Abundance
Off to Costco, to stock up for the Apocolypse...
One Year food supply, for twoFruit supplyVegetable supplyDeluxe Emergency Supply KitYou gotta love Costco. I gave up my membership for a few years because, as good as the bargains were, I always felt broke after leaving their warehouses. Not to mention the difficulty storing the pallets of toilet paper and paper towels. Now look! You can buy food for a whole year. Just add water and a heat source and you're prepared for anything. Is this overkill or what?!
Updated: Okay, seriously, I think I may buy this for my mother, for Christmas. She lives in a pole house on a cliff in CA not too far from the San Andreas fault and as she should (given the number of earthquakes and wild fires that have threatened her home), she is always working on emergency kits. She has flashlights and batteries in every corner of the house, bottles of water, and whatever other supplies she deems necessary, but I don't think she has a condensed supply of food like this...so...shhh, don't tell her!Labels: Food and recipes, The Absurd
Like You Didn't Already Know This
Good grief! I just turned on the 7:00 am news shows (all of them, in rotation, searching for our local weather report for the day) and every. single. one. of them was busy covering the Cambridge Police vs. Professor Gates vs. President Obama story. And not just a little news blip either, but all of them were going on and on for a good 10 minutes (I know this because I continued to flip between them for 10 minutes) of interviews and commentary about racial profiling, and the President's use of the word "stupidly."
The next story, covered in less than one minute and with no detail whatsoever was a dust up of at least 44 people including mayors, rabbis and other public officials arrested for accepting bribes, laundering 10s of millions of dollars and brokering human kidneys (in New Jersey and New York). Now, maybe this isn't news either unless you live in NJ or NY but it sure makes for a more interesting story than the former.
I've found the best "news" coverage is offered over on E! At least, they don't pretend to offer any real news.
Labels: The Absurd
Chorus: May Result in Injury or Death
It is amazing how frustratingly difficult the "simple" operation of installing a car seat (excuse me, "child restraint") has become. Last night, I spent the better part of 2 hours reading (yes, I did) the instructions (i.e. WARNINGS, WARNINGS, WARNINGS) and working on the actual installation. Trouble is, the actual
install instructions were surprisingly missing from the 39 pages of warnings that were repeated over and over throughout the booklet. The simplest of tasks, like "How to Adjust the Height of the Shoulder Straps" and "How to Attach the Headrest to the Carseat" were nowhere to be found. Like most things mechanical, I became frustrated to the point that I was ready to return the thing to Babies R Us and go
restraintless. But then, there's Julian's life at stake, and according to the "instruction" booklet, I could spend the rest of my life in jail if I did what my parents did and let him run free in the back seat. My brother and I used to play hide-and-seek in the back of the station wagon which was outfitted with lots of hiding places for the small and agile...every once in awhile, we had to "pull over RIGHT NOW(!) and let you out HERE(!)" because we got a little loud. But then, my parents didn't have to go through the agony of installing child restraints in their car.
And since when has our garage become the habitat for CRAWDADS (crayfish, crawfish, baby lobsters, nasty insects, whatever)?! I swear, there was a 4 inch long crawdad crawling around a corner of the garage as I worked on this project. Sometimes, life in the country stinks a little bit.
At last, the bigger, better child restraint appears to be installed (possibly correctly) and we're going for a test ride to the park today, to go swinging! June Bug, surely you know how much I love you!
Labels: Baby Spartacus, The Absurd
What Is This?!
What in the world is this thing that the dog has dropped at my door?! It appears to have a foot, and maybe a beak. I'm telling you...6 months! I don't think Blue has but 6 months to live.
