The Lynnster Zone

The Lynnster Zone Has MOVED

2006-12-23T05:29:00.000-06:00

The Lynnster Zone has now moved to: http://thelynnsterzone.com/

Please update any blogrolls, links, and bookmarks to point to the new site when you can.

I am changing the feed over right now.

Your feed will not be affected if you subscribed via the Feedburner feed.

If you subscribed more than a couple of months or so ago and subscribed via the old feeds rather than the Feedburner feed, you may need to resubscribe.

See you at my new home!

To Be or Not to Be Sick

2006-12-22T19:24:00.000-06:00

You know that feeling you get when you're not really sick yet and your throat's not sore yet and your head's not feeling bad yet, but you feel kind of funky like you're about to get sick like that? Yeah.

Um, I do not have time to be sick this weekend and short of being on my deathbed, I have to go to Chattanooga on Sunday, sick or no.

I'm achy all over too, which I thought was a byproduct of all the mad desperation shopping yesterday (well, and falling asleep in the chair again), but now I'm not so sure. In any case, I AM sleeping in my bed tonight and until I feel like getting up. Hopefully that's all I need and all this ooky feeling will be gone tomorrow. Fingers crossed...

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Bad News for Westerberg Fans

2006-12-22T19:13:00.000-06:00

Some bad news for Paul Westerberg and Replacements fans today, good reason to be a little down in the dumps. Paul suffered a massive hand injury, and it's speculated that he may not be able to play guitar for a year.

I'm guessing we can probably hang up hopes for a 2007 tour now. Hope that hand heals swiftly and without complications though, that's got to hurt like crap. And just days before not only Christmas but Paul's 46th birthday upcoming on New Year's Eve.

(Hat tip to Frank at Left of the Dial for sharing the scoop)

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The Song Is Over

2006-12-22T18:00:00.000-06:00

I was reading much of the blog commentary around about the closing of Tower Records in Nashville today, and just watched Brittney's spot about it on News 2's broadcast. I guess it's because age is a relative thing, especially when you've been away from somewhere for a number of years, but since Tower didn't exist in Nashville when I lived in the area, the concept of it being an "institution" bemuses me. Then again, I've also been away from Middle Tennessee almost 19 years exactly, so I'm certainly dating myself with that fact.

You pretty much went to Cat's back in the days when I was there, although there were a couple of cool small indie shops in Nashville and the 'Boro in the mid-'80s. But lack of inventory was a problem in the smaller shops and I was usually hunting obscure stuff which could often be found in the bins at Cat's, so there I pretty much lived when I was in college, especially the one in Murfreesboro.

In 1989, when Cat's set up shop in Memphis and I was back in college again briefly, I talked my way into a job and was part of the group of first Cat's employees in Memphis, and was also part of the group that opened up the flagship store on Union Avenue. Those were some fun days and I worked with an awesome group of folks (including one of Memphis' top Elvis impersonators, no lie), a couple of whom I am still in touch with today.

Because of our proximity to downtown as well as Ardent and Sun Studios and the smaller studios, you never knew who might pop in to shop. The most gracious to ever drop by during my shifts were guitarist Steve Vai, and longtime Buffett sideman Greg "Fingers" Taylor (who kindly signed an autograph for my Parrothead mom that's still in a frame in her house today). The worst ever? No contest - New Kids on the Block Jordan Knight and Donnie Wahlberg. It was the height of the group's heyday and they were just, sadly, total jerks.

I remember when the plans were announced for Tower in Nashville and thinking, "Well, that'll be neat." I'd been to the legendary Tower store in L.A. in 1979, and the already musically-addicted me had been wildly impressed. Like, "Wow, this is a REAL record store."

Now Tower's closed in Nashville; I'm not familiar with the state of the other longtime stores (though I'm sure some of you will inform me). Most of the Cat's stores in Memphis have closed, and the once-great flagship store that my own blood, sweat and tears helped put together is now a shell (and a very small one) of itself. Even the legendary Pop Tunes out on Summer Avenue is now gone, and it kind of disturbs me, if I'm driving out the way in the evening, not to see that great big huge round sign out there and all lit up.

To everything there is a season, I suppose. We were already starting to phase out the vinyl when we opened the flagship Cat's store in 1989. My young future brothers-in-law, both in their twenties, have never known what it's like to open up the cellophane and take out a bright, shiny new and unscratched, black vinyl disc and pop it on the record player; nor do they know how to tell when a needle's going bad and needs replacing, or any of those things. CDs - those things they lied to us about way back when, saying they would last forever and were darn near impossible to damage - are probably going to be around a fair amount longer, but they're almost passe' now as it is as well.

I practically grew up in a record store, the one around the corner from my family's drug store. From the time I was three years old on, I was in there constantly until we moved to another town in junior high. The owner was an older man and longtime musician who knew my family well; his several sons worked there, as well as many other men ranging in age from teenage to older. They were always nothing but gracious and patient with me, even though I was a dumb little kid and they probably didn't want to be hassled dealing with me and my dollar or five dollar purchases all the time.

Or maybe they - at least some of them - took some pride in helping to shape what would eventually be my musical tastes. Along with my father and various experiences, those music store guys, and others later in other stores and other towns, were definitely influences as much as anyone. All the discussions about music of all kinds, and the hundreds of times I would wind up walking out with whatever was playing in the store. Definitely a big influence, and I would hope that in my relatively brief record store career, maybe I occasionally influenced someone else.

And I think that's what kind of makes me sad about seeing traditional record stores fall by the wayside. You're not going to learn the kinds of things I learned over the years hanging out in record stores by shopping iTunes and the like. That experience is all but gone now, and while high technology in the modern day certainly has its advantages, I think it's a little bit of a shame that most future music fans won't really have that experience, that kind of personal influence.

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Back in the Christmas Groove

2006-12-22T14:45:00.000-06:00

Hey, all you good and wonderful people. I am OK. I was out of the house for over 8 hours yesterday, what with the office Christmas party and desperation shopping, since I haven't been able to do any. The good news is I do not have to go out to ANY more stores. I have a little online shopping that I was planning anyway to do tonight or tomorrow, and once that's done, I am finished except for the wrapping. Or I should say in my case, bagging.

I noted on another blog this morning (sorry, it now escapes me where I saw it - I got so behind being gone yesterday, catching up today has been a blur) the theory that gift bags did not make things as Christmas-y as wrapping up presents one gets to tear into. While I do totally see the point, I gotta say gift bags are the best thing that ever came along for someone like me.

You see, much like I was born missing the gardening gene, sewing gene, and housecleaning gene, I also apparently am missing the giftwrap gene. I am like the world's absolute worst present wrapper EVER. Every once in a while, I'll wrap one that doesn't come out looking just plain pitiful, but even those have inevitable problems. I'm just not good at it.

Not even working at the giftwrap counter of my godmother's gift shop for a couple of Christmases and one graduation season helped. I learned to do those just well enough to be passable. Most boxes were in one of three sizes, so it was repetitive enough I could make them look like something besides something your retarded 2-year-old cousin might wrap. But I just have never been very good at it. No, that's an understatement; I'm not good at it at ALL. Give me a roll of wrapping papers, scissors, and tape, and soon there will be a disaster of epic proportions.

Nowadays, with the widespread sale of gift bags and cute little gift boxes, I'll go out of my way to not have to wrap something traditionally. Right now I have one thing that can't be bagged, though if I had a bag big enough, you can bet it would be bagged too.

In any case - yep, like the gardening, sewing, and housecleaning gene, I am most assuredly missing the giftwrap gene as well. I can cook, however, so I guess that makes me not an 100% poor excuse for a female.

On another note, I do appreciate everyone's kind words and worry this week. The stress over not being able to shop for Christmas, all the huge expenses, and the inability to sleep almost got added to yesterday when it appeared my Christmas bonus for this year had gone missing, but it turned up, much to my relief.

Health-wise, honestly, I think I'm okay, I just need several days with not so much to do and plenty of opportunity for several good night's sleeps. I have habitually overworked myself on a regular basis for some time now, averaging 60-80 hour work weeks for a very long time, and that coupled with all the recent stress plus some other stressors I haven't blogged about, I think I just managed to hit the proverbial brick wall with both stress and exhaustion. Unfortunately the next couple of days are going to be hectic preparing some more for the holiday and getting out of town, and getting ready to go out of town.

But tonight I have an opportunity for a good night's sleep - maybe two nights in a row if I can get ahead on all the stuff I need to do before Sunday morning - and I only work two days next week. So my plan is when I get back in town next week, I'm going to pick up some melatonin at McSmiley's previous suggestion, try to avoid taking on much freelance work next week, and just try to chill out and rest and recuperate.

And if that doesn't work, then maybe I'll head up to N-town and let Hutchmo and Mrs. Hutch bring me back to good health with peace and quiet, decaf, and danishes. Well, maybe I'll do that anyway. Mmmm... cheese danish!

But I promise if things don't get better soon, I will see someone with a medical degree for real so y'all can all stop worrying. You are all sweet and wonderful good folks. I may have worked for and with doctors most of my life, but I don't like to see 'em unless absolutely necessary!

Back to finishing the day and hopefully making some headway on projects, catching up, and must-do's tonight and tomorrow as well as sleep. Hope everyone is having a good Friday and not suffering pre-holiday stress. I am most thankful to have gotten that shopping out of the way even though it liked to have killed me doing it all at once yesterday like that - one less thing to worry about!

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Christmas, No!

2006-12-21T06:59:00.000-06:00

I think I will just stay insane from now 'til Sunday.

I fell asleep AGAIN! And at the desk once again, and my left shoulder now won't move (well, without an EXTREME amount of pain) from being all crunched up in the chair all night long.

I am so screwed. I'm trying to get some freelance work done right now with a deadline this morning (which I should be able to finish in plenty of time), but then I've got to get a number of things together so I can be prepared for some desperation shopping this afternoon, and have to be ready to leave the house in plenty of time later this morning for more REAL desperation shopping this morning for the office Christmas luncheon. This is the second year in a row they have scheduled that on my day off, makes me so happy.

I wish I had gotten some REAL sleep and in bed last night, 'cos by the time I get done running around today and get back home I may be comatose. And I really, really, really need to do some more stuff tonight. There is SO much that needs to be done before Sunday.

I'm OK with not canceling Christmas, but can we just delay it another week? Ugh, ugh, ugh.

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Christmas Is Making Me A Crazy Person

2006-12-20T04:55:00.000-06:00

There is so much I want to get done before leaving town for the holiday, but right now I'm my own worst enemy. Not only has there been all this stressful junk, but I'm not doing myself any favors by my inability to stay awake when I need to (and, thus, inability to go to sleep when I should). I had one of those "oh, let me just close my eyes for an hour or so" moments last night, which was a stupid move, because I know how that story is going to end every time. Sure enough, seven hours of time I could have gotten all kinds of stuff done later, I woke up.

Granted, I know I need the sleep, but this isn't even "real" sleep. It's waking up every half hour thinking I need to get up and do something, but being too still asleep to fully wake myself back up. And in the most uncomfortable chair!! The chair at my desk is terrible, I really need a new one. I think I've slept in my bed twice in the past almost three weeks. Maybe three times. It's pretty ridiculous.

Thursday is my day off, which would be great except I can't sleep in because my department's Christmas party is that day. But I am aiming to at least get some slightly significant amount of sleep, in my own bed, tonight at some point.

Since I fell asleep, I didn't get around to calling my mom last night so she is still blissfully unaware of the bank brouhaha. I'll call her today, I should have called her last night anyway because a family member had outpatient surgery yesterday and I was supposed to pass along the resulting info.

I'm definitely not really myself right now (which is good, since maybe that means I'll stop griping and bitching eventually) and very much operating on autopilot. I think I am getting most of what needs to be done on a daily basis done (well, except a couple of things that had to be delayed due to lack of transportation but I'll be taking care of those Thursday). But I am concerned that I'm forgetting something, like I forgot to pay an important bill or some such. I know I paid the IRS (greedy #$%!@%!s - the self-employment penalties on the freelance work are horrendous as well as unfair) their monthly payment this month, though, so I guess as long as I know I did that, the rest is not that significant.

Wendell, I do appreciate the vote of confidence RE the Christmas shopping problem but I am pretty much screwed all the same. I don't get paid 'til the 21st, which is the same day as my department's Christmas party, so I have no choice but to get up way earlier than I want to and do some desperation shopping that morning. And the money from the bank deposit brouhaha won't clear 'til the 22nd. I can't even start shopping until Thursday afternoon, really, and I despise shopping anyway. Usually by now I've done most of my shopping online and am at least close to finishing, and here this year I have all of ONE present bought. I'm going to try real hard to just bite the bullet and do everything possible Thursday afternoon so my days of misery not only shopping but having to do ALL at once won't be extended any more days than possible.

I know, bitch, bitch, bitch. But this year and this situation has really kind of broken my heart about Christmas this year. And I know Christmas isn't really about the presents anyway. But my family, we make a huge deal of Christmas every year. Our Christmases are fun, you won't see nothing but socks and underwear and ties and sweaters in a gift box. Well, you might, if that's something someone wanted and needed, but generally we all give each other (A) stuff we really want, (B) stuff that's neat and cool, and (C) stuff that's picked out especially and specifically for us.

And this year I'm probably just going to have to give everyone gift cards or gift certificates or something, because there is just no time left. I know that's a perfectly fine gift in the long run, but that's just not really me and I don't like having to do that.

I also always experience a fair amount of hyperactive anxiety when having to travel, even if it's just overnight. It'll take me three hours at a minimum on Sunday to be ready to leave, actually probably four, and it'll be horrible, and once I get on the road everything will be fine. But everything up to that will be nail-biting and cussing under my breath from Saturday night on. (And if I don't get any sleep between now and then, it will no doubt be worse.) I don't do well with this, and this is certainly one thing I miss about sharing a home with another person, because when there was someone else to do some of that stuff, it wasn't nearly so overwhelming.

Oh shit, I haven't reserved the rental car yet. Must do that too. Crap, one more thing that has to be done. I know I'm forgetting something.

And I know everything will be fine once Christmas Eve is here and I'm where I gotta go. All this craziness lately and no sleep has turned me into a neurotic batch of nerves, and that also is just not usually me. I hope that once all this is over and Christmas has passed and I'm back home and can maybe possibly get back into some semblance of a normal routine again that I will turn back into my normal, less whiny and bitchy and gripey and sometimes funny, self again and everything will be just peachy. Maybe?

On a much happier note, the Lynnster & Momster Post-Christmas Meet-and-Greet Tour is shaping up to be a fun event. Looks like I'll be stopping on the mountain to say hi to CeeElCee for a few minutes, then onto Rutherford County for a quick coffee klatsch or something with KathyT and Ivy, then on into Nashville. Not sure yet about the status of the Mothership that day, on the day after Christmas (I'd be closed if it were up to me) but it would appear that Sista will be in West Nashville anyway, so we are probably going to attempt to meet somewhere out thataway and anyone else who wants to join us, that'd be cool, I'd love to see anyone but since there's probably no BBQ in my future next week we'll probably just settle for the Barrel or something at one of the exits on I-40W. I wish I had more quality time to spend that day to really hang out with folks, but we are going to be on a tight schedule to get on back to West Tennessee; however, as I said, I'm planning to come on back in January or February and predict there will be BBQ in my future when I do, so if not this time, hopefully I can meet up with some more folks next time, and drag Newscoma with me when I do.

OK, enough of me, over and out. Oh, and go check this out at Jag's, it's funny!

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Christmas, Wow

2006-12-19T14:45:00.000-06:00

OK, I should probably know by now that just about the time everything seems to be on the fast track to hell in a handbasket, something good might happen, but this was just plain weird.

No sooner had I even hit the publish button on that last whiny post when my doorbell rang. I might not have even actually hit the button yet.

Turned out to be the FedEx man bearing completely unexpected gifts from one of the companies I do freelance work for. Turned out to be a couple of Amazon gift certificates and another little gift. What a trip.

I had just started doing work for them right before Christmas last year, so I had no idea this was coming. The gift certificates are not that big and not enough for me to do most of my shopping on, but gosh, nice gift. And something that unexpected is always neat.

I'm certainly still frustrated about all the other, but this was a nice pick-me-up, for sure.

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Yeah, Merry Christmas to You, Too

2006-12-19T13:33:00.000-06:00

The grinch has totally stolen my Christmas, I am defeated, and I give up. Until pay day anyway (Thursday), when I will have to go running around town like a chicken with my head cut off to be at all prepared for Christmas and right now, if I could, I'd cancel it. The Lynnster Zone (online and off) would be a Christmas-free zone this year.

I won't bore you all with all the details since some of the primary points are rehashes of the past three or so weeks, but the brief recap leading up to this would go a little like this: Too much work to do, car dead, more disasters trying to get car fixed, other car dies, car costs a small fortune to fix, Lynnster doesn't sleep for three weeks. No money, no transportation = no Christmas shopping.

Christmas score right now is I have ONE present bought, and some stocking stuffers.

So, my Mom, good soul that she is, sends me a second check on top of the one she already sent last week, since after writing that gargantuan auto repair check Friday, I had bills yet unpaid as well as no Christmas shopping done and, you know, great Scott, we have to leave in five days for Chattanooga for Christmas. I ran out to the bank yesterday morning immediately to get the deposit in so it would process overnight, in hopes I could do a little shopping tonight after work. Not only are we leaving in five days, but my department's Christmas party is Thursday.

Today, I get a notice in the mail from my bank that the check is being held until Friday.

Absolutely furious as not only have I had an account with this bank for 20 years, nor have they ever held any regular deposit, but they have processed probably hundreds of my mother's checks into my account and thousands of dollars' worth over that 20 years, I call. Spitting nails and ready to chew someone up and spit them out.

It turns out that my mother's bank is no longer verifying checks automatically for my bank, so that's why the hold for verification. Technically, it's my mom's bank's fault.

I'm not going to call her 'til later to tell her about it, no point in ruining both our days.

I think I would sleep 'til after Christmas if I could at this point. I do apologize for all the bitching and moaning of late, it has just been four million and one things after another lately. I'm not looking for sympathy and nobody need feel compelled to comment, just venting so I won't go put my fist through the nearest wall. Grrr. Maybe my Christmas present to myself this year should be a punching bag.

PS Just heard from the mechanic as I was getting ready to post this. My other car will cost a real fortune to fix, looks like I'm selling it for junk or whatever. Good and bad, really, but right now I just don't really care anyway. Blah.

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Good Food, Good Friends, LOTS O' Laughs

2006-12-19T03:46:00.000-06:00

Y'all are just going to have to excuse me and John H for a bit, as our newfound mutual admiration society is liable to make others want to throw up for a while. But we just had so much fun last night out to dinner with our mutual friend here in Memphis, Phil - who, two weeks ago, we had no idea the other even knew - I know I'm just positively gushing about what a great guy he is. No wonder he attracts such fabulous blogwives and has other lovely bloggers simply smitten. What a great guy! Oh, I already said that, oops.

I had to get more dressed up than initially planned 'cos I learned earlier in the day a former co-worker had had a family member pass away, so I made a quick stop at the funeral home to pay respects on the way down to the historic Cooper-Young neighborhood, where we were all meeting. Cafe Ole' is my fave Mexican restaurant in town and I've probably eaten there a couple hundred times since the first week it opened years and years ago, so that turned out to be an excellent choice.

