Category: Uncategorized (Page 4 of 114)

In NYC, very uneventful (though long) travel day. We had dinner at Patsy’s, which wasn’t the restaurant my boss thought we were going to, but, oddly enough, he’d also been there before. The food & service was very good; the umpteen-mirrored staircase is enough to give a gal vertigo, especially after a Bombay Sapphire on the rocks!

Then, because one of our travelers had never been to NYC before, we decided to make the trek to Times Square – which would have been fine, had this traveler pulled her coat out of her suitcase, or at least had a random Clapotis to drape around her head/neck. It may have been 70′ in KC today, but it was Dayum Brisque tonight in midtown Manhattan! I have a sore throat to boot, so I finally peeled off from our crew and parked myself in a Starbucks, so they could still go see the blinking lights, and enjoyed an apple chai while catching up on the ‘net with my mo-bile.

I’d forgotten a book at home, but fortunately, had a book stashed at work that I hadn’t read yet: In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote. Certainly a classic, and two winters ago, I was riveted by the movie version with Phillip Seymour Hoffman (of course, most everything he does is riveting to me.) Anyway, I am utterly enthralled. This book is written so well, to even try to describe it feels like I’m automatically doing it a disservice.  You know, as I’m in one of the biggest cities in the world, and everything’s moving at this accelerated pace – people are walking along, texting, plugged in, a constant barrage of instant information, incoming and outgoing, I just am struck by how FAST it all goes. How fast we expect everything to happen, to communicate. And that is not this book. In the first 20 pages or so, I caught myself wanting to skim, to gather the main nuggets of data, give me the Tweets here, Tru. But I forced myself not to, and slowly that desire to push through faster gave way to sinking deeply into the text. Reading the minutae of descriptors, how the post office in town was drafty through the roof, the boxes didn’t shut, and so on he goes, page after page, painting this utterly detailed, gorgeous account of a terrible, horrible murder of a family and the men who did it.

I’m as guilty of it as anyone, hurtling headlong into the tunnel, running the race, thinking a mile a minute, chasing the next project and to-do list action item, plurking and twittering more than I write paragraphs. But the excrutiatingly beautiful detail falls away, and while you don’t always need it to understand what is happening, you realize how much it adds to the experience when you re-encounter it. It’s an inspiring read, and I want to read the rest of his work, because I sense I have utterly missed out on something fantastic and engaging.

Now it’s time to head to bed – tomorrow will be filled with exciting, energetic meetings, and another long journey home. Which is kind of nice, because it means more time with my book. (though now my knitting is suffering!)

See you in a day or so!

Sorry peeps. I would write about what’s going on right now, but seriously, nobody wants or needs to read it. I came down with some from of stomach virus late Saturday night & it’s been good times ever since. I’ll be back soon, and I want to tell y’all about the fun knitting retreat at The Elms, as well as the progress my p.i. friend is making on the zombie case!

standing in line for two hours to vote…….compared to the hours you spent to get here.

Mr. President, First Lady. Congratulations.

Polly had a multitude of toys. Soft toys that she loved, with squeakers in them. Which in turn led to her having a bit of a CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP effect when doing actual retriever work. So when Tripper happened along into our lives, we put all the softy toys up, to avoid repeating the behavior.

Watching him grow up (or not grow up, as the case may be) has been entertaining. He still loves ice cubes, which is that phase they grow out of, eventually, and I secretly love it so. He charges in at the sound of a tray of ice being cracked (yes, we are old-school) and sits on his butt with his ears up and eyes huge, waiting for you to toss him a cube.  He is the most persistently stubborn and into-things-he-shouldn’t-be  dog I’ve had; he is not content to chew on bones, but goes in search of tissues, toilet paper, trash, and has a peculiar penchant for Q-tips. They don’t even have to be used to be appealing to him; the other night he went into James’ duffle bag & ate half a travel-sized container of them. I didn’t know the container was only half-full until the next morning, and at the rate Tripper’d been going, he seemed fine.  All I could say was (shrug) “Good thing they’re made of paper!” Let him outside and you can expect to see any number of things go from their original state to shredded or destroyed. Plastic flower pots. Milk jugs we’ve saved for watering. Large piece of cardboard from a label. A random goose decoy head.

One of the things Polly used to do that cracked me up was her work in  Toy Management and Distribution. She was really trying to get fast-tracked to be promoted in the industry, as she would race up and down the stairs to move various toys to rooms around the house. Every morning this happened. But then Tripper came along, the toy supplies dried up and she had to give up that career path.

James has a door to his workshop that’s by the greenhouse, and since it can be blown open (and won’t return to shut itself), he attached a bungee cord to it so it will stay shut unless you push it open. And this door? Is Tripper’s favorite thing to do. He LOVES to open it with his head and prance through, sometimes at full-tilt speed. When Suzy does it? She just nudges it open and walks on through. But Tripper goes through with a BANG and I’ve taken to saying any number of phrases when I see it happen. “Busy day, people, all sorts of meetings, please, take a message, I’ll be back after lunch, I’ve GOTTA GO.” Somehow in my mind, he’s the head of security at the casino, and he just saw something on the cameras that concerned him and he’s headed out to the tables to investigate before another dollar is lost.

I’ve got to find him a little green visor.

And yes, I’ve been very busy myself. Sorry for the quietude. I have two good-sized projects to get through & then, hopefully, things will mellow out a bit. Which is the same thing I’m hoping for in Tripper. :)

I feel like Earl, I’ve got a big ol’ list going. I’m taking tomorrow (almost today) today yesterday off, and originally had planned for the day to be filled with nothing. Except a couple hours at a local day spa. Unfortunately, said day spa? Had a water line break and they are delaying their re-opening by at least another week, so all appointments are canceled. Disappointed doesn’t even cover it. So instead, I thought I’d seize the day & get stuff done. We’ll see how that goes. I made a list, I’m going to intersperse doing things on it with just enjoying the r&r, and clearing off the DVR. I’ve gotten whipped into a political frenzy all over again and I need to take a break from it, because I get really riled up. I know, your imaginations just had to stretch so far on that one.

