Home again, home again, jiggity jig

It is one o'clock. I have been doing laundry and messing around on Facebook like a yokel. I wish I had taken a shower instead. I want shower. I have a lot of reading to do this afternoon. Omaha, Omaha, what can I say about Omaha? While I was gone, my laptop has completely blown out. Most of the files have been recovered, but most of my music is conspicuosly missing. I don't like computers anymore. In Omaha, I did many things. I went to a dog show and ooohed over the golden retrievers. I ate chocolate covered strawberries. And chocolate covered everything else. I had some of the best meals I have ever had in my life and some very good wines. Great salmon in Omaha. I finally (finally!) saw Pirates of the Caribbean 2, and was much incensed by the behavior of one Elizabeth Swan. I read Taming of the Shrew because Francis thinks that Petruchio is perty much the coolest guy ever. I stayed up until three in the morning, sitting in Hope's car in front of her house and talking (no surprises there). We drank margaritas an hour too early for happy hour and had to deal with a very creepy waiter. We walked around the larger half of Zorinsky lake while the sun went down. I went to the Afternoon, the coolest store to ever grace the corridors of Westroads Mall. I saw two incredible photography exhibits at the Joslyn Museum. Edward Weston is one cool dude. I spent an afternoon at the zoo, rode the dragon on the carousel and got to see the bats, my great, great love. Took a ton of pictures, you can see some eventually. I have to go to the Post Office today and hopefully pick up my copy of the Emporer's New Groove. I am going now to cook some bulger wheat to go with my cucumber yogurt sauce. I still want a shower.

~S.

Goodbye, friends...

Well, this is it. I have finally finished all things. All things that there are in the world to do...no, wait, I just feel that way, really I just got done the stuff for tomorrow. That's pretty much the way it is with me, I get enough done for just one more day. Ah well, I have been reflecting upon my lifestyle lately, reflections which alas I cannot share right now...maybe soon? Maybe not, I'm gonna be gone for a week. See you next Saturday.

Goodnight,
S.

Ketchup

I hereby dedicate this post to my dear friend Tim Boland, who requested "bizarre and whimsical vacation stories." I don't have much, actually, this vacation was a whole lot of floating of the waves of the great blue and lying in the sun and flying my wonderful kite with the picture of the sailboats by the setting sun on it. We flew it higher than the building we were staying in! But anyway, aside from all the relaxation, I would say that the most bizarre event would be our trip to Fuddpucker's, a Destin, Florida institution. The greatest attraction to draw the tourists into Fuddpucker's aside from their "world-famous t-shirts" was the live alligators. Tourists crowded around the railings, leaning over to gaze into the pit of doom to see the dread monsters. So, we looked over the rail, and there, down on the sand, was....vreet, vreet, vreet! a bunch of iron-colored, footlong lumps that did absolutely nothing for so long we thought they must not actually be alive! You know, they advertise these live alligators, and I expect 12 foot long beasts with vicious toothy grins. I expect trembling keepers to throw them whole coons or possums which they would swallow with one snap of their immense jaws. Instead, the "feeding" of these alligators was conducted by the children who stood around the pit, lowering down tiny bits of red something on a long fishing pole kind of thing, which the alligators were too boring to even pay attention to. All in all, I was very disappointed by the alligator.



The other thing that I found rather atrocious was that one of the keepers was standing with one of these miniscule alligators with its mouth taped shut so silly tourists could touch it w/o worry. Poor gator! The other thing that was pretty bizarre, besides the skin tones composed of tans/burns that these sun worshippers acquired, was the giant outlet mall that we visited almost every day. So much commercialism...my eyes are still trying to focus. It is so hard not to get sucked in. Okay, another story...this picture is of Armond, my frog-prince lover. Seriously, it's true! One night (subsequent to the lizard episode) my sister came running in panicked by the presence of a frog in the garage under my mom's car. After extracting the critter with a broom, I relocated him out to the yard so he wouldn't get shut in for the night. But then, only minutes later, I recieved the report that the same frog had showed up on our front porch. I looked out the window, and there he was, crouched by the door, obviously waiting to get in! So, Armond and I have developed a very special relationship. No kisses yet, but Armond is a very persuasive little bugger, and besides, he's so cute! Okay, that's all for tonight. Hopefully I will be able to post again this week.



Goodnight electrons, spinning through the jars,
S.

I'm Baaaaack...

