The First Cut Is the Deepest....

I like mowing my lawn. (Before you ask—no. I would not like mowing your lawn. Anything I'm about to say here applies to my lawn, and my lawn only.)

Ahem. I like mowing my lawn. Today I got home from work a bit early; the sun was shining; I was eating an ice cream cone; and I thought to myself, I'd like to mow the lawn! Admittedly, the urge to mow probably had something to do with the fact that I've got two 10-12 page papers due in the next two days.... But still, I hadn't mowed yet this spring, so it was a positive impulse and I felt I should act on it.

When I say lawn, by the way, I mean "lawn" in the loosest sense of the word. My lawn is made up of 25% shady fescue grass, 40% violets and ground ivy, 5% dandelions, 20% undesireable grass, 9% peculiar unidentified weeds, and 1% lovely little wildflowers which I feel guilty if I accidentally mow over them. Trillium, solomon's seal, virginia bluebell, spiderwort—all tiny, colorful blobs of guilt. So mowing can be kind of an adventure. After mowing for fun and profit last summer at the Zoo, I got accustomed to perfectly green, thick turf; mowed it in different striped patterns each week, just like the guys on the baseball fields, all of it very mathematically precise, neat, and trim. My yard, on the other hand, cannot be mowed in stripes because of the profusion of large trees. The patterns are marred by my occasional swerves around the trillium. And "perfectly green" and "thick" are not words we'd use to describe the fescue/violet/weed mixture. Still, when all's said and done, and it's all evenly cut and smelling nice and looking sharp with little dots of violet still showing here and there.... Ahhhh. Does a body good! Papers, schmapers...

some might say...

Some might say it’s odd that i get along with my ex’s current Significant Other. Frankly, I find it a little odd myself... There are times when i find it very difficult to be around the two of them together. But then there are also times like Saturday night, when I took Ex and the C.S.O. out to the bars to celebrate CSO’s 21st birthday:

(in my driveway, preparing to leave)
EX: Cathy, you should show (CSO) the ‘Stang!

ME: Err...sure, if you’d like to see it..... (opens garage to reveal bright red 1965 Mustang v-6 Coupe, driven only on special occasions.)

CSO: Oh. My. God.

ME: (shyly) You like it?

CSO: If there’s ever any errands I could run for you, in this car, like if you wanted coffee or something and you didn’t have time to go get it yourself...

EX: You’d be her bitch?

CSO: I would SO be your coffee bitch.

Seriously, how can I dislike her? She’d be my coffee bitch. Hee hee hee....

The Right Loses Ground...

Right brain that is--though it's been a bad week for the political right as well. While I didn't actually watch the president's press conference, I did read the transcript (scary) and saw a photo of his tie (even scarier. who dressed him? it's like the secret identity hypno-tie from The Tick...) I swear, sometimes I almost think the conspiracy theorists have it right--else how does someone who is so bad at thinking on his feet get to be the leader of the most powerful nation in the world? Whether you love him or hate him, that Q and A sure didn't make him look good.

I'm sorry, what were we talking about? Oh yeah, my brain. After a look at the bank balance--dismal!--and a ride to and from work yesterday on the old bike with the new cushy non-orange seat, I've decided to stick to what I know for a while yet. At least til I know if I've got a new job. Second interview Monday, at long last. I'm in financial crisis mode at the moment not just because my cash inflow is poor, but because I'm going to a conference in early May and have been unable to secure funding assistance from either my school or from the Association of Midwest Museums, to whom I applied for a scholarship back in February. So I may be eating the $250 in registration fees and $300+ in airfare myself. Plus health insurance, plus mortgage...makes May an ugly month for me... So no new bike for me yet. I'll be lucky if I can afford a shellacked carrot.*

*see previous comments field. sheesh! my response to your suggestions is finally posted....