Obviously, it’s taken me some time to even get this written, since I started it Thursday night & it’s now Saturday midday!  I did get some things crossed off my list, but my main project is still in-progress, filling the latest Loopy Ewe order for more DPN holders. This will be the last of the monsters, it seems – I’d gotten them on clearance a couple of times, and now they’re nowhere to be found. However, Sheri did add monkeys to the order, so they may be the new monster. :) The devil duckies will certainly continue to be a staple. My fingers are sore from all the elastic stringing, and I need to print off more labels & cut them up.

In other news, I had THE most phenomenal experience at Bath & Body Works, the same place I witnessed a near race war last year (I knew, just KNEW, I’d blogged about something wonky there last Thanksgiving).  I’m not linking because I’m lazy and it’s not terribly pertinent to the story. It turns out, I was being helped by the store manager, but she had the grand idea to allow me to split my purchases up into smaller purchases, so i could get a proffered free item (which I was buying multiples of) more than once. For sake of storytelling, let’s say it’s a tube of lotion.  If you spend $15, the lotion is free. (And it puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again!) Well, I wanted lots of lotion, and lots of presents and lots of antibacterial soap. So she broke my purchases up into smaller groups, and I ended up having, um, quite a few transactions! I was clever enough to use several charge cards, as I figured any credit card company seeing multiple, under-$20 purchases would immediately put my card on lockdown. Add to all of this an additional 15% off with my Back in the Swing card. I sent an email last night to B&BW corporate because she was truly that great. However, I am on the verge of OD’ing on “Creamy Nutmeg Home Fragrance.” Actually, anything that can obscure the scent of Tripper’s farts is ok in my book…. he’s lethal today.

Now I’m trying to find a new skin for my Firefox, because whatever in hell I’ve done to the fonts on this computer are totally fubarred. They are legible, but they look kind of fuzzy and make me feel like I used to before I had Lasik. Only now if I squint, the type makes me feel drunk, instead of becoming clearer. GAH. I just tried to download one and it’s yelling at me that the file is corrupt. Drunk, angry stupid computer.  Did you know there’s a “Pimpzilla” theme? And as entranced as I can get by all the shiny fun images and icons and buttons, there’s this cranky 92-year old in my head that’s barking, “Just give me the damn thing so I CAN SEE IT!” I don’t want to have to decipher what a curved bumblebee actually means in my fucking toolbar! Oh Joy. I just refreshed & have “Camifox” installed, and I can see that this is an overall Windows setting I fubarred, not FF. FUCK. You know, it’s not the major stuff that melts the glue in our seams, it’s the small, higgledy-piggledy stuff, the little pieces that are like midges or gnats, circling and moving just out of range while we flail wildly, appearing to the casual observer that we’ve completely gone off our rockers and are channeling Hunter S. Thompson on a mesculine binge.  A quick help search turns up this page, which I immediately notice has a typo, and it only makes me crazier. You’d think Microsoft would figure out “Widows” might be a common screw up, and a search/replace might be a good thing. (let’s insert another crazy yelp right here, shall we? The damned dog is still farting.) OMG, I might have fixed it. It’s not perfect, but it’s not blurry, either.

I might need a nap. Or a drink. Or both. Definitely an oxygen mask. SHEESH, Tripper.

Pictures & whatnot later. I can’t handle much more wrasslin’ right now….

one of my dad’s most favorite songs… though rather drenched in irony, since the man bought himself virtually anything he DID want, and his famous quote was, “It’s better to have, than to want…”

Anyway, that’s my way of saying, “Yes, it would be lovely if I posted pictures of finished knits, or my friend Shelley’s absolutely adorable baby Kara, or the photo of me with the Yarn Harlot from Monday night, or even a post that was remotely interesting, but you aren’t necessarily going to get that today!”

Let’s see – all the photos are on the camera and need to be off-loaded. That’s probably not going to happen for a couple more days. Because then there’s the editing. Cropping, whatever. It takes time. And to quote my beloved 80’s duo, Hall & Oates, “I’m outta time….” Sure, I could skip playing sixteen games of Scramble a night, or stop reading all the bitching on Facebook about the new Packrat (omg, does it ever BLOW CHUNKS. I am keeping with the 80’s lingo, something has to be entertaining here.) I could also do some laundry, I could get some holiday shopping done, yes, I said holiday shopping, because this week is “Back in the Swing” week here in Kansas City, and it’s a pretty cool charity effort – participating shops give you 20% discount, and all the card proceeds go to services for breast cancer survivors here in KC.  But it’s only for a week, and I gotta get to using my card. We did get the discount on our pre-Harlot meal Monday night, which was nice. Hathaway Shoes, you’re in my scope & next on my list!

Plus I’m trying to take Friday off, so my time-space continuum has been short-sheeted! I’m just all very whack-a-mole, which, oddly enough, was used in an article to describe the financial crisis. I’m glad they’re finally boiling it down to terms we can all grasp.

So, I’ll keep plurking, and serving up rather banal, frenetic posts here and there, and then, there’ll be some pictures…and some ranting…. and some deep thoughts…. speaking of – best wishes to my friend Carmen and her trials & tribulations with her mom, we certainly missed her company on Monday. (You know how Dear Abby would always do that “Private to CG in KC” thing? Well, not-so-privately, Carmen, COME HOME. NO MORE RUNNING FOR THE BORDER, and you KNOW what I mean!)

And now, off to whack more moles.