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I love Talisker whisky, it is to other Scotches what opium is to pot. My current bottle is bottomless, which happens to me every few years. I've been drinking it for a week now and it's stayed at 4" left in the bottle the whole time.
I'm like Rainman minus Wopner when taz doesn't post a BunTarot. I almost posted my own today.
One of my cats just crawled up my back onto my shoulders, claws in the whole way. I don't mind.
I've stopped drinking. I even went to a meeting this morning. Two guys recognized me from my last 12-step tango a few years back. Fuckers are like elephants, man.
I wish there were another day in the weekend. Whenever I have a three-day weekend, it seems just about the right amount of time. Enough time to do laundry, get groceries, the boring stuff; plus also enough time to do some social stuff, maybe get outside, maybe read and daydream. The 2-day weekends are too short.
I am still working on this grant, and I wish it were done. Looking ahead at a busy week. And also, trying to parse a "where's-this-headed" conversation that my new squeeze and I totally stumbled into Saturday morning. It's much too early to be worrying about that stuff, but now it's been broached so I have to think about it.
This morning I should have worked on the grant. Instead I worked on my own new songs for two hours, then practiced "4 + 20" obsessively several times, also "Meet Me in the Morning".
On the plus side, I was just at the drugstore and I bought a Dale Jr. Nascar ballpoint pen with a helmet on top. And I bought a bar of 'Limited Edition' chirros-flavor Bugles.
Good thoughts going your way jon. Not much time to type anymore due to a long story of it's own that I also don't have time to type, but good thoughts.
Fingers crossed that it goes the way you want it to, jonmc, or maybe that it goes even better than you hope.
As for me, I bumped into the mother of my ex yesterday for the first time in nine years. My ex constantly obsessed that I was sleeping with my (male) best friend, told me we'd end up married with kids on our first date when I was nineteen (he was 22) and then physically hurt me and verbally abused me when I broke up with him after ten months. He finally married someone two years ago and has a child. I don't actually know how I feel about that.
I mention this here because none of you guys probably know me well enough to care much. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.
For what it’s worth, Shane (coming from an itinerant type like myself) I thought your question and your tags were great, they cracked me up. When I first read them I expected a bunch of sparkling wit and wisdom to appear in the thread in response. (There was a bit of that, but obviously I’m not so good at predicting this sort of thing.)
Best wishes also to jonmc. And tracicle.
I’ve been working day to day the last few months on a long-term project, trying not to get sabotaged by the many delightful possibilities that are out there waiting to distract me. For example one of the comic delights of the month of February, for me at least, is going to the grocery store on the morning of Super Bowl Sunday.(Bottleneck in the snack food aisle! People with carts full of twelve-packs blocking the way!! Don’t these folks know their way around a grocery store?) I actually enjoy this ritual, it’s total madness, but this year I made up my mind (since I didn't actually need groceries) to stay home and work, so it has turned out to be pretty much like any other weekend.
I'm working a wake tonight and I saw a guy I haven't seen since high school. Nice guy, but a bit of a quiet, reserved type. I never expected him to amount to much.
"So, it's been fifteen years...whatcha been up to?" I ask him.
Turns out that he lives in Manhattan, is dating a magazine illustrator and trying to get his music career started.
As he spoke, I seethed with jealousy.
"So..." he added, "Working for your dad, huh?" And here's the thing, he wasn't trying to be assy. He was just being polite. But it made me angry nonetheless. I wanted to tell him that while, yes, I did happen to be working in the family business, I also had a rich, rewarding, exciting life.
I threw a party for the Superbowl, and people actually came! I'm overjoyed. The last party I threw, no one came and that made me sad. But now I have to wash the dishes. Which sucks.
I threw a party for the Superbowl, and people actually came! I'm overjoyed. The last party I threw, no one came and that made me sad. But now I have to wash the dishes. Which sucks.
I went out with some girlfriends, drank some beers, it was nice. Then I came home and my phone rang and it was this guy I met at a New Years party, who lives in Chattanooga and who I blew off the next day because I was too hungover to talk to him. He had lost my phone number and had just managed to find it, which was a task since I only have a cel. We talked for like an hour. I am kind of amazed and stunned and blown away. Also, I have this second interview to be the office manager here on Tuesday afternoon and last Thursday I completely serendipitously met one of their very few staff, who will be one of the people interviewing me on Tuesday, and he was really nice and said he would throw me softballs at the interview. On top of that I met with these people I'm supposed to be doing freelance writing & web updating for and even though I kind of dropped the ball on that one they are still really interested in having me be part of their organization.
So, things are sort of seriously looking up on every level of my life and it's freaking me out, majorly, since I'm not really equipped to deal with good news, but I think I'm learning. Do you believe that this guy actually made a serious effort to track me down? I am so bowled over by this. Wow.
