Friday Cemetery Blogging

Been playing with the photo software again...

Because Babygator asked...

Babygator tagged me to do 10 things a week or so ago. I've not had a chance to do it, even though there has been lots of stuff careening around in my head that I intended to use. Of course, now I can't remember the ones I didn't write down and I don't like the ones I did!

So, here we go -10 things off the top of my head:

1. I hate coffee. In all its many forms and permutations. It's just nasty and it makes you old.

2. I went to bed at 8:30 p.m. last night. Slept all freakin' night long. I had a really bad headache and it was either sleep or throw up. I chose sleep. Rumor has it that there was a prodigious amount of snoring, too, but I'm sure that is a lie from the pit of hell.

3. Jackson keeps asking me what I want for Christmas. I have no idea. I think I am going to be a total Scrooge about Christmas this year.

4. We started doing yoga at work again last week. It is a pale substitute for riding my bike, but I'm getting lazy and it is cold and dark at 7:15 in the morning these days. However, I have to admit, nothing makes me feel as good as yoga and nothing I've ever done has made more of a visible difference in my body than yoga. I don't lose any weight, but it seems to redistribute the lumps in a more pleasing manner.

5. Speaking of yoga, while I was waiting for someone this afternoon, I tested things out. I discovered I could put my foot on top of the filing cabinet without standing on my tip-toes. Flexibility returns!

6. I want to be a tattoo artist. But I want to paint tattoos on canvas instead of people, although, I'd agree to do them on people if I had to. If I ever get sent to prison, I plan to barter with tattoos. Ester's youngest son used to stop by my office for a Sharpie tattoo whenever he came to see his mom. He was my first customer....sigh.... the memories...

7. I'm re-reading Stephen King's Rose Madder. It not one of his better known books, but I really like it. Something to do with the way the painting speaks to the main character, I think.

8. Evil Steve has come out from under the bed. She still does not like Zoe the Poo Machine, but she finally realized that she can smack the hell out of the dog and make her run away crying. Steve it enough of a bully to think that is a good thing. Doofus Archie just ignores her, unless she gets too close.

9. Is it a crime not to take college courses if I can do so for free? Probably so. I should start. But I've had it up to my eyeballs with psychology. Same with sociology. The local U doesn't seem to offer many night courses in Art. Nor do they offer a master's degree in that subject. Maybe I will work on a Master's in English. But I think I will try to do shoddy work and crappy papers. I just want to go and learn, but I don't want to really work at it. I could just audit the courses, but then I wouldn't be working towards a degree and what's the point of that?

10. Am I the only one who gets sort of hypnotized by the action of pen on paper? I love the feel of it, the scratchy sound of it and the way a page full of carefully drawn script looks. I don't do nearly enough pen and paper stuff anymore. I write much, much faster on the computer, but it just isn't the same. And I miss writing letters.

Since you asked...

We had sort of been kicking around the idea of getting a dog. Vaguely. Non-commitally. Uninspiredly.

Then, Jackson had to go and rebuild all our gates last weekend. Dog-proofed 'em while he was at it. Put springs on 'em so the kid with zero short term memory that lives at our house would not let an animal out every time she went through the gate and forgot to close it behind her.

Naturally, the yard was screaming for occupancy at this point.

As for Jackson, he is a semi-reformed pet rescuer. When he worked in Big Flat City he often spent his lunch hour hanging out at the humane society and he always adopted the sick, infirm or socially challenged animals because he felt soooo sorry for them. He's such a marshmallow!

We had sort of planned on adopting a puppy from someone he knows at work, as soon as the puppies were weaned. But on Sunday, Jackson had a relapse. He noticed cars at the local Humane Society when he drove past on his way to the grocery store. They were closed, but he stopped anyway and gave 'em his own puppy dog eyes. They let him in to look at the animals.

He came home empty handed, believe it or not. But he convinced Katie and I we needed to go look at the puppies on Monday after work. Granted, he didn't have to work very hard to convince us. Trust me when I tell you there was no way on God's green earth that Jackson was coming home empty handed a second time.

Katie named her Zoe. She's a some kind of a German Shepard mix. She likes cat food, rawhide and ankle biting. Her talent is crossing the living room floor without falling on her face more than once and she feels like global warming is the most significant challenge facing the next generation.

