The low, the high , and the “eh, who cares” for the day.
Rant – The rising wind and cold. The air pressure has stayed low and my shoulders have been screaming. I just want the high pressure to get here so things will quit hurting.
Rave – The people at
Epitome of Tepidity – Molly snoring away on the floor by my feet. Makes me want to head for the bed as well.
It’s that time of the week – time for Mama Kat’s Writer’s Challenge. So here are this weeks topics:
1.) I recently read all about the importance of us bloggers developing an “Elevator Pitch†via one of my new favorite blogs. According Wikipedia and Elevator Pitch is “an overview of an idea for a product, service, or project. The name reflects the fact that an elevator pitch can be delivered in the time span of an elevator ride (for example, thirty seconds or 100-150 words).†Create one short (a sentence long) and one longer (100 – 150 words) Elevator Pitch describing what your blog is about.
(inspired by Darren from Problogger)
2.) The strangest dream ever…
(inspired by Amo from Where A Woman Shakes Her Tablecloth.)
3.) Write a list of 10 things that can be done to stave off boredom.
(inspired by Lourie from CA Girl).
4.) “How many homes have you had? Write a journal entry about ALL the places you’ve called ‘home’ in your life.â€
(inspired by writingfix.com).
5.) “Why wouldn’t they just start over? Write a story where a character refuses to go back to square one.â€
(inpired by writingfix.com).
Given that I am running a bit short of time, I am going to only do #s 1, 2, 3, and 4. You’ll have to visit Mama Kat to see about those who tackled #5.
#1 – First the short version:
The random ramblings of an over-observant obsessive.
Then the longer version:
My day to day rants, raves, observations, and punish humor. Originally started to get my writing muscles back in tone, but now continuing because it is fun. One of the few blogs with absolutely no commercial interest. No solicited reviews, giveaways, ads, or pushes to go see the ring of connected commercialism that is much of blogging.
#2 -Â I already brushed on this topic in this post. The full version runs thus.
I had a very vivid dream. As I was strolling down the path, I was accosted by a group of pygmies chanting and dancing. Since they spoke no English and I spoke no Pygmy, communication was difficult. Eventually it became somewhat clear that the pygmies had formed a company to commercialize and market their rib sauce that had been passed down from elder to younger since the dawn of time. Their claim was that it was the world’s best rib sauce. Suddenly I was buried under a mass of pygmies who were all chanting
Bar Be Que
Bar Be Que
We Eat You!
And then I woke up.
#3 – Some quick time wasters:
Â
#4 – I have lived in 13 places since birth. It starts with the little house on the left side in this aerial picture:
I spent from age 0 to ~3 living there.
Next we moved into town to a house that I remember primarily because it had wagon wheels painted green and white for a fence. The wheels were taller than I was and fascinated me greatly. We were there a year or so. (The house still stands today, but the wagon wheels disappeared sometime in the 80’s)
From there we moved to a small stucco house with a large picture window on the edge of dry land field. I talked about this house here. It was in an unincorporated oil field exploration community of maybe 30 houses and not much else.
Then we moved to a town of about 350 in Nebraska. That was where I attended kindergarten through third grade. I remember that house because it has a big back yard and grape vines. Perfect for my brother and I and the neighborhood kids to play army and cowboys and indians. One of the adjacent houses was built underground since the area got hit with tornadoes year after year and they got tired of rebuilding. I suffered my first crush on an older woman when the neighbor’s daughter gave me an old pair of her roller skates.
We moved back here to this town in time for me to start fourth grade. It is the house that mom still lives in today. What I remember from the early years is that the house had been built in the first quarter of the century by a local craftsman who used no milled lumber. Every piece of the frame was hand adzed to size and shape and no two were the same. So when we remodeled it was an interesting type of do-it-your-self project. It was also full of mysterious things like a family bible from the old country in German, etc. Fortunately the next door neighbor knew a bit about the history and the family who had lived there.
Then I went away to college and lived in a dorm and then a frat house. On the way from college to graduate school, L and I got married and arrived in California to find no housing available for us due to a snafu. We eventually found an apartment in a complex after spending some time on a fellow grad students spare bunk bed set. The complex stands out for being painted in brown, brown, and more brown as was typical in California at the time. After a couple of years we rented a nice little duplex that had a private patio and a fireplace. It sat less than half a block from the green belt through the town and was a gorgeous place.
After graduate school, we moved to the suburbs of Chicago and a ground floor apartment in Naperville. It was all white and had shag carpeting. We lived there for three years and experienced some real firsts there. The first time we had a car stolen, the first time with -50F temperatures causing ice to form on the inside walls even with the heat on, and the first time living near an abusive couple. Needless to say, we were ready to move on from the Chicago area.
Then it was off to Manhattan Beach, CA. We rented a house for the first year and it was a typical beach community bungalow, with a full size swimming pool in the back yard. It had roses in the front yard and a huge hedge along one side of the lot. It also had termites.
