the crowds of people, the impossibility of ever being alone except maybe in the privy, the inability to make a statement without someone else having a retort, until it’s gone and I’m suddenly surrounded by silence…and memories.

Every meal is empty without someone sitting next to me on a bench with a good portion of dust on our food. Every evening is just darkness without someone beside you, walking across a patch of land dotted with decrepit buildings and beautiful sunsets, with one hand on your pass, ready to show the people with yellow flags. Scotch never tastes as good as it does being poured out of someone’s belt into a dusty, dirty, small wooden chalice-shaped shot glass as people file by you to get to their cars, maybe wondering to themselves “I knew it, they all do drink here!”. I’m considering hiring Rich Shepardson to show up outside of my bedroom window every morning just to sing the last few bars of “Swing Low…”. That rattles my rib cage….in a good way. I’d like Rich to bring Neal Skoy with him to run into my tree trunk in my backyard.

I suddenly want one more chance to walk down the lane and mistakenly step on someone’s bit and feel really stupid for a few minutes until someone mistakenly does it to me. I want to walk in the parade while a pirate tries to snatch my glass out of my hand and I swing it carelessly about.

Making someone laugh is the best thing I could think to do for them. I feel silly giving people cards. Giving presents can be fun but it’s kind of fleeting. Getting them to laugh is priceless and everlasting. Having been on the receiving end during the lowest points in my life, I can tell you that it is priceless and everlasting. If anyone uses that statement against me at contract time, I’ll beat the hell out of you.

The kind of humor that is found at fest doesn’t always translate in the same way outside of fest. At least, the reaction isn’t as free. Your co-workers will correctly give disapproving head shakes because the employee manual says so, but I think that deep down inside, there is a guffaw lurking.

Finding the opportunity to be able to do this at this specific location is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that transcends management, ownership, parking conditions, and heat. I’ve met the most incredibly talented, generous, caring people, all of whom continue to let me be around them.

Mandy Patinkin, in a Princess Bride documentary, talked about what it meant to be a part of that movie. At the end of his statement, he tears up and tries to say, without his voice cracking, that “I never dreamed I’d get to be in a movie like this. I never have since and I guess you’re lucky in this life, if you ever get close to something like this.” I couldn’t agree more.

So now I will paint my nails and dream of what could be in another ten months.

Brian’s Song:

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
…Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for awhile, then closes
Within a dream. (Earnest Dowson)

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. (Shakespeare, The Tempest)

Juggling as a metaphor for life

Question #1 - Guess who now has three balls with which she’s trying to keep two in the air at any given time? Me, that’s who. Yes, I proudly purchased three balls designed to withstand an adequate amount of use throughout varying environmental conditions over several years.

Question #2 – Guess what builds up quad muscles and helps to stretch out hamstrings? Learning how to juggle, that’s what (all that bending-over to pick up dropped balls.)

This is not my first attempt at learning how to juggle. I’ve read several online “manuals”, complete with drawings, on the subject. I’ve asked the MRF Juggling School plus several other free-lance MRF jugglers for the secret and hopefully quick+surefire method to learning how to juggle. I’ve even paid a guy $35 to learn how to juggle. A co-performer also paid the same guy $35 but it actually worked for him.

Here’s the part I have difficulty with: just exactly how am I supposed to catch these balls without looking where they’re going to land? Do you ever see a juggler looking down at his hands? No. I find this incredulous. How can you possibly know where these balls are going to land? You don’t! Sure, you can assume that they’ll land in your hands but you don’t KNOW that they’re going to land there. I could trust in differential and quadratic equations of trajectories and hope these are correct but how do I know they’re correct all the time? And further, which equation should I go with? What if Galileo was wrong?? WHAT IF HE WAS WRONG?? Then I’ll never catch those fucking balls!

There are far too many factors involved in knowing for certain where the damn ball will land. I’d have to estimate the launch velocity, launch angle, trajectory height, and the positions of the launch and landing points. I can’t do that all in a few seconds. I can’t even do that all in a few days.

Wikipedia has a cute little animation showing a stick figure juggling 3 balls in what I believe is the common beginner’s pattern. I could also mention here that it is referred to as a Siteswap 3 but part of me feels that term was added to the Wikipedia page by some professional juggler in an attempt to get the newbies to repeat a silly sounding phrase. I would like to point out the lack of environmental factors in this animation like wind velocity, differing weights of the balls, and surrounding distractions. I also think this page illustrates how we can be fooled by the internet into thinking life is much easier than it really is.

Supposing I could decide on a calculation that I trusted, I would then have to contend with Zeno’s paradox that motion is an illusion. In order to move from point A to point B, I would first have to throw the ball half way, but in order to reach that half-way point, I’d have to get the ball half-way to the half-way point. Because there are an infinite number of points to cross before getting to Point B, I’ll never actually get around to throwing the ball up. In fact, I’d never get around to picking the balls up because I’d have to bend half-way, but first I’d have to bend half-way to bending half-way….oh nevermind.

Louis Pasteur said that “chance favors a prepared mind”. It seems to me that catching a ball would favor a prepared hand but I can’t figure out how to prepare my hands for this.

I think there is a secret mind-control method to juggling. Jugglers have learned how to make the balls go where they want purely with the power of their minds. Microscopic laser beams are coming out of their eyes and directing the balls where to go...and then Satan is making sure the balls land in their hands.

