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 |  Here's to bloggin' around the block--one word at a time. |
"If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper you are misinformed." --- Mark Twain There is way too much bad news out there and I’m just not up to thinking about it right now. Instead I decided to look for some funny, or at least unusual, news. Here are a few of the things I found. ORLANDO, Fla. — A 911 dispatcher had to tell a caller how to unlock her car on Sunday. A woman called Kissimmee, Fla., police to say she was locked inside her car at a suburban drug store. “My car will not start. I’m locked inside my car,” the unidentified woman said. “Nothing electrical works. And it’s getting very hot in here, and I’m not feeling well.” The dispatcher asked the woman if she was able to manually pull the lock up on the door. The woman said she would try, and then, she said, “Yes, I got the door open.” HoustonChronicle.com HALFWAY, Md. – An Oregon company has ordered new packaging for its Peace Cereal after a typo on the box sent callers to a phone sex line instead of the cereal maker's 800 number. Instead of reaching Golden Temple of Oregon, callers were greeted by a recorded voice asking, "Do you love sex? ... Isn't that why you called?" Yahoonews.com BERLIN (Reuters) – Police in northern Germany are searching for a man who tried to walk out of a supermarket with 68 tubes of toothpaste stuffed into his clothing. "We don't know if he had bad teeth," a police spokeswoman in Rostock said Friday." Noticing his bulging jacket, a store worker grabbed the man when he refused to stop and the tubes of toothpaste spilt all over the floor, police said. The thief struck the woman in the face and ran out. BERLIN (Reuters) – A German woman has divorced her husband because she was fed up with him cleaning all the time. German media reported the wife got through 15 years of marriage putting up with the man's penchant for doing household chores, tidying up and rearranging the furniture. But she ran out of patience when he knocked down and rebuilt a wall at their home when it got dirty, Christian Kropp, court judge in the central town of Sondershausen, said Thursday. "I'd never had anyone seek a divorce for this," he said. DETROIT – Police in Detroit have ruffled some feathers after they cracked down on an organized pillow fight at a downtown park. The Detroit News reports that police at Campus Martius Park prevented the feathery fight Saturday by disarming pillow-toting participants. The bout was part of a worldwide event organized on social networking Web sites. Michael Davis of Hamtramck says police confiscated the 32-year-old man's pillows but returned their cases. He says he was told that he needed a permit. Scott Harris of Ferndale told the News that it's "not illegal to own a pillow." Detroit police spokesman James Tate says cleanup was the issue. http://news.yahoo.com/i/757 There they are. What do you think? |
That’s not flying, that’s just falling with style. My husband and his son love to fly those radio controlled airplanes. Jack is usually the ground crew and his son the controller. One plane lasted a whole year. It survived some hard knocks and was mostly held together by duct tape, but they flew it often and got better and better at it. This past Thanksgiving was a nice clear day with low wind so we all bundled up and headed down to the school to watch them fly it. After a perfect take off the plane smacked directly into the only iron pole for miles then fell to the ground in a heap. It was sad to see. Somehow it must have known it was being replaced and decided to go out with a bang. So our daughter-in-law bought their new plane for Christmas. It was easy-to-assemble, fancier, with a shorter wing span, a little pilot in the cockpit and everything. It was also expensive even though the battery wasn’t included like the hobby store clerk had told her it was. So after a slight delay, they picked a day for the maiden flight. Let’s just say I’m glad I didn’t see it. They may have made history for how quickly they crashed a brand new plane beyond repair. Now the newest radio controlled plane is a model from a kit. Jack spent weeks ordering just the right one, struggling to put it together with bad instructions, getting advice over the internet and from the hobby shop, and getting a few more necessary parts. Finally he got it together and working and was excited as a little kid. After all that work I knew he’d be crushed if (or when) something happened to it. On Thursday they loaded it into the car promising me they were going to take their time, get a feel for it, not fly it the first day. Of course I knew better and I was right. They brought it back “almost in one piece.” It had landed right on its nose and bent the thing that holds the propeller on. It could have been worse, and undoubtedly will. |
“The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.” I just read the entry "Invalid Entry"  in susanL  ’s blog that inspired a thought.My daughter told me she’s been talking with her brother about a big disappointment in her life. He was empathetic, but he made her think when he said “at least you’re not Jenny H-- ” Jenny is a young woman my son went to school with. I went to school with her father Larry. Larry was from one of the wealthier families in our little town, with a huge house and one of the first swimming pools built. Somehow I never dreamed he would become a guidance counselor at the high school but he did. I also never dreamed he would one day take a gun and blow his head off. Jenny’s brother was a year ahead of my daughter in school. He was good looking and popular, a more talented athlete than his dad had been. I never dreamed he would become a meth addict and have to move into his mother’s pool house. I also never dreamed he would one day hang himself from the basketball goal outside. Obviously Jenny has already had a lot of heartache in her life. Now her child has an inoperable brain tumor. Everyone who lives has sorrow but some seem to have more than their share. I try to remind myself as my son was reminding his sister: “If you can’t be grateful for what you have (and sometimes it’s hard) be grateful for what you escape.” As life keeps coming at us it helps to remember to keep counting our blessings. |