Creepy, isn't it? We just got back about an hour ago, so you should all be very impressed with my faithfulness in blogging. So far we have unpacked the car, I have gotten the extensive amount of mail we got while gone, checked my e-mail and deleted all the junk mail, (which was copious)and now I am checking in on my blog and absentmindedly watching the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the part where Verucca is singing her song about the golden eggs. I always thought that both Wonka movies were a little bit bizzare, a bit too psychedelic for me. And I am mulling over all the things that must be done not only tonight, but all this week because a week from today, I am shipping out again for a week in the fair land of Omaha. What could be grander than my glamourous life? Oh, and in other news, I am officially signed up on Facebook, though my little profile jigger is not as complete as I'd like it to be. But I was swayed, despite my better judgement, by an impassioned plea, and because it was also well-reasoned, I gave in. So look me up, amigos, b/c right now it looks like I have no friends. And tell everyone that it's up there, that will save me the trouble of a mass e-mail. All right, this really wasn't meant to be a full blown post, just a heads-up, I'm back in town.

All right, homies, see you in the 'verse,
S.

More Rain?

It rained again today and tonight, it is raining right now as I write this...where did I leave the keys to my ark? I am frantically trying to finish A Theology of Liberation by Gustavo Gutierrez before we head out for vacation on Saturday early, which means I have to get it back to the library tomorrow. 2 more chapters to go and the left hemisphere of my brain is throbbing still. I am so irritated by this project, I just want to be lazy and have fun all the time. Fortunately we are leaving soon for vacation in Destin, Florida, where we will relax and have fun on the beach and do nothing all the time, and I will only bring one skinny book to work on and some big fat books to read for fun. So ha! academia, I still refuse to sell my soul to you. Today was the first official meeting of our purity group that I am leading for church for the youthies, I bet you're all dying to hear about that and I'm dying to write about it. I have thought of so many things that I have wanted to post about, but I have been in straight up reading mode, so they have gone unwritten, maybe I can do that while we're gone too. Okay...2 more chapters...(and kudos to you, Hope for your amazingly consistent posting of comments!)

Yagua Days

I read a very good book by this title once in the days of my youth. It is illustrated by Jerry Pinkney, one of the greatest of all children's book editors. It is about a Puerto Rican boy growing up in New York, where there is nothing to do on rainy days. But then, when he finally gets to go to Puerto Rico, he finds that there rainy days, Yagua days, are the best days of all. Today we had our own Yagua day of sorts, and a very interesting one it was too. First I spent the morning at the dentist, which always makes me think of torture chambers and interrogation and cyanide capsules, even though it never hurts too terribly much, I like to dramatize things. But anyway, the time at the dentist had ended, and back we hopped to the car, realizing in the process that a torrential downpour had just started. On our way back home, the rain in the streets was getting fairly high. On our way back through the neighborhood, the water was inches deep across the entire street and was running up in impressively high sheets on either side of the car. Well, my sister was enthralled, I started to get a little worried about the engine water-logging. Fortunately, before that could happen, the passenger side of the front seat started to take on water through the door. I could hear the SUV driver up ahead snickering, "Hey, I may have to spend 80 dollars on gas every week, but at least my car is prepared for these once-in-a-lifetime emergencies." After we plowed our way home we spent a bit of time bailing out the backyard, where the water was lapping around the back door. The little divits where the grass between two yards were flowing liberally with rain water making it's way down to the street. So after the rain had slowed to a stop, we played around some more, sloshing through the grass and the ginormous puddles. All in all, it was an exciting morning. And, in case you were worried, the house is as yet unflooded.

Cheers, ducks,
S.

Hoop, there it is

Last night, my family and I took in the Comets-Monarchs game. The Comets, for you ignoramuses who do not follow the WNBA, is our local Houston basketball team, and the Monarchs are the Sacramento team. It was a great game, we actually got seats three rows away from the court b/c the reason we went in the first place was b/c a client of my mom's had given us the tickets. I totally support women's sports in theory, so it was nice to have a chance to support them in praxis. And it was really fun, those ladies play hard and I had fun watching the game. I like basketball a lot more than, say golf or baseball. I don't know much about the technical terms of the sport, so it would be difficult for me to give you the play by play. But I can tell you that the Comets won!!! Yay for us. Okay, okay, laying all my cards out on the table, the entire point of this post was to give commentary so I could post my pictures. Yay for pictures.

P.S.-Sheryl Swoopes is on our team...Yay for Sheryl!

"Death in his eyes..."

