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  We have a plan!

Tomorrow we are expecting snow.  Allie and I are going to drive through the storm to pick up our favorite Platypus.  We could wait I suppose, but we aren't going to.  If it was my first day of Christmas vacation I wouldn't want to spend it sitting in an empty dorm.   We are planning it similarly to the Normandy invasion.  Minus the Germans with guns.  When bad weather strikes it's best to be prepared, so there will be an entire houseful of stuff in the car.  Food, blankets, water, phone, flashlights, umbrella.  (suggestions anyone?)  Oh, I almost forgot the most important thing, lots of music.   Anyway, we're going to spend the night and come home Saturday.  Friday night we get to meet some of her friends, eat at her choice of restuarant and then maybe a movie or bowling.  Something fun, whatever the kids want this time.  (I rarely say that.)   Now that's what I call a plan. 

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Written Wed. just never posted it or finished it.  Stuff like this happens all the time.

Bwhaha, I missed The simple Life.  Maybe there's hope for me yet.  Actually, I rented movies.  So my sister, bro in law and I watched, Holes, How To Lose A Guy In Ten Days and Santa Claus 2  We had a marathon.  I loved Holes I think I should buy that one and The Emperors New Groove.   It would save me so much money on rentals.  Am I the only person who rents the same movie over and over? 

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Bear had a marathon week,  54 hours in four days.  22 hours the first two days then two 16 hour days, which is bullshit.  I guess what ticks me off most is that they know that on Wednesday he has to drive an hour and a half to get home.  So he had about an 18 hour day today.  Needless to say it takes three days to recover from the four.  I remember a time when we were younger and had more energy either one of us could do this standing on our head, but not anymore.  I really don't understand how people can do 60 or 80 hour weeks.  It would kill me.

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Happy day, my dad and sister brought me a huge bunch of flowers.  How sweet is that?  I absolutely love getting flowers, and since I don't get them often I split them up into 4 different vases and put them all around the room.  It made a gray, cold, icky day so much brighter. 

I feel like I'm really slacking off on getting my decorations up.  Just about all of the Xangans I read have not only got their tree and decorations up, most of you have either started buying presents or are already done.  Man, talk about pressure.  This year I will be frantically buying on Christmas eve.  That ought to make it interesting.  The only person who has specifically asked for anything is Bear.  So he is going to get the play station 2 he wants.  Just goes to show little boys grow into to big boys.  I'll probably have just as much fun with it, so I'm going to try and get some good games.  Any suggestions.  Usually we prefer the role playing type so if you know of some good ones I'll keep them in mind.

The Simple Life is on again tomorrow night so I thought I should in all fairness warn everyone.  RANT! (coming your way soon.)  See how well I know myself.  I'm sure I'm some kind of masochist to put myself and you through this again.  But, like an addict that hasn't hit bottom, here we go again.  So you've been warned.

This is coming from left field but I really want to know.  So if you only leave one comment answer this one.  If you could have any of the superpowers that comic book characters have what would it be?  Just one though and if you want you can make one up.  Of course this includes all the powers from the x-men, superman, Spiderman, blah, blah, blah!  So use your imagination.    

Later gators.  Have a good evening!

old news; Still waiting on my damn computer and still sick.  I'm not really sure which pisses me off more.  pah! enough of this and that.

Once more and with feeling,                       (links to sites are in color)

If you don't read fauquet  that's okay.  Reading a French guy who is old enough to be your grandfather isn't for everyone.  However I would ask that you keep him and his wife Janine in your thoughts and prayers.(if that's not to politically un-correct of me)  He is having some pretty serious stuff with his health right now and if you have a spare second please use it sending good energy his way.  

Some people flounder around a lot when they first start this thing we call Xanga.  I might be off the mark but I don't think Heike or Stowry will flounder near as long as I did.  Normal people writing about semi-normal things.  After all Heike is married to History Pig so she can't be completely normal. (just kidding)  Yeah, that's my job uniting Xangans in peace, prosperity and weirdness.

Reasons I should ALWAYS eat at the table.  (believe it or not there are several)

10. Supposedly (is there scientific evidence of this?) you eat slower so you don't add pounds or get as much indigestion.

9. When you eat alone (like I do 4 days a week) you don't eat as much. (I repeat, is there any scientific evidence?)

8. It provides a routine that encourages other productive behavior. (sure it does, I'm just gonna jump up and do those dishes right now.)

7. (now we get to the truth)  You drop less spaghetti on your favorite sweatshirt.

Look familiar to anyone?

