Ok, yeah, so I've only just now figured out that TypeKey sign-in is kinda broken. Apparently I need to upgrade my templates. Well, that"s fine, except I've modified the $h1t out of my templates and it"s not just a simple "StyleCatcher" maneuver to upgrade. Maybe next week. (Ha.) For now, it looks like if you "log in" twice it can figure out who you are. For all my bajillions of commenters ;-) sorry for the inconvenience.
January 2006 Archives
Well, the BabyCar finally got a front license tag, thanks to an overly attentive cop on Memorial. Dammit.
It just looks silly, I think. Like buck-teeth. I know that"s not an acceptable excuse for The Law, but aesthetics should count for something, don't you think?
Update
Hmmm. Maybe I need this...
Super Bowl XL!! Whoohoo!
My eyes are really going square. I'm bouncing between projects at work and between websites at home. On the downside, I often can't remember what I'm supposed to be doing at any given moment. On the upside, I'm learning a lot and I'm getting better at enjoying small successes. (That's called "trying really hard to see the glass half-full.")
Last weekend I went to see The Thin Man with the MO's parentals at the MFAH's theatre. It was fabulous!! I've decided I want to be Myrna Loy when I grow up. (Yeah, I know it ain't gonna happen, but a girl can dream....) I'm very happy to know that there are five, count 'em five, sequels. (Oh, and of course there is a box set! And check this, on the Amazon page for The Complete Thin Man Collection the "people who bought this also bought" shows the Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Collection Vol 1 that the MO's parentals gave me for Xmas, so how perfect is all that? I watched Shall We Dance last week and loved it....) (Although that dress that they show on the picture on IMDB was really hideous....)
I've been reading some short stories, too. I'm not ready to jump into another novel after my Peter F. Hamilton excursion and I'm too distracted to deal with a history book right now, so short stories are perfect. Last night I read "The Lover of Horses" by Tess Gallagher. I found the central concept of the story quite alluring, in a strictly "wow, what would that be like?" kind of way, and I was entirely engrossed in the unfolding analysis of the familial character flaw (depending on your point of view).
I guess we look for familiar scenarios, and sometimes the mind makes quite a leap in connecting the dots. Near the end of the story, the protagonist is sitting outside under a cedar tree, smoking a cigarette, contemplating silence, and I immediately envisioned my grandpap sitting on his stool under his little arbor behind the house, feeding squirrels or watching redbirds or whatever-it-was he did when he sat there. I was always told not to bother him when he went there, so I never did. (In fact, I'm just guessing about the stool. I'm sure he must have sat on something and I don't recall a chair.) But later, seeing him on the back porch patiently regarding hummingbirds and the squirrels on the corn-cob wheel, I figure he just sat there and smoked and thought.
Shelley Powers: Flitter
I wasn"t expecting much when I arrived; I've been to other butterfly houses, and the number of visitors seemed to be disproportionately larger than the number of butterflies. However, when I entered the Butterfly House, within a few seconds a dead leaf butterfly landed on the shoulder of the man in front of me. I would have taken a photo but the hot and humid room had fogged all my lenses. It would take close to half an hour for the lenses to come unfogged; just about the time when I was getting red faced and drenched in sweat, having foolishly dressed for winter.
(This one's for you, Mom :-)
The Carnival of the Cats is up at Niobium this week. Thought I'd mention it specifically since Lorax and Melvin have both made appearances here after a long kitty hiatus.
Poor Melvin just curls up on herself when it's nail clipping time. She tucks her tail up and looks so pitiful. She also turns into a wiggly snake trying to get away. But she gets these dagger-sharp claws that make her nesting habit really painful, so she does get clipped. You'd think she'd have figured out by now that it doesn't actually hurt, but she doesn't have a very long memory.
This was supposed to be a picture of Melvin, but by the time my camera took the picture, she was long gone....
Who says cats don't have fantasies? I'm pretty sure Lorax is pretending to be an airplane....
How cool is this?? You register at postcrossing and then request an address. They email you an address from another registered user along with a postcard id. You send this person a postcard, including the postcard id. When they receive it, they log its receipt, and then you're eligible to receive a postcard. It's like chainmail but funner :-)
(Thanks to schwan272 via the carving consortium for the original link!)
I think school zones bring out the worst in morning drivers. I go through one on the mornings I don't go to the gym, and it seems more often than not somebody gets bent out of shape about something. For heaven's sake, it's only about five blocks long. Just chill out for a couple of minutes....
Anyhow, the entrance to the school is very close to an intersection, and they have a big sign out reminding drivers not to block the driveway. Most people ignore it, of course, leading to some interesting gridlock-type maneuvering as cars stack up behind the parent who wants to cross traffic and get into that parking lot.
So, in the interests of maintaining my own sunny morning disposition (!) I am very careful about not blocking the school entrance. One car can fit between the crosswalk and the driveway, then you have to leave a big gap. So if I'm the second car, I leave a big gap. Yesterday, the guy behind me had a conniption over this, honking and gesticulating. (Mind you, this is only an issue when the light is red. You're not going anywhere anyhow, so who cares about an extra car-length between you and the RED traffic light?)
