20 questions meme

I stole this from Grannie Annie, who had some really interesting answers!

I forget who does and doesn't like to be tagged, so please feel free to do it if you like. I love to see other peoples' answers :)

1. When you looked at yourself in the mirror today, what was the first thing that you thought? Oh my GOD, only Mr. RK could see my hair like this and still love me without throwing up.

2. Do you miss anyone right now? I miss my friend Ward, who died in 2003.

3. If you could move anywhere else, would you? Depends. I'm happy here but have always wanted to live in the UK.

4. If you could choose, what would your last meal be? Cheese enchiladas with this addictive serrano pepper sauce that I get at our favorite Mexican restaurant.

5. What famous person, dead or alive, would you want to have lunch with? Jesus. I'd want to know what he thinks of the neocons, Joel Osteen, and people who say "God wants you to be rich."

6. What was the last book you read? A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie.

7. What was the last movie you watched? Despicable Me

8. What was the last song you heard? Something on the radio that I did not recognize.

9. What’s your dream vacation? Going to Ireland and Scotland with Mr. RK, and stopping in England to say hi to Chella and Sarah, Claire, and Joey.

10. What is the next trip you’ll take? Not sure. Probably down to CA to visit my family for Halloween.

11. Did you ever go to camp? No, and I never wanted to.

12. Have you ever been in love? But of course! That cheesecake was divine... ;)

13. What do you want to know about the future? So many things, I don't know where to begin. I'm a curious sort of person.

14. Where is your best friend? Putting the sheets in the dryer!

15. How is your best friend? A bit tired from a 25-mile bike ride

16. Who is the biggest gossiper you know? A volunteer in my organization that I try not to talk to very much 'cause she never shuts up.

17. What does your last text message say? "Good"

18. What are 3 things you’ve always wanted to do, that you still plan to accomplish? Publish my book (I hope!), start a volunteer GED program, and visit South America

19. What is one thing you’ve learned from your parents? From my dad, life is short. Do your best to be the best person you can be and be compassionate to other people. From my biological mother - inadvertently - blood is not thicker than water. Surround yourself with people who love you and make you feel good about yourself.

20. What is one thing you hope to teach your own children? I don't have any, and won't have any, but I hope my little brother and sister grow up to be compassionate and generous and open-minded human beings. They are doing a good job so far!

Vegetarian vampire squirrels on my balcony

OK, so I sorta stole that from my amigo Robert Tres. But this is a true story.

I got home yesterday and one of the plants that had been growing happily in a pot in our urban garden on the balcony had been decimated. The baby lettuces had been neatly snipped (as it turns out, eaten) off the plant.

I asked Mr. RK, "Did you harvest this plant?"

He looked at me like I had asked him if he wanted to roll around in a bowl of jello. (He doesn't eat vegetables unless I force him by threatening to withhold sex.)

So then we tried to figure out the veggie eater...it wasn't a bug, because there were no holes or small nibbles. The leaves simply vanished, sad-looking stalks left behind.

Could it be a squirrel?

Do they eat lettuce?

I'm a suburban kid and don't know much about wildlife.

If it was a squirrel, how the fuck did they get up to the balcony? Did they build an elevator?

Mr. RK said, "Perhaps they have croutons waiting back in their nest. Perhaps a young male squirrel suggested this as a spot for a hot date and a salad."

I have to eat crow because I was e-mailing Lynn about tomato plants. She said squirrels can sometimes eat them and I thought, "Ha! No worries about that, I live on the second floor."

Famous last words.

So I really am curious. Do you think they used our balcony (and our plants) as a salad bar?

Now, I have a halfway decent chance of finding out - not because I am setting up a web cam, but because my good buddy Mike D is also curious and is going to do a little experiment for me. Namely, he is going to leave some lettuce outside of his house in Connecticut and see if they eat it.

Oh yes - one more thing. I asked Mr. RK, "Should we put up that metal netting to keep them out?"

"No," he replied. "You should share."

Mondays are for laughing

Unless we have an event on the weekend, my week begins on Monday. I don't know about you, but I indulge in a number of things on my days off, including weekends, and this includes staying up later. Needless to say, I'm tired most Mondays.

