the mullet of jabbings, as it were

i went for my second pfizer vax jab today. there were a lot fewer people going thru the process than were there when i got my first. i mean, it was steady, but no waiting in a line at any point. and the atmosphere was a bit subdued, not the party feel of the first jab. i don't know what upped attendance last time - maybe people were getting firsts and seconds then and only seconds today, or maybe people aren't coming back for the second. at any rate, smaller crowd, more subdued atmosphere and frankly a bit of a letdown. felt like i had been sucked in with the celebration up front, and now it was all business on the back end. the mullet of jabbings, as it were. 

but two jabs are better than one and i am certainly glad i have done it. looking forward to more freedom to go more places, do more things. 

right now, i don't feel tops. lethargic, slight headache, sore arm, shoulder, neck, and scratchy throat, stuffy nose. the lethargy is the worst because it's not just fatigue - it's being tired and being in the mood to do nothing at all. it's one thing to be tired, but this is an altered mood. blaaaaah.

so, just a warning to y'all who haven't gotten all your jabs yet -- bring your best good mood to jab number two!

not even sorry, buster!

i don't like chocolate. 

i mean, i will eat it. i don't hate it. i am not allergic to it, altho my grandmother was. i just don't like it. on the gamut of sweets, i would choose chocolate last. vanilla is okay, better than chocolate, but not the winner either.

the real action starts to happen around the caramel/butterscotch zone. the brown sugar family, as it were. throw me some molasses, honey! or, for that matter, some honey itself will do.

spice cake, pound cake, 

nutmeg in your boiled custard,

chess pie's the best pie -

not even sorry, buster!

i'll take 

brown-sugar-cinnamon 

pop tarts 

any time

and i don't 

even care 

that they mess 

up the rhyme

scheme!

carrot cake, haystacks, 

oatmeal scotchies, snickerdoodles,

pecan pie is second best,

and biscoff? i can eat oodles!

i am also partial to your fruit varietals - strawberry cheesecake, skittles, starburst, sweetarts, necco wafers, jelly beans, and so on, but that's not what this post is about.

just in case

i am a just in case carrier. in my backpack, you'd find the normal essentials like wallet, phone, burt's bees plus the superessentials like pens, nail file, kleenex plus unusual but not outrageous bandaids, dental floss, tylenol plus the sort of random shit that i needed once but didn't have at the time so now i carry it around all the time like one plastic spoon. 

one plastic spoon is not large. it doesn't take up a lot of space, doesn't weigh much. and it's dead useful. you get a yogurt at the airport or the gas station during a road trip, say, and presto, you need a spoon. 

but thing is you rarely need a spoon. and super rarely do you need a spoon and you could not have procured one, say, near the yogurts in the cold case. 

that spoon isn't the huge deal, though. just a plastic spoon. the huge deal is not the spoon. the huge deal is that carrying around a plastic spoon is a bit of a gateway drug to carrying around a pack of cards, warm gloves in the summertime, five pens and two pencils, your contact lens prescription, and a random red plastic whistle that you don't know where it came from but hey it might be useful at some as-yet unknown future point on the space-time continuum. 

so you see the problem, right? one thing leads to another and pretty soon i can't find the spoon when i need it, if i even remember i have it, so i am at the airport eating yogurt with a plastic spoon i picked up next to the cold case where i bought the yogurt and i finish the yogurt and i am on the verge of tossing the spoon with the yogurt container when i think, hey maybe keep the spoon... just in case...

picture pages!

we took our first-round-vaccinated selves on a trip! we wore masks and did our best to not get too close to people and all that. the whole thing felt really safe. well... maybe the amount of ice cream was risky...

anyhoo - i brought you back some pictures!

this is an oil drum rocket from a random gas station where we had to stop because we thought we could make it to sam's but the light came on so we stopped at this random place. 

this is from the tiny town we visited in the foothills of the appalachians. it had some significant steepness! this hill looks less steep in the pic but that's ok because what i wanted to show you is the steps up to the house. they are like alice in wonderland steps - all twists and turns. plus, made of stone. so cool!

this is visible in the previous pic but i wanted to give you a better look at it. it's an elevated sidewalk. what's up with that? so interesting! who decided to build it that way, and why? it goes the length of the street -- maybe a couple tenths of a mile. i did not see any indication that it continues that way on any adjoining streets. i am fascinated by it! problem is, this tiny appalachian-adjacent town doesn't have detailed accounts of artifacts such as elevated sidewalks and their origins. at least, none that i have yet located... i haven't given up.

saw this in the woodcraft shop in the tiny town. look at that red stripe! it's literally red wood! i would have bought it but $145....

this is from a lake we walked around, 3 miles. it's 20 minutes or so from the tiny town. you can see the weather was grey and foggy, and i will tell you it was also like 55°. that's right - my favourite weather! and you know i like hiking and lakes. it was a good day. 

