Asradel's Cauldron

"With magic, mother fucker!!"

2011-04-10T19:54:00.000-07:00

Went and saw "Your Highness" this weekend. It was every bit as stupid as it looked on the trailers. And I like me a movie that delivers what it promises on its trailer. Whatever that may be. I like that honesty. This delightful bit nonesense was American Pie meets Dungeons and Dragons and it was AWESOME. My favorite line in the whole movie happens when the handsome prince is about to marry his recently rescued from the tower virgin, and the evil warlock appears in the midst of the festivities and announces his intention to retake the bride to be. Seeing the warlock surrounded by guards and vastly outnumbered, the King asks, "And how do you intend to do that?" The warlock replies, "Magic, mother fucker." I straight stole that graphic from here. Okay, so there was NOTHING redeeming about this flick. I admit it. But I still really enjoyed it. It was fun and stupid. A complete pixie stick of a movie. Sometimes on a Friday night, that's just what you need.

A New Tattoo for a New Me

2011-02-12T03:31:00.000-08:00

So Wednesday, February 9, was a very exciting day for me because I went and got a new tattoo from the same artist who did my last one, the cornucopia which you can view here: Cornucopia Tattoo His name is John Cimperman and he used to be at Lynnwood Tattoo, then it became Colorbomb, then he moved on to Laughing Buddah on Capital Hill in Seattle. I'm glad he's there now. It seems like a much better place for him.

So we got there about 5:00 p.m. The hubby went with me even though we'd had a discussion about how boring it was going to be for him at three hours of hearing the tattoo gun. But he wanted to go and I was glad. He got some good pics there too.

This first one is the come to Jesus moment when that gun first rips into your skin - before the endorphins kick in to save you from the relentless onslaught of pain. I found out AFTER we got started that these fatty side pieces are typically the most painful part! Crap! Now you tell me!

I couldn't sit in that chair like that for very long. Maybe about the first fifteen minutes of what worked out to be a nearly four hour tattoo. By the way, this sucker was custom drawn for my back by John. He's really an incredible artist who, if given his own head, will come out with some gorgeous stuff.

So, because my let was going to sleep, John went in and got a massage table for me to sit on. Since I didn't want to hang my legs over the side and have my knees cut off my circulation, I wound up sitting akimbo and bent way forward. You can see John working on my back putting the color in in the next couple of shots.

After I got the rush of endorphins, it was actually possible to focus on my homework. I had a long chapter to read as we were having a quiz on that material the very next evening. So, I got down to the business of reading.

It was tough to sit there that long in this position, and I know John was tired and ready to go home by the time he was finished, but he was proud of this piece as was (and am) I.

Isn't it beautiful? He does such great work.

And here we are...artist and canvas - both worn out and ready to go home.

Renewed Faith in the Goodness of Human Nature

2010-12-28T15:44:00.000-08:00

Often it doesn't take much, especially this time of year, to warm the heart and make a person think that the world is not that bad a place afterall. Such a thing happened to me today.

Over three years ago I had a business trip to Minneapolis in the dead of winter. I stayed at the Radisson there and in the business suite, where I hung out in the mornings before heading to the office on the skyway, I met a concierge whom I liked and we hit it off. At the time I was reading a Christopher Moore novel. (Love me some Christopher Moore) and she enquired about it and I gave her some details. A couple of days later, I saw her again and had finished the novel and wanted to share it with her. It was a hard-back book so I thought I should probably indicate that I would like to have it returned, and did so by putting my name and address on the inside cover. Well, my husband said that I was silly for "loaning" it to her and that I would never see it again. After several months went by, I conceded that he was likely right and I would have to buy a replacement for the book so that I would not have a hole in my Christopher Moore collection.

Well, today, out of the blue, I got a package in the mail from Minneapolis. Not remembering having ordered anything from Minneapolis, I was puzzled, but it was clearly addressed to me so I opened it. And there, lo and behold, was my Christopher Moore novel. There was a nice postcard inside saying that she had run across the book and felt she had better return it. Of course, the address I gave was my business address here and she also added that she hoped I was still employed here. (Thankfully, and for many more reasons than the return of the book, I am). She also related that she is no longer working at the Radisson and is currently unemployed and hoping for a better year in 2011. I too hope she finds a job. I was right when I loaned her the book - she's a nice gal. ;)

So I think I have a book on my shelves at home that has strayed too far from its owner and which I've had for a lot of years. I remember who it belongs to and think I will pay this forward and return it to its rightful owner. Okay, now before you get all judgemental, it was loaned to me by a lady with whom I worked about a decade ago, and shortly after the loan, she left the employment of the company and I never heard from her again. Granted, I did not make an effort to find her, and she did not include her address on the front inside cover - but I could have tried. Believing that kindness merits and begets more kindness, I am inclined to do just that. I'll let you know if I find her.

Attending a Captivate Class in Portland

2010-12-15T10:43:00.000-08:00

Well, I attended my last class for the quarter at UW last night, and then when it was done, got in my car and headed south to Portland. I'm attending a Captivate class at a training provider here. The problem is that I didn't arrive in Portland until about 12:30 a.m., and I'm staying with a friend so we stayed up talking like a couple of magpies until about 1:30. We're both just KNACKERED! And computer training is always soooooo riveting anyway. It's a friggin' challenge just to stay upright - nevermind actually learning anything!

But it beats being at the office for a couple of days and this is something that I have been feeling like I need to do for a while. I'm getting tired of dropping everything I'm doing at work to train someone on a software feature - so this ought to save me some time in the longrun. But DAMN! I'm tired today. :)

It's almost Hallowed-Weenie!

2010-10-28T20:42:00.000-07:00

Halloween is coming! Woo hoo! Another Halloween is upon us. At least I'm going to be home this year. I didn't have time this year to crack out the Halloween decs because I have been uber-busy with school, but it's in my heart. Near and dear. I'm not sure what the husband and I are gonna be doing to celebrate frightfest 2010, but we're going to do something!

So, right now, I'm going to do a little Blogger image reprise. This is the "Halloween bed" in all it's glory. Can't wait 'til 2011 when I do this again.

a classic Halloween card. Gorgeous, huh?

I dont' think this candy was mine, but I liked how it looked.

Yours -truly in the pumpkin witch costume. I can't believe this was two years ago now.

Happy Halloween, everyone. Go out, do something fun, and dream the dark. It's a great time of year.

Sick of People Being Sick Around Other People

2010-10-26T18:16:00.000-07:00

What the hell is it with people that they feel completely compelled to show up in group settings like classrooms when they are coughing and sounding generally consumptive? I know this girl next to me has a home....she's nice looking, well groomed and apparently DYING. I suppose I wouldn't be as sensitive if I wasn't immune suppressed, but still.

Right now we are watching a film on the villification of Arabs in American films. It really is rather astonishing. But I just wanted to vent about the lunger sitting next to me. Caio!

Game On!

2010-09-12T20:56:00.000-07:00

Well, we've been doing a little D&D play since PAX, and having a pretty good time. Last week on Tuesday went went over to check out our friend's game store, Wandering Havoc Games. It's in Marysville and I guess has been open for just over a year. I'm really getting into learning about D&D and playing some of the games. So far, I've been involved in three, and they've all been good. I didn't play any video games this weekend, but I didn't really miss it. I woke up really early on Saturday and did a tarot reading for a client downtown. It was a good reading but took quite a bit of time. All good though. the workmen were here at the house laying tile and working on the outside of the house as well. So I wasn't really missing anything. Kristopher got all nerved-out and had to take off for a while. After I got home from the reading, I just took a nap for a while because I knew we were going to have a late night of it.
And right now we just finished watching the season finale of TrueBlood and I must say that I was hella disappointed. It wasn't a very good season and it wasn't a very good finale. Maybe I'm just done with it for a while.

Well, I'm finishing off the weekend working on a webpage for a client. I can't get things to show up correctly in Mozilla Firefox. I guess that one is a little too big to not be concerned about, so I'm back at it.

PAX 2010!

2010-09-03T15:39:00.000-07:00

Well, it's finally here. PAX 2010. We are having a great time, but it is a test of one's mettle, that's for sure. I had a really cool pic on my phone which I emailed to myself so I could put up a pic here, and it hasn't yet arrived. Damn yous AT&T 3G dumbass Numbnut go nowhere fast network. My friend Chris Briggs, who's still over in the morass of people over at the main theatre, thinks that the iPhones are pooping the bed today at the convention center because virtually everyone in the pueblo has one. There are lots of peeps who are dressed up and it's lots of fun to look at everyone and even take some pics. Of course, my pics were of a LOTR Nazgul horse...but still. I'll shoe-horn it in here when it finally arrives.

I hope everyone is having a great day. I'll take pics on another camera and not rely on yon 3Gs no mo. E'rybody needs to see some PAX! :)

Beginning Week 2 of Summer Vacation

2010-08-29T21:21:00.000-07:00

So it's week 2 of my vacation from school and I'm having a good time. I was playing video games and generally doing whatever pops into my head. So I've started a new game of God of War on the PSP - but what's more exciting and rare is the fact that I've been playing a game on X-Box 360. It's a game that I ordered at the last PAX and got in about February. I'd only played it a total of about three hours before this weekend, and I have now played it somewhere around 12. I'm on the second chapter. It's a lot of fun. The main character's name is War and he's one of the four horsemen of the apocolypse. The story line goes that there had been a truce between Heaven and Hell and it's been broken due to some kind of conspiracy and one of the horsemen, your character, pictured here, was summoned. His power gets taken away from him after the prolouge but he has to struggle to get it back through the chapters.

I worked on a website for my sister's paralegal association during the first week of my vacation. I didn't mind. I actually thought it was pretty fun and I got paid for it so it's a-okay. Yesterday, I read tarot for a new client that I got through a referral. She was pretty sweet. It was nice to meet a new one.So now we're watching TrueBlood. I really like this show, even though it's getting weirder and weirder.

Ah....First Weekend of Summer Break

2010-08-22T20:20:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally finished the worst quarter of my academic career. I got a 3.0 in Biopsychology - which is bomb-diggity considering I made a D on the last two tests. My writing saved my ass once again. I got a 4.0 in my Anthro class, and was pretty happy about that. Now I'm waiting for my Communications grade. I'm hoping for good stuff. We had a comprehensive final that went back to the beginning of the quarter. When I first looked at it, I thought..."I am so screwed....I don't know ANY of this crap." But the longer I sat there, the more I remembered and the more I was able to write. So I have lots of hopes for that class grade too. I feel sorry for the professor because it seemed like it would be a cast-iron bitch to grade. One thing I know for certain is that I will never take three classes in one quarter if I'm working. Especially three classes that are all HARD.

So while I'm off school, I get to play a little code monkey and make a little green for it. My sister wants me to edit her paralegal association's website and I said I'd do it. She insisted I take some green for it, and who am I to argue. So that's what I'm working on this evening as I sit here in eager anticipation of the next TrueBlook episode.

It's been a great weekend and it's gonna finish off good too. I'm going to get this website updated and then play some video games after what I'm hoping is a great episode of True Blood! :)

So I guess I'd better get to it!

Holy SHIT SNACKS!

2010-08-12T09:24:00.000-07:00

Well, it's full-on panic mode now. Here I am, blogging like a moron when I have a final project due today that is worth 70% of my grade in Anthropology and is, as of this moment, about half finished. Why am I procrastinating to such an extreme degree? I really couldn't tell you. I've just been operating on overload for so long, I think I've blown a fuse or something.

All I know is that after today, this Anthro class is done, and after tomorrow, my Biopsyche class will be done, and then I can focus on Communications, which is going to be a complete bitch-kitty and consume the entire weekend. **sigh** Well, just this one more and a whole month off. Okay, I'll get back to my presentation now.

There is a real Asshole in my Comm Class

2010-08-10T19:33:00.000-07:00

What a jack-ass this mo-fo is. He's on his last quarter here at the UW and has the biggest mouth and the hardest head and the narrowest vision I've ever seen since Ive been in college.

So we are talking about listening in today's class. There is a researcher who is studying communication patterns of the Blackfeet Native Americans out on the mesas of the Dakotas. He is studying how they listen to trees and other aspects of nature. I, personally believe that this is a valid form of research and a valid form of listening. But, boy.... you should have heard these people in here. They are all about being complete absolutists....there is no gray area with these people - they are all "if it is not emperically sound - if you cannot see it, smell it or touch it, and cannot scientifically prove it then it's not real and therefore has no place in academia." Morons! Your bus is leaving... We don't fully understand the workings of a human brain, we don't fully understand particle physics....some of the greatest minds in history have attempted to ascertain the mind of God. Is that empirical? Undergrad ass-baskets, wake up! I have no patience for tiny-minded people. **sigh** I will be glad when this quarter is over. Over! Ahhh! I had to roll a professor under the bus for ignoring everyone in the online class, I have had to do homework almost every night and write more papers than I wrote in my entire school career up to this quarter, and I am puked of it! Ahhh!

Well, Back from Vacation

2010-06-19T16:29:00.001-07:00

Hey you! We're back from the Alaskan wildes and very glad to be home. Pictured here is my little husband with his pride and joy, pirate King-style rum bottle. He bought that on the MS Rotterdam along with several other bottles of liquor, which, as it turns out is the only thing on a cruise ship that you can buy that isn't a carnival-style rip-off. I think they feel like they have to give you something so you can tell all your friends what a great fdeal you got on something. And what better thing to brag about than bringing back a buncha cheap booze?

We had a pretty good time on our vacation cruise to Alaska. That is, after all of the gail-force winds, sea-sickness and barfing up of the liver. That happened the first full day we were on the water. It started on Saturday night but by the time Sunday morning came along, it was like an episode of the World's Deadliest Catch. We missed our first formal night because of this, along with approximately half of the other guests on the boat and about half the crew as well. But the next day was much better and we made our first stop of the trip in Juneau. This is a picture of the dock as soon as we got clear of the boat. there were all kinds of people out there selling tours to one thing or another. And the main street was lined with jewelry stores of every ilk.

By Tuesday everyone was feeling much better, and we stopped to look at Hubbard Glacier. I don't have any pics of the glacier because my husband hasn't given me any from his camera. Bad husband! (Right now I'm having my third Captain Morgan and root beer. Can you tell? So please excuse in advance if this blog entry becomes unreadable. However, I am going back to school on Monday and intend to milk every moment of freedom from homework and scholastic responsility that I can between now and then. And I couldn't drink on the boat. After Sunday, well, I just didn't have the stomach for it. Literally.) Anyways, the glacier was a thing of beauty and maybe a little bit scary because you could hear the ice grinding against the hull as we approached the face of the thing, but we got a really up-close and personal look at it. I didn't see any big hunks breaking off of it, but the National Forest Service guide that the boat picked up and brought along with us said that most people saw big hunks falling off of it. They call it "Calving" - but I didn't see it. And that's despite the fact that I went in and got my swimsuit on and sat in the hot tub on the outter deck and stared at the glacier for another hour after everyone had gone back to their staterooms or other locations on the boat. It's really hard for me to believe it now, but I didn't get a singlle picture of the interior of the boat. Again, Sunday kind of set the pace for everything. So, I guess I'll have to just get some pics of the interior of the next ship we are on. If, in fact, there is ever another time. So what am I up to now, oh, right, Juneau. We went right away to visit the oldest Russian Orthodox cathedral here in the US and that was St. Nicholas'. Not much as cathedrals go, but it was pretty cool to see. A bunch of people evidently got together at the end of the 19th century and built a church here in this very, very rustic gold mining town, and it is still standing today. I think the priest said that they could fit approximately 50 people in the structure at a tight squeeze. But that at festivals such as Easter, it was likely that some people would have to stand outside. I'm sure that doesn't strain the imagination when you look at the picture.

Then we went to a little museum there run by a retired couple. It was pretty cool. They had these little Juneau High School diplomas that we made out for ourselves and stamped, but we left them behind. Anyway, after that, we went to the famous Red Dog Saloonand had a couple of beers and some potato skins. Here's a picture of us there and a picture of the piano player.

After that, I went and haggled with some diamond merchants. Check out the ring that got away. I told the jeweler at this establishment that I wanted him to quote me a price on this ring that would make a Jew cry....and he did. This ring, with a one karat center, princess cut diamond and a full Karat in baguettes below it was $4,400 out the door. No big deal to leave it behind. But now I know where to go and get the deal when it comes time to shop for the 10 year anniversary ring. After that, we went to the Alaska Tee-shirt company and had a good time shopping for souveniers for the peeps back home. Outside, Kristopher fought a bear.

But then we got back on the boat and had a pretty good day. This was the first time we got to have a formal dinner. It was very nice and we had a good time. Late night, but still no drinkie...and we got up the following morning for an excursion to Sitka. Sitka, as it turns out, is a big Russian-American community there in AK. Lots of Russian Orthodixy and fishing, and that's about it. I bought a Metreshka dollie and an amber bracelet there and Kristopher didn't buy anything. It was a fun stop though. We stopped also at the library where I found out that a former co-worker of mine had died of natural causes at the age of 45. I knew this guy pretty well, and he wasn't in any better or worse shape than I ame, and he dropped over dead. the net effect of this news was to make it where I didn't care how much money I spent! I didn't go crazy though. My feeling infected my husband though and he bought himself a hella nice watch on board the ship. As it turns out,l he got about a hundred bux better deal than he could have gotten off of Amazon or from Macy's for the same watch.

We had a pretty good time the rest of the evening and went to bed tired like we had every night up 'til then. Next day was Sitka. Sitka was nice and we saw a Russian Orthodox church and met a nice man at a Russian trading post.

Thursday night on the boat was the chef's special dinner. It was pretty cool. The wait staff danced through the dining room and put napkins on laps and brought salads and desserts to songs and other fun stuff. It was a good night and we sat with some really nice people and had a good meal. We tried a show that night, but it didn't work out. The staqe show was completely stupid. The guys were more womanly than the girls and it was completely terrible and cheesy. We then tried to go to the ship-board movie, and the screen was broken so they were showing it on two plasma screens on either side of the large central one over which the curtains were still drawn. We made it just a few minutes through the Harrison Ford movie, "the Mosquito Coast" and then gave up and went back to our room.

Okay, that's enough vacation talk for now. We are watching Battle Star Gallactica, and it is getting very, very good. I will continue this saga later. I hope.

Hello from A Comparative Study of Death

2010-05-03T20:04:00.001-07:00

I'm in my Anthropology class, and we have another hour to go. The subject of tonight's lecture is "Escaping Oblivion" and we are talking about life after death. It's a fascinating subject. We have watched a few minutes of Betty J. Eadie's "Embraced by the Light" video. This room is full of fairly smug atheists, and it's so easy for them to be cynical and act superior. What a buncha crum bums. What the hell are they doing in an anthropology class? Friggin' idiots. Most of them are grad students too. How can you study something that is a universal human experience and be so friggin' cynical? Well, I just think that they're a bunch a bombastic turd-waggers. Now we're gonna watch some work by another anthropologist who worked with dying children at Children's Hospital here in Seattle. Maybe these fuckers will be able to accept some of it.

I'm listening to what's going on so I won't write any more for the moment. I have to write a long paper for this class and I'm looking forward to it.

Full Time Work, Full Time School, Part Time Insanity

2010-04-26T12:48:00.000-07:00

Hi all,
I don't have time to blog anymore...I don't know how anyone DOES. Well, I guess if I weren't taking 15 hours at the UW, I would maybe have a few free minutes. But, I'm trying to get my degree finished up this year, and will certainly do it. I'm very glad to be accomplishing that before the 30% hike in tuition and fees goes into effect. I got an email from the provosts' office that says it's going to do just that. Already a 5-credit course there is $1,480.00. You do the math. And it's a state-friggin' school! But it's a pretty state friggin' school. Check out this picture of Denny Hall taken on a blustery April afternoon before class.

I have a class in this building called "A Comparative Study of Death." It's a great 300 level Anthropology class that I'm enjoying very much. Taught by a professor who's been around a while, it's a very interesting class indeed. But to walk up to this building and have that particular class in it is just so Addam's Family. I think it's extremely cool.

Currently, I am sitting in the "Husky Den" at the HUB here on the UW campus. I just got finished with a mid-term exam in Communications Law. I think I did okay - especially since my son came over and bugged me for a couple of hours to help fill out insurance forms for his work, and then I threw more study time on the fire by sitting around and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes with Topher until it was 10:30 or so. I had an exam in logic last night as well as some work on my Anthropology paper - all of this left about 1.5 hours for study on the material that was covered on the Communications mid-term. But I'd spent 3 hours studying for it on Sunday, so I still felt pretty good. So, I'm off to my favorite class (the Death class mentioned above). I wonder what Dr. Green has in store for us tonight. We shall see...Buwahahahahaha! I know we've got a cemetery tour coming up here in a couple of weeks. I'm looking forward to it and hoping that Tophie will come along.

Train People, Constitutional Law and a Bad Foot

2010-02-01T21:02:00.000-08:00

Hello all... I'm sorry it's been so long since i had anything to say. Bizzy-bizzy-bizzy 'round our house. Lots going on and getting a lot accomplished.

I've been working out of our Portland office a bit, and my favorite way of getting down to P-town is to take the train. Gotta love Amtrak. I always feel so good riding the train. I'm saving gas...I'm getting work done (worked all that morning from basically 7:30 until I rolled in about 11:00). Yes, that's a very long time, but still....stuff was getting done. I would have, no doubt, spent three or slightly more hours getting there by plane, and couldn't even have gotten out my lappy or used my phone. So there! And, I would not have seen anythign nearly as cool as what I'm sharing with you here in this picture. This ia a photo of a leave-behind balloon sculpture done by a scruffy (and from wht the train employees said, smelly) Grizzly Adams lookin' dude. He was just sitting in the dining car, twisting up balloons, and when I got up to get a coffee, I saw this sitting there.

Ah! Constitutional Law class just let out, so I gotta go. But I wanted to get this up. Have a good night, and I will try to make it sooner than eight weeks when I post another of these.

Back to School....

2009-12-17T20:25:00.000-08:00

Well, it's only been 10 years since I was in school...how different can it be? Don't answer that! I know things have changed a great deal in the last ten years, but I feel compelled to get this done.

I was attending the University of Washington's Evening Degree program in 1997 and 1998. I would have just continued to go and been finished with the program and the degree in 2000, but wound up getting my IT job as a software trainer in 1999. There was way too much to learnb on this new job for me to be able to sustain that and upper level coursework at the U.W. too. So I left the program and decided I would go back after a couple of years when I found my legs on my new job. Well, two years turned into ten seemingly overnight and here I am, finally going back to school. The cost of college has doubled since I've been out. It's really staggering what it costs to get a decent education these days. But the good news is, I should be done in early 2011. So just one more year, and maybe another quarter after that and I'll have my bachelors in political science. Will I make more money? No. Will it help me in my career in any way? No. What it will do is give me a sense of completion for something I started a very long time ago. It's always bothered me that I didn't complete my bachelors degree. Very much. When Kristopher decided he wanted to go back to school, I did everything I could to encourage that - now he'll be done with his bachelors and looking toward his masters in just a few months. For the past three years I've been of a mind that it was too late for me to do the same. Well, there was early 2008 when I made another run at the U and had all my documentation ready to sign up, but was vascillating because Kristopher wanted me to try the distance degree program like he did - the end result was that I didn't go back at all and thereby wasted another two years. It really does go by very, very quickly.

So that's it. Classes start January 4. Wish me luck.

Oh My God!

2009-11-09T20:46:00.000-08:00

It's been over two months since I wrote a blog entry. Now this isn't the longest amount of time I've gone without putting up a post, but it seems like a very long time. I've been in a cast, I've been rolling around on a scooter and trying to survive my job.

Long Time No Bloggie

2009-08-27T10:41:00.000-07:00

Hello!

Lots has happened since I last blogged. I've had a fusion surgery on my left foot and am currently convelescing in my lovely home.
The photo of my here was taken in the hospital last week, and there's my foot inthe foreground and my primary method of transportation for the next three months in the background. Like everything else I own, this little knee scooter has been customized and given a name. This is daisy. She's got a PowerPuff girl (Buttercup) strapped to her basket, got some lively pink and silver tassles on her handlebars and even a specially purchased teapot bell for dinging as I go 'round the house. She's really be a handy companion.

So let's see what all there is to catch up on....the weekend before I went into the hosptial, Kristopher and I made a daytrip over to Roslyn where we met up with Nick and Maggie and had lunch at the brick.

First picture was taken from the car on the road to Rosyln. It's really a pretty little drive.

The next one is of my little man. He wanted this to be a really nice trip for me, so he did all the driving. it was actually pretty great.
There aren't a ton of things to do in Roslyn, but one of them is the local museum. Here's a picture of my budding historian in front of the museum's outdoor exhibit.
The picture of the organ is just that...a picture of a really cool organ at the Roslyn museum. Hey! They can't all be significant!

And this one is of me and the little man out in front of the museum. Self-sufficient explorers that we are, this is obviously self-taken. There really weren't a lot of people under the age of 80 wandering around to ask.
My favorite exhibit at the museum was this old switchboard. It reminded me of my mother. This one was actually in service there in Roslyn until some time in the 1980s! There is much about this little town that appears to be frozen in time. And they are very proud that their little community was used for the filming of Northern Exposure. The crazy clock that was ordered by the hot-shot astronaut in one of the episodes is now in the Roslyn museum. It's really cool to see close up. It was made out of a bunch of random objects like paper plates - and then spray-painted gold. Check it out.
After the museum we met Nick and Maggie at The Brick. I should have taken pics of Nick and Maggie, but I suck at that kind of stuff. We had a nice meal there, and it was just fun to be in there. Check out the sign:

There's actually a working spit-river that runs the length of the bar. It's really kind of gross. You can just imagine what it was like when everyone was chewing tobacco and spitting into it. Ug! But it's a piece of living history, so in that respect, it's pretty cool. No.. I didn't take a picture of the spit river. Just use your imagination. It's a friggin' tin-lined trough in the floor that runs the length of the bar with a little river of fresh water flowing in it. When we were there a napkin had found its way there and was floating around. It kinda grossed me out. So no...no friggin' picture!

We did manage to get the classic picture in front of the Roslyn Cafe sign. Thank you Nick!
Another feature of Rolsyn is the cemetary. Or should I say "cemetaries"? There are 26 of them abutted one to the other there in the tiny burg of Roslyn. We took a pretty good look around.

