CluePhone

Well, I can name family and friends right off the bat! My aunt Shelle was just here to visit, and it was nothing short of fabulous. We had a party and everything, at the loft. Nerves were a’janglin! (Mostly mine.) Unfortunately, Shelle ended up working most of the time. Not that I wasn’t contributing. I was! By putting together a table (that she had bought for me) and subsequently having two of the glass panels crash to the floor and shatter. Now, you might be saying that that doesn’t sound like a favorite thing at all. And you’d be right. My favorite thing is our reactions to the situation, and to each other. When you can laugh like mad people over the fact that one of you (Shelle) is sweeping up a giant pile of glass from the bathroom floor, for the SECOND TIME, on the day of “her” party, you have to have a sense of humor. Did I mention that it was her birthday?

If I had a fireplace, I’m sure she would have been cleaning the cinders out of it.

Another thing that I love is my mom’s Chef-Boy-R-Dee pizza. The kind where you add your own toppings. My best friend used to worm her way into eating over at our house when she knew we were having that. You’d take a square-shaped piece of pizza, and it would kind of droop in your hand. (Now I’m hungry!) And the best part of all? Either left-over tavern meat or green olives as toppings. With both? Swoon!!!

And lastly (well, not really lastly, I’m just tired of composing this) is watching my favorite moments from TV / Movies over, and over, and over. My poor friends and family. It’s amazing that they still associate with me!

(I have a stuffed goat that sings “The Lonely Goatherd” from The Sound of Music. It was a gift. Fear me.)

~~High on a hill sat a lonely goatherd~~ ~~Lay-Oh-Eee-Lay-Oh-Lay-Eeee-Ohhhh~~~

So, I’m watching the movie Earthquake and we have…. an earthquake. Let’s just say I’m not going to be watching Twister or Volcano anytime soon.

And can I just comment on the cheesiness of this movie? Apparently, all the men had to have on very high-waisted slacks, and then after the disaster, you might just discover an adorable, abandoned puppy nicely tucked into evenly cut strips of newspaper. Under a crumpled building. It could HAPPEN! People who tend to abandon puppies usually make sure they have a comfy, nicely lined bed.

I also love the creepy, girl-obsessed guy who likes to play the role of a soldier. Like, even if his act was so convincing, how in the HELL did he get in command of some rescue unit after all the chaos? Maybe he had the papers all ready, and was all “I was away on a Top Secret Mission. And that’s why you’ve never met me. But I’m in charge.” Plus, he’s wearing a wig. Is that supposed to be a disguise? Or just something creepy he does?

Okay, we just had another “aftershock” (in the movie) which decimated many of the people standing below the cracked and could-crumble-at-any-moment skyscraper. I’d do that too, run outside and stand near a very visibly impaired skyscraper.. Maybe with a downed power line nearby. If you’re going to be in disaster, you might as well make it a bit more exciting.

If you’re like me, you have those moments where you have a great idea, and you’re thinking to yourself “Hey, this would be something people would like if I blogged about it” Then, by the time you get your word processing program open, you have totally forgotten what they hell you were so previously verbose about. Yeah, thus this blog. Of nothingness. Or, close to it. But there was SOMETHING there, just a nano-second ago. This is your (my) cue to start thinking… “Hmmm, Olympics? No. Dixie Chicks? No. The latest Crate & Barrel catalog? No. I like pie. Well, yeah, but… no. WHAT THE HELL WAS MY FANTASTIC IDEA TWO SECONDS AGO?!?!” It’ll probably come to me at about 3:34 a.m., just after I’ve managed to fall asleep. Without a writing instrument and pad nearby. It’s so hard being a genius. And a better driver than 94% of the population. I rarely even talk on my hands-free cell phone while driving, and that’s not a smug look on my face right now. I usually look this way. Unless I’m shooting pool, because then I am required to stick out my tongue from the corner of my mouth. What were we talking about? Eight ball, corner pocket!” Hey that reminds me of something……   dang.

(also known as “The Shudder”)

We all have those things we fear. Whether it be spiders (“Hi mom and Twisty!”), snakes (“Yo, Grandma T!”) or sandals with socks. (Hey, umm… most of us.)

For me, it’s something else. And no, we’re not talking about a giant plate of lima beans. Although that’s probably a close second. (Those of you that are delicate, or squeamish about things might not want to read on. Heh.)

