Living In the World, Not on It

Car 66 and Car 65 - sister squads!

Monday is Memorial Day, and I hope you’ll spend some time reflecting on the sacrifice of our soldiers. In the meantime, could you name seven of your favorite holidays? It’s a simple enough question, depending on how many holidays you actually celebrate. But just to make it interesting, I’m going to eliminate what are likely the two most popular answers! That’s the challenge for this week! Thanks for playing! Be sure to check back this week and click on the links of bloggers who play along in the comments below! It’s a great way to find blogs you may not have visited and to keep the conversation going! Here is this week’s “ Sunday Seven ” question. Either answer in a comment here, or put the answers in an entry on your blog (with a link here), and then comment here with a link back to your blog so that everyone else can visit! Permission is not granted to copy the questions to message boards for the purpose of having members answer and play along there. Enjoy! THIS WE...

I have a list of seven (maybe eight) items to blog about that I worked up last night before going to bed. This tells you how much free time my brain has on it. It was too late to really sit down and focus, but I didn't want to forget this stuff (all minor). My goal this morning was to clean around the house in the morning and erase the Luis-depredations of of the weekend (having that man home for three days is a hardship), then dress for success in living in my hammock with laptop in han-- lap --to catch up on my various musings. It was not to be. Around 10h30 I get a call from my father... which is a bit on the early side and surprising since I spoke to him last night. So he told me that Ma threw up last night/this morning and the doc's consensus was to send her to the hospital. So Ray called me right after Wayne Ambulance took her to go to St. Joseph's hospital. It's not my favourite place, but it beats Chilton and it is livable. By the time 1230 rolled around, I mad...

I hope you’re all ready for a nice Memorial Day weekend! I’m sure there will be plenty of people who’ll be spending their Monday off at the lake or by the pool having a few beers and barbecue. Those few beers are the subject of this week’s set of questions. Be sure to check back this week and click on the links of bloggers who play along in the comments below! It’s a great way to find blogs you may not have visited and to keep the conversation going! Here are this week’s “Saturday Six” questions. Either answer the questions in a comment here, or put the answers in an entry on your blog… But don’t forget to leave a link to your blog so that everyone else can visit! Permission is not granted to copy the questions to message boards for the purpose of having members answer and play along there. Enjoy! 1. Do you prefer red wine or white wine? I don't drink wine. I don't like either colour or any kind of wine. It's not my kind of drink. 2. Do you prefer a mixed dri...

Here is some weirdness for you! 1. I read an article in this week's People Magazine about a school in New Orleans (pronounced "nar-lins" - it really is, just wait until you go) where the student body wants paddling brought back. I saw the title and thought, "I'm sorry?" How does this happen? Apparently when the kids are late or don't do homework, now, they don't care. There is no negative reinforcement. So the kids want to have the corporal punishment back. I'm going with brainwashed. I just can't imagine anything else. If a teacher attempted to strike me, I raised my hand back. There are a gazillion things teachers can do to torture kids who aren't pulling their weight or are consistently late. I never had any liking for what my teachers did. However, they had zero rights to touch me. Yup. Brainwashed. 2. Automotive collisions. Why is it three people in two vehicles who just had a fender-bender are walking around? How stupid-- I mean, ...

My life is simple. I like it that way. I spent yesterday and today in my hammock, just hanging (literally) out, reading and listening to music. It was perfectly wonderful. (Meet Freddo, my friend from yesterday. He didn't say much but was still good company.) Today was warmer, around 82 degrees F, not humid. I started out in the sun, had my breakfast (a salt bagel lightly buttered) and fell asleep. I woke up sweating and frying, so I moved the whole set up to a shady part of the yard and happily resumed reading. It made a huge difference. Moving from the sun to the shade dropped at least 5 degrees and there was a lovely breeze. Who knew... At 1400 I grabbed some Thai food (yum - Pineapple Fried Rice, level 4), ate a good lunch, did more reading, took another nap (I'm 43 years old trapped in an 80-year-old body) and then read for a couple more hours until almost 1800. I finally came in. Who knows why... there is nothing all that exciting inside. Actually, I need to glue my jigsa...

I don't watch a ton of television. I have a handful of shows, most of them rather similar: Monday - "Castle", "Pawn Stars" Tuesday - "Body of Evidence" Wednesday - "Criminal Minds" Thursday - "Bones", "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation", "Grey's Anatomy" and "Private Practice" (but I am thinking it will be good if "Private Practice" is not renewed for the 2011-12 season) Friday - Saturday - nothing Sunday - "Celebrity Apprentice" (that just ended three days ago) Now that the 2010-11 season is ending, more than half of these shows are off. Now there is nothing to watch. Summer shows are at a premium. Let me see... it looks like "Drop Dead Diva" will be returning on 19 June; "Eureka" returns on 11 July (that's not too long a wait...); "White Collar" returns on 7 June; and I can't think of any other summer-airing shows I watch. It's tough being...

When I was A little baby A mamma's boy No one could save me From those kids at school They would bully They would tease They would taunt me Haunt me "You're such a pretty boy" "You're such a pretty boy" "You're such a pretty boy" "You're such a pretty boy" Fear I grew up so scared The bible belt Redneck lifestyle One day I'll fly free In the airplanes "Where's my seat? Where's my champagne?" Champagne ... I'm such a pretty boy I'm such a pretty boy I'm such a pretty boy I'm such a pretty boy Heaven knows the lengths I'd go To please them every day They don't even notice when I'm Down Such a pretty boy Such a pretty boy Such a pretty boy I'm such a pretty boy Hotels were closed And the airport was clean I was stranded alone In my southwest dream Hotels were closed And the airport was clean I was stranded alone In my southwest dream I love this...