There were cemetaries for Masons, cemetaries for various other religious groups, mini cemetaries founded by individuals, and yes...there is a Druid cemetary here. I'll have to be sure to remember to tell Leon about this one. I liked the sign. It was extremely cool with all the moss growing off of it. Also, something to note about ye olde druid cemetary...it was the only one around that had ferns growing in it. We took a pretty good look around, and none of the adjacent cemetaries had ferns. Hm... Hooo Doo.

There were lots of really cool headstones in this cemetary. They were made out of all sorts of different things. This one was made of wood. I was extremely impressed by its longevity. 100 years and you can still read the name and dates carved into this one.
I've been in quite a few old cemetaries, but this is the only one I've ever seen with little plots completely fenced off. Check this out:

Oh, and no trip or site-seeing venture is complete without a photo of my little husband giving me the high sign.
So that's pretty much it for Roslyn. And before we went to Roslyn, we had ourselves our 7th anniversary. Yep. Me and the little man have been married seven years. What a ride. And no, he hadn't been taking drugs when I took this photo. We were at the Claim Jumper restaurant, and my little man just gets embarrassed when I do things like take these long-arm photos of us. But hell! Someone's got to do it!

I think this has now officially become my longest post ever, so I guess I'll stop here. I think it's time for me to go and take a shower. Ye olde leg is starting to cramp, so I think I need to get up. Even though Ghost Busters is on the television and it's pretty compelling. Ha ha! Nothing like seeing Dan Akroyd in action. Oh! Right now Bill Murray is rolling around on the floor after having been slimed by the green spud.

Have a great day everyone!

A Rainy August Day....

2009-08-08T15:24:00.000-07:00

So we were supposed to have an air-conditioner delivered yesterday. We're certainly not in a hurry for it now that it has cooled off to a very Seattle-like 60 degrees. Oh well. It's a rainy, gray Saturday and I think that both myself and the husband are enjoying it very much. I'm in my music room playing with my computer and my flutes, and he is in the living room playing video games. We're going to an art opening later tonight. Can't say that I'm all stoked up about that either. Just had a second cup of coffee for the day and thought I would use the added energy to blog while I waited for the sugar to get rinsed out of my mouth so I can pick up one or more of my flutes. I've already put in two hours practice today but plan to do at least another hour. The weekend is time for me to get caught up on the practice I missed during the work week because I was too fried from the office-day to come home and put the lips on the plate.

So, let's see... on my last entry, I was putting up pics from the Seattle Flute Festival back in April - so I guess I will continue with that. In fact, the one at the top of the post is a bunch of flute players stretching under the direction of Lea Pearson who gave a very cool seminar on Body Mapping for Flutists.

So I think I already have a picture of Greg Patillo, the beat-boxing flutist with his ensemble Project, but here's another one anyway - he's cute. You'll get over it. And I'm sure that Eric Stephson and Peter Seymour will appreciate me calling them "Greg's Ensemble". Sorry guys. You are both bad-ass on your instruments and rocked that concert here in Seattle, but I'm a flute-nut, so I'm all about Patillo.

And second we have Project on stage for the main event:

And third, we have the stage after Project has gone into the wings. I thought it was a nice touch to leave the cello there.

So that's about it for the flute festival. I was too busy having fun to take too many pictures. One of the scenes I really wound up wishing I'd gotten was a shot of the vendors room. Good God....there was no way to capture the feeling of that room without having audio. What a crazy cacophony! Hundreds and hundreds of flutes being tested and pawed by hundreds of people. It was really something else.

And then there was a fun bike ride last weekend with me, Kristopher and a friend of ours, Lisa Lake. She works with Kristopher, but I claim her too. We had a deal where we said that whenever we went out riding together and took photos, we would crop from the waist up. So here are a few photos of our little 23-mile bike ride on on the Sammamish River and Burke-Gilman trails from last Sunday:

And here's one with my favorite sculpture on the trail. From one side it is a crescent moon, and from the other it is a salmon. Very cool indeed. We all had our picture done by it. (probably a stalling tactic as this is about 8 miles from the entrance where we started). Of coures, I'm a complete dumbass and didn't get a picture of the salmon side. Next ride.

And then here's the three of us taken from Kristopher's long arm.

So I'm tired of this post now. This is about all the blogging I want to do for the moment. Ug. Happy Saturday everyone!

Woo Hoo! Claire de Lune Sounds Decent!

2009-07-22T23:07:00.000-07:00

Yay! I've been working on friggin' Claire de Lune for about six weeks, and it's finally starting to not sound like complete ass.

I've got an .mp3 of it, but I don't see a way to upload .mp3s to blogger. Bummer. I wouldn't have minded sharing this one. Even though I don't know how to use my recorder very well yet, and there's no piano accomp...accomp...accompaniest. **grin** You'd know what the hell I was talking about if you saw "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou" about 20 times. I can't make a video for shit. I did about ten of them and none of them would upload to youtube. I can't believe it. I guess I'll have to buy my own digital movie camera to make that happen. Or get my buddy who's in feeeelm school to come over and record me.

I'm starting to get my sound back though - yay! I'm so glad. I was worried there for a while. I've been practicing pretty heavily for the past 4 months, and wasn't noticing what I thought was a reasonable amount of improvement until very lately. Past couple of weeks. I've been getting good, encouraging comments from my teacher, and that's good. I LOVE playin' the flute. I enjoy looking at them on their stands too. I put in about 90 minutes this evening and that was on top of my 45 minute lesson, so I don't feel bad that I'm just looking at them and not playing them. I was telling Kristopher that I need to buy a third flute stand because I can't get all three of them out at once. I'm really hoping I can figure out how I'm going to play while I'm out after my foot surgery. The biggest hurdle has been cleared in that my instructor has agreed to come to the house for my August and September lessons. So at least I get to continue.

It occurred to me that I never put up any pictures of my adventures at the Seattle Flute Festival back in April. Just wasn't doing much blogging in that month - anyway, no time like the present.

The Seattle Flute Festival was held a the Town Hall in Seattle, and they couldn't have picked a better place. I love the Town Hall. I saw a historical actor protray Thomas Jefferson there once and the atmosphere really made the thing. But I digress. Might as well start off with a little Greg Patillo. He was the featured artist for the Festival. OMG! Look at the time....I'm gonna have to continue this tomorrow. But here's Greg anyway.

Greg's an amazing flutist and he does quite a bit more than just play stright, melodious flute. He's a beat-boxing flutist, and his stuff's all over youtube.

Anyway, we will continue this later. It's almost midnight and it's a worknight!

Man! What the Hell is Goin' On?

2009-07-10T10:12:00.001-07:00

What's up with all the bad ju-ju bullshit lately? Let's see....I've had nothing but bullshit and hassles with my health, a bit of which I've chronicled here...my fuckin' car got keyed in the parking lot of the park-n-ride last week, my brother-in-law who had a very complicated shoulder surgery where they grafted cadaver bones in to help support what had deteriorated, pulled all of the grafts lose when he was trying to work on a piece of machinery at his work, well after he was cleared to go back, and now has to have another surgery to re-do what he has un-done. That would be completely horrible. My nephew burned his eyes by welding with a mask that had gone faulty in the middle of his job, and now my brother-in-law is going to have to undergo a series of rabies shots because he tried to help a feral kitten and the bumble fucks at the city, they live in Wenatchee, killed the kitten immediately, but mishandled the remains so they couldn't do the rabies test after all. So, shots for the brother in law. And I guess they are still the same as they were at the turn of the fuckin' century (not the most recent one) and so will be given to him in his stomach over the course of three injections. Oh! and a church-mate's husband had a heart attack last night. ENOUGH ALREADY! FOR FUCK'S SAKE! This niggling and eating and biting with bad shit happening needs to STOP.

Okay...there. I've said my piece. Beyond that, it is Friday...oh sacred, oh blessed, oh thou glorious and singularly holy FRIDAY. Needless to say, I am looking forward to the weekend. Not because I have anything planned, but because I will not be at work. Work hasn't been that bad this week, actually. I've gotten a lot done, and am planning to get a lot done today also. I've already downloaded one new software update, and am getting ready to do another. then I'm going to do some billable work. Then I'm going to see the surgeon for my make-up appointment, and hopefully get a surgery date set to get this foot taken care of. Enough is enough already.

Well, I wish everyone reading this a Happy Friday. And may only GOOD come your way.

Happy Wednesday

2009-07-08T11:54:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm in a pretty good mood today. Gettin' lots of work done and feeling pretty good in general. Let's see...did I mention that I got to select my 15 year service gift last week? No? Well, Hell! I did! It's a very cool program our company has - they contract with the O.C. Tanner company that does nothing but keep up with companies employees, offer and ship out awards. It's very, very cool. I chose this ring here. I'm quite happy about it and it is due to be at my house, not coincidentally I'm sure, on my 15 year anniversary date which is August 1.

I'm also listening to a little White Ladder action - I love the songs on that disk. Babylon is one of my faves...you gotta be careful though, there are quite a few wrist-slitting tracks on there as well.

Well, I gotta get back to it...I just wanted to post up a picture of my 15-year prize. I think it's great that they do that. Not all employers do - but then there's a reason people tend to stick around here, and this is just one of many.

Have a great day everyone, and remember....if things get too hairy, you may have just picked the wrong day to stop stiffin' glue!

4-Day Weekend Winding Down....

2009-07-06T21:53:00.000-07:00

My second Gemeinhardt flute ad came in today. It's black and white and I don't care for it as much as the color one I got a couple of weeks ago, but it's a nice addition to the wall. I have it hanging up with my Haynes ad tacked above it. Pretty cool with the statues of the composers and the candleabra...Well, candle "thing" anyway.

I took today off to go along with the 3-day weekend for the 4th of July. We had a really quiet one this year. We didn't spend any money on fireworks or go anywhere this weekend. We pretty much stayed in and wtached DVDs and Kristopher did his homework and I did my flute practicing. Life is good. I started to go in today, but wound up just bagging in and staying home. Who knows how many more opportunities I'll get to just say home and play my flutes. Which, that and cooking is pretty much all I've done today and I'm happy about that. I got up around 10, and after my shower and protein shake, came into the music/exercise room and played for over five hours. I honestly lost count. I'm going to call it five hours in my practice book, though I'm certain it's more like 7. Seems to be the only thing I'm interested in doing lately, so I guess I'm just gonna do it and not question it too much.

Friday morning I was surprised by a visit from Tim Allen and my little doll-baby Meara. They are so cute together. I really enjoyed their visit. We took Meara out to the backyard where she swung in the hammock. It was a blast. The picture here is one I took about a week ago over at their house. I didn't bring out the camera while they were here on Friday - but it's a fresh picture and you get the idea. I love her hair!
She is certainly the apple of Gammy's eye.
After Meara and Tim Allen headed out for Sally's where Meara was spending the rest of the day, Kristopher and I went to Macy's and bought the sofa and loveseat we had been looking at a couple of weeks ago when we bought the bed. Our very first new furniture together. It was really a no-brainer when you sat down on it. When I do wind up having the surgery on my foot, this stuff is going to be a great thing to have around for recovery time. It won't be delivered until the end of the month. When it is, you can bet your ass I'll get a picture of it up here.

Yesterday, we had salmon made out on the grill. Here's a picture of my little man watching over the fish planks.

Andrea did a little barbeque yesterday and had a couple of her friends over and invited me as well. She didn't decide to actually do it until pretty late in the day, so we had already done the salmon, but I went over for a visit later on anyway. It was great to see her and she seems pretty happy in her new living situation. The guy who is renting the room to her seems pretty nice, and, so far, no pervert-dom has risen to the surface.

Well, tomorrow is another day and one where I am going my happy ass to work. 4 days off has been good for me. Today was especially good to just be here and enjoy being quiet and on my own. Now I'm going into the living room to watch Transformers with the man. We went to see Transformers II over the weekend and were both disappointed. But Transformers I is da bomb!

Wow....It's Monday Alright

2009-06-29T14:04:00.000-07:00

You know, I try to give just about everyone I meet the benefit of the doubt. When I make an appointment, I expect that if I show up, the person I made the appointment with will also be there. Not so, apparently.

This morning, I got up and drove in because I had a 9:00 a.m. appointment with an orthopedic surgeon at OPA Seattle. He's supposed to be some hot-shit rock-star surgeon whom I was foisted off on because his associate, Dr. Khan-Farooqui, whom I liked very much, was moving to Grand Junction, Colorado and didn't feel as though he could ethically perform a surgery that would need several months of follow-up care when he would only be here for one more. So, I made an appointment with his parter - the one whom he said would do the best job for what was going on here, and I was in luck...there was an appoinment available a mere 3.5 weeks away. Woo hoo! So, this morning I was pretty excited to get there and get things underway. I arrived at the OPA office building 30 minutes prior to my appointment as I was told by the receptionist who set the appointment that Dr. Mankey did not like it when patients were not prompt - that he was always prompt, hardly ever ran behind in his day and he appreciated his patients respecting that. So, not wanting to get on the doc's bad side, I showed up quite early. I went up to the offices at 8:45, and got check in by his receptionist. At 9:05, she calls me over to the desk and tells me in a very matter-of-fact voice that there was a "mix up" and Dr. Mankey wasn't in the office this morning. He had a doctor appointment, and they would call me this afternoon to reschedule. I was so friggin' stunned I just stood there for a second without saying anything - those of you who know me know that this is quite an amazing thing. Anyway, I said,
"great, I get one doctor who's moving away, so I get shuffled off to this one, and you guys set me an appointment which I wait nearly a month for, on a day when he has a doctor appoinment? I take off work this morning, I drive in, I park...."
"I know, and I'm sorry. But we'll call you this afternoon to reschedule." Now, mind you, this girl said this with all the remorse of someone telling you that they are sorry a movie is sold out and that you had to be bothered to come up to the ticket window. In other words, as though it was no fault of their own. This girl looked like she was raised on Nordstom salon foil wraps and bon-bons and didn't have a care in the world. Highly likely she is the over-privileged brat child of one of these friggin' surgeons.

Anyway, this made for a very shitty morning. I was so upset and there was no one to take it out on. I just had to swallow it down. I would go somewhere else, but this is the recommendation I had. I mean, I know these guys don't actually care about their patients, and these guys don't even really care about the money because they are the orthopedic surgeons to the big sports teams. Now I'm not sure what kind of a recommendation THAT is considering the quality of our local sports teams, but still. Oh! and when I asked the stupid bitch later on the phone (I was so pissed off I felt that I needed to call back for clarification on how this happened and to explain that I was out money on parking and so forth) if they were at least going to cover my parking for my next visit, she said, "We don't own the garage, so we can't cover your parking." O-kay....maybe she had one too many foil jobs....since when do you have to own a parking garage to comp someone's parking? It's called petty cash, you dumb bitch!

Anyway, that's been the old morning 'round here. It took me a couple of hours just to settle down enough to work! I hope anyone who reads this is having a better Monday than I am.

Ciao!

Happy Wednesday...

2009-06-24T10:18:00.001-07:00

Apparently I CAN add images today...yay for meh! And thank goodness too because there is really no help for Blogger...and not that I'm complaining because it is FREE...free I tell you.

Okay, what you're seeing here is a pic of my big box of crayons that I keep in my office. Back about a decade ago when I took my first job as a software trainer, the senior trainer sent me a box of crayons in the interoffice mail. She said that they reminded her of the first day of school, and whenever she needed to knuckle-down and learn something, she would huff on these little waxy sticks and it would put her in the appropriate head-space for learning and teaching. So I'm huffin' crayons today. I'm not teaching anyone, but I want to get in that knowledge acquisition mode.

Also, I had a nice experience this morning when a guy at the O-to-Go place where I get my morning noms gave me a free packet of honey peanut butter. I had my dollar all out and he just gave me my receipt for my oatmeal, and told me that it was okay. Behold, free peanut butter. Why am I showing you my free peanut butter? Well, because I'm not a 20 year old hot chick who gets free shit all the time. They may get free drinks, and free dinners and never have to pay a cover charge, but that's not the reality of my life. So, the free peanut butter was a big deal. lol!

Also, a friend of mine went to Florida and went to Disney World and the Kennedy Space Center and had a great time. She came back all tan and shit....and she brought back a couple of really cutie things for me. Behold the space shuttle that is a thumb drive...

So, way cool...Happy Wednesday to all.

Another F*&kin' Monday.....

2009-06-22T09:27:00.000-07:00

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_fz72uVGXBak/SkJdzCu3L4I/AAAAAAAAAZk/wPtBNdSHP8Q/s320/case-of-the-mondays.jpggood morning.

Yeah....whatever.

So it appears that Monday is negatively affecting me. You think? Not as much as some Mondays - but it's early still. To add to the spectacularity of the morning, I'm unable to upload images to this beeyotch.

Oh well. Have a good one anyway. I'm posting this to show I care. **grin**

Hello from Work - Gray Skies...but it IS Seattle

2009-06-17T10:16:00.000-07:00

I'm waiting for a database to "pack" and just thought I'd drop in and write a quick post. It has come to my mind lately that I haven't written very much lately at all. And lately includes the past fifteen years that I've lived in the writer's capital of the United States. Okay...not sure whether that's actually true. I just pulled that fact out of my ass.

So a couple of weeks ago I went to a writer's workshop called "Write-o-Rama" at Hugo House in Seattle. My husband went too, and he probably blogged about it the day we got back. Of course, he's kinda new to blogging and he's got about five of these fuggers out there to update, so he's fresh for the fight. **sigh**

So do you remember the flute picture I put up a couple weeks ago of this glorious Haynes?
Well, I bought it. Bought it from the gal at Fluteragious - which, as it turns out is a 32 year old woman living in Arkansas who has flute on the brain like I do. Except she has kept flute-on-the-brain since she began playing as a little girl, so is miles ahead of me in the obcession. She has gone to bench school in New York and learned how to actually repair flutes and runs a hobbyist business out of her home where she buys and sells flutes online. She's very cool. Her name is Kate. Anyway, what the hell was I talking about? Oh yeah...how I bought this flute from her. Hang on...the database just finished its indexing and packing.

So anyway, here are some more pics of the Haynes. And all of these pics were taken by Kate and are being used with permission.

Kate put that jewel in the crown of this flute with her mad skills. She also tipped the thing in 24K gold. It's really gorgeous. Did the lip plate in gold and put little gold accents all over. I've been carrying it to work since I got it. It plays quite well. I think my teacher was impressed with it too. "Haynes is a really good flute..." is what he said, and that is a LOT for Klaus.

And here's another.

I've been trying (kinda lamely) to get Kristopher to take some pictures of me with my flute so I can put one up on youtube with my profile because I have some flutie friends out there.

Well, that's enough. All the automated stuff is finished so I can't write anymore here. But I'm going to try to post more often. It's not like nothing is happening in our lives, but there just aren't enough hours in the day to blog about it!

Sunday Evening Again

2009-05-31T20:12:00.000-07:00

Fridays don't come fast enough, and Sundays always come too soon. Kristopher is sitting here on the sofa doing his homework, and I am waiting for some quinoa to cook so we can have dinner. Had to do the whole meatless thing for the past couple of days due to the husband's swollen ankle as he thinks it is an attack of gout. Who am I to argue? It's an ailment that, thankfully, I don't have. He does suffer from it from time to time, so I defer.

The little grand-nugget was supposed to come over again this evening, but her Mom and Dad didn't get around to get her here. They said it was just too much trouble, and thought that I might want to come over there. Uh...no. I'm not going to my son's house for 5 hours on a Sunday and trying to be quiet while he and his wife sleep. No thanks. Get in the car, and get the kid over here, or just tough it out.

My friend Patricia came over this morning for my 4th yoga session. It was very good.

So this last week I joined up with the Lynnwood Community Band. It was a bunch of fun. It was almost exactly like high school. The drum section didn't show up, and the brass section, despite the fact that the median age had to be 60, were a bunch of clowns! I do love playing my flute. I sent my Gemeinhardt off to Elkhart Indiana for a serious tune-up by the one and only guy that Gemeinhardt recommends to do it.

And isn't this lovely, breathtaking beauty? That's my next wish. A Haynes. Loverly.

Did I mention that I'm taking flute lessons? I don't know whether I did or not. Well, I am. This coming week will be week 10 in that adventure. My flute teacher is a pretty serious dude. His name is Klaus Liebetanz. I was gonna put up a picture of him, but am a little scared to do that because they all have copyrights on them. I got permission to put the picture of the Haynes up from the woman that runs the Flutragious website.

Well, I gotta go. I gotta go over to my son's house for a bit. More like 45 minutes instead of 4-5 hours.

Have a great week!

Long time No See....

2009-05-25T09:00:00.000-07:00

Can't believe it's been over two months since I posted to this blog! Ouch! Haven't been feeling too great and have been focusing on changing that - trying to eat right and take care of myself. Takes a lot of energy.

But I wanted to stick my head in and say things are going pretty good. This was the view from my couch last night, and it just doesn't get any sweeter than that. She is just over one month old, her name is Meara and she's my little granddaughter. Yep. I'm a Gammy.

Isn't she sweet? Well, she is. Anyway, that's pretty much all I wanted to say about that this morning. I have to get my biking clothes on and head out for a bike ride with a friend. Don't know how far I'll be able to ride as it will be the first time I've been on that bike in almost 2 years. I don't think I rode it a single time last season. I think I like the idea of having a bike more than riding the bike. Well, all these aches and pains don't help my attitude in that arena. Anyway. I gotta jet....

Oh, one more thing I thought I'd put up. A picture of my current passion. I have decided to get myself back into respectible playing shape on the flute, and pick up where I left off 20+ years ago. Pictured here are my Artley and Gemeinhardt B foot flutes, and my alto flute (way in the back). Pretty, huh? You might ask me why I have three, but I don't have that kinda time this morning.

Wonder if I'll know when I have surpssed my former abilities and moved into new territory. I look at some of the music that is marked for playing in my old books, and it is inconceivable to me that I played well enough to play them - but I must have. At least enough to mark them up. Oh well...didn't I say I was going? Yea...I've goto to make a field test of the air in my bike tires before I head out. I can and will take the pump with me, but really don't want to just hop out of the car and start pumpin' up the tires.....

Wow!

2009-03-19T22:25:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of Darryl Hall. Remember Darryl Hall of Darryl Hall & John Oates? If you're a woman and you're over 40, and you listened to pop radio stations when you were a teenager, chances are you do remember who Hall & Oates are. But what I want to say is that this mother fucker in this picture right here is 62 years old! WTF? Maybe there really are people out there making deals with de great satan hisownself! Who the fuck knows? But I'm really happy to have found Darryl Hall again. Kristopher was just looking around the channels last night and happened onto Palladia - which is the re-branding of MTV's HD channel. Man, it is COOL. Our 50" plasma tv with HD concerts and surround sound - sheeeeet. Last night I watched lots of videos - the Kings of Leon were on, it was FRIGGIN great. Watched some of Robert Plant's new shit - that was good. Then there was a tribute to The Who - with Pearl Jam and This morning, I got up and watched an Elvis Costello concert (well, parts of it....Elvis has far too many contry singer guests). Then I was in the kitchen making coffee and I heard this voice that I wasn't at first quite sure about, then I looked around the corner and saw Darryl Hall standing there. So I came in and watched and listened and it was great. John Oates was with him and he's looking pretty good too. Unbelievable these guys are still going this strong. And check it out....here's Daryl as Jesus!

At the very least, I feel like he's definitely worth my fanship.

So what else is going on? Well, I've taken a couple of days off work. I definitely needed it. I didn't leave the house all day today until after Kristopher got home from work. I made dinner for him, then took off for errands. Went to Lowe's to exchange a toilet seat for the main bathroom. And while I was there bought some new tile for the same bathroom. Then went and bought some new protein powder at Super Supplements, went and bought kitty-kat food at the pet store, then came home.

Now we're watching an episode of The Twilight Zone. I believe it's called One More Pallbearer. We bought the entire set with our tax money. One of the best entertainment purchases we've ever made. We both love the show so much.

Well, I just thought I'd throw upb another non sequitur post. Yay!

Hello from Hell

2009-03-03T04:55:00.000-08:00

Well, the hits just keep on comin'. I'm sitting in a hospital room at Harrison Medical Cetner in Bremerton wtching Andrea, that's my daughter for anyone who might be picking up this unfortunate cancor of a blog to read for the first time, struggle to breathe. And THIS is an improvement over when she was unconscious for 4 days in ICU in this same hospital. It's strange. I am so exhausted I don't even know my name, but I don't really have much to say on this subject other than I would not wish this kind of pain and worry on my worst enemy.

Her lungs have some serious gunk in them and her blood oxygen saturation levels just won't stabilize. I have been here at the hospital for what feels like most of my adult life. I came her on Friday at noon, and left Saturday at midnight (or, if you want to be technical, Sunday at 12:00 a.m.) and then returned on Sunday at 8:30 (left the house at 6:00 because Bremerton is 1.5 hours from where we live), and have stayed through now, let's seeeeeeee it's 5:25 a.m. on Tuesday. Needless to say, I am quite tired. And I have no idea when I will be able to get some actual sleep. The original plan was to go over to some friends of ours here in Bremerton and get some sleep on their couch while the very capable nurses in ICU took care of Andra. After all, I stayed through the night on Sunday - there should be no need to do it both Sunday and Monday. Wrong. They decided that Andrea had improved enough to put her into progressive care. Well, let me just say THAT may have been a bit premature. I left here at 9:00 p.m. when they moved her to this new room. The ex-husband and his girlfriend were here visiting her, so I stalled a bit at Lories, and then we went to pick up my car which had a flashing warning light come on when I was driving out of here on Saturday, and again when I was driving in here on Sunday. Since it was flashing, and nto a stable light, I took it to the Hyanduai dealership here in Bremerton. Those dudes were pretty good. They had it fixed and ready to go in two hours. The problem was that Andrea had begun the long and arduous process of waking up out of a 4-day drug-induced coma, and I barely was able to scrape out enough time to go and drop the friggin' thing off, much less go and pick it up when it was ready, so I didn't. I talked to one of the service technicians and he said that he would leave the key in the wheel well, and I could just pick it up at my first convenience. Well, due to Andrea's being moved out of the ICU, my "convenience" didn't arrive until 9:00 p.m. At 9:00, Lori picked me up from the hospital and we went back to her house so I could inject my Enbrel, and she coul think of something to fix me for dinner. I got the all-important and extremely good, chicken salad sammich. Anyway, I dinked around between chatting with Lori and picking up my car for 90 minutes. By the time I got back to the hospital, Andrea has gone downhill. She had a fever of 100.7, and she was talking like someone who had experienced brain damage. It was a very, very scary night. Thankfully, the RN who is looking after her here, is quite good. She listened to all my concerns and bascially we worked out a strategy to get Andrea better. This strategy included her reviewing the chart, ordering new bloodwork and having a conversation with Dr. Eagan - the dude who is on call for this sort of thing.