Labels: The Absurd, The Animals
Peep Eyes
Happy Spring! To celebrate, I bought my first box of Peeps of the season. Orange is the new pink! I picked orange. I've never had orange peeps before. I hope they're just as good as the pink ones. I prefer the chicks over the bunnies because I think there's more surface area to deliver more of the sugary coating, and they are more fun to eat after they've hardened for a week or so in the open air (or the freezer if you're in a hurry, as I am). Never mind that these little babies may be the most toxic of all the food groups, surpassing even Pop Tarts. In my research a few years back to determine just how toxic they may be, I discovered
this website. My favorite part of all was the
solubility testing in which they concluded that, "Given enough time, the proper resources, and access to some really toxic stuff, one can probably dissolve just about anything except Peep eyes." Take the time to read the complete testing process and then dare yourself to sit down with a box of Peeps (like I'm about to do) and eat the whole thing. I dare you. :-)
Labels: Food and recipes, Near-Death Experiences, The Absurd
Divine Comedy, Redux
No, I'm not going to wax on about my current journey through Hell, Purgatory & Paradise (if Oklahoma is as good as they say...hey, we're almost home anyway!). I just want to comment on a recent...um...I don't know what you call this:
During our short stay in San Francisco, we strolled into a few art galleries along the Wharf (near Ghiradelli Square). One was exhibiting the prints of Salvador Dali that illustrate the "greatest Italian work of poetry,"
Dante's Divine Comedy. I don't fashion myself a guru of poetry by any stretch of the imagination (or art for that matter...just ask
Sisiggy ;-), but I do have a college education and would think that I should at least be familiar with the title, if not the concept of Divine Comedy. Alas, I was clueless. If I were playing a game of Trivia, I would have said it was a Woody Allen movie. I mean, I've heard of Dante's Inferno, but I thought that
was the poem. I didn't realize that was just a part of the bigger whole. As you can tell, I've read none of it.
Anyway.
In addition to being ignorant about Dante, I've really only ever known one of Salvador Dali's paintings,
The Persistence of Memory (though I could not have told you what this painting was called). What I discovered in the gallery was that I really like some of Dali's work. Specifically, I really liked
his depictions of the Divine Comedy. They were ethereal and beautiful. In fact, I came dangerously close to buying one when I learned that the prices were not prohibitive. But alas, I do not need such a thing, especially given that I do not even know the history of either artist, but it did give me pause and cause to do a bit of googling.
Fast forward to today (traversing OK on I-40, the very image of Paradise) and I'm reading a book given to me by a friend that "I must read" (I'm sure this had to be on Oprah's Book Club list), entitled Eat, Pray, Love which is both a travelogue (I
love travelogues) and a story of one woman's journey to Italy (to eat...she's "double majoring in speaking (Italian), and eating - with a concentration in gelato"...heh :-), to India (to pray), and to Indonesia (to find the balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence). I'm still in Italy, and reading about why it is that she and so many others travel to Italy simply to learn the language which she describes as "perfectly ordained to express human emotions." By her description and research, the Italian language as spoken today was chosen by a group of intellectuals in the 16th century who decided that there needed to be one dialect chosen to be the national language, and they chose the most beautiful dialect they could find which was in 14th century Florence and which derived from the (you guessed it) "great" Florentine poet, Dante. Specifically, it was the language he used in Divine Comedy, the language of the people on the streets shaped in what he called "il dolce stil nuovo" ("sweet new style").
And therein, ensued another lesson (however brief) about Dante's Divine Comedy about which I previously knew nothing.
Labels: Art, The Absurd, Theology
How To Use A Cup
This manual is 4 pages long. No joke. And in English, French and Spanish, for good measure.
This reminds me...on my recent flight to CA, I read
this great article about manuals in the Southwest magazine, written by our very own
James Lileks. Hilarious.
Labels: The Absurd
On This and That
On the debates: do we really ever learn anything new about the candidates by watching them "debate" (debate is in quotes because it seems nobody ever really answers/debates the questions, choosing instead to talk from a script they have rehearsed beforehand regardless of the questions)?
On text messaging: when a client arranges a meeting with you and is sitting in your office discussing tax matters, then picks up his crackberry and asks you if he has spelled "squirrell" correctly, is it any of your business to whom or about what they are writing?
On redundancy: I love my new upright bagless self-propelled vacuum cleaner, but when I went to dump the contents of the cannister (which indicated my previous vacuum was alarmingly deficient in the job of sucking up dirt if the volume of dirt, lint, hair and birdseed now in the cannister was any indication at all), dirt and debris fell all over the kitchen floor, requiring that I reassemble the vacuum in order to suck up that which had already been sucked up once. And now, I imagine my stats will increase dramatically based on this paragraph alone.