The Hutchmo was waiting outside on the sidewalk, and it might well be that I walked on inside when I first got there without stopping because the guy on the sidewalk looked much too young at a glance to be who I was looking for. Seriously! And he has been far too kind and complimentary towards moi (I should have shown up in my daily work uniform of t-shirt and sweats - shorts in summer - bare feet, no makeup, and glasses, heh). In any case, we were both later bitching about how our friend Phil, who I've known about 15 years and John has known nearly as long, has not changed an iota since either of us first met him. He looks EXACTLY the same, it's almost scary how much.

Anyway, we had a fine time, the wait staff probably hates us since we sat there for well over four hours, and I just laughed and laughed and laughed. The two of them were hysterical together, and contrary to rumor, they weren't monopolizing the conversation and I did get several words in edgewise between giggles. Really I was just happy to be up and walking and talking at all seeing as how in three weeks I still haven't slept but just a little bit, so being able to form a coherent sentence at all and not look totally like some zombie out of Night of the Living Dead was sort of an achievement anyway.

I think John and I were dying to talk about music and blogging and bloggers and some other stuff we didn't want to bore Phil with (which doesn't explain why Phil and I probably bored him to death with legends and tales of our nutty crew here in Memphis), but that's okay, there'll be other opportunities, especially since I intend to miss no more Nashville blogger meet-ups/meat-ups. I think we did all three manage to get into a fair amount of technocomputergeekbabble, which would probably have bored anyone else within earshot but we dug it. The group of friends down here in Memphis used to tell lots of blonde jokes at my expense back in the day, but my not-so-secret weapon in defense was the fact that I could take apart and put back together and redo a computer just as fast or faster as any of those techguys I hung out with.

In any case, it was a great evening, was more like meeting an old friend than a new one (which I'm sure is going to be the case often the more other bloggers I meet), and I thoroughly enjoyed the good company and the laughs. Thanks for hanging out with us, John!

I was also happy to have gotten in and out of Cooper-Young without having even looked in the windows of the House of Mews, which is a cat adoption place down there. I have frequently looked in the windows, but even though it's been open many, many years, I have never set foot in there and only been near it when it's closed. I know better, I would be wanting to walk out of there with 15 more cats to go along with the too many I already have. Well, I would grab another one or two to take and give to Sista because you know how much she loves cats.

So now on to hopefully meet up with some more fabulous bloggers in the coming weeks and months! It's starting to look like the Lynnster Christmas Tour (with the Momster in tow, but she's like really cool) may be making some quick but quality time stops at several exits dotting I-24 and I-40 on the way back west from Chattanooga the day after Christmas, unless the Mothership just happens to be open, and then again sometime in January somewhere in West Tennessee. But definitely planning on getting back up Nashville way and just hanging out for a day or two after the holiday madness, and not missing another big meet for sure. So maybe see you then, or see you later, I hope!

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Miscellaneous - Blogs, Fleas, Teeth, & Hutch

2006-12-18T08:58:00.000-06:00

Well, first of all, the new and improved Lynnster Zone's opening is going to be delayed just a little bit longer as I ran into a snag. That snag being that I crashed and fell asleep much of last night, without meaning to. Oops.

I'm kind of irritated about not getting further along yesterday evening but ehhh, it'll get done when it gets done. Hopefully by Wednesday at the latest I can switch my feed and everything else to point to the new blog. I could do that now, but as mentioned earlier, you can't tag posts over there without a full edit and my feed would be updating 300+ more times (whether now or later) without really being an update and you'd all and everyone at NIT would be pissed, so I'm going to do that first and that way it's done and nobody wants to beat my head in.

Anyone who's subscribed to the feed via Feedburner won't have to change a thing, once the new feed's ready to go I'll swap it and you'll never know the difference. I think most are probably subscribed via Feedburner no matter what reader platform you're using, but if by chance you subscribed a long time ago via the regular Atom/RSS feeds, you'll need to update the feed when I open up the new blog.

If you're reading/feeding on the LiveJournal mirror nothing will change, though I don't know why you would be reading over there instead regularly anyway. I mean you can if you want, but I don't pay much attention to the LJ blog other than transferring new posts over there. (That said, I guess if you're reading via feed it doesn't make much difference, but I do occasionally post stuff on the "main" blog that doesn't get put on the LJ mirror, and besides, the new blog is going to be way cooler anyhow.)

And Margaret, even though the new blog is sort of colorful, the content text is on a white background so I think you'll be OK with it!

So, fleas. I appreciate all the sympathy. The reason I am so pissed about it is because I have made a huge effort to keep us flea-free for years and other than one I stamped out super quick when the puppies were babies, we haven't really had an outbreak of fleas in probably 10 years. When my ex still lived here we used to fight the fleas with little success every year and it was just miserable, for us and the pets, and once veterinary medicine started coming out with all the modern flea stuff that was a lifesaver.

In fact, I have had such good luck with the topical flea crap that for the last several years, I have been able to get by flea-free with only dosing the dogs, don't even have to treat the cats 'cos treating the dogs keeps them gone. Our usual flea season is from March or April to October - usually once it starts freezing, the threat disappears - and never in the last several years anyway have I had to treat them after October. 'til now!!! So I'm pissed.

But what I guess I didn't count on and think about was some of my immediate neighbors have acquired new dogs recently - on both sides of my house, matter of fact - so I figure that's where the fleas came from, traveling over to my yard. Really I'm doubly pissed at myself because I really should have thought of that and prepared thusly.

I hope I see some signs of them going away before I leave for Christmas. Lulu's already missing huge patches of hair on her haunches from scratching (which I didn't notice 'til the other day either, bad mom that I am), and Dobie's got a spot that Petey alerted me to also. But I didn't really notice any of the pups scratching nor the cats 'til yesterday either so I'm hoping I have caught this outbreak early. I hate fleas, I hate 'em, I hate 'em!

And Contrary, I love you, and I realize fleas contribute to your salary and living wage; but my friend, you are a SADIST. Heh. I might forgive you for liking fleas if you will send tapeworm killer if THAT happens too. Ugh, I hate tapeworms fifty billion thousand times more than fleas. (And yes, folks, that's how dogs and cats often get tapeworms is by ingesting fleas when they're chewing due to the itching.)

Anyway, yes. Fleas bad. Bad, bad, bad.

Broken tooth again also bad. That's a post/slash/rant for another time but the Cliffs Notes version is I inherited my father's bad teeth and those thousands of dollars spent on my mouth for orthodontia as a teenager was just wasted money. My teeth are breaking at an alarming rate and there is, no doubt, thousands of dollars in dental work in my future. Now it's one of my front teeth again and I'm so pissed about it.

This is payback and karma, I'm sure, for my horrified commentary back when the documentary on the West Memphis 3 premiered on HBO , when I bitched about how the majority of people they interviewed had no teeth and thousands of people were going to not know the difference between West Memphis and Memphis, and would assume we have no teeth either on this side of the Mississippi River. In fact, I was rather involved in a certain Usenet newsgroup at the time and spent a good bit of effort explaining the difference between West Memphis, Arkansas, and Memphis, Tennessee for a while after that documentary was broadcast. And now my teeth are falling apart and it's payback. And traumatizing, since I have always been kind of funny about my teeth, but the double digit thousands it's probably going to cost to put my mouth back together is lots more traumatizing. Bad, bad, bad.

So what's good? What's GREAT is that I am having dinner with and get to enjoy the company of the famous, awesome, and irascible Hutchmo tonight, along with our mutual friend here in Mempho. That was just freaky to find that he not only knew and was friends with someone I know here in Memphis, but it's someone I have known and been good friends with for 15+ years!!! That was just wild, and wonderful.

So dinner this evening is going to be a blast and I'm totally excited about it. Except since they are both really hilarious, I fear I may need to tape up my ribs before leaving the house, 'cos I've probably only got like two or three ribs left to fracture from laughing so much the past week over McSmiley's 12 Days of Christmas. Actually just one now as today's entry has now fractured what was left.

Next on the agenda is meeting up with Newscoma either here or there in January probably, and I'm definitely plotting a trip to Nashville in January or February hoping to hang out with some of the rest of the bloggers and say hey. Also, if anyone's free around lunchtime the day after Christmas, I might be able to stop on the way back from Chattanooga - any takers? Sista, you free the day after? No ideas where, I bet the Mothership won't be open the day after Christmas, but if it is, a stop in Berry Hill is probably definitely in order. Or perhaps a stop Sewanee if Smiley and the belle will be there? Maybe a quick stop for coffee in Rutherford County too? So many places to go and people to see, it'll be like being on tour, whoa. Later!

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Fleas!!!

2006-12-17T12:37:00.000-06:00

I am taking a momentary break from all this blog moving nonsense to scream.

Dogs aren't supposed to have fleas in December!!!

AUGH.

Happy I am not.

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On the Horizon

2006-12-17T07:41:00.000-06:00

I am working super hard trying to get what I think is going to be the new and much improved Lynnster Zone up and going today. There would be only some fairly insignificant tweaking to be done, but the biggest snag is that while WP makes it really easy to import old entries (I'm having to move my LJ posts instead of the Blogger ones 'cos of you know what not working), you have to edit posts to categorize them. So I'm trying to do that as I move months over, because if I start categorizing/editing a few hundred posts later on, everyone at NIT and everyone who is subscribed to my feed is going to kill me. So basically, I'm busting my butt today for your benefit. Heh heh.

I know I don't HAVE to move all the old posts nor do I HAVE to tag them. I could just link back to here. But I'm a completionist (completist? hell if I know) and anal retentive about that kind of junk and it will drive me crazy not to do it. If I leave them I'll want to do it later and you'll all kill me when the feed goes crazy.

So once it's done it should be all spiffied up, and has got a whole lot of really cool bells and whistles and I gotta say I am super happy with WP. Depending on how much I get done today (since I stupidly took on some work for the weekend, which I know better than to do, ever), it might not be 100% complete but should be mostly. And it's pink, and that makes me happy. But I promise it's not in-your-face pink really. I think it's pretty cool and not overly obnoxiously pink. Fuschia, magenta, whatever.

OK back to work. Will post when done and ready...

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Memo to Self

2006-12-16T14:32:00.000-06:00

Note to self: When another blogger calls you and says they hope they're not disturbing you, it is perfectly A-OK to say, "Oh, no, not at all. I just was blogging."

(As opposed to when most family or non-bloggers call, who would likely respond, "Huh? You were WHAT?")

Things I do - or don't do - really puzzle me sometimes. The switch in my brain is forever on delayed response. Heh. :)

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Movin' Out

2006-12-16T14:02:00.000-06:00

Ah... I always knew there was a good reason to hang onto and mirror post to my LiveJournal blog.

That thing that rhymes with theta? It doesn't work with WP's importer (surprise, surprise).

But LJ's does!!!

Transformation should be complete fairly soon (at least before the weekend's over). Stay tuned.

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Strange Days (Slight Return)

2006-12-16T13:08:00.000-06:00

Weird stuff:

My Blogger post editor has suddenly gone all wacko.

REALLY weird - I was listening to the Last.fm player, and a remake of my fave Cheap Trick of all time, "Downed", came on, done by Guided By Voices. Because I am like completely ADD about most things, I hit the next button and missed the rest of it. (Strangely, I can't find this on MP3 on any of the zillions of services I'm subscribed to.)

Well, anyway, after making those rounds searching for that, about ten minutes later I turned the Last.fm player back on and what was the next track up? "Downed", by Cheap Trick. Eerie.

Not weird but cool:

I am giving you sorta-music-inclined folks a present today. Even if you think you don't like The Vines, go download "Rainfall" anyway and listen to it. (If you already knew what a thing of beauty this is, go listen to it anyway.)

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Tee Hee

2006-12-16T12:26:00.000-06:00

(giggle)...

That made my day, totally! Smiley's magic, he somehow psychically knew I could use an extra giggle today, I think.

Now, I really must be off to see what Britney Spears has been up to the past 24 hours.

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River Deep, Mountain High

2006-12-16T12:23:00.000-06:00

While catching up on all the commentary and tons of great photos following the Nashville blogging community's Holiday Blogger Meat-Up at the Mothership last weekend, it quickly became obvious to this reader that one young man had definitely made a big impression on the ladies. So much so, in fact, that his mom was later seen apologizing for him getting, shall we say, a little handy in the boob department with some of those smitten females, heh. He really is one of the most adorable little round headed babies ever.

Anyhow, all that hangin' out with precious little babies stirred up a little motherly instinct and baby lust in some who attended, discussed earlier this week (I'll not repeat where since she was having second thoughts about posting such stuff as it was :) - which I should probably be having second thoughts about right about now myself). But I can't really say that I didn't get a little of that myself just looking at pictures of all the cuteness. Babies and children are adorable, no doubt.

And in recent weeks elsewhere at another spot I hang out a lot, there had been some questions posed about one's reasons to have kids or not, which I didn't really get involved in at the time. But I'd been thinking about that stuff anyway - and listening to the biological clock I used to be pretty sure was broken ticking - for a while now.

One important thing about all this is that originally, kids were never NOT supposed to be in the picture. I grew up fully expecting I'd have kids someday and never thinking anything different. Arguing with my mom on dozens of occasions when there was resistance to whatever teenage scheme I was trying to push and get permission for, I got told time and time again that I'd understand when I had kids of my own.

But that day never came, even though at one time, it was most definitely supposed to.

Though I have not lived in a small town in over 20 years, somewhere deep down in this jaded city dweller's heart, I am still a small town girl. There was a small number of us that left for college elsewhere after high school, though several of those that left did eventually return. Most of my friends and acquaintances, however, are still there and never left.

Consequently, when I find myself back home, two things always happen: one, I'm reminded that they all think I'm crazy to have stayed in Memphis. I think this is just me, rather than others who left town years ago - if I'd remained in Murfreesboro/Nashville instead or gone permanently to Knoxville/Maryville, I don't think the issue would be quite the same. Memphis, however, is like the big bad awful city of crime and other negative things to most of them, and I just won't even go further into that right now or this post would be 50 miles longer and go off on a whole other secondary subject. Let's just say Memphis is bad and scary to them, OK to visit but they wouldn't wanna live here, and leave it at that. So therefore, I'm crazy for staying here, especially for 20 years.

The other thing that inevitably happens - and I don't even have to be there in town, if there's someone here in Memphis or anywhere else that I went to high school with, it always comes up - is that my high school sweetheart's name comes up in conversation. Sometimes it's directly asking where he is and what he's doing these days (I do know, although there's no logical reason anyone should expect that I would know that). Sometimes it's just brought up as an offhand comment or remembrance that has nothing to do with me; sometimes it's a little more involved with me, like, "Remember when y'all went to (wherever) with us?" That kind of thing.

It's like this parallel universe there, where my name and his will always be inextricably linked. They see me, they think of him too. I wonder if they do the same thing when they see him (which is much less than they see me, in general - he's been several states away for many years now). I am guessing that most of them do, if not all. I think they probably don't ask him about me nor mention me at all though. Probably mainly because so many of them wanted to string him up and tar and feather him when we split up, and after all these years, they'll be pleasant to him, no doubt, but they're still holding a grudge. They've got my back, even though I never asked for it nor expected it, nor have felt it even necessary for a couple of decades.

It's a little bit odd that this word/name-association continues after all these years if you look at those still in my hometown, mainly because many of them are on their second and third, and even a few on their fourth, marriages. And some of them have married folks that I never in a million years would have guessed they'd have wound up together. Those people have become mentally disassociated with their past lives and past relationships, in the minds of others around them. This type thing doesn't generally happen with them. At least I think so. But all of them see each other all the time; I think that's the difference.

The difference with me is they don't see me but maybe once, twice a year if even that much. And actually, admittedly, I'm kind of guilty of the same thing - even if I don't say anything about that person from the past, I see so-and-so and I immediately think of whoever it was they were with way back when.

I don't know, maybe we ALL do it, and I just don't know this. Maybe everyone, in the back of everyone else's mind, is inextricably linked with whoever from their past, in some weird small town way. I just know I'm the one, and seemingly about the only one, who always gets asked about him, or he's mentioned when I'm around. At least I never hear anyone else get asked some of the things I do, or hear their high school sweetheart's name dropped every single time like always happens to me.

But that might be, I'm going to guess again, because I am just about the only one left who has never gotten married or had kids. There might be one or two others left, but I'm probably the only one who actually is seen at some hometown functions from time to time.

And that's the other thing about this whole dynamic. Besides thinking I'm crazy (maybe the better word here is "eccentric", heh) for never leaving Memphis in all these years, it's that it really, really kinda bugs them that I've never gotten married and/or had kids. In fact, I'd go so far to say that it has often been thought, and also probably verbalized, that I "ain't been right" since aforementioned HS sweetheart and I split up - solely because I have never gotten married and had kids, and exacerbated by the fact that I have chosen to remain in, god forbid, Memphis for so very long.

Has this ever actually been verbalized to me? Nope. But I know it's true, and furthermore, the bottom line here really is the fact that they blame HIM for me having never gotten married, not having children, and not living happily ever after.

I suppose there is some logic there because, at one time, that was exactly what was SUPPOSED to happen. It was not only all practically planned down to some of the smallest details, but we came dangerously close to blowing off all the traditional and formal plans and running off to elope, get married a few years before planned. Somewhat fortunately in retrospect, we were both too drunk to drive - the discussion taking place at a college football game between his school and my school - and upon sobering up the next morning, the immediate urgency of the nuptials from the night before was all but forgotten. And can I just add - whew.

Because while I appreciate the friends I have who would not only fight to the death for me but hold that grudge for me for all these many years, I know that marriage would have been a mistake. Granted, it took me a few years to come to terms with that conclusion, but I know that relationship would not have survived intact to today. We'd have been divorced before either of us turned 30, no doubt. In fact, the person he did end up marrying, he divorced, though they later remarried (and are married still, far as I know).

Like I said, though, when we were still planning to get married eventually, we had everything planned out right down to various wedding details, the cars we would drive (he was a car nut, so that was muy important to him), and had picked out names of at least firstborn male and female children. (I know, it's sickeningly sweet, ugh.)

He has a son. It just so happened that his wife's maiden name is the same as the name we had picked out for the firstborn male child. It threw me for a moment when I'd first heard, yeah, but I had to get over it pretty quick. Under the circumstances, it's not like I could be really angry about THAT.

For many years after, I kind of took some pride in the fact that I had gone on to have a life that had a few adventures and such, and certainly doing and seeing things and going places that someone in his position couldn't really do. He was one of those people so bright he could have gone to college anywhere, and ended up giving up the college education he was in the middle of, and a doubtless promising career after graduation, in order to work full-time to support the family he had within barely a year of our split. I can't say I fared much better with college seeing as how I kept dropping out, but for a long time I was still in and out of school, and certainly doing things and going places that I couldn't have if I'd been a working mom with a baby to raise and a husband at home in my twenties.

For a long time, I thought, well, I wound up having a life, and he didn't have one. That was, of course, coming from a still pretty bitter and resentful, and still fairly young girl in her twenties who maybe needed to feel that way for a while to be able to move on to something else where things like that didn't matter. I'm not particularly proud of all that residual bitterness and resentment, but things between us ended on a pretty ugly note, and that's probably really kind of an understatement. All of my friends wanted to kill him at the time; some of our mutual friends were pretty angry with him at the time, though maybe not quite as homicidal. The last time we were both in the same room 20 years ago, he himself admitted to one of my friends he was scared to death to try and talk to me - which, if you know me, that's pretty laughable, I'm the easiest person in the world to talk to.