Juggling may be the cruelest trick to play on an obsessive-compulsive person. I really want to catch the balls RIGHT NOW but I want to know exactly how to catch the balls RIGHT NOW. I think the stupidest thing I ever did was to purchase three balls designed to withstand an adequate amount of use throughout varying environmental conditions over several years.

Now Playing....

Did you know that the first alien body was unearthed in 17th century Ireland by two body snatchers? You would if you've seen "I Sell the Dead". It's too bad that cool movies like this don't get wider exposure. Or at least wide enough so that I'm learn of their existence sooner.

I'm not sure what kind of statement it makes about society that movies can be so influential. My mother grew up in the 40's & 50's when Katharine Hepburn was popular. My mother's senior picture sports a Hepburn 'do and I think she really believed that Katharine wouldn't lie to her about how life would turn out just like her movies, if you watched them often enough.

I personally would still be struggling with necklines on sweatshirts if it wasn't for "Flashdance". Boy, was that liberating for my un-effeminately large trapezius muscles. I also wouldn't have the faintest idea how to change into a space suit in a tightly enclosed area with a potential danger lurking outside if it wasn't for Sigourney Weaver. I pity the generations of women who've grown up not knowing how to slide themselves down a door jam to prolong that first kiss from a first-loser/then-winner/then-winner-again/then-one-more-time-winner-again/then-ugh-winner/then-whocares boxer. And I can't believe any woman who grew up in '80's would name her daughter Jenna.

I'm not dumb enough though for a second to believe that a group of scab football players would do the Electric Slide while incarcerated.

Excuse me, I have to go let some geek borrow my underwear for 10 minutes afterwhich I plan on making out with Mr. TallDarkandHandsome over a cake.

A Mid(end)summer night's eve...

I only have two weeks left of summer. Disambigually speaking, there's 47 days left. In the fashion world, autumn has already begun.

I'm claiming two weeks left of summer because in 13 days the MN Renaissance Festival begins and then I enter that black-hole period where the temperature waivers between sweltering and freezing with maybe two days of pleasantness, I enter my house to only take my clothes off, throw them in the washer, get myself in the shower, then bed, then up, then out the door and repeat. I successfully manage to burn myself no matter how much sunscreen I put on and I question my motives and choices every seven minutes. When it's over, it's time for the first snow fall and week 4 of football. I've done this for twelve years. I think I would have led an extremely boring life if I hadn't have done this for twelve years.

If I hadn't have done this for twelve years, my fence would be complete (including stain) and my gardens would be properly weeded. I would have gotten to that three-season padio construction I've been drawing out on notebook paper for years. I would have a clean garge and a lot more football stats committed to memory.

But since I have been doing this for twelve years, I have piles of paper filled with ideas, lists, paragraphs, stories and articles laying around everywhere; scraps of material and patterns stuffed into closets and drawers; a sword and whip just laying around in my unclean garage; another sword on my wall and three more laying on my china cabinet; the ability to articulate what makes me hurt and what will probably make others laugh and those usually aren't the same things; an appreciation for how what doing what you love doesn't mean you have to make money at it to make it important to you; the ability to pen incredibly long sentences; and most importantly, I have a host of incredible personalities in my life that makes me want to get up in the morning and keep going.

Thirteen days is plenty of time to finish a hat, oil boots and get one more kayak trip in, right?

Hurry up and finish.

After sitting here for several minutes, I have decided to challenge myself again with the task of writing what comes to mind without going back to edit. I would like you to know how extremely difficult this is for me.

If I could have a spell-check or thesaurus implanted in my brain, I would totally do it. I just broke my own rule there by going back to correct "brian from "brain". See? This is hard.

Okay, so today's top ic is.....umm......accomplishments. As in, finishing one thought at a time. Well, it also includes finishing that emial I've been meaning to send to that certain unnamed pain-in-the-ass central unit which almost cost me $99,502 in uncollectable expenses. It's great and all to have a University that has no many different fields to offer a student and a community, but it's also a complete pain in the ass to tyr to have said University function in a cohesive manner. You wouldn't believe the amount of rules there are with research funding. I feel fortunate that I don't need to document the amount of times I....ugh....interrupted by the co-=workers phone "ringing" with the ringtone of crickets. It's almost as annoying as her laugh.

Oops, I've gotten off=topic. I wish I would have practiced the location of the '0', I mean '-' key in typing class in ghigh school more. THen that last reference to off-topic would have been much neater. Wow, this is hard.

Where was I? Oh heah, accomplishments. This is starting to rmind me of that muppet scketch where Fozzie is typing the script on a broken typewriter and Kermit doesn't have time to proof-0fread before he goes on stage. It's a cute little bit.

My accomplishments lately include the starting of several projects. My next set of accomplishments will be to finish those projects. It's all in the wording, you can make anything sound good if you put a little effort into it.

My final accomplishment for this session will be to end this mess of a post and get back to work and finish the exectuive team reports which will be edited and re-"finished" several times before next week's meeting. Who invetnted the work 'accomplishments' anyway? What an idtio.

What was I going to do again?