We laugh a lot in my office, and we have decided that this is a very good thing, considering the serious and sometimes difficult nature of the work we are doing.

So that combination - being tired and needing to laugh - seems to make things more funny on Mondays.

Take this conversation from today:

Me: "Do you like albacore tuna? I have some that no one in my house will eat."

Volunteer (thinking I had said "Albertina Kerr," which is a local nonprofit:) "You know, I've been trying to volunteer there, but I can never get a hold of them."

Me: "You want to volunteer at a fishery?"

Explanation and many fits of giggles followed.

Which reminded me of another funny thing, which we also laughed about - at the dentist's on Friday, someone with a name that sounded like "Herbert Stott" was paged over the intercom.

My hygienist paused and said, "Did that sound like 'Herbert Snot' to you?"

We laughed about that all day today, too.

I'll probably go to hell, but...

I wrote a couple of friends about this, but I just had to share with the rest of you...

As you know, I cannot stand it when people completely lack common sense. So I don't feel bad laughing at them, on occasion.

Yesterday was a case in point. I'm waiting for my dental appointment and I'm sitting about 20 feet away from the front desk, so I can hear their phone calls. This one pricked my ears:

Receptionist: "Yes, hello Randall."

Pause.

Receptionist: "Did you use SuperGlue?"

Pause.

Receptionist: "Yes, if you used SuperGlue, you'll need a new partial.
And because you used SuperGlue, our responsibility for the partial is
null and void."

And some tiny (well, more than tiny) part of me hoped, "Dear God, can this be my ex Randall? Pretty, pretty please?"

And I e-mailed my stepmom about it, who one-upped me pretty good:

"Too bad it wasn't the proctologist and a corn cob...and my ex on the phone."

An extra "merci!" to my friend K, who sent me this fantastically appropriate picture...

Things I learned from muppets

My friend J got me an awesome book, Sesame Street Unpaved.

It has stories about the beginning of the show, trivia, scripts, and other fun stuff. One page Mr. RK found right away was "Things I Learned From Bert and Ernie." Among them: "How to not get cookie crumbs in your bed: eat cookies in your friend's bed."

I loved watching PBS shows as a kid. I still love PBS - it's the only TV we watch.

I loved the Muppet Show, Sesame Street, the Electric Company, and Vegetable Soup. (Yes, I'm dating myself - I was a bicentennial baby.)

So on that note, I got to thinking about things I learned from muppets...

1. Interspecial relationships are OK (think Kermit and Miss Piggy.)

2. If you're a gay muppet, you're still in the closet. You also tend to collect paperclips, befriend pigeons, and have a messy roommate who likes to put bananas in his ears.

3. If you count aloud, it's so funny it's like being stoned out of your mind.

4. If you can't stop eating cookies, you don't have to join a support group, you just become a Cookie Monster. Now, mind you, this was before cookies became "a sometimes food." What the fuck, people? He's a cookie MONSTER.

5. If you have to live in a garbage can, you're not likely to be cheerful. However, you have all of this hidden, awesome space down there that we never get to see on TV. And you have awesome eyebrows. So how bad can it be?

6. If you are a muppet musician, you have to be into the 70s groove and have a funny accent.

7. The muppet show caters to people of all musical tastes, having had guests ranging from John Denver to Alice Cooper.

8. Muppet News is actually more unbiased than many of the places I worked for as a reporter.

9. Movie critics are mostly assholes (think the guys in the balcony.)

10. Pigs fly. Really! You saw Pigs in Space, didn't you?

Pictures

My parents have a bigger yard than most people in Silicon Valley - that is, bigger than a postage stamp, because they didn't violate building codes and build on to their house so it covers the entire fucking yard.

Seriously, I envy their back yard on a nice day. There is nothing more pleasant than sitting out there with iced coffee.

I also took some flower pictures.

I forgot what this one was called, but Mr. RK called it "the slut of the plant world," as many birds and bees were stopping by it:

The roses were super happy because it was warm and dry...




This was the view when we looked up, sitting at the table outside.


