Things I Must Do Before Leaving for Holiday

• Finish grant solicitation (not to be confused with Grant solicitation)
  
• Acquire two functioning knees
• Pick Up Dry Cleaning

No problem.

Test

Portraits of My Cat With My New Phone

Things That Are Orange

Terrible Tee Shirts

Did horrible tee-shirt slogans come back into fashion while I wasn't looking? In the last 24 hours I've seen:

• This is What Awesome Looks Like
• Volunteer Gynecologist

and

• The Man (arrow pointed up); The Legend (arrow pointed down)

Really, fellas? Is this what the world has come to?

Overheard on Mass Ave

"I was fourteen and she was twenty-two..."

Unless the end of that sentence is "and she babysat for me and my brother to pay her student loans" we don't believe it.

Here's a song about babysitters.

Things That I Cannot Explain

Well Good Morning to You Too

At about 5:45, I awoke to the sound of a spirited conversation that the occupants of these cars were having while parked in front of my house. Please note, that my street is one lane, and one way (hint - not in the direction they're facing). Good times.

wow

As I'm waiting for POTUS, I am remembering where I was on September 11, 2001 - in Cambridge, MA, only 10 or so blocks from where I am now. And after a day of watching the news, tracking down relatives, and in general feeling disillusioned about everything I ever knew, buying a pack of cigarettes after having quit for a million years or so, and smoking them on a corner in Inman Square with the man I later married and a homeless guy, wondering what had happened to the world.

Not sure how I even know how to feel at the moment, but for now I wait with all y'all...

(Icy) Blast from the Past

I was digging out a picture for my father for his new iPhone, and found these pictures that I took last winter in Vermont after an unusually rapid cold snap. JSP and I walked down the brook, and I took these photos of the unique patterns that such a quick freeze produced.

They Say It's Spring...

This is my favorite house in our fair city (it was the one that had snowdrops while it was still snowing). I think this garden should constitute a community service for keeping the rest of us less depressed.

The Cat is Somehow Less Thrilled Than Expected to Have Me Home on a Week Day

I think my coughing all night disturbed her beauty rest...

Overheard from my Office Window

"Look - everyone is not aware that you're having sex with both of them."

My office is on the third floor, dude. If I know, everyone knows...

Overheard in New York

"What is the difference between an appletini and a French martini?"
"Easy. An appletini tastes like apples. A French martini tastes like French people."

This is what a French martini tastes like:


Or, at least, that's what I think a French martini tastes like. The internet and the woman who Mrs. K and I struck up a conversation with after her "tastes like French people" comment think that it involves pineapple juice and Chambord.

I take the fact that the restaurant we found ourselves in 20 minutes later had the pictured wall of lillet is the universe telling me that I'm right.

Overheard in Boston - late night edition

Even though Ani posted it on Facebook, it is too good not to share:

"Why did a Tibetan nun slap you?"
"Because they are bitches."

Peter Mulvery Lyrics Stuck in my Head

I watched his concert on-line (oh, these amazing internets), and in my tired, dreary, getting over a cold, snowing as we move into April moment, some of his lyrics particularly resonated. So here, in no particular order (videos where I could find them):

• Funny, you never think you're gonna need no Dynamite Bill, 'til someday something happens and you find that you will need Dynamite Bill because you gotta make something go boom.

• Years go by and your thirty-three. It's time for the Cross or the Bhodhi tree. But you'd like to cry when you skin your knee. Man it's hard.

• You will always mean what you mean to me. (BBB, you still do)

• And all will be right with the world down to the dirt on your shoes.

• Some people they go lightly. Some people go heavy as hell.
  

• and she must have missed the road sign that said "from now on nothing will be clear"

• Perhaps it's worth mentioning as I write this song down, I am the happiest fucker alive.

• You my parlor music. You, my kitchen sink. You the barefoot midnight crossing, of you my skating rink. (tragically, I can't find a video, for what I think is the truest love song ever written)
  

• and today the earth is warm, and the blackbirds have returned. And I have heard this one before, and it's beautiful. It's beautiful. Especially the part that we can't quite name, it's beautiful.
  

• These days it's all about the monkeys. (also, sadly no video, but I think that says it all, really)
  

and here's him singing my sister's song.

Carded!

Apparently, one needs to be eighteen or above to purchase expectorant:

Is the act of clearing bronchial passageways somehow illicit? Are productive coughs only for people of voting age? Am I missing some way of getting high off of this?

I looked up the active ingredient, and other than helping me with gout, I can't see any upside (other than helping me sound a bit less like Camille).

For the Right Party?

Though at what sort of party one would wear a gold lamé and knot demo gown, I'm not entirely sure...

Why The Sad Face?