3.14159

that's as much pi as i know. 

now, pie is a different question. 

as far as dessert choices go, given the gamut from which to choose, i'd probably go for a cheesecake, maybe a carrot cake with cream cheese icing. during the season, a claxton fruit cake hits the spot. i do like ice cream... a nice traverse city cherry from kilwins... mmm. but as for pie, i like two: chess pie and pecan pie. (the latter is basically chess pie with nuts.)

when i was a child, i didn't know that chess pie was a southern thing, nor did i know my paternal grandmother (ole sweet) was a chess pie magician. apparently they're difficult to make correctly. who knew?

chess is the pound cake of pies -- butter, sugar, eggs. less flour overall - just in the crust - but same basic ingredients. the thing is that it's difficult to get the consistency right. too custardy and too runny are common. too crystallized is less common and more acceptable, but still not correct. there's a specific consistency for a chess pie that is not only aesthetically pleasing but also texturally comforting. 

chess pie squares mimic the flavour but do not approach the texture. i've never made either, but i am sure the squares are simpler. 

if you have never had chess pie, i pity you. ole sweet is dead, so if you want the best, you'll have to get one from her in the hereafter. 

sunshine steal

this weekend we spring forward which means at 2AM sunday morning, through no fault of its own, an entire hour of time will be erased. ERASED -- as if it had never existed! at 2AM, it will become 3AM. boom. do not pass go, do not collect $200, go straight to oblivion. 

prosecutor, to defendant..: where were you at 2:15AM on sunday, 14 march 2021?

defense attorney: objection! there was no 2:15AM on sunday, 14 march 2021!

judge: suh-stained....

i don't like losing an hour. i prefer the fall-back scenario, where we magically get to spend another hour sleeping. pluslywise, falling back adds daylight to the morningtime. springing forward means it'll be dark again when i get up. i feel like it's just now becoming light when i get up in the morning. 

so it's not a simple thing -- not a 1:1. the hour that's actually removed is the hour of daylight when i am emptying the dishwasher and brewing the caffeine. it's not 2AM that's taken, it's a sunshine steal!

plimsoll joy

we are all standing up for something these days, and in doing so, we are stomping on each others toes. and so, our collective toes ache.

we could get steel-toed shoes to protect our toes, but some of us are all enamored with our current shoes or with looking at our toes themselves -- or (not to be too philosophical, but...) the shoes or the toes are the very thing for which we are standing up. 

it's like this: if i am standing up for bare feet, i do not want steel-toed shoes covering the very thing for which i am standing up. nor do i want your steel-toed toes or any otherclad toes standing on my bare toes. watch it, buddy! i am standing up for bare toes - you stand down!

but, that's the conundrum, innit? who should stand down - that's the question. 

if i am standing up for bare feet, and you are standing up for steel-toed shoes, we are fairly diametrically opposed there, see?

now, on one level, it's fine. it's a notoriously free country. wear shoes. don't wear shoes. it's your choice. live and let live! huzzah!

but when you start stepping on my toes, well then we have a problem, buddy. your freedom is encroaching on my freedom. we all have freedom, sure, sure. but the diametrical freedoms cannot, by definition, coexist. they simply cannot. it's a matter of physics, really. i mean, you are all - protect your toes! and i am like - just gerroff 'em ya big galoot. we can't be at the same place at the same time.

now, i am not talking about purposeful toe-stompers here. purposeful toe-stompers are clearly actively violating other people's space, rights, and freedoms. i am talking about inadvertently stepping on each other's toes.

to complicate the matter further, there aren't strict boundaries between stompers and stompees. some days you do the stomping, some days you are the stomped. steel-toed shoe aficionados can be stomped on and barefooters can stomp. it's not as simple as it looks.

