Went to a screening in the park of the Princess Bride, projected on a thirty foot screen set up in front of the bandshell. Lying on his back on the blanket, my four year old pointed straight up in the sky and said look daddy, stars! He fell asleep on me and I watched the […]
As I came to bed tonight – at 2am, early for me – I pulled the chain on the banker’s lamp on the old metal filing cabinet that serves as my bedside table, and watched the light flicker through the green glass shade. I flipped the shade to look at the bulb, wondering if it […]
I’ve seen the anniversary of the fire coming for some weeks now; I would say I’m mostly okay with it personally, but it causes a lot of worry about my mom, my daughter, and a lot of thinking. I am already prone to too much thinking. Last week I stopped at a red light and […]
I went to an ice cream parlor; homemade ice cream for 50 years or something like that. Closed for a few years, it just reopened with a line all the way down the block. As I walked out a kid of about ten walked in, wearing a pinstripe fedora and carrying an Etch-a-Sketch. I think […]
I blinked, and eight months flowed by. I blinked, and eleven years flowed by. It took eleven years for the dates to match up, for the day my father died to be that day again. Some years I am distracted by the whirlwind that passes for April, but this year, I lived the week again. […]
The cat was thrilled. I’d found a can of slightly dusty albacore in the back of the cupboard behind the new-fangled tuna pouches and from the other end of the house the orange boy somehow heard the tiny sound of a hand can opener. A fraction of a second later he had teleported the length of the house and was rubbing against my leg, shaking in anticipation. Tuna! There is tuna! In a can! It’s been months! Damn you, pouches!
Even though the date nearly slipped by me, for a few weeks now I’ve seen it approaching, not with a particular sadness or dread, but simply: it is coming.
The other night I had a dream, the first I can remember in years. I snuck into a concert in a baseball stadium, not for the show but to see friends on the crew, and I was dressed in a baseball uniform, an old style, from not quite a century ago perhaps. I guess there […]
Maybe this only makes sense if you’ve got kids, I don’t know. But every day I’m a little bit sad that it’s the last day my kids will be this exact age.
“There’s a tumbleweed in our yard!” reported my four and a half year old girl. She thought for a second about this, then: “Should we throw it out, or should we fly to the old west and give it to a cowboy?”
I was still up the other night when L. jumped up in her sleep, grabbed the baby’s ride-on Mickey Mouse airplane like an over-inflated football and rushed to me with it. “Quick, touch this! Touch this or the magic won’t work!” I touched it, and suggested she go back to bed. “But what about the […]
There’s talk amongst those forecaster types of isolated thunderstorms tomorrow, but I guess some leading edge is in a hurry and earlier tonight there were some reasonable breezes, and then a little light rain – the perfect amount of light rain. Not enough to make a water-level difference, not enough to close windows, not enough […]
I evidently have some sort of disfunction and must hit cmd-D for nearly every page I visit on the web, and if it’s good, I have to do it two or three times to be sure it took. This must have become programmed at some root level, because I’m not really aware of doing it, […]
I cut off (or more accurately, had a professional cut off) 82% of my hair, which is probably 7 to 16% shorter than I’ve had done before, which completely weirded me out later in the shower when I reached behind my head to find… nothing. It was long overdue, though; I think the guy had […]
An old friend died last week; a massive heart attack at age forty for absolutely no clear reason. He and his wife had just decided to uproot and float with no real agenda: Australia as a first stop, but then, who knows, beyond not returning to their longtime island home. He died while writing a […]
My four-year-old saw what I must assume is a vacation bible school video aimed at children, although I’m not sure she got quite the intended message. Breathlessly she reported what she saw: “God is real and he’s a cowboy squirrel and he makes movies about himself!”