6. If you do drop your spaghetti, it doesn't land in your favorite chair.

5. If someone knocks at the door you look less like a slob if you don't have spaghetti on your sweatshirt.

4.  Even if it's just TV dinner spaghetti you feel less like Homer Simpson and more like Julia Child.

3. If your drinking a glass of wine with your TV dinner spaghetti at the table, your having a fine Italian dining experience, if your not at the table your just a lush, not really interested in the spaghetti as much as the wine. (I prefer a good ILLINI red with my sweatshirt)

2. When your kids call, you can impress them with your class and maturity.  (yeah, right, 22  hours of labor wasn't impressive, why should this be?) 

and the number one reason I should eat at the kitchen table. (ala David Letterman ,drum roll please)

1. No one will ever have to suffer through a spaghetti entry again.

Unless of course I snort a spaghetti noodle through my nose, that would be to classy to pass up. 

Take no prisoners people,  they just take up space and eat all your spaghetti.

My brain is still not functioning at its best but what the heck, here goes. 

I woke up this morning with my mouth wide open because both sinuses were swollen shut.  I couldn't swallow my throat was so dry.  Thank God for auto reflexes or I would have suffocated.  As soon as I got some water down, my first thought was, wow I feel a lot better.  cough, ack, gag.  Which is worse drooling on your pillow or being so dried out there's no drool at all?   Dumb ass me thought, oh good Bear will be home and he can wait on me hand and foot.  With the bonus thrown in that my dead body won't lay around and putrify.  HAH!  He slept the first 14 hours he's been home and he's not reading my mind well at all.  For instance why doesn't he automatically know that the vaporizer needs more water and I need more Vicks rubbed on my chest.  Some mind reader.  Isn't there some kind of rule that if your married more than 20 years they should know how you like to be babied?  There's not!  Well there should be.  whine, bitch, moan.  My level of whininess always increases as I start feeling better, that's how I know survival is probably in my future.

Did anyone catch The Simple Life  It stars Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, daughter of Lionel Richie.  The premise as far as I can figure out, is to take these two ultra rich, spoiled beyond belief girls, and put them in Altus, Arkansas so they can make fun of all the locals, while looking down their surgically enhanced noses at people who actually work for a living.  Lets make fun of the farmers!!   I've been to Altus and like most small towns in Arkansas it has gone through some rough economic times, you can see it in lack of growth and a general run down appearance of some of the older buildings.  However, it is filled with people who are friendly and care about their neighbors.  They live in the 21st century like all of us do, they just do it at a slower pace and with less money.  I think what ticked me off most about this show is when the girls private jet landed at the airport, the soundtrack immediately started playing the theme song from Deliverance.  HELLO!!!!  You have nothing to fear driving the back roads of  the South.  You can camp, hike, and wander around without fear of crazed hillbillies.  The producers of this show should have done a little more homework before deciding on this one, they have not only made Paris and Nicole look like spoiled rotten rich girls, they have tried to make rural life a cliched Hollywood joke.  To bad, what could have been done with dignity is just highlighting what the rich don't get about the rest of America.   

Okay, I'll climb off my soapbox and go back to bed.  See you tomorrow!

Oh  lord have I been sick.  I caught whatever has been going around and by Sunday night all I wanted to do was crawl in bed and sleep.  Since I'm here alone I had lots of time to wander around the house trying to remember what I got up for.  Ie: the vicks vaporub or more kleenex for my ever drippy nose.  I also had plenty of time to figure out how long my dead body would lay here before somebody came to check on me, 24 hours!  However, she made up for it by bringing my chicken souped out stomach McDonalds and my atrophied brain her laptop.  So I'm not feeling near as sorry for myself as I was, boohoo.  I guess I'll probably survive.  Whine, bitch, moan. 

We had a terrific Thanksgiving and I'm thankful I didn't get sick in the middle of that.  We ended with no turkey leftovers at all.  Even though I cooked a 20 pound turkey. Where were you Doc?  Aw well maybe for Christmas.  I'll make that one a twenty-five pounder if you come. 

Hopefully we'll be getting our computer back from the doctor soon.  We will have a new motherboard and two new ram chips.  All with lifetime warranty, we are also getting a battery backup power source.  Our electricity has the annoying habit of clicking off for a second, just enough to wreak havoc with the computer and all the clocks.  The clocks can be reset but it plays hell with the computer.

Before I completely run out of energy i'll close, I have alot of catch up reading.  Hope everyone has had a good week.  DON'T GET WHAT I GOT!! 

EDIT update:  Notagoose reminded me of a promise I made my best friend make.  When I die and before all the relatives descend on the house she has to come and clean it so I won't be embarassed wherever I am.  And believe me I'll know if she doesn't keep her promise and I'll haunt her for years.  YEARS, people.

Mmm, a holiday devoted strictly to food.  I wonder why so many Americans are overweight? 

Here's a little digression.  Why are people who live in the United States called Americans?  What about the Canadians and the Mexicans?  They live in North America too!  So wouldn't we all be North Americans?   

Back to  the Turkey.  This is not a rhetorical question.  What do you do with all your leftover Turkey?  With us once all the side dishes are gone people just forget about the turkey.  So I end up making a turkey pie or soup.  I'm sure there are better ideas out there I just can't think of any. 

Since this is a holiday of Thanksgiving here are a few things that I am thankful for.