This weather is beginning to wear on me. I’m finding it difficult to maintain the motivation to finish anything. I have a ton of great ideas, I just lack the ability to follow-through. I would love to blame this solely on the weather but it’s really my crushing sense of self-doubt and conviction that I will make people mad by asking for what I really want. I’m also finding it difficult to follow through with myy thoughts. I’m finding them a bit scatte…

I love cartoons. The first memory of ever looking at a TV screen includes a cartoon. They contain beautiful colors that you always try to see in real landscapes but never quite get close to. So, needless to say, I have loved the resurgence of animated feature-length movies that exploded on the scene with Pixar, DreamWorks, and Disney which led to a ton of independent films. One of these is “Mary and Max”. I don’t want to give too much away but I’ll say that their letters are so intriguing because they say so much about themselves but do it indirectly. There are some of the usual “I’m eight and live in Blahblah” but you also learn that Mary has a small family that lies to her and generally has a miserable life yet is filled with hope for the future. She doesn’t say “I have hope for the future”, instead she talks about saving to marry a Scottish Duke named Earl Gray and living in a castle. She’s not willing to give up because of her current condition.

This movie is so good that you could turn off the picture and just listen to the audio and still absolutely love it. There isn’t one superfluous or wasted word in the entire film. I am particularly enamored of the letters. I would love to receive a letter like that. A letter from a stranger that is attempting to tell you all about them yet keeping in mind that it’s a letter so you have to say things kind of quickly. If I were to rip someone’s address out of a phone book and write to them, my letter may go something like this:

Dear Mr./Ms. Randomly-picked-person-from-Telstra-directory,

Good day. This is my attempt at being colloquial and polite at the same time. I picked your name out of a directory because I wanted to write an actual letter on real paper to someone I’ve never met and may never meet in my lifetime considering that it’s extremely expense to travel to Australia and I’m on a tight budget.

The University of Minnesota has had a wage-freeze for two years but I’ve managed to still increase my take-home pay by getting what my supervisors may term as a promotion although I’m really just taking on my responsibilities and getting only slightly more pay so really, I’m underpaid. But at least I’m paid.

In today’s technologically advanced world, do you think it’s better to communicate a gripe better through email or by phone? I often get nervous when I actually have to speak and end up stammering which makes me more self-conscious and makes things worse so I prefer email but my supervisors have said that a phone call would be less confrontational. I disagree because I think it’ll make the SFR Senior Administrator only more confused and irritated and therefore, unwilling to listen to my side of the story.

I would continue but now I’ve lost interest and am convinced that this was a stupid idea.

Hurry up!

Do most people feel like they’ve let a whole section of their lives just slip by? I feel like I’ve always been busy yet I haven’t done anything.

When I was at the age when I didn’t have a say over where I went, I always had to go “camping” on the weekends. From Friday evening until Sunday evening, we were all sequestered on a 40 acre plot of land in Dresser, WI. Camping is in quotations because usual camping trips involve activities like swimming and hiking. Our “camping” involved mowing the lawn and doing a bunch of other work to reach a point at the end of the day where we could sit down for maybe 30 minutes and think “Gee, the weather sure is nice today.”

This lasted until I was 16 and could both drive and hold a part-time job; so for two years, I did fun things on the weekends. Then it was off to college where I worked on the weekends because if you haven’t developed the need before the age of 18, you definitely develop the need after age 18 of having to support yourself. That need became obsessive with me. I suddenly realized how much money I was going to need to keep a roof over my head for the rest of my life and I couldn’t image that there would ever be enough money left over for me in this big bad world after everyone else took their share.

I used to sleep until 10am when I was a kid. I would go to bed early too. I couldn’t get enough sleep. If I would have been the only one in the house, I would have slept longer. Now, I feel panicky and flustered the whole day if I don’t get up by 8am. See, I’m in a hurry to get things done so I can get to some point of reward. Something that will be great but I have no idea what that is.

Most times, I arrive early to where ever I’m going and if I don’t, I’m very uptight about it. I’m supposed to work from 8am - 4:30pm with a one-hour lunch. I can’t remember the last time I took an entire hour for lunch or arrived at work at 8am. I’m usually there by 7:15. I usually don’t take a lunch but instead eat at my desk so I can leave by 4:30-ish. My goal with this schedule is to get all of my work done so I can move on to other things that I want to do. I never seem to get to those things. I can’t figure out why. Seriously, I can’t.

I work hard. Really hard. Once I get to a point where my hard work is noticed, I feel like I can’t slow down for fear of letting someone down. I should just try to keep people’s expectations low, I’ll have a lot more free time that way.

I can start a lot of things that I like, but I rarely get to see them through. I started a performance class and another dance class with several friends six years ago; they’ve all done a lot in that time and have moved on to some great things but I haven’t. I’ve sunk. At this point, I’d be happy if I could plateau. If you could see inside my head, you’d find a lot of really good ideas and plans in there. Somehow, my body never catches up to my mind.

Tonight, I should sit down and come up with a plan to change this….but I really gotta get that lawn mowed first.

Summer summer summer summer summer

I liked 1978. I was 7.

My favorite movie, “The Deer Hunter” was released that year along with my other favorite movie, “Superman” and my sometimes-favorite movie “Star Wars”. Van Halen released their first album along with Kiss’ “Double Platinum” which my brother and I dutifully taped onto one cassette, carefully printed out the song titles in the accompanying cassette label, and listened to over and over and over and over and over and over and I still have it somewhere in my garage. Olivia Newton-John’s “I Honestly Love You” was playing all the time on the radio station my parents listened to although it was released in 1974; it’s a miracle that I ever managed to discover great things like Fender Stratocasters being played by phenomenal people like Stevie Ray Vaughan.

When I was 17, I bought my first car which was a ’78 Camaro. I used to drive around everywhere in the summer with the windows down which produces a wind tunnel effect similar to the hair dryer mechanism in “Blade Runner” that Joanna Cassidy uses. Men probably only remember that scene for Ms. Cassidy being naked but I bet most women remember that hair dryer thing. She just sticks her head up in that clear plastic bubble and POOF one minute later her hair is perfectly dry and styled. Someone should actually invent that.

