More Random Musings

I'm still feeling rather laid back after my lovely day yesterday at the Botanical Park.

I'm glad I went when I did.  Later in the afternoon a thunderstorm moved through.  Lots of wind & rain.  I was glad I was home.  I did worry about a young man who came to my door wanting to give me a religious brochure.  As always I politely said no, thank you.  I hope he was able to find shelter from the storm.

Earlier in the summer I visited my mom who lives in west Texas.  There are a number of odd place names on the way to & from Albuquerque.  For example:  there is Cannibal Draw (near Big Spring, TX).  I wonder what happened there to give it that name.  I keep telling myself I'm going to do some research on it.  However, I've been a bit lazy in that regard.

One of the routes I've taken over the years goes through Lincoln County - where Billy the Kid earned his notoriety.  Lincoln NM has a small cemetery.  Some gravestones are old.  Some are newer.  Some don't even have a formal headstone - just a large stone (about the size of a bowling ball) at the head and foot of the grave.  Kinda sad when you think about it.

There is one headstone that amuses me.  It's for a husband and wife.  His claim to fame is that he was a 'pal of Billy the Kid'.  I guess if that's your 15 minutes of fame, then you might as well run with it.

Papillon

A Lovely Summer's Day

I spent part of the day at the Rio Grande Botanic Park.  One of the reasons I went was to see the Butterfly Pavilion.  As to be expected, there were lots of lovely butterflies fluttering by.  (Oh, there was also the cutest family of ducks outside of the pavilion.  A mama & about a half dozen babies who acted like they owned the joint.)

After the Butterfly Pavilion, it was fun & rather soothing to wander through the rest of the Botanic Park.  Lots of flowers - begonias & roses & daylilies among others.

My favorite spot in the whole park is the Japanese garden tucked all the way at the back.  Extremely soothing.  Lots of shady spots to sit & reflect & relax & just commune with nature.  A couple of dragonflies seemed to be posing for me.  (Let's hope those photos come out OK!)  A few people walked through but for the most part I was all by myself. 

I did swing by the Heritage Farm area of the park.  I was minding my own business taking photos of daylilies when something in the foliage STARTLED me.  It obviously wasn't some small critter or a lizard, but was of significant size.  I backed up a bit & at first thought it was a cat.  Nope, it was a fairly hefty chicken.  During the day, the farm area lets the chickens go free-range.  (They're put in their coop at night - no reason to provide hot snacks for the local coyote population.)  It obviously agrees with them because they're of good size & have a rather carefree attitude.  It was fun to see them doing their thing.

Papillon

Hitting the Bottom Line

I have yet to figure out why people crank up the bass to its maximum when playing their music.  A couple of days ago I was driving around town & a man drove by.  The bass was cranked up so loudly that it sounded like his speakers were going to explode.  I made sure to give him plenty of room just in case they did.

A similar incident happened several years ago.  I was stopped at a red light.  All of a sudden my vehicle started to vibrate.  I was worried that I was looking at some pretty pricey repairs until I realized it was a car behind me with the bass cranked up.  I wouldn't be surprised if local seismographs were registering that car.

What brings all this to mind?  I live several blocks from a local city-run swimming pool.  (I moved into the house before the city put in the pool.)  Occasionally during the summer they will host evening pool parties.  I don't have a problem with that.  What I do have a problem with (sometimes) is their music.  When tonight's party started they had the music & the bass line cranked up so high that it felt like my heart was beating in time with the music.  You could feel the windows vibrating in sympathy.

Someone (not me!) must have complained because for a while there was silence.  When the music started back up, it was at a much quieter level.  I can still hear it, but now it's in the background (for me) instead of feeling like they're situated smack dab in the middle of my living room.

Party on!
Papillon

Bunnies & War

Gee, ain't I a stinker! - Bugs Bunny

Of course you realize this means war! - Bugs Bunny
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There's a fair amount of wildlife in my neighborhood.  Coyotes, quail, squirrels, and, of course, rabbits.
Up until now, I've had a pretty good relationship with all of them.  I don't bother them & normally they don't bother me.

Recently I bought some bedding plants.  So far the rabbits have ignored the sage & rosemary.  But they zeroed right in on the peppermint.  I noticed the plant was looking a bit nibbled on.  However, I draw the line at them stripping it right down to the stems.  If those wascally wabbits are too proud to eat the weeds growing in my yard, then I'm not going to enable them by provide them peppermint to cleanse their little palates.