and it's easy to say, if you don't like it - leave! but then who gets to live near the froyo shop? 

pluswise, if you only hang out with other barefooters or other steel-toeders, you are going to miss out completely on the joy of the plimsoll. or... well... the plimsollers will tell you there is joy in the plimsoll... it's not an innate joy, no... i didn't mean to imply that is is an innate joy, okay? so calm down. 

everyone just calm down. 

london in the winter then

in london during summer, it doesn't get dark until like 10, 10:30pm. in the summer where i live, it gets dark about 8:30pm, maybe a little later, and the days seem to go forever. i don't want to think about having an even later sunset. so much daytime! i like my sleep. i guess i will take london in the winter then. 

heli thoughts

a helicopter frequently flies low over our house, and i've been told it belongs to luke bryan. he lives just down the road a piece and he is rich enough to have a heli, so i have no reason to doubt this is his. i don't know if he flies it himself or has a pilot. that wasn't part of what i was told.

i can see the convenience and i feel like it's probably no more risky than a car, but i am just not sure i'd have a heli. i just don't know. 

i do know if i were rich enough to have a heli, i'd have a swimming pool. i love to swim and i don't think it's an overestimation to say i'd be in my pool most every day. clearly, i am rich enough for a heli, so my pool is an indoor/outdoor jobbie where you swim under the plexiglass window to get outside. i'd pay someone to come over and certify me as a lifeguard so i could keep all the kiddos safe.

i'd also have smallish lake big enough to canoe around. i like to canoe and it's good exercise. i would paddle around a while then lay back on the stern deck, put my feet up on the thwarts, and just get some sun. not too much, though, since you can only really comfortably lay on your back in a canoe, and i wouldn't want to be all one-sided.

i'd have a place to play my harmonicas. first, i would have more harmonicas, and second, i would play them more. apparently, i am assuming i am independently wealthy or something, because no one is going to pay me to play my harmonica. i am good, but i am not that good.

one thing i wouldn't worry too much about is having a bunch of televisions everywhere. i mean, one in the gym and one in the family room, but there doesn't need to be a TV in every room. read a book, why dontcha? 

i am not looking for a huge house, but it would be nice to have enough room to have everyone over. to have family or friends spend the night - like, to have guest suites with bathrooms. i might put a TV in the guest suite because that might feel homey, but you are here to visit, so don't be sitting in there all day! it would be nice to have enough space to be able to have people feel comfortable, not crowded. for visitors to have their own space so they don't feel like they are encroaching. maybe put a mini-fridge in the guest suite - and you don't have to pay for what you take out!

pool. lake. harmonica studio. not too many TVs. a place for company to be comfortable.

after i have all that, then maybe i will think about the heli.

this is the sort of thing that makes me want to give up.

 i used to be able to write like an ace. now i suck at it. makes me want to give up. see this for more:

http://bareyellowbulb2.blogspot.com/2013/03/post-fifty-first-2013.html

this book i'm reading

a friend from work invited me to join her book club, so i did. after a couple false starts, i was able to read the book and join the discussion in february. so it's march and we're reading another book and it's got some flaws. 

first of all, it's as if the author believes that L and M are the main two letters names can begin with. libby, lucy, michael, marco, mémé plus then there's a henry jr and henry sr. then she alternately gets fantasticly creative with birdie, phineas, clemency, stella. obviously she has an imagination. i'm telling you, though -- unless libby and lucy turn out to be somehow the same person, it's simply poor form. you're confusing your readers and demonstrating your lack of creativity. 

secondly, the way she's unfolding the mystery is less intriguing than frustrating. it's even like a mystery is unfolding, but more like it's being withheld and parcelled out -- like she doesn't quite have enough mystery to make it to the end, so she's got to be careful how much she gives out. so, it's not a natural development, it's an artificial construct. 

on top of all that, it seems a bit trite. i'm maybe 1/3 of the way in, and what we have so far is a well-to-do british family where the mom has some sort of mental breakdown, invites in some odd/dangerous boarders into the house, and things go downhill from there, culminating in suicides. 

the mystery is, what happened that led up to the suicides. 25 years later, the surviving baby is 25 and, unaware of her origins, inherits the house. the surviving teenagers are (1) narrating in the past tense and (2) destitute in the present. none of them seem to have awareness of the others in any meaningful way. 