Wheels'n'Deals

It begins to look as if, one way or another, I’ll be working in White River State Park for at least part of the summer. I can get there by bike in 45 minutes, entirely on scenic bike paths; so I’ve begun to think about biking to work. (Never mind that, if I’m working at the zoo again this summer, the odds of my feeling like biking home after pushing a lawnmower for 8 hours in Indiana heat and humidity are approximately zilch. I’ve never generated so much sweat in my life.... First purchase for Gardens work this summer will be a water bottle with a belt-hook. Second will be a pair of steel-toe tennis shoes, hopefully made with more comfort in mind than my trusty-yet-painful Wolverines from last year. But I digress.)

Anyway, so thoughts of biking naturally lead to the thought of buying a new bike. My old bike is a black Schwinn “World” 10-speed, purchased in 1984 for my fourteenth birthday present. It was one of those defining childhood moments--a grownup bike, and I got to pick it out myself at Mac’s Broad Ripple Bicycle Shop. I test drove it. I may have even kicked the tires. It was a big deal; it was my first taste of transportational freedom. I still have a very clear memory of my first trip to the McDonalds at 96th and Meridian, independent of parental conveyance.... so the thought of buying a new bike brings a tear to my eye. But nostalgia aside, the seat is harder than a rock and bruises the hell out of my butt. So I went to the bike store to look around, and the two halves of my brain discussed our options.

RIGHT BRAIN: We should get a new bike!

LEFT BRAIN: We should carefully examine our options, read up on different brands, do some web research, and--

RIGHT BRAIN: I like this one!

LEFT BRAIN: Wait--

RIGHT BRAIN: It’s orange!

LEFT BRAIN: Think for a minute. You want to spend $350, which I remind you we don’t actually have, on a Trek Adventure 4000, just because it’s orange.

RIGHT BRAIN: It’s orange! And shiny! We should buy it.

LEFT BRAIN: That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.

RIGHT BRAIN: You said that when we bought the iMac, too.

LEFT BRAIN: Sigh....True ‘dat.

In the end, I bought a new cushy seat for the Schwinn for $25 instead. But....mmm....orange Trek Adventure 4000....mmmm.....It could happen.

STOMP. STOMP. STOMP.

With the success of the previous quiz, I decided I'd better try Ravenblack's other offerings before moving on with the blog. Check me out:

I am Kong. Strong and passionate, I tend to be misunderstood, sometimes even feared. I don't want to fight, I don't want to cause trouble, all I ask is a little love, and a little peace. If I don't get what I want, I get angry, and throw barrels and flaming oil at whatever's stopping me. What Pre-1985 Video Game Character Are You?

I am a Fedora. The hat of the adventurous, I am spontaneous and active, perhaps sometimes a little foolishly. Regardless, I always come out alright. What Sort of Hat Are You?

I am the sonnet, never quickly thrilled; Not prone to overstated gushing praise Nor yet to seething rants and anger, filled With overstretched opinions to rephrase; But on the other hand, not fond of fools, And thus, not fond of people, on the whole; And holding to the sound and useful rules, Not those that seek unjustified control. I'm balanced, measured, sensible (at least, I think I am, and usually I'm right); And when more ostentatious types have ceased, I'm still around, and doing, still, alright. In short, I'm calm and rational and stable - Or, well, I am, as much as I am able. What Poetry Form Are You?

This very well may be the best quiz site ever. (Oh, and my backups were tomato, "Jet-Pack Man," whoever that was, a transparent visor, and a haiku.)

Mmmm.....Beefy.....

I swear, these quizzes just get stranger and stranger.

I taste like Beef. I taste like beef. I'm probably made of beef. You are what you eat, they say, and if the title didn't mean something else, I would be a beefeater. I think red meat is good for you. Puts hair on your chest. What Flavour Are You?

What can I say? I'm what's for dinner.

*Insert Tortured Artist Here*

When I have schoolwork due, art suffers. (Obviously, if I were an actual art student, I wouldn't be having this problem. Or maybe I would, and it would be even more emotionally devastating.) The real problem is, since people are actually PAYING me for the stuff I paint--in some cases, pre-paying me--there's a whole level of guilt associated with not painting in addition to the general frustration of spending my time poring over financial statements instead of happily dabbing tiny dots of paint onto little lead soldiers. They say you have to suffer for art... Reading financial statements is suffering.... Therefore, doing my homework makes me a better artist! Or, not.