Fortunately, I caught it in time so there's still some greenery left & the plant looks perky enough.  What's left of it.

Thinking of Bugs Bunny, I once used one of his quotes while at work.  I think I'd gotten to the office & was commenting on someone's driving during the morning commute.  I concluded by saying "what a maroon!"  A coworker then corrected me saying, "It's pronounced moron."  All I could do was stare at her & then turn & walk away.  I've never been quite sure if she'd been so culturally deprived as to never have seen a Bugs Bunny cartoon or if she was, in fact, a maroon herself.

Off to water the plants,
Papillon

Summertime

Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.


-- Henry James

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Days like today always remind me of my favorite summertime sound - the quiet 'chink' of ice against the side of a glass full of lemonade.  Note:  it's gotta be a glass glass, not a plastic glass.
 
We actually got a bit of rain today.  A teeny tiny bit of rain.  After supper, I went out to water some plants & there was a very fine spray of rain.  It has since passed on.
 
I think my brain is feeling the summertime heat effect - as in it's too hot to think.
Either that or my blood donation from earlier today is resulting in not enough blood to carry oxygen to my brain.  (Just kidding, all you phlebotomists!)
 
People always tell me they can't understand how I can be a regular blood donor.  They HATE needles.  Well, duh!  So do I!  But it's only one needle during a time period that's a minimum of 8 weeks.  I'm especially amused when people who have tattoos make this statement.  Unless that's a temporary tattoo, you've had WAY more needle pricks than I've ever had.
 
Plus, it's the ultimately lazy way to help the community where you live.  You do it once every 8 weeks, you do it lying down, you're giving a resource that's regenerated in a very short period of time, and when you're done they give you juice & cookies.
 
Today, they were earmarking some donations (including mine) for babies (& probably other folks with immune system problems).  It got me to wondering - does blood donation affect the recipient the way organ donation sometimes does?  I've read where people who have received donated organs have later exhibited some characteristics of the donor.  Liking spicy food when the donor didn't like it before.  Craving candy when the donor didn't crave it before.
 
I'm hoping my blood's recipients turn into voracious readers.  Reading anything & everything.  Broadening their minds & horizons.  Delving into the past.  Speculating about the future.
 
Read on!
Papillon

Cat Weirdness

"There is no snooze button on a cat who wants breakfast." - Unknown
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Dogs are essentially omnivores.  With certain exceptions like onions & grapes, they can eat most anything.

Cats need lots more protein.  I once saw a documentary where a British expert said that the perfect meal for a cat is a mouse.

That being the case, why do cats like to eat the strangest things? 
Examples:
- A friend used to have a cat who liked broccoli with cheese.
- My family used to own a Siamese who LOVED graham crackers.  And champagne.

The champagne leads to a funny story.  The cat didn't originally love champagne.  But one New Year's Eve I put a drop of champagne on my finger & offered it to him.  He acted like I'd just offered him a drop of liquid arsenic.  I dab the drop on his nose.  He licked it off.  You could see him thinking about it - 'hmm, not bad.  Better than I thought.'  So I offered him another drop.  He licked that up.  Next thing you know, he's trying to drink out of my glass.

My current cat is carrying on the family tradition.
He likes:
- croissants
- wine (but not hard liquor)
- butterscotch pudding
- Wheat Thins
- and the list goes on.

Interestingly, he's not overly fond of Thanksgiving turkey.

Papillon

Eating an Elephant

There's an old, old joke - how do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.

The latest book I've read is One Small Step Can Change Your Life by Robert Maurer, PhD.  It's an interesting book based on the premise of Kaizen. 

Kaizen is the Japanese term for 'eating an elephant one bite at a time'.  The premise is - no problem is so very big that it can't be solved one very small step at a time.

Overweight & don't have time to exercise?  Start by marching in front of your TV for one minute per day.  Just one minute.  Per day.

Doesn't sound like much & it's not.  But if you get used to doing one minute per day for a week, then you get your brain used to exercising for one minute.  So the alarm bells & red flags & other warnings don't go off in your brain that you're exercising for crying out loud.