At any rate, I find myself dozing off in the middle of this post. I don't want to be a dumbass and lose my lappy over falling asleep at the wheel. So I'll just go ahead and post.

Down With Zune Up with IRiver Clix and "Taken" was a Bad-Ass Moobie!

2009-02-21T21:36:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I have some nice friends...what can I say? My buddy who works at Microsoft felt sorry for me because my Zune tanked after only three weeks of service (not to mention that the stupid ass-flavored service bounced to the ground the next day and was off-line for 2 days - I haven't looked at the stupid shit since - despite the fact I'm all paid up for the next three months). Anyway, my friend brought me an iRiver Clix Gen 2 player. It's pretty cool. I know that it's not proprietary like the Zune player (stupid little bastard fuck-tard thing). Of course, I may find out that the iRiver won't work with Rhapsody, which will only serve to further disillusion me - but right now, while it's still on the charger, I'm riding high. So here's what it looks like

It got great ratings from all the gizmo-checkers, so we'll see. Of course, to be fair, so did the friggin' Zune, and where is it? Somewhere between here and the Zune service center in a Fed Ex return box that took a friggin' week to get here. So already, the Clix is ahead of it there.

I'm bummed tonight. I think it is because tomorrow is my mother-in-law's birthday and we're all going out to linner for the occassion. I always thought it was a nice occassion before. But now that my own mother is gone, it's just hard. I wish I had done more for my mother while she was around. It doesn't do any good thinking these kinds of thoughts. There really is nothing I CAN do now. Death is a pretty permanent remover of opportunity for such things. Ah...the joys of growing up Catholic and feeling that it's normal to carry around crippling stones of guilt.

So, it's probably not helping my mood that I'm listening to Elton John. Actually, he should be an inspiration to just about anyone. Check out the pics here. This one: - with the glasses that look like they are sproinging apart on his face was from about 30 years ago. That's right...30 friggin' years ago. This next one, where he's rather dapper and GQ looking is quite recent. I believe from last year.

Not only are the glasses a world better, but the man himself actually looks better than he did thirty years ago. Of course a reduced coke habit may have something to do with it if the blogs about him are to be believed. He also has the money to pay whatever it takes to keep the HGH flowin' like a fountain. Still and all - I think that a great deal of his improved countenance has to do with living long enough to navigate his way through his own psyche and emerge true to himself. Sure I was crushed when I found out that my teen-hood idol was a butt-pirate, but I've long-since made peace with that and am quite happy for Elton. Oh. Wait. Sir Elton. As a matter of fact, I think I was more pissed off at him when he married that girl in the mid-80s and not me!

We went to the movies last night and saw "Taken." It was really good even though Liam Neeson looked like someone had dipped his whole head in formaldahyde. There were lots of really cool parts to that movie, and Liam, although he always looks like a hard-luck case that just had his last dollar beaten out of him, worked quite well as a down-to-business, retired govt. spy guy. Before he got into acting, he was a forklift driver for Guiness. My little hubby person said that he would happily drive a forklift for Guiness. **grin** He probably wouldn't drive it very far. lol!

Okay, The Office is on and I think that will cheer me up pretty good.

Happy Post Valentine's Day and President's Day

2009-02-16T20:00:00.000-08:00

Did you know that Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born on exactly the same day? February 12, 1809. Kinda interesting, huh? That's a lot of influence and impact on American and global society for one day. Celestial focus like a laser beam, baby!

February is a pretty cool month. It's singularly unique among all the other months in the number of days it has. It's the month all these cool prezzies were born, and it's the month of VALENTINE'S DAY! I love Valentine's Day. I hear people say things like, "it's just another one of those holidays invented by Hallmark . . ." and I think it's sad. First of all, Valentine's Day is a lot older than most people think, AND it's a global holiday - not just something we do here in good ole commercial America. There are several "origins" of the holiday, or really, more appropriately, several religions and traditions honored with this day, and it has melded and evolved over time into a wonderful celebration of love and friendship. The card-giving extravaganza we know today in America began during the mid-1800s. Card and note giving was already going on in England when an American woman glommed on to the idea and used her father's stationery business as a means to manufacture and distribute the new Valentine's Day cards. And the rest is history. I remember that I loved Valentine's Day when I was in grade school, even though I wasn't the most popular little girl. Didn't matter. I still got to use the red and pink and white construction paper to make hearts and cupids and stick them on one of those white craft bags and tape to to my desk. I also got to tear all the perforated valentines with funny sayings and choose who got which - putting a special one for teacher in an envelope first. There were always one to two "Teacher" Valentines in the box. And I still like to celebrate Valentine's Day. And this year, the sweetie and I had a really good one.

We stayed at an old Victorian Hotel in Port Townsend. Here's a picture of my sweetie in the parlor where we were going through local menus trying to figure out where we were going to go for dinner on Saturday night. We got into PT on Friday night and went to The Public House. Kristopher had a steak and I had some fish and chips. They did a great job on both, but the steak was just amazing! It was the best steak I'd tasted since I've been in Seattle. And fifteen years is a long, friggin' time. Anyway, we went back to the hotel early because it looked like PT had gone to bed for the night when we finished at the restaurant about 10:30. When it was officially midnight, Kristopher gave me my Valentine's present which was a beautiful red, velvet heart filled with truffles. Lots of them. Like 50. lol! Maybe I'll have to take them to the office and give them away. That's a lot of chocolate.

The next morning we got up and, after taking our sweet time in the room, er...um...anyway we went to a local joint called SeaJ's which is on the working end of the waterfront behind a hotel where I stayed when I had a visit with my friend Laurie Smith. Kristopher went off hunting for the weekend, and used our room as a base camp for his operations, and Laurie and I hung out all day and messed around PT. Anyway, Kristopher and I had a hearty breakfast at SeaJ's amongst the locals. After breakfast we went over to Swain's, an "outdoor outfitter" place which was more of an "everything" kind of store. It actually reminded me of the old-fashioned Woolsworth's store. Speaking of, we also went to a drugstore that still had a soda fountain in the back - old school, with chrome, red-topped stools and pull-handle Coca-cola dispensers behind the counter. I LOVE PT. It's like walking into the past.

Anyway, after quite a bit of shopping (more than either of us generally do in a month) we went back to the hotel for a nap. Well, after we went to the local co-op and bought some water and apples and the two biggest cookies we'd ever seen. After the nap, we got up and got out some more - this time going downtown and walking up and down trying to find places we might want to eat for dinner. We had been out playing and waited so long, however, we wound up going to the Nifty Fifties restaurant for our Valentine's Day dinner. But that was actually great. Nifty Fifties is really a cool place. They've gone to a lot of trouble to make it as authentically 50s as they could. And, we just happened to be in there on the same night as this group of about 15 teenagers who were all decked-out in 50s attire and out for a night on the town. I first noticed them when I saw this perfectly "Fonzie" dude sitting at the soda counter.
When it was getting about time for them to close (unbelievably this place closes at 6:00 p.m. on Saturday night....) the whole group got together and had a picture taken. I wish I had been thinkin' straight - I would have gotten a picture of them as well. But I only just learned how to focus my GD camera, so gimme a break. After dinner, we went to the movies to see the new Clint Eastwood flick, "Gran Torino" at the local theatre in uptown. It looked like it used to maybe be an old playhouse, but I didn't read anything on it so I won't say anymore. What I will say is that if you haven't seen Gran Torino, go see it. If you like anything Clint Eastwood has done, go see it. You won't be disappointed.

Next day we got up and got our stuff packed to leave. We went and had breakfast at the Bayview restaurant. How's THAT for a little brand recognition, eh? We both had a special called a "BOB" which is an acronym for "Bayview on a Biscuit". And it just so happened that our waitress, Cinda, was the inspiration for that dish. We got the whole scoop. Seems that when she was pregnant with her daughter (who is now 7 years old), she kept craving a particular configuration of Bayview breakfast items. And, after they'd made it for her so much, and she had turned other customers on to it, they just put it on the menu. It was on there when she got back after delivering her child. So we had a great breakfast there, and went back to downtown PT where the shops were yawning open and we went to the local pagan bookstore: Phoenix Rising. What a great store. She has so much SHIT in there, it's not even funny! Anyway, bought a few things there, then went over to the candle shop, bought a few things there. We went to an antique book store called "Insatiable Books" where I purchased a "Washington Monitor and Freemason's Guide" from 1945. It belonged to a Master Mason who was installed into the order in 1946. Anyway, I found the place to be intoxicating. I was so "crowed" (self-coined term for what happens to me when I go into shops containing items of intense interest such as old books, jewelry, etc...) when I went in there I didn't think to get out my camera and take pictures. But I've got my little book. (Just took a big sniff of those old pages....lovely!)

Let's see...then we went into the Bishop hotel where we met the proprietress and chatted her up about the place. This is probably where we'll stay the next time we go. All of the PT merchants are very concerned about the upcoming bridge closure that's going to start at the head of their life-sustaining tourist season. If you're reading this and thinking about planning a mini-vacation getaway between May 1 and June 20, think about going to PT and staying anywhere. Spend some bux over there. I hate seeing all those empty storefronts and we have to support our local destinations if we expect them to weather this economic storm.

After talking to our friend at The Bishop, we were both pretty tired and ready to go home and see our kitties, we lucked out and got on the Keystone ferry and headed back toward the mainland. Here we are taken at mister man's arm's length:

When we got home to Lynnwood, we topped off our weekend with a visit to the Claim Jumper restaurant where we ate too much and drank too much and had too much fun.

This was a great Valentine's Day. I have to say it was the very best we've had together and I can't wait 'til next year. I hope it's just as good and better. Nighty-night everyone! I gotta go to bed. Another work day tomorrow, and man...am I ever thankful I am among the fortunate ones who can say that. BB!

Why Do All The Little Microsoft Gizmos Always Suck Ass?

2009-02-03T22:00:00.000-08:00

I ask you...why can't Microsoft, biggest fuckin' corporation on the planet - okay, mebbe not quite, but still pretty damn big - make a friggin' MP3 player that doesn't go tits-up a week after you buy the damn thing? I ask you! I'm out on their site and it's ass-flavored.

Now I have to go and take back a thing that I didn't buy for myself to a store that I never would have bought it in. Damn good thing I didn't get rid of my Sansa and didn't stop my subscription to Rhapsody. Guess I'd better go to bed. It's only Tuesday...don't want to be shootin' the wad this early in the week.

On a more pleasant note...I've been enjoying Facebook quite a bit the past several days. I threw a monkey at my sister-in-law, and that rocked. lol!

Going Back to Work Tomorrow

2009-01-25T14:00:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been twelve days since the phone call from my sisgter telling me that Mother was gone. I got back into town on Friday around lunch time. I'm very glad to be back home to my familiar surroundings. I thought it was going to help quell the sadness better than it has. This has actually hit me a lot harder than I expected. There have also been side-lessons that I really didn't anticipate.

Anyway, I'm hoping that going back to work is going to be the glue that brings me back together.

My Mother Died on Wednesday, January 14

2009-01-20T21:09:00.000-08:00

Well, it's happened. I can't say that I didn't expect it, because I did. I have expected it for a long time now as my Mother has been getting sicker and weaker over the past couple of years. But it doesn't matter how long you've been expecting it or bracing yourself for it - when it comes, it's still a horrific experience that you really don't know how to handle - or at least I'm not planning to write any self-help books on the subject any time soon. My sisters and neices and nephews feel the same way. My own children, Tim and Andrea, have been away for the past 15 years - and it's actually been that long since Tim has seen her - Andrea saw her just a couple of years ago so it's a bit different for her. Still, I now that it stung them, even with the time and distance. But a mom is different than a Grandma, no matter how you want to slice it. It's strange, but I'm beginning to see the edges of understanding that there is an invisible umbilicus that connects us all to our mothers - no matter how old we are. And only this most final of partings can sever it. It's the strangest feeling of being orphaned. My father has been gone now since 1972, so in a sense, I guess I really am an orphan now. The photograph at the head of this post is of my mom when she was 16 years old. Isn't that something? Look how young and vibrant she looks. **sigh**

I'm sitting in a motel room in a place called Ardmore, Oklahoma. It's where I grew up until I was 18 and moved away to Texas. It is also the final resting place of my parents and my maternal family My sisters and I have been through the wringer with the final disposition of my mother. There have been two funerals - one in the town where my mother has lived for the past 8 years - the town that my sister and brother-in-law call home, and this town. So, I flew in with Mr. Kristopher on Wednesday after getting the call, and Thursday saw us making funeral arrangements, picking music and caskets and ministers and so forth, and Friday was for making sure that all was right and the body was ready for viewing at the funeral home - of course that first time you see your loved one all decked out in their eternal finery it's quite a shocker. And then Saturday was the first funeral - cried and cried...don't remember much else about the day other than we went back to my sister's house and cooked a big meal. Don't think my sister was too keen on that, but I think she got through it okay. Myself, I needed something familiar and busy to do, and it was good to see everyone together and having food and laughing and talking. One of those "affirmation of life" moments that I know my mother would have approved. Then Sunday was for seeing Kristopher off back to Seattle - which was and has been rough on me - I sure miss him being here with me. He was a huge help, and it was so wonderful just to have him to cuddle up next to. Anyway, we caravaned him to the airport to turn in the rental car on our way to this town, which is about 3 hours south of where we were as the crow flies - we got into town yesterday, got a motel room, got almost no sleep and then we had to get up and go through another funeral. I thought I had cried myself dry at the last one, but hell no....not at all....this one was worse. After having thought about it, I believe I have identified the pivotal moment when it GOT worse too. It was when I saw my cousin who lives in a town called Moore, Oklahoma - and I hadn't seen this dude since I was 12 years old. As soon as I saw him, it was like a switch going off in my head that said, "this is your mother's funeral - she has really died and that is why these old relatives are coming out of the woodwork" and that was kind of like a sucker punch. So there was another 2 hour round of crying. The service was nice and it was good to see the old relative show up and exchange email addresses and so forth, but it was completely exhausting. Then we went out to a restaurant where I had a dry steak with no flavor (not sure it wasn't the day and not the facility...not likely to ever eat there again to find out - but oh well). Then went and bought silk flowers and drove to the graveyard to make new arrangments for the urns which were already in place on my Dad's and Mom's duel gravestone. Then, I went back to the funeral home on my own to say a rosary (not my path, but my mom's and I felt like I owed it to her since she did not have a mass for a service - both sisters have now gone protestant! Though who am I to say anything about THAT?) After the rosary, I had a little more talking to do to my mother while in the presence of the body she occupied for 80 years - then I put some flowers in with her, touched her hands for the last time, closed the coffin lid and felt more tired than I ever thought possible. I decided to do something - ANYTHING to take my mind off of all of this (Six days of NON-STOP fun, lemme tell ya) so I went to see a movie. That stupid "Mall Cop" - which was just the sort of vacant stupidity that I needed. So I did get at least 1.5 hours of respite. After that it was wandering around this little town in the car - wanting something but having no idea what - and wanting nothing at all; feeling lonely, yet not wanting any of the company that was around for me to enjoy - like my sister, brother-in-law or niece, being hungry, yet not wanting anything to eat - and, well, you get the picture.

It is a no win situation, lemme tell ya. So, I wandered around a bit more, found a salad to bring back to my room and decided to blog. So now you're all caught up.

My mother, Theresa Ann Chitwood, died peacefully in her sleep in her own home. My sister, through no small effort, was able to keep the old girl out of a nursing home, which I'm sure she is VERY proud of. I hope she's proud anyway, I am certainly proud of her. I'm not sure I could have done it. It is absolutely CERTAIN that I would not have been able to accomplish that feat from 2500 miles away.

Tomorrow is the interment. One more thing, and then I can say that I saw this all the way to the end of the road. I will throw the handful of dirt - say my final, final goodbyes, and then likely not revisit this town again for a long, long time - if at all.

I'm really hoping to come home sooner than I planned, which is Friday. I really want to be back with my own immediate family and to feel things that seem normal once again. Nothing has felt normal, with the possible exception of the keys on this purple lappy, for the past six days and it's exhausting. Here's a last picture of my mom for this post. She was pretty puny in this picture, but she was an apple of health compared to the way she was in the very end.

This picture was taken during my visit in 2006 and my mom was still walking with her walker then. She had not walked since October of 2007 following a fall and a bad break to her right leg.

I loved that old woman, and I know that her spirit lives on in all of us left behind. I know that she is out of pain. It's those of us who remain here, missing her, that hurt now.

And with that, I bid you goodnight.

ZUNE RULES!!!

2009-01-11T16:24:00.000-08:00

So I got a Zune .mp3 player from a friend for a late Christmas present a couple of days ago, and it is COOL! I've been using the Rhapsody music service for just over 2 years now, and have been really happy with it, but it's fun to learn new stuff, and this is a Microsoft service. And, being the consummate geek, nerd, MS fan-girl that I am, it's pretty cool to be hooked in to the service. Here's a picture of the little Zune player.

It's 8GB, and holds pics, videos, music, audio books, etc... So, pretty cool...I spent five hours on the Zune site two nights ago when I set it up. It takes a while to get a decent music collection going. Right now I'm listening to Boston's greatest hits or some shit. It's pretty cool. There's a Zune online community where you can meet people who have similar tastes in music. My shit's all over the map though, so I'm really not interested in using that. I may listen to Rob Zombie or A Perfect Circle or even Disturbed - it doesn't mean that I want to sidle up to a bunch of skin head freakazoids. And I may listen to the Cranberries and the Smashing Pumpkins, but that doesn't mean that I want to pierce my tongue and get a tramp stamp. So, new MS music service, super cool...worth lookin' into if you're into that kinda thing.

So what else is goin' on? Let's see....had church last night. That was good. Always makes for a better start on the following week. I'm having some ice cream - or a I was...now the kitty is having what was left in the bowl, which was basically the meltins'. Kristopher is reading a book (What Color is Your Parachute 2009) And all is peaceful and right in the Skelton household.

Monday is on its way, and far too quickly. So I guess I'll post this since I can't think of another thing to say. **sigh** I gotta think of some more good music too.

Wooo Hoo! It's 2009!

2009-01-05T20:33:00.001-08:00

Well, it's been a while since I've posted and with good goddamn reason. It's been the friggin' holidays and I've been running around like someone gave me a bucket of cocaine and a time machine back to 1981.

We had a nice Christmas celebration here at the house, and I took some of my ususal, wonderful photographs. Here, lemme share with you:

Okay, though it may look like I was running through the living room being chased by wild dogs when I took this picture, I can assure you that I was standing as still as I could and snapping yon pickage.

And check out this next offering .. . Geezuz.... I'm tellin' you that I am the shittiest photographer EVER.

Again, looks like a scene from Logan's friggin' Run. I did actually take a picture or two that wasn't so bad. They were pictures of the tree and packages. Those sucker stayed still long enough for me to snap 'em. And one of my friends, you know who you are, wanted to see pics of the tree.

So here's our blue tree....

And here are a couple of close-ups:

So there's a little taste of Christmas at the Skelton household. Those pics were taken on the evening of the 25th, as that's when Tim Allen (the son) and Andrea (the daughter) came over with their significant others and we had Christmas.

Leading up to the event was some of the snowiest weather I've seen in my fourteen years here in Seattle and lots of work, work, work. I got stuck in Redmond on the 18th after one of my spine appointments and wound up having to hole-up in a hippy coffee shop there which I found thoroughly enjoyable, and bought some stuff there too. I also gave Kristopher his present early, and it was a good thing, because it was an XBox 360, and to me there's nothing worse than getting a video game (much less a PLATFORM) on Christmas and then not getting to play with it because there are people over and dinner to be eaten, etc....

Now I didn't take detailed pictures of Christmas dinner because I did that weird shit on Thanksgiving.

Oh, but there was a pre-Christmas Christmas at Kristopher's mom's place where I took this fantastic picture of my brother and sister-in-law:

I think they're quite the cutie couple there with their little picka-poo, Thor. And while I'm at it, lemme show you some pics of my little hubbie who loooooooves Christmas so much, and loves getting his picture taken even more. Doesn't he look like he's about to take the camera from me and shove it up my ass in this first one? Maybe that's why my camera work is so shaky....

And finally, here's an image of my husband that displays how he really feels about the whooooole Christmas season.

Okay, I'm gonna go do something else right now, but I wanted to put up a post before it got too much later in the month. I'd like to start blogging more often, and will try. Wooo Hoo!

Wow! It's December 19 and there is Snow on EVERYTHING!

2008-12-19T15:15:00.000-08:00

Okay...if this post cuts off abruptly, don't think anything of it. I have vowed that no matter what I have said or haven't said, I will be posting this before I put this box down for more than just going back and refilling my glass. That's right ... no more of these tired-ass, posted three weeks later posts...

Okay, I have no idea what I'm gonna talk about...oh wait! Yes I do! Almost all of the presents are wrapped and ready to go. The tree looks really good - all full and shit. But tomorrow it will start to get depleated. Oh! And did I mention that I am drinking for the first time in about a year? No? Well, I am. I haven't drank because of the meds I was on, but I've been off of those for nearly two months, and so now I can have a drink again. Okay...a drink or five. I had a crazy assed craving for whiskey sours today, so I cracked at the mix and am on my, well, when I get up to refill it, my third drink. I have a giant bowl of popcorn sitting next to me and that's tasty too. The housetops that I can see out our picture window are all white and fluffy, and the blue and crystal tree is awesome as well. Life is good. I'm trying to decide whether I want to go out for a walk.

I'm looking forward to all the Yule and Christmas doin's we've got scheduled coming up. I don't have any pics to post . . . but I'm going to have to post anyway. ha ha!

And a Couple of Birthdays Come and Almost Gone

2008-12-09T23:19:00.000-08:00

It seems like everything has been set on fast forward these past many, many weeks. Today is December 9 (REALITY CHECK: It is actually December 19 - 11 friggin' days after I wrote this post - but I refuse to delete it entirely since I can't remember what I was thinking at the time), and it's my birthday. It's been a really good one too. Quiet and simple as far as celebration goes, and yet, not at all.

Also covered by this post is Andrea's birthay which was a whopping TWO WEEKS ago. Here's a picture from it:

Needless to say, I'm a little behind. With good reason. I had a class to create on a piece of very complicated software for a presentation that happened yesterday. That had me riding pretty high on adreniline for most of the referenced two weeks. As soon as Thanksgiving was over, I hit the trenches in earnest with that and didn't let up until it was done...and it wasn't done until around midnight on Sunday. All worth it though.

So...back to birthdays. Mine was good, as I've already said. And it was good despite the fact that I had a 6:30 spinal relief clinic appointment, a toe-nail removal at 8:30, (this required getting a deadening shot in the toe which is a form of torture that is legal for podiatrists to use in this country - apparently), and a holiday party at the office for which I had agreed to sing at 12:30. It was quite the busy day, lemme tell ya. But everything worked out wonderfully. Even though I was late for my spine appointment - and late because I thought that I missed my exit and got myself all turned around so I could come back the other way on 405 and re-approach it - only to realize that I hadn't overshot it in the first place. Did I mention that it was about 6:15 a.m. and I'd had maybe five hours sleep the night before? Hmm? Anyway, the folks at the Spinal Relief Center always make me feel pretty good about my day (I'm really gonna miss 'em when the treatments are all completed) - but I digress . . . as USUAL.

At work I had to hurry up and get shit done because we had our office party today and it started at noon. I couldn't get out of there 'til 12:30, but made it over to the party just in time for the food to be delivered. Time enough, I guess. The Figgy Pudding carrolers got back together for a command performance and that was fun. If you don't know what I'm talking about, nevermind...it's really kinda sad. Anyway, then I stopped off by GameStop to pick up a case for the PSP. Yesterday all I did was charge the thing - today, I actualy played it. :) I played some God of War and it was really cool. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself now! I can't seem to win...I either run completely off course, or get ahead of myself. Anyway, fuck it! I had some lovely roses and cupcakes a couple of books I'd put on my Amazon list waiting for me when I got home to the little man. Here's the pic:

We were going to a movie, but I opted for staying home and playing with my PSP.

Okay . . . given the fact that it's actually 12-19, and not 12-09 anymore - I think I'm gonna post this friggin' thing

Man...All He Wanted Was a Red Rider BB Gun!

2008-12-02T22:31:00.001-08:00

Well, it's that time of year again . . . yep. Christmas time is here. The one time of year we encourage our kids to sit on the laps of funny-smelling old men, stroke their beards and take candy from them. Yep. The American Christmas - nothin' quite like it.

I just thought I'd share these precious-moment photos of a friend's kid getting into the spirit of things.

Thanksgiving A-Plenty!

2008-11-30T02:20:00.000-08:00

Well, we've had our Thanksgiving holiday, and lots of it. It started last weekend when Tim Allen, Polly, Andrea and her new beau, Bill, came over for a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner. It had been a couple of years since I cooked one, so I went NUTSO! I've got a bunch of pics to prove what a nut case I am too! I thought I'd do a little show and tell. Who knows? One of you may need to reference this page to cook your own turkey one day. (Possibly even one of my children)

Okay, the first thing I did is bake my own bread especially for the purpose of staling it and using it in the cornbread stuffing the following weekend. So this rising bread here was done 7 days prior to the dinner.

This may seem a little bit much for some of you, but I want you to know that it DOES make a difference in the way the stuffing comes out. The bread has to have a lot of body so that it doesn't get soggy. I HATE soggy stuffing.

I also made a carrot cake for one of the desserts. Here my ceramic kitchen buddies look on approvingling.

So after I got the desserts taken care of, and I didn't take pics of all of them, but I did a Bavarian salad the night before as well as two pumpkin pies, I got up at 6:30 Sunday morning and began working on the turkey. The first thing to do with a turkey is to take it out of the bag and wash it. After washing it in the sink with room temperature water, you need to give it a salt bath. Check out yon pictures.

So after you've rinsed out all the innerds...you simply need to pour salt into the cavity of the bird, and vigorously rub the insides. You are using this as an abrasive and thoroughly cleaning the inside of the bird that is going to become the roasting cavity for the stuffing.