And Jon - darlin', best wishes, and all strength to you.
So, at the end of the wake, the guy comes into my office, and for like, twenty minutes opens his heart to me about how sad he is that he hasn't been here for the last few months of his father's life and how he'd give anything to just talk to him one more time.
And it made me glad that I was able to see the sun rise this morning with my dad, as we were coming from a home where we picked up a man who had died in his bathrobe on his front lawn going to get the morning paper.
before rambling about myself: nice one jonmc, much support from this quarter.
so I'm in a really good place right now, my work is going well, I've had compliments from my boss, mr. g and I are getting on exceptionally well (that kind of blissfully happy thing that doesn't happen all the time with your partner) and I'm about to start playing bridge again.
On the down side, I lost $50 today (out of my pocket in chinatown) and the steelers won. Boo.
What a great thread. MGL, things sound good. I can relate to not quite trusting the universe when good things seem to be happening. Someone clued me in to a (slightly silly) book called ProNoia, by the "Free Will Astrologist" Rob Breszny, that talks about that -- that we should just get used to the idea that wonderfulness is quite as likely to happen as badness. ProNoia is the opposite of paranoia: the state of being ready for and open to good things, not always bracing oneself for some unknown negative future occurrence. For what it's worth, I thought I'd mention it. Good luck with the guy and the interview.
Omie, hope whatever's sad is manageable, there.
Gaspode sounds excellent. ColdChef, thanks for posting part 2 of that story.
A very philosophical, Sundayish, slice-of-life thread. Best to all.
Well, it's just after 7 am Monday here, and still dark out - just the faintest hint of pink over there behind the mountains, fading into the deep purple of the early sky.
It snowed overnight, so everything is lovely and white, which is nice, but I feel kind of shortchanged that I didn't get to see much of the actual snow-falling bit. I'm really, really glad that we finally got our heating fuel delivered last week, after being completely out for several (unseasonably warm, sunny) days. Yay, heat! Yay, snow!
We made the best chicken soup ever yesterday, and just pretty much snuggled and lazed about in our jammies. Yay, lazy!
Yay, Shane - fun thread! And I'll be more regular with the bunny tarot now that I know I have a big fan. :-) Yay, jonmc! Yay, mygothlaundry! Yay, coldchef - lovely to see you! Yay, bunnies, all - I hope you have a great week!
We had our second snow of the winter and stayed in and made chicken stock today and plan to make veggie stock tomorrow. Friday I made Indian food and Saturday Thai, both of which had plenty of Cilantro for garnish. I need to go back to work to keep my company going and I am trying to get my mind in gear for the interview.
I didn't get much done this weekend and would probably be dissatisfied, except that I found something unexpected in a box. It was a cassette tape from my first ever yoga class, back when I was 15 or 16. So just a little bit ago I ran the tape and did an hour-long class right out of the past.
Every nuance of the instructor's voice was familiar. It was wonderfully, unexpectedly comforting, and now I'm feeling waves of love for everyone, including people I haven't met such as all of you.
According to the dude in Grizzly Man all we really have to do to quit boozing is get really dangerously and delusionally into bears to the inevitable point where a bear eats us. Which seems like a fair trade for less unexplained bruises.
Hell, I'd trade my life at a bear's teeth and claws for thirteen summers that close to nature. The bear had been tampered with by humans, too-he'd been anesthetized, had a tooth pulled, had his lip tattooed with an I.D. #, and generally was predisposed to hating people.
It was just plain the wrong bear.
Timothy Treadwell was crazy but a genius.
Werner Herzog was compelled to make the documentary. I urge everyone to see it.
I have a pic of Treadwell sitting next to a bear on my cubicle wall.
Anyway, since i have to tell this but nowhere to put it (yet) I might as well do it here. So we finished the bird experiment yesterday, not a day too soon, because I was getting sick of the birds, and its not fun working with vertebrates, cause you get the feeling that they have feelings y'know, and they look at you like with beagle eyes everytime you bring them food and stuff. Anyway, so we ran the stats and it looked like it wouldnt get any better or worse with more trials, so we decided to end the experiment and release the birds. But most of these guys had got used to hanging in the cages and they wouldnt leave even when the cage door was open. A bit like- so we're free, but we like the food here, so we're going to stay etc etc. I mean, there were some individuals who did their best to squirm into the smallest gaps there were in order to escape the cage and now these guys just wouldnt leave. One bird did go out and promptly flew back in to the cage again. i left them for a while with the cage door open, but when i went back to check them they were still there. Finally, I decided to chase them out of the cage, and when I left they were still hanging about the aviaries hoping for food or something, I don't know. Birds I tell ya- give me invertebrates any day.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