Okay, so this story has been ruminating in my mind for a while, and I've really wanted to share it with y'all, but I've been unable to just sit down and write. Now I have a few minutes, hopefully enough, so here goes.

My sister has been plagued of late by a little lizzard problem. And by little, I do mean little, the thing is not more than an inch long, but from listening to her tales you might expect to spot gargantuan beasts running around in our house. The first sighting of this little critter was one evening, in the laundry room, shortly before bed. I was calmly watching TV out in the family room when my sister comes in making this high-pitched noise and babbling, "Sister, sister there's a lizzard, come and kill it sister, come, come on, you gotta come, hurry," and etc. So, being the caring individual that I am, I quickly gave in and followed her back to the laundry room. I was almost a little hesitant to see what lay behind the open door, to check would have been to shut myself alone in a room with the unknown beast that had caused my sister so much fright. But I steeled myself and pulled the door closed, to reveal a tiny gecko, almost translucent in color and with eyes bigger than it's body proportions should allow, perched neatly on the wall. Of course, I know his description only by previous observation. I was armed with my rocketship cup to trap the little guy and take him outside, but no sooner did he sense the door moving than he began scuttling away like lightning.

He first moved to the corner, losing himself in the baseboards, which are white, and form an awkward angle, but before I could even contemplate how to deal with this new challenge, he was off again, scuttling across the floor, making a mad dash for the washing machine, which he quickly secluded himself under. Though I made a show of pulling out the clothes sorter which lay next to the washing machine to appease my sister, I knew after he was under the washer that it was basically a lost cause. My sister could not rest soundly unless we both bolted out of the room and closed the door behind us and then stuffed a rug into the crack so he could not follow. Unfortunately, my mother in her unthinking selfishness, moved the rug out of the way and opened the door the next morning to go to work, thus allowing our little friend to "escape." (Heather's words.) Any conscientious mother would have obviously gone out the front door and opened the garage from the front. Honestly.

But this was not to be our last encounter with the little guy. Again, winding down before bed in the family room, my sister comes out in an even greater state of panic, babbling that when she moved a pillow away from the wall in her very bedroom, there he was, waiting on the wall above her own bed! I went into the bedroom with all due haste, fearless now, knowing my enemy. But the wall, this time, was entirely blank, no lizzard in sight. I thought I saw something down on the bit of baseboard exposed between her desk and her bed, but when I bent to check closer, he scuttled away to the tangle of cords, printer, and just plain crap in the abyss located under my sister's desk. I moved the printer, rocketship cup again in hand, but he scuttled away as quickly as ever and I lost track of him momentarily. (Keep in mind, too, that the whole time I was looking my sister was standing up on the window seat, her face looking kind of crumpled as she emitted a constant, high-pitched whine a couple octaves higher than a dog's.)I sat staring at the mess beneath the desk forlornly, when suddenly I saw the little beastie scuttle up the side underneath the desk and slip into the desk drawer. This last sighting, however, was not mentioned to my sister, as I checked the side of the desk and the drawer faithfully, but could not see hide nor hair of the creature again.

Quite a relationship, however, has sprung up between the two of them. There is reason to believe that the lizzard from the laundry room and the bedroom are the same fellow, so my sister has christened him Leonard or Lenny, for short. However, this familiarity does not increase their affection, my sister is convinced that these strikes were planned and aimed towards achieving an ever increasing proximity to the target, namely, her. "You should have seen the way he looked at me when I found him behind those pillows," she says from time to time with a terror-glazed look, "There was death in his eyes!" Fortunately there has not been a repeat incident since the offense in the bedroom, and I have told her that I recieved a note from Lenny, informing us of his plans to move to Germany to pursue his plans of racing on the Autobahn. Whether or not you are willing to believe that I did recieve such a note, well, that's up to you.

Good luck, Lenny, wherever you are.
S.

OMG!

Guys, this is the coolest, I just figured out how to add photos to my blog. I am a goddess! This is gonna be great. The test picture up here is a classic. This is a statue of Buddha sitting in his lotus flower in the Christmas parade in Hobart, Tasmania. So not only do you have the irony of Buddha in a Christmas parade, this is also a great picture b/c I took it in Tasmania, and everything that happens in Tasmania is automatically cool. Like, "I bought this milk from a milk machine...in Tasmania!" Wow, great story! Okay, gotta run, we are currently sipping margaritas and munching on chips and guacamole. I love living in Texas...but don't tell John Wesley.

Later,
S.