Speaking of stuffing, you need to have it all ready and sitting somewhere near the turkey so you can get it all stuffed in. I use a nice serving spoon and shovel it gently into the cavity. The main cavity isn't the only place I stuff either. I also stuff the back cavity so that I don't have a turkey with that weird indentation when I get finished.

Another thing thing you need to do is to take care of the neck and giblets (the heart and liver). Put them into a sauce pan with lots of water. This is later going to become the liquid for your giblet gravy, and to moisten the stuffing that goes into the oven to cook outside of the bird.

After the turkey is stuffed in the main cavity, and the back cavity, then it's time to do a little surgical sewing on it. I had to sew the back flap closed so that it wouldn't come open and look strange. So it's a needle and thread and get to sewin!

The best way to finish, is to get the turkey on the roaster rack, dry it off with a paper towel, then oil it with olive oil. I also ground some fresh black pepper on it before it went into the oven. I cooked it at 350 for the first 1/2 hour, then turned it down to 325. You cook turkey for basically 15 minutes per pound. This was a 20 pound turkey, so we were down for 5 hours.

Here's what the turkey looked like cooking.

So after the turkey had been cooking for a few hours, and just before the kids got there, I set up the appetizers. Really wish I wasn't one of THE worst photographers ever. I'm trying, but my improvement is slow and barely perceptible.

So here's Andrea and Bill, and the little baby dog Trixie. They got there just before noon.

Here's Kris and Tim Allen basting the turkey.

Andrea and Polly snacking on stuff before dinner. There were veggies, a cheese ball, and Hickory Farms crackers and dates, and cream cheese with olives in celery. Yum!

I'm not sure if this was supposed to be a commentary on the turkey or what! lol! Actually, I know it wasn't...she's just a little turd!

And here's me....ready to cut the bird!

And so a slicin' we will go...

And here's my son trying to get across the kitchen without getting his picture taken. Tough luck!

And here is Andrea and Polly. Andrea took my camera outside to get this one.

We had a wonderful time. I didn't get any more pics because I was busy serving dinner. The Goddess let the food come out good, and everyone was personable and all was calm and wonderful.

We continued our Thanksgiving celebration by heading over to Wenatchee to Nick and Maggie's place for the real event on the real day itself. I didn't get a single picture of Nick and Maggie's Thanksgiving...I have no idea why. I never even thought about getting my camera out - AND I HAD IT WITH ME! I hope we get to go again. I'll do better. Their house was beautiful, the food was great. And OMG! Is it 3:30 in the morning? Yes. Yes it is. I'm goin' to bed. But I did manage to finally get this T-Day blog done! I still need to do an entry with Andrea's birthday pics in it. There are only a few, but they are cute, and they were taken on her 19th birthday.

Whew! Goodnight all!

Could Stress be the Next Diet Aid?

2008-11-19T17:07:00.000-08:00

As I was sitting at work today with acid reflux riding high, I thought of how I wasn't hungry at all, and how there might be something marketable in this fact. Mind you, I feel like there's a hole burrowing its way through the lining of my breadbasket, but hey! I don't feel like I need food, and I've had like a cup of oatmeal today.

Whatever the case, it would have to be better than friggin' Alli . . . I can't even BELIEVE that people would buy this product. It makes me laugh out loud when I think about the fact that the warnings include things like "may cause anal leakage and spotting." Holy Hell! You may be able to eat a few hundred calos more per day, but you have to start wearing adult diapers. How sexy is THAT? Hey baby....I'll be right out...I just have to change my pants...I seem to have shat myself.. tee hee! Riiiight....

Or maybe we could go back to a turn-of-the-last-century solution and start nom-nommin' tapeworms. Can you imagine? Tapeworms? How DISGUSTING is THAT? I can remember reading about tapeworms when I was a butterball teenager and wishing I could get one. Who knew you could by them in a box in my grandmother's day. Sheeeeet... have another doughnut...ain't no thang...here....wash it down with a sterilized tapeworm.

It's really unbelieveable the stress we put on the physique in this country, and then don't have any support system for helping to make it happen for people. For instance, there's the whole magazine ad culture that teenagers are victims and slaves to - however, all over the country, athletic programs in schools are being cut due to lack of funding, and academics are stressed far more than physical fitness. But if you're a fat kid who sits around and reads all day long and makes straight As in school, you're automatically branded as a lazy kid. Huh? And we may want our adult work force to be lookin' good too, but do most companies have provisions for physical fitness during work hours? No.... I'm not talking about the employer actually paying you to buff up, but we are, in fact, alloted only so many waking hours, and it so happens that most of us spend the majority of them doing some kind of meaningless work. Why not encourage some physical health and fitness int he workplace by making it mandatory that employers, especially employers of office workers, who employee over 500 people, make an exercise facility available for employees who want to use it? Hell, we write every other damn nit-pickin' detail into law - why not something that actually would do us some good for a change? I'm just bitter because we have this really nice shower facility here at my work, but if you want to ride an exercise bike or walk on a treadmill, you've gotta go waaaaaay the hell down the road because all the close-by ones (okay...with the exception of the rich old men's health club across the street that costs $5,000 a year to belong to) have closed down.

I'm not sure why I went on this rant...oh yeah...heartburn as the next diet and weight loss solution. That makes about as much sense as having your stomach cut out and your intestines re-wired. Oh wait...that's bariatric surgery which is a multi-million dollar industry in this sad and confused country of ours. (I'm also probably feeling a bit militant because I'm listening to Mudvayne's new stuff). Anyway, there it is. Have a great hump day!

Alaska True Cod Toothpaste

2008-11-11T09:13:00.000-08:00

You know...once in a while I have a great idea. Today is one of those times. As I was ingesting my 3 tablespoons of fish oil as prescribed by my chiropractor for the disks in my back - I thought "What the Hell? Everthing I eat or drink today is going to taste like this friggin' fish oil...I may as well have brushed with fish oil toothpaste."

I think that the color is about right too, huh? Well, maybe this isn't THE best idea I've ever had. Maybe my idea for a turbo salt-shaker was slightly better. However, I'm in a whimsical mood and felt like sharing it.

This morning saw another early morning back treatment, and all that space between the vertebrae when they're done leaves you feeling a little giddy sometimes. But I'm here at work, so I'd better concentrate on giving Caesar what is Caesar's. Ciao Baby! Happy Tuesday! (I love me some exclaimation points!)

Woo Hoo! A New President and Friday!

2008-11-07T10:39:00.000-08:00

It doesn't get much better than this. I'm so happy that Obama won the election. I honestly got up the next morning and felt better about being an American. And many, many of the people that I spoke with on Wednesday felt the same way. I'm hoping that the policies that will be changed, and the actual CHANGES that will no doubt be made in the coming months and years will reveal a more modern and global America.

About the only thing that bothers me about the Obama is the fact that he smokes. I hope he's able to get that under control soon. As an ex-smoker, I know that it is hard. But I have such a hard time believing that someone as smart and talented as he is actually still lights those fuckin' things and puts them in his face.

I was thinking yesterday as I was walking on the streets of Seattle, desperately trying to regain my health so I can feel better and have a better quality of life, that the tobacco companies must be okay with him getting elected. Granted, it would have been a more direct benefit to have McCain pick up the election, but they get the soft benefit of having Obama in there with the tacit acceptance of it being okay to smoke. Both of my kids smoke, and I hate it. I really do. I cannot believe that those two kids, both of them pretty intelligent, are actually SMOKING. Now what am I gonna say, huh? Now that we have a smoking President, how much juice am I goign to lose on our Thanksgiving day when I plan to snipe at both of them for the nasty habit. Thanks, Barrack. Thanks a heap. I think the American Lung Association ought to send him a year's supply of nicotiene patches for good measure.

So today is Friday, but it's also Enbrel injection day. I'm happy that my insurance company okayed this drug and is paying for it. I just wish I didn't feel so jumpy about injecting it. It leaves these coronas around the injection site that make me really uncomfortable. And then there was the problem last week when, several hours after the injection, I began to feel woozy . . . dizzy and sick and feverish. I called my doc's office and the glib nurse told me that I must "have the flu" - and I really wanted to push her face in. I was standing there with my face all flush and hot. I informed her that I hadn't had the friggin' flu since 1988! And then she proceeded to pour upon me her glibbery by telling me how "Well, from the moment you took that first injection of Enbrel, your immune system was compromised..." Thanks bitch! I really needed to hear that. Anyway, turns out I didn't have the flu, and I survived the symptoms - but I was none too eager to inject myself again. I didn't yesterday because I didn't think I actually felt well enough to do it. And one thing that they did tell me when I went for "injection training" is that if you feel sick, don't shoot the stuff. So I did it again today because I didn't feel sick or sickly, but I injected it in my leg instead of my stomach. Looking forward to seeing the giant, red-ass ring around the needle hole there too. Oh! And the coronas on my previous injection sites didn't show up until yesterday, at which time they appeared like some kind of bizarre fading and returning ink. Both of them. The one from the injection several weeks ago, and the one from the most recent.

My mother is back in the hospital. She is in Baptist Memorial in Oklahoma City this time. I think they were trying to kill her in that little hokey home-town hospital in Perry, OK. My sister said that they dropped her from the lift TWICE. It caused her to lose a lot of blood by making it pool in her stomach and lungs. Greeaaatt. My sister gives me updates. I'm almost too chicken-shit to call the hospital and get them for myself. I want her to filter them for me. **sigh**

Well, the weekend is here. I hope all reading this are planning a good one.

Post-Halloween and Election Day

2008-11-04T14:26:00.000-08:00

Well, Halloween is all done and over with for another year. It was a good one, but by the time the event itself got here, it was a quiet one for sure. By the time I got done driving home in the traffic that was out that night, it was tempting to just shut all the blinds, turn the porch light off and pretend to not be home. But instead, I got changed out of my witch costume and into some jeans and felt quite a bit better. I cooked pork chops for dinner and we had a nice, relaxing evening watching Halloween-related films and answering the door for the half-dozen or so groups of kids who braved the rain to show up. I wore my "harvest witch" outfit this year that I made in 2006. This will be the last year for that costume to come out. I don't think I'll be able to alter it sufficiently to make it fit me for another year, so it's getting retired. The picture here was taken by a co-worker. It's the only one in existence that I'm aware of. The only reason I care is that this dress was a bitch to make! I have plans for next year, but I will have to get started on it some time next summer. We'll see if anything comes of those plans.

And now, here it is, election day. Eagerly awaited for four years by those of us who have been pulling for the Democrats. Well, I guess that technically, I've been eagerly awaiting this election for the past 8 years. 2000 was such a disillusionment for me, that I thought I might have to look into moving to Canada. Of course there's really nothing I could offer Canada that would be a unique skill (never did master that thing with the ping-pong balls), so I guess I'm gonna have to stay here no matter who wins. But GOD I AM READY FOR A CHANGE AND SOME MUTHA FUCKIN' PROGRESS in this country. We are so woefully behind the rest of the competitive world when it comes to education and health care and just humanity in general that it is mind-boggling. Mind-boggling because there is enough wealth, talent and population in this country that we could and SHOULD lead the entire world....not look like a bunch of retarded school yard bullies. Oh well....I swore I would never again get too emotionally involved (after 2000, that is). I lost my voice that year from all the screaming that I did at the television the night that fuck-tard Bush "won" the election. And when he stole it again in 2004, well, I was just numb by then. Numb, and I honestly couldn't believe it. Honestly COULD NOT. I'm not sure that we won't have out-right rioting in the streets tonight if McCain wins. We'll just have to wait and see. I'm not going to even try to keep up with it this evening on television. I'm going to cook some chicken curry and jasmine rice, make an apple pie in honor of election day and hope for the best. Trust in the process and the American people to make the right decision. We'll see how that works out. Stay tuned.

A few pics from the Husband's Birthday and Miscellaneous Ramblings

2008-10-30T19:44:00.000-07:00

So we had a birthday party for Kristopher here at the house last Tuesday, and I didn't get any pics put up. I have some really good ones because Jaime was here and he's a great photographer. Unlike myself who sucks the big one! First we have a picture of Kristopher's cake. I thought it was really cute, and he picked it out for himself. We actually went to Albertson's together and he chose the spray on image and asked them to put the really cool pumpkin decoration on it. The pumpkin decoration absolutely MADE the cake. It looks super cute in this picture, but when you saw it in real life, it was like your glasses needed cleaning or something. Still it tasted good.

My husband acts like he doesn't like any of the corny shit like getting a birthday song sung for him or blowing out candles - but I gotta tell you...he did a pretty good job of acting like he was actually enjoying himself.

At the party were Beth and Marvin, Patricia Hedtke, Jian Lakerson, Jaime Forerro (thanks for the pics Jaime!) and Terry (Mom) and Kevin - and, of course, me. It was a nice little gathering and we had Papa John's pizza, a bunch of soda and cake and ice cream. Old-fashioned birthday. Mr. and Mrs. Frankenstein even had party hats on. While I was cutting the cake, we had a bit of a philosophical discussion about how cool it was to have your birthday so close to such a cool holiday as Halloween. Great to be close, but not exactly ON the day itself. If your birthday is on the 31st, you'll never be able to have just a regular birthday - it will always have to be a Halloween party. But if it's just close...say 10 days before - then you have the opportunity to either embrace all the Halloween kitch, or completely ignore it. So, again, it was decided that the little man had a good thing going with his birthday on Halloween. Here he is opening his card from his Mom.

There are a few more pics, but I think I'll stop here. Everyone had a pretty good time, and it was really cool to have an old school birthday. But my present to Kristopher didn't show up until the next day, and when it did . . . well, it didn't fit as well as it should have. But I did manage to get a picture of him in it before he took it off because it was pulling on his shoulders. Check out my baby in his giant onsie.

Of course it was really weird to not have Nick and Maggie around. This is the first year that they are in their new home in Yakima. We'll be seeing them for Turkey day, but I've been with Kristopher for 8 birthdays now, and I've never not seen Mr. Nick on that day. I know that Kristopher really missed him too. Things change - familes move apart...but that doesn't mean you have to like it.

Okay, that's it for now. Tomorrow is Halloween and I'm really looking forward to it. Quite a few people at the office are dressing for the occasion and I'm going to do my best to get some decent pictures. Hopefully I can get someone with a steady hand to take a few of me as well.

Fuck Halloween Candy!

2008-10-20T09:59:00.000-07:00

Well, I am a great lover of Halloween - and normally, I don't have any trouble resisting the Halloween candy. However, over the course of the past couple of weeks, I seem to have developed quite the taste for the evil shit. I ate 1000 calories worth of it yesterday. Between the evil Halloween candy and my simpering inability to resist eating it and the fact that the doctor has taken me off of all exercises while my disks heal, I should be whale sized by the time my treatments are done. Well, that's not gonna happen. If I so much as look at one piece of that shit tonight, I'm taking the whole lot of it and throwing it in the trash can. Kristopher and I talked about it, and I think he's about ready to do the same thing. We've had enough for this season, that much is certain. (I think that I had enough for the season YESTERDAY!) Okay...I just wanted to check in and say what I had to say. I forgive myself for my infractions to date because I was getting off of pain killers. Okay. I'm all done with those (they are evil of a different color - but evil to be sure - especially when you are having to stop them.

But on the brighter side.... I don't feel like I need sugar OR pain killers today, so I may be out of the woods. And happy to be out of the woods am I.

Alrighty then! Everyone reading this have a great day.

Spam Blogs and Remote Car Key Responsibity

2008-10-07T20:56:00.000-07:00

My other blog, about my course of spinal treatment, was blocked today as a possible spam blog. Weird. I didn't know what a spam blog was until now. I guess these assholes who have been filling our mailboxes for years now with all manner of crap have taken to automating blog production and blog entry for the purpose of setting link traps to get people to click to go to a single site. How fuckn' stupid can you be? Stop it already, assholes...don't we have ENOUGH meaningless and usesless shit out here? Hmm? Why put more? Knock it the fuck off. Who wants to navigate a trash heap? Another excellent example of how a few assholes can ruin it for everyone else. I think Google is doing a great job by flagging anything that might possibly be one of these sites. I don't mind having my other blog locked where I can't write to it for a couple of days to help keep that kind of lame crap from proliferating all over the Internet. Besides - blogs are cool and it's nice to have them around. If this kind of stuff is allowed to run rampant, even a company as rich as Google won't be able to keep up with the server load demand. Okay...that's all I've got to say about that. Oh, and I'll be sure to put a link to my spinal decompression blog in here later.

And now on to the next topic. Remote repsonsibility for car keys.

This one requires a little bit of explanation. I shall now provide that. Ready? Of course you are. Remote responsibility for car keys refers to the phenomenon of my daughter believing that it was my fault she locked her car keys in her car on the same day that she asked me to give her my key to her car because she had come so close to locking them in there before. When she asked me earlier that day to give her that set of keys, I simply told that she had to be careful and not do that, because I was not giving her the set of keys I have to her car since I am still a co-signer on the loan for that car. Now I know that is extremely unreasonable of me. Call me crazy. My 18-year old daughter who has shown such vast amounts of responsible behavior could not possibly ever default on that car and put my credit at risk. So yeah...she winds up locking her keys in her car with both her and her dad's dog inside. And then she proceeds to call me up and yell at me with a "hope you're happy" kind of tone. She also informed me that if I wasn't going to give her my key, I should at least have the decency to buy her another one because this lock smith was going to cost her money. Okay. Now there you have it. I am somehow remotely responsible for what she does with her car key, and it is MY fault that she locked that key in her car. Does anyone else see the point here? Does anyone else see that she never once thought about it being HER responsibility to be careful and NOT lock her keys in her car. I don't know. I just wonder about the girl sometimes. Her brother was over here on Sunday and he was talking about how he remembered how when Andrea was little, and basically all through her life until her father and I divorced back in 2001, she pretty much got any and every thing she asked for. She would cry for it if that's what it took, but most of the time when she was with her dad, that was unnecessary. And now the sense of entitlement is enormous. I am seeing that things are getting somewhat better with that sort o thing as she has to struggle to do as she wishes and faces up to the consequences - but we still sometimes get gems like "remote responsibility for car keys."

October 1! Yay! Hallowed-Weenie Approaches!

2008-10-01T09:23:00.000-07:00

yay! It's the month of Halloween. Time to put the decorations on the lawn without fear of the neighbors thinking we're a bunch of crack-pots. Of course, they probably ALREADY think that, and what do I care? i really need to work over my main website "theinvoker.com" but I haven't had any heart to do much of anything for the past many months. See my other blog on spinal decompression for info on why that is if you're interested. However, fall is here in earnest and I am feeling better and I think I should do a little creative web-crafting. We're having movie nights at our house this month. The first one is Johnny Depp night and I'm hoping we have a good turnout. Even if it's just two or three people, it will be fun to watch "Sleepy Hollow" and "From Hell" with some other peeps. As usual, it will likey just be the broom crew who shows up for this. The conundrum of having no friends outside of Craft is a continuing one. It just seems that there is really no time to form or cultivate friendships anymore. Too much going on and too little time to keep up with all of it.

Well, I'm so excited I can hardly stand it. Good progress with my back treatments, the first day of October, and Hallowed-weenie is emminent. Goddess bless us, EVERYONE!

Geezuz! September's Almost Over and Here Finally is the Story of Our Ill-Fated Vacation

2008-09-23T20:05:00.001-07:00

It's almost time for Halloween again! I love me some Halloween. Last year was a total rip-off since I had to be in Boise for the occasion - but not this year. Nope. Whatever it is that the firm needs done on October 31, can be done by someone else. I'm going to go to work in costume, hang out with my co-workies and enjoy the day.

Lots has happened since I last updated this blog. I guess it was June! Daaang. Well, since then we've had a camporee, several church get-togethers, a vacation to Glacier National Park and are down a paycheck since Kristopher's job at Swedish came to an end. Life is generally quite good - I have continued the mission I began at the first of this year and am in pursuit of better health and answers as to how I can deal with/get rid of the pain I feel on a pretty much 24-7 basis. I don't have anything particularly interesting to write about this evening, which makes it pretty much the same as most evenings lately - but, I did promise my sister that I would post the story of our vacation, so that's what I'm about to do here. It's quite long, but here goes:

My Glacier National Park Vacation
Or,
Sometimes We Just Need to Get Away – Even if Staying Home Might Technically be a Better Idea
by Maryellen Skelton

I think that it has been about five years since I have taken a regular vacation. Even then, it was not quite a week, so in my mind it doesn’t really count as the full meal deal. Kristopher and I have been married just over six years now, and we haven’t taken a road trip together, so we put our heads together and decided that it was high time we did. So we somehow came up with the idea of going to Glacier National Park in northern Montana. We’d been talking about this trip since back in April, and finally, August came and it was time to go. We both took a week of vacation, got our good friend Kathie to look in on our kitties and that was that.
We had a great trip planned:
Day 1: Leave the house at 7:30 a.m. and drive for 9 or 10 hours until we arrive at Glacier National Park, where we have reservations at an Inn on the East side of the park. We should be arriving late – between 7 and 9 p.m. because there are a few things we still need to buy along the way – like food for camping out, and a small Weber grill for grilling steaks and chicken and such for two - but that’s alright because we have a full day of fun scheduled for the next day.
Day 2: Awake refreshed from a good night’s sleep and find a camping spot somewhere in a campground called Many Glacier. At 2:00 p.m., take a scenic boat tour from the historic Many Glacier Hotel of two of the lakes there. Afterward, find or make some dinner and enjoy an evening by the camp fire.
Day 3: MMMmmMm smell that clean mountain air! Wake up early, pack up camp and head for a place called Two Medicine – one of the older spots in the park with a lake that will allow motorized craft. Arrange for a tour of that lake, then spend any available daylight cruising around on that lake in a rented motor boat. After a great day of all these outdoor activities, another evening spent by the camp fire, gazing at the star strewn Montana sky, and an early bed time will ensure an even better Thursday.
Day 4: Heading for the west side of the park, we will take the famed “Road to the Sun” – according to Fodor’s guide “arguably the most scenically spectacular drive in the country”, to a place called Sprague Creek – which has a nice camp ground and nice hiking trails nearby. Being prepared for Sprague Creek to be filled, we have a back-up plan of going to Apgar or another nearby campground just in case. There’s no real plan for Thursday, but it will be our last evening in the park, so I’m sure we’ll enjoy ourselves. Roasting marshmallows and making s’mores, no doubt.
Day 5: Bid farewell to the glorious park, and begin making our way to Missoula where we have a reservation at a Staybridge Suites for Friday night. Even though we will have had a wonderful time in the park, and rainbows are appearing over our assholes, we will no doubt be ready for some nice clean sheets and other civilized amenities.
Day 6: Wake up early and head for home. Stop along the way and see Kristopher’s brother’s new home in Wenatchee and regale him and his wife with tales of our great vacation. Oh, and if it’s not too late, we’ll stop off at my friend Tracy’s house for a housewarming. La la la ….tra-la-la….
Riiiiiight.
Like so many things in life . . . the reality worked out to be somewhat different from the plan.
Day 1 (Monday): Had to go to work for about four hours on Sunday, so didn’t get the stuff packed up in the car until after midnight. As a consequence, we got up later than expected and didn’t get out of the house to hit the road until 10:00 a.m. Right there we’re gettin’ a different start. But we are in a good mood and happy to get started on our vacation, so it’s all good. We get some breakfast at Jack-in-the-Box and filled up our car and headed down the road. Spirits were high for the first couple of hours. We had decided to take the route of Highway 2 all the way to our destination, pretty much anyway. It was going to be more scenic – and, in the end, we believed more direct. At the very last minute I had a twinge that this might not be the best course of action and I shared those sentiments with Kristopher who assured me that it was as there was an accident on I5 that morning that would have held us back from getting to I90 by about 45 minutes or more. So we headed down that road. By the time we got to Leavenworth, a mere 185 miles down the road, we had been driving for over four hours. And here is what Leavenworth looks like in the summer:
Anyway, I began to recalculate the drive time while we sat behind a line of cars that was being held up for road construction, I began to be afraid that this trip was going to take more along the lines of 10 to 12 hours to drive. No matter – it would be late when we got there, but we would still get there. So on we drove. And we drove, and we drove, and we drove drove drove. Late in the evening, I began to get concerned about my plan that we were going to enter on the West side of the park, take the Going to the Sun Road to our destination on the East side of the park – so, just before we got out of Washington, which was almost 7:00 p.m. (not even out of WASHINGTON yet, you see where this is going?) , I called and spoke to Lindsey at that desk of the Swiftwater Motel where we were going to be staying and she said that she would not attempt to take that road after dark. That during this time of the year, road crews would shut down that road for four hours at a time. Whew! I thought….we’ve dodged a bullet. Nevermind the fact that the alternate route we would have to take would be at the very least another 120 miles farther. No matter – we would get there. So, for the next hour or so, I felt pretty darn good about myself that I’d made that phone call. And on we drove in denial. As it approached 11:00 p.m., I called Lindsey again and let her know that we were not going to make it before her shift ended at 11:00. She said that she would let the security guard know and that he would let us in when we arrived. At about 1:00 a.m., we stopped to get some gas - completely punchy from having been on the road for fourteen hours (we had a time change), and Kristopher told me that I needed to turn around because I’d missed a sign. I was looking at a sign a couple of blocks away and it wasn’t the right one, and he flipped out and told me to get out of the car – that he would drive, and oh baby…it was ON then. For the next hour, over the most twisty, pathetically pot-hole ridden dark-ass roads you’ve ever seen, we fought. And I mean I was MAD! During about the last 8 miles of the trip, I realized that I was still bitching at Kris just to keep myself awake! By the time we got to the hotel, I was ready to start pounding on the goddamn glass to get the security guard to come out. But he did come out and I didn’t even have to vandalize the place to make it happen. We got to bed finally, and, though we were both completely wiped-out from the all day marathon in the car we went to sleep with a sense of well-being. All would be well. We had made it! We were in Glacier National Park and some time tomorrow, we would actually get to SEE it!
Day 2 (Tuesday): We got up fairly early and got our clothing bags packed up in the car, and went to breakfast. Should have known that there was gonna be trouble that day when the waitress told us that the restaurant was closed when we went in. Despite the fact there were several people sitting there in front of us eating. The waitress went on to explain that they served breakfast from 6:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m., then closed for an hour to tool-up for the switch to lunch and open again at 11:00 a.m. Okay then. Of course Kristopher was pretty pissy about that, but he got over it pretty quickly when we went next door and found some microwavable breakfast and I got some coffee. It was gonna be okay. Oh! And I forgot to mention that on our way to the park, on that lovely, lovely drive, I started my period. Oh yea….. Gonna be camping in bear country on my period. Woooo hooo! “Dumbass woman on menstrual cycle camps in bear inhabited national park and is mauled by a grizzly. Film at 11:00.”
Anyway, the next stop that morning was to pay our park fee. Since we came in late and basically through a little-used entrance, we got in for free – but being the honest assholes that we are, we had to drive back over to the entrance gate and pay our $25 fee for the week. Of course we wanted to pay for the week, because we were going to be there a week, right? Well, read on. After we paid our $25, we turned around and went back to the ranger station at Many Glacier so I could talk to a lady ranger and ask about camping while I was on my period. Evidently, all the stuff we had heard about people being attacked by bears because the woman was on her period at the time had no basis in truth – so, although it would be a pain in the ass for me to be on my period, it shouldn’t get us both killed. Hurray for that! Anyway, things were definitely looking up when we were able to get a camping spot at the Many Glacier campground. We were just there at the right time, just like we thought we would be with our planning, and we got one. It was basically on the same land as the Swiftcurrent Motor Inn where we had spent the previous night and we could just walk to the little store and get anything we needed. The rangers stopped by and told us about the rules about cooking and food storage, and told us about a great little camp program that was happening that evening and everything sounded wonderful. We got the tent all set up – we could have left it in the car, but spots at this campground are at such a premium, I wanted to get everything all set up so we wouldn’t have to worry about it after we got back from our boat ride extravaganza.