On death and dying: the goldfish, the one that
almost died on April 15th, is dead. My daughter made me feel especially bad when she told me she bought it as a feeder fish when she was in the 5th grade (I took over care and feeding when she moved out last year). That would make the fish about 9 years old. She never had a name which surely proves that goldfish live longer when you don't name them. My husband, bless his soul, offered to cremate her...on the grill. I'm sure this would be acceptable in some parts of the world, but not in my house. We will conduct a proper memorial service and bury her in the back yard, in this heart shaped casket (it's about 8 inches wide for a little perspective):
Rest in PeaceAnd last (and least), on NASCAR: we're going to the races tomorrow. yippee.
Labels: Flora and fauna, In Memorium, NASCAR, The Absurd, The Animals
Mmmm...Fish Bait
Because
one person thought this was funny and because I have nothing else to share, I will posit my thoughts on eating fish bait here on my blog, for posterity. Because one never knows when one's memory will disappear forever and then, where will these stories go?
When Sissigy wrote
a nice post about her latest culinary failure (and from what I have read, I believe this is a rare occurrence in her house of Domestic Derring Do), it brought up one of those memories that in hindsight is very funny, but in the moment, it is just another moment in your daily life. I find that it is very hard for me to post daily because to do so becomes very boring, for me and everyone else..."today, I woke up, made coffee, took a shower and went to work. And then I came home. And all moments in between were exactly like every other day...busy. And then I went to bed."
I don't usually find myself thinking things like this,
as they unfold...
Today, this guy cooked fish bait for dinner. It was delicious. I think I'll marry him.
No. It wasn't like that at the time.
At the time, I was so enchanted with his cooking skillz that it never even dawned on me that, hey! We're eating FISH BAIT! And I wasn't quite yet of the opinion that we would one day get married.
Here's the thing. We lived in California at the time, and we lived on an extremely tight budget, like $100/month for groceries. Something like that. And my husband liked to fish, so there were many occasions when we grilled or fried fish for dinner, mostly for free, except for the cost of bait. And in CA, one of the things he liked to fish with, when he couldn't find the most grotesque
sea centipedes on the beach (no, we've never eaten those, although...give us time...we've got more boat repairs ahead) was
squid. Salt water fish love squid. He bought it at the deep sea fishing outfitter's and kept it in the freezer. Back in that day, squid was still kind of a rare menu offering at seafood restaurants, so it was still really cheap, especially when you bought it as bait. In Croatia, where my husband is from, squid has been on the menu for eons and it is a specialty along the coast where he lived. So, one day, when faced with the choice of fish bait or nothing, he pulled the fish bait out of the freezer, thawed it, and sauteed it (whole, tubes and tentacles all) in a sauce consisting mostly of
Chinese Oyster Sauce, and some chopped vegetables. He served it over rice, and it was delicious.
Since then, we (
he, much more than me) have eaten sea urchins, straight off the boats and crabs, straight off the beach. So to order sushi in a restaurant is a very tame experience.
It is the good chef who can turn fish bait into a gourmet dinner. It's been a while since we've had fish bait for dinner, but when I reminded him of it last night, he laughed and said we need to go to the Chinese market and get some stuff. A trip to the Chinese market is like a trip to Disneyland for him. In the right light, he even looks Chinese. I'll let you know what he cooks up. 8-}
Labels: Food and recipes, The Absurd
Elementary, My Dear
I was going to remove the Blog Reading Level widget from my sidebar because I was becoming increasingly annoyed with its presence. But before wiping it out completely, I decided to check in and see if my more frequent postings had done anything to increase my reading level. And the answer is...a resounding "no." In fact, now it registers at the Elementary School level. *beaming with pride*
Labels: The Absurd
Random Thuursday
Because I had nothing substantive to say yesterday, I've made note of a few random thoughts from the drive in to work...