The temperature outside has really heated up here in Charleston. I was hoping to take Scotty to the dog park early today, but it’s already so warm that I would worry he’d overheat. He loves running and chasing other dogs, but in a thick Collie coat, that might be a little too much. So I think I’ll take him to PetSmart at some point and get him a toy. (No, he’s not spoiled at all! Really.) But that topic got me thinking about this week’s set of questions, so here goes! Thanks for playing! Be sure to check back this week and click on the links of bloggers who play along in the comments below! It’s a great way to find blogs you may not have visited and to keep the conversation going! Here are this week’s “Saturday Six” questions. Either answer the questions in a comment here, or put the answers in an entry on your blog… But don’t forget to leave a link to your blog so that everyone else can visit! Permission is not granted to copy the questions to message boards for the...

It's even foggy. Foggy and overcast. When I walked to the bagel place it was wet - not raining, but the air was full of droplets of rain. I came back with my sweatshirt (I know, right? A sweatshirt in late May. Pathetic...) wet without being unwearable. My hair was all curly from the moisture. Crazy. The forecast hasn't improved any. There may be thunderstorms rolling in today, but so far there haven't been any thunderstorms since this low system has moved in and stalled over the area. I tend to not believe the predictions for storms any more. I'm tired of this weather. Part of being positive about life includes sunny, warm days. We're almost to June and I was sure this insanity would have ended. People say things about "normal weather", but what's that? Do we even know? Two years ago we had the wettest, rainiest summer in years. Last year it was beastly hot and hardly rained at all. So what is "normal"? Even so, nowhere did I sign up to live...

If you are sitting there thinking how dull your life is, ask yourself if it really is? I think we see so much telly and/or movies where there is non-stop action - the telly detective that has cases all the time. (What they are leaving out is the days-worth of downtime where the detective is waiting on ballistics, trace, DNA and various other processes to give them (him or her) that next lead.) Since a one hour show really only gives one 41 minutes to solve a case from discovery to fruition, this is all the stuff that might (at most) be referred to in an off-hand comment. The real glory and non-stop work is not there. I shouldn't say that. It has to be imminently satisfying to know that your work mainly put someone behind bars. But non-stop is a huge fallacy. Even the men who go up in space have downtime. I've been singularly unhappy with my life since I began my "retirement". Of course, Aetna's total screw up for two weeks this month absolutely did not help; that ...

The world, clearly, did not end on Saturday as had been predicted. Most of us knew that this would be the case without having to wake up on Sunday morning to confirm it. But let’s say that you knew — beyond any doubt — that your last day of life was just one week away. Could you pick seven things you’d most want to do during those final seven days? That’s the challenge for this week! Thanks for playing! Be sure to check back this week and click on the links of bloggers who play along in the comments below! It’s a great way to find blogs you may not have visited and to keep the conversation going! Here is this week’s “ Sunday Seven ” question. Either answer in a comment here, or put the answers in an entry on your blog (with a link here), and then comment here with a link back to your blog so that everyone else can visit! Permission is not granted to copy the questions to message boards for the purpose of having members answer and play along there. Enjoy! THIS WEEK’S ...

...because the world is ending tomorrow. (It's after midnight, so that is chronologically correct.) I was reminded of this by my good friend Michael Christelman ("The Wonderful World of Nothing") and his post from yesterday morning. He'd planned not post his final post until the day before 21 December 2012, but then he tripped onto this nutball from Family Radio, who swears that the world will end tomorrow, 21 May. Uh-huh. Wait, there's more: he has reasons! Camping teaches that the world will end May 21 2011 using the following reasoning: According to Camping, the number five equals "atonement", the number ten equals "completeness", and the number seventeen equals "heaven". Christ is said to have hung on the cross on April 1, 33 AD. The time between April 1, 33 AD and April 1, 2011 is 1,978 years. If 1,978 is multiplied by 365.2422 days (the number of days in a solar year, not to be confused with the lunar year), the result is 7...

Go figure... In the first season of Castle , a show I love, I've found three people who have been in or appeared for an episode in Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice . In the episode "Nanny McDead", the killer is April Kefner, a character in Grey's Anatomy . In the episode "A Chill Goes Through her Veins", the delivery guy is the 750lb patient in the 6th season of Grey's Anatomy (he was considerably beefed up for the super-overweight guy in Grey 's). And then in "Home is Where the Heart Stops", the daughter of the victim stuffed into her safe is Little Sheperd (she was very briefly in Grey 's but is now a regular in Private Practice . Hmmmm. I'm waiting to see who shows up next... Now, that's funny.

Wow... Within the first ten minutes, there was a huge mental down on Celerity Apprentice. (I couldn't be lieve it! NeNe Leakes became the Project Manager. She said she wouldn't mind doing it, but this was strategically planned by Star. (I agree with that. Star said as much in the end of the last episode when she brought in with NeNe by Star.) It would have been enough if she'd wanted to just say that and let it go, but the explosion went on for quite some time. It happened in front of everyone there - the apprentices, Mssrs Donald and Eric Trump and Ms. Ivanka Trump and the gentleman there who was the CEO of some haircare company. Ouch. Star's mistake was to go after LaToya, who was an unbelievably weak link. She would have been DQd on her own anyway. But she managed rather easily to get rid of LaToya. Now she is gunning for NeNe, but she is aiming in the wrong direction. NeNe is not at all her biggest threat, it is Marlee. She has kept her own council at all times and...