Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Suki Psyche and Student Surprises

Apparently the folks at the Toyota dealership were quite amused with Suki, who put on a show like none they'd ever seen before, compulsively flailing her wipers and flashing her lights like Herbie's hippie cousin on a bad acid trip. When they'd had enough of the show, they sedated her and gave her some good alternator health care. However, the young gofer dude assigned to retrieve her today must have missed her antics, because he was nearly incapable of locating the most conspicuous car on the lot. (Perhaps he was thrown off by the word "Camry" on her key, instead of "Freakmobile.") I experienced a bit of instant Karma for my insensitive cackling as I watched him search in vain for my car, because when he finally found it and brought it around and was mere steps from handing me the keys, I stepped beyond an invisible curb and instead of levitating (as my subconscious may have intended), I splatted quite dramatically just below his outstretched hand. However, I popped back up so quickly I think I may have bounced. I'm a bit sore now, but I have my Suki and my Suki has me, so all is right in the world.


On the student front, apparently I am now a full-time one. I had to add two more classes today after finding out that financial aid rules had changed. I figured it was in my best interest to learn HTML and Rock Music History and be able to, you know, pay the mortgage and all. I'm a bit overwhelmed thinking about how I'll juggle a full course load with everything else (homeschooling, my jobs, the single mom gig, volunteer work), but I'm stoked that the extra money from going full-time means I'll be able to get that laptop after all.

Life never fails to surprise me.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Counting

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.

--Einstein


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Saturday, August 23, 2008

Adventure in Bigfoot Country

I'm so glad the Bigfoot body was a scam. I don't want anybody to find one EVER. Stay shy, Bigfeet. I'm rootin' for ya.

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On my last day as a 32-year-old, my dear Suki (sweet little car o' mine) decided she simply couldn't carry us any farther than the 1200+ miles she'd come from Colorado, so she protested by randomly and violently waving her windshield wipers (despite the controls being in the off position), and then losing all forward momentum when I turned off the air conditioner. I let her idle and rest on the side of the road for a bit, in the hopes of raising her spirits a bit, but her tantrum wasn't over. When I coaxed her into going forward again, the windshield wipers flailed in proportion to the weight of my foot on the gas pedal, and she randomly flashed some display lights on her dash. I relented and turned the ignition off, and she lapsed into a coma from which none could wake her.

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Thus, the kids and I spent several hours on the side of the road on Snoqualmie Pass, pictured above. It's beautiful, and looks idyllic from a distance, but the roar of the 70mph traffic mere feet away is still in my ears almost 24 hours later. I hauled all our Colorado possessions a hundred feet up the road into a minuscule pull off, where we set up camp. Our Van Gogh car sunshades, giant wicker picnic basket, and rainbow and Buddha canvas bags festooned the side of the rode and passersby gawked as we sweated in our insufficient shade. Once AAA towed the car away, we were on our own, and likely mystified more than one human hurtling through the mountains in their obedient hunks of steel and plastic. We passed the time with songs and silliness, stories and shade-seeking, furtive toileting and Bigfoot-watching. Leo is certain he saw branches mysteriously move as though someone were keeping an eye out for us.

We're now safely ensconced at my parents' house in Tacoma, sans car. Interestingly, the shop where Suki was towed lost power about the time she arrived, and in spite of being a major business (the Toyota dealership, in fact) in a metro area, word says that they won't get power back before Wednesday. Who'd'a thunk it? So, in the meantime, I'm sending healing vibes to Suki and preparing to bid farewell to the laptop who has been dreaming of coming back to Colorado with me. C'est la vie.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

What does this look like to you?

Bigfoot Body Found

One of many news stories with pictures



A lot more articles about this





Basically, a couple of professional Bigfoot hunters found a carcass, stuck it in a freezer, and let a few select people take pictures of it. Now press releases are circulating worldwide announcing that DNA and photo evidence to be presented at a press conference this Friday in California. I’d link you to the original press release but www.searchingforbigfoot.com has exceeded its bandwidth. Apparently I’m not the only one trying to go there for the first time tonight.



The hunters say they saw several Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) walking near where they found the body, but at this point they refuse to reveal the location "to protect the creatures". Good for them! Stay strong Bigfoot dudes, fight the bad guys and protect the shy Bigfoot from the scientists! (Remember E.T.?) No, wait. These guys are Bigfoot hunters, not activists. They just aren’t telling where they found it, because they’re planning to capture a live Bigfoot now. Assholes. As much as I want Bigfoot to be real, I also want this one to be fake so that they can continue to live their secret, shy, natural existence without human interference.



Does anyone find it odd that this is popping up so close the Texas sighting and filming of the chupacabra, the the unidentifed creature that washed up near New York, and the Yeti hair that matched no known species?



There is a lot of mystery on this planet, in this universe. If this stuff turns out to be true, I think I’m going to have to believe in fairies.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

100 Books

The Big Read is an NEA program designed to encourage community reading initiatives and of their top 100 books, they estimate the average adult has read only six. According to another blogger, they encourage us to:

*Look at the list and bold those we have read.
*Italicize those we intend to read.
*Underline the books we LOVE


Tough noogies. I'm only bolding the ones I've read, because I'm tired and because I can.

Share this list in your blog, too, if you like. :)



1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo



43 of them. Not bad.

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Letterman's Top Ten

Rest in Peace, Snot

Puke & Snot occupy some of my fondest childhood memories at the Renaissance Festival.







Link
Joe Kudla, aka Thomas Snot of the legendary comic duo Puke and Snot, died Monday from an apparent heart attack at his Minnesota home. He was 58.

The pair had performed together for more than 30 years, and were featured at the Colorado Renaissance Festival in Larkspur for 26 years.

Obama Songs

I added my own titles.

It Rhymes With Pajama


Laser Eye Beams


Oprah's Got Your Back


Obama Delilah


Do-do-do-do-do


Yes, Of Course We Can

What I Haven't Wanted to Blog About



Guess what?

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Please note the present tense.

No, I will not provide more details. Use your imagination.

Two of My Favorite People