See? Isn't that just the cutest little campsite you ever saw? Also, it was about 80 degrees, and pretty darned hot in that tent, so I opened the windows and just left the screening up so the wind could get in. I didn’t want it to be hot and stuffy when we got back. The air mattress was all set up, and it had a down comforter on it, all tucked in with a fitted sheet, our sleeping bags, our clothes bags and our pillows were there. So we got some lunch at the same restaurant that turned us away for breakfast (It’s difficult to have hard feelings about such things when you’re hungry), and we got to the Many Glacier Hotel just in time to get parked and get on the boat. On the way to the hotel, we noticed that there was a light sprinkle getting started. Not to worry – no doubt it would soon stop. By the time we got onto the boat, that sprinkle had turned into genuine rain. No worry. No doubt it would stop soon. We got out on the lake, and the rain was coming down so hard that we couldn’t open the windows without getting soaked. So I was getting very disappointed and kinda pouty, but Kristopher was trying to stay positive. So that was nice and I tried as well. Now this boat ride we were taking was a combo boat ride and optional hike. And we were also going to be touring 2 lakes, not just one. We had to disembark the first boat and take a short hike to another boat and tour another lake. Lake Josephine. Anyway, the rain was coming down pretty good by the time we came to the first shore where we were to change boats, and the skipper asked who wanted to go on the hike as planned, and we definitely did not volunteer. Another thing I neglected to mention is that we, the husband and I, did not bring a single thing to deal with any kind of inclimate weather. Not an umbrella, not a rain poncho, not even so much as a jacket or sweatshirt. Oh yeah…. So, we weren’t gonna be the best candidates to go on the 2 mile hike in the rain. So, we went over and got on the next boat to tour lake Josephine. The walk to the other boat was up a fairly steep hill, and there was a bit of a wait while standing in the rain for the second boat. That was all very interesting, let me tell you. The rain, which was now coming down in buckets, was also coming down at a 90-degree angle. wind had kicked up and was driving this thing right into the realm of a significant summer storm. I began to get concerned for the tent and was wondering how it was fairing the storm. I wasn’t too worried at this point, thinking that it was likely that the weather was a lot worse here on the lake. So it went on. By now, I was just hoping to get through it quickly. We got finished with the tour of Lake Josephine, and were on the trail back to the other boat (for which we left the boat early because the rides were so crowded there was a chance you would not be able to get a seat if you didn’t get there quickly), and Kristopher said something crappy to me, and I hit him in the back of the neck with a water bottle that had about 3 ounces of water in it, and he turned around and was MAD. He said something hateful and we went back to the campground in a silent car. I was wet, cold, disappointed and seething. The plan was to go back to the tent, lie down for a while and try to recoup and hopefully not say anything about anything and thereby avoid getting a giant fight started. But we went back to the campground to find our tent soaked and all the stuff standing in a couple inches of water in places. The packed bags with our clothes were in the tent, the sleeping bags, the down comforter, the quilt, the air mattress and basically anything and everything that was made of cloth and would be very inconvenient to have wet when you have no handy way to get them dry again - were in the tent. And all of it – all of it was wet. This, of course, coupled with the still persistent rain, magnified the significance of what happened on the trail on the way from Lake Josephine, and there was some uncomfortable time in the car. Finally, the rain subsided and we began the process of pulling all of the stuff out of the tent and setting it up to dry somewhere on the campsite. Kristopher, thank God, brought a huge length of rope, probably 80 ft. of it, and strung it between some of the trees on the site. We were talking about going to the dryers at the Swiftcurrent Motel and putting in some of the wettest pieces when a guy passed by (never knew who this guy was or where he came from) that told us we could use the dryers ‘if the electricity wasn’t out in the whole valley’ – and other things like we were soon going to be out of water in the campground because none of the pumps were going to be working. Swell. So the feather mattress that was soaked, and all of Kristopher’s clothes that were also soaked in their bag and both sleeping bags and all the other cloth in the tent was strung out over the lines that Kristopher put up, and the hammock (which got plenty wet itself) and the bushes and everything else that would hold . Not wanting to sit there and look at the soaking wet stuff any longer, we headed to Babb for dinner. I was still feeling very down and like nothing was ever going to work out again even after we got there and right after we ordered our food, but then it started to get some better, and it wasn’t raining again, and things were looking up. The sun had been out for long enough that by the time dinner was over, I was sure that most of what we had was going to be dry enough to be passable and that the worst of it was done and over. That, as it turned out, was very true. There was nothing again on the trip quite like the sideways driving rain boat trip or the 2 inches of water in the tent and all the stuff wet while we were soaked to the bone and cold. However, we ain’t done yet. And, in the event it has escaped your attention, I am on day 2 of my period while camping here in bear country. So we have a great steak dinner at this cool steakhouse. I have a New York strip and Kristopher has a buffalo steak and we get free cheesecake to go for dessert, and we go back to the campsite. We have a nice fire, and hold our pillows in front of the fire to get them dry. We get out the Coleman stove and I heat up some water for hot tea (can’t have anything with sugar in it, or anything that might look like food or actual cooking after dark while camping in bear country). We have cheesecake and by the time we tuck in for the night, we are sleeping warm and comfy. And that’s a good thing because, about 30 minutes after we went to bed, it started raining. But again, we were warm and dry.

Day 3 (Wednesday): It’s good to have a plan so you have something to abandon. We managed to get up and get to the restaurant before they stopped serving breakfast – so already we’re stoked about that. We have a decent breakfast at the Swiftwater Motor Inn’s restaurant, and we went to the gift shop where we picked out rain jackets, hats and emergency ponchos. They were nice jackets and they were reasonably priced, and the hat that we found for Kristopher made him look like Mr. Wilderness himself. We were going to deal with the rain, and do so with a smile if we could. We read a weather report on the counter of the restaurant and it basically said that it was raining on the east side of the park, and it was raining on the west side of the park. So it really didn’t matter where we went. As such, we thought we would abandon the idea of going to Two Medicine and go ahead and take the Going to the Sun road to the west side of the park. At least we would have a beautiful drive, and likely we would find more to do on the west side of the park with the Apgar center there and so forth. So, we set out. The Going to the Sun road is a marvel of engineering – carved out of the side of the mountains and winding around the rock faces to incredible heights until ultimately crossing the continental divide, the views are reportedly breathtaking. We drove through St. Mary and picked up some cash, and started along the road. It was still raining, but not hard – certainly nothing we weren’t accustomed to seeing having come from Seattle. In fact, as we continued along the road we both remarked about how much this place we were in looked like Mt. Baker state park about 40 miles from home. In fact, the only things we could see due to the reduced visibility brought about by the cloud cover, were ALL very similar to the parks we see and drive through any time we feel like it. And we drove 14 hours on shitty Highway 2 to get here. Hmm. Smart. As we continued on our way on the Going to the Sun Road, the weather took a turn for the worse. The rain increased, and, when we were at the peak, the clouds began to roll in. Actual clouds. Not just fog, but the really think kind of white, cotton clouds that you sometimes get in when you’re flying. Except we weren’t flying. We were driving. To be more specific, I was driving. So the visibility that was diminished for sight-seeing, now became virtually nil, and the visibility for driving and seeing the road, went right along with it. I am not exaggerating when I say that I could only see about 7 inches in front of the hood. We were on the inside track, right next to the rock face and I was concentrating on staying just to the right of the center line, as I could not see a right-side line most of the time. Of course, oncoming traffic had the outside track, and they were worried about not falling off the side of the mountain so some of them were watching the center line and concentrating, no doubt, on staying right on it. Anyway, it was quite harrowing, and there was quite a bit of it. The one good thing about it is that we had abandoned bitching because the only scenery we could see looked an awful lot like Seattle, and started being grateful to be making it out alive. When we regained some visibility, we got stopped by the road construction crew. The road was narrowing to a one lane now. Yay. The rest of the drive down was uneventful, but took quite a bit of time. It was about 2.5 hours of stress and no views. We stopped at Lake McDonald where there was a lodge, and a place to have pizza. We looked around at the lodge and went to enquire about a room for the night at the lodge. I really hated to leave the park. Of course, there was no room at the lodge as they are booked well in advance – but we tried. The pizza was pretty good, and it should have been for the price of it. Anyway, whatever. We decided to give it up and leave the park. So goodbye to Glacier, and it was only Wednesday. On we drove, south toward Missoula. We planned to stop along the way and camp somewhere on Flathead lake. Luckily, that worked out and we found a nice place to stop for the night. I kept hoping that we would out run the rain, but we weren’t able to do that. It did actually stop raining long enough for us to get the tent set up, and to go into town (Polson) about 12 miles down the road and pick up some groceries and a tarp. So that’s what we did, and we found a little Weber like I wanted at the Ace Hardware store, and we bought some steaks at the grocery store next door. We went back to the campsite – it was dark by now – but we had a nice dinner there by the lake. Kristopher built a fire for us and the moon, just full on Saturday night, rose above the lake and gave some beautiful views. By the time we finished eating and put the dishes and other stuff away, it started to rain. We didn’t mind because we were tired and ready to go to bed anyway. And so it rained – and it rained all night long. That was okay because we stayed nice and dry inside our little Sir Edmond Hillary tent.

Day 4 (Thursday): By morning the rain had subsided, which was good because I really had to go pee. Did I mention that I was on my period while we were camping in bear country? So I got up and went to the bathrooms in the car so I could take a shower. Managed to do that without incident, then went back to the campsite and began the process of cooking breakfast, while Mr. Man got out of the tent and built another fire to burn stuff in. I did, however, take the time to put up the tarp so I could cook without getting wet if it started to rain again. And, as it turned out, it did do a bit of raining so it was a good thing we had it. Anyway, it was fun cooking breakfast, and the lake was beautiful. So it was a good morning. We got the bedding out and got it most of the way dry (yes, a little water got in the tent during the full night of raining), we got the car unpacked and re-packed in a bit better configuration and went down the road. The plan was to find some place to camp for this last night before it got too late. There were still a couple of state parks listed on the map that we could investigate before we got to Missoula. And so we drove on. We stopped and visited St. Ignatious mission in St. Ignatious MT. It was a pretty cool church with beautiful fresco paintings and it was a nice stop. All this time it is still raining as we go southward on our way. We continued on and headed for the bison range since Kristopher wanted to see that. It wasn’t far out of the way, and before entering the bison range, we stopped and had a hamburger from a surly vendor just outside of the range. We also stopped by a curio shop across the street where we got some wallets made from buffalo skin and Kristopher bought me some buffalo earrings. We went to the bison range entrance, and you’ll never guess what happened. It started to pour down RAIN. What a shocker. It was getting kind of late, and so we decided to head on down the road to our next campsite. I had found a place on the map that looked pretty good – it was east of Missoula and if we cut across a road going through the Flathead Reservation, we could be there in a couple of hours. Well, we did just that. Except that when we went through to the road going to Salmon lake (or Lake Placid – there were two to choose from), it was an unimproved road – no challenge for PePe, except that a couple of miles in, the road forked and there was absolutely no indication which was the correct direction to take. The only thing that even approximated a direction was a blue arrow painted by someone with a can of Krylon on the back of a stop sign pointing toward the fork on the right. And so we took it. That fork led us on a meandering path of some farms in the area, and, after about 30 minutes, right back out onto the highway from whence we came. And so, since neither of us was in the mood for much more adventure and Kristopher mapped us out a route to get to these parks that took us on some dependable roads. Dependable, yes. 90 miles more out of the way, yes. By the time we got to these parks to take a look at them, I was about ready to ditch the car and run away to the nearest airport to get home. But I was keepin’ it together. We looked at the first park, which was pretty nice, fairly secluded (if a little dark), and then went down the road (only a couple of miles or I would never have done it) and looked at the second park. When we got there we saw people whippin’ out their rain gear. Yep. It had followed us once again. Not able to bear the thought of having to set up for camping in the rain again, I got inot my back pack and got the file folder on all the arrangements I had made ahead of time and got the information on the hotel. Since we were fortunate enough to have cell phone signal, I called and got the hotel reservation changed to Thursday instead of Friday. So we went to Missoula to the Staybridge Inn, and there we salvaged our vacation. As soon as we checked in they told us about the free buffet that they had going on and how we still had an hour to enjoy it. Not 5 minutes – a whole hour. Ah….. We got our stuff up to the room, and as soon as Kristopher had dropped the bags he was carrying, he started dropping clothes. He hadn’t had a shower since Monday morning when we left home, and he was READY. After his shower, we went downstairs and had some Caesar salad with chicken. It was a decent dinner, but the best part about it was that we didn’t have to get back into the car for anything. We stayed right there and we were happy. They had a big movie room in the common area and we took a movie down there to watch. I also enjoyed the hot tub and pool (more the hot tub than the pool). It was great. We slept quite well in our king sized bed. Some time during the evening we made the decision to stay another night. Actually, it was more me who made the decision because I could not fathom getting up the next morning and getting into the car for another full day of driving. And, although I could see some places to stop and camp on the map, I had quite enough of trying to out run the weather and second guess the roads. So another night at the Staybridge Inn sounded just fine to me.
Day 5 (Friday): Woke up at about 9:00, got dressed in exercise clothes and went to the free breakfast buffet with Kristopher. Walked like I normally do, then after getting dressed went to the Sportsman’s Warehouse with Kristopher and spent just over two hours picking out his hunting gear with him. We went to a great place for ribs – I think it was called “Famous Dave’s” and man, it was gooooood stuff. I had ribs and Kristopher had a steak. Then we took off for downtown and rode the carousel together. We bought some stuff in the gift shop and took pics – then headed off to the mall. I bought a new necklace at Sears – a heart and ruby one, and Kristopher bought some shoe laces. We headed back to the hotel and watched some television and went to bed.
Day 6 (Saturday): Got up at 9:00 again (didn’t take a lot of time to try to figure out why I was sleeping so soundly) and did the free breakfast and walking thing. We took off for home about noon. We made it as far as Superior, MT and had some lunch at a place called Durango’s. We bought some souveniers there – I got a really cool dragon statue and some nice glass earrings. I also bought a dragon statue for Mr. Bill for Yule, and Kristopher a cool box for his God incense (nice little piece of altar gear to go with the water chalice he got at the mall), and a couple of spices that are really bad ass.
After that we pretty much drove straight home with one small stop off at the Coumbia river for some pictures and to stretch our legs.

Blogging with Word 2007

2008-06-12T22:25:00.001-07:00

So I'm trying something new this evening. I have Word 2007, and it's the new hotness where document authoring tools are concerned, so I'm kickin' the tires on some new features. I haven't posted an entry on this blog in quite a while, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy. Quite the opposite. I've hardly had time to catch my breath lately. Busy at work, busy at home. Pretty much that's the way I like it, but I could also use some broccoli time. Kristopher is working on an English paper – the dishes are done, the lawn is weed – eated (for the most part) – I just had a shower and now it's time to play with ye olde computer.

Kristopher bought me a scope for my rifle. I will have to post a picture of her. She's very cool with her Mossy Oak camouflage badness. Her name is "Pinky" and she's a Remington 597. I think that WAS my last blog post, as a matter of fact. I think I posted a picture of pinky the day I ordered her. Well, she's here in all her Mossy Oak glory – but I'm having trouble getting any kind of accuracy out of her at the range. I'm gonna try again this weekend. Last weekend was impossible because I had to finish up getting ready for a class that I was giving at another law firm. My old friend, Susan Barragan, who is now the office administrator for a firm called Tupper Mack Brower, asked me to come over there and do some Adobe Acrobat 8 training. I agreed to do it, and Monday was the day that I went over there and did my three-hour dog-n-pony show. I had to go to work at the firm for the second half of the day. It was hectic, but well worth it. The rest of this week has flown by in a blur of work and watching movies. I was going to watch the third LOTR movie (Return of the King) tonight, but decided instead to come in here and fuck around with my Purple Lappy. Ooops! I just remembered that I have a baby shower to go to tomorrow, and I haven't done one single thing for it. I meant to get out and get a present for Chris Briggs and his wife Rebecca, but I didn't manage to get it done. Dammit! I can't believe I'm so friggin' lame! I'm gonna have to just buy in on the group gift! That sucks a bunch. I'll bet Rebecca doesn't have a bunch of friends runnin' around this city and she isn't really gonna get to open too many gifts and such. Oh well. Who the hell am I feelin' sorry for? I didn't have a shower with either of my children, and with Tim Allen I was back at work 3 days after I had him. I think the time was about the same with Andrea as well. She'll be fine. I'll go in on the group gift and go down to the conference room and watch them eat cake. If I get up early enough, I guess I can go by Fred Meyer before work and get a gift and put it together before the party. I'll have to do that. Group gift is just way too lame. And this way, Kristopher can sign the card too.

Okay – now I'm gonna try to post this thing.

And Next . . . Pinky!

2008-06-01T00:45:00.001-07:00

Well, it seems that my husband has awakened something in me that has been dormant for quite a very long time - in fact, something I had worked pretty hard to actually bury. He has awakened . . . The Cracker! lol!

Seems that Kristopher has been bitten by the firearms bug. Now, I have to tell you that my Dad was a HUGE gun enthusiast when he was alive. Granted, he died when I was 10 years old, but I remember going out to the firing range with him and my mom and brother on a few occassions. I couldn't drive you to that firing range if I was sitting on my ass in a running car in Ardmore, Oklahoma right now, but I can describe it to you quite clearly. Anyway, my Dad died in his shop working on reloading some rounds. He really enjoyed messin' with guns. He was in there with my uncle and croaked. He was 47 years old. My mom sold off his gun collection with the help of my brother, and I know that it paid quite a lot of mom's outstanding bills to do so. After Dad was gone, there was none of the gun stuff in the house any longer, and we had very little contact with my brother, so that "manly" stuff was just out. When I got older and got into guys, I knew that I certainly didn't want the "hunting and fishing and gun sports" type. I didn't want the type that watched football either. I'm not sure what I wanted - I guess someone who was sophisticated - maybe a musician or an artist or whatever other lofty idealistic horseshit I had in my head at the time.

So anyway, skip to present. My husband has taken an interest in rifle sports and has bought a .22 cal rifle. He also bought gun safety and basic rifle classes for both of us at the Kenmore gun range. Well, we had rifle class this past weekend and I really enjoyed it. Ib even did pretty good shooting. Kris and I have been out shooting since then too. So, itn was only logical that I get a gun so that we can both dive in anbd do our qualification shooting. So, I bought myself a rifle. It's the cutest little Remington .22 cal you've ever seen. In fact, here's a picture of it. :)

Anyway - there she is. She should be in to the firearms dealer by Tuesday. We have a range meeting that night, so there's a chance I'll get to pick her up then. But it's just after 1:00 a.m., and I think I'll go to bed. We didn't eat dinner 'til around 10:00. I miscalculasted the cook time on a big turkey breast I was cooking up for us - so there it is. But still - how late can you stay up?

Happiness is a PurpleLappy

2008-05-19T11:24:00.000-07:00

Hello! It's been a long time since I put anything at all out on the Internet. The deeper I get into my job, the more cautious I become with what I put out here altogether. I have seen so much crap dug up in the name of electronic discovery, it boggles the mind. I have seen whole web pages recreated, even after their owners thought them to be safely down and inaccessible (thanks to Google's caching function). Scary, to say the least. But I really don't have anything out here that's too off the wall, so for now it stays.

My newest thing is the beautiful purple laptop that I'm typing this post on. Working in the technology field while working for a conservative company has made it necessary that I purchase my first personal computer since 1994. That's right. The last computer I purchased for myself was in 1994, and I bought the hottest thing I could get my hands on. I paid four times what I had to outlay for this one, and it came loaded with Windows 95. That's right! Windows 95. You guys remember that OS? It was a good one. Very strange in the beginning, but once you got accustomed to it, it was da bomb! :) Same holds true of Vista. I think that I bashed it prematurely and without good reason. Now, I just want to use it and learn everything I can about it because it really is cool. They (Microsoft) has put a lot of good stuff in here.

Thanks to my good friend, missy Megan-head, who just finished up a several month stint of work in Mecca (Microsoft), I have a Bill Gates signature edition of Vista (full version, baby....not a friggin' upgrade). Here's a picture that I smoothe stole from someone else's post.

So there you have it. Just a stupid post about nothing in particular with a rather uninsteresting photo of a software box. Stay tuned. I should have some more shit to say soon. Believe me, I haven't been standing still since January. Quite the opposite. I've traveled, gotten another certification for my jobbie-job, and am about to set myself up for another one. This one more spendy than all the others I have put together. And, this next one will be the richest. Certified Hacker Forensic Investigator. CHFI. Oh yeah....

Later gator!

A Random Monday in Early 2008 that Didn't Suck All That Bad

2008-01-07T19:55:00.000-08:00

I started to title this post "God Dammit I'm Tired!" but realized that I wasn't really all that tired - just sorta worn down from the day. It was an interesting one at the office where I worked straight through without a break. Makes me kinda retarded when I do that. Don't even say it....

Let's see....I haven't talked about Yule-age and New Year yet, did I?

So, let's start with some Yule-age...shall we? Kristopher and I got home on Friday evening on December 20th and I watched some more Christmas movies and wrapped some more presents. Got up the next morning and I made a nice quiche and we opened out presents with Andrea. It was a great Yule-haul (get it...Yule-Haul...oh nevermind...it's more of that retardation I told you about a minute ago). Anyway, we all got lots of nice stuff. I got a diamond cocktail ring from my sweetie and also the much beloved 'Charlie Brown's Christmas' special from my sweetie-man. First pic is of me opening the moobie.

Andrea seemed to have a good Yule. I like this picture of her opening up her new purse. The reaction seems pretty genuine. If you''d've seen her old purse, you'd KNOW it was.

And here's a picture of my mister-man checking out his new coat. I think it'll keep him warm.

So Saturday morning was a good bit of Yule-age. I can't remember what I cooked for dinner Saturday evening so it must not have been anything special. The next day was spent getting prepared to go to Witchy Hollow and have the Yule celebration. It was the final installment in my Wheel series and I was quite happy to have it done. It's been a wonderful and eventful year. We had a nice circle, then wonderful feasting and opening of gifts. Beth seemed happy with her stuff and damned if I didn't forget the camera when we went over there. :( Kristopher got a cool lightening globe, and I got some candle holders for the yard. They are torchiers, really. Four of 'em. Hmm. Wonder what I'm gonna do with those....Okay, so that brings us to Monday, which was Christmas Eve. I wound up having a few drinks as I nanced around the house and cooked a duck. Yep....cooked a duck. Sorry about that.
It was great and here's what it looks like all cooked up from the perspective of a drunken camera person.
So after we had our lovely duck-dinner, I took off about 6:30 for West Seattle where I picked up my friend and co-worker, Chris Schafer. She was born on Christmas Day, and she is either Catholic or Jack Catholic; but I do know that she loves the iconography and wears the medallions indicative of either being or wanting to be Catholic, so I thought it would be a great idea for us to go to Midnight Mass at St. James Cathedral in Seattle. Now it's been about 10 years since I attended a Midnight Mass there, so I called the Cathedral offices on Friday before I left work, and they said that it would be standing room only by 10:00 and if we wanted to get decent seats, we needed to be there by 9:30. Well, we got there by 8:30. I wish I had pictures of the doors to that place! They had replaced them since I had been there last with these outrageous bronzed doors in raised relief. They are really incredible, and, like George Carlin eating a box of oreos while staring at the kitchen clock, we stood and stared at those doors for about 10 minutes out in the cold in front of the cathedral before we went in. I was completely oblivious to what anyone thought of my unabashed wonder at the sight of a hinge about 12 inches high and four inches in diameter. They were unbelievable. Again...no friggin' camera. I'm gonna have to make room for it in my purse. Anyway, we got there early and the mass wsa beautiful. I didn't get quite the rush from it as I did the last time (at least to the best of my memory), but I DID say a rosary for my mom without bursting into flames, and we did sing carols with this huge congregation, and it was the highlight of Christmas. I got home about 2:15 or so and went to bed. The following day, we slept in. Andrea went over to have Christmas with her Dad. She wasn't real thrilled when she came back, but then she never really is. He got her a "club" for her car. She had a good Christmas from me and from Kristopher - so she wasn't hurting, but still....I dunno. A friggin' "club" - it's like her Dad doesn't have a clue. Well, that's only partially it. The other part is that he's the cheapest tight-wad on the planet. The next day we went over to Aunt Pat and Uncle Ed's house for Christmas dinner. It was nice. Maggie and Nick were't there because they were on the Penninsula with Maggie's family - so it was quiet and kinda strange but good to see the aunts and uncles. The next bit of Yule-age had to wait until after the longest three-day week in the history of the world. Andrea moved out of the house on Friday the 28th leaving behind a pile of stuff that looked like it was blown in by a hurricane. She did a pretty good job of getting her stuff out with the time she had around her work schedule, but still it took a whole day to clean the trash and debris out of the room and by the time I was finished, I was who-hash. Anyway, I went to Sears that day and bought a new tread-mill and put it in the empty room. I hope it doesn't hurt her feelings that I didn't leave the piles of trash laying there for sentimental purposes, but I thought it best to clear it out. The next day we had the family Christmas over here, and that was my favorite. Maggie and Nick and Terri and Kevin, me, Kristopher and Andrea. We opened gifts, and wow, did we ever make a grand haul that day. Terri went nuts with the gift-giving. And it was extra great that Kevin was here this year. I think if we have to make Christmas at an off-day to have him around every year, that's what we ought to do. It was really nice. Here are some pics from that too.