In any case, yes, it was ugly when it ended, and may be the only ended relationship of my life that I ever truly walked away with this huge upper hand, even though my failure to marry and have children later has rendered me "irreparably damaged" by well-meaning friends who I love very dearly. So for a long time I was happy I'd had this "big life" while he'd had "no life". And then I got over myself after a while, and grew up, and none of that mattered anymore and was all but forgotten.

Well, obviously - my allegedly grown up self can now recognize - he probably had the life he wanted. And he certainly has something I've never had, like a family of his own. A child of his own.

In that regard, I've got to wonder - sometimes - who really missed out.

When pondering such issues (which I really don't do often - nay, I mostly try to avoid this direction of philosophy!)... well, it probably doesn't help matters, in my mind anyway, to have to remember that I pretty much wasted my twenties, and most of my thirties. It was sort of an accident, almost as if one day I was 21 or 22 with alllllllllllll this time ahead of me to do whatever, and then all of a sudden, I'm pushing 40. And where did all that time go?

Well, a good nearly seven years of it was spent with the Freeloader Ex, who I moved down here to Memphis with in the first place. Well, seven years if you count the four years we were actually a real couple, plus the next three years we spent as roommates with occasional delusions that everything might be all right and we'd be okay as a couple again. His extreme drug and alcohol problems kind of kept taking care of those delusions time and time again, which was certainly all for best, all things considered.

But the first couple of years we were together, it wasn't like that yet. His problems had not evolved to what they eventually became. I don't know that at the time I was really active thinking marriage and children at that point, with him anyway, but I still always figured that eventually I would, indeed, one day have kids.

Before I ever even got to the point where I was thinking in that direction, though, something came up that forced the issue. We had been together probably less than six months at that point, when we learned that he might indeed already be a father. The child was already born and the mother was requesting a paternity test. Stress, stress, stress.

In the course of a conversation about it all one afternoon, that's when I learned that it was his intention to never bring any children into this world - or at least not any more children, if this child turned out to be his. He didn't want to be a father, didn't want to have children. Not with me; not with anyone.

Well, okay. I spent the next several days being bothered about that, as well as being kind of puzzled that it was bugging me so much since it hadn't really been an issue or even a thought at that point. And it wasn't so much that I desperately wanted to have children and soon. And at that point in time in my early twenties, I didn't really feel like I was ready to make that jump yet anyway. But it had never ever occurred to me that I wouldn't ever have children of my own, someday. And at the time, having just started a new life in a new city with someone I was really in love with at the time, I certainly hadn't been looking to leave that relationship anytime soon.

I struggled with it for a while until it got to the point where I knew the decision was going to have to be made. Should I stay or should I go? If I stayed, then I was settling for never having children. Should I stay, or should I walk and possibly have children and a family of my own someday?

You know how that turned out - I stayed. And eventually, I actually convinced myself that I really didn't want kids anyway.

And I love kids, I enjoy them. I spent years being "favorite aunt" and godmother type to dozens of my friends' kids, some of whom are almost grownups themselves now, and that's always been really cool.

And yes, at that point of my life it probably would have been a bad idea. We had a few really good years, and then a few years that were a complete and utter nightmare as his substance abuse problems escalated. When we finally made the mutual decision that he was moving out (albeit before I was going to have to just kick him out) - once he was gone, I felt like I'd been run over by a few dozen trains. Putting my life back together again wasn't easy, but god, it was such a relief to be rid of all that craziness and negativity.

But you just don't expect that what starts out as a fairly normal relationship and a pretty good thing is going to turn into something as horrific as that did. I get angry with myself sometimes for not having been able to predict what would happen. But in reality, I couldn't have.

I dated a while, even ended up in another long-term relationship that wasn't bad at all; we just never really belonged together in the first place. Some more shorter relationships after that, none of which ever really stuck, save for one; and in that one, had things gone in that direction, I would have ended up being a stepmom, which I would have been pretty cool with had that worked out.

In any case, for that entire time I was still pretty certain I really didn't want to have kids of my own anyway. And as a family member or two or three made a point of pointing out, I was getting a little bit old for that kind of thing anyway (oh, yes, thanks for reminding me).

Then around my mid-thirties - 34, 35, 36 - three things happened. First, I had a routine test turn up bad, and spent the next eight months under a cancer scare and dealing with the possibility that I might well be having a hysterectomy before it was all over with. Fortunately, at the end of those eight months, all was well and I got a clean bill of health.

But it's one thing to think you probably don't want to or are not going to have kids. It's a whole other thing to deal with when that choice is potentially about to get taken away from you without you having any say in the matter.

Second, I fell in love with my best friend, someone who had been pretty much right under my nose for well over a decade anyway. In the old days, I had been with Freeloader Ex, and his significant other at the time was one of my best, longtime girlfriends - and, in turn, he and the Ex had been close pals. NOW, it's as obvious as the nose on my face that the wrong two couples were together at the time, and it's obvious that there were already some pretty deep feelings there on both sides. But the timing would have been bad; and chances are, had a relationship evolved at the time, it never would have lasted. When the time was right, the time was just right. Four years later, we've had ups and downs like everyone else - some of them maybe a little more extreme than a lot of people - but we're solid.

So there was that, and I guess anybody out there who did find the right and perfect person for them knows that when that happens, strange things happen. Like, even though you may have just felt absolutely certain for the last 15 years that you just really didn't want to have kids, have a family - that hmm, maybe it would kind of be nice to have those things after all, maybe.

Though in our case, it really is starting to get kind of late. His mom had his youngest brother when she was in her forties, and older than I am now. And he loves kids, is great with them, would be a terrific dad. It's still a possibility, certainly, and not only that but there's the adoption and foster options too, especially older kids that they have such a hard time finding adoptive or foster homes for. But we'll be okay, too, if it winds up just being us.

The third thing that happened around the same time as the other two, though, was undeniably the most bittersweet and the hardest to swallow.

I wrote (joked) about the detox effort with my ex a few weeks ago, in a short post. That was close to seven years ago, and the next chapter of that little story is that we came very close, once he started getting clean and sober again, to getting back together again. Prior to his going into rehab, we talked about it some, and basically mutually agreed to talk about it again later on down the line, once he had gotten through rehab and gotten his shit together again. It was not the time to be discussing such things when he needed to focus on getting straight. I had made the arrangements for him to get into residential treatment, with some financial help from a family member, and drove him down there, a few hundred miles away, and let go, for the time being.

That future planned talk never happened. In the end, when it came down to it - when the answer was going to have to be either yes or no - I'm 99% certain my final answer would have had to have been no. The water that was under that bridge seemed way too deep, and I guess the feeling was mutual. It just wasn't supposed to happen.

I wasn't prepared at all for what did, though. He went back to college while still in rehab. Eventually, he graduated, and even went on to get his master's. Which was great, fabulous, of course.

He also got married, and had a child.

Yeah, well, it took Mr. Edge (Not of U2) about a month to talk me down from the cloud of anger and venom and bitterness and resentment and all manner of rather violent wanting to go kick his ass to Timbuktu and back, or worse, over that little bit of news. I was so mad for weeks I was practically spitting not only proverbial nails but proverbial poison darts, dammit. My outrage got crazy and twisted enough that Edge - who dislikes him intensely and for reasons that mostly have little to do with me and are more about leftover garbage from what was their friendship of the past - was almost taking up for the ex, in the face of all my venom-spewing. I was picking apart every little incident and occurrence from that past relationship and tossing all kinds of evil theories out there, and poor Edge would be saying things like, "Look, I know you're angry, and you have a good reason to be, but I was there, remember, and I really don't think it was that way," or "I really don't think he meant it like that."

And eventually he said, "You've just got to let this go." And he was right. No matter how angry I was at this person who'd insisted he was never having children, we were never having children - and no matter how much a part of me really wanted to just pick up the phone and scream that he'd "robbed" me of my twenties and any dream I'd ever had of a family and children, and how dare he have a child of his own after that - no matter all that.

He might have been the catalyst, but it was ultimately MY decision. I made the choice to stay, knowing what I knew, and I stayed for years. It was on me, totally.

That's not to say it doesn't have the potential to still sting a little. If my mind goes wandering in that direction, which it doesn't often, I very quickly remind myself it was my choice. End of story, fini.

I regret some things I didn't used to, I guess. One thing I DON'T regret is having helped him get clean and get his life back together and back on track when I did. He hit bottom a bunch of times in many years, some of which I witnessed and some of which I wasn't around to, but that last time - which was the first I had heard from him in over five years - I knew if I didn't do something, he probably wasn't going to make it. So I did what I felt I had to do. Presumably, he's still alive, safe, well, and these days pretty successful. No regrets.

And me, the whole kid thing's not much in the forefront of my mind, if at all. Something, like some of the discussions and questions posed in recent weeks, I'll get to thinking things like, "Well, you know, I don't know." Deeper than that I suppose, in truth, but that's the Cliffs Notes version.

Or I'll be talking to or hanging out with my mom, who is, like, the coolest. With the exception of the teenage years, which were kinda tough on both of us, we've had this really great relationship, and especially so since I've been an adult. We don't see each other in person as often as we once did, but whenever we do get to hang out, we have a great time. And we're really, really close.

And I guess that's when it occurs to me most, to think - well, maybe I HAVE missed out on something here after all. What my mom has with me is something I'm quite probably not going to have the opportunity to have.

Not going to lose a whole lot of sleep over it, no. But yeah, it's there. At least a little.

So, obviously the latter part of this week has been kind of uncharacteristically deep in thought and serious, ugh. But like I said, sometimes I write just to get it out of my head and be somewhere else. And now it is. At least, until and unless writer's remorse gets the best of me. Then again, I've always been pretty much an open book and could care less.

So I'm done with the deep and serious this week, everyone will doubtless be glad of that. Blondes shouldn't ever, ever think this much, it makes our head hurt. ;)

Deep thought moratorium officially begins. Now, pardon me while I go see what Britney Spears has been up to for the last 24 hours.

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This Is Only A Test

2006-12-16T01:24:00.000-06:00

Testing to see if I can fix broke Blogger Beta... if this works I may have found the solution for all NIT'ers...

UPDATE: Never mind, it didn't work. Back to banging head against wall.

PS: Hey guess what, what Blogger Beta folks? You can only use the Wordpress import tool to import from Blogger if you HAVEN'T switched to Beta. Wasn't that nice of Blogger Beta not to give us an option to be able to switch back to Classic after switching to Beta?

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Elf Yourself

2006-12-15T19:39:00.000-06:00

Sista Smiff is very concerned about my lack of Christmas spirit this year.

I think my elf self has the Christmas spirit down pat just fine, thankyouverymuch.

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Cars, Pt. 2 (In Which I Become Very, Very Broke)

2006-12-15T17:13:00.000-06:00

And the final total is... $1,141.19.

This does not include what's spent (up to about $200 so far) on the still-dead mystery-ailment car. Which I may be selling to a junkyard anyhow.

That said - it was reasonable for the amount of work done and parts needed, and the car should run great for a long time to come. Timing just sucked, 'cos the majority of stuff done, I was going to have checked out and possibly worked on at a later date anyway when my grandmother's estate got settled (which was supposed to have been settled in April, don't even get me started on that). Apparently the car didn't want to wait any longer and thought I needed the Christmas gift of buying it EVERYTHING it desperately needed NOW.

Still needs new tires, but that can wait a little bit, and it needs some AC work in the spring when it's warmer. But I have heat and defrost now, and a car that should run trouble-free for a while.

In any case, these people are reasonable, fair, and good people, and work danged fast when you need it. So if you're in need of auto repair in the greater Memphis area, see George at Unlimited Auto Service at Summer and Shelby Oaks. Good folks, seriously. Something not all that easy to find in Memphis nowadays, I hate dealing with most service places here.

I think my newer car, as said, is destined for the junkyard. As said before it's totaled anyway from the hail damage during the 2003 tornado, it's not like I'm going to get a lot for it anyhow selling it otherwise. And my new personal mechanic says ones like I have, once things start going wrong it's all downhill from there. As opposed to GM cars like the one he just fixed for me in barely 24 hours. He said on the phone to me Wednesday when I was asking him about fixing that one that he thought he could get it running in no time, and indeed he did.

This car's whole problem (the fixed one) was it sat in my grandmother's carport for most of over a decade. Heck, it's practically an antique - it's a 1986 but it's in near-pristine condition cosmetically and the interior, and it's got (get this) less than 20,000 miles on it. It was a high-end luxury car that I could not have possibly bought myself in 1986 - that's for sure - that she bought new. At that point, she wasn't driving much anyway, and sometime in the early '90s she quit driving at all, so for over the next ten years, the car got out only a few times a year when her roommate or family members would take it for inspection and registration renewal, get the tires rotated once a year, etc. So for all practical purposes, it should have been almost like a brand new car, but the extended parked time took its toll, obviously.

But now it should be almost like a new car, soon's I get some tires on that baby. And at least now I know if something else goes wrong, which it shouldn't for a long time - I got someone who can fix it.

So even though I'm a grand poorer here right at Christmas, which sucks, I feel pretty good about things. Feel even better if I could get shed of that other one. If you're in the market for a non-running, 4-door, 1997 Neon with hail damage and pretty low mileage and a mystery electrical short (that might run OK for a while to come if you can solve the short problem), I'm your girl, I'll sell it cheap, gimme a shout.

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The Color Purple, Part Deux

2006-12-15T12:19:00.000-06:00

In other words, how bad would you hate/be okay with this kind of purple (or maybe darker)?

Or would you rather see something a little less colorful?

(Subject to change, I'm still messing with stuff...)

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The Color Purple

2006-12-15T08:56:00.000-06:00

So, how you do feel about purple? Anyone got anything seriously against purple? Like it? Violently against it? Colorful blogs make you want to scream?

The original Lynnster Zone was mostly purple in color so as I am trying to fix things (and get the hell away from the scourge that is Blogger Beta), right now I am leaning towards a purple theme again. But if there are a bunch of purple haters out there, I might go with something else.

So anti-purple people might better speak now or forever hold your peace, 'cos after this evening you may be SOL on any say about it...

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Cars

2006-12-15T08:50:00.000-06:00

Well, I just heard from the mechanic.

The good news is I should be able to pick up one of my cars this afternoon.

The bad news is the total is $755 and climbing (there's still a heat and air issue yet to be resolved).

I think I may talk to him about junking the other car, since they are having trouble figuring out what's wrong with it anyway...

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Memory in the Making

2006-12-15T06:54:00.000-06:00

Warning - rocky road ahead, so to speak. You don't have to stick around and read for this one. It's probably really just for me, and someone else who might never read it. But it's okay if you do. Doesn't matter to me.

Sometimes I write because if I don't, it'll nag and nag and nag at me until I finally just do it and get it all out and be finished with it. I would say I make a habit of that, but there's boxes of notebooks and typewriter-typed pages and all kinds of other such stuff tucked away in a box in the back of my bedroom closet that would prove that to be the contrary; that I always finish it, that I always get it out and over and done with. Which, actually, probably explains a lot about, oh, everything. I think I've come to terms with the fact, lately, that after 20 and 15 and 10 years, none of that stuff in those boxes is ever getting finished.

And sometimes it's just the stuff that has no potential entertainment or literary value whatsoever - it just needs to get out of my head and be somewhere else.

So, here.

Having written about Nashville, non-country, music past this week and reading a bit about the same genre in the present - and having been involved in a couple of long conversations that included a lot discussion about Nashville past and present this week - I find myself over here at the sorry, flat, ugly southwest end of the state a little preoccupied, both with past memories and a few present troubles. And also a little homesick, I suppose.

It's never been any secret among my friends and family that I never really wanted to leave Middle Tennessee. I basically moved to Memphis because I was young, stupid, and in love, and thus I convinced myself that moving here was the right decision to make.

Actually, if I'd HAD to move somewhere and had no choice at all about staying in Middle Tennessee at the time, I would have rather gone to East Tennessee. That was where the object of my affection was at the time and had been for a while, and where I was quite a bit of the time anyway at that point. But he decided he wanted to go westward for school. I came with him, and here we ended up in Memphis.

Sort of eerie and what may have been a portent of things to come - fortunately he was driving - I became violently ill, sick to my stomach, before we even left Rutherford County on the day we moved, and stayed sick for a couple of days after. I couldn't even drink a couple of sips of water without it coming back up.

In retrospect, it was yet another really bad decision to go right along with all the other thousands of bad decisions I have made in life. Still and all, I was a pretty big fan of Memphis for a while, and there were some good years here with him, and still some more good years here after him and without him. It wasn't all bad. Sometimes I think I just outgrew this city. I don't think there was any one thing or one event that soured me so, such as I am. I think I just stayed too long.

And again, the longer I'm here and not that happy about it, the more I regret ever leaving Middle Tennessee in the first place. The last year I was there was the best ever. I had finally moved into an apartment that I absolutely loved, after years of bouncing from place to place every six months or less, on a quiet street a few blocks from the MTSU campus. I was taking classes again, at night. My job at the time, I worked with people I genuinely liked a great deal. Three very distinctly different groups of friends to hang out that were all great fun - friends from school, some of which were also from my hometown; friends from a former job to party with in Murfreesboro; friends I hung out with, most of the time, in the clubs and indie music scene in Nashville, a couple of whom I had actually known since childhood via church camp and other Episcopal youth statewide stuff throughout childhood and teen years.

It was that last group I was closest to, always have been, all these years still. What's left of us anyway. Kind of like everything else I had, all those great things I was so happy with at the time in Middle Tennessee that I left behind. They're just gone, mostly.

Many of my friends from that time are gone, not only from Nashville and that old scene, but gone from this world altogether. Accidents, drugs, a murder, illness - you name it, most of the usual culprits have whittled down what was a very close-knit group of twelve or thirteen-odd or so people down to a meager group of six. The oldest one is only 42 years old.

I know, "only" 42. Maybe that sounds old to some people. 40 sounds old to me lots of days. But it's really not, not in the grand scheme of things. No, it's not.

Anyway, that - coupled with many more friends I have lost from my hometown crowd, and some other friends - it's just stunning. You're not supposed to be 40 years old and have lost count of how many people are irretrievably missing from your life. You're not supposed to be 40 years old and have outlived so many of your peers.

I'm kind of afraid though, lately, I'm losing another one. I've been down this road before - and with the same person, no less, as well as others - to know you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped. Or find someone who doesn't want to be found.

Way back in those old days, technically I lived in Murfreesboro at the time, but most of my friends and my boyfriend for a good bit of that period were in Nashville. Throughout much of the last half of 1986 and almost all of 1987, I was really pretty much living in Nashville, even though my mail was still being delivered to Rutherford County and I was still paying rent there.

One of our gang had this little apartment that's no longer there, almost within spitting distance of the good old Exit/In. Even though there was, like, NO room - it was a tiny place, really small - the core group of a dozen of us were living there almost 'round the clock. Between all of us, plus all the people that were always coming home with us from the clubs as well as some of the bands from out of town, there was hardly room for that many bodies. Somehow we managed, as long as you didn't mind getting stepped on in the dark in the middle of the night sometimes.