The baby woke up crying, and would not be consoled with milk; he did not need new pants; he only wanted to be held. Often he’ll just go back to sleep in my arms, but tonight he only wanted to look around in the quiet light of a twenty watt bulb, seeing things he knows […]
Twist n Shout Bam-Bam T-Rex Spider Monkey Sir Gentle with the Kitty
Lately, realizing I’m not getting anywhere sitting around asking hard questions and hoping for easy answers, and tiring of asking easy questions and making up hard answers, I’ve decided it’s probably better sometimes to just shut the hell up, but I can’t find anything in my manual about how to do that and not go […]
The other day, on the bed, an unmade pile/roll of blankets and comforters and pillows and so forth looked exactly like a manatee, complete with little tail flippers. I didn’t think “hey, that looks just like a manatee!” I didn’t think “what are the odds!” I thought “How did a manatee get way up here […]
I’ll often open about 85 browser tabs, full of news and articles and bloggy crap and just… well, crap. Suddenly the browser will be using about 126% of available memory, everything will start crawling, and I’ll do one of three things: a) just quit the thing, b) quickly close nearly everything, read a couple, then […]
A vision of perfection: I looked out my kitchen window at a sea of bamboo, the late afternoon sun, barely clearing the earth, lighting them gently from the side, a light snow drifting in the air between the reeds — wait a second – Those aren’t bamboo, those are dandelions. Very tall dandelions. Four million […]
Select headlines from cnn.com yesterday: Elephants at risk from gangs, eBay Driver of runaway woodchipper jailed Whales spooked by traffic Texas town worries about polygamists Yearbook photos show bong, drinking, smoking Claims pour in for shipwreck booty Jessica Alba: ‘I love challenging authority’ Help avoid falls in the home with stylish universal design Einstein was […]
How come “five and dime” brings back memories of being a kid in a candy store, of plastic bins full of toy soldiers, of Woolworth’s and superballs and packs of baseball cards, although I mostly bought my trading cards from the ice cream man, but “nickel and dime” brings … nothing of the sort?
There is a Winnie the Pooh and Tigger clock propped against the wall in the corner of my bathroom counter. It is propped at an angle, with 1 up and 7 down. It was accurate enough, if you tilted your head, but then it started losing track of time as the battery found itself unable […]
If I count my side of conversations in IM as writing output, I’m incredibly prolific.
I hate it when I make rookie mistakes, even if for the situation in question, I really am a rookie.
It got too late last night to make the brownies we planned for a splurge, so we scavenged some cookies: one chocolate chip cookie from Subway (free for them being out of two kinds of bread and without internet and thus incapable of taking credit cards, debit cards, or subway cards) (I originally typed that […]
I heard today of a friend’s new dog, evidently a goofball playful nine month old named Grrr. Or maybe Grrrr. Not sure of the spelling. I can’t decide if that name is pure genius, or … something else.
My desk is cleared off enough that I can be 96.6% certain that this week my desk has eaten a Newsweek and a book of Costco coupons. I think I’m concerned about this.
Do what you love and some money, not enough but some, enough to encourage you but not enough to get by, will follow.
I saw a TV commercial last night for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I cannot make that up. This is wrong on several levels. One, pb&j needs no advertising. I mean, really. C’mon. And two… it was a combined ad pushing JIF peanut butter and Smuckers. They put the peanut butter on first then put […]
I saw a statistic that says women use on average 15,000 words a day, but men only use 7,000 words. I suspect this leaves me about 6,970 words short for the day. Doh!
I found a cell phone recently in the gutter, not close enough to any stores or offices to make it obvious where to take it. I looked through its phone book to see if there was a “home” listing so I could call the owner, but there wasn’t. I rejected trying to call Big Jim, […]
I tried to add a friend’s cat as a friend on one of those little social networking sites the kids like so much. This would be the second cat; the first cat was a couple I know, using their cat as a front. That, effectively, meant I was adding my friends as, well, a friend, […]
It’s a great time of year. The ash tree outside my kitchen window went all yellow at once, giving the light filtering through the window a soft glow, and for part of the afternoon you get a bonus beam of bright orange as the sun refracts through a bottle of bright orange antibacterial soft hand […]
I need to keep better writing notes, or better yet, actually just write down what I mean to write down, when I think of it. I have a note here that says “fear the chicken” but no idea what I meant. Somehow, this is worse than when I can’t read my own handwriting.
An older woman stopped next to me at a horse jumping event. She leaned on the pole rail fence for a few minutes, watching, then said: “I used to own an arabian too, but I never rode him like that.” She spent a moment reflecting. “Not everyone has to have an athlete, though. What’s wrong […]
Last week I switched from cable to satellite; the quality difference (for essentially the same price) is incredible. I got a dual tuner DVR as part of the deal, so we can watch recorded shows in either room from just one box. Sometimes technology can still astonish me. Tonight I rewired my television and all […]
Friend in IM: do you know anything about plate techtonics? Me: i don’t even own a dishwasher
If someone is very particular about their cookware, does that make them a pot stickler?