All's well in butterfly-land. I'd add more links for cool pictures, but I'm still recovering from the firestorm of commentary on my last ones. We've got African butterflies now, from Kipepeo Project in Nairobi. ("Kipepeo" means "butterfly" in Swahili. That's your educational moment for today, thank you for your attention.) They're very cool, though I'm fairly sure that 90% of the patrons I've talked to weren't suitably impressed by the presence of Kenyan butterflies. They're all too busy trying to photograph the Blue Morphos. Taking a good photo of a Morpho is only slightly easier than taking a good photograph of the Invisible Man; when they're flying they're very fast and very erratic, and when they land they close their wings and the blue vanishes. So people run back and forth across the conservatory, pointing their cameras, pressing the button, looking at the digital replay screen and going "Dammit!" and starting over. I took my own camera to work Wednesday, to see what I could get, and even I couldn't get a nice Morpho picture over the course of 8 hours. Did get some other nice ones though, which I might post over on my website if people are interested...

Had my first interview with the Eiteljorg yesterday, but I think public posting any details would be verbotten; I'll just say, it went fine, second interviews are in a week and we'll see if I get called back. I'm also considering applying at Starbucks, I hear they give staff a free pound of coffee per month!

More Mythinformation...

I'm sad to report that the old saw, "Butterflies Are Free," is untrue. They are not, in fact, free; I know this, because I've seen the invoices.

I've been a Butterfly Keeper at White River Gardens for two weeks now, and frankly it's kind of dull. Butterflies don't really need a whole lotta keeping. When a new shipment of chrysalises comes in, we take a pvc rod and a glue gun, and hot glue their little asses to the rod (which understandably sometimes causes them to wriggle suddenly, which causes me to drop them, which occasionally causes them to squash. I don't enjoy gluing duty much; the combination of guilt and seared fingertips from the hot glue makes the whole process somewhat unappealing.) I do like the part where we let them out of the hatching chamber after their wings are dry, and I like working in the Conservatory, which is warm, humid, and increasingly filled with colorful Lepidopterae. Which Lepidopterae, you ask? Lots of Zebra Longwings, some Saphos, some Julias, Postmen, Malachites, Owls, and everyone's favorites, the Blue Morphos. And lots of others that I don't have the patience to search for links for. Anyway, it's a fun job. Except for the occasional squashing.

The Little Engine That Couldn't....

Yep, once again I had to go for the Indy Zoo mandatory employee drug test, and just like last year, it was utter, complete torture for me, both mental and physical. "Matter over Mind" isn't easy for me, when I'm in a stainless steel bathroom holding a plastic cup with a built-in thermometer while a nurse stands outside the door saying brightly, "How we doing in there?" We're not. Doing. Anything. God....

So not much to report, other than the fact that school is picking up steam and about to kick me in the butt. I spent last week working a temp gig at the Eiteljorg Museum of Native Americans and Western Art, and next week I start my long-term temp gig at the White River Gardens, a part of the Indianapolis Zoo, where I worked last summer. I've been idly paying attention to the democratic primary, but it all seems rather pointless since by the time Indiana's time rolls around everything is decided. This is one of two things about our election system that utterly defy logic, to me. One is that the primaries are so spread out; it would make much more sense to me for the candidates to campaign nationwide, have some debates, and then all the primaries are held on the same day, just like the general election. (Kerry still probably would have won, but still... I'm still pissed that I wasn't able to cast a meaningful vote for McCain, because the momentum had turned Bush's way long before our primary thanks to his dirty campaign tactics.) The other thing that buffaloes me is why electoral votes are cast in a bloc, in every state except I think Maine... Why are the electors not required to cast a vote that reflects the majority of voters' choice within their electoral district (or whatever it's called?) This strikes me as a complete reversal of the whole point of the electoral system, and I can see no reason why it should work the way it does. Certain areas of Indiana tend to vote more liberally (central and northwestern) but since those areas are outnumbered by the more conservative areas, my votes for moderate to liberal presidential candidates have never "counted" for anything. I know lots of folks who say "why should I vote? Indiana always goes Republican," and there's no good answer for it.