I wrote about that time earlier this year here in the blog (at the time, my intentions being to poke fun at my good and old friend Josie Walker's gigantic boat feet, which really are huge, you wouldn't believe):

"...way back in the old days when everybody used to flop at Scott's old apartment in West End, which was small to begin with, sometimes it was even harder to find sleeping space because not only the twelve or thirteen of us in our little group, as well as any assortment of dates and girlfriends and boyfriends, would be crashing there as well as, sometimes, most of whomever had been at whichever club that night. As well as, sometimes, whatever band from out of town had been playing at whichever club that night. Sometimes it would just be wall to wall people crashed in every available chair (not many) and the couch (only one) and the floor and you'd have to watch where you stepped if you had to make one of those middle of the night sneaks to the bathroom. This was always especially fun if you'd had too much to drink that night and were, indeed, trying to get to the bathroom to throw up or something."

Some of the best and funnest (sic) times of my life were spent in that little hole of an apartment. As long as you had no immediate need for the restroom facilities - since there was ALWAYS someone else in there - it was actually a pretty cool little place to be, at that age anyway.

Also in that apartment, so were some of the worst times. One of the worst days of my life was the morning I had to drive down there after working the graveyard shift at the ER at Southern Hills, having had the misfortune of being the one on the front desk that night when the ambulance brought one of our group in following a wreck on Harding Place. The only explanation for why he was down that far south in the first place, and at that time of night, was that he must have been coming to visit and hang out with me at work. And instead, I had to be the one to go tell everyone the next morning, everyone crashed and hungover in that little apartment, what had happened and that he was gone.

But there were probably many more good times than bad back then, and if not good memories, extraordinary ones. It was a pretty wild time, crazy time. When the party ended at whichever club, the party relocated to that teeny apartment most nights. You never knew who you might find worshiping the porcelain god in the bathroom, since that door would never lock. There's a few secrets I can never tell.

All of the great bands that came through town at the time, I had the privilege of getting to meet almost everyone I could have ever possibly wanted to back then - with the exception of Paul Westerberg and the rest of The Replacements, which is a humongous thorn in my side to this day. Every single time The Replacements ever came to Nashville then, I had to be somewhere else, one time back home for a funeral. I never got to see them play live until the last tour before they broke up, seeing them here in Memphis.

The only person whose name was actually ON the lease of the apartment - well, if it was three in the morning and we weren't bailing him out of jail or picking him up from night court, he was frequently found hanging upside down off the balcony half-naked (or sometimes all naked) singing at the top of his lungs, sometimes with guitar in hand, sometimes not. Several in that core group of people living/slash/squatting there had serious drug and alcohol problems, but that one - he was completely out of control. So much so that people all over town were taking bets on how long he'd last, when he was gonna pull the ultimate Jim Morrison or Jimi Hendrix and, you know - ::poof:: - be gone, just like that.

And then he shocked the hell out of everyone by cleaning up, getting straight. Going back to and finishing college. Went out west for a while. Made a shitload of money, enough that he could pretty much retire before he was 40 years old, though he still kept working when he felt like it.

Fifteen or so really good years, and then in a flash, it was like all that good stuff never happened. He was using again. Things got ugly. There was a horrific argument between four of us - three against one. He told us all to go to hell, especially me. All of the addicts and alcoholics I have known except for a couple, it's either my "fault" or I'm the first and foremost target when they're lashing out. I'm used to it, I know how to stand my ground with them, they hate me for it, big deal. I'm only 5'2", but I somehow become like the biggest threat to them being able to poison themselves with whatever they're on at the time, like I'm someone who will take their drugs or their booze away from them. Not that it ever stopped any of them.

But then he got clean again, shocking what few of us are left to be shocked once again. And was doing so, so great.

And then he split town to go work on a big project, presumably for a few weeks. That was late August, or maybe early September. Supposed to be back long before Thanksgiving.

The cell phone's still on, though goes to voice mail every time. Credit cards are still being used, and with the proper signature (very helpful when the best friend is also one's accountant). MySpace profile has been logged into a couple of times. Shrug.

Back in the old days when we were all living/squatting/crashing in that little place in West End, young Greg, who was like my baby brother and was the only one of the whole group younger than me - he was 17, 18 at the time - had these delusions that we would just all be together forever. That we'd like all just go off and set up some bohemian commune somewhere. Since everyone there was either a musician or artist or writer, or a wannabe of any of the three (except Stevie Kane, who rather inexplicably went into accounting and will, by god, tell you himself that accounting is an art in itself - yeah, OK, Steve)... well, Greg just had these stars in his eyes about all this hippie dippie shit. Let's all just go off and start our own little artists' colony or whatever and just live there forever, happily ever after. I think it broke his heart when everyone started graduating, moving away and moving on, scattering as people do. Growing up, supposedly.

I won't go so far to say everyone in the bunch was hugely talented in their respective art, but we did have a few that were simply amazing. Watching and listening to Joey or Greg or Scott play guitar; Joey crafting a new song from start to finish; watching Scot the Happy Italian draw or paint and his keen eye for capturing everything perfectly; reading anything Ev wrote - all experiences I was fortunate to be able to witness, day after day.

But the most prolific and constantly evolving piece of art in the house (and I use the term "art" here loosely) was one big giant long poem (also using the term "poetry" loosely) that was scribbled in black Sharpie, in the handwriting of a dozen or so different people, on this beat up old bulletin board that was hanging down almost the entire side of the refrigerator. That bulletin board was Communication Central for the house for about two years, and the rule was everything written there had to keep the poem going, no matter what it was about. Grocery lists, reminders, arguments and calling someone out on their shit, whatever - it had to be part of the poem.

A few I remember -

Paper towels, milk, and please some Cap'n Crunch?
Pork chops and applesauce - The Brady Bunch!

Can someone pick me up after work today?
That all depends, Miss Jo, how much you willing to pay?

Looks like someone forgot to pay the electric bill.
Oh, you'll learn to love the dark, quit bitching and take another happy pill.

You fucking asshole, Scott! Where the hell is my money??
Ummmmmm probably in his dealer's pocket, honey.

Nope, no stellar poetic talent there, but at least it was kind of entertaining most days. Two, two and a half years' worth of it. Probably mostly arguing about money, since nobody ever had any, something always needed to be paid or someone needed to be paid back, and whenever the boys had any money anyway, it almost all went to colossal amounts of booze, weed, other party favors. If not for Jo and me, we'd have never had electricity.

I've no idea what happened to it after everyone finally moved out and left for good, it's probably a shame no one kept it. I called Josie Thursday morning to ask about it. She remembered how it was about to fall apart to begin with when the boys slapped it up there on the fridge, so she figures it probably fell apart when anyone tried to remove it.

This below lives elsewhere on the 'Net, posted late this past summer:

Photos scattered all around my floor
Twelve souls plus a couple or three more
But only a handful of souls outside 900 Broadway
Bitter gray cold February day
Walking along Church Street, pausing at a stop sign
"When there are two or three of us, it's fine"
"When we're all together, it's toxic and sick"
And with that the wise little one stopped traffic
Don't tell me you've never been able to see
The common denominator was always me?

I didn't write that, you see.
But you who did, I think you're reading here still - please, just call me.
Or Stevie Kane or Jo or Jay.
We just want to know that you're okay.

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Autoamerican

2006-12-14T10:45:00.000-06:00

So I finally talked to the auto mechanic late yesterday evening. Apparently whatever's wrong with my car is a mystery. Not the one that died and stranded me weekend before last - this is the newer one that I THOUGHT only needed a new battery.

They've done everything that they were supposed to and are now trying to find a mystery electrical short. Things aren't looking particularly good.

In the course of our discussion, I mentioned the other one (the one that stranded me) and we talked about what it was, what had gone wrong, what all it had been through previously, etc., etc.

The Cliffs Notes version is with that one being a GM car, he feels they ought to be able to get it running again in no time. My other, newer car? There may be no hope for, or at least not enough that's it worth tossing a small fortune into it, and he feels it's probably going to continue to have problems (I'd already decided that myself a while back when it started acting a little wonky, which was why I'd parked it and been driving the other one).

So I had the old car towed out there this morning. If he succeeds in getting it running and back in good shape again, going to go ahead and have him slap a new set of tires on it too. That was planned for later down the line, but seeing as how the other one is quite possibly on its way to the junkyard, I may as well spend what I was going to spend on registration renewal on needed new tires.

So that's where things stand today, and why I never married either an auto mechanic or a veterinarian is once yet again, for the millionth time, a mystery to moi.

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I Don't Begin to Understand

2006-12-13T12:13:00.000-06:00

A while back, he announced he was offering his sperm for $1 million.

And now, this. (@ Gawker)

I don't usually comment much on celebrity stuff here, though I read plenty of it. And I see lots of crazy stuff in the celeb news-based media that's freaky, but it doesn't keep me up at night or anything.

But he just makes my head hurt trying to figure out why, for the love of God - WHY?

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I Wanna Grow Old With You

2006-12-13T10:52:00.000-06:00

On my reading rounds this morning, I saw this link to Deathforecast.com on another blog and checked it out, just to see. I've done this at another similar site before, with basically the same general questions, and got a much better result somewhere in the 70s, but, whatever.

According to this one, if The Edge (Not of U2) and I get married, he dies at 73 years old and I die at 68.

If we don't get married, he kicks it at 71. Moi, 66.

Actually, the results ballpark-wise might not be all that far off for real, as we both have heart disease galore in our families, and many of those in my family died around the 70-ish mark and a couple earlier than that. Of course, one can do plenty of things preventative measure-wise to better those chances.

But I'm a little bit miffed about those results, seeing as how one of us is a former drug addict in recovery and has literally baked in the sun every day for a lifetime pretty much, and here's a hint - it's not me.

Apparently if I had been eating more balanced meals and regularly instead of being pseudoanorexic and skipping meals for a day or two at a time, and working out a little more often, I could have been getting a tan all the time and shooting up heroin* all along!

And, obviously, this marriage is going to have to happen sometime within the next 25 years, though the way we've both been about finalizing plans and making concrete and definite decisions like that, it might well take us that long anyway...

* (Yes, just kidding, Mom...)

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You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch

2006-12-13T09:39:00.001-06:00

His lovely wife is one my favorite people around, they have a home filled with almost as many dogs and cats as mine, and he's not as mean as he would like everyone to think he is. However, he is indeed and most certainly a curmudgeon. And always sends me into fits of giggles.

Now the king of curmudgeons hath struck again, spreading his own special brand of Christmas cheer by reviving an old Snarl. Can't say I'm not feeling just about as Grinch-y this year myself, though definitely not as medically paranoid...

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Wide Awake in America

2006-12-13T05:52:00.000-06:00

I'm awake, been awake. It's okay.

I never went to bed last night, but I did doze off for four or five hours, so that's a little better in comparison to most nights and days lately.

And tomorrow's my day off, so unless something comes up about the car that needs to be taken care of in the morning, I'm determined to sleep in. In bed.

And with any luck, the car'll be fixed today anyway. I didn't hear anything yesterday, but keeping fingers crossed.

More later, and Happy Birthday, Jay W. - if you'd drive or fly to Memphis this weekend, I'll spring for crepes and mimosas on the Square on Sunday afternoon...?

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What a Big (Freakin' HUGE) Surprise

2006-12-12T23:21:00.000-06:00

Get this, y'all. Remember my friend and former neighbor who had the car wreck weekend before last while coming to help me with my car, and wound up in the hospital for a day?

His insurance company handed him a check this week for just under $13K. We have not a clue why it was that much. There's no logical explanation for it. I mean, his car is actually the exact same age as mine was when I got caught on the road during the 2003 tornado in Jackson, and my car got totaled. Like mine, it's not anything special. And had over 100K miles on it, whereas the only reason my insurance payout was as high as it was because I had really low mileage on my car, even though it was six years old.

But folks, I got like just a little over $2000 for mine. We can't figure out why he got soooo much. His agent stated the figure twice last week to him on the phone and he thought he might have just heard her wrong, or that she said thousand when she meant to say hundred. I wondered aloud last night on the phone about whether that was coverage for part of his hospital and medical bill, but he said nope, that's still to come.

In the meantime, we're just flabbergasted. I have said several times now, well, don't ask too many questions, don't look a gift horse in the mouth, and most especially, don't spend it all in one place just yet. I mean, this is really, really weird.

I wouldn't go so far as to say looks like I did him a favor - I sure don't want any of my friends or family hurt or in the hospital - but jeez. If nothing else, buying that old used car (already with lots o' miles on it at the time) has certainly turned out to be the smartest car buy he ever made! Man.

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Oh, To Sleep, Perchance To Dream

2006-12-12T14:36:00.000-06:00

For those that think they'd love to be able to work from home, here is the one really bad thing (and really the only, to me) about doing so...

On a day like today, when I am so very tired that I could just about fall over - when you are mere steps away from your nice warm comfy bed and can't go crawl in it and sleep for a while, it is absolutely pure, sheer torture.

Of course, this is my own fault - she who declared not just one, but two days in a row to all kinds of folks in e-mail, on the phone, on here - everywhere - that both nights I was going to pop a couple of Tylenol PM early enough and force myself to go to bed and maybe, possibly get into some kind of at least semi-normal sleeping schedule again starting this week. Or at least sleep, which would be a definite improvement over most of the last two weeks.

And indeed, I had another one of those unplanned, inadvertent brief naps again last night, dozing off while reading something or another on the 'Net after finishing off what posed as dinner (a cup of Lipton Cup-a-Soup, gallbladder friendly and fat free or mostly). Dozed for maybe 20 minutes, 30 minutes, might have been an hour, I dunno. Phone woke me up, thank God, or I might have been once again sitting there out cold at the desk until after midnight again.

Which, granted, would have been SOME sleep as opposed to what I got, but it's not like I'm getting a good night's sleep when I do that (and usually am so sore all over I'm moving around like an 110-year-old woman for a little while after waking, I don't think my neck is ever going to be not sore again).

I don't know why I can't sleep when I should, nor why I keep sleeping when I shouldn't be able to, both are getting kind of disturbing. The other day when I was stuck at the auto repair shop for the better part of the day, I dozed off while reading and was out for like two hours, with two screaming kids and their frazzled mom right next on the couch in the super-crowded waiting area.

Narcolepsy? Probably not, at least I don't guess so. I think it probably doesn't help matters that I really haven't been eating all that much as a rule ever since I started dealing with this gallbladder crap back in July, which was a mystery ailment for a while, so (counting, whoa) I guess we're going on six months now of that, but I've been taking vitamins and all that kind of stuff and trying to keep as healthy as possible through it all.

As for the not sleeping part, I don't know. It just gets to when I should probably go to bed and I'm just not tired one bit though I pay for it later in the day, every day. And I've always had pretty terrible habits of staying up too late and not getting all that much sleep during the workweek, usually, but this is bizarre even for me, and even more bizarre because I'm not sleeping really on the weekends, either. Smiley shared some good advice in comments about Ambien and melatonin several days ago, but of course, being transportation-less right now, I haven't made it to the store. And should have thought to order online or something last week I guess, but my brain is obviously operating on low power, right? (I say that as if my brain ever operates normally...? Heh.)

Anyway, yeah, this long - two weeks, fifteen days, whatever - on so little sleep, I've got to do something before it turns into, like, Elizabeth Taylor in Suddenly, Last Summer here, presumably without the latent cannibalism and homosexual plot devices, of course. (Okay, there was probably a better film about insane women reference there, I just grasped for the first one that came to mind and we all know by now my brain's not working properly. I just mean I'll be babbling and incoherent and hallucinating if I don't get some decent sleep and at least sort of nightly soon. Not that anyone would notice the difference, right?)

Of course, I'm guessing too that once all this mess with the car situation gets settled (nope, still no updates or news there, still waiting), maybe things will even out. Of course, NOW, thanks to all that, being so behind and nowhere near being ready for quickly approaching Christmas is not helping, but it'll all be all right once Christmas gets here. I just wish I could delay it another week or two.

I also have a bunch of blog posts put aside that I kept starting last week and the week before and never did finish a single one of them, which is also kind of unusual and bizarre for me, 'cos once I get in the writing groove I generally don't stop until I'm finished, even if it about kills me. So if I'd just go tie up all those loose blog ends and finish them, I wouldn't have to do anything but copy and paste probably the rest of this month and still have a post or two a day on the blog. Who knows, all things considered they might be best left alone, ranting and ravings of some crazy chick who hasn't slept in two weeks.

All I know is, once again, I'm going to attempt to really sleep tonight, even if it's four or five hours or something. I've got stuff I've got to do, and then some more stuff I wanna do 'cos I'm probably going to have to work Wednesday and Thursday nights and won't be able to do anything else. And then it's all about sleep. Sleep is good. Sleep is our friend!!!

KC and Greg - my so-called friends - used to say I came with three settings, but they'd argue with each other about what they were. KC said I came in Blonde, Dizzy Blonde, and Dizziest Blonde; Greg said it was Unscattered, Scattered, and Super Scattered. I'd guess I'm about amped up to Super Scattered Dizziest Blonde at this point, but it's OK. Not like I haven't always fully embraced my dizzy blondeness anyway.

Just need sleep. And for my brain and mouth to start cooperating with each other and working together again, and that'll be cool. On the next episode of To Sleep or Not to Sleep - tune in tomorrow and we'll see...

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Someone That Could Use A Hand

2006-12-12T14:07:00.000-06:00

If you're able and so inclined... I know it will be much appreciated.

We Three Things

2006-12-12T06:55:00.000-06:00

I've no idea where this one came to me from, but after this I'll be caught up and will institute a temporary moratorium on memes. At least until the day comes I've run out of something to say again, which is, like, never. So, here.

Three things:

That scare me: Heights; spiders or basically anything creepy or crawly; and winding up with some illness or condition that leaves me completely awake, alert and oriented but totally without any control of any other functions (and karma is going to bite me in the ass one day and get me for now having documented this fear in black and white for posterity, I just know it).

People who make me laugh: The Young Ones, The Kids in the Hall, Travis L. Harmon (OK, I know technically that's WAY more than three people but it constitutes as three things/entities, or at least I say so, which is all that counts here).

I love: Music (duh!), cats, working four days a week instead of five (officially anyway, only problem there is I usually end up working on my day off anyhow).

I hate: Any peas except for black-eyed peas, washing dishes, flat land (yeah, I know - so why do I live in Memphis?).

Things on my desk: A bottle of hazelnut liqueur from the Czech Republic, Tim Lee's Concrete Dog CD, and an orange cat who is sleeping and won't move his head off the edge of my keyboard.

I'm doing right now: Wondering why I didn't go to sleep last night AGAIN, dreading having to start work soon for what is going to be a long and painful ten hours, drinking coffee.

I want to do before I die: Visit Australia (at least Sydney and Perth), live in an actual house again and not a duplex or apartment or whatnot, figure out what I want to be when I grow up.

I can do: Waste an incredible amount of time; play guitar; appraise, buy and resell vintage Barbie stuff at a hell of a profit (my "part-time job" for several years).

I can't do: Wrap presents well at ALL, sew, keep plants alive or garden.

I think you should listen to: Paul Westerberg and The Replacements, the silence when (if) it snows, your heart or instinct instead of your head or what other people tell you most times.