I’m glad to report there was nothing wrong with the drain in my bathtub that: denial a week of plunging anger a screwdriver bargaining a garden hose through the window and jammed in the drain depression a gallon of bleach five gallons of boiling water … couldn’t easily fix. I can only hope the sink […]
Grocery Outlet is sort of depressing if you go there just to save money (unless you stick to the same exact items you’ve have gotten somewhere else for more) but it’s kind of fun if you look at it as a treasure hunt, trying to find crazy products that didn’t quite take, foods you’ve never […]
My three year old jumps up and down every night at the prospect of brushing with her “new magical strawberry toothpaste.” I always smile: it’s hardly new now – it’s been months – and while it’s the most perfect of fakes, I bet it has nothing to do with real strawberry. But for some reason, […]
If the lawn mower will not start, it is because it doesn’t have enough gas. This applies even if I’ve peered in the gas tank and it appears to be full to the top and I say, loudly, that the gas cannot possibly be the problem. The fruit punch at Artic Circle is very tasty, […]
After a good lunch at a once a year fundraising event, nothing sounded exciting for dinner. “We could have canned food… food in little boxes… bread…” Even with details on what’s in the cans and little boxes, nothing stood out. A commercial came on for the Mashed Potato Bowl at KFC. “I want that!” L […]
I’ve been doing a ton of cleanup work on my yard, getting rid of junk buildings and paint bits from painting the house last fall and a flowerbed that was really just weeds; beautification via removal. Yesterday with the help of a neighbor with a large truck I pulled down a half shack thing that’s […]
The other day I passed the Boise Airport Police K9 Explosives Unit truck, and it had the license plate KABOOOM. I am now trying to always, always, always carry a camera.
My son was born six weeks ago, in the same room his sister was born in three years earlier, almost to the day. There’s a good story around it, involving a police officer pulling a gun on a dog in my yard right before we head to the hospital, but that will have to wait […]
A movie I worked on (okay, as a location office PA, big deal) is on Entertainment Weekly’s list of “25 Worst Sequels of All Time” and I am oddly proud.
We had a run of no-jacket weather and I started working in the yard, but winter has returned; it’s snowing right now, a heavy wet snow that makes the trees into art and the misty city sky into a magic orange glow. I went quietly about my house peering out of different windows, storing up […]
IM from me to J: i just went through my fat wallet and pulled out all the receipts and business cards and crap and i was left with five bucks and a coupon for 55 cents off life cereal. sigh J’s reply, illustrating why I keep him around: yum. life.
I decided the little bit of roast beef I had left wasn’t really enough for lunch, even if it was still good, which was a gamble. I tossed it, and went to see what there was I could finish up so I didn’t feel I was wasting things. I had the last bit of orange […]
I was told the trash guys would take a queen mattress and box, and a couch if there wasn’t a fold-out bed inside; no special pickup necessary. So I dragged said old items out of my garage and put them next to the cans and sure enough, the truck took them. The couch was about […]
The Wonder Bread people (which may be simply the Wonder Bread Company, for all I know) have a new product out called “White Bread Fans” that is whole grain wheat bread but looks and tastes a lot like… well, Wonder Bread. It’s a little brown instead of pure white, but that’s the only obvious difference. […]
I didn’t think you could beat the socks and Chia Donkey but I was wrong: The woman behind me at Wal-Mart tonight was buying four packages of audio cables, two twelve packs of Heineken and a really big sledgehammer. She saw me smile and went to explain, but I cut her off. Explanations would only […]
Saw a license plate holder today (around a vanity plate that has a first name ending with a Z probably to be a possessive, like this, nameZ, because, one would presume, someone already got nameS, and this is just stupid either way although I have to admit I think it’s sort of amusing when someone […]
“1. Remove film cover. Remove chicken nuggets, ketchup, and muddy anthill sprinkle packet from tray.”
A signboard at the extreme end of a strip of stores and the angle you see it driving by made it appear to belong to its neighbor, thus leaving me this afternoon wondering why a funeral home and crematorium was in neon-colored letters advertising FREE ELECTRIC SCOOTER WITH PURCHASE.