LOST, the television phenomenon that has swept the nation (without me!) - I have finally succumbed to the teevee. Well, I watched the special "Looking Glass" episode of LOST anyway, and I loved the snarky subtitles! And thank heavens for the DVR so I could back-track every time I looked away and missed a critical element in the Cliff Notes. This was a very clever way to catch up the Neanderthals (me) who managed to miss last season (and all seasons leading up to that one). So will this season take place
off the island? I'm not sure I'll stick with it, but I have set the DVR to record tonight's episode should I choose to watch it. We'll see. If there are no subtitles, it will probably lose me pretty quickly.
Britney in the news - again - gasp! This girl has enough problems without the 24/7 spotlight hysteria from the media. I'd go stark raving mad also if that was my life! Brit Brit needs to hole up in a bunker someplace and not come out for a few years. Poor girl. I'm afraid she's not long for this world. Poor kids. They are the real losers in all of this.
Election Predictions - Two days ago, I was all ready to call my prediction for a "
Nick-Osama" race. But following the Florida primary, I'm now predicting a McCain - Clinton race. Not nearly as exciting, in my opinion. And while
Jen claims to be bound by the Heath Act, unable to voice her opinion, I will share mine...I don't think Clinton has a chance against McCain who has gathered a lot of support from across the aisle. He may not be a true-blood Conservative, but if what we're really afraid of is another Clinton administration, I don't think we will have to face that horror. Republicans will band together and vote for anyone who is not Clinton. And Democrats/Independents will be split between the two. So I'm predicting a McCain win in the end. Not that this is who I am voting for in the primaries, mind you, just my prediction, for what that's worth.
Fox News XM Radio ads - too much Viagra! My. Word. Every other commercial is for some form of "male enhancement" or "performance" drug. I've stopped listening to Fox News. It's all blues, all the time, from now on. Exit 74 on your XM dial. Good stuff!
Study shows that all blue-eyed people are related - oh, really? I suppose some government grant money funded this study also. Another reason why I no longer need Fox News in my life. This is what news has boiled down to. Well, this, and all Brit, all the time. It seems that about 10,000 years ago, some mutation took place in the human species resulting in the loss of pigment in the brown eyes which caused them to appear blue instead. And ever since, the recessive blue eyes have been passed down through generations leading researchers to claim that all blue-eyed people are related. Am I missing something here? Because if we push back a few more years, aren't we also saying that we all descended from the original brown eyed folks, possibly the two found sharing an apple in the Garden? And doesn't this make all people related? Not surprising I guess is that the study arose in Germany where, if my history serves me well, it was also once claimed that the Aryan blond-haired, blue-eyed race was superior.
Labels: Insanity, The Absurd
Pajama Detail
Here's a detail from my latest Target purchase. Aren't these the greatest?! Headphone wearing, scarf wearing, elf hat wearing pink flamingos, hanging out at the Airstream trailer park. I just had to have them. Bring on the holidays. I'm ready.
Labels: The Absurd
Sisters
I stumbled once again on this site where, for whatever reason, we can compare ourselves to celebrities. I, for one, can think of almost nothing more edifying than this. <*/sarcasm> So I grabbed the photo that I posted
here, (the one where Eric suggested that I looked like Drew Barrymore, in case you missed his comment) and voila! It turns out we are related. I'm so flattered. And glad to know that it's the ET version of Drew, as opposed to the mini-skirt wearing, tattooed, broken doll-faced Poison Ivy version. And while I see no resemblance whatsoever to Natalie Portman or Katherine Hepburn, who am I to argue with that?! My other photo turned up James Cagney which gave me a real chuckle. As does Luis Figo, the Portugese futballer. Heh.
Labels: Movies, The Absurd
Looking Pretty
So I decided to "have my nails done" if I am going to actually wear the beautiful new ring that my husband gave me for my birthday. I'm not a very high maintenance girl ("girl" being a very loose term...just roll with me, please) and my nails are usually the least of my worries. Hair is another...as you can see from the pictures, my solution to hair problems is usually a hat, and/or a ponytail. Works for me. To make a long boring story short, I am now officially disabled. I told the gal they needed to be "short." They may be short by manicurist standards, but they are definitely getting in my way even as I type this short post. I can't zip my pants. I can't open my Diet Coke. I can't put on my charm bracelet without help. And I can't run my 10-key. All I can do now is work as a hand model. So this is the price of looking pretty. That and the $30 it cost to pay off the person who did this to me. Hrmph.