• I am thankful that when I took the big leap and married Bear, took the chance of being vulnerable to heartache and pain, it worked out just fine.
  
• I am thankful that my kids turned into beautiful,  smart, sexy women, with gumption and verve.
  
• I am thankful that I live in a country that gives me the freedom to march to a different drummer.  (with my mouth I would hear that night time knock on the door sooner rather than later.)
  
• I am thankful that I "met" you.  You are a very welcome addition to my circle of friends.  I read you every time you post and you are by turns funny, thoughtful, happy, sad, reminiscent and generally make my world an ever expanding place of beauty and hilarity.
  
• I am thankful that you we're there to help pull me out of my depression.  I know it spooks some people but there were many of you that gave me encouragement and good advice.

In case you didn't catch it, you are the "you".  So if your reading this, I mean you.

 For any of you turkey orphans out there your welcome at our house.  We're having dinner for 12 so what's a couple more right. (turkey orphans are those who are far from friends and family so they end up alone.)  Bear and I have a laissez faire attitude about company so everyone's welcome to drop by.  Believe me we have plenty of food. 

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

This whole thing of being without my own computer sucks.  Even though Allie has been really nice about bringing over her laptop, I'm used to having as much time as I want to read my sir list, and comment at my leisure.  Believe it or not I put a lot of thought into my comments, unless it's something hysterically funny and all I can think is Oh My God, hahaha.  There are some hysterically funny people out there, (think Rache) and I appreciate them no end. I am just not that funny.  At least not on paper.  My kids think I'm a riot, but then that becomes a case of  "you had to be there."  Either way reading, commenting, or writing my own blog takes time.  So this is weird and awkward for me.   My computer doctor couldn't call and give me an update, because I went and picked up my premium platypus from college.  She's home for Thanksgiving break.  The whole drive up and back I'm thinking...Good Lord we have got to get this girl a car.  This is for the birds.  3 hours up, 3 hours back.  I could have gone to Kansas City in that amount of time.  Anyway, I was gone ALL day long so I have no idea what the latest on my computer is.  I'm sure it's bad. 

However, me and my platypus had a great visit on the way home.  She had all her CDs with her so there was a lot of singing along to go with our non-stop talking.  Her and her girlfriends have decided to go to a rave as the rainbow brite girls.  They have Patty O Green, Shy Violet,  and Canary Yellow.  My un-shy daughter is going to dye her hair purple again.  I wonder if they'll be able to talk their boyfriends into being Buddy Blue or Red Butler.  I would love to see a picture of that.   

Person of the day.  If you want a bit of advice, if you need an objective point of view.  If you read Ann Landers or think Dear Abby hung the moon then this is the girl for you.  She's good people.    The Advice Lady  She always researches her subject, the links are relevant, and she always shoots straight from the hip.  So whoever she is, I'm glad she's doing a good xanga service.  Not just for the teenagers, but us screwy adults as well. 

That's all folks!

I have a preliminary report on my computer. (piece of junk)   It had about 15 parasites, 4 or 5 programs that we sure as heck didn't put on it.  And to boot either it has a bad hard-drive or bad RAM or both.  So here I am on Allies' laptop again.  (I knew I had kids for a reason)  This means that I don't have access to my images and to be honest I'm not sure how to connect her laptop to my scanner.  So no home photos for me...wah!  But I can still link and as we are finding out I am a link madwoman!!!!

     If, person of the day, an extra smart, talented lady with a hell of a camera eye.  Look at her fotolog if you don't believe me.  CORK!

Someday I will go to Australia.  When I go, if I can't take my family I am going to go with MyKi  I say this because we could have some serious fun over there and then I wouldn't drive poor Cork crazy.  She reads cork too, so at least we wouldn't be total strangers.  I admire Cork for taking charge of her life and for having the strength to make hard choices and changes.

Now for a little experiment.  I'm going to copy today's cartoon which as we've seen self-refreshes.  Let's see if  it has a life of its own up here.  I gotta admit some of those cartoons have been pretty funny.

Let the experiment begin.

 Fauquet,  is my "if" person of the day.

If I ever get to see the real France I would want him and his lovely wife to be my tour guides.  He sees things with wonderful eyes and  tells us lucky xangans about them in a completely unique way.  A lovely person with a big heart.

These were taken not far from my house.  I don't know why I like them so much but I do.  The first is on a little side road that I that I took when I was mapping the county.  The second is on Mt. Eagle.   

I've never claimed to be a photographer, but once in awhile I do pretty good.

Did anyone notice Sat. cartoon?  Todays version is pretty funny.  Go on down and see the amazing self-rotating cartoon.

I finally had to take my computer in to have it checked.  I have a wonderful daughter and she kindly let me borrow her laptop because I have been losing my mind since Monday.  I figure either my hard-drive is bad or I have a bad memory. (I have a bad memory in life, why not one in virtual space as well.)  Regardless, it's spending money on the computer, that I would rather be spending on something else.