All summer consisted of was swimming, mowing the lawn, walking through tall grass, mowing the lawn, swimming under water for hours (okay, minutes), sleeping with the windows open, putting on lots of mosquito repellant…oh, and swimming. I haven’t swum yet this summer. I also haven’t slept with the window open yet but then again, the city is a dangerous place and I don’t have anyone to protect me but me and it would be pretty stupid to leave the windows open when I’m letting my guard down.

I’ve been bemoaning the fact that I haven’t gotten out to do many summer things yet this summer (If I can think of a way to construct a sentence that uses the word ‘summer’ even more, I’d do it…summer.) I actually haven’t said it out loud to many people, I’ve just been thinking it over and over in my head; this way, no one knows what a whiner I am…until now.

BUT that’s all about to change. I get a chance to go to a real, live cabin this weekend. And, holy crap, it has a dock. The last time I tried to run off of a dock was about three years ago on a trip up to White Earth where there was a serious drought on and people had to jump into my path in order to stop me from jumping off of a dock that would have landed me on my head into a pile of mud. NOT THIS TIME! WOOHOO! That dock is going to get jumped off in a way it’s never been jumped off before and I hope it’s ready for it. It better start working out, stretching, preparing mentally, whatever it takes. The only thing that would be better is if I had a ’78 Camaro to drive up there in.

I’m going to buy a ’78 Camaro, restore it and drive it down to Texas to swim in the ocean. It’s going to be epic.

Warning: This blog doesn't really have a point.

The last time I wore this top, I was driving through Missouri. I was on my way back from some flimflam camp that I only went to because two of my friends were going to be there but after only a few short hours, I realized I was surrounded by people engaging in a gigantic oneupsmanship where by the person that could say the most outrageous thing was somehow held in great esteem by those gathering around….so I left.

An example is this exchange at the bonfire - correction, spiritual gathering involving flame of mother stick:
Man: “I’m just waiting for the right man to come along” (insert light laughter)
Young-ish woman: “You can have the men, I’m waiting for the wrong woman to come along!” (insert slightly louder laughter)
Old woman: “Well I need me a horny lesbian!” (Insert gafaw). Really? Because I think that if a horny lesbian fell in your lap, you wouldn’t have the slightest idea what to do with her and further more, she’d probably make you cry.

So anyway, I’m driving through Missouri on my way to South Dakota because I suddenly decided that I wanted to drive through Wounded Knee. Why Wounded Knee? Well one, I had never been there before and I like the movie “Thunderheart” (with Val Kilmer and Graham Greene who is completely underrated as an actor and should be in waaaaaaaay more movies and if you don’t believe me, just watch his two minute scene in “Powwow Highway”); two, I was at that age (29) where I was still very idealistic, which I believe explains my time spent at the flimflam camp, and thought that I would get answers to all of my questions by simply driving past; and three, it was on the way.

On my way out of the looney camp, I inevitably had to stop for gas. Let this be a warning ladies: when in Missouri, do not stop for gas at the one gas station that is on top of a hill with no other buildings or human beings within a 100-mile radius. Because if you do, you’ll find three unsightly gentlemen; one behind the counter who will tell you that the gas pump is broken and the total isn’t $11.00, it’s really $20.00 and two other gentlemen engaged in a battle of wits over a pool table in an area usually designated for automobile repair. If you make any indication of asking for corroborating evidence on this alleged “broken” gas pump, one of the two gentlemen in the auto/pool area will cease his cue ball setup and turn to look at you at which time you should set your $20 on the counter and get the hell out…quickly.

Missouri isn’t all bad though, one of the more poignant moments was when I stopped for the night at some motel which looked just like the ones you see in movies like “White Lightning” or “Thelma and Louise” minus Brad Pitt. The woman that ran it reminded me of Flo from that TV show “Alice” except without all the sass. She was very sweet. The room was filled with very old furnishings, carpet, wall coverings and “window treatments” but what was there was very very clean. When I left in the morning, they had changed the sign in front to read something about “Follow your dreams, you never know where they’ll take you” and I thought that was extremely profound for a roadside motel and then I thought “How did they know I was trying to do that?”

So then it was on to South Dakota and I’ll be damned if that Wounded Knee site and the surrounding areas don’t look almost exactly like the movie. I’m going to attribute that to the fact that most of the movie actually was filmed there. Either the prop guys forgot to take out a couple of cars from the gullies or the movie was extremely based in reality.

I discovered that people like to leave things at the Wounded Knee memorial. Stuff like flowers and necklaces and ribbons and anything else they can manage to attach to the chain link fence. This concept has always intrigued me. Why leave something there? Flowers okay, but jewelry? Eventually some human being is going to have to take it down and it will go to some other human being. I don’t get this leaving-stuff-for-dead-people, but that’s a topic for another time.

It was raining when I drove up but the sun was also starting to poke through the clouds so it all looked pretty spectacular. Even more so with the old guy walking up to the monument as if it wasn’t raining at all. See, the monument is located on top of a hill with a pretty long incline so to walk up to it takes some doing.