Then you can bump things up to marching in place for a whole commercial break.  Then for a whole show.  And the next thing you know, you're exercising & you haven't freaked out once.

So this is my homage to solving BIG problems one very small step at a time.

Try it, you just might like it.

Papillon

Gullibility

I always love to see ads for stupid products knowing that there is going to be someone out there who is gullible enough to buy said product.

Product #1 - a dispenser of liquid hand soap that you don't actually have to touch.  You put your hand underneath & the dispenser senses your hand & drops a dollop of soap in your hand. 

The theory behind this soap dispenser is that people have dirty hands when they press the pump on your average low-tech liquid soap dispenser bottle.  Over time, these dirty hands leave lots & lots of germs on the pump.  If you buy the high priced, high-tech soap dispenser your hands don't leave their germs & don't pick up somebody else's.

My thought on this product?  Ummm - why don't you just wash the low-tech soap dispenser's pump once in a while?  You don't even have to use antibacterial soap.  Just regular soap will kill most/all of the germs.  Much cheaper & at least as efficient.

Product #2 - a new towel dispenser by Kleenex.

The theory is - people have fabric hand towels in their bathrooms.  Family members & guests use the hand towel & it gets dirty.  Therefore you should use the new Kleenex individual towel dispenser & you're not having to use the same fabric towel as everyone else.

My thought on this product?  Aren't these just a different take on the same paper towels you use in the kitchen?  If you don't want to use the same fabric hand towel as everyone else, why not just put a paper towel dispenser & a roll of said paper towels in your bathroom?  Cheaper, easier.  Or just put a clean hand towel in the bathroom every day.  They're not that big & so shouldn't add a huge amount to your weekly laundry efforts.

My, my, my.  I don't know how we've survive all these centuries without these products to make our lives 'better' and 'easier'.

Cleanly yours,
Papillon

Book Junkie

"People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading."  Logan Pearsall Smith

"No furniture so charming as books."  Sydney Smith

"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.  Books are well written, or badly written.  That is all."  Oscar Wilde
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Hello, my name is Papillon & I'm addicted to books.

There's no getting around it.  I am.  And I enjoy it to the hilt.  The name of my latest fix is The Devil's Boarding House by M. William Phelps.

Interestingly enough, it's about America's deadliest female serial killer.  Someone I had never heard of before - a woman named Amy Archer-Gilligan.  (It's rather ironic that her first name is based upon 'ami', the French word for friend.)  She & her first husband (the Mr. Archer portion of her last name) started a small nursing home in the early 1900's, at a time when those sorts of facilities were not entirely common.  (The author says they may not have been the first to open a nursing home as a privately run business, but they were certainly early innovators in the field.)  The problem was, they eventually needed a fairly consistent number of incoming patients.  And the only way to ensure that & to have the space available was to regularly get rid of the old patients.  Attrition due to normal old age wasn't fast enough.  Mrs. Archer-Gilligan decided that the easiest & fastest way to do this was to feed arsenic to the patients she wanted to get rid of.  She also decided this was the best route to inheriting from her husbands (yes, both of them) as well. 

It was an interesting read.  Also, given the subject material, kinda creepy & a bit morbid.

In a rather ironic twist, several decades after all this took place, the storyline was used as the general basis for first the Broadway play Arsenic & Old Lace, and later the movie starring Cary Grant.  In the play & movie, the method used to poison the victims was elderberry wine.  Mrs. Archer-Gilligan preferred plain old-fashioned lemonade - with a real kick to it.

One interesting side note - at about the same time as people started to get suspicious concerning the deadly Mrs. Archer-Gilligan, the east coast was going through one of the worst heat waves ever (to that date anyway).  People were actually going mad from the heat.  (Mrs. Archer-Gilligan could not claim that as an excuse for her actions.  She just wanted the money.)

Papillon

Random Thoughts

There's no specific theme today...just some random thoughts.

First off, the 2nd family of finches has flown the coop.  I wrote about them earlier, the ones who've been nesting in the tummy area of my cat-shaped wind chime.