This first one is of Nick and Maggie - Nick apparently terrified by the small, flat tree that is inexplicably on his plate. The next picture looks like I took it from the back of a ski boat. I have no idea how I got a buncha crap splashed up on the lens, but I managed somehow.
So that was our Christmas experience for 2007. Now my ass is getting numb, so I'm going to get up and get off this computer for now.

Hiiii Deee Ho!

2007-12-20T22:29:00.000-08:00

Wow! It's been a while since I've said anything on here. Studying for the CLA exam pretty much consumed the end of September through the end of November. It was a good test and I enjoyed seeing my sister, though I have to say, seeing my Mother was hard. The trip back to Oklahoma was a taxing one all the way around. First I landed on Wednesday evening and went home with my sister and saw my Mom there in the Hospital (this was, by the way, November 30). Mom had been in the hospital either in Stillwater or Perry since October 3. Anyway, we got to the hospital and there was Mom. She had lost all ability to get up and walk at all, even as crummy as she was walking the last time I saw her. So there was that....and the next day I spent the day getting prepped for the test and resting up from the trip and seeing Mom. The day after that was day 1 of the test, and that was in Tulsa, 90 miles away. This is me at the Tulsa Community College on day 1 of the test.
After the test, I managed to get myself lost on the way back to Perry, so when I got to Stillwater, I stopped off and ate at El Chico - which, for those of you reading this who don't know, it's a bomb Mexican restaurant chain that I miss from my Tex/OK days. It was good, and I got through the 2nd day of the test okay too. On the second day, however, there was a horrific writing exam where we had to write a brief on a legal fact scenario and apply some law that was given to us. I had a hard time with it, and when I was reading through it the 3rd time that a woman walked up to the Procor and turned her exam in. Made me feel stupid for about a split second until I realized that she was crying. She told the Proctor that she didn't even know what to do, and that she was sorry. That meant that she failed that section of the exam since that particular question was worth 75% of it. Oh well.
Anyway, I got through it and had a few days to visit with my sister and my Mom. Mom is in bad shape. I don't want to say any more about that really. There are still all kinds of ongoing problems with that, and I send my love and sympathy to her, and to my sister who is working hard to take care of her.

So, I had a great birthday also. Turned another year older. It was a good one. The day before Kristopher and I went to Sushi with Nick, Maggie, Terry and Geoff and Marianne. It was fun except for the fact that there were not enough chairs at the bar for us all to sit there, so Kristopher sat with Geoff and Marianne and it was like they were in a separate party. But you can't have everything. The next day I got up and went to coffee, then to Macy's and got myself a pair of new jeans and a new shirt. I knew that kristopher was taking me somewhere for dinner, but I didn't know where at the time. I went home and had a brand new DS waiting for me all wrapped up on the kitchen table. It was very cool. It is a beautiful red one with a cool case and Brain Age II. Then, my little hubby took me to the Space Needle for my birthday dinner. He didn't spare any expense. It was very nice. I had the prime rib and Kristopher had a steak. It was a great birthday. Okay . . . that pretty much catches us up with the exception of what I have a buncha pictures for. On Tuesday of this week when I got my tattoo. Yay! :) I was so happy to get it done.

It was done by a dude named Hippie John at ColorBomb Tattoo here in Lynnwood. I went there last Saturday (after all, Andrea had one done on her birthday just after she walked in the door and announced that she wanted one). I didn't get to do that because what I wanted wasn't in any of their books, and Hippie needed to draw it up on the light board. So, we settled in on a design, and I went back the next day to get it fixed on my chest, then he made the appointment to do the tattoo on Tuesday of this week. Here I am just before I went in to lay on Hippie's table:

I wasn't scared, just tired from working all day and taking time out to go to the doctor - spine dude. Anyway it wasn't long and Hippie came to get me. We got started at 6:49 p.m. and got finished at 10:10 p.m. I was STARVIN' by the time I got home. Anyway, here are some of the pics from the big event.

The above pictures and the very next one were taken by a dude there at the shop named Berger. He is a wanna be tattoo artist and works the front counter. The tattoo dudes were constently yelling "Goddammit Berger!" for no reason. It was fun. They were razzin' the new dude. Anyway, here's another Berger special showing Hippie John doin' his thang with the cornucopia on my chest.

Isn't it beautiful? I'm gonna be wearin' it for a looooooong time to come.

It was worth all the time and effort. And Hippie John is a great tattoo artist, and an artist he is. :) Here it is close to being finished.
Both Hippie and I were ready for it to be done when it was, but he stuck with it and did a fantastic job. Okay....I just reailzed that it is after midnight and we have stayed up night after night and it's getting old! I have to get up and go to work in the morning. So, goodnight all.

Andrea's New Car

2007-09-04T22:22:00.000-07:00

Last weekend (not this Labor Day weekend, but the one just before that), was a big one 'round the old homestead because Missy Andrea-head got a new car. Sick of wrestling with old cars, we (and I suppose I'm using the "royal we" here) made the executive decision to buy her a new one with a full 10-year/100,000 mile warranty. Here are some pics of her with her new baby.

Of course, I caught no end of crap from my son who managed to tell me that I never did anything for him ever in his life, and how his "mother in law" (I put that in quotes because he's not really married to the girl he's living with) has been there for him more than I have, blah, blah, blah....and how it didn't count that I bought him, outright, a $2000 Honda Prelude, which he loved. Mind you, the daughter is responsbile for making the payments on this new little car. That's part of the deal. Help her to grow up while she's got a net (me) underneath her. But he didn't seem to care much about that fact, nor in fact, give it any credence at all. Oh well. It is typical of kids that they tell you how you have ruined their life, and if they have siblings, how much better you treat the other than they ever treated you. My turn, I guess. I know that my brother and sisters gave my mother similar crap when I was growing up. The older I get, the more I see life as a circle.

As for my part, I will continue to do whatever it is I can for my children for the time and circumstances I'm in, and just hope, that when the circle comes around on them, they remember.

Charlotte's Web, Witches in the Stix, and Happy Birthday Blogger!

2007-08-24T23:07:00.000-07:00

This here's Charlotte! She's our newest tenant here at casa de Skelton and she is living above the doorway to and from the garage at the back. (My husband would say that she is living in the doorway of his shop - and really that's true, as one of her threads is attached to his blacksmith sign. E.B. White would be proud. :) I can't help wishing that she would spin some words into her web. Maybe she could write, "BAD ASS" or "TIME TO MOW" and we could hang out by her web and intake her wisdom.

I can't believe that blogger is 8 years old. Let's see...I only found it what, two years ago? I think it's cool to keep an Internet diary - so long as you are not stupid about it, as I believe I mentioned in another post. We live in a country that is tenuously free - that freedom can be taken at any time, really as it is only there as a matter of social compact that is solidified into laws. But solid things have a way of revealing their transitive nature at some of the most inopportune times - so just a little caution is called for.

Things have been so busy I haven't had a chance to put up a decent post in a while. But the husband is sitting here next to me watching "New Hope" on his laptop, and I am refusing to study tonight (I gotta at least have my Friday night, man...at least until the test gets a bit closer)

So I got a few pictures from our camporee adventure at the first of August that I thought I would share here. A little segment I like to call....Witches in the Stix. Dun dun duuuuuuuuun.

I don't even know what I was thinkin' when I laid these sticks out and took a picture of them. Don't remember that at all. There's evidence of why in the next shot.

This second one is of me sitting at one of the tables at our campsite copying in my big book. Notice the empty bottle of Ameretto sitting in front of me. Possibly something to do with my lack of memory of the finer points and details of the camping trip. It was nice to be outside and be working on my book. I do remember that much.

This next one is of my little man using our "La Douche de Camp" or... Camp Shower. :) Instead of calling each other douche bags now, we just call each other "camp showers." Works for me. I think he probably wishes the sun had come out for just a while and warmed that water. Bless his heart. I, on the other hand, went up the hill with my tokens from Miss Lori and got myself a hot shower in the pay-can.

I've got more pictures from camping, but they are of peeps I don't know how they would feel about being put up on the Internet. Remember that minimal level of care thing?

But here's one more thing I can show you before the Xanax kicks in....Princess Skwiik. Yes, it's Skwiik. Her name has stuck but the spelling has changed. She's been named with the beloved wii in mind. ;) And here she is....what a little doll.

And that's about it for tonight. Not too verbose, but lots of pics. I need to blog more because I need to get in the writing practice in anticipation of my CLA/CP exam in November. I'm discovering that mental skills, like physical skills, get very, very rusty from lack of use. But I'm putting on the old Navel Jelly and hoping ot knock it back down to shiny steel. :)

Now I'm gonna go check out the new tools on blogger. I think it's really cool that they have pivoted information on the profiles. I've always liked this venue soooooo much better than My Space. I still keep a page out there because I still need to keep an eye on my daughter and make sure she isn't trying to peddle herself on the Internet or anything like that, but Blogger is my fav. Nighty Night!

Glory Hallelujah.....

2007-08-13T22:58:00.001-07:00

I don't know why I just said that...or really what the Hell it was about. Just felt like titling this post that way. Lots has happened since my last entry. We had a great campout with our pointy-hatted little friends out in the wilds of Sequim. It was a grand time with only a mishap or two not worth mentioning. Kristopher and I made stew our first night there and had that with Popeyes biscuits and it was like bein' on the trail with a chuck wagon.

We didn't tell any ghost stories around the campfire or anything like that - but there was a Lammas ritual in a perfect little grove and there was a Wicker Man about 9 ft. tall with a holly head and a wicker basket heart.

And here I am, a good 10 days after I started this post trying to remember what my point was in even making it. Sadly, it is lost!

But I'm gonna put it up anyway because it's been a while since I posted. I just got finished reading a quick blurb on MySpace where one of the people who is on my friend's list just got fired from her job for posting to her MySpace blog about her job. Daaaaang. People, get a clue. Don't post stuff on the Internet about your employer, your job, what you hate, what you like about it....NOTHING. It can come to no good. I've mentioned in my profile that I work for a large downtown law firm in Seattle, and that's all you're gettin'! I'm not gonna talk about my employer and sully up my job because I want to vent about a bad day, bad week, month or year. Buy a fuckin' diary! Don't put it out here, because honey-bee, lemme tell ya...ain't nothin' private about electronic data. Beleive me, I know. It's my job to know.

Now be good and I'll talk to you later.

Goodbye Chico....

2007-07-22T18:11:00.000-07:00

Got up this morning....made coffee, and was opening the blinds when I saw our little cockatiel, Chico, who had been with us for 9 years lying dead on the bottom of her cage. She was three years old when we got her which put her at 12 when she died. She was a good little bird who was very loving and would allow you to hold and handle her all you wanted. She was a hand-raised baby who had been given to us by a firend of mine who used t work at the law firm where I am currently employed. Her name was Liz Fitchen and she was leaving the city to move to the midwest to get married, and thought that two birds would be too much to take. So, she chose to take her pocket-parrot, Opus, instead of Chico, and left Chico to live with us. Chico was primarily my daughter Andrea's bird for a long time, but as teenagerhood settled in on my daughter and her room became more dark and uninviting, Chico's care began to flag as well, so, just about a year ago, maybe just over, I moved Chico out into the living room so she could be around where most of the family activity took place.

About two years ago we were all surprised by Chico when we discovered, by finding eggs in the bottom of her cage, that she was a "Chica" and not a "Chico" after all. Hmmmm....it explained why, all the years we had her, she didn't learn to talk. The females of the species just don't have as much capacity for it as the males.

In November of last year, I bought her a really nice cage, and she lived her remaining days with the light of day on her for as many hours as it was available in the sky. She loved her honey sticks and spray millet. She would only squawk and squeak when she was hungry or needed new water. She was a great little pet, but now she's free. She's free to fly the blue skies beyond the boundaries of this flesh-life.

These pictures of Chico (whom we could never get accustomed to calling "Chica" after our revelation about her gender), were taken on April 1. Our friends Jaime and Melanie had come to visit with their dog, Lu-Lu, and Melanie wanted to see what it was like to hold the little bird. As you can see, Chico made it a pleasant experience for Melanie who really enjoyed holding her. Chico never disappointed people when they wanted to hold and pet a nice little bird who wouldn't bit them. She's bending down for a little scratch behind the neck like she loved.

So bye-bye, Chico, baby. You were a good little pet, and we tried to make you happy while you were with us. Fly free now and please remember us well if you remember us at all.

Swimming in theQuantum Sea, and Cecilia

2007-07-18T10:29:00.000-07:00

Good morning...happy Wednesday in the middle of July from Seattle where it is raining and about 68 degrees outside.

Just got off the phone with my buddy Ce-ce, with whom I seem to be extra connected. We talked about quantum physics. Not many of my friends I can talk to about somethin' like that in the first place - and, as it turns out, Missy Cecilia had been given a vision of the string theory of matter when she was in a half-sleep some years ago. I told her that she was retarded lucky....and we chatted for a while about a book I've been reading and I read her a passage about microtubules and we ooooo-ed and awww-ed together for a little bit about the reality of being light-emitting ethereal beings. Then we talked about tarot and the fact that I had returned some money to her for a reading she had purchased a couple of weeks ago. I just came into the office this morning and thought "I can't let another minute go by without giving this girl her money back because I haven't done the flippin' reading yet," and so I came in, logged on to PayPal, wrote her a nice little note and proceeded to go to work. She calls, and we talk (as I've already mentioned), and all the while she is thinking that I did the PayPal thing in response to an email she sent me this morning....had to have been VERY close to the same time I sent the PayPal money...but I had NOT seen the email...I did NOT know that she too was thinking of it....perhaps I should've known...but I didn't.

Ce-ce...if you're reading this, you gotta know that I'm thinkin' it would be great to conduct some psychic experiments together if you're game to do it. I already mentioned the astral travel....maybe I really SHOULD try it.

Okay, so I DO have to get back to work - the mysteries of the universe will simply have to wait 'til after 5:00, but I did want to share this poem on my Blog. I wrote it a couple of nights ago as a homage to the glorious entity that is the Moon....

Did you ever open your arms
to the Moon....

When She was round and
Gorged with radiant dreams?
Did you feel the cool, silver light wash over you -
Remind you of the gift of Magic,
and Infinite possibility?

Or when she was a silver crescent
Slicing the summer night sky?
Did you feel Her young and eager energy
Quicken the tides of your blood?
Did you remember your Power?

Or when her light was full spent -
hanging at the flickering point
Before the final darkness ,
And re-entry to the womb?
Did you sense the weight of time?
And , if only for the briefest of moments,
Know the secrets of the Quantum Sea?

Did you ever open your arms to the Moon?
****
Bright blessings, everyone...and don't forget: Magic is EVERYWHERE.

Az

The Inner Me

2007-06-26T09:51:00.000-07:00

Good morning all! :) Happy random Tuesday. It is a beautiful, sunny day in bustling downtown Seattle. My allergies seem to have abated, I'm wearing a new silk top and have lots of good work on my desk to do. Before I get to it, however, I thought I would check in with the old blogspot and post a cool pic I scammed at the doc's office yesterday.

The image you are seeing there is an x-ray of my new metal knee. Very cool, huh? I sent it around yesterday to anyone and everyone I didn't think it would gross out too badly. How's THAT for sophomoric? Hmmm?

Okay - well, time to get to work! Happy Tuesday everyone.

Ooooh! Lookie here! A Baby Kitty

2007-06-13T17:04:00.000-07:00

Isn't she sweet? Her name, so far, is Squeak. :) She may tell us something different later, but for now that's what it is. She is three months old and just as cute as she can possibly be. I went and got her while Kristopher was off racing on Sunday. He was very happy when he got home. My daughter, who normally doesn't like anything I do or say or think, actually said yesterday that I picked good kitties. :) High praise, baby.

Not too much new going on otherwise. Kristopher and I are eagerly awaiting the next disc of The Sopranos to arrive in the mail. That should be some time tomorrow since I got the email notification from Blockbuster today. I couldn't believe it...I actually ordered HBO so I could get HBO on demand and, I thought, watch ALL of the Soprano episodes. However, evidently, that's not how the whole "on demand" thing works. There are only so many legacy episodes you can watch, and Kristopher and I still lack a whole discs worth before we can start watching what's available on the cable service. Oh well. It's not a very expensive addiction, so I guess I'm not worried.

So I went to a Trainer's Symposium today and learned about Office 2007. Lemme tell ya, any anxiety or weepiness I was feeling about giving up my training job went out the window when I saw these apps. They are really going to be a tough sell to the general computing populus around here.
Well, about time for me to get on home. Yay! See ya later.

STING....Oh my god!

2007-06-08T11:24:00.000-07:00

Hello from Cloud 9 - cuz that's where I am right now. Last night's Police concert was awesome to the Nth degree. I don't have any pictures from the event because we went in stripped down and streamlined to avoid the physical search at the door. Plus, let's fact it, I forgot to bring my camera. Susan and I started out by spending about 5 minutes in my car "getting ready" at about 6:00. Then we walked over to T.J. McHugh's on Mercer and went into The Police beer garden. We had an average brat and a better than average beer. It was cool to be in a place where everyone there was going to the concert.

We went over to Key Arena after that, found our seats then wandered around and bought tshirts and blinkies. (and nachos, M&Ms and sodas). **grin** Then the opening band "FictionPlane" came out and they were so-so. I was mystified as to why The Police would choose a "Police WannaBe" band to open for them. Oh well. They were average at best. Making The Police shine all the brighter when they came out. Maybe THAT is the purpose.

Well, of course everyone went apeshit wild when they came out on stage. Our seats were in the nose-bleed section, but we didn't care...it was just wonderful to be there and feel the energy and know that you were seeing and hearing these guys live. At least for me that was the case. The tix were a bill each, and still it was nose bleed time. The seats on the floor were $200 if the little wierdo who was standing guard on our row was to be believed. The first song of the set was the high-energy Synchronicity and it just went on from there. These guys didn't confer with each other between songs or anything - they just went from one right into the other...it was fuckin' awesome. I would have very much liked to hear more talking from them, but what'reya gonna do? They weren't there to talk...they were there to play.

Their set went by in a flippin' blur of excitement; Roxanne, Walking on the Moon, Every Little Thing She Does is Magic, Spirits in the Material World, Lonely, Message in a Bottle and more...for the first encore, it was King of Pain, second encore, and thought I was gonna die on this one, Every Breath You Take....they actually did a THIRD encore, but I didn't recognize the song. Poor bastards probably just wanted to get off the stage by that point so thought if they played one of their B-side selections, the crowd would get the message. Anyway, what a grand and glorious time...makes me tear up just thinkin' about it. I felt like I was 20 years old again! And the audience was all over the place age-wise. People my age and 10 to 15 years older, and people in their early 20s, and maybe some of them not even in their 20s yet. It was really, really fun and it's something I'm going to remember for a long time to come. I have my ticket all posted on my bulletin board here at work, and I must be suffering from post-excitement disorder because I can't seem to get a flippin' thing done. I thought maybe if I went ahead and made a blog post it would alleviate a little of the excitement and I could get on with my day. That's the idea anyway.

Of course I'm sitting here with my Rhapsody channel playing and listening to Sting sing "Every Breath You Take" **sigh** Did you know that he was born on October 2, 1951? Geeeeezuz....not only was the show good, but it was also inspiring. It's fantastic to me that he is 56 years old, well, will be on his birthday this year, and he's still in the kind of condition it takes to put on a show like they did last night. The sum-bitch just isn't aging I tell ya! I think I'm gonna have to sign up for some yoga classes or somethin', cause honey...I am IMPRESSED! I had to play it down a bit when I went home last night because the poor little hubby didn't get to go. Not that he likes The Police or anything, but any live show that exciting is a hard thing to miss and then hear about later.

Okay! I'm gonna try to get some flippin work done. Software training and data collection seem so drab after that!

Krikey! Where's the Friggin' Sudafed?

2007-06-05T13:12:00.000-07:00

So I'm sitting here in my office after lunch in the protected, filtered air, and feeling pretty darn miserable. I may have to take my plump rump down the street and buy some allergy meds. **sigh** Oh well....

So not too much going on - I just find myself here on my lunch break without much to do. It's raining outside and I'm already all snuffly, so not really interested in going out and getting moreso. I'm gonna be doing something exciting here in a couple of nights. I'm going out to The Police concert with nmy friend Susan from work. I think we'll have a great time...too bad you can't take pictures at the concert. That would be a huge bummer to whip out a digital camera and have it confiscated. :( Not willing to risk that. I'll just have to buy the tee-shirt I guess. The tix are $90 each - and generally I'm very tight with my money, but as soon as I found out that Sting was actually playing with them in this wheezing revival tour, I thought what the hell? I listened to these guys all during my 20s, and I still find myself listening to their stuff even now that they are long-since broken up and haven't made a record together since the advent of the MP3 file. So, it seemed fitting. In fact, at the moment, I am playing all of The Police that my music service, Rhapsody, has to offer.

At the moment that song, "Don't Stand So Close to Me," is playing. Sting re-did that song in the late 80s and it was released on his disc called "The Singles" which I listened to 'til it was worn out (if such a thing is possible for a cd). Anyway, he really slowed that sucker down and it was haunting.

My husband read some reviews on this latest tour (you know...The Police : The search for more cash) and said that the drummer was quoted as saying they sucked and that they weren't together on anything and Sting's vocals were off. I guess they are getting their rehersals in on the big stage. I'm glad Seattle wasn't their first stop. I'm hoping they have their shit together by Thursday night. I'm sure it will be a good show and a memorable evening pretty much no matter what.

Okay...I'll let you know about the concert after. Right now, it's about time to get back to work. Ciao!

Did I show you these?

2007-05-29T21:24:00.000-07:00

I think I forgot to post any pics from my brother-in-law's wedding last month. There were actually two formal affairs....the first was the actual wedding which was on April 5 (don't have any pictures from that...was still walking with a cane at that time) and one was on April 12, which was the formal reception. That's the thing I have pictures of. This first one is one of my favorites - it's a close up of the cake decoration. This was one of the best wedding cakes EVER. It was a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and these darling little do-dads on it.

They were very happy at their wedding and their reception, and we were very happy for them. It was a nice time all the way around.

My friend Cecilia in DC called today. We had a nice long chat. I miss her - here is a picture of her and one of her friends who is a legal assistant at a firm here in town...hell, I forget which one - but I took this picture a couple of years ago when she came for a visit and we all went to a Viatnamese restaurant in the International District....somewhere. Geezuz...I can't remember anything when I get to the end of a day anymore. Too much going on these days I guess.

Oh...and the dude in the picture - his name is Mark. Hell No! I didn't just remember it. It's in the name of the photo. ;) anyway, Ce Ce, if you're reading this, don't forget to send me your questions.

Okay, now where were we? Ah yes...rambling...my favorite. I read a couple of articles on WitchVox today. I've been trying to think of good topics to write about. I was thinking that I would write a series of articles on the sabbats as a kind of commemoration of my year of Sabbats in my 2d Degree, but I just can't seem to get motivated. I wrote my article on Samhain last year and they put that one up....why not? Not a bad idea I suppose, and I am a contributing member.

So what would anyone be interested in reading about Litha. That it commemorates the festival of mid-summer. That it is the Summer solstice - the longest day of the year....the apex of daylight and the sun in our hemisphere? Mebbe. Or would they be more intersted to know that midsummer is traditionally, at least in fairy traditions, the night where you can cross between the human world and the fairy world without getting hopelessly stuck in the latter? Taht's always good for a head-turner. Iv'e often wondered about people who say things like "I work with fairies" - what the fuck does that mean? I'm talking about in a wiccan context here. Some of you reading this may not know what I'm talking about, but some of you do. some of you out there have been in new age stores buying your candles and incense and been standing next to this rasta-haired white girl reeking of patchouli and wearing Birkinstocks who opens her mouth and says, in all and great sincerity, "I work with fairies," and know that they are talking about the little flying people. There may be something to it, though I myself have never actually seen one. I did see a video tape of what for all the world looked like one. It was taped by the friend of a friend. Supposedly something captured on a closed circuit security camera that waqs unmanned at the time the footage was shot. It was fuckin' incredible. That'd be something for U-tube, wouldn't it. It was friggin' wild. It looked at first like a giant bug, but then you could see a little body perfected outlined as it went up the wall. I don't know...it sure got me thinking. It seemed too sophisticated for the equipment I think this dude had at the time - but I don't know squat about the video biz, so this might have been something that he could have done himself with cello tape and a flashlight. Whatever - I will email him and if he still has it, tell him to put it up on U-tube. If he does it, I'll put a link to it here. Then we'll see how crazy rasta patchouli girl is. But it DOES sound strange.

Okay, enough nonsensical talk for now. I'm gonna go do something else that maybe doesn't require me looking at this little screen anymore.

Ciao! and bright blessings.

Vrrrrroooom Vrooom! and Ahoy Mateys!

2007-05-28T23:00:00.001-07:00

Arrrrrr! Cap'n Jack Sparrow rides again! :) Rescued from Davey Jones locker, he's back to give 2 hours and 45 minutes of solid entertainment. But! let's start with today....

Went to the autocross races today with the hubby-person. He likes to do his autocross stuff. He's pretty dedicated with it too. We got up thids morning at a pretty reasonable time and took off about 9:30. Stopped and got some breakfast at Jack in the Box (our other kitchen) and made our way to Bremerton Motor Sports park for his participation in the afternoon session.

I got to ride along for one run - but the rest I sat out and played fan club. I got a few pictures, but they aren't very good and don't do anything to capture the excitment of the day or the fun of watching your baby drive his car as fast as he can.

So, that was the majority of the day. Then we came home and watched some more Sopranos (damn I'm hooked on those things!!) and I planted some more flowers in the yard, and now we are sitting peacefully watching Pirates of the Carribean II.

I went to see III with the daughter this weekend, and it was WONDERFUL! :) It was way better than Part 2 (although my hubby solidly argues that 2 and 3 are parts of the same movie - and he's right). What a RIDE part 3 is! Can't wait to see it again.

But, in the meantime, it's lights out and nighty night.