Parasites. There, I’ve said it. Any kind of parasite, where some creature latches on to you and starts to SUCK YOUR BLOOD is so many different kinds of wrong. I think my fear of parasites may have started when I read “On The Banks of Plum Creek” and they lured Nellie into the leach-infested section of the creek. Even though she TOTALLY deserved it, I was like, “Okay, that’s pure hell.”

I’ll never forget the time we had been up at the lake, and my aunt had driven us kids back to our house. I was taking a shower, and glanced over to my shoulder. There was a TICK, just happily sucking away my life force. I had to finish my shower, growing steadily dizzier. (That may have been my mind working overtime. We’ll never know.) I hurriedly dressed and went out to show my aunt this Horror, this Abomination. She was calm, although she could have just been putting on a brave face for my life-threatening predicament. She tipped a bottle of rubbing alcohol over the tick, and it released itself from its deadly grip.

And in the Olden Days, they used to use leaches, as part of their “medical technique.” If I were living then, and was approached with a leach, I would have been all, “No, no, sire doctor. I’m feeling just fine now. I don’t even think that’s gout, really. I must have banged my leg against something. Hand me that giant turkey drumstick!”

There could still be tick parts, like tubules or something, floating around in my system. Just waiting…. Waiting for the day.

{{shudder}}

My friend called me the other night, and I was all “Hey, what’s up with you?” He replied, “Roz is with Gigi now, I had to have her put down.” Mixing the joy of hearing from a friend along with this incredible loss almost left me speechless. Then I remembered, when I had to have Gigi put to sleep, and I just needed friends to hear me out. I hope I did that for my friend, as well.

Roz was a great dog. She was so loving and gentle, after you first approached the front door. She’d bark like you were trying to burglarize the house, until you actually got inside. Then, it was all tail-wagging and doggie kisses. She was named after a character on “L.A. Law,” the one who fell down an elevator shaft. (And, heee!) She was also nicknamed “The World’s Largest Sheltie” because she was pretty much regular collie size. She also put up with suddenly having a “younger brother-dog” when Art came onto the scene. Art is a big galoot, and loved to lick Roz’s fur. So much, that she’d end up all matted. If ever there was a “Dear Lord!” look on an animal’s face, it was on hers when Art was licking/bothering her.

Knowing how much I miss her, I can’t imagine what my friend is going through. Roz was 15, though, so she had a good life.

As my friend says, she’s probably catching a squirrel (or eighteen) in Heaven right now.

(The picture is of me and Roz, in Chicago.)

As some of you may or may not know, we now have a “hands-free only” cell phone law in place for when you are driving your vehicle here in California. It went into effect on June 31st. This, to me, is like a gift from baby Jesus. With smiley faces. My commute to and from work is 25 miles, each way. And it’s all on the freeway. You may think you can drive just as well while chatting on your cell phone about your new haircut, the color you’d like to paint your bathroom, or how the 49ers are doing, but you’d be wrong. It never fails, you’re driving down the freeway and suddenly there is somebody in the 2nd lane from the left, going about 50 mph. Inevitably, they are either elderly, or talking on their cell phone. Hopefully not both. Personally, I do my absolute best NOT to be talking on my cell phone while driving, because although I can multitask with the best of them, “driving” is not one of the skills that fit into that category for me. Plus, I drive a manual six speed. The couple of times I did talk on the cell while driving, I would occasionally have to holler “Hang on, I have to shift” and then I’d throw the phone on the passenger seat.

Before our big road trip, I had a stereo upgrade installed, including a bluetooth device that displays the call on my stereo and works like a charm. The sound comes through the speakers, the stereo mutes itself, YAY gadgets! (Well, it works like a charm for ME. Not so much for the people on the other end of the call.)

Anyway, I have been very pleasantly surprised with the decrease in the number of idiots still holding the phone up to their ears. So, the point of this whole story? Remember that funny picture that was circulating awhile ago, about the “Cheap Version” of a hands-free device, with the guy and a cell phone taped to his head? Yeah, well, I’m on my way to work, stopped at a stoplight. I look over, and the guy in the car next to me has his cell phone RUBBER-BANDED to his head. And he’s chatting away. I just about died. Hey, it’s hands free, right?

Bully for him!