But anyway, back to my top. It’s the only good thing that happened to me at the wacko-camp. It’s a tie-dyed (gasp!) halter top that completely covers your front but leaves the back open. Lest you men think that this isn’t a good setup, I can report that the result of this design makes everyone’s abdomen look appealing, even if you don’t think yours will ever look appealing. The good thing about tie-dye is that if you’re not wearing a bra, no one really notices because there’s so much already going on up there. This top can be worn when the temperature is ungodly and I won’t have to worry about looking like a skank. I try to reserve that look for Skank Night.

Re: Re: Fwd: Re:

I'm usually one who has to be pushed into the present day when it comes to technology like for instance cell phones, email, internet, dvd players, you get the idea. I found email particularly irritating at first because it seemed to laugh in the face of proper business communication rules such as a header, date line, salutation, body of message constructed with an opening greeting followed by what you were going to talk about then talked about it then summarized it and closed with a "sincerely". This format conveyed everything that was needed without any feeling or emotion whatsoever which is exactly what's needed in business. Emails on the other hand....

There is supposed to be generally accepted rules of email etiquette which include former business communication rules from yester-year like having a salutation, body, and closing but also include tips designed to help the foreigner through the new culture of internet communication, similar to travel tips.

One tip is that capitalization of your entire message means you're yelling; not unlike pulling your ear in Italy indicates the same senitment as the middle finger does in America. There is a Document Preparer that has always capitalized every email she's ever written and when I first open them up, I actully lean back in my chair as if her voice is blaring out of my monitor.

Another tip is to avoid trying to be humorous because emotion does not always read in an email and could be misinterpreted. It could also be used against you in a court of law. Remember that the next time you send "Is embezzlement still against the law?"

Yet another tip is to avoid sending the supflerous "thank you" email where that's the only thing you're saying. The recipient has to take time to open your email only to see "Thank you!" written and has gained no new knowledge but has instead wasted 30 seconds of his life that he'll never get back. I confess that I am sometimes guilty of this. But then again, I work with sensitive people who need a pat on the back before they can continue in life.

Too many people treat an email as if they were standing face to face with the person and discard any rule of etiquette that ever existed. A fine example is an email I received yesterday after asking a procedure question. The response was "you preparer should enter it!" That's it. No salutation or closing signature or anything else. To me, this said that the respondant was so angry with my question that he couldn't even take time to capitalize the beginning of his sentence but sure could take enough time at the end of the sentence to find the ! key. I responded with an apology and clarified the reason for my question. His response was "no problem! all is good!" I will now forever imagine this person as being like a golden retriever, always jumping up and down every time he speaks.

Other items that drive me crazy about email is the massive confusion of the reply feature. There are waaaaay too many options. Do you reply to one or all? Do you realize when you are replying to all instead of one? Is the signature block at the bottom or top? Are you one of those that writes your reply in a different colored font in the middle of the original message (Ms. Fancypants!), do you try to be sneaky and remove sections of the message that could be damaging to your reputation before replying?

That brings me to another topic, that damn blind cc. It can often be used for good but too many times it is used for evil. Like copying a supervisor or other authority figure in a part of an email that may or may not have sections deleted. Why not just strap a wire to yourself, go into someones office and ask a question you've already been given the answer to and which by doing so you know will illicit a negative response?

I think one of the main pros of email was that it saves on paper. This is a fallacy. I once worked for a Dean who never read her own emails on a computer screen, she instited that all of them be printed out upon which she would write her response and have someone type that response into the email and hit 'send'. It looks like Sarah Palin may have done this also.

The one thing email does allow is the ability to hide from people. If you don't want to hear the sound of their voice, just respond to their voice mail with an email. There are many times when this feature makes email worth any other trouble it may cause.

I have to go now and get caught up on the 11 emails I've received since I started writing this.

Gimme Back My Bullets

I really like using the phrase "Is it still illegal to shoot someone?" because the answer is completely obvious so no one would take you seriously yet they get the point that you are incredibly aggitated with someone.

I was thinking this to myself last night while driving home and an immediate afterthought was "What if it wasn't?" I mean, what if we were all given one freebie, one shot on-the-house? You know, kind of like that other fun remark of "You only get one of those" after someone has hit you with a snowball, or has somehow otherwise zinged you. I bet most of us would waste it as teenagers, you know how rash they can be.

Would there then be some type of black market where shots were bought and sold? That would lead to interesting ethical delimas (after, of course, we have resolved the original delima of being allowed to actually kill someone); if the goodie-two-shoes people always somehow got rid of theirs so they could claim that they would never do such a thing even if it was allowed, could they still claim they were better than others if they knew someone was going to get two shots? I bet all of the manipulators out there would figure out ways to convince others to use theirs on people they really want dead and so that in essence, they could really have more than one free shot.

But there would be no guarantee that the shot would kill the other person. Then you have the issue of someone having a grudge against you forever; maybe they turn and use theirs on you and you actually die. Just like a good old-fashioned duel. Someone once told me that there is documentation of a duel held down in the South in the 1800's where it took something like three days for the two men to die; they had so many wounds that they were just slowly bleeding out. That certainly takes the romance out of those duel scenes in the movies, but not the movie "Duel" because that's between automobiles.

What if there were some countries or governmental units that decided to not follow that free-shot policy? Would the people rise up and revolt? What if that leader was replaced with someone who didn't even like punching or any action that could be construed as assault but then constructed invisible fencing around the border so the people couldn't leave? Oh, that's just silly.

This all started because a new co-worker has a very bad habit of throwing insults into the middle of her sentences but ending with a question so you then answer the question and you always mean to go back and address the insult but somehow never get the chance to...and it leaves you angry. So angry that if you had one free shot, you'd probably use it on her.