I’ve been watching the countdown (countup?) to one billion songs sold on iTunes, trying to get in there and snag the grand prize (or any prize, really). I got distracted by some in-depth articles and missed my crack at the 100,000 level prize at 999,000,000 by – according to the counter – a couple of […]
I just discovered – after three years of living here – that the living room television reflects off a large framed photo on one side of the hall, then off a photo on the other side, slips through the bedroom door that is open for cat access, and bounces off the front glass of the […]
Caption to a photo I saw in a Target parking lot but did not take, mostly because I didn’t have a camera: “Cartnage”
I was prepared to make three grocery stops tonight – Costco, for some Costco-sized things; Walmart, for nearly everything else, and Winco, for a squeeze bottle of Best Foods mayo. That’s Hellmann’s if you’re east of the Rockies, and why they don’t call it that out here is beyond me. Hellmanns.com and best-foods.com are the […]
I woke up on the living room floor from an unplanned nap and Jay Leno was on my television, which is something I try to avoid. Worse, he was doing some sort of ‘comedy’ thing with Howie Mandel, who I guess needed a job. L. was asleep on the couch, and when she woke up […]
For about the last month I’ve slept in cities such as Auckland, Palmerston North, Christchurch, Arthur’s Pass, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, and Wagga Wagga. The first time I did Wednesday, on the other side of the date line, I should have been wearing shorts. The second time, back here, I needed a coat. When I […]
Behind me in a boarding line the other day a woman had this button on a purse: “The only obstacle to happiness is reality.” A woman waiting for this particular flight has a shirt that says: “I’ll try being nicer if you try being smarter.” One of the TSA screeners added to the standard laptop/video […]
Here I am, not much more than halfway into my bonus hour, and I am tired. Tired not like it’s 1:41am, but tired like it’s 2:41 am. This hardly seems fair at all. In fact, if you consider that this is not really a bonus hour at all, but an hour I paid for last […]
I love the “fall back” part of daylight savings – I got to waste a couple of hours watching my TV backlog – that “Real World” I missed in August really was critical – and because of the clock thing I also get a few hours to pretend to write but not really do it. […]
At a house not far from me there is a truck with the license plate ELK FOR TWO, and I know they mean it – now and then something wrapped up hangs from a tree in their yard, although I have no idea if it’s an elk or a deer. (Actually, based on the sizes […]
I think this is a good thing to look into noah One and all will realize you have “Arrived” We’ve got a powerful lawn tractor with your name on it. One and all will understand you have MADE IT Based on the same concept as the clown car. Everyone will realize you have Arrived If […]
Somehow, for just a moment, I got Talk Like A Pirate Day and The Wizard of Oz cross-connected in my head, and I thought “avaste ye, my pretties” … and that’s just not right.
Recent events involving my fridge have revealed that while the gallon milk storage on the top shelf of my door sure is handy, milk stored on the bottom shelf above the crisper is just a few degrees cooler and approaches perfect as far as temperature is concerned. I love gallon door storage, but I love […]
I like Oroweat but I’m not often up for spending $3.50 for a loaf of bread unless the person selling it to me baked it themselves (hello, Great Harvest) so I was pleased to see my favorite Oroweat variety on sale for $1.48. I was immediately flooded with regret, however, that I’d just the day […]
I think I do my best thinking and writing in the shower, but my evidence for that is not so much what actually gets out of my head and onto paper, but the times when I turn off the shower, get my towel, and then realize the hard way that I was so distracted that […]
If you’re going to get stung by a bee, make every effort to avoid what happen to me yesterday, which is to be stung by a bee ON MY SPINE. Wow that hurt.
In a bookstore today I saw the title “NO TOUCH MONKEY!” There is a subtitle that explains things but where is the fun in sharing that? Okay, fine. “… and Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late” But really, isn’t “NO TOUCH MONKEY!” enough?
I just cleaned out my wallet as I moved into a new one – parts of the old one being held together by just three threads – and I decided it was time to remove the years of fortune cookie fortunes that were piled up, blocking a portrait of Winnie the Pooh and Chistropher Robin […]
True: the better the hotel, the crappier the cable TV. Also, charging $10 a day for the internet is completely bogus. Should be a hotel law: the bathroom lightswitch should light up, especially if if it’s between the heat lamp knob and the outlet with the plug for the hairdryer and thus not so easy […]
If you find yourself in a small country diner on the edge of a small farming town, and if you look around and nearly everyone has a lemonade on their table, and you look at the menu and see that it says: Lemonade (in season) … here’s a tip for you: order lemonade.