Evil Steve the Cat? She is SO not impressed...

This is the third time I've taken this test over the last few months...

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

It always comes out the same.

I've always HATED this movie...

Friday Cemetery Blogging

Isn't this a great tomb? I didn't take this photo, my friend Liz in Budapest did. She knew I like mourner statues. Don't you love the cracked stones and the ivy growing out of it? I thought this was really cool. She sent me another gravestone with a mourner. When I saw this one, I thought about something interesting...

In the United States, we have lots of statues in cemeteries, but they are nearly always angels. (With a few snobbishly aloof Jesuses thrown in for good measure.) They are mourning angels that try to look vaguely upset by the absence of the loved one, but they generally succeed only in looking a bit surly or perhaps intestinally disturbed. I can't remember seeing a headstone here that conveys this level of hopelessness or despair. I think it's because generally we Americans don't really believe in death - not really - so we don't want some stone chick perpetually wailing over Aunt Eunice's mouldering remains. It makes us...uncomfortable.

I know there are also characteristics of Hungarian culture that account for the difference as well, but I can't really speak to that. What do you think?

Feeling a bit grumbly after watching the news this morning...

Two Blissfully Unrelated Photos

This is what happens when you spend the evening playing with the photo software. You end up with some crazy-weird photo of a partially dead tree in a cemetery. (Which is a good place for any partially dead thing, I'm thinking. Like zombies and stuff.)





Friday night we went to watch the Coach-in-law's football game. Again. Even though I have been officially banned. (They tend to lose every time I attend a game. They also tend to win every time I'm not there.)

In fact, prior to the game, I was standing next to Jackson along the fence at the edge of the field. As the team came out on to the field, the assistance coach looked over at us. He left the team and ran over to where we were standing. I thought he recognized Jackson and was coming over to say hi. I was partly right. He did recognize Jackson, which means he figured out who I was. As he drew closer, he pointed a long, skinny finger at me and said "You're not supposed to be here!"

Heh.



They won.

Friday Cemetery Blogging

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Random Wednesday Stuffs of Madness

Guess what? My Sunday school teacher wants us to memorize a verse. We all suck at it. I have it memorized well enough that I can finish it if someone starts it. Sad, isn't it? What he doesn't know is that last month when we were studying some stuff in Matthew, I memorized one of the verses from that: Matthew 24:28 "Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather." I think that will come in handy at some point, don't you?

Evidently, prohibition has finally been repealed in Fake Cow County. The resolution passed by 36 votes yesterday. Next year we may consider whether or not to recognize Hawaii as the 50th state.

Really and truly, I love living here. Seriously. It's flat and dry and often ugly, but it is so fabulously weird. The people here are wonderful and deranged and outrageously uptight while being explosively unrepressed. If you've never spent any time here, you are really missing out. In a lot of cases, the wheel is still spinning, but the gerbil is dead. So many of the local gentry are true salt of the earth types, but once you get to know them, you realize how nutty we really are. And what makes us even more fun is that we have no idea that the rest of the world doesn't think exactly the same way we do.

Been a bit tired lately. Winter always cuts down a lot on what I get accomplished. I tend to follow the rhythms of the light. When it's dark outside, it's dark in my house and when it's dark, I sit and read or watch TV or go to bed. When it's light, I work and create and occasionally clean. If I have something really pressing that simply must get done on winter evenings, I have to turn on every light in the house as soon as I get home, so that it never gets dark until I'm finished.

Illumination, when it's artificial, generally makes me crazy. I hate, hate, hate overhead lighting. Despise it. Makes my skin crawl. I have no idea why. Lamps are the way to go. Even it if takes 15 of them to light up your project.

Last night I started to entertain the notion that Doofus Archie had finally met his untimely demise. I assumed he had succumbed to Death-By-Coyote. This morning I went outside to see if my backyard was still there. (It is, despite long neglect.) I heard yowling from the alley and looked up to see Archie threading his way through the gap in the fence. He wallered and yowled all the way across the yard and into the house. Seriously, from the look on his face, I think he'd been lost and forgotten where we live. What a doofus.

Friday Cemetery Blogging

This is what happens when you don't pay the undertaker, I guess.

And before you ask, Jonboy - no, I didn't take this one home with me.