Tuesday, February 27:

Don spent the whole snowed-in weekend working on the kitchen. Things are really coming together now. We got a sink base from IKEA for our happy yellow sink (an "Akaranamumm", or something like that) that came with the above instructions. IKEA instructions are great so long as they're not key to your assembling something successfully. Each picture tells a story. As you can see in the second row of illustrations, the IKEA man cannot find his ass with both hands. He broke his sink base AND he can't find his ass with both hands. Have I ever been there! But in the next picture IKEA man is happy--he's proudly stroking his new sink base with one hand and he's found his ass with the other. Translation: Seek out your ass not with two hands, but one, and use the other to hold all those leftover parts you're going to have after you assemble your sink base. Words to live by.

Today was confusing and non-productive. My power was shut off intermittently while new power lines were installed up and down East Johnson Street. I came into work because I thought I'd find stuff to do but you can't do much without electricity. It was dark and I didn't know what time it was. Hope that never happens again.

Saturday, February 24:

Crap-a-doodle-doo! We're having a snowstorm. S'posed to get 15-20 inches this weekend. We ran out of food and propane yesterday and ended up going to the grocery store at the same time as the people who were "stocking up for the storm". Oh my Christ, what a nightmare that was. We never would have gone in if we knew what was going on in there. I felt as though if I let go of my cart I was going to be swept away in a current of swift-moving groceries and large people. It was scary on a number of levels... as if anyone in Wisconsin couldn't afford to go without food for a day or two, you know? If you're healthy enough to muscle a grocery cart through Woodman's you've probably got enough food at home to get you through the weekend.

So I had some down time yesterday during which I upgraded my Cafe Press Store. Now there are multiple t-shirt designs available on black, which I've come to learn is very important. Everybody wants the black shirt. The handsome "Keep on Colonizin'..." and "Don't Spy on Me" designs are there as well on mousepads, t-shirts and magnets. So go there and check it out! New designs are forthcoming.

Today's awesome You Tube clip diverts from the recent trend toward the career of Morgan Freeman. This one is from Sesame Street circa 1970 (or so) and it's about a lower case "n". I think this clip is a comment on times (the 70's) when spaceships and the beings within them were friendly. As we draw closer to the 80's (the Regan years) society becomes more hideous and fearful. Space ships and the beings within them become more hideous and fearsome. (Except for E.T.,[1982] who was friendly but annoying and overly-merchandised.) Anyway, here's the clip.

Thursday, February 22:

It's gotten really warm this week so the glacier that's in the store's backyard is starting to melt. Usually the secrets held within snowbanks consist mostly of cigarette butts and dog doo. Imagine my surprise when I found an entire Winnie the Poo Christmas tree ornament collection just outside my back door. So far the melting snow has revealed seven Pooh ornaments--more if you count the little bells. I think this begs the question why would someone with an obvious hatred for cartoon pigs and bears collect so many of them? And why would anyone try to cover their distain for anything with ordinary snow? Everyone knows you have to use fire...especially when destroying trinkets from Hallmark. It's a mystery.

Wednesday, February 21:

Yesterday was just a lost day. I spent most of it alternately staring at and washing my new tattoo.(Washing helps keep the scabs away, don't you know.) Early in the evening I went to a Fat Tuesday party at Don's place of employment, The Great Dane Pub and Brewery. Don had to be there to play accordian in a procession of musicians and be-costumed drunk people. It was extremely festive. Last night I learned a lot about Mardi Gras traditions but forgot it all a short time later.

One of the high points of the evening was meeting Jamie, a lady brewmaster from the Moosejaw Brew Pub in Wisconsin Dells. I did not know there were any lady brewmasters. What an oddity in her field she is! Jamie told excellent stories and she swore a lot--two of my most important criteria for friend selecting. I thought she was cool.

Another thing I remember from last night was eating a crawdad. I never had one before and thought it would taste like how it looked--like a tiny lobster. I remember being very, very excited at the prospect of eating a crawdad. Turns out it's more gamey than lobster. It does not taste like chicken, either. I ended up eating the tail section and then made the upper torso run around the bar boxing the air with it's tiny claws. Crawdad is one of those foods that is more fun to play with than it is to eat.