You should NEVER listen to: Telemarketers, only certain music just because it's what everyone else is listening to or tells you that you should, me when I'm talking in my sleep.

I'd like to learn: How to cook on a grill, to play guitar a little better than I do, how to fix up and repair various things without messing them up in the process like I normally do.

Favorite foods: Mexican, southern BBQ, breakfast.

Beverages: Lipton Citrus Green Tea, coffee, anything alcoholic that tastes like Kool-Aid basically.

Shows I watched as a kid: The Monkees, American Bandstand, Saturday Night Live (well, and cartoons... I was kinda a normal kid, sometimes).

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It's No Secret

2006-12-12T05:25:00.000-06:00

Oh my god, I have been so out of it and frazzled the last week or so, I completely forgot to check PostSecret on Sunday. Matter of fact, I think I may have forgotten to check it last Sunday, too.

Horrors. Be right back.

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It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

2006-12-10T22:27:00.000-06:00

I got tagged for this Christmas meme by Sonia, which is kind of funny because I'm such a Scrooge, as Sista knows and has been having mucho fun taunting me over. Actually it's not really that I'm all that Scrooge-y, it's just that I hate the fact that I always end up in a mad rush trying to be ready for it and it's downright traumatic almost; my actual Christmas is always either at my mother's, my godmother's, or my sister's, all out of town, so I don't really do any decorating or anything "for" Christmas, haven't in many years anyway; and this year in particular I'm not really looking forward to it, for a variety of reasons.

But truth be known, Christmas has always been my favorite holiday and my family makes a huge deal of it, bigger than most families probably, and once it actually GETS here, I will be fine with it. Santa still fills stockings at our houses (boy, does he) and opening presents between the six of us has almost always been an all-day affair (because everyone can only open one thing at a time so everyone can see what it is, same thing with going through stockings), though last year we agreed to downsize a little and actually finished before dark that time. We also drink mimosas all day and have some other little family traditions and it's generally a great day. It's just getting TO that day that's such a problem for me every year it seems, I'm all dread and doom and gloom and running around like a madwoman at the last possible minute trying to be ready, especially since I'm the one who always has to go out of town every year.

So it's not so much that I'm anti-Christmas, this just hasn't been the best of years and I'm sweating the anxiety and rush even more than usual (especially since I have NO gift buying done yet to speak of, except for one thing). That said, I don't know, everyone on my list may be getting Amazon gift certificates this year, the way things have been going lately and with me being short any transportation.

That all said - onto the Christmas meme:

Favorite Christmas Movie: Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer

Favorite Christmas Song: I can't choose between "Angels We Have Heard on High" and "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" - both remind me of Christmas Eve Mass (Episcopalian) and especially while growing up, that was just magical for me. I have lots of good memories of Christmas Eve. In secular music, anything off The Ventures' or The Supremes' Christmas albums. My dad had a special Christmas reel-to-reel tape that was always playing in our house that time of year, and was full of songs from those albums so anytime I hear them now I am immediately transported back to childhood Christmases.

Favorite Christmas cookie: My godmother's cookies and I have no idea what they are made of.

Favorite Christmas gift ever received: I was so spoiled rotten as a kid and got so much great stuff it's hard to choose and same really with a lot of gifts as an adult. I guess if I have to narrow it down to one or two, the first would be a quilt my grandmother re-made for me, that has cats on it. I say re-made because she initially made the quilt and gave it to me (maybe not even as a present, or if it was it was a birthday present) when I was about 7 or 8 years old, and throughout my teen years it hung on the wall over my bed. Time really took its toll on it (as well as many and various cats playing Spiderman on it climbing it) and sometime in my twenties, I talked to her about whether or it not it could be repaired and she told me to bring it to her and she'd see what she could do. A year or two or three later, it reappeared as one of my Christmas presents that year and she had not only repaired it but totally redone it - same embroidered (and repaired) cat squares, but with a whole different backing, and it was even better (and thicker and warmer) and better colors for my tastes as an adult! It's gorgeous and especially now that she's gone, means all the more to me that I have it.

The other gift wasn't really a "major" one but was certainly one of the most memorable. I was probably nine or ten years old and there was this oddly-shaped, triangular present under the tree from my dad that drove me absolutely crazy trying to figure out what it was the whole month of December. It turned out to be three LP albums taped together in a triangle. You may have figured that out before I even got to that sentence - and it was of course a method he could never use again because it would never be a surprise again - but that thing being under the tree all those weeks just drove me nuts trying to guess what it was. One of the albums was Elton John, I can't remember what the other two were.

One more - last year, my grandmother passed away on November 30th, and had been sick for a while before that, so when I was handed something I was told was from Grandmama I was so shocked, it was so unexpected. It turned out that while going through things after her death, one of my aunts had found a pretty significant amount of cash stashed away in something, and it was decided that that would be split among the grandchildren as that year's Christmas present from Grandmama. Talk about turning on the waterworks, immediately.

Least favorite thing about Christmas: The mad crazy rush for shopping which is really my own fault because I am always so behind, even though usually part of that's because I normally can't afford to do most of my shopping until right before Christmas. One of these days I might learn to start saving up year 'round.

Where would your perfect Christmas be: Anywhere my family is. Though, admittedly, I like it best when it's at home in my hometown, at my mom's.

Favorite part of Christmas: Christmas Eve, late at night, with or without Christmas Eve Mass (we've gotten really bad about not going the last few years).

Favorite Christmas Decoration you own: We have a lot of neat decorations that have been in the family for many years, but I'd have to say my favorite is this little plastic pink elephant ornament that's encrusted with what looks like rock salt, is the only way I can think of to describe it. I have had it for as long as I can remember and it may have been one of my first Christmas presents as a baby, not sure. Once I was old enough to start helping decorate the tree (probably two years old) I demanded it be the last ornament hung on the tree every year (for some unknown reason), and that tradition continues today. Even though my mom doesn't always put up a tree these days, the years she hasn't, that little pink elephant still gets hung up somewhere.

We also have this other decoration which has kind of become a family joke simply because, most years, everyone forgets about it when the decorations are being put away after Christmas. It's a large ball that looks like a Christmas ornament and, in fact, is a music box - you pull the string hanging down from it and it plays "Jingle Bells", and was a gift one year from my godmother and godfather. Somewhat surprisingly, even though it comes from the tacky Seventies, it's really a tasteful piece and still looks great today. Which is a good thing, 'cos more years than not, it winds up hanging in whatever doorway or archway it got hung up in until the next Christmas. And is another thing that usually gets hung up for decoration every year whether we're decorating at Mom's or not (unless, again, it was still hanging from the year before). I think last time we decorated at Mom's (two years ago) we actually did spot it right before the last box went down to the basement and it got packed up. But there's been lots of years it's amused me to no end to go pulling the string on that thing in the middle of July or other very non-Christmas-y months and send the sound of "Jingle Bells" throughout the house, with everyone snickering because we forgot about it once again that year.

When do you put up the tree?: When I was a kid, it probably used to go up very shortly after Thanksgiving. In more recent years, if we're decorating at Mom's there's usually a mad rush a couple of weeks before Christmas to get the tree and everything else up.

Do you wear "holiday" sweaters/sweatshirts/t shirts?: Yep. My mom actually made several which are gorgeous, most of which are not in good shape nowadays, but these days I've got some really nice pieces to wear if I want. However, on Christmas Day and the day after I usually wear a couple of sweatshirts, one of which has some cartoon reindeer and Santa and a tree on it that's really funny, and the other is a great big smiley face wearing a Santa hat, and I like 'em and don't care whether anyone else thinks they're silly or not. They are both pretty typically "me". I guess I should retire the reindeer one since probably every batch of Christmas Day photos for the last ten years of me features that sweatshirt, but like I care. It's the only day out of the year I ever wear that one and I'll probably wear it 'til it's literally falling apart.

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It Came From Nashville

2006-12-10T16:42:00.000-06:00

In Googling while looking to verify some information for someone else - information that probably used to be in some brain cells killed long ago in my head - I once again ran across this August 2006 article from the Nashville Scene about Nashville's music underground of the '80s, an article that references tons of people I knew and practically every band I ever saw from 1982 to 1987. That article, and another similar recent article about that period that's been floating around the 'Net, always makes me glad I was there to witness much of the miracle that was happening at that time in non-country Nashville music. As I told Shadow 15's Scott Feinstein in the course of a brief e-mail exchange a few weeks ago, that was just a really special time to be around then, hanging out in that scene.

Government Cheese is playing? Yeah, I'm there, man. The Questionnaires, The Movement, Jet Black Factory, Webb Wilder, Bill Lloyd, Raging Fire, Jason and The Scorchers, Walk the West, and so very, very many more. Something to do every single night, somewhere to go, and someone to see.

The Knoxville contingent had it going on too at the time, but I think all of us in Middle Tennessee thought we had it better, snotty youngsters as we were. I saw a bunch of great Knoxville bands within Davidson and Rutherford County lines, though, first and foremost being Smokin' Dave and the Premo Dopes. Happy to report that Todd Steed's still doin' what he does best over yonder eastward.

As previously referenced on my old Replacements page, the word "alternative" had not yet been coined in those days as the end-all, be-all term for the indie music scene. "Indie" was already sometimes used, Rolling Stone was still calling it "college rock" in their charts. The word "underground" was tossed around a lot, and I guess that's what we were all calling it most of the time then around Nashville. I don't think there was any big definitive term at the time. It was just different than most everything else that was all over the dial on the radio at that time.

I know everyone was all excited because there seemed to be something HUGE happening. There had already been these big local scene explosions around the country, like Minneapolis and Los Angeles (like L.A. really needed it), and then closer to home in Athens, Georgia. A bunch of those bands from Athens that were almost like the home team to us because they played Nashville so much, suddenly they were getting ALL this national attention. And we were just SURE Nashville was gonna be next.

Well, there was some attention, a little. I've got Rolling Stone's 1985 yearbook back in the back room somewhere that has a little section on Nashville in their local bands section, that features bands that had mostly broken up by the time it was published, or would soon after. Jason and The Scorchers, yeah, they did well enough. We thought a whole lot more would follow in their wake, lots of very deserving, very talented folks. 1986 was this huge, huge year, absolutely electric in all the excitement.

And then - well, it just didn't really happen. It was good to be there when it was happening, though. It was a great time to witness, something to see. And something I'll likely never see (or hear) again. Not like that.

When I moved to Memphis in the beginning of 1988, it was a huge disappointment to find a music scene that was practically dead, and a fight to find decent radio. Rhodes College's indie station was around at the time but changed format soon after I moved here, there were a few alternative shows on the public radio station but not full-time, then one of the AM stations tried a late-night show for a while that didn't last long. As far as radio, we were mostly without until Nirvana broke and suddenly we had a 24-hour, big power station. The live scene mostly sucked. There were a few bands to get excited about, but most up them gave up soon enough in frustration because there was so little support of the Memphis music scene in general.

Memphis was nothing like what I had experienced in Nashville, though I was aware that at that same time things were winding down up there as well. Sometime around 1990 or so, friends in Nashville were telling me this band or that one had broken up, people had left town, this place or that place had closed, things just weren't the same.

It was good while it lasted, in any case. It was great being there in the middle of this scene that just seemed like it was on fire, about to just freaking explode. All this electricity in the air, great bands and awesome music to listen to everywhere you turned, it seemed like for a while.

I have some more thoughts about those days bouncing around in my head today, but they're of a more personal nature. I guess I knew this was going to happen, writing about those old days. Not sure if the rest is to be shared or not... guess we'll see, or not...

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By the Way

2006-12-10T09:07:00.000-06:00

Unimportant stuff...

I forgot to mention that a little while back I added an extended About Me & About This Blog page as well as My Favorite Things, snagged off my MySpace profile. Since I apparently broke my Blogger profile a while back, starting fresh and adding these seemed the easiest thing to do to fix things. Not that either is terribly interesting, really, but they're there.

Also, my Last.fm chart (Radio Lynnster) tends to be a little behind (which is really annoying since I'm a subscriber and not a free account holder), so I slapped a link to the real-time stats underneath the chart, in case you're just dying to know what I'm listening to at any given moment.

I'm probably going to be playing with Blogger Beta functions today so if things look whacked out, it'll (hopefully) only be temporary...

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I Go To Sleep (redux)

2006-12-10T07:05:00.000-06:00

I guess I was long overdue for a crash, seeing as how I had barely slept at all for almost two weeks, but I'm kind of ashamed to admit I slept a whopping 17 hours straight this weekend. Which maybe I wouldn't have done if it hadn't been so blasted cold (and I was happy to find it warmer when I finally woke up and got up), but anyway, yeah. I lost Saturday totally, pretty much.

Love everyone's photos of the Mothership party that have been posted, like here and here and here and here - lots of smiling happy blogger faces there! (Don't tell anybody but I think some of them might have been drinkin'... shhh!) But the best thing of all, by far, is here. Glad everyone had a good time, hope I get to see and meet many of you next time there's a big get-together up there.

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Popsicle of Love

2006-12-09T03:01:00.000-06:00

1. I do believe you could break my toes off my feet, like icicles, right about now. Not only do I live in the Ancient House from Draft City, but this will be my second winter trying to get by on two (safe and not left on while sleeping) space heaters. Which can't be on at the same time or they flip the circuit breaker. Yes, I DO get tired of living like a 19-year-old college student sometimes. Except they probably live in better places nowadays than I do, probably.

2. I got so busy switchin' all my stuff over to Firefox tonight, I forgot all about the newly released Diner Dash 3. Obsessive stay up all night playing games desire being overruled by desire to crawl into warm bed full of covers though, I think. After I warm up the bedroom with the other space heater first, which means I get to sit out here at the desk for an hour freezing some more while I wait.

3. "Icicle" is kind of a dumb word when you think about it.

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Hey Jack, What's Happenin'?

2006-12-08T19:24:00.000-06:00

Ready for this one? THEY FORGOT ABOUT MY CAR.

Oh, yeah, they sure did. They forgot to tow it to the other mechanic for the electrical work. Dude didn't think about it 'til this evening, when I guess he was squaring away all the pending work at the shop before the day was over.

I was so busy working all day, I didn't really think about it until late afternoon and decided since I hadn't heard from 'em that it probably wouldn't be fixed today, and planned to call them when I finished working. The guy at the auto shop had remembered and called me before I had a chance to call. Needless to say, apologizing profusely and planning to take care of it first thing Monday morning.

I'm really not that annoyed about it, since (A) I don't know how much this is going to cost me yet, so that's one less thing to ruin my weekend, (B) I can pretty much get by without until Tuesday or Wednesday or so if I have to, and (C) it's too danged cold today to get out anyway. I can't get away from my ceramic heater for two minutes without my fingers freezing (this house is old and cold). But still it figures that something like that would happen, always to moi. Sheesh.

Anyway, I'm in the process of resubscribing to all my feeds via one of these way cool Firefox add-ons I picked up, it's very neat. Just taking a while, no easy way to transfer them out of my IE-based reader so I am having to manually input them individually. I am finally right now up to the P's. I read way too many blogs. Wait, there's no such thing as too many blogs!

I am definitely going to be checking out StumbleUpon thanks to the recommendations from Frank and Ivy. As if I need more things for time suckage, so I'll blame them when I have no more time because I've wasted it all, hehe.

And speaking of time wasters, I got an e-mail notification this morning that Diner Dash 3 has been released, so there goes my weekend. Well, after I spend the next 12 hours or so in bed because (A) I'm tired and (B) it's too cold! Well, when I go to bed anyway, which is probably going to be sooner than later because my toes and fingers are turning to ice. Stay warm, people!

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This Is Only A Test

2006-12-08T12:03:00.000-06:00

Oops, think I figured out why my newly Blogger Beta'd feed wasn't doing quite right. If this works, will post the necessary info for you Feedburner users...

UPDATE: Well, that didn't work. I read somewhere a while back that you needed to make a change in the case of the above, but apparently what I read was incorrect info. Anyway, never mind.

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Ice Ice Baby

2006-12-08T11:23:00.000-06:00

Wow, I just stuck my hand outside the front door for, like, five seconds to get the mail a few minutes ago, and then I was outside less than thirty seconds probably getting the dogs back in, and I am froooooozen.

It would probably help if I didn't live in the Ancient House from Draft City but man, it's still cold out there. Sun's shining though. Not that that's helping much.

We Tennesseeans don't do so hot when it's under 30 degrees.

Wait, what's wrong with this picture... it's 26 in Memphis with a predicted high today of 37.

It's 32 in Nebraska, where my sister moved this summer, with a predicted high of 46.

No, no, no... it's supposed to be the other way around! Grrr.

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Switchin' to Glide (redux)

2006-12-08T10:19:00.000-06:00

I am in the process of switching all my stuff over to Firefox now, pretty soon I won't need to open IE for anything anymore except maybe a couple of rare apps that don't work in Firefox. I can't even comment on Blogger in IE anymore, only in Firefox (which is probably something due to Beta and apologies to anyone I may have accidentally double commented last night trying to fool with this stuff).

Anyway, yeah, Firefox, this is really cool, so far I have no complaints and am just finding all kinds of way cool stuff. You guys were right all along. I'm very quickly turning into a new fan.

Although I do believe I may freeze into a blonde popsicle before the day is through. Could it be any colder? And can you guys that are freezing right along with me today in Tennessee believe it's supposed to be, like, in the 60's again mid-week next week?!?! Everyone who hasn't been sick already is gonna be and that probably includes me since I've skated past it all so far. So I really should stock up on Zicam I reckon, as it's been so highly recommended by John and CeeElCee. Except I'm a little afraid of cat panting and rascalitis, but anything that has to do with cats can't be all that bad.

Don't know anything about the car yet. Really don't care at this point if I don't hear anything before Monday, the better to not bum out my weekend.

And, I'm just wondering what the hell the Internet is so doggone excited about today (see right).

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Looking Through a Cracked Mirror

2006-12-07T23:35:00.000-06:00

So, welcome back to Jeez, This Blog is Turning Into a Drag Central again. Sorry, I seem to have misplaced my sense of humor temporarily. The Lynnster Zone, Your Daily Dose of Blah.

Today I got four whole hours of sleep, which is certainly more than I've had at one time in the past two weeks, so that was good. Except I would have really liked to have stayed in (my very warm) bed for a few more hours, seeing as how it was my day off. But nope, there were vehicle matters to be attended to, so I rose to greet the day with hope and a halfway decent night's sleep behind me.

So about those car matters. Dead Vehicle #1, the one that conked out last weekend, remains where the tow truck left it in front of my house. It's older and has needed much more work besides just the known popped drive belt, so the logical decision was to get Dead Vehicle #2, the newer, in for quick repair.

It was thought - keyword there being THOUGHT - that all Dead Vehicle #2 needed was a new battery. Got the battery jumped off, drove it to the auto place. Battery and some other general maintenance, winterizing, and tire rotation (and airing up since DV#2 had two near-flats) planned. It was noonish. Estimated time of departure: 2 p.m. Which would have given me the rest of the afternoon to take Dead (and Expired Registration) Vehicle #2 through inspection, and then to the clerk's office to pick up new tags & plate.

Well, first of all, don't know why I didn't expect the monkey wrench to fall in my lap anyway. Because it always does. It shouldn't have been unexpected. I am not a pessimist, I'm just a realist. If something can possibly go wrong and I'm involved, it most likely always will.