I had a really fun 4th of July, at my friend’s house. She always has an awesome barbeque with fun friends and great food. When it was time to go, I made my first trip to the car and noticed how very dark it was outside. Dark as Pitch, it was. Her development doesn’t have any streetlights. Very nice for the ambiance, not so much for the actual moving about. As I was returning to the house, I forgot that they also don’t have sidewalks, and rammed my foot into a curb something fierce. I went down. It’s very scary to be falling and not know what you are about to fall on, except for maybe that curb to the right. I got up, seemingly, mostly unscathed. As I hobbled back to the house, I realized that my big left toe was hurting something fierce. (In hindsight, I totally had second thoughts about wearing open-toe sandals before I went.) Then I felt the blood. Damn. So, I hobbled back to the car and got a napkin to wrap my toe with, before getting the last load from my friend’s house. She has white carpeting and everything. I don’t think the nail is going to fall off, although I did crack it about a half-inch down. Even with the gauze and bandages, I’ve wrecked two pairs of socks. (Don’t worry, it’s not bleeding anymore. Really.)

The fireworks I felt at the end were not enjoyable, at all.

So, I ended up going to NASCAR up in Sonoma the other weekend. I had no intentions of going, as the whole “racing” thing has never meant that much to me. But my friend called, and there was a VIP ticket that someone couldn’t use. This meant getting my tired-ass to the Walnut Creek BART station parking lot at 6:30 am. On a SUNDAY. Plus, we had been having an incredible heat wave. The “Con” list was growing. In the end, I decided to go. And I’m glad I did! They were VIP tickets, after all. We had access to a hospitality tent and everything. We even had two of the drivers come to our tent to talk, which was awesome.

[Edited to add]
I guess I really didn’t talk that much about NASCAR itself, so here we go. It was more fun than I imagined it would be. As my co-worker (who’s also not into NASCAR) said, “It’s like one big, giant left-hand turn.” That may be true usually, but at Infineon it’s a Road Track, or whatever the official term is. Plus, they drive clockwise. For some reason that seemed odd to me. Anyway, we were rooting for Montoya (he’s a cute little fella) but he got messed up at about lap ~70. At least he made it back into the top 10! Our official seats were on turn 2, which I understand is a great place to be. You see a lot of passing, etc. on that turn. Another thing I learned was how hot it got inside the race car itself. Apparently, with all their gear and stuff, it can be pretty uncomfortable. For 110 laps!!! The only thing that is a slight drawback about seeing it live is, sometimes things happen where you can’t see them happening. (Like when Montoya got ROBBED on that turn!) Bottom line, it was awesome, which I’ve probably already said.

A bit about the weather I’ve experienced lately. During our Road Trip, we had intense wind at our first impulse stop, which we dubbed the giant pit. It was a historic site of an asteroid impact, (that was a link, sorry, I don’t have the patience to try to figure out how to underline it. I just went with Italics & Bold, since there were buttons and everything) and it was VERY windy. There were repeated instructions to “Hold onto the rails. If you fall in, we can’t come get you.” It was still fun, interesting, and totally the reason for doing a US road trip. Plus, they trained NASA astronauts there, because it’s so much like the moon!

Then, we went to sunny Santa Fe, where we got a bit too much sun. On from there up through Colorado, across Nebraska, and up to South Dakota. While in SD, we had a tornado “scare,” since those of us familiar with this type of weather know that the broadcast news has to exaggerate it. (Poor Lisa. Me, mom and stepdad were all “Well, let’s go meet your sister and her friends.” Lisa was like, “Oooookay, I guess you guys know what you’re doing.” They said that it was a warning intil 8:00”)
I just said, “We’ll just wait till eight. It’s only quarter-til.”

On to the Black Hills, but the next major weather change was the Grand Tetons / Jackson Hole / Yellowstone. It snowed, rained, and then snowed again HARD while we were arriving and there. Driving. (We cursed a lot at the other tourists, in 4WD SUV’s, stopped on an INCLINE because it was snowing.) We made it, but they closed the road after us for 4 ½ hours.

Now, I’m back home in the Bay Area. People, we have had a heat wave like you wouldn’t believe. When I got back home to the loft this evening, it was 91.5 degrees F. It’s now crept up to 92.6. I don’t have AC. So, although the title of the blog is misleading, I am not a Green Witch from the West, and I would totally appreciate a bucket of water being thrown on me, at this point. Screw the ruby slippers. I got awesome cowboy boots in Jackson Hole! But not the “ruby” pair (they were Black Cherry) because they didn’t have them in my size.