Labels: The Absurd
I just learned something new today.
A while back,
Eric posted about various State Symbols but what I didn't realize at the time is that my own state of Missouri has more State symbols than any other state. Among them, the official
State Dinosaur. And it's not a politician. ;-)
We also have a
State Grape, a
State Aquatic Animal, and a
State Tree Nut. As opposed to just a
State Nut.
This is why I claim to be
from Kansas (even though I currently reside just across the state line, in Missouri), a much more down-to-earth state (pardon the pun) and home of the
Harney Silt Loam (aka the State Dirt).
Labels: The Absurd
Did You Ever Wonder Why...
From Strangecosmos.com (I've narrowed the list down to just my favorites, and then my most favorite favorites are in bold ;-):
Why isn't phonetic spelled the way it sounds? Why are there interstate highways in Hawaii? Why are there flotation devices under plane seats instead of parachutes?
How does the guy who drives the snowplow get to work in the mornings?
If 7-11 is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, why are there locks on the doors?
If a cow laughed, would milk come out her nose?
If nothing ever sticks to TEFLON(R), how do they make TEFLON(R) stick to the pan?
If you tied buttered toast to the back of a cat and dropped it from a height, what would happen? If you're in a vehicle going the speed of light, what happens when you turn on the headlights? You know how most packages say "Open here". What is the protocol if the package says, "Open somewhere else"?
Why do they put Braille dots on the keypad of the drive-up ATM?
Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways?
Why is brassiere singular and panties plural?
Why is it that when you transport something by car, it's called a shipment, but when you transport something by ship, it's called cargo?
You know that little indestructible black box that is used on planes, why can't they make the whole plane out of the same substance?
Why is it that when you're driving and looking for an address, you turn down the volume on the radio?
These sound like Steven Wright questions, don't they?
Labels: The Absurd
Speaking of Dogs
Today's top story...
When frogs become dogs (or
dogues, as
Foo might call them)
(story via
Hillbilly, Please, via
Darko, who has apparently locked himself in a dark room and refuses to come out and play until the tushery and agraphia wear off)
Aside from the especially humorous possibilities that
Jane points out, of being the Official Frogwatch Coordinator for your local homeowner's association, or your office for that matter, I liked the fact that this poor thing was captured during a
raid on a pond! This sounds like a job for
Brian, who is currently the top candidate for Molewatch Coordinator.
Oh, and by the way, that book Jane mentions,
In A Sunburned Country, another one of my favorites, by Bill Bryson, is well worth the read. Absolutely, side splittingly funny.
Labels: Books, Flora and fauna, The Absurd
Your Dream Car?
Rachel has posted
our dream cars (if you're a commenter over at her place go check it out). And if you're not but still want to know what your dream car is, you'll have to
ask her, because I couldn't find a magic link for this scientific study.
This reminds me of a cute "From the Mouths of Babes" story. Rachel absolutely nailed the car of my youthful dreams. One of my parents' friends drove one of those 12-cylinder Jaguars that looks like...well, the front end is very long and it's the definitive British sports car and I thought it was very cool. I've outgrown my affinity for anything that is overtly showy
. Ask my family and they will tell you that I am the ultimate
bore when it comes to "bling."
So once upon a time, we pulled into our local historic downtown square to go to our favorite ice cream parlor. We had to navigate our way through a Corvette car show to get to the ice cream. As we were trying to find parking, I let out a comment that would come back to bite me (as comments made in the company of children are wont to do). "Look at all these Corvettes. I don't like Corvettes very much. They're so phallic," said I, the wise one. Not surprisingly, the next question was "what does phallic mean?" "Um, well, it's like a man's private part; you see how the shape of the front of the Corvettes looks like that? Men who drive Corvettes are just showing off," I said, without any evidence whatsoever to back up this claim (and to any of my readers who happen to drive a Corvette, I apologize, but really,
what are you thinking?!) And there was silence in the back seat of the car for a minute. We parked the car and started walking through the street full of cars. The cars and their owners were in full preening mode, feathers up. We were bumping shoulders with their owners when the youngest daughter (the one with the very loud made-for-theatre voice) asked, "WHAT WAS THAT WORD AGAIN? WAS IT PHALLIC OR PHALLIS?"