so... it's confusing, slow, disjointed, and mechanical. now, in its defense, i have learned some new terms: wolf tone, wooden harboring, and chinese burn. the latter is what we in the states would call an indian burn, altho neither term is politically correct. 

i'll try to remember to let you know how it turns out. 

the baby shower

i had been looking forward to it.

i was invited to a baby shower. it was going to be outside, with safe distances, and people wearing masks. at least, that was what i thought when i RSVP'd, and when i diligently shopped for & found a gently used copy of the 1965 edition of Andrew Henry's Meadow to fulfill the currenlty-very-fashionable practice of asking guests to bring a book instead of a card, and when i carefully crafted then carefully handwrote a heartfelt note on the flyleaf, and when i realized that the book wasn't meant to be the gift - that there would be other gifts - and so i bought something off the registry at target to be shipped to the baby's house, and when i printed the page from the registry to put into an envelope to wrap with the book so that it would be clear i had gotten A Real Gift, and when i wrapped it all in a reusable orange string bag with yellow tissue paper poking out the top like a sunburst, and when i planned to do my taxes in the morning so i could make it to the party in the afternoon, and when i selected an outfit and took a shower and dried my hair and got dressed and in the car and drove over and parked and all the way up to arriving at the decorated concrete driveway with the balloons and cupcakes -- that was what i thought right up until then.

but i was the only one wearing a mask and no one was even pretending to be six feet apart, and i felt alternately like a pariah and like a judgy mcjudgerton, and either way, nobody wanted to talk with me from six feet away, and everyone was all in these really tight groups talking in each other's faces and they were hugging people they never spent any time around, and i finally had to tell the expectant mom that i hoped the party went really well but i had to go.

i think i said something about cognitive dissonance.

so i went to sam's to pick up my zyrtec scrip and everyfreakingbody there was wearing a mask. one guy had his on his chin and one lady had hers hanging from one ear, but everyone else was properly masked up. nobody was too close, everyone was respecting everyone else's personal bubble, and overall it felt much safer than at the baby shower.

i stopped at starbucks for a blonde americano and came home to read my book.

i was really disappointed about the baby shower. i had been looking forward to it. i also felt somewhat betrayed - i had been led to believe it would be safe. these people had put me in the position of being the bad guy - i don't care what anyone says, that's what it is. i left, which means i deemed it unsafe. i judged them and decided they didn't meet my standard. like i am too good for them. or like i am not good enough. either way, it was me that had to be the one to leave, right in front of everyone, but at the same time, trying to be low key because it's not like i had someplace else to be or anything - i just didn't want to be there.

i wish i'd never planned to go at all. i wish i had just dropped off the gift and not acted like i was going to stay. that was the thing - i acted like i was going to stay, and then i had to be like, nope, can't do it. i wished i'd never said i was going to stay at all.

anyway. that's all there is to it.

we'll see how far i get.

tomorrow i plan to do the taxes. we'll see how far i get.

i know it's outdated but i like to do my taxes by hand. i get a cuppa and settle in, download the forms from the IRS and just typpity-type away. i mean, uh... carefully enter precise and well-scoured data. that's what i do, that last thing. 

i always start by pulling out the previous year's as a starting point, and then i gather all the required inputs, and then i download the forms, and then i start filling them out, and then i get about 8 or 9 lines completed, and then i realize i don't have everything i need, and then i realize that it will take several hours or even days to get what i need, and then i get really frustrated and break things. 

so that's my process. we'll see how far i get. 

not sorry

ducky ducky rubber ducky

floating in the tub

someone pulled the drain plug out

glub glub glub 

a million channels and nothing to watch

every truck around here has a trailer hitch

whether it hauls anything or it don't

cause everyone around here wants the top of the line

whether they plan to use it or they don't

it's the sheer number of channels that's to blame. there are so many channels that there is simply not enough quality - or even anything close to quality - to go around. just pages and pages and pages of OMG IT'S THE SAME THING thumbnail after thumbnail just paging and paging through the thumbnails. 