It always seems to work that way.  I see them day after day - the babies getting bigger & bigger & then one day I go out & they're all gone.  I suppose there's a metaphor in there somewhere.  It's interesting that I never see them practicing flying.  One day there are three babies in the nest & the next day - none.
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I see on the calendar that Friday, June 25th is Take Your Dog to Work Day.  Trust me, do this only if the dog is well & truly housebroken.  There are some 'presents' that are never meant to be shared.  Dog poop & piss rank right near the top of that category.  Your coworkers will be truly appreciative.
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I love buying books.  It's even better if they're on sale.  And I don't just mean at the chain bookstores.  Some of my best 'scores' have been at secondhand bookstores.  Example:  I've found some autographed copies.  Books signed by Hedda Hopper (oh, go look her up), the Horse Whisperer (whose name has just flown out of my head), and several others.

Equally fun are autobiographies by people I've never heard of but who turn out to be delightful to read about.  Example:  Anna Russell - she was originally training to be a classical musician.  However that didn't work out & she became very popular in the 1950's & 60's as 'the queen of musical parody'.  She spoofed classical music - sort of doing what Weird Al did with pop & rock music.  It's a very funny read.  She did a summary of Wagner's 'The Ring Cycle' - taking several days worth of opera & condensing it down to 20 minutes.  It was totally accurate & showed how absurd the plot of 'The Ring Cycle' is.  Opera lovers adored it.

I'm currently reading an autobiography by Catherine Drinker Bowen - Adventures of a Biographer.  It's a series of essays on what she loved about being a biographer of such people as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr & Tchaikowsky, among others.  A couple of things make this book fun -- it's a first edition.  It also looks like it was a reviewers copy because there's a card inside that says not to release any reviews prior to the book's release date.'

For me, looking through secondhand book sales is rather like searching for treasure.  Sometimes I find treasure & sometimes I find nothing much.  It's fun & ultimately serves to help stretch my mind.  Keep the little grey cells active & well fed.

Oh, and let's not forget the large softback copy of the entire Chronicles of Narnia that I snagged for just $1.00!  Woohoo!

Papillon

The State of the World

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it.
- Mark Twain
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I've been trying to come up with a post on the state of the world.  Something pithy & humorous & totally on point.
 
Essentially I came up with nada.  However, the above quote from Mark Twain pretty much sums up how I feel about the state of things past & present.
 
It seems I'm in the mood for quotes today.  Another interesting one is:
 
"There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life."

- Frank Zappa

I never thought I'd be quoting Frank Zappa, but here he is.  His quote reminds me of the one by Albert Einstein (and I'm paraprasing) where he says there are only 2 infinite things - the universe & stupidity & he wasn't sure about the former.

It looks like I'm in 'cynical mode' today.  I'm not sure why.  All in all it was a fairly good day.  Weatherwise, sunny & not too hot - which pretty much sums up how the day went.

Oh, well.  Some days are like that, I suppose.

Papillon

Knit Wit

"Knitting is a boon for those of us who are easily bored.  I take my knitting everywhere to take the edge off of moments that would otherwise drive me stark raving mad."  Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, author of Yarn Harlot and At Knit's End:  Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much.
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I'm just curious, but what is it about knitters & humor?  It seems as though you can't throw a rock without having it hit some form of knitting humor.  A quick search of the web found the following blogs:
               yarnharlot.ca (run by the lady whose quote is above)
               crazyknittinglady.wordpress.com
               wendyknits.net

Just to name a few.  Ms. Pearl-McPhee has also published 3 books of her humorous knitting adventures.  In perusing the Arts & Crafts section of a nearby bookstore, I spotted several books of knitting humor by other authors.  I don't recall any such books by people who do stained glass or needlepoint or woodworking.  All books on those subjects tend to be straightforward how-to books.

The only other hobby category that seems to have people willing to mock their obsessions is quilting.  As a part-time quilter myself, while reading Ms. Pearl-McPhee's first book, Yarn Harlot, I noticed there are any number of parallels between her knitting experiences & those of most quilters I know.  Her observations about her knitting stash almost exactly matched those I've had about my fabric stash.  Example:  buying yarn or fabric simply because it was on sale & later realizing it was on sale because it was absolutely too hideous to use in any project.  Ever.

Which leads me to my next question.  What is it with pets & projects?  Every quilt project I've ever worked on has instantly magnetized every pet I've ever owned - causing them to become inseparable.  Able to defy that rule of physics that says 2 separate objects cannot occupy the same space.  It doesn't matter if the pet is a cat or a dog.  If the project is on an available horizontal space, your pet will be on top of the project.  Said pet will become annoyed with you when you try to separate the two.  My cats have been known to sulk, loudly, when shooed away from sitting in the exact middle of a quilt.