Oh no, DV#2 doesn't JUST need a new battery (might not even really need one, but it has been a while). DV#2 has an electrical short. That is going to require DV#2 to be towed to another shop that does electrical repair since where it currently is doesn't. Then, after however much money said tow and repair will cost, expected then No Longer Dead Vehicle #2 will return to Place #1 for the rest of what it was supposed to have done today.

So about 6:30 p.m. (my entire day off now pretty much having been spent in the waiting area at the auto shop), I walk a few blocks to Kroger because I have no food I want to have for dinner at the house. Then I walked a couple more blocks to Starbucks for a white mocha latte while I wait for the cab I called, since I decided not to walk the three or so miles home in the freezing damn cold and my not-as-bad-as-the-bad foot was hurting pretty bad anyway.

Funny thing about my feet. The bad one is the left one that I sprained horribly a little over three years and wish I had broken instead, because (as the doctor said at the time) it's given me trouble ever since that it might not have if I'd broken it. But that one wasn't acting up today. Instead, because I walk just wrong enough to compensate for the bad one, I have effectively now made the right foot probably worse than the bad left one as far as pain, swelling, and general yuckiness. But enough about my f'd up feet.

So now after having gotten home pretty late, spending most of the evening on the phone with my mom, my future mom-in-law, and my friend and former neighbor (who is doing much better, thanks) and generally getting nothing else I had planned today and tonight done... I think I'll just finish catching up for the evening and soon crawl in bed since it's like two degrees anyway. Soon anyhow.

At least I did almost finish Anthony Kiedis' Scar Tissue while waiting around the car shop, after having started reading it, I don't know, nine or ten months ago. That wasn't exactly the accomplishment I had planned today, but I guess it's one.

Well, tune in tomorrow, it can probably only get worse...

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Brain Stew

2006-12-07T23:15:00.000-06:00

It's been a while, so a music junkie post...

Examples of how my brain works, which is probably a deeper look into my general psyche than anyone needs to go, and worse, this is the tamer stuff.

Example #1:

1. I'm putting a finish on the morose post about my stupid car(s) and about to hit "publish", when my Last.fm player suddenly swaps over to something that is not usually a frequent play on the player, which would be Devo's "Gut Feeling".

2. "Gut Feeling" is the first thing I ever learned to play on an electric guitar, taught to me patiently (and with only a smattering of pulling his hair out in frustration) by Greg. (Clarification: It's like the easiest guitar lick in the WORLD.)

3. This makes me momentarily happy. And I'd like to think was not coincidence, but who knows about such things.

Example #2 (sort of like twisted word association of sorts):

1. A little later on the Last.fm player is The Vines' "Outtathaway!"

2. "Outtathaway!" is also my cell phone ringtone and is the only thing that's waking me up these days if and when I use my phone as an alarm clock.

3. The Vines' manager is Andy Kelly.

4. Andy Kelly used to be the bass player in The Monarchs and is completely hilarious and used to write the best e-mails ever.

5. This, again, makes me momentarily happy.

Thus:

1. I am entirely too attached to music, but it's pretty much too late to stop now.

2. Yep, I'm not just a little bit weird.

3. I wish I could have about 4,000 more moments like this in the next 24 hours and everything'd be all right, sorta.

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This Is Only A Guess

2006-12-07T10:39:00.000-06:00

I'm not sure that the switch to Blogger Beta hasn't broken my feed. Other than that, so far, so good I guess.

And nope, no snow here in Memphis (unless it snowed any before I got up this morning)...

Switchin' to Glide

2006-12-07T04:45:00.000-06:00

So, I made the jump to Blogger Beta, now that I've got Firefox running nicely thanks to Ivy.

It's a little bit scary, though I've already found a couple of things about it that are pretty cool.

Hope I don't regret this 'cos there's no turning back now... eek.

Fox on the Run - Resolved!

2006-12-06T16:33:00.001-06:00

My Firefox looks fantastic now, all thanks to Ivy the Great and Powerful and Totally Kickass! Once she took a look at screenshots of my Explorer vs. Firefox (and deemed the Firefox text as "looking pixelated" compared to the same in Explorer, which was sort of what I was blondely trying to say this morning when I said it looked liked crap, heh heh), she went a-hunting and came up with the info needed to fix it and voila, it looks bee-yoo-tiful now and not only that, so does pretty much everything else including my e-mail. What a bonus!

It turned out I needed to flip the switch on ClearType and then tweak it with the ClearType Tuner in XP (which apparently from what we read elsewhere is a default in IE7 even though it's disabled systemwide in XP), and that did the trick. My blog in Explorer and Firefox now looks almost identical from here.

So now thanks to Ivy, and with some helpful Firefox tips Jag passed along to me today, I'm gonna dig into it and see what all fun I can have, and maybe I'll fall in love with it like the rest of you now! And be able to do some more worthwhile messing around with Blogger Beta (which isn't working with IE7). Thanks again, ladies!

And - after being on the national and state Do Not Call lists for about three years now, I got to file my first complaint ever today. Not only that, but it was my former, many years ago, Internet provider, with whom my last year or so of service was a complete and utter nightmare, so I think this is a good case of what goes around comes around and payback. Yes!

So a good day even though I'm still sleep deprived, and tomorrow is my day off. Awesome!

Oh, You Can't Do That

2006-12-06T05:53:00.000-06:00

Because it is like a deep freeze in here and I have to start work in a little over an hour -

OK, so it just occurred to me if I go to bed and crawl under all those nice warm covers NOW, the likelihood of me getting back up and out anytime soon is pretty darned slim.

Yawn. Brrrrr. And grrrrrrrrrrrr.

Fox on the Run

2006-12-06T05:36:00.000-06:00

OK, all you Firefox lovers. I'm trying, I really am. But every blog I frequent, the text looks like total crap when I go there in Firefox.

Is there some switch or tweak I'm just missing and can't find? I'm generally not this technodumb and this is annoying me.

In other news, last night's good night's sleep attempt was foiled by another unplanned dozing off for two or three hours. But I might lay back down for, like, an hour before work. Mainly because I'm freezing my ass off. I'll try again this evening. At least tomorrow's my day off, even though I'm going to have to spend part of it dealing with the car stuff.

Yawn. BRRRR. Happy Wednesday.

Good Morning, Good Morning

2006-12-05T06:58:00.000-06:00

So, boring catch-up stuff...

Got the car home, it was intact. And, it would appear that what actually happened was not the alternator but a broken drive belt. Whatever, I'm just glad it's here now. One less thing to worry about.

The friend that had the wreck on his way to coming to help me went home from the hospital yesterday. The pneumothorax (collapsed lung - uh, yeah, you can tell I worked for a lung surgeon for 14 years, huh) was only 5%, which having one is never good but 5% is better than double digits %. He also has a few cracked ribs and badly bruised shoulder. I know he's glad to be home. Turns out the vehicle that hit him (an SUV) had little to no damage and nobody hurt.

The plan is I'm gonna get my other car to the shop Thursday (my day off) where hopefully all it needs is a new battery and there will be no unexpected other surprises. Fingers crossed.

A few asked about public transportation... well, it's available here, kind of a joke but it's here and I live near a bus stop, yep. We have a trolley line too, but it doesn't come out this far east. The thing is, since I work at home all but maybe three or four days out of the year (I work for a local company), it wouldn't be the biggest deal to be without a car... except for the fact that my primary weekly or biweekly shopping usually includes 30 and 40-lb. bags of pet food and such - can't really lug that stuff around on a city bus. Of course, you can now order that stuff online shipped directly to you, and I haven't checked into it that deeply yet, but I bet they kill you on the shipping charges for heavy items like that. I unfortunately also don't live close at all to any stores of any kind, really. There used to be a few over here, but one of the main drags in the city, while not really within convenient walking distance, is not that far away, so what stores there were nearby have closed.

Anyway, things are little more stable and calm here right now so that's good.

I just wish I knew why I can't seem to sleep lately. Not only for obvious reasons but this is REALLY unusual for me, I'm generally a major sleeper. I might stay up late most nights, but given the opportunity any time I'll sleep forever, and I didn't even really do that last weekend. I'll doze off here and there for a bit but then I'm awake again indefinitely, and in fact, I haven't actually slept in my bed for any extended length of time but once in the past week and a half or so. I guess all these all-nighters working my butt off doing freelance work has finally started to catch up with me, and I think what I probably need to do tonight is round about some decent hour take a couple of Tylenol PM or something and just go to bed. There's no way I can subsist on one- and two-hour naps indefinitely, I don't think, and considering how much I love to sleep when I can, this has just been bizarre.

Off to start the workday before the Blogging Police get me for BWSD (Blogging While Sleep Deprived)...

The Hoodoo Gurus - That's What I Like

2006-12-05T06:28:00.000-06:00

I am hearing through the grapevine that there's a very good chance the Hoodoo Gurus may well be touring the U.S. come around March, which thrills me to no end since they're (A) one of my three very fave bands of all time and (B) they haven't been here in the States since... 1994, I think. Wow, that was a long time ago! There was a scheduled tour in 1997 that got postponed and then canceled. So anyway, yeah, it's been a very long time.

I'm not absolutely positively without a doubt for sure it's gonna happen but it sounds like there's a pretty good chance at least. The rumor is that they will also hit the South by Southwest festival in Texas while here.

If it happens, I'm pretty certain Memphis will be on the schedule and hopefully Nashville as well. Jeffraham, Chez Bez and lovely wife - and anyone else who'd be into it - I'll assume y'all might be up for it? That would be really cool, especially if they make Nashville too.

As for me, even though I'm pretty much broke as a joke right now, I SHOULD be in a position by then where I can afford to do exactly as I always planned if they hit these shores again and hit every show possible, and the only ones I'm probably ruling out are anything between the West Coast to, say, Austin and Lincoln/Omaha - anything eastward from Texas and Nebraska on is gonna be fair game. Exceptions to that westward rule would be Salt Lake City and Portland, both of those would be an easy hit for me. In the meantime, I think I probably know either another Gurus or Replacements fan, or have friends and family, in almost every city they're liable to play in so this could get fun. Some of you Gurus and 'Mats folk that haven't heard from me in a while, you're probably gonna soon, heh heh.

So, I'm excited, and I really really hope this turns out to be for real this time. I'd guess this will probably be the last time the Gurus play over here collectively as a group, and I couldn't go to either of the two Mecca gatherings in Australia, so I'm NOT missing anything I don't have to this time. Maybe I won't be able to make all the shows I'd hope to, but the Southeast is a given as well as Texas and most of the Midwest, so I'm stoked. It's been a loooong time since I've had the opportunity to give in to rabid fandom and I'm gonna make the most of it for sure!

Updates as I hear stuff...

What's the Story, Morning Glory?

2006-12-04T06:48:00.000-06:00

Just a brief update on the Weekend from Hell fallout... my friend who wrecked on the way to come get me and help with my car is gonna be in the hospital for probably a couple or three days with a collapsed lung. Which is not good by any means but it certainly could have been much, much worse, and I'm thankful that was the most of it.

My car still sits (at least I hope it does) dead where I left it but you know what? I can't do anything more than I can do, so I'm just gonna try to deal with it and try not to let it 100% wreck my week, even if it does 50%, you know. I can only do so much and I've only got so much money to do it with, so whatever happens happens.

Thanks everyone for the well wishes and pep talks in comments, I really appreciated it and you guys were a real shot in the arm for what has been a truly dreary weekend. You guys are terrific, all of you. My sweetie called tonight too which also helped, tho I know it's so frustrating for him to not be here to be able to fix things immediately from afar. And thanks, Newscoma, for going so out of your way as you did, you are a gem and that was really sweet, AND I see my panic attack warranted a visit and pep talk from Weakley County royalty too, how cool is that?!?!

In any case, every one of you folks that dropped by is tops in my book... from the wonderful Weakley County Duo to the fabulously fun Sista, wise and wonderful John H, kilowatthour who's always such fun and a cheer-up, infectiously optimistic good man Smiley, Ivy the great and wonderful and kickass, super sweetheart KathyT, and the absolutely inspiring AT even tho he despises Blogger (heh), the fab Bez (my comrade in GuruNess!), and happy and also optimistic Jeffraham who is always so cheerful, as well as Shauna who was monitoring the whole disaster from NIT this weekend... I hope I didn't leave anyone out but it was all so very much appreciated. You guys are all awesome and getting to be like family I didn't know I was missing and that's so cool, and I'm so looking forward to meeting everyone in person soon in Middle TN, and hopefully AT before long, and kilowatthour, who's been thinkin' she should gather up a blogger meet in Tennessee and I say come on down after the holidays, heck yeah! OK, stopping before I gush anymore, but I am very touched, thanks, and y'all are good folks. (PS Jeffraham, hit me up if Bez can't get you with the Gurustuff, I got tons.)

Overheard in New York also did a bit to cheer me up last night and got me cracked me up a bit too so that was a cheerer-upper. People are funny/strange, for sure.

Today's probably gonna suck too, but hopefully not quite as overwhelming and anxiety-inducing (at least I hope not)... if things don't go well it'll probably be the bitchfest from hell later. I was kinda annoyed yesterday because I had a post nearly finished before all this happened about how the city of Mempho is turning into a police state, but not only will I just save it for later - if my car got towed to the city impound lot, no doubt I'm going to have even more to say about that subject! Will update later on how things go... fingers crossed the car's still there, that will just be such a hassle...

How Much More

2006-12-03T16:54:00.000-06:00

Yep, it just gets better and better.

Before morning, I e-mailed a good friend and former neighbor, who's about the only person I have left locally now that I have no family here anymore and friends have all moved on elsewhere. Knowing he'd be in Memphis today (he comes back to the city to work every weekend), I told him what was up, asked if he could bring jumper cables with him, and if he could come by after work, run me to the store, then see if we could get the stupid car started long enough to get it over here to the house.

He called around noonish and was leaving work early as something was busted on his own car (he's a delivery driver), but thought he could help me out with what I needed and get home all right. At the time, he said he was ten minutes away.

Ten minutes or so later the phone rings again. He's had a wreck. A bad one.

His car's totaled, the ambulance took him to the hospital, where the last I heard he was still waiting to be seen but I expect they are going to admit him at least overnight. He sounded pretty bad and was having a lot of trouble breathing. I mean, he's probably going to be okay (I hope) but right now, obviously not doing so hot. And, of course, I have no way to get down there, nor can I take him home if they do let him go home.

He works over in the area where he had the wreck and might well have been at that same intersection anyway, but I still feel terrible about it.

And my dead car's still sitting where it was, at least I hope. I'll make some kind of arrangements tomorrow, I reckon. No point in it this late on Sunday afternoon, I'd be waiting in the cold for hours for the tow.

I'm really not generally a very mopey person, but this really is the way my crappy luck usually runs with stuff, so I have pretty much had it with this weekend. I'm going to bed until the phone rings again. Hoping my friend will be okay, and right now I don't care if that stupid car vanishes off the face of the earth. Blah.

Those with the kind words today, it was much appreciated, thanks bunches. I don't have a lot of bad days like this usually, but when I do they are usually doozies and mega crazy stuff. Sorry to have been a drag.

And tho I told Sista earlier today I was going to see if I could maybe make the holiday party next weekend after all, it's definitely not happening after all this crap. So I reckon I'll shoot for seeing all the Nashville folk in person after the holidays sometime when there's another get-together going on.

For now, I snooze. Later...

For Some Of Us It's Not A Good Time

2006-12-03T04:16:00.000-06:00

This is how my crummy, rotten, sucky, horrible Saturday night went.

I finally got some decent sleep and got up late-ish Saturday night feeling sooo much better.

I was planning on doing a little shopping in East Memphis, but really got back up a little too late to do so. Which, in retrospect, turned out to be a good thing.

I ran out to my nearby Kroger to pick up a couple of things, including something to eat for a late dinner.

A little over a mile from my house, my car died.

I walked home. Fortunately I had put my winter coat on, for the first time yet this season, when leaving the house. Not that walking a mile plus home in 30-something degree weather with a wind chill of 20-something degrees was much fun. Also it was after midnight. And might I remind you I live in Memphis, crime capital of Tennessee.

I have the roadside assistance coverage with my cell phone provider, and probably would have gotten it towed (or a jump, if a jump would have worked) to my house if the college kids up the street weren't having a huge party Saturday night, which they do practically every night, and every parking space on my street wasn't taken up because of it. Including in front of my house.

So now I have one non-working car sitting in the driveway, another non-working car sitting on a street a mile away where it is probably either going to get vandalized and/or stripped before I can get it moved tomorrow, or else the folks in the million dollar mansions on that street will have it towed, tho technically they shouldn't since it hasn't been there long enough. But you know, money talks.

And looks like I will be spending the money I had tagged for Christmas on car repair and registration (since the one in the driveway has expired, which it wouldn't have if we didn't have #$@!%&! inspection in this stupid city).

This is just yet another thing in what's been a long line of things this year, to which I keep saying "If ONE more thing happens..." If one more thing, what? I dunno. I'm just tired of it.

And tired, and still cold, and now sneezing. GREAT.

I want a new car. Anyone know where I can get one for free? Blah.

'til tomorrow... when I'll be back to spread more sunshine, I'm sure. Blah, blah, blah.

Broken (The Sequel)

2006-12-02T11:56:00.000-06:00

I broke my Blogger profile a long time ago. I figured out a while back how to expand it on the main page, and then when I wanted to re-shorten it again - back to how they are originally with the brief couple of lines on the main page and you click to see the complete profile - no matter what I do or try, I can't get it to go back like that again. I'd hoped when I changed templates that might solve that problem and it'd go back to the default view, but nope. Didn't work.

Any Blogger experts with any ideas how to fix it, please share...?

Before I Get Old

2006-12-02T09:50:00.000-06:00

First it was having to wear reading glasses sometimes. While I am also wearing contact lenses.

Then it was wondering if I am getting early Alzheimer's because I honestly don't remember the Wonder Twins.

Now, I just turned up the text size in my browser from "smaller" to "medium".

Sigh.

Should We Give It Up? (I Don't Know)

2006-12-02T09:17:00.000-06:00

I am being sorely tempted to jump from Blogger right now, especially since all my experiments with Blogger Beta have been less than thrilling. I can hardly believe it, but WordPress is tempting me more than anything right now because of some of its options. The reason I can hardly believe it is because I used WordPress for another project about a year and a half ago and hated its guts. But apparently there's been some improvements since then and it's got some cool features.

Blogger is free, and I like free. And what I would want to do with WP would not be free. But free is nice. And I'm getting kind of attached to this template now, even though it's a Blogger standard. And WP has a bajillion templates, which Blogger SHOULD have but doesn't.

I don't know what to do, but I have a feeling my entire weekend's fixing to get sucked up by the inability to drag myself away from technostuff and tweaking and playing and experimenting, and dang it, I have five fresh DVDs in from Netflix to be watching. What to do, what to do.

Any opinions about the virtues and evils and pros and cons of Blogger vs. WordPress vs. TypePad vs. anything else are most welcome, fire away if you have a mind to.

Me, I'm going to bed in my bed for the first time since Sunday. (I did sleep a while last night, finally, just not in my bed.)

The Fires of Hell Will Take You

2006-12-02T08:21:00.000-06:00

Reason #1,274 that I am probably going to Hell for my smart mouth...