It was rainy, but I got some gardening done after all

2007-05-20T21:14:00.001-07:00

I go forever without posting anything to this blog, and then, all of a sudden, I can't shut up. But that's okay. I think I'm coming back to being more like my old self. I'm feeling better, I'm doing more, my house is looking a lot better for it, and, in general, I'm in a much better mood.

So I wanted to get some gardening done this weekend, but yesterday there was the matter of a party to attend at the home of my office administrator, and I didn't want to get too dirty or too involved in anything. So, yesterday I got up and cleaned off the patio furniture and the patio. It looks great...the grill, the table, the chairs, the benches, the desk that I put out there last year as a sort of place to store all the grill tools and as a staging area for having BBQ guests...all clean now. The cedar table and chairs is ready for a coat of oil now too. That table and chairs was gifen to us by a dude who used to work at Stoel as a professional "schmoozer" - he was about 5 ft. tall and was a guy who had turned the short man's complex to his financial advantage by being a smarmy used-car salesman. Every time he came in to talk to me at the officde I felt like I was on the front row in a comedy club with all the one liners and long stories he could lay out...but I digress.

So that was yesterday, but today was going to be for mowing the lawn, clearing out the flower beds and planting some new annuals. But when Kristopher and I left the house for Lowe's this morning, it started raining and we came back home because it wasn't any fun to go out and look at flowers with the rain falling on me and the wind blowing...yech. So I came home and finished the Aphrodite I just posted about.

Okay...so I didn't want to give up on my idea of planting some flowers - so I decided to at least plant out the porch. So here are some pictures....after that, I watched the Sopranos.

Lookie What I Did Today...

2007-05-20T16:48:00.000-07:00

So I have this Aprhodite statue that I inherited from a friend of mine - he's a friend who's burned a lot of bridges and isn't well thought of by the people we hang out with, but I still like him. Anyway, when he gave up Paganism for whatever religion he is investigating this week, and he gave me this statue. She's lovely, and I had cleaned her up and fixed her a little then put her in a shell and put her outside. She looked okay in her original paintjob - but I thought that she would be a lot prettier if I painted her more lifelike and painted the dolphins etc....

Here's how she looked before I got started

this is the front view.

This is the back.

And so here is how she looks like now that she's all painted up:

This is her newly painted front.
And this, is her newly painted backside. Check out the "newly spanked" pink of her little rear-end. OKAY! Yes....I'm a pervert. Tee hee!

So I think she looks a lot prettier. Doens't hurt anything to have an altar to aphrodite in your house. I'm a young woman she still has quite a lot to offer me. ;) And now, with her new coat of paint she's mine all mine.

We're sitting here watching The Sopranos...we're on Season 4 and I think we are on episode 5. It's a good show.

Okay, guess I'm gonna call it a wrap on this entry.

Howdy Doody

2007-05-17T09:44:00.000-07:00

Don't have a picture today - though I should. I took some recently but haven't moved them off of the camera. It's that old laziness thing. :)

Went over to an old friend's house for dinner last night. This dude is a long-time bachelor - though not "confirmed" - as he would like to find a nice Catholic girl and settle down, but just hasn't yet. Anyway, he grilled some chicken for us and stir-fried some fresh green beans and made some gooey rice. Oh well....for a bachelor, he did a great job. And one of the best parts is he got along with my husband pretty well. Not an easy feat most of the time - though I have to admit that the hubby was on his best behavior yesterday.

So, tonight is the hearing for my daughter's diversion. Every teenaged kid in Washington state gets one free pass to commit a minor crime. Too bad hers is being used up on something as stupid as a erroneous accusation of "obstruction" when she had her accident and the police believed that she was lying when she said she was driving - all in the name of protecting her idiot boyfriend. **sigh** I hope it is over quickly and quietly. This is an exercise in logic, however, for her. She figured out all on her own that even if she was able to make the police believe that she was, in fact, the driver of that vehicle on the day of the accident, she would STILL be charged with obstruction because she lied to them about her boyfriend's name and tried to shine them on about him even being in the car at all. I can't imagine having the brass as a teenager to lie to the police. I was kinda wild, but lie to the police? No....I really don't think so.

So the new job is going pretty well. I'm learning lots of stuff and getting to do interesting work. It's an adjustment, but what isn't. I miss my old office and my old friends. There is no goofing off in my new position - well, very, very little. And I kinda like that. Oh! Break's over....gotta go.

Take care and thanks for reading!

Woooo Hooo!

2007-04-29T19:47:00.000-07:00

Look what I got today....

shocks, kickstand, pretty light yellow color.....lucky! :) I got myself a Trek bike at the Gregg's cycle that opened up near us a few months ago. Along with the cycle, I got a trainer so I can ride in the living room and get my strength up so I can better ride on the street. I need to rehab this knee of mine and strengthen the other one so I can put off having another surgery for longer, so, I guess I had to spend some money. This was a much better option than having to purchase an indoor exercise bike that clutters up the place 24/7. This way, i can bring in the trainer, set up the bike, ride it after work during the week, then take it off the trainer and ride it out on the street on the weekend. I hope it works. I certainly spent enough money!

Oh well, just wanted to show you my bike. Now I'm gonna go out and sell my treadmill on Craig's List as well as a traimer that I don't need. Don't need it cuz I bought it off of the Craig's list and it woulnd't fit the new bike I bought at the Cycle shop. :( I'm also gonna sell my Nintendo DS. I don't really want to sit around looking at a tiny little screen.

Blessed be! Talk to ya'll soon.

Let the Good Times Roll

2007-04-27T20:00:00.000-07:00

April 22 2007

Let them knock you around....let the good times roll....let them make you a clown....

Now, personally, I think that Rick O'Casick crapped out on that last line, copping to something that almost rhymed but didn't quite...but probably sounded preeeeetty good whilst stoned out of your gourd. But it's a cool friggin' song anyway.

I'm working on building up my third laptop in 9 months. 9 months ago my long beloved one was stolen, then I got a temp replacement from my office and had to turn it back on this last week. Now I have a new one. I've popped some more ram in and it's ready to go. I did, however, with my cowgirl ways of turning back computers wind up losing a few things. Among them a license to my ftp upload program. :( I just bought the license about six months ago and now the key is gone with the wind. I uninstalled it from the old laptop, and when I changed jobs recently, deleted about a bazillion emails from my work account. It is highly likely that the license key one was among them. oh well. Software is volitile stuff.

Of course there is all kinds of software to be reloaded. I am a member of Rhapsody music service, and I don't have that on here....I have a wonderful digital camera that I got for my birthday in December of last year that has to have software to hum on this new machine - so that's one of the things I'm gonna be doing this weekend. Getting this new box into "Asradel" shape.

Didn't have much to say - just wanted to check in on my blog. Bought another pile of shit car for my daughter last weekend. So far she has spent 250 fixing up a 500 dollar car, and there is much more to go.

Hello from Recoveryville

2007-03-18T12:57:00.000-07:00

It's Sunday the 18th...day after St. Paddy's day. We had a quiet one at home with guests (since (I'm not in any shape to hit the town) and it was very good. I was glad that the teenager had decided to go out and do her own thing as her being home these days is like having a 140-pound porcupine with a bad attitude and a smutty mouth in the house. November, when she turns 18, is just not going to be able to get here quite fast enough as far as I'm concerned. Here's a little picture of me and the hubby yesterday. It was a good day and we were both happy.

Like my "wearin' o-the-green" hair ribbon?

The husband told me one of the most bizarre things I've heard in a long while......he told me that one of his co-workers, who is a relious man, does not believe that St. Paddy was a regal guy. I sat there in astonishment as he related that this guy said he didn't believe in St. Paddy's day because he didn't believe in fairies. Yep....didn't believe in fairies......

Well, that's it for today Lads and Lasses!

OwweeeeeeeiiiiOOgeezuzhepmesunuvabitchturdfucker!

2007-03-14T03:13:00.000-07:00

Keeerist! Well, it's been a while since I've posted and well, I finally have something to say.....

A total knee replacement hurts like a sunnuvabitch. That is all.

lol! Well, yes, it does hurt like all nine kinds of hell but the bigger picture of pain-free knees when the trauma of the surgery subsides is what I'm focused on here. So stay with me on that. And yes...I DID go and do this voluntarily. Quality of life over time is worth putting up with a lot of pain.

I went into Swedish Hospital on Wednesday, March 7 for the procedure - so it has been a week. The photo I've uploaded here was taken on day 5. Not a lot of change in that image in two days, so you're gettin' the fresh goods here.

At any rate, this operation was done by the Rock Star orthopedic surgeon, Daniel L. Flugstad. I am hoping that his Germanness has brought precision engineering to the operating table. Was I being mean and racist there? Hardly my friend...hardly. I would still rather drive a German-made car than any other. Only problem is I couldn't afford it. I could, however, afford for my insurance to pay for Dr. Dan Flugstad to give me a new titanium and plastic knee in my right leg. And that's what I did. The surgery happened on Wednesday, March 7, and I was out of the hospital on Saturday, March 10. I can get around with some assistance ( a walker all my very own named "Gerty") and things are improving each day. Though the increments of improvement could be a bit larger. We takes what we can get, though....right? Well, I just wanted to post a pic of my surgery. Now I need to take a nap. That's how sleep is coming these days. Short bursts of one to two hours at a time - then it's time to wake up and ice the knee. I've been feeling like the Duncan Donuts guy lately. (For those of you who remember the commercials on television with the man getting up so early he meets himself coming back from work at the front door as he's leaving to go make the donuts....) Anyway, that's what this feels like, only you're not making donuts. You're taking narcotics and getting out ice packs!

Okay, sleepy now. nighty night.....

Countdown and Sweetie's Day and Various Ramblings

2007-02-13T22:23:00.000-08:00

It's about three weeks until I get the surgery on my leg. Yay.....I'm scared and ready all at the same time. I give my next unit of blood "autologous" donation is what they call it....where if I need blood during the surgery, they will have my very own on ice and ready to go in. It was mine before, it'll be mine again if I need it. Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. That's pretty cool. It was a pretty crummy holiday for me there for a couple of years, but it's getting good again. Lots of things are getting good again. I should have known when the shrink-o said "One to three years...." as an average "getting over it" time period, that I would be at the very end of that spectrum, and sure enough...here we are. The shitty days where Valentine's Day 2004. Infamous, but not worth mentioning here again - and now, Valentine's Day 2007, I feel pretty good about the whole thing and the memories of the crappiness have faded to tattered remnants not worth looking at.

Damn man....I just spent the past 10 minutes or so trying to make a little Valentine in the Paint program. No dice. I must be really tired or something. Maybe I can do one tomorrow when I'm not using a friggin' roller mouse. Ahhhhhhh....listening to "A Perfect Circle" at the moment. They are like "Tool" only different. "Passive" - it's a song from Constantine. I love the scene where it's playing. Neo, oh wait, fuck...um....Constantine is walking into Papa Midnight's bar (a haven for those who rise and fall) :) WAKE UP! AND FACE ME.......DON'T PLAY DEAD...CUZ MAYBE....ONE DAY...i WILL WALK AWAY AND SAY....You disappoint me. Maybe you're better off this way.....

Yeah.....

If you know the flick you will understand the preceding paragraph. If you don't...well...you won't.

I'm all amped up but know I need to go to bed. It's weird how the first of the week you really have to ration out your energy so you can make it all the way to Friday.

Okay....so I dug out a picture I think is fit for Valentine's Day. It's me and the man from my birthday (about 30 seconds prior to the waitress dropping my birthday camera) but we were having such a great time and the warm fuzziness was quite apparent.

Happy Valentine's Day ya'll. Go find someone to hug.

Yipppee! It's 2007

2007-01-14T14:06:00.000-08:00

So it's Sunday, January 13, and I've been sitting around the house just enjoying all the things that life here at the house has to offer since about 9:00. Coffee....coffee and more coffee (probably not the best thing in the world for me), and working on my web pages and writing a bit. I'm going to be entering a novel writing contest on ta interweb very soon. I just discovered today that the complete novels that I had housed on my domain site are now gone. Probably as a result of a move to another server and rules that did not capture then since they were outside of the main folder where my other web pages were kept.

Oh well, one more challenge. I have to get the computer I was using at the time out of the closet and boot it up and get the data moved VIA FLOPPY DISK to a jump drive and then to this laptop. It's hard to believe that it has been 11 years since I did any creative writing....seriously....any at all. That's really strange because I spent all the years of my adult life in the south writing on SOMETHING....then, I move up here, and as though it was a price to be paid for the moving and the prosperity of the new life I had found in the Pacific Northwest, the muse dried up and there was nothing. I finalized The Invoker and The Secret Year after I arrived here, but the most creative writing I've actually DONE since we rolled into town 13 years ago are some short stories. Un-be-fuckin'-lievable....lemme tell ya.

But 2007 is gonna see me return to the pen a bit I think. At least that is the hope. I'ts gonna be a big year with the Crescent Scouts as I perform my Sabbat cycle....and I think that that is gonna give me some impetus to do some creative work. Or at least that's the hope.

Anyway, wanted to check in on the blog....it's either that or delete the damn thing. I am harshly reminded of the transient nature of digital data with the loss of my novels out on my website. Of course, this would not have been a problem had my personal laptop not been stolen in August of 2006. It was part of the data that I move around from one machine to the other as I change year after year...now that chain has been broken and I have to go back to the source machine. I wonder if I will have to burn incense and chant while I try to boot it up. It is, after all a 13 year old computer. But it was a Gateway from back in the day when Gateway meant superior components, so I have great faith.

Well, I guess I'll get to it. I gotta pull the box out of the closet in our library/computer room and send some sparks to it and see what I can get cookin.

Bright blessings to all who read this and all who touch their lives.

Az

Winter Comes to the Pacific Northwest

2006-12-01T16:22:00.000-08:00

So I've been living here in the Pacific Northwest for about 13 years now. The winters here range from just being wet and gray to actually having some character like we've seen recently here.
However, this is the earliest I can remember that this much character showed up. The picture below was taken in my front yard on November 26 and it continued in that vein for about the next three to four hours. Of course, this little smattering of snow is meaningless to those who live in more severe climes...such as my supervisor at work who is mystified every time the city of Seattle shuts down over a little ice and snow. You see, my supervisor hails from Minnesota where the snow is considered and measured in feet, not inches!

Our office was closed on Tuesday the 28th due to all of this snow and our feeble inability to cope with same. I really enjoyed having my snow day off too....I climbed up on a ladder (a very daring feat for me these days since the ill-fated knee surgery of August) and got down the Yule decorations. The tree is now up as are several pieces of festive garland....I there are no actual decorations on the tree, however, so that is going to be a task for the near future. Maybe this weekend after my accupuncture treatment...but I digress.

What I was going to tell you is about this crazy ass manager who works in my office that went into her department on Wednesday after the office was closed on Tuesday and bawled out the people who work in there for not coming in! She's totally coo-coo....as is the rest of this place. Oh well.

So I just wanted to get a picture of yon snow day up on my blog. I don't really have anything else to say and I have another web page that I have to work on for work here.

So, ta ta for now and take care...keep warm and dry.

Well Fuck Me Runnin'.....It's the middle of November

2006-11-15T09:13:00.000-08:00

Howdy anyone that ambles by. I just thought I would share a few thoughts on a grey work day. I have my cup of starbucks by my side and am feeling pretty good and just thought I'd share.

Halloween was a good time, but a also kind of anti-climactic like it always is. I DID wear my Billy-bad-ass booby showin' costume, but didn't get any decent pictures while I was in it. :*( Oh well. Fuck it. I have decided that to make Halloween as special as I need for it to be, I'm gonna have to get the Hell out of Dodge. So, next year, and this is the current plan anyway, I wanna go to Salem Mass for Halloween. They got a whole big festival that goes the entire month of October centered around the festivities. And that's where I'm gonna be. I have enough witch outfits to wear for at least three different days there and, of course, I'll have to make a new one for the occassion. It'll probably cost about $1,200.00 to take both me and the man to Salem. I think Andie would love it too, but, oh well....she's at a weird age. She doesn't want to go anywhere with either one of us, much less both of us at the same time. Maybe if it's really good and fun, I can take her as a young adult.

Here's a picture of me with my co-workers that dressed up. This is a pitiful showing of people getting into the spirit of Halloween in an office with 180 people in it. :(

Anyway, that's me in the pumpkin orange witch dress. That thing was a beast to make. The hat is really bad-ass but it wasn't standing up for the picture. It is a poofy one that is supposed to lean, but not be flat on my head. The whole thing cost a flippin' fortune in time and money to make. I may make the same pattern for next year now that I know what I'm doing. But this next gown will be black, I will cut more room into the pattern and I will make it quite a bit longer than this one. When I cut this dress out, I was talking to my mom and so I didn't make it any roomier and I also spaced the fact that patterns are made for an average 5'6" woman. Of course that little brain poot left the dress about 3" too short for yours truly. Oh well....I couldn't wear heels anyway because of my knee.

So....let's see....what else? Not too much. I've taken to going to accupuncture to deal with my knee and back pain. Seems to be a bit more effective than nothing. We'll see. The lady I'm seeing is a true healer and I think she's very good at what she does. All I know is I am fucked up. That's about all I know. Oh! And then to put the cherry on the cake of my knee-babying experience, I had to go and fall in the street right on the 'mergency knee.

Anyway,
I guess I'd better go to work.
Az

Vacations and Other Stuff

2006-10-23T13:19:00.000-07:00

Well, since I last posted I've been on vacation to Oklahoma and back, been to about a billion physical therapy appointments - until I feel like I see more of those guys than I do my own husband, and lost a co-worker. I don't know what the hell else I've done since, for the past many, many years I have relied on journaling to remind me of what I'm doing with my life, and since I've given up journaling because it was too painful to go back and look over some of the stuff. Oh well. I guess I will just wander around aimlessly for a while longer until I can get back in the habit of chronicalling where I've been and what I've done with my days and nights.

I went to Oklahoma to see my mother and my sister. They are both doing well - well, my mom has pretty much immobilized herself with lack of movement, but my sister is doing quite well. She just turned fifty years old. Here she is with a picture of her two granddaughters. Yep....granddaughters. She looks pretty darn good, huh?
And here's my mommy from this trip. Compare with the picture of my mommy from previous blog post earlier this year. Not much change.

So that's the little fam. My sister had her 50th birthday and basically that was the big event. Of course it wasn't as big of an event as I would have liked it to be, but my knee being all fucked up and my back too, didn't give me much of an opportunity to do much of anything for my sister. I spent the whole time being pretty miserable, actually. Which is actually why I don't have anything interesting to say. I've come to the conclusion, and this may not be a revelation that shocks anyone else, maybe I'm just a slow learner....but pain changes your personality. Just thought I'd tell you that. My knee is slowly, ever so slowly, getting better. It still hurts like hell and I dread walking on it, but at least I CAN now....which is better than it was before. However, it hurts so much that it actually affects how much enjoyment I can get out of my life. For instance, a friend of mine stopped by my office earlier today and told me that she was going to walk down to the Pike Market to get some spices for herself. Now Pike Market, which is a big tourist attraction around here and a pretty neat place to go is only about a 15 minute walk from this office. However, I wouldn't think of walking there with my knee like this. I have been unwilling to take the bus into work for the same reason. I truly do not know how the 4-block walk will affect me by the time I get here. And Goddess forbid if I have something more to carry than just my purse for that day because it will be too much for my back with it's four herniated disks and the disk fragment that is still lodged in my spinal column. **sigh** Before all of this shit went wrong earlier this year, I basically took my good health for granted and didn't exercise or do anything to improve my lot. Now that I can't do most exercises, I long to have the ability once again. Fancying that if only I did, I would make better use of my time and get my muscles into better shape. I can only hope and pray I'll have that opportunity.

So, since I don't have anything to actually "say" - I guess I'll just show you one more picture. This one is of me at my mom's house using the sewing machine to make my Halloween costume that I have been planning for a year. We'll see if I actually get to wear it or not. I don't have anything planned for Halloween, so it may have been 20 hours at the sewing machine for basically nothing.

See what a good mood I'm in? Too much feelin' sorry for yourself isn't good. I know that. But sometimes I just get so down. I'm ready to feel good again and like I could jump up out of this chair and go get myself a cup of coffee without having to limp the first five or six steps, or without having to stand and move my leg up and down at the knee just to get warmed up enough to walk down the hall. I'd like to be able to carry a box, climb a ladder, get up on a chair to get some of my Halloween ceramics out of the cabinet.

Guess I'll write more when I'm not so poopy.

Having Teenagers is the True Hell!!

2006-09-24T10:23:00.000-07:00

I know that there is a huge portion of the population that believes that when you die, if you haven't been a righteous person in your life, you will go to the firey pits and be burned for all eternity in punishment for not having lived up to the mark.

However, I, as you know if you have read any of my previous posts am not one of those people. There is retribution for your sins, but it is exacted here on this earth. For instance, if you have kids, you will enjoy them while they are little, but when they get to be teenagers, they bring with them the wrath of God and Goddess alike, all too willing to spill it out on our deserving heads. I can remember that I treated my mom like crap when I was a teenager, and here I am, living the role reversal some 30 years later with my own little cookie-cutter.

Oh well....today I'm downloading music and listening and playing with my computer. I may put on my jeans and go out for a walk. My teenager is starting her first job today and is in the bathroom getting ready. It's cold in the house. Church was last night....right now I'm listening to The Spinners "I'll Be Around." I'm going to Oklahoma in a few weeks. I'm narcotix free these days but my leg still hurts like hell from the surgery. Still going to physical therapy three times a week. Awfully glad that blogger is sponsoring my personal journal. Never plan to run for public office so don't give a good rat's ass who sees this. Homeland security? Come and get me motherfuckers. Noooch.

Here's my natty little MP3 player. Almost makes up for the teenager....NOT!

Music makes me terribly reminiscent. So I'm downloading more. I love to look at the big picture...the tapestry of life. My husband hasn't seen the tapestry yet. He's got a few years to go. Maybe he's seen the hem of it...it's the grandest thing to have lived through some decades of change. Too bad I didn't keep my old body - or wait...I mean, my young body. I do hope I get the opportunity to continue to work on that. Now that I've got an MP3 player, that just got a whole lot easier. I feel as though I've been starving myself for music! And why? For no good reason that's for sure....Ahh......."Iris" is on right now with all it's expansive waves. Nice. Hell yeah! I subscribed to a service! :)

I'm just rambling, but that's what I wanted to do this morning. Happy Sunday.

Some Pics from Lately

2006-09-21T21:35:00.000-07:00

So I happen to be lying here in my living room in front of the fire and within ready reach of my handy-dandy camera. So, I thought I'd upload a few pics from some interesting stuff lately.

First, here's a picture of me with some of the administrators from my office at the ALA conference in Palm Springs. I was asked to present a seminar there and did so and had a great time in the process. ALA stands for the Association of Legal Administrators and they are a class act, lemme tell ya. Very organized, very professional and drink....lord god these people can drink. :O

We're all having a great time there. It was the first night I was at the hotel and this was a big reception around the pool. Here's a picture of the pool from my balcony. It was quite beautiful and nice to swim in. I don't think I've ever seen so many lounge chairs in one place before.

So anyway, we all had a great time drinking and eating around the pool. I picked up my speaker package and went back to my room. I hate these kinda nametags that hang around your neck, but I enjoyed having the "speaker" ribbon on there.

After I did my speaking gig the next day, I ran down to the bar and got myself a double pina colada, went upstairs and took some pain medication (my knee was brutal after standing and presenting for 90 minutes) then I went and got myself a massage. It was great, but it didn't keep me from having to go to my room and put an ice pack on my knee for the rest of the evening. It was great though.

The next day I spent the morning in the hot tub, the pool and the exercise room until it was time to go home. I was trying to upload some pics from the pool, but blogger won't let me. :( Oh well....maybe there's a limit per post.

Anyway, it was then time to go home and the day after I got home we went to a friend's house and had ourselves an old fashioned cider pressing. I'm gonna end this blog entry cuz I can't upload any more pictures, but I'll make another one shortly. Those of you living vicariously through my blog (and you know who you are over there on the penninsula) I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get you something to read. :)

Me and the Web Cam

2006-09-21T16:46:00.000-07:00

There's a funky little eyeball sitting on top of my laptop at the moment. (Well, it isn't MY laptop....that got stolen from me last month when I had my knee surgery - but the laptop I'm using at the moment anyway). It reminds me of the eyeball in the bag on "My Stepmother is an Alien" - which, if you are ignorant of same is one of the cooler movies to come out of the late 80s. Not a John Hughes movie, but definitely worth watching (IMHO).

I'm at work at the moment and am learning to use the new Creative web cam for purposes of video meetings. So far, I'm up to getting it installed and taking a picture for my blog! Yay for me! :) I have a whole bunch more pictures of my recent training trip to Palm Springs for the ALA convention there as well as some fun snaps of a cider pressing we went to last weekend. Life has been rich of late, despite the fact that I'm really dragging ass on my recovery from knee surgery.

The daughter has joined the swim team and she got a job at Ruby's in the mall. I'm so very proud of her. I hope she can keep her grades up so I can let her keep the job. We'll see....

Okay, well, I gotta shut down soon. They didn't give me a little leatherette case in which to keep the eyeball, so I guess it's goin' into the old bag bare nekkid just like it is.

I'll put those pics of Palm Springs up real soon.

Hiiiiii-dee Ho....

2006-09-01T22:11:00.000-07:00

I didn't mean for it to be so long in between posts. The summer got under way and well, one thing led to another and here we are at September 1. My daughter starts back to school on Tuesday, I have a huge presentation due on that day, and in less than two weeks I will be in Palm Springs presenting a seminar to a bunch of legal managers. There are no words to describe how relieved I will be when that is done. I have been both looking forward to and dreading the event since I agreed to do it. :) That's just the way I work.

Let's see....since I last wrote, my daughter went to Oklahoma for almost three weeks which gave me a chance to have a small break from her for that amount of time. I painted the living room purple...well, one wall, the kitchen red (well, two walls) and did some general decorating and spiffing up of the old place. I would take some pictures and put them up here, but, well, our house was burglarized last week and my laptop is no more. Oh well....I suppose I should also go about the business of getting my new one configured so I can upload web pages and so forth, but I do have that presentation that needs finished and there is nothing about the web pages that I maintain that could ever be considered vital.

I want some ice cream.