And when it got warm, we hopped in the pool.

Home

We had a really nice trip - my parents spoiled us! But it's also nice to be back home. Our cats went a little crazy when we got back last night. Darth Weasel is a saint for taking such good care of them. In fact, my plants seem to be happier under his care!

Mr. RK took hundreds of pictures (I kid you not) that we have not gone through yet, but I only took a handful in comparison.

Highlights:

My "little" brother is now (barely) taller than me. This thrilled him, of course...although I don't know how we pried him away from his computer to stand back to back with me.


Mr. RK's engineering skills came in handy with an impossible-to-put-together play set my little sister got...

She calls Mr. RK her "big-brother-in-law." Is that adorable or what?

And my other little brother, at age 31, still can't pose seriously for a picture...


But that's sort of a temptation for most of us...

Art

I grew up with a dad who loved art. He still loves art, and is also incredibly knowledgeable about it.

Recently he repainted and decorated every room of their house - just using the art they already owned - and it turns out he is rather artistic himself. I kid you not - every room looks like it's straight out of Architectural Digest.

Anyhow, I am headed down to California for a few days to see them, so I won't be online as much, but I'll be back next weekend and hope to catch up...I might take some photos of their house to show you my dad's handiwork. (Of course, now that it's no longer hotter than fuck, I leave for vacation...timing is everything.)

In the meantime, I got to thinking about art because I offered to do some hand-painted frames to donate for a fundraiser for my friend's nonprofit. I asked Mr. RK to take some pics of a few I had already done, since he's quite handy with the camera, so I could show her what they could look like.

Of course he totally showed me up by tinkering with the photographs inside the frames...
Me and Mr. RK, in cubist form...

Mr. RK playing at Speed Racer

Me, my dad and my two brothers in 1999 or 2000, in cartoon form.

I wish I had more artistic talent! I have a good eye for color, so I can take good flower pictures and paint abstractly, but wouldn't dare try drawing a circle round.

How about you? Is there a talent you wish you had?

I don't even want to think about it

The other day, while I was driving to work, I was listening to the "8 at 8" - a local radio show that has 8 songs with a common theme and starts at 8 a.m. The theme: songs from 1994. That was the year I graduated from high school, which made me think, "Holy shit!" It's been 20 years - or it will be, this fall - since I started high school.

And let me tell you, I hated every minute of it (except summer vacations, spring breaks, and winter breaks.) I did not go to the graduation ceremony. I stayed home and was happy as hell.

Joey sometimes does a Top 10 Tuesday - so here's a Top 10 Thursday, with the Top 10 things I do not miss about being in high school:

1. Stupid rich kids getting stoned in the car on the way to school in new cars their Stanford professor and Silicon Valley tech parents bought them, and replaced when they crashed them.

2. Teachers hitting on us.

3. Catty bitches. Come to think of it, I still hate catty bitches, but I don't have to deal with them on a daily basis.

4. Using condoms. I hate them, hate them, HATE THEM. Fortunately, I grew up in an area where there was no question that we'd have sex ed in school, and the community pounded it into us (no pun intended) to have safe sex. Come to think of it, that's something I hate to live with hating until moving in with Mr. RK.

5. Having to take pre-calculus and never, ever having fucking used it once.

6. The nonstop Bob Marley/Led Zeppelin/Pink Floyd/The Grateful Dead soundtrack that was always, always on in the background, somewhere. I can't listen to any of these groups now because I got so sick of it.

7. Having to analyze "what the writers are trying to show you" in books that were a) boring, b) poorly written, and c) probably way over-analyzed.

8. Having to sit through classes that were super boring. I did enjoy literature, creative writing, geology, Spanish and sociology.

9. Having 25 minutes for lunch. I adopted the habit of eating too fast, which I am unlearning just now, and it wreaked havoc on my system, I'm sure.

10. Carrying loads of fucking books everywhere. Now the only ones I have to carry are ones *I* want to read.

How about you?