And as long as I'm being all political-chatty, if you haven't read my friend Jeremy's post on the legal definition of marriage, go take a gander. He does an excellent job refuting those folks who say that "marriage" should be an immutable legal term.

Curse of the Queerwolf

I should have burned it.

Back to Business as Usual.

Turning away from the world of barf scans and skipped flight physicals, I am sad to report that an icon of my life has been shattered. Yes, the film "Sorceress," which I have touted for years as the worst movie I've ever seen, may finally have been knocked from its pinnacle of awfulness. And by a zombie movie, of all things--namely, "Nudist Colony of the Dead."

First, a caveat: "Sorceress" is, and shall remain, the lamest, most awful sword-and-sorcery fantasy movie ever committed to film. I am confident of this fact. But for sheer, "I can't believe I'm seeing/hearing this" crapfactor, "Nudist Colony of the Dead" is the runaway victor. Here are a few salient points to keep in mind:
1) The nudity is, to say the least, unexciting. I wouldn't even call it "gratuitous." The zombies just happen to be naked.
2) The effects are awful. I balk at even calling them "effects," as they mostly consist of the inappropriate use of latex and fake blood.
3) The script has more cornball, supposed-to-be-funny-but-just-make-you-wince lines than any film I've ever seen, and features some painful ethnic stereotypes, and
4) IT'S A MUSICAL.
From the opening strains of the title song, which features lines like "undead evil with no name/exposing gonads with no shame" (I'm paraphrasing a bit) to the relentlessly repetative finale, "Kill All the Zealots" (the zombie mantra,) the music is what makes this movie beyond the f-ing pale in terms of bad film. The melodic centerpiece is a little Brady-Bunch style number called "It's an Inky-Dinky-Doo-Da Morning" which ruthlessly battered its way into my skull--much like a flesh-eating zombie, only it stayed there for hours and wouldn't leave OR finish me off. Like a flesh-eating zombie lingering over coffee and dessert. Anyway, to sum up the plot, the Sunny Buttocks Nudist Colony is forced off their land by a churchful of religious zealots. In defiance of the court order, they commit mass suicide and apparently somehow manage to bury themselves on the grounds afterwards. 10 years later, the same church goes to the site of former Sunny Buttocks for a youth retreat (where before it was right around the corner, now it's apparently 150 miles away from the church and requires a lengthy bus trip with painful musical accompanyment.) A park ranger tries to tell them--in rap form--of the danger, but Mrs. Stucco and Mrs. Luger heed him not, and fake bloody mayhem ensues. I could go into more detail, but I've got to go; my copy of the director's other film, "Curse of the Queerwolf," just arrived in the mail, and I need to decide whether to watch it or burn it....

”Well, they better not scan mine...”
Or, Why I Could Never Write a Political Blog

I am usually a fast reader. This comes in handy when I’m reading a 200 page book about the financial trials and tribuations of the New-York Historical Society for my museum administration class; but it also means I have a strong tendency to misread things in my haste. Spoonerisms are a big problem with me. So naturally, when I opened the paper this morning and skimmed past the headline “French Assembly OKs Head Scarf Ban,” what my brain saw was:
”French Assembly OK’s Head Barf Scan.”
This is a serious deal, France is legislating its secularization policies to the point of, some would say, impeding religious freedom and further marginalizing their substantial and growing Moslem population. But for me, every time I hear about this issue now I’m going to be all “Oh yeah, the barf scan thing....hee hee....”