Please keep all screws with their appropriate nuts

The first rule of disassembly is to have a plan; the second rule is to keep all screws, nuts, and bolts with their respective parts and label them but don't use a felt tip marker; the third rule is to always remember the last part of the second rule; and the fourth rule is don't tell anyone about Disassembly Club. I apologize for this last rule. After typing it, I am now officially sick of seeing "don't tell anyone about fill-in-the-blank Club" inserted at the end of something to make it seem funny. You have witnessed the end of an era...for me.

I have no idea why I suddenly want to tackle this resoration project so much, it's not as if I don't already have enough to do. I imagine a therapist would tell me that there's something lacking in my life so I'm always trying to fill it with whatever comes along. Possibly, but I haven't jumped on the burlesque band wagon yet; I'm still firmly seated in the traditional belly dancing band wagon although I haven't peformed for a long time. Something always comes up that causes me to cancel. At least something always comes up where I would feel guilty if I didn't do/take care of that something and performed instead. That and I'm still scared of social situations. I'm willing to bet that most people who know me do not realize how difficult it is for me to go out in public sometimes. I mean in a social setting like to a bar or someone's back yard.

It's a combination of suddenly becoming uber self-conscious and honestly wanting to stay home in my cozy living room on my comfy couch where there is no stress or tension and I can watch whatever I want on TV. I've waited a long time to find a room like that and sometimes I just don't want to leave it.

That's why I love winter...no one really expects you to clean off your car and drive through all that snow to go anywhere. Only 183 days until winter!

In 1974, we were all drunk drivers

I was born in 1971 so I don't remember this law, but in 1974 there was a seatbelt interlocking system that was mandatory in all cars built in the U.S. in 1974. The car would not start unless all front-seat passengers had their seatbelts locked. Without having to read anything further on it, I could imagine how well that worked out. Well, I kept reading because I wanted to get to the section on 1975 Camaros so I quickly learned that the system had flaws (gasp!) and sometimes the ignition wouldn't unlock even though all passengers had their seatbelts on, locked, pinky-promised to always wear them and even crossed their hearts and hoped to die.

This is unfortunate because this silly mandate, along with the front bumper guidelines requiring your car to look like it had wrapped itself around a really long fence post, made several 1974 models undesirable, including the 1974 Camaro. I claim that this is unfortunate because Chevy switched to a 350 2 bbl engine which would have given it more power except that the weight of the bumper kind of zero'd that out. Again, another example of The Man trying to keep us down, rob us of our power to careen around corners of city streets for absolutely no reason at all.

The seatbelt thing is interesting because I remember very well how I never even saw a seatbelt until I the early '80's. The various family cars may have had them in but they were well tucked into the seats to the point that they couldn't be fished out anymore. This combined with my dad's stellar driving skills, it's a miracle we were never in an accident and thrown clear from the car.

People used to do lots of stuff to and in cars that no one would dare imagine anymore. For instance, drinking and driving. That was pretty much standard for anyone over the legal drinking age (wasn't that 10?) and I think it was mandatory for single males between the ages of 18-32. My uncle had gotten so many DWI's that he started to seriously consider not driving drunk anymore because it was such a hassle. And then they came up with those soul-crushing DWI laws like sending you to jail immediately.

My other uncle and a few other family members actually sold me their cars for $1 when I was living in Duluth just to avoid the emissions standards that the 7-county metro area was enacting in the early '90s. At one point, I was the proud owner of four cars. I think there was also some federal restriction against nitro which I don't remember the finer details of but I remember the hushed tones and quick sideways glances used whenever the topic came up, followed by hand-rubbing and Mr. Burns-esque devious facial expressions.

Well I think we've come a long way as a society in the area of car production, ownership, and use. I wish I could say the same thing about driving skills.

So, on to the next big thing

Huh, six months can go by pretty quickly. Guess how many plays I’ve read? 0. But in my defense, I’ve completed many other projects; for instance, my fence. While I must confess that this has been the only project completed, it should not be diminished in importance. It took over my entire one-week vacation. Well, that and staining the house. It wasn’t just putting it up, it was taking down the old one, cutting up the old one and hauling it to the solid waste & recycle site (I would like to add here a short note on the humor one finds at a recycle center; namely the South Transfer Station where they ask you if you have wood or metal and if you say “My wood has nails in it, is that okay?” the response will be “You have to pull out all of the nails” after which approximately two seconds of silence, they laugh hysterically) pulling out the cement footings of the misplaced original posts, correctly placing the new posts, and then screwing in the panels after you discover this handy concept called torque and if your drill isn’t at the correct torque level (torquage?) it makes a horrible ratcheting noise announcing to your neighbors that you don’t completely know what you’re doing. That took a week.

It is now taking one month for me to trim the tops of the fence posts which is probably the easiest step in the process. Maybe subconsciously I don’t want the project to be over. I have no idea why I wouldn’t want this to be over. Maybe my subconscious is a sadist.

Today is not only five months and sixteen days since I last posted something; it is also Father’s Day. Or is it Fathers’ Day? Shouldn’t it be Fathers’ Day since it’s supposed to include more than one? I have just googled it and have found journalists who have used both. Someone should be penalized.