good stuff is incredibly hard to come by. we watched anne with an e, longmire, hell on wheels, blacklist, yellowstone, arrow, queen's gambit, the komisky method, plus most of jane the virgin, some of the 4400, and a metric shit-ton of others i am forgetting. we have recently watched a dozen or so movies - spenser confidential, 6 underground, kodachrome, the highwaymen, the take, fisherman's friends, the fundamentals of caring, homefront, redemption, and who knows what else because who remembers all that -- but they were mostly-good to really-very-good, but that's like a dozen out of a million. oh, and we are watching one right now called behind her eyes. it's pretty creepy in a mysterious good way. 

it's the paging through the pages that just wears you the fock out. you get numb to the excess. blinded by the deluge. can't see the trees for the forest. 

yes, this is obviously a metaphor for life in the states, but we will take your netflix recs, so bring it on.

dr seuss would have understood

read across america is a year-round program of events, resources, and partnerships which was launched by the national education association in 1998 with the goal of encouraging kids and teens to read. in the beginning, read across america was just a one-day celebration. the NEA chose march 2 as the one day to celebrate reading because it is dr seuss's birthday. 

today is read across america 2021, and to celebrate, the organization dedicated to preserving dr seuss's legacy - dr seuss enterprises - announced that six of his books will no longer be publised. woo! happy b-day dr s!!

the reason these books won't be published is that they, according to dr seuss enterprises: "portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong". two of the books on the list were ones that were a big part of my childhood: on beyond zebra and scrambled eggs super. they were read to me, i read them to my younger brothers, i wrote my name in the family copy, and still have those very editions with me. of course, both are missing their covers - WEIRD. don't know how that happened, but the pages are intact and bound, and if you were here, i could take you right to them on the shelf. this morning when i heard they were now VERBOTEN, i took myself right to them on the shelf and picked them up and looked through them and here's my analysis: they are nonsense. the words, that is. in keeping with most of dr seuss, the words are loosely held together by a bit of a plot which is simply a framework from which to hang non-sense words and ludicrous situations. there is nothing offensive about the words, unless you are a stickler that your words not be completely made up out of thin air and comprised of sing-songy rhymes. 

as far as plot goes... on beyond zebra is a twist on the alphabet book. in it a younger boy is learning his alphabet and an older boy shows him the wonders of 20 letters that come after Z. nonsense. scrambled eggs super is - i think? - the same boys. they travel to far flung and obscure places to collect unique eggs for their meal. non. sense. nonnnnnn. sensssssssse. 

the problem is the pictures. dr seuss drew these fantastical illustrations, and there are one or two per book that purport to portray humanness. most everything he draws are animalish beings of which most resemble muppets. the humans are rare, but as is his tendency, he aims for the exotic. unfortunately, what was deemed exotic in 1955, and apparently every day since then up to yesterday, is now racist. 

i know that perceptions change plus people get tired of being inaccurately portrayed plus people get woke. i know all that, and really, you know what? that's life and change and progress and that's all good. all good. what i wonder is why didn't they go about this in a different way. they could have taken the existing books out of print and issued new versions with new illustrations. i realize the words and the pictures together are THE THING - it's a creation the the good doctor created to go together. however, times change and it's time for new illustrations. the existing ones are really tired and horribly outdated. even putting they offensiveness aside, they have a sadness to them that screams 1950s suburbia.

there is a joy to imagining letters beyond Z. there is a whimsy to collecting eggs from odd places. childhood needs joy and whimsy, now more than ever. dr seuss would have understood.

nb255

i have lately been working to organize my home office, which is also now my office office, so i spend a good bit of time in there. for years it has also been a sort of catch-all room. like the junk drawer in the kitchen, it's actually filled with useful stuff, but everything has been all jumbled in there together. 

i get uncomfortable in a cluttered room. it makes me anxious. i have been coping these past months... er, this past year! by just staring at the people on the screen and doing my work, then leaving the room. there is just so long you can ignore all that tho. so, i got some paper trays for the paper and some decorative storage boxes for the keepsakes and have been generally sorting and straightening. 

one of the things i ran across is the toshiba netbook i used to pound out everything from bill payments to blog entries to old navy orders. hey, little buddy! it's a toshiba nb255, which apparently was introduced in 2010. a few years ago, windows was bogging it down so badly, i installed peppermint, a lightweight linux. i don't know why i gave it up... not exactly... i mean, i started using my laptop from work to pay the bills and this little buddy is pretty slow at loading web pages. but it seems to work fine for blogging - much better than typpie typing on my phone. 

welcome back, nb255. i kind of missed you!