Year: 1999

On my couch: Freeloader Ex, for the first time in five years since we split up and he split town

On the table: Bottled water, ibuprofen and Tylenol, various bottles of herbal stuff like St. John's Wort and others, vitamin supplements, wet and dry washcloths, and a bucket to throw up in

Why: At-home detox (don't try this at home, kids!)

Him: "Okay, so now you know what to do and no matter WHAT I say, don't give me a drink. Do you have any questions?"

Me: "Yeah. This isn't going to turn out like Leaving Las Vegas, is it?"

Let It Bleed

2006-12-01T01:07:00.000-06:00

If you get a chance tonight or in the morning, hop over to Secret Cables and give nashgirl some encouragement towards her making another effort to give blood tomorrow. I know just how she feels, and I think it's awesome she wants to try again and wants to help.

I have only given blood twice in my life, and not only am I an extremely slow bleeder like she is - both times I passed out cold. I also accidentally tried to cut my hand off once, and the same thing happened.

You may say to yourself, "But Lynnster, I thought I read that you have worked in the medical field since you were 16 years old." Indeed that is true. And I have even worked in two emergency rooms, including a busy one in south Nashville back in the late '80s. That's why this story's even more crazy.

And ironically, the first time I gave blood was when I was a senior in high school as well, back four million years ago. The Beta Club at my school was sponsoring a blood drive, and pretty much all of us who were 18 and eligible signed up to give. They had assigned a time for each of the givers, and I just happened to wind up the first one on the list.

So the morning came, and we were all lined up by our assigned times in the gym. I was #1, and a boy in my class who had not only the biggest (size 14) feet in class but the entire school - we'll call him Bigfoot (don't get excited, Newscoma) - was #2. Bigfoot and I went thru all the usual registration rigamarole they do when it's your first time, and then were sent to the other side of the gym to take our places on the lounge chairs they had set up.

So they stick me, and I commence to bleeding. A girl in my class who was in the Beta Club was parked next to me as a "watcher", and we were just hanging out there chatting about whatever.

She told me, later, that I was in the middle of a sentence and suddenly, my head just went down - thunk! - on my chest. I was out like a light.

It gets better. Bigfoot, in the next lounge chair over, passed out just seconds after I did. And not only that, but he went into mild convulsions as well. Rad!

I don't know how many of the other seniors standing waiting in line turned around and walked out of the gym at that moment. I know there were a few. When I came to, it was like I'd been asleep for half a day, though I was only out for a minute or two. And I felt fine. It did take forever for me to fill the bag, but I did eventually finish bleeding.

Not sure whether Bigfoot stuck out the rest of the day or not or went home. He was still out when I came to, and there was the convulsions thing.

I would have chalked that experience up to the possibility of it having been the first thing in the morning, and I wasn't a big breakfast eater, and that being why I passed out. But then I tried to give blood again about five years later.

The Freeloader Ex and I were living together at the time, and he was waiting tables for a living and would go give blood or plasma any chance he got, because over at the University blood center they'd pay for blood, and the plasma center paid for plasma. One day I was off work and he was going to go give blood, so I decided I would too.

Once again, it was taking forever for them to take mine. He got through, and I'd barely started. He waited around a few more minutes, and then decided he'd go outside and smoke, since it was taking me so long.

When he finished and walked back in, he about had a heart attack. Not only had I passed out again, but I had started going into convulsions this time, and the nurses were furiously trying to bring me back. And what was really freaking him out was, he said, my lips had turned blue.

Of course, I was eventually conscious again and all was well, but I didn't feel so good this time. And there wasn't any obvious reason for it to have happened, I'd eaten lunch, wasn't dehydrated, none of those things.

A year or so later, Freeloader Ex and I are at home watching TV with one of our best friends, who just happened to be staying here with us and living in our guest room at the time. That best friend just happened to be the fella now known here nowadays as The Edge, nowadays known as my current better half. Yeah, I know, funny how things turn out.

I was trying to get one of those annoying plastic wrapped packages open, and had gotten out an X-Acto blade to try to get the stupid thing open. It wasn't cooperating.

In fact, it wasn't cooperating so much that the next thing I knew, the blade slipped and stuck itself way down deep in the lower part of the palm of my hand. Oops. And ouch.

I was rather oddly calm sitting there watching blood pour out of the wound. I didn't seem to be bleeding all that slowly this time.

I tapped Freeloader Ex, sitting next to me on the couch, on the shoulder. "What?" he said as he turned around. And then he looked down at my outstretched hand, his eyes nearly popped out of his head, and panic set in.

Not really sure why he did this first part, but first he led me to the bathroom and held my bleeding hand over the toilet. Then (also inexplicably since yeah, we did have a bathroom sink) he led me to the kitchen, turned the cold water on, and held my hand under the water.

I think I was saying something like it didn't really hurt that much when - they told me later - I went down and basically just melted into the floor, crumpled in a ball.

Once again, I was only unconscious for seconds, maybe a full minute at best. When I came to, the two guys were carrying me to the couch - The Edge had my feet, Freeloader Ex dragging me from under my arms. Sat me down, propped my feet up. Did probably a hundred things they thought might make me better, the only one of which I remember now was The Edge making me drink a Coke (a regular Coke) with sugar added to it.

What I remember about THEM was their faces were whiter than sheets and more drained than mine, it completely freaked them out. And they fussed and fussed over me for hours until they seemed satisfied I wasn't going to fall over and die any second. Well, after we'd stopped the bleeding, which we did. I still have a nice little scar there.

So yep, medical person with nearly 25 years experience here, and quite a bit of experience working in the ER. And I apparently can't stand the sight of my own blood, or at least not more than a little.

Now, I can watch anyone else bleed all day, and have seen plenty of it in the ER for sure. I can watch you have surgery (though I draw the line at brain surgery - brains are gross). Nooooo problem.

But when it comes to my own, nope, apparently not.

I keep thinking I might try to go give blood again one of these days, just to see what'll happen this time. Stay tuned, I'll certainly let you know if I do.

I Was Most Impressed

2006-11-30T22:11:00.000-06:00

Newscoma just got some new clothes over yonder, check 'em out! Is that not the most perfect template in the WORLD for Casa Newscoma?!?!?! I am just beside myself at how fabulous it is and totally captures the Newscoma Essence. That is just awesome.

We West Tennessee chicks are just putting on all kinds of new dresses this week. She needs to keep hers for sure tho, that's just totally Newscoma. Woohoo!

17, 18, 19, 21! (The Sequel)

2006-11-30T21:58:00.000-06:00

Random bits and pieces at the end of my day off... I don't know how things are looking in Nashville right now, but the winter weather has taken hold of Shelby County already tonight. I just brought the dogs in, who got soaking wet 'cos it's raining, and the rain is COLD. It doesn't feel like snow out there to me, it feels like potential ice storm. I was without power and heat for almost two weeks during the ice storm of '94 here, so the thought of such things gives me horrific flashbacks.

Anyway... Apologies to any who notice such things for all the re-publishing earlier today. It was one of those rare but necessary occasions and won't happen often. You see, I had to because after tweaking and fixing stuff all of the posts on the main page not being in the same fonts was giving me hives, because I'm basically easygoing and laid back until it comes to working with web pages, and then I get all anal retentive like that. Force of habit, tho I have finally, after years, come to terms with the fact that everything is not necessarily going to come out perfect and they way I want it, things don't HAVE to be perfect and can wait a day or two and it's not the end of the world, AND it doesn't have to take hours. Except today, which did. I'm always tweaking and tinkering, it never stops and it will never be done 'cos there will always be something else I want to do. Now I'm starting to remember why I spent two years without touching an HTML file, but things are different now. Not so much burnout potential, and NaBloPoMo was apparently the shot in the arm I needed to get back in a regular online groove.

And I totally agree with Anne, as Comic Sans is evil as can be. In my font snobbery, Comic Sans does not even exist. Ick.

Obviously, I have been messing with more web gadgets and widgets today and god only knows what I've screwed up, tho so far I haven't found a glitch. Now that I spent hours messing with stuff, I wonder how much of it won't work with Blogger Beta, and it will all be useless and I'll have spent all those hours for nothing. IF I make the switch - I'm still a little concerned especially after reading some more recent stories, and the fact that it still doesn't work properly with IE7. It will with Firefox, but I'm mad at Firefox again right now.

I'm still collecting cool and hilarious blog links and have found even more to add, will probably work on that as well as some more blog projects this weekend, like getting my damn music charts back (I'm mad at them too). I never even got back to the NaBloPoMo list so still have plans to sift thru that, and keep discovering more cool Tennessee blogs that make me laugh, and sure there are many more I just haven't happened upon yet. I wonder if my boss would mind if I took off tomorrow to read blogs all day.

Also, I'm kind of considering shifting most cat, dog, and music stuff to additional, annex type blogs. Because you know, all three of those subjects could easily nearly completely take over this one. I know Sista probably rolls her eyes every time I go posting cat pictures or talking about cats because she loves hers so much and treats them as if they were her own children, you know. Heh.

Anyway, well, maybe not the music stuff but the animal kingdom should probably have its own home so it doesn't just all take over completely here. And then those blogs will get twice as many hits as this one and I'll be grumbling about "damn cats, damn dogs don't even know how to type grumble grumble grumble" just like I used to when I would get e-mail from Germany or Japan asking how Dobie was.

And yep, unfortunately I still have a big file of work that must be done before morning that I probably should have done this afternoon, and for those keeping score, I still haven't slept, unless you count 20 and 30-minute naps here and there, which is probably why when I could have slept a while, I didn't. I'm really stupid for not going ahead and doing the work today, but too late to cry over spilled milk there now. But it's OK - it's almost Friday, and come 5:30 Friday evening, I can collapse if I wanna, and likely will.

Oh... and "17, 18, 19, 21!" is just an old code phrase KC and I used to use regarding anything that was random, like random notes like this post. It's kind of a music geek/slash/junkie in-joke that hardly anybody would get, I just like to use it as a catch-all for random type stuff.

Oh, and look over there at the Recent Readers in the sidebar at KathyT (if she's still there when you're reading this). It cracks me up how it looks like she's just peeping in and you can only see the top half of head peeking in from the corner. That makes me giggle every time I see her on there.

So life is good. But it sure would be better if I'd already done all that work and could go to sleep for a few hours in my bed for the first time since... Sunday? I think it was Sunday. I am so looking forward to when The Edge (Not of U2) and I live in the same house again because, when left to my own devices, I am my own good night's sleep's worst enemy.

Oh Man, She's Got Issues

2006-11-30T15:32:00.000-06:00

I am having font issues, I think I am going back to this one tho. I'm a font snob. I still don't like the way it looks in Firefox tho.

And I think I am getting kind of attached to this template, even though it's just an old standard Blogger one. Maybe spruce it up some with a header or something. I dunno. I have another one to play with but it's extremely pink again and I know some of y'all don't much like the hot pink.

And, why has Blogger - after all these years - not significantly increased their cache of templates? There should be hundreds by now, you'd think. I don't get it. It makes no sense to me on a techwebgeek level. Sure, you can find plenty elsewhere, but it just seems odd to me that Blogger has grown as exponentially as it has yet has so few templates available and such little variety. It's just weird.

Somebody Get Me a Doctor

2006-11-30T15:00:00.000-06:00

Nashville is talking, you say? Nashville may talk a lot, but by all appearances, it's also pretty damned viral right now. I'm serious, those Middle Tennessee folks are SICK.

In fact, I think Newscoma and I should go build a checkpoint on I-40 at Cuba Landing and require of all entering West Tennessee from the east: throat cultures, chest x-rays, and a routine physical. 'Cos we don't wanna get sick. Y'all keep your germs on that side of the river, sick people. But do come over for a visit when you're not sneezing and coughing and swallowing razor blades.

Take a quick glance around Nashville's blogging community this week and you would think EVERYBODY in Davidson and Rutherford County both is coming down with something. Or they've just gotten over a bug. Every other blog I go to this week - sick, sick, sick.

What are these people doing up there? Some of it sounds like strep. Are they all kissin' each other and drinkin' after each other and stuff? Inquiring minds sure are wondering about those folks across the river and what they've been up to.

I kid, of course. But it really is kind of unsettling, I have now lost count of how many bloggers over there are sick now or recently have been, there's been so many. Blog after blog after blog, I see it. And been typing "get to feeling better" and "get well soon" over and over and over again.

So here's a blanket one for everybody still sick over there and everyone who's not gotten hit yet - eat lots of chicken soup, drink lots of fluids, get lots of rest, and GET WELL SOON, Middle Tennessee!

Portrait of the Blogger as a Young Girl

2006-11-30T14:50:00.000-06:00

Portrait of the Blogger as a Young Girl
Originally uploaded by LynnsterZone.

Yep, that would be me, as rendered by my mother, the artist. That would also be my first dog, a black Lab mix named Snoopy (who the puppies' mama, Satin, kind of resembled a lot, actually). Yep, I had so little hair at the time I kind of looked like a boy. Actually up to this point in my life, I pretty much had almost NO hair, so that was an improvement. Even tho I have long hair nowadays, there's still not much of it. My mother has thick, easily stylable, formerly blonde hair. My dad had thick, wavy, jet black hair. Why I was cursed with baby-fine, thin, straight as a stick hair that won't do anything at all, I'll never know. I don't get it. Obviously, I DIDN'T get it. Or at least not much of it.

I guess I am feeling a little nostalgic for my childhood today. Yesterday brought the news that one of the fellows in the Nashville blogging community's grandmother had passed away. I lost mine a year ago today.

I guess I was pretty lucky to begin with - when I was born, two of my great-grandparents were still alive. It had almost, very narrowly, been three, because one of my great-grandmothers died a week or two before I was born. One of my great-grandfathers died a month later, and my maternal grandmother passed the month after that. But a lot of people, at least back then, didn't have great-grandparents alive at all, so I know I was pretty lucky to have two of them. And not only that, they both lived well into my teens.

I practically lived at my paternal grandparents' house growing up, I was there as much as I was at my own house. Being first and only grandchild for many years had its privileges, I did whatever I wanted when there and was always the star of the show. My grandfather and I would play Yahtzee at night and eat a bowl of Rice Krispies together before bed. My grandmother and I would put jigsaw puzzles together, and I taste-tested and ate the leftover batter of thousands of batches of fudge, cakes, pies, and every other dessert under the sun. And I probably ate four million of my grandmother's grilled cheese sandwiches, which try as I might, I can't replicate. They never taste as good when I try to make them.

My great-grandparents on my grandmother's side might have been the only family in Henry County in the Thirties who had a movie camera. Certainly if not the only family, they were one of the few. They were kind of characters anyway; Al Capone's men were running liquor through Northwest Tennessee during the Prohibition era, and my great-grandparents often visited one of the speakeasies that had sprung up over near Martin, no doubt also fronted by Capone family members. And they were also doing other things probably not that many people in rural Northwest Tennessee were able to do and afford at the time, like taking their daughters to the 1939 World's Fair in New York. Which I have video footage of, as well as a fair amount of footage of my grandmother and her sister when they were teenagers, and that's probably a relative rarity for someone my age to have.

My great-grandfather was really something. He bought this awesome purple Chevy convertible in the Forties that my dad and uncle both later drove, and my dad drove it again for a while when I was a kid. I wish we still had it, but my great-grandfather sold it in the late Seventies, purportedly so my father and uncle wouldn't fight over it after he died. He was also frequently, and often secretly, doing things to help those less fortunate around the community; my mother found out about one of those occasions just last year when my grandmother died, over 25 years after my great-grandfather's death. My great-grandmother was this Great Southern Lady who everyone just adored, and was quite striking in pictures and on film, before her illness which eventually took her life. I wish I had known her. I hear she was quite excited about my pending arrival, but I arrived a week or two too late.

I think the story of my grandparents' marriage is funny as hell. My grandparents eloped, running off with another couple to New Concord, Kentucky, when my grandmother was 16; my grandfather was already in his twenties. They returned home and went back to each other's respective homes with their parents. And stayed that way. I don't know exactly how much time passed before the secret marriage finally came to light, but it was a fair amount of time, and no doubt my great-grandparents were less than thrilled. Instead of doing what she was probably supposed to, like her younger sister eventually did - going to a "good" all girls' college and getting a degree, then marrying a Tennessee state senator - my grandmother was a child bride at 16. My grandfather went in the Navy during WWII, and my grandmother gave birth to my father a little over a year after she'd graduated from high school.

And she'd have had it no other way, I think. My grandfather was the love of her life, and she loved being a mother and a housewife, though she did work in the family drugstore now and again. She loved babies, and would have probably kept having them if my grandfather hadn't put his foot down and put an end to it after #4. Ten years after that, I came along, and then later my cousins, so she had babies and kids around again and was thrilled. She would have adored being a great-grandmother, if only any of us - my cousins and I - had ever bothered to get married and have kids, so I'm kind of sorry she wound up missing out on that. But at least when she remarried, she wound up with a slew of step-great-grandchildren.

My grandfather died when I was in my twenties, and I was living in Memphis by then, but would get back home more often than I ever am able to nowadays. Spent a lot of those weekends over at my grandmother's house too, drinking wine coolers and playing Scrabble with my mother and grandmother until nearly sunup.

My grandmother got remarried in the early Nineties and moved to her new husband's home in Nashville, and I didn't get to see her as often. She loved her new life, but she always missed our little hometown terribly, which was almost the only place she'd ever lived.

Her husband was quite a bit older than her, so I always expected that if he went first, she'd be back in Paris in a flash. When he passed away early last year, by the very next week she had found a house back home to move into. She had missed her life and friends back home so much over the years, and her husband had been ill for some time and had required so much constant care, so I had hoped she would be able to spend at least several years back in Henry County, having some fun and enjoying herself.

She had about two good months back home, socializing and spending time with my mom, and her two kids that were still in town, and my youngest cousin, who was in high school at the time and still at home. And had even picked out Husband #3, so I'm told. Except he got sick and died a few months after her return to her hometown.

And she was diagnosed with cancer a couple of months after her move back home last year. Shortly after Thanksgiving - a year ago today - we lost her.

I've lost a good number of my friends, too many, including some of my closest. And all my grandparents, great-grandparents, and a few years ago, my father. So it's not like I don't know how this whole thing goes - the grieving, the getting past it, the going on.

This one has not been so easy to get past. I keep telling myself I'm 40 years old, and this is ridiculous to still be missing her so much, and that I was lucky to have so many grandparents and great-grandparents in my life as long as I did. And to get over it. I've lost some of my best friends in some of the worst ways imaginable, and a parent. So I should, logically, be able to get past this, too.

Well, maybe someday. It won't be today, though. Not quite there yet.

And since I can't, I hope maybe if you still have a grandparent and/or great-grandparents around, you might pick up the phone and call them and say hi and tell them you love them. You really should. I'm just sayin'.

Broken

2006-11-29T11:32:00.000-06:00

I am still not happy but I can live with this template for a couple of days. Don't get used to it 'cos it will probably change before the weekend. After discovering the horror yesterday, I just couldn't deal with it anymore. This kind of looks a little better, doesn't it?

I found this bee-yoo-tiful, absolutely gorgeous template yesterday that I loved and even tinkered with it on my Blogger account a little bit. In the end I decided not to use it (tho I might toss it up for special occasions in the feature). It was really cute and really pretty, but pastel colors and flowery stuff really kind of isn't me. I'm a girly girl but not, like, pastel girly.