And while it was great to hear Scott McClellan (White House Spokespatsy and my vote for Least Enviable Government Job at the moment) trying to make the handful of Bush’s military info they released seem like the Oxford English Dictionary of National Guard records--”I think these documents answer your question. I don’t care what your question is, these documents answer it,”--I just can’t get past the fact that Bush’s commanding officer in Alabama was General William Turnipseed. General Turnipseed??? And Alabamans wonder why the rest of the country won’t take them seriously.... It’s like a name off the “Andy Griffith Show.” Or "Dukes of Hazzard." "Gosh, General Turnipseed, I shore don't know where them good ol' Duke boys done hid." "That's all right, Lieutenant Flapjack--release the coon hounds." I know it’s not nice to make fun of people’s names, and especially in a matter of potentially damning seriousness about President Bush’s military service or lack thereof. But Turnipseed... Barf Scans... Snicker...

Amazed, But Not Shocked...

By popular request, I blog again--physics be damned! Well, I shouldn't say that, physics has played a rather key part in my life in the last few days. We've been getting a lot of freezing rain lately; gone is the soft fluffy whiteness of my last posting. Now, my street is encased in a thick coat of solid ice. The postman wouldn't deliver the mail yesterday for fear of driving his jeep into the canal. I think I saw Hans Brinker out there this morning. So the #1 law of winter physics is, don't back down the driveway too fast or you'll spin the car 90 degrees and get stuck on your way to your evening class. Yep. That's the law, and I broke it.... I rescued myself eventually, but it wasn't fun. Then TODAY, three simple words: Electric. Eel. Escape.

It wasn't my fault. I was feeding him, he got excited, and...well.... Suddenly there's four feet of eel writhing on the concrete floor of the back hall in the Waters building. Let me tell you, physics works against you when you're trying to pick up a frantic electric eel with nothing but two medium-sized fishnets.

Another meme--I always knew I was meant to be a bridge between two worlds....

You are 45% geek

You are a geek liaison, which means you go both ways. You can hang out with normal people or you can hang out with geeks which means you often have geeks as friends and/or have a job where you have to mediate between geeks and normal people. This is an important role and one of which you should be proud. In fact, you can make a good deal of money as a translator. Normal: Tell our geek we need him to work this weekend. You [to Geek]: We need more than that, Scotty. You'll have to stay until you can squeeze more outta them engines! Geek [to You]: I'm givin' her all she's got, Captain, but we need more dilithium crystals! You [to Normal]: He wants to know if he gets overtime.

Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com

Not sure why I turned out to be such a hottie, but I'll take it.

2, 4, 6, 8, Come On Snow, Accumulate!

Yes, OK, I realize that my enthusiasm about snow is directly related to the fact that I don't have a "job" which requires me to go out on the "roads" when they're total "crap." But even when I did, I liked it. Winter without snow is just wrong, it's like summer without humidity. (I live in Indiana, after all...)

Actually my excitement at our 6 inches of white stuff is somewhat tempered by the fact that my pipes froze last night (we got down to -10, I think) and so now I've got no shower, no sink, no ability to wash laundry or dishes, and can only flush the toilet by flinging a gallon bucket full of store-bought water into the bowl. Unfortunately, the frozen pipe is somewhere between my house and the water main, so the tiny space heater I've got blowing on the pipes inside the house ain't doing diddly. Oh well. Hopefully it'll thaw by tomorrow, or the folks coming over for the Superbowl better limit their beer consumption...

Speaking of the weather, check THIS out. The man is brilliant. Check his other auctions; he also sells tinfoil hats to prevent the government from reading your pet's brainwaves.

And finally, since I jumped on the meme bandwagon with the last map, here's my states one. Got the east pretty well covered, but the west needs work. Jersild? Want to drive out to Jane's wedding?


create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide
Jeremy, I'm with you on Southeast Asia. Let me know when we leave.

I’ll Take Indonesia for 300, Please.


I love travel. I also hate travel. I hate packing; I hate airports (I especially hate airports in the present age of guilty-until-proven-innocent); I hate the way airplanes smell; I hate wondering if my pets died and my house burned down while I was gone; I hate feeling uprooted. It’s not my fault, mind you, it’s genetic, just like the clumsiness thing. But I also love seeing new places and things. I guess you could say I love being there, but I hate getting there. So I don’t often fantasize about travel except in a very abstract way.... but then, this.



create your own visited country map
or write about it on the open travel guide

Bugger. Now I want to go everywhere, and see the red just spread across the map like...like a....er....well ok, all the images I came up with there were gross. But you get the idea. Look at it! I haven't been to Asia at all!! And man, there are just spitloads of places I want to go in the US as well, all kinds of stuff I haven’t seen. I’d really better get moving on that whole "independently wealthy" thing.

