"Summertime And The Existence Is Leisurely"

(Today post brought to you with the aid of Teena)

"Here comes those indolent, nubilous, lunatic days of summer".

"In the praiseworthy fossil summertime".



Thesaurus + Song Lyrics + Hot Summer Day =

-Torrid burg
Summer in the metropolis

-Timbers reeling in the summer zephyr
Exhibiting their sterling foliage
As we promenade by

-Summer's in place and the era is Conservative for gamboling in the thoroughfare.

-Moreover I adore to live so agreeably,
Live this existence of sumptuousness,
Lazing on a halcyon afternoon,
In the summer time

-In the summertime when the climate is pleasant
You can expand right up and palpate the heavens
When the climate's pleasant
You got dames, you got dames on your consciousness

-Surmise it's gonna be a frigid solitary summer
But I'll occupy the hollowness
I'll transmit you all my visions
Every day in a hieroglyphic
Sealed with a osculation

-Here comes summer
Yeshiva is out, oh, felicitous days
Here comes summer
Gonna annex my damsel and turntail

Goin' To The Chapel And We're Gonna Get Married...

Actually, we didn't. We got married in the judicial office of a friend of my mother's.



The front of our wedding announcement:




The inside of the announcement:




My husband's step-mother was, "Shocked! Just shocked!," when she opened her copy.
My mother,"Whooped with laughter."

I'm Bored

I just can't seem to finish anything I write. I started a post about the Renaissance Fair and got bored with it after a couple of paragraphs and deleted it in frustration. The only thing about the fair that fascinated me was the high number of unattractive people there. What is it about that kind of venue that attracts them?

Yesterday I started another post about hearing the sound of the next door neighbor's little dog get hit by a car on the street in front of my house the day before but wandered away from it somewhere in the middle. The dog is doing fine and just has some scrapes and bruises. Tough little girl.

I was going to write about an old TV show from the 1950's called Studio One (I just bought a DVD collection of some of the shows) but that idea didn't even make it to the computer.

Right now I have a unfinished post sitting in Save As Draft about another Duke/Emma episode but I found it hard to put two coherent sentences together in a row so I stopped working on it.

I don't know what is wrong. Maybe it is because it is summer and I want to be outside more now. Maybe it's the heat. Yesterday it got up to 109F/42.8C. Maybe I'm going stir crazy from being cooped up inside during the day because of the heat. Maybe I feel I have nothing to say right now. Maybe I'm just done with blogging.

Anyway, I think I will take a little break. Hope to be back soon.

Time For A Play Date

(Via Philobiblon)

Book Quiz

You're Siddhartha!

by Hermann Hesse

You simply don't know what to believe, but you're willing to try anything once. Western values, Eastern values, hedonism and minimalism, you've spent some time in every camp. But you still don't have any idea what camp you belong in. This makes you an individualist of the highest order, but also really lonely. It's time to chill out under a tree. And realize that at least you believe in ferries.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

The Following Is A Public Service Announcement

When driving your car-

Use The (bleeping) Turn Indicators

Use The (frigging) Turn Indicators

Use The (blipping) Turn Indicators

Use The (F'ing) Turn Indicators

Use The (bloody) Turn Indicators

Use The (flipping) Turn Indicators


(The above message was brought to you by the letters C, E, F, K, R, and U.)

Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Condition Was In

I woke up this mornin' with the sundown shinin' in
I found my mind in a brown paper bag within
I tripped on a cloud and fell-a eight miles high
I tore my mind on a jagged sky
I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in

I pushed my soul in a deep dark hole and then I followed it in
I watched myself crawlin' out as I was a-crawlin' in
I got up so tight I couldn't unwind
I saw so much I broke my mind
I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in

Someone painted April Fool in big black letters
on a dead end sign
I had my foot on the gas as I left the road
and blew out my mind

Eight miles outta Memphis and I got no spare
Eight miles straight up downtown somewhere
I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in

I said I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in

Spent Saturday at the Renaissance Fair.
Staying away from the news.
Watching the British Open.
Condition good.

Stop The World I Want To Get Off

Fifty-two people killed in London bombing. Seventy-five people die in ethnic revenge killings in Kenya. Twenty-seven people, 24 of them children, die in bombing in Baghdad. One hundred twenty-eight people die in train crash in Pakistan. Sixty-two people killed by Hurricane Dennis in the Caribbean.

That hole I crawled into last week? I think I will pull it over me now.

Morning Walk

Took the dogs for their morning walk up by the old "Smith" farm for the first time since Emma died. No one is living there right now and as I drove by the house I was surprised to see how dead it looked. There were weeds growing in cracks in the driveway and the place had that desolate air of an unoccupied neglected house. I slowed down as I passed the equipment shed and was relieved to see the door closed.
(It's called a shed but it is really a large tin building big enough to store a tractor, a truck, and other farm equipment.)

No one was living in the house but whoever owned it seem to be using the land surrounding it. There were about 20 cows meandering around in the field to the south and five horses grazing in the field to the west. I drove about a quarter of a mile past the house, parked the truck, and let the dogs out of their kennels. The second their paws hit the ground they raced up the dirt road toward the top of the hill.