Higglytown Heroes is computer animation and everyone looks like those Russian nesting dolls – vaguely bowling-pin like and hollow inside. Sometimes the Higglyites (Higglyians?) will just open in the middle and take something out relevant to the task at hand – say, a bike helmet before a ride, or a squirrel. Someone always has a […]
L. and the baby (who is not such a baby anymore but I can’t stop calling her that) were leaving for some lunch and so forth, and I heard a slight plastic crash and scrape sound. I knew instantly the recycling guys – and not the garbage guys – had left the empty bin half […]
A storm is here. I woke to soft rain that stopped while I did my morning net news rounds, but then the thunder came, far off at first and then shaking the house with a long, low rumble that promised an angry truck screaming up my street. But now the real rain is here and […]
I accidently bought the ‘lite’ Eggo syrup and sure enough, I think it tastes wrong. Not as wrong as when I bought (on purpose) the low fat peanut butter, thought it was okay for about a quarter of a PB&J, and then realized the product would make an excellent spackling compound, but still wrong. This […]
I don’t know if you’re watching “Hit Me Baby One More Time” and if you are watching if you’re willing to admit it, but I think Cameo got robbed the other night. (Howard Jones was excellent too.) The whole think has me digging through my iTunes library, finding ’80’s CDs I ripped but have never […]
Boston again: There was almost always a musician down in the T, at least at the stop by my hotel (Downtown Crossing). One afternoon there was a largish older black man with an electric keyboard propped on a folding shopping cart. Next to him was a young black man with an acoustic guitar, and the […]
Overheard cell phone conversation fragment #1 – a young woman walking quickly: “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were in a sex shop.” Overheard cell phone conversation fragment #2 – a man about fifty pacing in front of a store: “I don’t like being associated with this family, so the next time I see you, […]
Q. and I hadn’t talked in a while, and a chance bit of free time when I phoned led to some good catching-up. I’d been out, six cities in two months, taking a few pictures I’m proud of (and if you know me, you know that’s rare). Back home, I mentioned after a losing season […]
Clearly, I work myself into a tizzy late at night, post a few frustrated low-substance messages all in a row, then do nothing for two weeks. Instead, I will now try to post a non-frustrated high-content message: every sign and bumper sticker I can remember from two visits to the Five Points Cafe in Seattle […]
My town is getting a Del Taco, which completely rocks not because of their tacos but because of their awesome crinkle cut french fries and we all know how few fast food chains really get the importance of crinkle cuts. I was all excited to post this, but Toni had to go and upstage my […]
In the few minutes I spent writing the previous entry and reading a Slate story about the decline of “Trivial Pursuit” the house across the street has gained Mylar banners across several windows that declare “It’s a Girl!” eight times and pinkish streamer across the front of the house, around the door, on all the […]
The neighbors across the street disappeared three or four days ago, with the occasional visit by a jeep or a SUV to take care of the dogs. Just now they returned, along with the jeep and the SUV and another car and lots of flowers and “it’s a girl” balloons and a tiny little bassinet […]
On a flight from Boise to Burbank last week the Southwest flight I was on stopped in Reno. I was reading a newspaper as passengers started to board so I’d never have looked up to see Tim Robbins pass my near-the-back seat to sit even-nearer-the-back if he hadn’t as he passed said to nobody in […]
Down in LA last week I saw a Fatburger all dark at an early hour and there were two banners: one said “Watch for Fatburger grand reopening soon” and the other said “Flame Broiled Burger: Good – Flame Broiled Building: Bad” which made me instantly want to eat there.
I don’t buy many new books these days – I think I may well have forgotten how to read – but the other day I bought a book autographed by a dog, partially because it’s a travelogue and I like those, but mostly so I can say I own a book autographed by a dog.
From a Reuters story: Fossett hopes to touch down back in Kansas in a little less than three days after covering 23,000 miles at altitudes of up to 52,000 feet — and is designated as an alternate landing spot for the Space Shuttle. Was this an editing error, or did a robot just string together […]
I watched the entire Oscars last night, and I’m still mad at myself. I used to love the movies, and I would go to a movie in a theater at least twice a week. I think I’ve seen two in the last three months. I barely even rent DVDs. I used to try to make […]
Today NBC is showing “2005 Tribute to Movies on Ice.” Perhaps the most disturbing part is the “2005” in the title. Have they actually done this before and decided it was a good enough idea to do it again? The horror, the horror…
They say you learn something new every day. Today I learned: gorgonzola sucks. My mom says it’s closely related to bleu cheese, so if you believe in guilt by association, bleu cheese sucks too. Although I bet you could tell because it’s spelled “bleu” which is weird and wrong. A moment of Googling reveals there’s […]
Three license plates, all seen this week: FLUFY ROMANTC CLARITY
Saw a big F150 with the “Idaho Forests: Today and Tomorrow” vanity tag reading “CLEARCT” … I don’t know if I should laugh or not.