I hate both Father’s(s’) Day and Mother’s(s’) Day. People with wonderful parents don’t understand this but then they may not fully realize that they don’t need a day to think about how wonderful their parents are. I’m willing to bet that thought crosses their minds quite often. What this day does is really drive home the point to people without wonderful parents (or parents at all) of what they don’t have. It brings up very specific painful memories of when you used to plug your ears with your fingers so hard that your fingers would go numb, or it carries a certain tension in the air the entire day of how bro isn’t here anymore and if he were here, the day would be much better but since he’s not, there isn’t anything that can be done to make it good. Once, for Father’s (s’) Day, I stopped at the cheese shop on Hwy 8 in Wisconsin to pick up some excellent cuts of beef (because no matter how anyone feels on any holiday, you can always eat), and was surrounded by families; they were all very happy just to be together. They didn’t have to be going anywhere in particular. In fact they probably weren’t, that’s how they ended up at the cheese shop, because it looked like a pleasant place to stop for a minute. If you’re wondering why I would stop for beef at a cheese shop, you have to understand that that’s what they do in Wisconsin. So I left that pleasant picture filled with smiling people to drive to my parent’s trailer where there was no one for miles to eat in silence.

I was very surprised once to hear a former Department Head state that she hated Mother’s (s’) Day. This was a woman who never showed the remotest sensation of anger, stress, annoyance; I don’t think she ever even shook her head in dismay. We met up in the mail room briefly and exchanged the usual “What are you doing this weekend?”’s when she said “I hate Mother’s Day”. She didn’t look at me and left after saying it. I initially was surprised but then it made me feel better. I was very relieved to learn that I wasn’t a bad person for hating that day. Here was someone that was very well respected in her field, very well liked by just about everyone and she hated Mother’s Day. It somehow gave me permission to go ahead with it also.

It’s not just some kids that hate the days, it’s some parents also. I know they’re out there. There have to be some. It’s the same sentiment, just the other side of the coin. I don’t think I used that analogy correctly. Anyway, what I mean is that a person can suddenly have parenthood thrust upon them and have to make a series of painful decisions which they have to keep making for a very long time since when you become a parent, you never stop being a parent, and you have to figure out how to create a person that can at least be functional on their own some day and avoid all of that judgment you think is being made of you by everyone else only to have the kid say horrible things to you and sometimes you wish they would just go away but you’re afraid that if someone heard you say that, they would think less of you. It can be a rough day for many. I think that’s why I subconsciously avoided the Back to the 50’s Car show this weekend (all those dads walking around happily). Maybe my subconscious isn’t a sadist.

So my next project is going to be restoring a ’78 Camaro. You may feel that this is above my paygrade, but I have nothing but time…and a two-car garage currently with only one car in it. This is going to be epic.

The year of Shakespeare

I took a Shakespeare class in college where the required text book was a hardcover copy (I'm not sure if it comes any other way) of The Riverside Shakespeare which is the complete works of Shakespeare including a four to six page essay before each play/work, written in what looks like 2-point Times New Roman font (I may be exaggerating here). To make this more impressive, the pages are 8x11 and contains two columns per page on 1927 pages. Are you impressed yet? It was the most expensive text book I had bought at the time (1991) and was also one of the most expensive text books out of every text book at UMD's bookstore. I know this because I looked around at the rest of the books after glancing at the $50 price tag to see if anything compared. Either it didn't or I have conveniently blocked it from my memory in order to make people feel sorry for me.

I was looking forward to this class when I signed up for it but that faded after the first day when I realized I would have to lug around that 5 lb. book every day and it wasn't necessarily the weight, it was the size - aka bulky. I further wasn't looking forward to the class after listening to the professor ask for class opinions on various passages and then proceed to tell them they were wrong. Granted, he was pretty damn old and just may have known Shakespeare personally, but hearing him say that Shakespeare "definitely didn't intend that" made me want to come up with the worst possible answer and yell it out...in my head. I never spoke up.

Just when I was hoping that the entire class was with me and against him, a fellow female student spoke up about the last speech that Katherina delivers in "The Taming of the Shrew" (5.2.136-179). She felt is was incredibly chauvinistic, was highly insulted by it, and oh my gosh, aren't we all glad we don't live in those times anymore.

This woman was (and probably still is) a complete moron. To not be able to read it over and over again while imagining life's hardships of the times and see that it's really a plea for couples to have a little respect for each other uniquely qualifies her for being a complete moron. How could she have not gotten how Katherina was illustrating that, out of the two, men are better suited for protecting, fighting, "to watch the night in storms, the day in cold", they're built for it; and out of the two, women are better suited for the whole being soft and looking pretty thing, again, being built for it, and if two people are going to be in a relationship, why should they not try to do the best of that which they are most qualified for?

The moron had a real problem with the phrase "true obedience". How is it she couldn't stop dwelling on two words and instead imagine what Katherina may have been saying but just not in words....that it's the whole point of doing as much as you can for the other, not giving yourself up or over to someone who clearly doesn't have your best interests at heart?

I started to understand how the professor turned into who he turned into. After only half of a trimester, I was incredibly agitated with one student to the point of considering her to be a moron until the end of time. Imagine if I had to do this three times per year (they had trimesters back then instead of semesters) and maybe more in the summer for countless years? Yeah, teachers should be paid a lot for putting up with us.

I am now committed...wait, let's not use that word, let's say I intend to read every piece of work in that book this year. I started with Twelfth Night on Sunday and was dismayed to see that it had nothing to do with the holiday season, but there was a clown in it so that kind of made things a bit better. I'm going to move on to The Merry Wives of Windsor next to keep in the whole "confusion by letter" theme.

"God give you good night!"

We made it.

I'm so glad we all made it through yesterday, which was, of course, Jan. 1st, 2011.