Spam, and Shameless Promotion

I've been getting a lot of weird spam lately. No, not more "Alpha Male" ads--though I'd welcome a followup explaining just what they're extracting from those elk, and how they're extracting it. This seems to be the product of some new spamblaster type of program; the subject lines are always a jumble of letters followed by three words that sound vaguely like the beginning of a sentence, only the sentence is...well, bizarre. I can't for the life of me figure out exactly what the strategy behind this spam format is, other than a hope that you'll be so mystified by the nonsensical subject line that you'll open it up. (And once you do, of course you'll order their leopard frog extract or whatever it is.) Here's a few of the best ones I've gotten in the past 3 days:

Re: WTQNLTAT, with increasing severity  
Re: XEJKHP, the steeds were
Re: FCPBZVTJ, his magician! have   
Re: MAOBFCF, the roman procurator  
and my personal favorite, Re: DK, bears playing concertinas

I mean, seriously, what the hell is up with this? It's like that Star Trek episode, where the aliens are trying to communicate and all they can say is stuff like "Shaka, when the walls fell." I actually opened that last one (see, it works) and here was an ad offering me medicines delivered "direct to your do!"--great, my hair gets so little mail as it is--and then I kid you not, about 30 lines worth of more random words out of the dictionary, of which this is but a small sample: loki spectrography bengal rufous chromium lorinda anthropology sarcophagus vernal continuum accidental quicklime flog tnt eggshell enigma alistair cozy grope tenuous honk ilona deflector lycopodium cramp complex pasty dread

The first person who can convincingly explain the logic behind this spamming methodology will receive a small but entertaining prize.

On the link front, I've added one for my good pal Emily, who is a talented musician as I've mentioned here in the past. If you're interested in hearing Em's music, click the link; it'll take you to a site where you can download some MP3 clips, and if you like them you can order her CD from them as well. ALSO, if you haven't done this already, pleeeeeease check out my friend Rob Harrell's comic, "Big Top"! It's amazingly funny (this week involves Pete's struggles with the evil Chicken Boy) and well worth your while. I went and bought some original art from the strip from him today, he's a good guy and it's a great comic. Tell your local paper they need to pick it up! But in the meantime read him for free over at ucomics.

Well Gee, That’s.....er....

Every time one of my friends posts their results from one of those personality test things, I go take the test. I almost never actually copy over the link into my blog (though the Marvel Superhero quiz was an exception) because my results are usually pretty silly, or the same as my friend got. But today, I am Schindler’s List.

What Classic Movie Are You?

Sure, it says nice flowery stuff in the text.... but let’s face it. I’m a black and white movie about the holocaust. Sure, I’m an oscar winner, and a triumph of filmmaking... But I’m not something you’d want to watch over and over again. I’m not good for repeat viewing. I make people cry.

I guess I just always thought of myself as being more of a “Philadelphia Story” type...

A Discovery of Volcanic Proportions...

Earlier this week (when I was feeling productive, and the temperature was above 20) I went out to run a few errands. I needed a bag of sunflower seeds for the birds, and bulgur wheat for a recipe I was making. This being Indiana, it took me trips to THREE different grocery stores to find one that stocked bulgur, in an overpriced box of tabouli mix from Middle East Cuisine... so I wasn't in the best mood by the time I got to the hardware store to buy the sunflower. Got that taken care of, and found myself standing cattycorner from the old family drugstore at 49th and Penn. Yep, it's the Hamaker Pharmacy; growing up, every year my new teacher would stop while calling the role and say, "Hamaker... like the drug store?" It's that much of a fixture on the north side of Indy. It's still very much the little neighborhood pharmacy, with narrow aisles, a tiny spinning comic book rack, a penny scale, and higher prices than Walmart. The Hamaker family actually hasn't owned the place since I was in high school, my dreams of being a druggist there were squashed pretty early on.... but I still like going in now and then, and our name is still over the door. I went on over to pick up some shoelaces and deodorant, and poked around a bit. Things seem pretty much unchanged, other than them having shoehorned in a couple large refrigerator cases to sell cold Cokes... But I wonder if their business might be better if they carried this product:





This may be the best spam I have ever opened by mistake. Who knew that the male wapiti elk was the most prolific lover in the animal kingdom? Well, other than Mrs. Wapiti Elk? I mean, wow. The best part is the comparision chart.... "Average middle-aged human male.... Average middle-aged elk." All I can say is, wow.

Ringin' It In, Yo.

A New Year, bright with promise! It's true, I have great hopes for 2004. Could this be the year I get a job? Get my shit together? Finish school? On a larger scale, could it be the year when our country frees itself from the grip of George W. and his dangerously loopy pals? I'm starting to feel the slight gravitational pull of the Dean Machine....

So what's new? Well, first off, I ran a half a mile yesterday. Yes, it's a--hey! Stop laughing, you! Stop it! Damn.... You have to understand that running has always been hard for me, from an asthma standpoint. The worst part of fencing practice in college was always the 3 lap warmup around the gym. I hated it. I hate how running makes me feel. And my stamina is, how you say, awful. But I'm realizing that the best kind of exercise for me is probably the kind I can do with the least amount of preparation--no drive to the gym, no membership fees, no special equipment. And I live right on one of the nicest jogging paths in Indianapolis. Literally, I can walk out my door and be on a no-car crushed limestone path which goes for 4 miles along the canal, turns paved, and continues another 3 miles right to downtown. PLUS, just a half mile along the path from me is Butler University's "Fitness Course," one of those things where you jog through the woods and periodically stop to do pushups etc. on slightly soggy wooden equipment. So when things dry out, I'll be doing that... and in the meantime, I'm jogging a half mile. Next week, 3/4 of a mile. Then a mile. Tomorrow, the world.

Great news for the New Year, Jane and Sarah are tying the knot, getting hitched--they're getting grbzniaked! Go over to her blog and congratulate her! Oh, wait.... Jane doesn't have comments enabled.... So congratulate her here instead. :]

Things to Remember.

First off, when the cookie recipe says "mix dry ingredients," sugar is NOT a dry ingredient. Oh sure, it looks dry, and it feels dry, but if you read just ahead in the recipe you'll see that the sugar is to be creamed with the butter and the eggses in step #2. If you've already gone and mixed it with the other so-called "dry" ingredients at that point, it's just too darn bad. Your blender will threaten to catch fire, and you'll end up having to mix the dry stuff in with your hands, a la bread dough, while watching a repeat of "Cops" from 1987 because your hands are too sticky to operate the remote.

Second, if you live in a humid environment, and you have old varnished wood furniture whose surface gets slightly tacky when moist, don't leave the one "Call of Cthulhu" gaming book you own which is actually worth something (in a collectable sense) sitting on the buffet for a month. You'll be sorry, I guarantee it.

Third, don't do either of the above things when you're having a monthly-hormone-related mood crash. Things that would ordinarily make you irritated instead make you blindingly furious, and things that would make you unhappy instead trigger mad bursts of tears and longing for the sweet release of death. Well, ok, maybe not quite that last bit... But jeez. Could I possibly feel any worse?

Well, of course I could! Andy called me late last night to say that he and Karen were back from Vienna, but their luggage (including car/house keys) was not. Arriving from a day of travel in a pouring rainstorm to find that one's keys are idling somewhere in the Chicago airport, awaiting approval from "homeland security" to continue their journey.... That's worse than ripping the back cover off my copy of Green and Pleasant Land any day. I think. Maybe. Ok, so I'm not really thinking clearly at the moment; but I should be back to normal within 24 hours, in plenty of time for xmas cheer. Happy holidays, y'all.