The next year, L and I bought our first place – a unit in a triplex in Redondo Beach – just up the road a ways. Our unit was gray stucco and 3 stories tall with an underground garage. It was during our years there that we found out we were going to have the Son.
Finally, we moved back here where we have lived for the last 20+ years. The Son was born and grew up here. You can see what the interior of the house looks like here. It is a big ranch style house with a brick exterior and attached garage. It was built in the 60’s and the only other owner is the the doctor that is my eye specialist. I went to school with some of his kids, including a younger one named Dan, so you might say it has come full circle.
I knew it was too good to be true. Today was overcast and misty/drizzly highs in the mid thirties. Made the whole day dreary and depressing. Even Molly thought it was downright low – she came and curled up at my feet and slept most of the day as I worked and talked to every Tom, Dick, and Harry on the phone. By the time I got free of the instrument of Satan it was drizzling and looking really miserable outside. Not to be deterred, Molly and I headed out for a good five mile walk. It was after dark when we got back to the house which just made the day seem even gloomier.
In other news, I got a confirmation call from the prison today. I am the honored guest speaker at the vocational program graduation on Friday. They originally asked L, but since she is up in the mountains they settled for me. {*grin*}Â
It has been almost three years since I spoke to a vocational graduation at the prison. (The others were college and GED graduations.) The last time I spoke I was introduced by a lady I had known for years. She was the Son’s grade school principal and had left to work in the vocational programs at the prison about the time the Son headed off to middle school. Since I last spoke, she lost her battle with cancer. It will be interesting to see who introduces me. If it is the assistant warden, I can count on it being hilarious. Let it be some of the other muckety-mucks and it will be as dry as two month old toast. There may even be some of the inmates from this post and this post in attendance as graduates. I hope so.
It will also be interesting since there was an inmate murdered in his cell last week – he was housed with a high risk offender due to the state budgetary constraints not funding opening the new high rish offender prison just completed. As a consequence, high risk offenders are now crowded into the medium risk populations. That leads to higher incidences of violence within the prisons, amidst other problems. Makes me suspect that security may be a bit edgier than normal.
One of the side benefits of gloomy days is that I tend to put on random music and listen to some really different stuff. Apropos of a gloomy day, I heard some music I haven’t heard in 40 years. Which is a topic for gloominess in and of itself. But in any case, I give you The Chocolate Watchband with Come On:
Hard to believe they used to open for the Grateful Dead at places like the Filmore, isn’t it? Even more amazing was that they played with groups like The Mindbenders at the Filmore.
I think it is a safe bet that you, my dear readers, haven’t listened to either The Chocolate Watchband or The Mindbenders in recent days.
The unseasonably nice weather continued here and boy is it great! Molly and I went walking and it was close to 50 degrees this afternoon. The downside is that there are sometimes rather strange people out walking when we are.
This afternoon was a case in point: a lady and her teenage daughters were walking in front of us at about the same speed. Molly and I got the pleasure of following them from about 20 yards to the rear for a couple of miles. That in and of itself isn’t interesting; the fact that the lady and her daughters were carrying on a discussion in voices that approached foghorn levels was.
I was a bit confused over their topic of discussion for the first part of the walk. I was torn between believing that the topic was basketball, soccer, or vinyl siding. Some of the phrases I overheard were:
“It is so big that I can’t fit it through the hoop.”
“Mine is so straight and thin that everything keeps falling off.”
“I’m jealous of you because mine won’t fill them out.”
“I’m jealous because mine won’t fit in the gap.”
Of course, the bits and snippets Molly and I overhead were tantalizing but very uninformative as to what exactly was being discussed in such stentorian tones.
After 15 minutes, the conversation became clearer. They were discussing their derrières!
I still cannot fathom why they felt the need to discuss this topic in such depth and so loudly as they walked in the park, but it kept me entertained.
Now all I hope for is to see this on tomorrow’s walk:
The differences between men and women can sometimes be so glaring and yet so un-obvious that one simply goes “Huh?” and proceeds on the down the road. Today I served as a perfect example on the male side of the huh.
I got up this morning, threw on a polo shirt and shorts, and then proceeded to do the normal morning things like let Molly out and in, make coffee, etc. Since I was working from my home office today, I moseyed down the hall to the office and went to work. At noon I grabbed an apple and played with Molly for a bit, then went back to work. Late in the afternoon, I decided it was time for Molly and I to go for our walk. It was at that point that I thought to button the vee on my polo shirt and discovered that I had been wearing the shirt inside out all day.
The point here is that I had not looked at myself in the mirror all day or the error would have been obvious. The inside is very different than the outside of the polo shirt in question. I would regard my behavior as somewhat typical for the male of the species.
Now, for those of you of the female persuasion, just how likely is it that you could or would go for 8 hours or more without looking in a mirror? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Amusing difference, isn’t it?