Just wondering.
Papillon

Flea Market Fun

There's a whole lot of fun in going to a flea market on a sunny Saturday morning.  It was made even better because the temperature was significantly cooler than it was last weekend.

Last weekend we hit 100 degrees (F) - the earliest date for that mark & setting a new record.  Here in the Albuquerque metro area, the flea market is held each weekend at the State Fairgrounds.  Just thinking about spending time in 100 degree weather at a flea market being held on an asphalt surface made me want to lie down with a cool, damp cloth on my forehead.

Fortunately my friend & I had decided on today instead & got lucky with a cool front going through late Friday & dropping the temperatures back into the 80's.

It's always fun to see what people are selling.  We were tempted by some T-shirts at 3 for $10.  But we resisted.  Then there were the packets of socks.  Ditto.  It was rather to sad to notice that a man who sold honey & beeswax in years past was not to be found.  He had yummy honey & I'd used his beeswax to make candles.  Lovely stuff.  Plus his jars of honey made a beautiful display when the light shone through them at just the right angle.  They would absolutely glow.

There are always several vendors who sell horchata.  I was in the mood for lime flavored & finally found a vendor who had some.  It was VERY tart & was exactly what I wanted.  The only way to make it better would have been to add a shot of rum.  Instant daquiri!  However, that sort of thing is rather frowned upon by those who run the fairgrounds, so I had to make do without.  It was undoubtedly for the best.

Later, my friend & I rested from our exertions by going to a restaurant neither of us had been to before - a place called Gecko's Tapas (on Academy).  Tasty food, a nice server who gave us good service & we had a lovely extended chat.  The man who took our money for the bill seemed to feel rather put-upon when we asked to have the bill split out.  Granted, we could have asked the server for separate checks, but we forgot.  I'm not sure why the man took it so very personally, after all we were a party of two & not twelve.  I guess I'll give him the benefit of the doubt & assume that he was just having a bad day.  It did rather put a small downer note at the end of our otherwise pleasant experience.

Otherwise, it's been an enjoyable day.  See you at the flea market!

Papillon

A Wedding Slacker - C'est Moi!

In this traditional month for weddings (June), I have to admit I just don't get it when it comes to weddings.  I understand marriage, just not the whole 'princess for a day' wedding schtick.

Things I don't understand about current weddings:
- the whole white dress thing.  Of course, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm a jeans & shirt kind of girl.
- bridal parties that are larger than the D-day invasion force.
- receptions that cost more than the GNP of many small nations.
- brides who go postal because they perceive an error & therefore their day isn't 'perfect' & they feel justified in throwing a temper tantrum.

I especially don't understand women who say they've been planning their 'perfect' wedding for their whole lives.

WHAT? 

That always causes my head to explode.  How can you spend your whole life planning ONE DAY?!  It's interesting because they never say they've been planning how to have a perfect marriage.  Only a perfect wedding DAY.  Royalty are crowned in ceremonies that are planned in less time & these ceremonies affect entire countries.  I must admit - in some respects I pity these women.  If their imaginings for their lives are so wrapped up in the planning of one day in their life - what a limited imagination they must have.  There are so very many things you could imagine happening in your life, why are you limiting yourself to just one day and one event?

A short pause while my mind boggles.

Papillon

Things I Wonder About

"The cure for boredom is curiosity.  There is no cure for curiosity."  Attributed to Dorothy Parker
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There are any number of things that I wonder about.  Among those things:

- Why do people name their kids totally weird names?  The one that always pops into my mind is the contestant on 'Wheel of Fortune' several years ago.  She was a very pleasant woman who had the unfortunate name of Vendetta.  Why would her parents name her something that means a blood feud?

Then there was the man (I forget where I saw this) whose first name is Finis.  Finis means conclusion.  I always wonder if he was the final child in a family with lots of children.

Or there are the parents who name their children after the months in which they were born - June is born in June and April in April.

The ultimate in lazy parents are those who can't even come up with an original first name & you end up with children named William Williams.  (One of the detectives in a series of mysteries by Ed McBain who was named Meyer Meyer.)