”The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.” Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche Last night while I was half asleep I started worrying because I couldn’t think of Orson Welles’s name. I don’t know if it began as a dream or a thought, but I was getting anxious. I could think of different things I knew about him - the War of the Worlds radio broadcast that caused widespread panic; his voice on the old radio serial The Shadow (we have some of those on cassette – he has a great evil laugh); his acclaimed movie Citizen Kane ; and that Vincent D’Onofrio played him in the movie Ed Wood . Still his name escaped me. I knew it began with an O, and I kept wracking my brain. Finally, after I relaxed a little, it came to me. But later I forgot it again! Of course it was so important  that I started going through the alphabet Ob, Oc, Od… Eventually I remembered it a second time then kept repeating it to myself so I wouldn’t lose it. It’s probably good I’m writing about it so if that happens to me again tonight I’ll just get up and read my blog.It’s not like I had any reason to think about him or like I don’t have anything else to think about. I wonder if I should be questioning my sanity.  |
| My brother-in-law saves the “Pickles” section of the newspaper for me. It’s the extra or entertainment section with the comics, advice columns, Sudoku puzzle in it. Each day has a different theme – one day food, another home and garden, cultural and so on. I read them when I get a chance. I’m still on January. We call it Pickles because of one of my favorite comic strips about retired couple the Pickles, Earl and Opal. One of my favorites: Earl is slumped in an easy chair, his feet on the footstool. Opal stands beside him. “What’s the matter Earl? You look a little down.” “Did you ever have one of those days where it seems the whole darn world hates you?” “Is that how you feel?” “Sort of.” Opal leans down and takes his arm. “Oh, I’m sure that’s not true. There are lots of people who don’t even know you.” Another one-frame comic I like is Speed Bump. Two men are standing near a podium. One says, “You’re better than my last sensitivity training instructor. But uglier.” I just read that 100 belly laughs are the equivalent of ten minutes of exercise. I better find some more comics. |
| Writing comes more easily if you have something to say. ~Sholem Asch Yesterday I downgraded and renewed my WDC membership for three months and I cleaned out a lot of the old stuff from my port. Thanks to a challenge from Thomas I’m going to try for a blue blogging month in April. I’m also considering starting a couple of other journals since I don’t seem to be writing anything else. Then again, maybe I won’t. I’m still reading though. A couple of weeks ago Jack and I went to the Library Services sale and each bought a large grocery bag of books and videos for $5 a bag. I’m considering holding a challenge or two for readers and/or for movie lovers. We watched the movie Appaloosa the other night. It was pretty good. I never would have thought of Jeremy Irons playing a gunslinger, but he did a great job. They don’t make a lot of good Westerns anymore. I always loved watching the TV Westerns with my dad. Well, I’ll stop now. I just wanted to limber up my fingers a little bit before tomorrow. It’s quite an undertaking for someone who’s been so busy not writing. Wish me luck. |
I’ve certainly been busy not writing lately. I’ve been reading blogs right along, but I’ve rarely even been able to string enough words together to make any comments. So, what have I been doing while I’ve been avoiding writing? Besides fuming about that AIG mess that is. Well, let’s see. I won a game of Hearts in four hands with a score of zero. That means I Shot the Moon four times in a row. That’s quite an accomplishment considering I have a long string of losses and am often the biggest loser. What else? I just finished reading four more novels in a row (all very good) and added them to the stack on the floor beside my bed. What have I done that requires getting up off my fanny? Well, I’ve gradually been working on the spring cleaning. This means we have several neat closets and cupboards and a very organized pantry. It also means the rest of the place looks kind of like a junk yard after a wind storm. There are piles of throw-aways, give-aways, or decide-where-else-to-put-its all over the place. *sigh* However, it was a really pretty day today so we spent most of the afternoon in the park. On the drive there we saw a car that looked like it was being held together with a bungee cord. As we drove into the park, which is several hundred acres, we saw a coyote standing in the middle of a field. Not a common sight around there. We hiked about three miles through the woods. There’s not much budding of the trees yet, but it seems like everything turns green overnight if you’re not paying attention. On the way home we saw more cops than we usually see in a week, all trying to catch speeders (the city budget is tight, you know). This evening we had a thunder storm and the tornado siren went off. We turned on the TV to see what was going on. Only one station had an alert running across the bottom of the screen saying there was a Tornado Warning in a bunch of counties. Then on another station the ‘weather girl’ came on and said, “There’s no severe weather right now but there is a Weather Alert Test for the entire state.” Huh? Well, I guess I better get back to not writing again. Thanks for stopping by. |