So it's back to work today. I mean it. But first, please enjoy today's tribute to the early work of Morgan Freeman. In this clip, Morgan plays a vampire who loves to take a bath in his casket. This clip is wierd on many different levels.

Tuesday, February 20:

It's been a really long month here in Wisconsin. Every day has been exactly the same--really flippin' cold and boring. How boring was it, you may ask? Well, yesterday I went out and got my Lost School tattoo just to break the monotany. It worked! The monotany has been broken.

Some things I've learned from the experience are: I like tattoos, getting them does not hurt as much as I thought it would and my arms are really white and flabby. More on all three of these points later...

Monday, February 19:

I get most of my news from AOL. The headlines are lined up so nice and they're right next to my email. Can't help but click on them. Yesterday there was a particularly "Look at me!" headline about an asteroid that is going to hit the earth. I looked at it and was relieved to see that the asteroid wasn't going to be within striking distance until 2036, and even then there was but a 1 in 35,000 chance of it hitting us. So we have 29 years to prevent this. We're likely to get right on that. Especially given the fact that most people's reaction to a doomsday scenerio is denial right up until the point that they have to run for thier lives.

Meanwhile, on You Tube--Today's clip is a treasure featuring Morgan Freeman as Easy Reader on the Electric Company. Get busy readin' or get busy dyin', I always say. I can't believe how funky Morgan was when he was young...and I wonder what he's got in that bag tied around his waist.

Friday, February 16:

Don and I went to the Re-Store the other day just to see what we could see. I stopped paying attention to the needs of This Old House a month or two ago when my dream of having an operating washer and dryer in the downstairs bathroom was realized. We weren't planning on buying anything (since we're not planning on working on anything) but then we saw this bright yellow kitchen sink that was in really good shape and only cost $25.00. What a find it was! And How!

Prior to finding the conspicuous sink, Don and I had been planning on decorating the kitchen in black, white and gray to match the $15.00 countertops we purchased. The end result was bound to be unexciting and make both us and the kitchen look cheap. Now that we have an exciting sink to decorate around we can adopt a tangy theme for the kitchen such as bees or taxi-cabs. Surely this will make the kitchen look quirky and it will make us look as though we have bad taste, which is better than looking cheap because bad taste is a choice...at least it is for us. Don and I formulated this theory at exactly the same time. We are so on the same page when it comes to decorating.

Meanwhile, on You Tube I am completely smitten with all the old animated Sesame Street and Electric Company snippets that are available. It's like a groovy, somewhat hallucinogenic walk down memory lane. Some clips, like this one of an alligator that has a machine that spells out the word "TRIP", just blow me away. I might have believed this was not a drug reference until the screen started flashing at the end. I've got others bookmarked that I will try to introduce into the blog by and by. Hopefully you will appreciate their greatness as much as I do.

Wednesday, February 14:

Feeling depressed? You might want to watch the Ladybugs' Picnic. This clip first appeared on Sesame Street some 35 years ago. I remember watching it then. It always left me with a happy feeling and a better understanding of the number "12". For me, there just aren't enough kazoos in today's popular music.

Speaking of depression, will the world ever be the same without Anna Nicole Smith? Sure, we'll have other train wrecks but the just won't burn as brightly.

In other news that's real and important, Kim Miles is following in the footsteps of Emma Ralph and Kate Mc Kinnon and is holding a raffle to benefit Jean Yates. Go buy a ticket for a chance to win one of three fabulous prize packages.

So it's Valentine's Day today. Traditionally, this is the day that Don removes the Christmas decorations from the light posts all along East Johnson St. I think it's too cold and icy to get this done today so I'm not going to remind him. I think they'll just blow down eventually. Most things in life will.

If you're in or around Madison you might want to buy your sweetheart some chocolates at twee and luliloo. (That's a candy and gift shop located on State St. that's owned by our kind and tolerant next door neighbors, Phil and Agape.) I would highly reccommend getting on their mailing list so you'll be the first to know when they open their on-line store. Their chocolates are delicious and interesting looking. Mmmmm...high-end chocolates. I'm going there later.