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
On a different topic - I was channel surfing one morning & happened across the Maury Povich show.  If these young people are our future, we are doomed.

The show I ran across was one of those where they are trying to determine paternity for a series of children who really drew the losing ticket in the parent lottery - at least as far as the behavior of parents while on the show demonstrated.  Lots of screaming & yelling & hurling insults back & forth.

My question is - if these people are the jerks & losers & whores & whatever other insult they use, why are they doing the one thing that is guaranteed to keep the jerk/loser/whore in their life FOREVER?  Having a child together isn't a short-term thing.  That connection will last until the end of lives of all concerned.

I don't feel sorry for the (alleged) adults on the shows.  I always feel sorry for the children.

Oh, another thing - if you're going to cheat on your spouse with a member of their family, why aren't you using absolutely bulletproof birth control (pun intended)?  It's really hard to say you're not cheating if there's a pregnancy proving the lie is, well, a lie.

Which leads me to one final wondering - where has all the commonsense & civility gone?

Papillon

Finches - I Got 'Em

A number of years ago a friend gave me a wind chime that I hung on my front porch.  The chime portion is bamboo sections that make nice 'plocking' noises when there's an east wind.  The top portion is a terra cotta cat.  It's not solid - it has filigree work on the side & a large hole where the tummy would be.

A couple of years after I initially hung it, a couple members of the local house finch population decided the tummy hole would be a great place to raise a family.  Off & on since then, I've been landlord to any number of finch families.  Some years there are none.  Other years - like this year, there have been 2 families. 

I don't think it's the same birds raising 2 separate families.  The first family was tended by a female who didn't mind my being nosy until I got a bit too close.  The 2nd family's mother is a bit more skittish.  Anytime I walk out the front door, she flies to a nearby tree.  In any case, it's always fun to see the babies - looking so scruffy & cute/ugly.  And for such little birds, they do make a whole lotta noise when a parent shows up with food.

In the meantime, I get to be amused by the irony of local birds making a home in the tummy of a terra cotta cat.

Papillon

Recently Read Books

I gotta admit - I do love to read.  Almost anything about almost anything.  I don't care what the subject is or the genre...if you can capture my attention, I'll read your book.

Most recently read - Paths of Desire by Dominique Browning. 

Now I know there are those of you out there who need to pull your minds out of that smutty little gutter!  We'll wait while you do so.  That's because the subtitle of the book is 'The Passions of a Suburban Gardener' - concerning passionate gardening, not passions of the earthy kind (pun intended).

It's fun reading about the trials and tribulations of taking a large & largely neglected garden around a suburban home outside of New York & turning it into something lovely.  One fun term from the book is Helpful Men.  These are the guys in your community who know how to 'do stuff'.  People you really want to know when repairs need to be done around your house & you have no idea how to do them.

The second most recently read book is The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner - subtitled 'One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World'.  (A word of caution - Moldova is NOT one of those places.  Do not go to Moldova if you are already depressed or even if you're usually happy.  It is not a bliss-full place.)

The author travels to 9 different countries trying to find out what makes people happy.  (Money is only one factor & it's no guarantee.)  It's easy to read & is a bit of an eye-opener as to what people think of happiness & if they think they're happy.

One interesting quote:  "It's simply a matter of numbers.  Plant enough happiness seeds...and eventually the laws of exponential growth kick in.  A tipping point is reached, and happiness, I believe, will spread like a California brush fire.  So what to do in the meantime?  I suppose we continue planting seeds.  Besides, it is the planting that matters, not the harvest.  As many philosophers have noted, happiness is a by-product.  Happiness is, as Nathaniel Hawthorne observed, the butterfly that alights on our shoulder, unbidden."

Another fun quote involves the country of Qatar, something to keep in mind if you ever get a hankering to go there:  "I clear customs and step outside the terminal building.  I immediately run smack into a wall of heat.  Heat has velocity.  Anyone who managed to stay awake during high school physics knows that heated molecules move more quickly than cooler ones.  But Qatari heat also has mass.  It is a solid, a thing, that presses down on you.  Much like gravity, only not as pleasant."

Anyway - that's what I've read recently.  Try them & let me know what you think.