Groan. Another lesson learned on the front lines of parenting. 8-}
Labels: Parenting, The Absurd
No Guns?!
This was the new sign on the door today when I arrived at the office. Okay, not really. It was really more like
this. Had they consulted me, it would have looked more like
this. But as usual, they did not ask my opinion.
Regardless, it's hard to imagine that a sign was really necessary. I mean, it's an accounting office. C'mon. We're a peaceful people.
We also got this email announcement to further explain (and there was laughter throughout cubicledom):
"A law was passed in Kansas on July 1, 2006 that allows citizens to carry concealed weapons. The issuance of permits to carry weapons begins in January 2007.
Please be advised that XYZ Co. prohibits the carrying of concealed weapons while on XYZ Co. property and while engaged in employment duties. We ask for your cooperation in preserving the values of XYZ Co. to provide a safe and professional work environment. Please review the pertinent XYZ Co. polices on Workplace Violence and Unacceptable Activities."
I think what struck the staff as so funny (literally, you could hear folks laughing throughout the office as soon as they opened this email) is the fact that we've only just begun tax season. Are they really worried we're going to go ballistic in January? Not likely. April? Load up the bazookas.
Well, that, and...we have a
policy on "workplace violence and unacceptable activities?" Does anyone really need to look in the employee handbook to find out if a company tolerates workplace violence and unacceptable activities or not? If someone is inclined to commit such acts, are they really the sort who is likely to consult the employee handbook first? This is why I'm not in the Human Resources department.
Labels: The Absurd
Hey, I Have Something Important To Say!
Ahem.
I forgot what it was. 8-}
Have you ever been in a meeting where you felt not a single word you said mattered? No one is listening to you? You offer up a solution to a problem and the discussion about how to solve the problem just goes on indefinitely? You know your solution will work, but nobody can hear you? You have experience with what they are talking about, but nobody cares?
These are the days you go to bed at night and wonder why God placed you in that place at that time. What in the world were you supposed to be doing?? I can only assume that I was supposed to be learning
something by listening to
them, but honestly? All I learned was that it's important to be a good listener, i.e. what it feels like not to be listened
to (and I know that ends with a preposition, but I'm not sure what to do about it). And honestly? Okay, honestly, maybe I'm not always a good listener. But I try.
In today's meeting (not for work but for a charitable board I sit on...I'm actually the Treasurer and the issues we were discussing involved money, the taking in of money, the counting of money, the internal control related to money, something about which I'm supposed to be knowledgeable and for which I'm supposed to be responsible), here are some things I thought about doing (but would never actually do in real life) to get their attention:
1) Get up and walk out, slamming the door and leaving a trail of ditritus in my wake (you know, like stuff that might fall out of my purse, girl things and such)
2) Throw my pencil across the room and scream "Hey, I have something important to say!" (I actually had a client throw a pencil across the room once...nobody got hurt, but that was not a very pleasant moment)
3) Push myself away from the table, close my notebook and refuse to talk even if a question was posed directly to me, maybe pull the New Testament out of my purse (amongst a group who does not read the NT) and start reading, completely disengaging myself mentally but not physically
4) Pull out my cell phone and start talking loudly to a friend, pretending to place bets on horse races, making shsshing noises and motioning with my finger for them to wait for me, to indicate this is a very important call I need to make but I'll be just a minute.
5) Pull out my laptop and start blogging, laughing at the incredibly witty things you all have to say that are way more fun than what I had to listen to in there.
There, I'm glad I got that off my chest. I'm sorry you had to see all that. 8-}
Meetings. *sigh*
Labels: The Absurd, Toil and trouble