Theatrical Experiences That I Found More Enjoyable Than the Play We Saw Last Night

• A high school production of Anouilh's Antigone, in which the drama teacher, sit-com style, had cast himself as Creon.
• The Hamlet on the Green that featured the To Be Or Not To Be soliloquy performed on a neon green raft floating in the moat that surrounded the stage.
• Brilliant Traces, a play that apparently originally starred Joan Cusack. The production we saw, notably did not star Joan Cusack, and was most memorable for the line "I'm sorry I cooked your shoes."
• An opening night performance of Pericles in which the director opened the show by saying that it wasn't quite ready to perform, so he was going to sit on the side of the stage, and might stop it if he had to...
  
• Leonce and Lena.
  
• A whole semester's worth of a college Performance Art class.
• An all night set strike, load in and electrics change-over. (note, those first two are video links to shows I never worked on)
  

JSP and I finally gave up and walked out about 45 minutes into it. The usher whispered to us that if we left, we wouldn't be able to get back in. When JSP said that it was okay, the usher laughed. Turns out that it's a good thing we left when we did, as there apparently was no intermission.

Orange Spring Things

I took these on Friday when it was 66 degrees and felt for a moment that we had rid ourselves of winter...




And here's a little Josh Ritter to celebrate springtime.

And for those of you who keep track, I didn't have money in my pocket when I heard the first bird of spring, so am doomed to be broke all year...

My Exciting Evening

• pajamas
• cat
• NyQuil
• The Tutors Tudors on Netflix

I need this cold/hay fever/whatever to give me a break already.

* (I had put this in the comments section, but think it should probably be in the post as well) Wow - NyQuil and Jonathan Rhys Meyers left me incapable of correct spelling....I'm home sick today, so more of the same is expected.

** The next day, I went on to type the word "indeering" in an email, so I'm not much better on DayQuil.

Helpful Hints

This actually came up on my computer screen this morning.


(I didn't take the picture that is on my desktop, so I cropped off the ladies' heads - it's a super cute picture though!)

Things That Were Perhaps Ill-Advised

So, on our way from the Lego store, we wandered around the mall for a while and found these in a store window:

Because Che Guevara and Nazi mannequins are obviously an appropriate way to sell yoga pants.

(and for those keeping track, this was not in the 02138 – we have our standards!)

Hmmmm...

I have to assume that this tree was buried under a snow bank until this morning and it's not just someone who is really behind, but who's to say...


It reminds me of the Shel Silverstein poem, that I post here with no permissions whatsoever (but with all credit, respect and love)...

Merry

No one's hangin' stockin's up,
No one's bakin' pie,
No one's lookin' up to see
A new star in the sky.
No one's talkin' brotherhood,
No one's givin' gifts,
And no one loves a Christmas tree
On March the twenty-fifth.

Lego-licious

So, we went on an adventure to the Lego store, and these are some of the things that we found there:









and here is a bin of goblets, pick-axes and handcuffs. What kind of Lego store are they running here?

Things that are Orange

Crazy Things in the News that I Find More Interesting/Disturbing than Charlie Sheen's Implosion

• Dior has suspended John Galliano over his anti-Semitic rant
• Gadhafi thinks that the people of Libya love him
• Even Joe Scarborough thinks that Glenn Beck has gone around the bend

Seriously - is there something in the air this week? And what does Mel Gibson have to say about all of this?

Teachers Who Changed My Life

With all of the nonsense in Wisconsin, I've been thinking about teachers a lot this week. So with that in mind, and in no particular order:

• Mrs. Annettes
• Mr. Corey
• Mr. Daly
• Ms. Knapp
• Mr. Colameco
• Mr. Williams
• Mr. Ritzo
• Richela Renkun
  
• Awam Amkpa
• Leandro Soto
• Jane Crothswaite
• Frank Brownlow
• Leo Damrosh
• Stephen Mitchell
• Jeremy Geidt

So thank you, thank you, thank you. I would not be the person I am now without you. (and there are more - I could go on for days)

Any favorite teachers out there, oh, my seven readers?

Snowdrops in the Snow

Yes Virginia, spring is coming.




I've been listening to Anaïs Mitchell's Hadestown this week and this lyric seemed appropriate for this time of year:

Some flowers bloom when the green grass grows
My praise is not for them
But the one who blooms in the bitter snow
I raise my cup to him (link here)

Things That Please Me

I took this last night on my walk home - you felt like you could reach out and touch the moon...

Things That Please Me

Things That I Don't Care About

• Survivor
• CPAC
• Spiderman: Turn on the emergency exit lights
• Lady Gaga's Madonna rip-off song (didn't like it the first time, don't like it now)
  
• Justin Bieber's views on abortion
• Justin Bieber's views on anything
• Justin Bieber