Things that have annoyed me today

1. The weather. First, spring and summer don't show themselves - and now you hit us with heat that is normally on schedule for late August. WTF? Couldn't you have waited a week until my vacation? You know how hot weather makes me cranky. My body can't process heat well, so I just overheat, and that really sucks. I'd go out and swim except for the fact that the pool is full of kids that probably piss in it.

2. My dress/underwear. WTF? The two of you working in tandem made me hide behind a parked car, walking back from getting coffee, and go commando for most of the day, which I *hate* because it's totally uncivilized!

3. Google/blogger: What have you done with 14 of the comments on my last post?

4. The drama queen I can't verbally bitchslap because...well, I have to work with you on some stuff. Get a clue, honey - it's not all about you. PERIOD. END. OF. STORY.

Other than that I'm in a good mood :)

Another meme

I am all out of ideas for posting, so I'm ripping this one off from Senorita and Joey.

BTW, this was one of the things that popped up from Google image search when I looked for "meme." I love these guys!

1.) WHAT ARE YOU WEARING ? Skirt and a shirt, rings and a bracelet. Oh yes, and a bra and underwear.

2.) WHAT IS ONE THING THAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT YOU THE MOST ? I'd have to say it's a tie between "You're weird" and "you are thoughtful"

3.) WHAT IS ONE THING YOU WILL NEVER HEAR SOMEONE SAY ABOUT YOU ?
"Wow, you really love being in a huge group of people where you don't know anyone!"

4.) WHAT PERFUME OR COLOGNE DO YOU WEAR ? none. I dislike perfume. I think it's stinky.

5.) VANILLA OR CHOCOLATE ? both

6.) PLAYBOY OR MAXIM ? Um, no.

7.) WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU SPOKE WITH ON THE PHONE ? Mr. RK

8.) WHAT DO YOU HAVE FOR A RINGTONE ? A ring. Really. It sounds like a phone ringing.

9.) WHAT COUNTRY DO YOU WANT TO TRAVEL TO MOST ? Ireland or Chile - it's a tossup. Or New Zealand, Spain, India, Australia...well, lots of places actually.

10.) IF YOU ARE A MAN... ARE YOU A LEG MAN OR AN ASS MAN ? Not a man. I do like having legs and an ass, however. It would be awkward to wake up without them.

11.) IF YOU ARE A WOMAN, WHAT IS THAT ONE THING ABOUT A GUY'S APPEARANCE THAT IS A DEALBREAKER ? Scruffiness. As in Shaggy from Scooby Doo.

12.) DO YOU BELIEVE IN GOING DUTCH ON A FIRST DATE ? No, I'd rather pay.

13.) WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOUR DATE FROM THE INTERNET SHOWED UP AND LOOKED 10 YEARS OLDER AND AT LEAST 30 LBS HEAVIER THAN IN THE PICTURE ?

I'm fairly certainly I'd just burst out laughing without being able to explain myself...so he'd probably leave anyway.

14.) MEN.... WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU WOKE UP AND DISCOVERED YOU HAVE A WOMAN'S BODY?
Not a man...but if I woke up in a different woman's body that would freak me out some.

15.) LADIES, WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU WORK UP AND DISCOVERED THAT YOU ARE TRAPPED IN A MAN'S BODY ? Oh man, I'd never leave the house!

So anyone who would like to participate...tag!

Fighting crime in pants!

Or rather, trousers, for those of you in the UK.

I love comic book stuff, even though I take issue with the geeks that draw it because every woman is drawn bursting out of her action suit. Even though I don't read the actual comics, I love the movies and I still collect action figures.

So I was interested to read that Wonder Woman is now fighting crime in slacks...but my friend Mike D, who is an even bigger geek in this area than I am, had the following thoughts about it:

Interesting. This probably won’t last very long. Her costume is very iconic, and fans are rather protective of icons. There were a couple of years ago where she lost her powers and then cut her hair off (sniff) for a disguise. She regained her powers and her long hair only a few issues later.

And by the way, I happen to know that Linda Carter was another one of Mr. RK's crushes back in the day.


When I moved to New York in 1994, one of the first and coolest things I saw was a Wonder Woman poster she had signed, hanging on the door of one of the many shoe shops on Eighth Street.