I'm sure all of you had heard or read several times throughout the day about how the date was 1-1-11 and if that didn't creep you out enough, people would go on to point out how 2011 is the sum of all prime numbers, etc.

They're are all valid points but.....DID YOU REALIZE that 1+1+1+1 = 4 and if you add the 2 in there, which you really should since it's 2011, not 11, the sum is 6 which is the first digit in 666 (it's also the second and third). Further, the product of 6x3 is 18 and 1+8 is 9, and if you turn a 9 upside down, YOU GET 6!!!!!!

If I would have realized this yesterday, I would have been convinced that we were all going to die and then would have been a bit upset about paying $138 to get my car out of impound the night before, but it's not like I could have used the money anyways.

So now that we're moving past the official holidays as they are marked by the days you may be granted off of work, we reach that period of time where you have to decide if the holidays are truly over and if they are, you then have to take the decorations down. In my youth, the tree would come down a few days after New Years. My mother has so many decorations that when all of these things were put away, we easily gained twenty square feet of living space back.

If you are a die-hard traditionalist, you may be choosing to wait until the 12th day of Christmas to take the decorations down. I'm labeling this as "die-hard" because trying to follow the Twelve Days of Christmas is a serious chore. You would first have to decide if you are an Eastern Christian or Western Christian. If I had to choose, I'd go with Western Christian since they get to eat, dance and party down instead of fast for a gazillion days because as you know, not eating in cold weather makes you really really cranky. Once the Eastern/Western problem is solved, you'd then have to grapple with the United States question; see, if you are going to commit to being an American, then you will have to forget all about 12 days and just throw the tree out and go shopping. I am committing to being a heathen and have chosen to leave my christmas lights up because they look really pretty in my living room and whenever it snows, I want to look at the falling snow through a window framed by little white lights.

I am off to read Twelfth Night.

So, where ya been for the last two years??

And another thing.....do you know how many signs there are in downtown Mpls?? I can't read them all!! Those little punk-ass valets may feel like they have gotten away with something but someday, after they get real jobs and with these real jobs acquire the need to suddenly alter their plans and drive to work where there are little to no free parking spots available and they'd gladly pay for a ramp or something if it wasn't for the fact that it's not payday yet and they can't withdraw any more money until tomorrow and they forgot to refill their empty checkbook after using the last check at the grocery store last night but they still try to be good citizens by searching out an appropriate, legal parking spot and when they think they find one, they park there not aware of the fact that they are only 29.5' from the traffic control device instead of the legal 30' and find that SOMEONE HAS TOWED THEIR CAR....then will they know my pain. That statement would carry more weight if that were the scenario in which I found my vehicle towed last night. Instead, I failed to read the sandwich board on the sidewalk next to the meter I parked at that said it was a valet-zone after 6pm.

Through the kindness of others, I have come to greatly appreciate the courtesy of a ride to the impound lot. I will, therefore, return this favor in the future whenever I am called upon. Oh sure, one could take a bus over there but nowadays, the probability of one having the correct amount of change (in coinage no less) to take the bus even one block is highly unlikely. I think it costs $10 to go 3 blocks. Walking may be an option depending on the time of day because crossing underneath that bridge on Glenwood Ave. always makes me feel like I need to look out for Gene Hackman driving his '71 LeMans through trying to chase down some drug dealers above on 94. If you can catch a ride with someone to the impound lot, that is always the prefered method.

I do have to commend the down right jolliness, dare I say mirth, of the impound staff on New Years Eve. The van driver was quite jovial on both trips; see, I had left my purse in the trunk as to not tempt any wanna-be car thieves on Nicollet Mall so I had to be chauffeured out to my car to fetch my payment method, brought back and then returned again. In case you're worried about the Impound staff being terribly bored on NYE, don't worry, they weren't. There were four people in front of me at 8:00pm. One man was on his third trip of the month due to the snow emergency demons foiling him once again. He proclaimed with gusto, after shoving a snow emergency flyer into the cuff of his snow cap, that they weren't going to get him again and Happy New Year.

The second group of young gentlemen held a brief conference to determine who had the funds to pay and what the collection process would be once they were freed.

The third person was a woman who had appeard to be enjoying the holiday festivities already and I'm still uncertain as to why they decided to release her car to her (unless it was going to be entrapment..ENTRAPMENT) but any entrapment plans were ruined after her car wouldn't start and she had to call her sister to come in, pass through the security system, and drive out to the lot to give her a jump. I must say, the sister looked less than amused about the entire situation.

When my number was up, I approached the staffer again and began to nonchalantly remove my checkbook from my purse as if this was an everyday occurrance, which for 2010 it almost was an everyday occurrance, when I was suddenly stricken with the horrific realization that I had used my last check at the grocery store the other day and had neglected to replenish. My credit cards consisted of a Discover, which had plenty of remaining balance to cover it and which the Impound lot DOES NOT accept, and a Visa for which I was certain had only maybe $50 left on the balance if I was lucky. I handed the card to her with much trepidation muttering something about oh how I hoped there was enough balance left and we both held our breath as the Zon machine did it's thing and finally spit out a receipt. The staffer looked as happy as I felt. She probably wasn't looking forward to a NYE freak-out from a middle-aged woman embarrased about the fact that she's there to begin with but is not about to admit it out loud but no worries....that wasn't in the cards.

I was in and out in about 20 minutes and proceeded to take 45 minutes to figure out how to get back on to 394.

Ahhhh, fun times.