I always like walking this road because I never know what I will find. The road up the hill runs through what was once the town dump. Stuff is always working its way up from under the packed dirt whenever the city sends the road grader out to scrape the road smooth after a rain storm or to level out the "washboarding" ruts made by the harmonic oscillation of the tires on the cars speeding over it.

It is amazing what you find. One time I found an old green glass 7-Up bottle that the road grader had uncovered. The grader had scraped off just enough dirt to expose the front part of the bottle and the painted on 7-Up label. I tried to dig the bottle up by scraping around it with a sharp rock but the ground was like cement and after ten minutes I quit.

This morning on my walk I found the following:

- large piece of blue and white checkered fabric
- tube of toothpaste buried in the road with only the letters GLEEM showing
- bottom of a rusted out metal pail
- beer cans, some flattened and others ripped apart
- dead flat guinea pig
- broken brown beer bottle
- a thin six inch long solid metal rod
- rusty bolts ranging from small to large in size
- large section of some type of machinery cover, painted orange
- small piece of white tarp sticking up out of the ground like a napkin setting at a formal dinner
- pieces of glass, large and small, sharp edged and dull, clear, brown, and coke bottle green in color
- rusty nails straight and bent, various sizes
- small pieces of a porcelain toilet
- rusty bits of wire of various lengths
- an eight-ounce glass Coke bottle
- whole brown beer bottle filled with packed dirt
- small rusty springs
- large and small pieces of white plastic of unknown origin
- rusty cabinet hinges
- chunks of old tires
- large and small chunks of concrete in various stages of wear
- rusty tin cans, some half buried in the ground
- a piece of flat metal so rusty it looks like a piece of dirty lace
- plastic 20-ounce soda bottles
- small pieces of rubber that look like they may have come from the inside of a tire
- rabbit remains made up of bones and fur
- some sort of U-shaped rusty iron fasteners

Quite a collection. The road grader must have been up there recently.

I am not sure how the dead flat guinea pig got there. It was dead and flat but it hadn't been dead and flat for too long because it still looked like a guinea pig.

Only flat.

And dead.

FYI

The thermometer is reading 105F/40.5C right now.

Feeling hot,hot hot!

An Example Of Courage

All the men, women, and children who climbed aboard the buses and subway trains in London this morning.

London rocked by terror attacks

Thus have the gods spun the thread for wretched mortals: that they (mortals) live in grief while they themselves (the gods) are without cares; for two jars stand on the floor of Zeus of the gifts which he gives, one of evils and another of blessings
-Homer, The Iliad

Small Town Life

One thing our schools have to have out here in Kansas is a tornado plan. I think someone once told me that the last time a tornado hit this small town was back in 1935. Although we have had a couple come close since I've lived here so it is something that we do have to worry about. My husband and I decided that the closet in the northwest corner of our basement is the safest place for us during a tornado warning.

I have heard that during a tornado warning the students at the high school are hustled into the cafeteria to sit it out. According to the National Weather Service this is one of the worst places to wait out a tornado since you should, "Avoid places with wide-span roofs such as auditoriums, cafeterias, and gymnasiums."

They do have a safer place for the student in the hallway on the first floor but there is not enough space there for all the students. No matter what they do some of the students would have to be sent to the cafeteria. The school, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that there is no way they are going to be put in the position of deciding which students are put in the hallway and which are sent to the cafeteria. If a tornado did strike this could mean the difference between life and death. The last thing they want is some grieving parent coming up to them and asking why their son or daughter was put to the cafeteria and not in the hallway. So to make it fairer all students are sent to the cafeteria.

London gets 2012 Olympic Games

Headline on BBC News website: London beats Paris to 2012 Games.
Translation: We're better than you are. We're better than you are. Nan na nan na poo poo.

Congratulations to all you happy people on the other side of the pond. Good job guys.

Note: I find this amusing because I thought only we Americans were this "in your face" jingoistic.

Dream Weaver

I believe you can get me through the night
Ooh dream weaver
I believe we can reach the morning light
-Dream Weaver by Gary Wright


In the dream I was in a grocery store. I had a cart and I was standing at the head of a line waiting for the cashier at the counter to finish with the customer in front of me. I noticed a man standing in another line intently watching what was happening at my check-out counter and although he was not doing anything he was making me very nervous. When I looked back at my cashier the customer was no longer there and the cashier was busy doing something I could not see. The man I felt uneasy about kept looking over at the cashier and I started worrying that he would try to cut in front of me.

I looked back at my cashier wondering why she did not motion me forward when she looked up and waved her fingers in a "come forward" gesture. I started to push my cart forward but the man in the other line quickly pushed his cart in front of me and got to the counter first. I started to tell him he could not do that when he reached inside his shirt and pulled out a large handgun and shot me eight times in the chest. I fell backward to the floor greatly shocked by what had happened and thinking, "He's just killed me."

I felt a deep sadness about the fact that my life was ending because it was my own stupid fault. I knew there was something dangerous about the man and I berated myself for saying anything to him. As I lie there grieving the loss of my life I put my hand to my heart and touched something hard. I reached under my shirt and realized I was wearing a bulletproof vest. I was not really injured. Then I woke up.