Monday, February 12:

Here's a funny story from my and Bob's trip to Dayton:

We arrived late at the Dayton airport late due to the weather. Seven inches of snow had fallen and part of I70 was closed etc. It was a mess. Flights were getting cancelled and I thought we were really lucky to have gotten to our destination city at all. By 9:30 pm we had been waiting for two hours for Bob's sister, with whom we were staying, to pick us up. We couldn't reach Bob's sister on her cel phone and didn't really know what was going on. (As it turned out she was stuck in traffic on I70.) I thought it was time to start looking for a hotel with a bar so I picked up a tourist magazine that had a bunch of ads in it and started calling around.

The first hotel I called was full, which figured because they were the only nearby hotel with a lounge. The second one I called was a Travel Lodge (aka Econo Lodge, formerly Quality Inn) did not have a bar but did had vacancies and it had a shuttle from the airport so we went there.

Rooms at the Travel Lodge are little bungalow type things in groups of about twenty or so with doors that open onto a little parking lot. The lots are all full of snow because the maintenance guy was still busy transporting van loads of unsuspecting people up from the airport. There were hardly any people near our assigned room which had a view of the parking lot and the highway, which was dark and sort of eerie.

The room itself was hotter than hell so I turned off the heat and turned on the air conditioning and stood with the door open for a few minutes. After a while I questioned the wisdom of leaving the bungalow door wide open to whomever and whatever was passing by and closed it. Even with the A/C on the room remained really hot.

After a while I decided it was time to call someone, like Don or Bob's sister or someone, just to share with them the phenomenon that was my and Bob's trip to Dayton. Since neither Bob nor I carry a cel phone I had to use the land line in the room. I picked up the receiver but it was dead. I retrieved the phone cord from behind the night stand only to pull up a frayed wire that looked like it had been ripped from the wall. I remarked to Bob how this was beginning to seem like one of those movies when the attractive teenagers through a series of unfortunate events are trapped in a cabin and they can't leave because "They would never make it in this weather". Their Blackberries or Ipods or fancy cel phones aren't working and there's a serial killer or a monster of some kind after them who's somehow able to lure them outside one by one. Except with us it's more like there's a couple of doughy, middle aged people trapped inside a super-heated Travel Lodge bungalow and they can't call for help because someone ripped the phone out of the wall. The killer is out there in the dark waiting to pounce on them when they open the door to vent the room. They can't hide in the bathroom either because one of the hinges on the door is so badly damaged that the door won't close (I forgot to tell you about that). I'm sure the hinge was damaged during a ruckus involving the monster vs. the last people that stayed in room 225.

Soooo...anyway, round about 11:30pm (we stayed to watch "Futurama") we trudged back to the lobby through the snow with our stuff to get our room changed. This is where the actual punch line to the Travel Lodge stay happens. What do you think the gal at the front desk said to us when we asked to change our room because our phone wasn't working? Was it:

A. Yes, of course you can change your room. I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

B. I'm sorry, all our rooms are full.

C. None of our rooms have phones that work. They were hit by lightning.

The answer is "C"-The phones were hit by lightning. None of 'em work. A much more interesting answer than I thought I was going to get. I thought a lot of things at this point but all I said was "What?" and "You mean we can't have a room with a phone?" She said I could use the desk phone if I wanted so I used it to call a Holiday Inn in a nearby suburb.

And that's how Bob, myself and Cleaner Crab ended up in Humpty's Lounge at the Holiday Inn in Engelwood at 12:15am on Wednesday morning. (Approx. 12 hrs. after we went through security in Madison.)That was a long day. P.S. Bob's sister, Chris, reached the airport at 11pm. She did not expect us to be there at that point and she forgave us for not calling.