| Yesterday felt like spring, but the warm wind was whipping. (Notice how poetic I am?) While I walked in the park I saw a darling little red haired girl who was obviously afraid the wind was going to knock her down before she made it to the playground. Later I went into Panera Bread for a cup of soup and their heavy front door blew shut nearly clamping onto my arm. Luckily I moved fast enough (for a change) that it only banged my elbow. Jack did a good deed today. He was in the Kroger parking lot taking his cart back to the corral when he noticed a woman had left her purse in one of the carts. Can’t you just feel that horrifying jolt you get when you realize your purse or wallet is gone? Naturally he carried it inside to the service desk. In these troubled times someone easily could have just taken it – or at least cleaned it out of anything valuable. Of course times don’t have to be troubled for that to happen. I have two grocery bags full of books I’ve read and I really want to list them, rate them and write a sentence or two about each one. A lot of them are part of the 50 that I want to read this year so I need to count them, too. Anyway, I thought I would get that done today, but I spent most of the day doing downloading updates and doing maintenance on both of our computers. I changed one of the screen pictures to a big field of yellow tulips under a blue sky. It’s nice and cheery. Is anybody else into (or maybe pushed into) watching really bad movies? I think I’ve now seen every movie Ed Wood made, most of them several times. These are movies like Bride of the Monster Night of the Ghouls and his classic Plan Nine From Outer Space. We just watched the movie about him starring Johnny Depp as Ed Wood and Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi. It was pretty good, but you’d appreciate it more if you had seen his stuff. For those of you who don’t know who I’m talking about, after he died Ed Wood received the award of Worst Director of All Time. His movies are so pathetically, unintentionally bad they’re funny. Plan Nine became a cult classic. This weekend is the beginning of Daylight Savings Time. They found that heart attacks increase during DST when we lose an hour, and they decrease in the fall when we gain an hour. Everyone be sure to go to bed an hour earlier for awhile. So there is my mundane list of five - no more, no less. |
| 01. Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me either. Just pretty much leave me alone. 02. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt and a leaky tire. 03. It's always darkest before dawn. So if you're going to steal your neighbor's newspaper, that's the time to do it. 04. Don't be irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted. 05. Always remember that you're unique. Just like everyone else. 06. Never test the depth of the water with both feet. 07. If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments. 08. Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. 09 . If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is probably not for you. 10 . Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day . 11. If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably a wise investment. 12 . If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.. 13. Some days you're the bug; some days you're the windshield. 14. Everyone seems normal until you get to know them. 15. The quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it back in your pocket. 16. A closed mouth gathers no foot. 17. Duct tape is like 'The Force'. It has a light side and a dark side, and it holds the universe together. 18. There are two theories to arguing with women. Neither one works. 19 . Generally speaking, you aren't learning much when your lips are moving . 20. Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it. 21 . Never miss a good chance to shut up. AND 22 . Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night. Author unknown This was in my email this morning. Made me chuckle. |
As opposed to a “Friday Five” which I’ve intended to write for two weeks. 1. My 96 year old father-in-law left six phone messages in an hour yesterday. They were all pretty much the same: “Are you there? I need to talk to you. Jack, Jack, Jack. Pick-up, pick-up, pick-up. Pop, Pop, Pop. No? Give me a call. Need to talk to you.” He varied a couple of them with “Finished your second pot of coffee yet? Need to talk to ya!” The big emergency? He wanted Salisbury steak for lunch and he wanted Jack to pick it up and take it to him. Every day he has a set menu and it makes him anxious to vary his routine. He called again twice and talked to me: “Tell him to go by CVS and get some Lubriderm. The one with the spout. Lubriderm.” And the last time: “Uh, [Jack’s brother who lives there] has a sore throat. Maybe he doesn’t want to come around it? He doesn’t have to.” (He went.) 2. Speaking of Pop, he’s been dictating another book about his years as an engineer for the company he retired from. He touches a little on meeting his wife, getting married and when their twins were born. But for the most part it’s – how should I say it – mind numbingly boring to anyone but him. And even with all the pictures we could find to add to it, it’s really not long enough. He has a real hard time talking about anything the least bit emotional, but we did convince him to talk about some of their trips like when they flew on the Concorde, went to Russia or even Pikes Peak where he was so impressed with the hot coffee and fresh donuts. 3. A new medicine I’m taking has the added side effect of being an appetite suppressant. Normally this is wonderful, but I’m having a bit of a problem with it. When I don’t eat enough I get so far beyond hunger that nothing sounds good, and I start feeling bad. Then I turn into a real shrew. Last night it was nine o’clock and all I had all day was a bagel. Nothing we had sounded good and every time Jack suggested something it made me mad. Finally I ate another bagel and a little bit of chicken soup and felt like a new person. Obviously I’m a slow learner because I’ve done it more than once. 4. I try not to indulge in Schadenfreude, but after my ex-husband’s hurtful remark to my daughter I had to laugh at what he told her about himself. Apparently his wife threw him a surprise birthday party held at some bar where they had karaoke. He sang, and afterwards every single person who was there went up to him and said, “Man, you really cannot sing!” 5. My sixth WDC birthday was February 26th. My subscription is up the end of March and I’m debating whether to renew. I always question whether I’m really using the site enough to stay, and so far I’ve kept renewing. I’ll probably renew for three or six months, because I’d probably suffer withdrawal if I left. But I am going to downgrade. I know I don’t do enough to justify paying for the Premium. 6. Happy 60th Day of the New Year! |
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So glad to see your blog again, and I like the idea of a 'new' Clean Slate. I may just do that myself! I look forward to reading more from you! 