Papillon

Cat Naps - Curiouser & Curiouser

"Rule of Feline Frustration: When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks utterly content and adorable, you will suddenly have to go to the bathroom."

"That project is a goat rodeo. It's like an exercise in herding cats."
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My cat, Oscar, has a problem comprehending naps.  OK, let me be more specific.  He has absolutely NO problem with naps when HE is the one taking a nap.  He has a problem comprehending ME taking a nap.  He seems to think that human naps are really a ploy by which I'm indicating that I really want to spend 15-30 minutes petting him.

He will ignore me for hours at a time while perfecting his already well-honed nap technique.  However, if I make any indication (and that includes just thinking the thought) I plan on stretching out to take a nap - he is Johnny-on-the-spot to try & convince me to pet him instead.  I have seen him wake up from a nap he is taking to walk over & disrupt my attempt to take a nap.  Once I give up & get up from my aborted nap attempt, he will walk away, find a comfy place & go back to his nap.

Note:  this appears to be a foible of this particular cat.  My two previous cats were both overjoyed to see me take a nap.  They would join me in the endeavor.  We spent many a happy time having a group nap.  But not the current cat.  I think he does it just to mess with my head.

Style - I Don't Have It

Recently I was re-reading Linda Ellerbee's book "Moving On".  In one of the chapters, she writes the following:

"I began to understand that style didn't guarantee happiness.  Still, who cared?  Sure, Snow White, who had no style, lived happily ever after, but Auntie Mame lived.....For most of my life, I did battle with The Clothes Rules.  To me, dressed is jeans, a shirt (T- for summer, sweat for winter) and shoes (sneakers for summer, boots for winter).  Anything else is costume.....(Mama said I became a writer just so I could dress badly.)"

I knew there was a reason why I'm a fan of this woman.  Actually, there are a number of reasons.  She's got one heckuva sense of humor to list another.  But it's so nice to see that I'm not the only one who feels this way about to wear on any given day.

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So far, I'm doing fairly well.  My blog is 2 days old & now has 2 whole posts.  This could taper off after a while.  Maybe yes, maybe no.  As the late, lamented humorist from Georgia, Lewis Grizzard, once said, writing a column is rather like living with a nymphomaniac.  It's kinda fun....at first.  Later on, not so much.

For those who are fans of Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way", she stresses doing daily pages.  Of course, she says you need to do them by writing them out, literally.  I'm hoping to combine my efforts.  Do some pages in longhand & then do some blogging.

I am thinking I probably will want to carry a small notebook with me.  Keep track as thoughts occur to me during the day, so they don't just vanish from my brain prior to sitting in front of the computer.

Hasta la vista!
Papillon

Getting Started

"All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed."

This is a quote by Sean O'Casey, an Irish dramatist (1880-1964) which sums up how I feel a great deal of the time. It also explains the name of my brand-new blog.

I was hoping to have a genuinely witty first post showing a great deal of intelligence and full of bon mots. It looks like that's gone by the wayside since I'm feeling a great deal of brain fade at the moment. I even wrote a list of possible topics to write about. However, I wrote a number of them in such haste that I either cannot read my handwriting or what I did write legibly now makes no sense. (I plan on correcting this in the future!)

One that is legible & makes sense concerns what I call 'CNN Brain'. That's when I appear to be acting normally & politely while a CNN-style crawl moves across the bottom of my brain commenting on how I really feel and think about the particular situation.

Example: the other day I was at Michael's, the ubiquitous craft store found in so very many places in the USA. I was in line behind a man who paid for one (count 'em, one) roll of zebra-patterned duct tape with a $100 bill. The roll cost less than $5.00 (USD). I said nothing to the man. After he walked away, I made a joking comment to the cashier.

However, in my head the crawl is saying things like - 'Are you KIDDING me? Who pays for one roll of duct tape (no matter how fancy) with a frigging $100 bill? Does this place LOOK like a bank? Go to the bank & get some change!' (On a practical note, I do realize that there may be a very valid reason why the man had not gone to the bank. Things like, oh, the bill is counterfeit & it's easier to slip a fake bill by someone earning minimum wage at Michael's than at the bank.)

That's all I've got for now. I do aspire to write great things in the future. Or funny things, whichever comes first. If I could write funny, intelligent things like the late, great Molly Ivins, then I'll be one very happy camper.

Bon soir!