In the midst of Conniption-Boy's tirade, Mr. Dropping-of-the-Kid-at-School Man comes the other way, is probably astounded that he is actually able to turn into the school grounds, and he flashes me the most enormous smile and gives me one of those pointing-at-you-turns-into-a-thumbs-up moves. That made it all worthwhile.
A friend of mine had her oldest (first) kitty put to sleep yesterday (the kitty was 16 years old and was suffering renal failure). Afterwards, of course she was emotional and she spent a lot of time with her other kitties (she called it "forced love" ;-), including the outdoor cat, who normally doesn't go in for affection so much. This morning, the outdoor cat left a nice rat at the garage door. It kind of makes you sniffle, just thinking about it. Kitties are so sweet....
We took a quick weekend road trip to San Antonio to help the MO's brother move a VERY HEAVY fish tank. Whew. Instead of just turning around and coming back home, we decided to spend the day there, so we went to the Blue Star Brewing Company for a lovely beverage and late lunch, poked around some art galleries and shops, and treated ourselves to a night at The Menger and a nice dinner. On the way back to the hotel last night, we reprised our wedding picture in front of the Alamo.
The weather has been beautiful lately--cool in the evening, clear and almost warm to warm in the day. Abundant sunshine. Big blue skies with no clouds--I think that is normal some places, but not anywhere I've ever lived. Clouds are the norm. Vast empty bluuuuuuuuuue skies are kind of a novelty. I took lots of pictures looking up, but of course you can't really capture it. (Or at least my Elph and I can't.)
We did succumb to art lust and buy a couple of treasures at San Angel. I would not say that folk art (esp. "outsider art") is normally my style (I think the MO has a much broader range of appreciation for it than I do) but when I saw one of Shane Campbell's crow trees, it practically leapt into my arms. Luckily the MO liked it too and it came home with us. I haven't read it all yet--we were joking about transcribing it. The MO also picked out something special that is definitely more to his taste. I'm not even going to try to describe it. Hopefully he'll write about it himself.
Dinner at Biga was interesting. We sat next to a table that had a great waiter. Our waiter was... competent. Mostly. Bringing the appetizer before the bottle of wine didn't go over too well, but that was really the only gaffe. He just didn't come across as very interested in the whole process. But we eavesdropped on the other guy and learned a lot about the menu that way. The appetizers were astounding. The MO ordered the game packets and I had the smoked salmon nachos. Yum yum yum times infinity. I also tried the grapefruit salad, which was wonderful. The entrees were kind of a letdown. They were good--very good, actually--but the appetizers were a hard act to follow. We did have a delightful bit of chocolate truffle ice cream for dessert, though.
After dinner we walked over the Davenport for a Costa Rican (for me) and a gin & tonic (for he). Watched the Patriots stomp the poor Jaguars, although we missed the last quarter because they turned the station to the Spurs game. Come on, basketball?? Basketball does not trump football, even if it is the local team, during the NFL playoffs. (Well, ever, if you ask me, but especially not during playoffs.) So we ignored the basketball and talked amongst ourselves. We're good at that.
We had brunch at The Menger this morning. Wow. They had everything. Then a little touristing and the drive home. We saw lots of hunters returning from their outings--coolers and buggies in pickups and on trailers, and several antler sightings, so at least some of them had good luck. I wish I had been quick enough with the camera to get a shot of the one with the whole muzzle poking up out of the back corner of the pickup bed. It was a tad surreal. Kind of like a dog hanging its tongue out in the wind, only bigger. With antlers. And dead. Okay, so maybe not really so much like that after all....
Anyhow, it was a great weekend, despite that last mental image ;-)
I'm beginning to suspect that Peter F. Hamilton may be my all-time favorite author. Yesterday I finished Judas Unchained, the sequel to Pandora's Star, and I'm still all involved with the stories and the characters. I think about his books for ages after I'm done reading them.... Of course, they're epics in page count as well as scope, but this one was especially satisfying because I got through all 900-some-odd pages in about a week. Talk about immersion! Gotta love those holidays....
(In case you're wondering how I've read it when it's not released til the end of next month, well, the MO is very clever as well as devastatingly sexy and he bought it for me from amazon.uk, where it had already been released. And just what is up with that, I'd like to know? Haven't we been waiting long enough over here on this side of the pond?)
Anyhow, all Peter F. Hamilton books hereupon even more highly recommended. But only if you don't mind cutting back on sleep, because you will turn the pages long past your bedtime, night after night, until you're done.
Apropos of not much of anything, ya know what I want? Links on links. Like nesting parentheses. So you can put an href on a title in an href.... Etc.
Tonight, a little surfing trip on TMI.... How could I not keep exploring after I found an industrial wire weaving machine? Sometimes the MO should be very glad we're not jillionaires with a warehouse worth of garage space....