When I told my husband this dream he said, "I know where this dream came from, Doc's story about the bear."
That's right, Doc told us about some friends of his who went hunting for grizzly bears up in Alaska. Well, they found one and it took eight gunshots to the chest before that bear dropped dead about six feet in front of them.

That story may have triggered (no pun intended) my dream but what does the fact that I had a bulletproof vest on mean and why did I not know I was wearing it?

Happy Fourth Of July

Yankee Doodle Boy
-George M. Cohan


verse
I'm the kid that's all the candy
I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy
I'm glad I am
So's Uncle Sam
I'm a real live Yankee Doodle
Made my name and fame and boodle
Just like Mister Doodle did
By riding on a pony
I love to listen to the Dixey strain
"I long to see the girl I left behind me"
And that ain't a josh
She's a Yankee, by gosh
Oh, say can you see
Anything about a Yankee that's a phoney?

refrain
I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy
A Yankee Doodle, do or die
A real live nephew of my uncle Sam's
Born on the Fourth of July
I've got a Yankee Doodle sweetheart
She's my Yankee Doodle joy
Yankee Doodle came to London
Just to ride the ponies
I am a Yankee Doodle boy

verse
Father's name was Hezikiah
Mother's name was Ann Maria
Yanks through and through
Red, white and blue
Father was so Yankee hearted
When the Spanish War was started
He slipped upon his uniform
And hopped up on a pony
My mother's mother was a Yankee true
My father's father was a Yankee too
And that's going some
For the Yankees, by gum
Oh, say can you see
Anything about my pedigree that's phoney?

refrain
I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy
A Yankee Doodle, do or die
A real live nephew of my uncle Sam's
Born on the Fourth of July
I've got a Yankee Doodle sweetheart
She's my Yankee Doodle joy
Yankee Doodle came to London,
Just to ride the ponies
I am a Yankee Doodle boy


(A little Yankee Doodle History and a little about George M Cohan)

Grow Old With Me

The two most interesting people I met at Doc's birthday party were a 103 year old man and a 80 year old woman. I noticed the man when I sat down at one of the picnic tables that had been set up under the pine trees near the meadow in front of Doc's cabin. As I sat down with a plate of food in my hand I glanced across the table and saw two older gentlemen sitting at the table just across from mine. Neither had any food and so after I set my plate down I went over to them and asked if they would like something to eat. One of them said yes so I fixed a plate and brought it back to him.

When I sat back down at my place I was asked if I knew who the man I brought the food to was. I shook my head no and was told that his name was Cole and he was 103 years-old. He and his friend Jack (age 95) had been driven up from Longmont for Doc's party. (They amusingly referred to Doc as "The Kid") Cole had been a pilot and was still pissed off that they had taken his pilot license away from him last year at the age of one-hundred and two. Jack, his young friend, was also pissed because Cole wasn't able to fly them up to the party. Further more, I was told, Cole had been mentioned in the Guinness book of world records as the oldest pilot in the world.

After we finished eating I went over to talk to Cole. I asked him when he first got his pilot license and he told me it was in 1917. I was going to ask him more questions about his flying career but somehow we started talking about the cane he was carrying. He told me he had bought the cane in 1925 right before he graduated from college. It had been the fashion at that time for all the men in the graduating class to buy canes and then have each one carve his own name into everyone else's cane. The cane was covered with the names and initials of all his classmates. Some names he still remembered and other he had forgotten long ago. At that point we got interrupted and I did not have a chance to talk to him again.

The other person that fascinated me was a friend of Doc's who was also 80 years old. In fact Doc always teased her and referred to her as "an old lady" because she was 4 months older that he. This woman was beautiful with large blue eyes and glowing skin. She looked her age but this did nothing to take away from her beauty. Just by looking at her you could tell she was one good-looking woman when she was younger. I was saddened when someone told me that this lovely woman almost didn't come to the party because she thought she looked "hideous."

It is even sadder to know that some women actually believe that just because they are older they do look hideous. Twenty years ago Sixty Minutes did a segment about 80 year-old women in Brazil undergoing the knife in order to look "younger." Let me tell you not one of those women looked younger after their surgery. They all looked like 80 year old women who had just had face lifts. I thought the whole thing was crazy and was glad that kind of thing was not done in the USA. Well, here we are 20 years later and it now is done all the time-just look at Joan Rivers.

Since we are looking at Joan Rivers let's look at Katherine Hepburn too. They are both about the same age in the photos below and I have to say I think Hepburn is more beautiful than Rivers.


















There is in true beauty, as in courage, something which narrow souls cannot dare to admire.
-William Congreve



FYI
I found this in the Guinness Book OF World Records 2002,page 56:

Oldest Pilot
Cole Kugel (b. 1902. USA) is the oldest qualified pilot in the world at 99 years old. He was born one year before the legendary Wright Brothers took to the skies, and has been flying for the last 71 years. Cole is a member of the International Flying Farmers- where he is also the oldest member.

And if you go here you will find an article about Cole on his 100th birthday.