I had a surgery last week. A surgery on my knee to repair my lateral miniscus and take out some arthritic cartilage. Trust me when I say to you that there are few things that can make you feel older than having your knees fucked up. I will appreciate mine so much more when they are better....I promise. Physical therapy starts next week as does water aerobics. After that....I suppose I may have to go to Weight Watchers. **sigh** I've tried to avoid them like the plague, but, well, I suppose a little comeraderie in the area of making less of myself wouldn't be a bad thing.

It's hard to believe that summer is done and Indian Summer upon us. I have a couple of little fall scarecrows on the front lawn. They're pretty cute....and I am already looking forward to Halloween with the zeal of a little kid looking to score some candy. My harvest witch gown is going to be to die for this year. I got the idea for it off of a witchy Barbie I saw on Ebay last year. Great gobs! It's only two short months away. :) I wanna be sure to get the house decorated the first couple of days of October so we can make the most of the season. But, first things first.....getting through this upcoming Outlook presentation.

So that's it....I just wanted to check in and say "hi" to anyone who may be watching. :) All one of you.

See you again soon, as I will not allow this much time to lapse before my next entry.

Help is On the Way

2006-06-15T15:48:00.000-07:00

This is great! I'm so glad to know this place is here, because many is the time I have needed to purchase some of their wares.

Well, it's been a few days since I've blogged, and I haven't yet gotten to see The Omen. Maybe tonight will be my lucky night. On "THE day", the husband and I attempted to go and see it but the movie theatre was mobbed by teenagers who were eager to get in there and see the devil at work. See, they get overly excited because they are too young to know that ALL children are the devil. Not just one. All those little fuckers. :)

So it's one of my good friends birthdays today. She's 46, but she's dividing the birthday by 2 so she's 23 again. I think that's a great idea in the even years, but what about the odd? I have a friend who was born on leap year day, February 29. She only has a birthday ever 4 years. I guess that if she's 52, that means she's only had 13 birthdays. Might be a difficult puberty if you are plagued with having to take arthritis medication. I dunno. Kinda hard to fit in the latest teen fasions when your tits are hanging down to your knees....but that's something else weird about her. Naked she could almost pass for a teenager or a 20-something. Probably because she is a lesbian and hasn't squeezed out any puppies. Who knows? All I know is that I'm so glad I found the paddle store.

Oh, and if any of you reading this want to buy Avon from me, just email me at Asradel@gmail.com and I'll send you a catalog!

Az

666....Today

2006-06-06T14:59:00.000-07:00

Time to bust out the horns and the pitch forks. Yep, it has arrived. All you Christers out there go and hide your heads in a hole somewhere. It's the day of the Great Beast. Yes.....6/6/6 has arriv-ed.

Whatever! I think it's an atrocity and a gross oversight on the part of Hollyweird to have not put more offerings out there to watch on this most inauspicous day. The only think we have to choose from is a weak ass remake of "The Omen" - Who cares? I hope that there are at least some cool graphics in it. Hell yes, Im going to see it. It's the only game in town. And I'm gonna see it tonight TOO! How can I not? I am a student of human theology, a seeker of truth and practitioner of the Art Magickal. 666 is a cultural icon. Whether you are a holy rolling Christer who flails around on the boards of the church floor of just someone who has a vague idea that there is a religion called Christianity, chances are you know what 666 is and what it is associated with. So yeah....I'm going to see The Omen.

My young friend Matticus put a nice little article up on the Bulletin board today. He's a smart little dude. I'm glad to know him. He found a fragment of one of the new testaments that was found in the jars of the caves in Qumran (can't spell the fuckin' thing....I can say it though) - anyway, he goes on to talk about how the 666 was actually numeric code for the Emperor Caligula. Quite possibly. What I remember most about Revelations was that it said, "he who has eyes to see and discern, let him see" - and brother does THAT remark ever point to a political statement on the times.

If we were living in a time of oppression (and we are) in which we could lose our lives if we spoke out against the powers that be (not quite yet) then we would find ways to express our unhappiness with the state of things without getting our little head-balls chopped off, I'm sure.

So, while I have no doubt that the human race will self-destruct or a natural disaster or disease will eventually thin our numbers to the point that we will be building on the rubble of society and coming up from dirt-eating once again (check your history books - they all point to the fact that we've done this a few times already) I do not believe that Death Rides a Pale Horse....(no disrespect to The Man In Black intended).

But, if you haven't read the Book of Revleations, I strongly suggest that you do....read it today for the sake of the day. Read it with new eyes that see past the shackles of an angry God and through to the truth of the human heart. Read it from the perspective of a people who had been enslaved and taxed to death for generation upon generation, and I guarantee you'll get something different out of it.

Bright blessings on all who read this. I'll let you know later how I like the movie.

Now here's a cute little blog thing that I got called "what sign SHOULD you be"

This one says I should be a Cancer. Now, I'm just fine being a Saggitarius, but who am I to argue with a 4 question quiz on the Internet?

You Should Be A Cancer

What's good about you: you're incredibly kind, caring, and generous

What's bad about you: you can be too moody and impossible to understand

In love: you enjoy wining and dining the object of your affection

In friendship, you're: likely to depend on other friends for emotional support

Your ideal job: historian, marine biologist, or religious figure

Your sense of fashion: you dress to match your mood

You like to pig out on: classic home cooked meals, like mac and cheese

What Sign Should You Be?

Big Ass Weekend!!!!

2006-05-29T21:24:00.000-07:00

So it's been a great Memorial Day weekend. It started off on Friday when we came home, had dinner and I filled Avon orders. I got my new Avon pin for selling over 500 dollars worth of Avon in just two campaigns. It's so fun. I can't tell you how strange it is to be an Avon lady when I can remember wanting to be one when I was a little kid and the happy recipient of those little lipstick samples my mom would get with her orders back then. In those days they were in little white tubes and you could clearly read their names on the bottom There were also fragrance samples, but what I remember most are the lipsticks. Anway, the merit pin was fun. Thank the Goddess that my husband discouraged me from wearing it to the movie we went to later! Ha ha ha! I was excited to get it and had a moment of duffessness when I thought it would look cool to wear it to the movies! WTF? A big-ass Avon pin in gold....just as an ornament! Not at a convention! Or even to deliver orders, but to a movie! Now you gotta be a dyed-in-the wool convert for something like that. Anyway, I saw the light very quickly and avoided that bit of embarrassment - and saved him as well. So we then went to see X-Men III - I have to say that I was kind of disappointed. It really wasn't as good as I was expecting it to be. But I refused to read a review on it before it came out. X-Men is something I hae to judge for myself. Anyway, it was great to go to it on its opening night, even if our tickets were for the 11:30 show! We didn't even get home 'til almost 2:00

Then Saturday we got up at a decent hour and my husband went to his favoritie Toy store, the Harbor Freight Tools in Everett. I hung out with Andrea the daughter - then we did the grocery shopping - big job....and we got a movie (that sucked), but it was still a pretty good day. The husband was working on his truck most of the evening, and then my son and his wife came over for a while.

The next morning my hubby got up and went off to the autocross practice in Bremerton. Shortly after that, I took Andrea to the last session of her driving school with what must be the most dufus ass instructor I've ever encountered.....but at least she has her permit and has passed her written driving test. So .... then she came home and was sitting there all bored and stuff....and her sister-in-law came over. :) I made us some vodka crans (not the 16 year old, but me and the 25 year old) and we all three sat around and talked and had a great afternoon. We played with Avon a little....looked through the catalogs and I did my daughter-in-law's makeup. Here are some before and after pics.

Polly Before

I gave her a choice between "going out at night" make-up a and a day look. Polly chose the day look and here's what we came up with. Not that we didn't have absolutely lovely material to work with already, but she did look absolutely beautiful with some under eye concealer, some pressed powder, a light bronzer on her cheeks and some neutral colored eyeshadow with a touch of Heaven Blue on the sides. She also had berry lipliner and a color shine mauve on her lips. She looked just beautiful. The pictures don't do it justice. Not to mention the fact that we had to wait until my camera batteries charged so I could take the "after" picture.

Shortly after that, my husband returned from his auto-cross practice, and I made chicken curry for everyong. My son came over to pick up the Polly, as she had had a bit to drink, but by the time they left, everything was just fine and she drove on her own.

So today I got up and went to the AutoCross (not practice) with my husband. To my great surprise, my son, Tim Allen, turned up to go with us! I couldn't have been more surprised or grateful. Surprised because he never comes to anything it seems, and grateful because he kept me excellent company while my husband was going about his autocross business. It was a wonderful day, albeit very long. From the time we left the driveway until we got home it was nine and a half hours! When we got home, my son took my husband 4-bying. They aren't home yet and it's 10:00 p.m. Great way to spend a weekend. I sure loved talking to my son for as long as I did. It was wonderful. I really have no idea when the last time was we even sat down and had a conversation that lasted ten minutes. much less roughly 7 hours. He's come out to be a great guy. I also enjoyed hanging out with Polly and Andrea. It's been a great weekend of reconnecting with my kids and I've loved it. As I type these words. Polly is sitting over in the big chair and Andrea is sitting next to me on the couch as the X Men II movie plays on the DVD player.

Well....happy Memorial Day weekend to all who read this. This one has definitely been one that I've been remembering the things that are important. Those who are here with me and living and lovin today. I know that my ancestors are important and this is a day to honor them....but what better way to honor your ancestors than to honor their progeny?

Let's see what next week brings.

Bright Blessings to all who read this.

Asradel

X-MEN III IS OUT TODAY!!!!!!

2006-05-26T13:26:00.000-07:00

Wooo Hooo! I can't wait. I'm going to a late show this evening. I do not think I can possibly wait until tomorrow. I love the X-Men movies and this one promises to be the ever-lovin' shiz-nitz baby! Too bad I don't have some Wolverine attire to wear. It's like I told the husband, though...I'd probably just wind up lookin' like Freddy Krueger with a fucked-up hair cut. Oh well. I guess I'll leave the Wolverine'in to Hugh Jackman, that sexy hunka stuff there....and well, there are going to be many many moments of "oooooooo" and "ahhhhhh" during this movie, I just KNOW IT! I wasn't this exited about any release of any of the three LOTR movies. I just think I like the characters better, ya know? They are all fucked up in addition to being super-mutants. We got the oober-Christer dude who can teleport his ass all over the place, but has blue skin and sharp teeth....alrighty then....and we've got the chick who can kill people just by touching them, but how much would THAT suck. Geezuz! Talk about no way to please yourself but BY yourself...that's pretty sad. And then, of course, there's the dude who can armor himself like a pill-bug and walk through walls.

And of course.....well....we know that Jean Gray will be back with this 3d iteration and oooooo-la-la.....

Oh! Oh! and then there's that crazy self-absorbed teenager who can turn the Earth into a blazing inferno....and then there's the ultimate bad guy....Magneto....now THAT sum-bitch is a cool dude. I hear that in X-III, he moves the Golden Gate bridge and wraps it around something or throws it at something....Wow! I can't wait to get out of here and get into a movie line!

That's pretty much the focus of my day....waiting for the ability to go see X-III. I don't even know what else we have planned for the weekend. Not that it much matters....I DO know that I am going to go and watch my huzband drive his car around a lot of cones on Monday....but Saturday and Sunday can be spent in a lazy haze....

Happy Memorial Day Weekend to Everyone out there!

Hope it's a good one for you and whatever you want you get lots of!

Az

Big Day

2006-05-20T00:59:00.000-07:00

Husband had his wisdom teeth removed this morning- I took him there and stayed with him - he had the easiest extraction of anyone I've ever known or heard of. He was in and out and had four of them extracted in 40 minutes. Gotta be some kinda record. Well, after that we went and got his Percocet and antibiotics prescriptions filled and then we came home. We both slept for a while then I left at 3:00 to meet my witch sister and friend, Iris at Travelers in Seattle. I had a really lovely time. She is such a wonderful person and I really miss seeing her since circmstances changed and seeing her is such a rare event. Anyway we had a wonderful time of sharing. She bought me dinner at an Indian restaurant a few blocks from Travelers and and just had the best time talking. I had to leave all too soon though so I could come home and take Kristopher to the Thesis exhibition of our friend Jaime Forero who was graduating this art photography class that has taken him six years to get done with. Then we went over to a great little bar in Ballard that we've been to several times before. I'll get some pictures of that place up here soon. My friend JenBaby takes pics all the time at places like the Last Supper Club and the other clubs she goes to. I don't see why I couldn't take a few of this place. Anyway...I'll pile the camera in the car the next time we go there.

I'm going to bed pretty soon, but I wanted to check in and officially thank the God and Goddess for such a wonderful day. I think blogging is a good way to do it too. If the Lady or Lord wants to use you as an example for someone, well, they dan do so with a website. ;)

Bright blessings, and good night,

Asradel

What's Happenin? A Revelation of Sorts....

2006-05-17T09:44:00.000-07:00

So it's officially the middle of May and the sun is out and it's damn hard to come in to work every day. However, I am reminded of the fact that I have a cushy job where I can keep long, manicured fingernails and where I get to hang out with people who bathe regularly, etc... That is a good thing, in my estimation. Also, I am much less in debt these days thanks to a refinancing of our house - a very good move indeed.

However, last night as I was standing at the gas pump filling my 1994 Saturn's 12 gallon tank and watching the meter tick over to 33.33 (a most auspicious number in and of itself - witchy friends who are reading this should ponder that a moment), I had a sort of revelation if you will. The crux of that moment of clarity and long vision showed me that economically things in this country are going to get much much worse before they get better. It was a crazy moment of being able to see where prices were going and why. I tell you now....we are in for a helluva ride. We have only begun to see the edges of how high prices are going to get. The fuel prices are going to be echoed in every corner of the market very soon, and it's scary. The great depression of the 1930s caught people by surprise, and, though the Federal Reserve has made provisions so that there will not be a run on banks like there was during that time, they have not been able to compensate for everything. I for one am going to react to my vision in the following ways:

1) Not going to make any major purchases that obligate me for long-term payments unless it is real estate or unimproved land for at least the next 2 years.

2) Going to cut the extra spending in half and increase the amount of money that I keep in my 401K plan. While there is some risk associated with the 401K, it will have my money growing rather than sitting still, and I can take the tax break on that money.

3) Going to listen to my husband and stock up on dry goods as emergency rations for food, etc.....

Lately my husband has gotten on a jag abou emergency preparedness - now while I do not subscribe to the theory of complete governmental or political breakdown, my vision at the gas pump has me thinking that there is going to be some form of societal storm to ride out. So, I'm gonna play along with him and that way I know that if the bottom drops out, we will at least have beans and rice to live on if we need to.

For those of you who are reading this, I'm not trying to scare anyone. I fact, I only shared the vision I had with my daughter, and that only because she was in the car when I had it. It was only a moment and it wasn't concrete enough for me to describe in terms like the Book of Revelation or anything - only a tremendous feeling of certainty and brief moment of clarity. If you are reading this blog, maybe it was because you were meant to as well. So that you could prepare yourself by stopping extraneous spending and tryign to get yourself into a state of preparedness. That never hurts anyway. Did you know that I heard that the Mormons believe that if the man of the household has not provided for back-up emergency food for his family for at least one year, he is being remiss in his duty to his family and to the church? Yep. One more thing the Mormon's threw in that actually has value.

Okay then....I don't have any pictures to go with this post. I don't know what I would put up anyway unless it was a gas pump with a big Jesus streak behind it.

Bright Blessings to all who read this,
Asradel

Banks are the Axis of Pure Evil and TGIF

2006-05-03T16:12:00.000-07:00

Okay... I'm a fairly reasonable person and normally am pretty fair-minded about businesses making their money - but right now my ass is chapped to an exponential degree because my ass-clown bank decided to rear-rape me for $280 in insufficient funds charges. Was my account deficient the money? No. Not if you count the check that I deposited that day. Not at all. Well, did they credit my account with the deposit? Hell no. They credited my account with $100 of the deposit and held the rest for 2 days while they watched 8 separate instruments come in while they were holding an artificial balance on my account that reflected only $100 of my larger deposit.

Now get this: the check that I deposited that they were holding was a check from an escrow account that was backed with US Bank funds from the refinance of my house! My head's gonna explode! WTF? I've worked in the legal support field for a very long time. Too long for me to actually wanna recall here - but I know, as do most people in the legal and financial world, that an ESCROW check is as good as cash. But not to them! No! Anyway, after going and fighting with the customer service manager and the bank branch manager, I was able to get back $210 of my dollars, but not the total amount. I will be writing a letter to the bank today in an effort to get back the additional $70, which I will promptly turn around and spend on a witch doll that I don't need but want very much.

So, I hope you all have a great weekend planned. Asradel here is going to help the husband get the truck loaded to take to the dump. Believe me...I'm totally STOKED about this. :) Not really. My life hasn't spiralled quite THAT low yet.

Oh! And by the way! I am going to start selling Avon products as of today. The district rep is coming downtown to meet me and give me my "getting started" kit. So, if any of you out there who lurke on my blog want a catalog, lemme know.

Bright blessings!

Post Tarot Camp

2006-04-28T15:49:00.001-07:00

Hey ya'll! This is my first time to write on my blog after my sojourn over to NYC for The Reader's Conference 2006. I wish I could have taken all of ya with me. We had such a good time! I got to hang out with my heros and heroines of the Tarot elite and could hardly believe my good luck. I have some pics here to share with you. The pic that's up above is one of me about to go out to the Rachael Pollack portion of the Tarot weekend. Look at me cheesin' there.

So, I got to NYC on Friday morning about 9:30 a.m., and should have been completely knackered from my trip, but I wasn't. I was so excited to just be there that I was bright eyed and somewhat bushy tailed. I registered and then went out and talked to one of the other attendees in the gazebo while the conference organizers were getting all the stuff together for us to go into the main room. The first session was about what we were all going to learn while we were there and from whom. I was star-struck!

We had a lunch break at which time I finally got to take a shower, and I was so glad! Flying overnight and having nowhere to lay my head was a different experience for me. :) I'm a "shower a day kinda gal."

Above is a pic of me with Bob Place. He spoke about doing 3 card readings in a way that I was totally unfamiliar with, and I got a lot out of his lecture. I am a big fan of the Alchemical Tarot. I'm a sad Panda that I don't actually own the deck, but had to borrow one from my Magus in order to get to better know Bob's work before the class. Anyway, it didn't take anything away from my enjoyment of the artwork (I just didn't want to give it back!). But I bought the Tarot of the Saints by Bob while I was there. Mind you, I didn't feel I could part with enough money to buy the English edition, but he had the "Tarot el Santos" which he was selling for half price that I scooped up with a high degree of zeal. Who knows? Maybe I'll take Spanish. :)

So we were all seated at big round tables in this ballroom type area at the Marriott, and one of the women at my table was the one you see me with in the picture above. Her name is Elinor, and I just LOVE her. She and I hit it off big time. I guess she's been a student of Ruth Ann's and Wald's (Tarot School - Email me if you want the link to their site) for quite some time and she knew everyone. She was my reading partner on one of the lessons and we had a nice dynamic.

Later that evening, I went out to dinner at a diner with Rachael Pollack, her agent Zoe, Robert Place, Elinor and I guess that was the group. Anyway, it felt kind of surreal to be sitting next to Rachael, who's work I had admired for quite some time. Nice, conversational style writing that works very well with me.

I DID wind up adding to my Tarot collection while I was there. I purchased an "Animal Wisdom" Tarot by Lisa Hunt. It's a nice one, but wasn't the prize of the weekend. Rather, a Tarot of a Moongarden deck was the prize that I was so happy to walk away with for the weekend. It was given to me by a gal from England named "Gaynor." Poor Gaynor....I didn't give her a moment's peace about this deck after seeing it in front of her at the table and her saying that "she didn't like it." I bugged her mercilessly to sell it to me. In the end, she wound up giving it to me for a card reading. What a great trade. The husband and I are planning to go to England for about a week in September. Maybe there will be a look-up opportunity while I'm over there. I sure hope so. Gaynor's a kick in the ass. Here we are:

There is so much more to tell about Tarot camp, and I'm not really in a mood to write too much of a play-by-play at the moment....perhaps later. Or at least I will put some stuff on my static website for you to look at. There was really a lot of good information given at this event. A couple more pics and I promise I'll be done here.

Next is a picture of me and Lon du Marquette - the author of "The Chicken Kabbala" and "The Thoth Tarot" and about a dozen other books, Lon is revered around the world as a ceremonial magician, a mystic and an all-round nice guy. He taught us to sing the name of "Ganesh" to the tune of pop goes the weasel three times through in order to reach the mystical number of repitition, 108. :) That's just how this dude rolls!

Now the pictures of me with these various folks are not the most flattering for me, and normally I wouldn't be sharing them at all, but I'm just too proud of the great learning time I had to be held back from sharing by some neurotic need to look good in pictures. I just DON'T and that's certainly not a new revelation.

Anyway, that was Lon above, and for those of you who are Mary Greer fans - eat your heart out that we had a nice round-table session with Mary on Sunday morning. I can't remember for the life of me what the heck we talked about, because the fecker was at 7:30 in the morning, and I never actually got off of west coast time while I was on the East coast, but I did my best.

Here's a picture of me and Mary Greer after I purchased and got her to sign her latest offering "21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card" - I haven't read it yet, but the premise is BRILLIANT. Very apprapo and I believe it will be a nice catalyst for me to take my own reading in some other directions that I'm not even able to think of quite yet.

And last, but not least is a picture of me with Eileen, my first reading partner. She and I did the initial reading for the conference with each other, and the last reading for the conference with each other. She's a real mensch too. I wanted to purchase Lon's Thoth Tarot book, but had tapped my funds out buying all sorts of other good stuff at the conference. Well, Eileen won the book in a raffle drawing on Sunday before we all headed out of there, and she GAVE IT TO ME! Thanks Eileen! :) She had already purchased one for herself the day before. I dashed out the door immediately to catch Lon so he could sign it for me. He wound up drawing a little charicature of himself on the inside cover, which I thought was a very nice touch. Aliester Crowley was probably rolling over, wherever he is. :)

So that's about all I have time to write at the moment. I have a lovely and very special house guest arriving on my doorstep this evening, and, as you witchy types already know, this weekend isn't the one to be staying in the house messing with the computer. It's Beltaine for Heaven's Sake! Time to get out there and really enjoy the gifts of the heavenly father and the earthly mother. Time to really get down with some gettin' down!

So, Happy Beltaine to all of you! And, you lurkers out there....you know who you are - You are welcome here any and every time.

Love, and hugs,
Asradel
The Good Witch of the West

My Sister Elizabeth

2006-04-14T11:29:00.000-07:00

I don't usually write expose type pieces on here, but my good sister (see the pic of me and her together on previous posts) just emailed me about my wicked idiot crazy sister, and well, I just needed to blow off some steam.

I have a sister who is ten years older than me, and I have to tell you, she is nuttier than Opra's shit after a fruitcake binge. She lives in a little po-dunk town in Oklahoma with her one and only son who weights upwards of 625 pounds. I'm not sure, but I think they are on intimate terms. Yes....you heard me....I'm talkin straight out of "Deliverence." It makes me really sick to think about it, but oh well....I guess they deserve each other. He is also whacked in the head - due in no small part to his mothers ministrations.

My sister is so lazy that she doesn't want to work at all. Well, hell! Who does you stupid cooze?! I'm sure that I could find lots of other things to do besides work, but we are called upon as citizens of this country as well as this world to do our part and carry our own weight if we can. Well, not her....she has to be carried by other people. In the spirit of wanting to be handed something and feeling like she is owed something, my idiot sister (see picture inset) decided that she needed to get Social Security disability. Well, it just so happens that my niece, who is truly incapacitated from a surgery gone terribly wrong, is a bright go-getter who knows her way around the social system from her own experiences. Well, to make a long story short, my idiot sister (see picture - which is an amazing likeness, by the way) used my niece to get full disability from the government, on the premise that she is useless and stupid, and yet could not be bothered to compensate my niece in any way. An attorney who does that kind of work would have ass-raped her for over $5,000. But, I tell you as a former paralegal who worked for attorneys who did this kind of work, they wouldn't have been able to get her near that kind of money. Her's was a case where she MAY have gotten a 33% declaration with an attorney, and she STILL would have owed them a butt-load of cash for getting her that. Oh noo.....my niece got her an obscene benefit and when asked if she was going to compensate my niece in ANY way, my idiot sister (see extaordinary likeness of her in insert photo) got pissy and made my niece sign a waiver that said she got NOTHING for her efforts. That poor young woman (my niece) has been through the ringer, has not gotten an even break for about four friggin' years now, and needs all the help she can get herself - but does that cow of sister of mine care? No. In fact, she forwarded the email that my good sister (see previous posts for pictures of my cute sister), the mother of the bright niece, sent inquiring as to what the niece may be getting from it, to the niece telling her "you deal with your mother on this one." Well, I know that I'm rambling and no one on the planet except those people who know the players will be able to follow this, but I just had to vent.

I know that my crazy sister has no life to speak of. I know that she has no friends - except for the ones she pretends to be friends with so she can get a ride to the free cheese dispensary once a month - I know that the only man in her life is her twisted sex-crazed attention-starved son whom she has completely ruined and who also has no friends, but this is a prison of her own making and I find it really hard to feel sorry that she's in it. It just doesn't seem fair to my niece.

Okay....that's done. Whew! Friday's a good day for a rant.

Az

Beauty for the Sake of Beauty

2006-04-09T11:44:00.000-07:00

Alrighty then....well, it's just 9 short days until my tarot conference in NYC. I'm getting very excited about it and have been doing a massive amount of reading for people in preparation for attending. I still feel like there's a great deal to do, but I'm trying to be more organic about it. I decided just today that I am taking my smallest suitcase and saving my back rather than taking a bunch of decks and trying to commit self-mutilation by carrying some big-ass suitcase.
So the image that I'm pulling in here has nothing to do with anything I'm writing or doing...it's just so friggin' beautiful that I could not resist. The colors are evocative of deep emotions with me. I would love to have a room painted in these colors, and then, of course, there are the forms. Anyway, it's glorious. I wish I knew who did it. All that I DO know is that it came off of WebShots.

So, my boss is playing golf this afternoon and it's a lazy time around here. I need to be writing documentation on some processes, but I find myself day-dreaming. It's 3:30 and I'm ready to go home already. :)

So anyway, Tarot conference on the brain is where I'm at. I'm making another robe for my circle life. It is going to be the prettiest yet. A nice deep amethyst color with grapes and grapeleaves for contrast. I will be stylin' next full moon circle. :)

That's about it. I just wanted to get a post in because I don't like to let my blog get too stale.

Later gator!