Friday, February 9:

I don't know if you've noticed this or not but I rarely take pictures of human beings. For some reason I prefer to document my times away from home by taking pictures of two particular inanimate objects in whatever setting I happen to be in. Everyone knows Triangle Man--he's inanimate object #1. I take him with me when traveling over land. Triangle Man has been to all the bead shows and was kissed by reknown bead maker Kim Fields on more than one occasion. He's famous, but also very heavy and pointy so I don't think security would let me take him on a plane inside my carry on bag. So when I fly I take inanimate object #2, Cleaner Crab, with me. Cleaner Crab was just a plain crab beanie baby that I got at a Mc Donald's a long time ago. I attached a fancy up do of curly blonde hair to her head and a tiny push broom to her left claw. Now she's Cleaner Crab! And now you'll know who she is when you see her.

So this last week Cleaner Crab and myself accompanied my pal Bob Foster on a trip to Dayton Ohio. It was for a sad occasion, Bob's mother's funeral. We just went along for moral support and also because I wanted to see what sort of a nest Bob was living in before he moved to Madison. Meet the family and such. You'd want to do that too if you knew Bob. Weather-wise the trip was on perhaps the worst day to travel so it yielded many stories including one about the worst lodging experience I've ever had. I'll have to get to that by and by. I've got stuff to do right now...feed the lizards and such.

Tuesday, February 6:

This week I am going to be zooming to and fro Dayton, Ohio (birthplace of Bob Foster, for those of you playing along at home). I will be unable to answer emails until I get back on Friday, Feb. 9. Talk to you then.

Sunday, February 4:

Mother of pearl! Is it ever cold outside. It's 5 below right now. For those of you that do not live in such a climate, if you were to put a banana in your coat pocket and walk around outside for about two blocks, it is not cold enough to freeze the banana but it will become very cold and firm. I expect a banana would freeze solid if you carried it around for an extra 15 minutes or so, even inside your pocket. Weather like this is where the expression "Cold enough to freeze your banana" comes from.

So we're having a Super Bowl party tonight. My one job was to procure a giant sandwich for the event and I was not able to do it. I am an ass. I kind of forgot about my mission until last night. Once I started looking around I realized that not every sandwich store makes giant sandwiches. In fact, Subway was the only place I could find on line that made giant sandwiches and I really try to avoid eating there because I think their commercials are stupid. The whole thing was kind of a moot point because giant sandwiches require Planning Ahead of Time--something I did not do. Dammit. I hope people still come over.

Friday, February 2:

My Dad is an American history professor. He retired about seven years ago but he's still got a lot of information running around in his head. You can take him to see any movie of a historical nature and he can tell you all about every character being portrayed and which parts of the movie are real and which are made up. His does not confine his vocal opinions to the movies we're watching in our living room (which makes going to the theater an interesting experience.) Telling you the real names of the actors and actresses in a given movie is a different story.

As a teenager, movie watching with Dad was kind of an bothersome experience because even though he did not know the name of the star he would have to take I guess. "I know who that is!" he would yell, "That's Jane Fonda!" (or whichever random movie star he happened to be thinking of--sometimes he would make up his own names). I never knew if he was serious about not knowing the movie star or if he was just trying to be a pest. Either way his lack of knowledge about both movie stars and cultural references was as public as it was annoying. Occasionally, OCCASIONALLY he would miraculously guess the right name. This was always followed by "See??" (as in "See, I do know my movie stars.")

As it turns out, in my family the inability to recognize movie stars and understand cultural references is genetic. Fortunately, it's the kind of thing that crept up on me so it wasn't much of a shock when I realized it. I had to laugh like hell, though, the other day when that story about the Aqua Teen Hunger Force ad campaign shutting down the city of Boston. Apparently, blinking sinage depicting one of the Moonintes (a character from the cartoon) giving the finger was mistaken for a terrorist bomb...many of them, actually.As a big Aqua Teen fan the first thing I thought when the story broke was "I know who that is! That's a Mooninite!". The second thing I thought was "See?? I do know some cultural references." (The third thing I thought was "I'm turning into my Dad.")

So Boston, the thing about this incident is, I "get" so few things these days and yet even I realized that that blinking image was a cartoon character. You don't have to watch Aqua Teen or know that the character's name is Ignignokt to understand that. What is wrong with you people?

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January 2007