By the same token, I also found a custom template I fell in love with yesterday except there was one significant thing about it that wouldn't have worked for me, plus - how do I put this? - it was a little too, um, risque. Which, if I'M sayin' that, it had to have been pretty out there. If it'd just been a little bit toned down it would have been awesome. Which I might go back later and talk to the artist about it and see if she could retool some of the elements to be more Lynnster-like (no, I don't know what that is!). But for now I was in too much of a hurry to get that horrific mess of the last template out of my sight.

Eh, maybe I need to dust off my old webwork skills and see what new tricks I can learn and just make one myself exactly the way I want it. But I can live with this here right now for a day or two. Who knows, I might get used to this one and just do some tweaking on it.

Let's see, in other news, the last time I slept was for about 25 minutes around midnight last night and haven't slept in my bed since Sunday still... have work to do tonight but it won't be the catastrophe last night turned into... AND I get to sleep in tomorrow. So everything'll be OK eventually. Think I'm due for a big crash tonight tho. Might get back here later this evening, you never know. If I commence to hallucinating due to sleep deprivation I'll be sure and log back on for a while, that'd probably be pretty funny.

Ain't No Way

2006-11-28T12:06:00.000-06:00

OH HELL NO.

This blog looks like crap in Firefox, yet looks the way I intended it in IE.

I thought that basic phenomenon was supposed to be the other way around. WTF??

Actually, I am not liking the way the text looks in Firefox on a lot of websites, not just this one. Is there some switch to flip I am just not finding?

The good news is Blogger Beta works fine with my test pages in Firefox.

Well, I can do a template change (headache!!!) but that doesn't solve the font appearance issue.

I'm not even supposed to be here right now, what am I doing? Pardon me while I go bash my head in with a big rock. This pretty much sucks when I almost had everything exactly the way I wanted it. And have no time to be messing with anything the next two days. My apologies to everyone who's been visiting here with Firefox for having been forced to look at this ugly crap.

This discovery just plain sucks. Grrr.

I Haven't Slept a Wink

2006-11-28T06:22:00.000-06:00

I have always been a night owl, but lately things are just getting way out of hand. I habitually go to bed late and sleep late any chance I ever get. Which, of course, is not something I can do on the four days a week I have to work.

Lately, I keep finding too much to do and before I know it, I've got a whole hour before I have to work. Or even when it's not a work day, I wind up falling asleep here in the chair for a few hours, rather than actually going to bed and getting real sleep. I think I slept in my bed three nights last week. Maybe just two. I don't remember. So far this week I haven't slept in my bed since I got up Sunday afternoon.

I know part of the problem is I'm seriously overextended anyway. Between my regular job, the freelance work, and volunteer work, it's like this constant overwhelming totally swamped thing. And that's not even figuring in time for other things I want to do like, hey, blogging.

This week has barely even started and already I'm feeling the crunch, having taken on responsibility for enough work that I will likely be working all day and then through the night from now until Thursday morning. Sure it's too much, but not working at least two or three nights out of the week is not really an option financially at this time.

I also seriously need to get a start on Christmas shopping, but I can't even wrap my head around Christmas right now. The thought of diving into all that madness and rush to get things done is just - ugh.

But I really would like to get some decent sleep. It's highly unnatural for me to even consider going to bed before one or two in the morning, but even that would be an improvement over the way the last several weeks have been.

Last night I didn't have any work to do, and that was my opportunity to get a good night's sleep. Instead I got to doing this, and got to doing that, and got to reading this or reading that. And then I took my shower and thought well, at least I can get a few hours' sleep. And then I got to doing something else and what do you know, it's a little after 6 a.m. now and I have to start work at 7.

Of course, it didn't help that I dozed off again for two or three hours in the early evening. But I don't do it on purpose. One second I'm awake, and the next thing I know two or three hours have passed and I still have a laundry list of things that MUST be done. And then I get that stuff done and more things keep popping up to do.

I don't know how you folks with kids do it. 'Cos there's many many more must-do's when you have kids.

And once again, it occurred to me around 5:30 in the morning that well, I guess I should have taken a Tylenol PM or something a while back. A little late for that now, though.

So here I am again, with approximately 18 hours of work ahead of me starting shortly that will more than likely drag out to 20 or so, another day and night just like it in the schedule after that, and no decent sleep. I have been basically able to manage my being a night owl my entire life, but this recent cycle is going to be the death of me. When they lock me away in one of those very quiet places for a long, long rest, I wonder if they'll let me take my laptop and have WiFi.

And you thought I was kidding the other day about being a zombie.

But I Was Sleeping on the Job

2006-11-28T04:59:00.000-06:00

Rocky, sleeping on the job.
Originally uploaded by LynnsterZone.

Rocky the tech geek, sleeping on the job when he should be transcribing my blog or optimizing my templates in preparation for Blogger Beta...

Cats. Pfft.

Modern English

2006-11-27T22:05:00.000-06:00

I know it's hard to believe some days around here, as half-assed and retarded as I toss some stuff up on the blog sometimes, as well as occasionally being deliberately illiterate. But, believe it or not, I was an English major in college.

So when I saw this on another blog this morning, I immediately had to go take it, because I secretly am a geek like that.

Your Language Arts Grade: 100%

Way to go! You know not to trust the MS Grammar Check and you know "no" from "know." Now, go forth and spread the good word (or at least, the proper use of apostrophes).

Are You Gooder at Grammar?
Make a Quiz

Darn good thing, 'cos I do believe I would have had to shoot myself in the head had I gotten much less than 100%. Actually the test is mostly about apostrophes, but I'd hazard a guess that is one of the top ten English stumbling blocks for most people.

Wow, I feel so academic today! I must be coming down with something.

You Say It's Your Birthday

2006-11-27T04:57:00.000-06:00

Today is Dobie's birthday. He is twelve years old today. If you look up the word "comedy" in a dictionary, there's probably a picture of Dobie there. He is a complete and total clown and always has been. Entertaining, amusing, and just plain goofy in both looks and personality, and more weird neuroses and odd quirks than you can shake a stick at. All wrapped up into one ball of yellow fur with enormous, gangly, and completely ridiculous looking legs and a great big black clown nose.

His mama was a Doberman and was originally a foundling, found starving in downtown Memphis many years ago, and the sweetest, best-natured dog ever, no matter that she was a Doberman. She didn't have a vicious bone in her body and she thought she was a lap dog. God only knows what his father was, and that relatively unanswerable question's been a fairly constant source of wonder for my entire family throughout Dobie's life. His mama was the first of two neighbor dogs I took in over time (yep, I'm a sucker) who both (hey, just like Cracker Jack) came with a surprise inside, though unbeknownst to me at the time either time when I took them in. She gave birth to nine puppies, one of whom didn't make it. Most of whom didn't look anything at all alike except for Dobie, one of his brothers, and his only surviving sister. I called the brother Eyebrows, as he looked just like Dobie except, yep, had dark "eyebrows". After initially going to a home that requested later to return him because he was "chewing on things" (what?!?!? he was a puppy, for crying out loud, puppies CHEW) - he eventually went to another home with a little kid. Kid and puppy fell in love with each other on sight, and I imagine Eyebrows had a spoiled and good life ever after. Though probably not as spoiled as Dobie 'cos nobody is.

Also in that litter of puppies was Big Head Todd, who looked a little German Shepherd-ish and was the only one I was even considering keeping at the time. And Jaws, who was so named at the time by me because you couldn't turn your back to him or else risked a chomp on your butt, and let me tell you - puppy teeth are sharp as little danged needles. Jaws looked like Dobie but was a darker color, so dark he almost had an oddly green tinge to him. There was another puppy that looked much more Doberman-ish, black and rust like their mama, and two more that survived, besides all the ones mentioned so far. Pretty much all of the puppies had really big and obvious individual personalities from the start and were very much just out there, noisy and active all the time, and just couldn't be missed or overlooked. Except one.

While most of his siblings were constantly in your face and vying for attention, Dobie was so quiet and hid so much, I often forgot he was there. I doubt that he got near as much attention as the others did because they demanded it, and he would just disappear into the woodwork. There were times it would occur to me that everyone else was hogging the attention and I'd make an effort to give him attention, IF I could find him. By all appearances, he was a very timid, quiet, and shy little puppy. I wasn't intending to keep any of them, and in fact, tried to talk the family that wound up taking Eyebrows home into taking Dobie - who was trying to hide once again - but they took his brother instead. They had been the last two puppies left.

He hid EVERY time anyone came to look at the puppies. I have been convinced his whole life since that the little weasel knew EXACTLY what he was doing.

Once Dobie was the last puppy left, all of a sudden it was, like - BANG! - whole new puppy! An entirely different puppy suddenly took the place of the meek, mild, quiet, timid little thing that had been there earlier and he became Hyperactive Noisy Insane Puppy Destroying Everything In Sight. He and his mama took to wrestling all over the house and chasing each other around the yard and just generally causing mayhem in every direction. He totally turned into Dobie, Dog of Destruction.

His aunt Lucy (black Lab mix) and uncle Dez, her son, were still around at the time when he was born and when he was little, though Lucy became sick not too long after and passed away. She had been a mama dog herself, twice, so the puppy was really just a minor annoyance to her, and she was good with Dobie when Baby, Dobie's mama, would let her.

Dez - who was not a dog of generally pleasant mood in the first place - appeared to rather despise the little bouncing ball of yellow fur and was constantly incredibly annoyed by him. However, one day, a neighbor dog came into the yard and was headed towards young Dobie, and you have never SEEN a dog zoom across the yard so quickly as Dez did, planting himself next to the puppy in defiance. It was sort of a "I can hate the puppy and be mean to him, but YOU can't" kinda thing.

We lost Dez shortly after Lucy - I had had him since birth, too, but he had always been a dog with issues and personality problems and really could not hack his mama's death and died soon after. So for many years, until Lulu the Beagle/Dachshund appeared, it was just me, Dobie and his mama, and the cats.

Hard to believe Dobie was once about the size of his big nose, smaller even. He achieved some degree of worldwide fame on my old website, and I used to get e-mail from all over the world just asking how Dobie was quite often (rolling eyes). He never let his newfound Internet fame go to his head, however, and spent most of his life enjoying the simpler things in dog life: barking at his mama; chewing up hats, socks, sweatshirts and whatever else of mine he could find to chew on (though that improved greatly after about age two); barking at his mama; chasing Missy the cat whenever she went on one of her berserk zooming sprees; barking at his mama; searching out new taste plateaus in chew bones; barking at his mama; running around in circles chasing his mama in the yard; barking at his mama; wrestling with his mama; barking at his mama; barking at NOTHING; barking at his mama; and so on and so forth.

Any time his mama had something - chew bone, ball, other toy, whatever - he had to have hers, even if he had been given the exact same thing. She was kinda to blame for this ever starting anyway, though, as she would always give the puppies her treats when they were all still around.

Also, Dobie has the boniest elbows and knees of any dog EVER.

Dobie has been especially and, lo, even overly gifted with a host of neuroses and odd quirks, some of which he inherited from his mother, like her mortal fear of thunderstorms. Mind you, for the first two years of his life he could have cared less and was never afraid of storms. Suddenly one day, thanks to his mom's influence, he decided he was deathly afraid of them too, and usually winds up cowering on the top of my head in bed or behind me on the couch, climbing all 60 lbs. of himself and his bony legs into my lap while I'm sitting at the computer, or getting as far under the covers as he can go even if it's the middle of July and a million degrees (because if he can't see the lightning, it isn't there, you know).

He has always been afraid of his collar and leash for no apparent reason and if you show him his collar, he looks as if he'll cry and becomes paralyzed at the thought. This fear of the collar and leash led to many years of interesting annual visits to his vet, which was located at a very busy intersection of Memphis and the building itself is on top of a small hill with numerous steps leading up to it from the parking lot. As soon as I took Dobie out of the car, he would immediately freeze with his extra-long gangly legs sticking out frozen stiff in all directions, and I would have to CARRY him up all those steps in that position, which I'm sure was an enormous source of amusement every year for drivers in the cars passing by on the busy street. In later years, he finally (thank god) decided it would be OK to walk instead of having to be carried.

We used to go through the same freeze-and-carry routine at bathtime as well (after having to be chased down), but a few years ago he shocked the crap out of me one day when he walked directly into the bathroom unassisted and stepped right into the bathtub and sat waiting for me. I guess he really wanted a bath that day, but it's been like that ever since and just freaks me out every time, after so many years of pre-bath drama.

For many years, the only time he was allowed to eat was if his mama deemed he could. I used to worry going on out of town trips for a few days that he'd starve, because most of the time, she didn't want him to eat. In recent years with the puppies, one of them has taken to being territorial about food with his brothers and has growled at Dobie on occasion. Buster's been disciplined for this and told, in no uncertain terms, that Dobie's mama wouldn't let him eat when he wanted for years, and Buster wasn't about to start telling the poor thing now when he could and couldn't eat.

We lost the puppies' mama and Dobie's mama around the same time, within a month of each other, when the puppies were about six months old. Baby, Dobie's mom the Doberman, was older and had gone blind about a year before and her health had been in a downhill progression for a couple of years. The puppies' mom - who was Dobie's buddy and was really still only a puppy herself (and was the other neighbor dog I took in that came with a surprise belly full of puppies) - her death was unexpected and a total shock.

The babies had only been out and about in the house for about two months prior to her passing, and Dobie was not exactly thrilled about their presence. They were crazy and were constantly disrupting his peace and quiet, but considering what he'd put his mama and me through as a pup, I thought it kind of served him right and was a good case of payback, really. What goes around comes around.

In any case, when their mama died and they were so young, Dobie somewhat reluctantly took on the parent role with the little ones, annoyed though he was. They still obviously annoy him on a regular basis, but he is generally pretty good with them and protective of them, even at almost three years old now. I think Bruiser really does think Dobie's his daddy, but Bruiser's intelligence has always been a little bit questionable anyway.

I am also happy to report that at about ten years old, Dobie FINALLY started hiking his leg to pee outside. Before, we always had this weird squatting thing going on that wasn't exactly a squat - more as if he was riding a surfboard is the only way I can possibly describe it, it was strange. I had him and his mama fixed as soon as I could after he was born, when he was a few months old, and I kind of assumed this failure to ever really act like a man in the bathroom might have been because he was neutered so early. So after a decade of squat/surf peeing, I about had a heart attack the first day he hiked his leg to pee at ten years old - which didn't happen until the boy puppies were around and were doing the same. The heart attack not so much because he was FINALLY hiking his leg to pee, but watching him do it was one of the most hilarious things I've ever seen. It took him a while to get the hang of it and he'd go up to a tree and look like he was just going to fall over sideways any second with the way he contorted himself.

He also has his own cat, as you saw a couple of weeks ago. Or Rocky has his own dog. I've never really been sure which is the case there.

All neuroses and quirks and loud (really loud) barks aside, Dobie has really been a pretty good dog and one thing about him - he's funny. He truly is like the Clown Prince of Dogs, you can't help but be entertained. You just look at him and laugh. He just looks plain goofy, with his long gangly legs and his big old clown nose. He can stick his airplane ears out in directions where you just go "What the hell?", and has always sort of resembled a deer at a glance.

His mom used to be able to fold herself up like a deer, curled into this little compact, tiny ball. Dobie never could quite manage the compact thing, with his legs being so long and sticking out so far all the time. We are talking ALL legs, big giant nose, and those goofy looking ears. He's just so silly looking, it's a riot.

In his old age, now, he is really starting to look aged, with his face turning white in places as well as his feet. And he has decidedly withered in the past year or so and I think we are on a natural downhill progression with him, too, now, though he's not particularly showing any signs of slowing down and will still chase the young'ns around the back yard. And with him having lost weight and withered some, he looks even decidedly more deer-like than ever and he just looks even sillier than ever. A little bittersweet now that he's so old, but you still really can't help but look at him and laugh. He's a NUT.

My former and longtime co-worker has always said she dreads the day it's his time to go because she thinks that will be the hardest pet loss yet ever for me. She's probably right. He is a total goof and has been a fairly constant source of amusement and entertainment, and he can be a real pain in the neck sometimes, but he is generally a good dog, always good natured and most definitely very much permanently attached to me. He may be an old man now, but on the other hand, in many ways, he'll always be my puppy.

This last picture of him was taken last summer, so he was already pretty old by then. This one happens to also be the wallpaper on my cell phone, heh. So yeah, I pretty much chuckle every time I open up my phone.

So, Happy Birthday, goofy silly old Dobie dog. It's been a good twelve years. Thanks for making me laugh at least once a day for all twelve of them.

From the Bottom of a Bottle

2006-11-26T21:15:00.000-06:00

I could use one more day off with this long holiday weekend. I wonder if my boss would agree. Sigh.

As I mentioned the other day, anyone who might get offended about jokes about drug and alcohol addiction is going to get offended here on occasion. My ex and my current are both addicts/alcoholics in recovery and, thus being that I've paid my dues putting up with their active addiction BS many a time, I can and I will joke about it sometimes. Because crap they do or say is funny sometimes, in its own sick and twisted way. I can find the humor in most anything, even something as pitiful as that issue is. So this is the last time I'll make any disclaimers about it and I'll never make any apologies for it. Those that find it offensive are better off moving along. I find it funny so, well, whatever.

That all said, I have hereby basically spoiled my intended post for the day, but never fear. I got addiction-related anecdotes for days, years even, and I feel a bit of a vent coming on, so I'll get back to you on all that. So, um, yeah... have a nice day and cheerio!

Cat in a Basket

2006-11-26T19:22:00.000-06:00

Cat in a Basket
Originally uploaded by LynnsterZone.

Missy, not liking the flash too terribly much. She is seriously not happy with me here.

I tried to get a pic of her curled up asleep in it this afternoon, but she got pissed off at me and kept moving and then jumped out entirely. I got one photo of about 1/4 of her and that was it. That's "her" laundry basket, which is an extra one that I usually keep old rags in.

I felt compelled to leave the background in the dark because my desk area looks not unlike the Gulf Coast did after Hurricane Katrina. It might have been a nice idea to do some cleaning and straightening up during these five days I have had off of work because of the holiday. But, why?

So Far Today

2006-11-25T08:14:00.000-06:00

I found stuff yesterday that made me very very happy and made me feel like I was 19 years old again for about an hour, heh. I am so thrilled more Nashville bands from the awesome days are surfacing:

Shadow 15 on MySpace

Raging Fire on MySpace

Jet Black Factory on MySpace

Really just can't get enough of this stuff, it's hard for me to believe it's been 20 years since I've seen some of these bands play. I luv me lots of all three of those bands, and Shadow 15's "So Far Today" remains one of my top fave tunes of the era - I have been carrying around a beat up cassette of stuff taped off of WRVU with that on it that has somehow managed to survive all these years. Which brings me to the next bit of news (great news for me!) -

To make this latest find even cooler, I heard from Scott Feinstein, who says they are currently in the process of getting together some of the old Shadow 15 stuff with plans for a CD, probably in a few months. So that along with the recent news of Tommy Womack planning to remaster and rerelease the old Government Cheese catalog eventually - I couldn't be more thrilled.

So in honor of all these fine folks that keep resurfacing out of the old Nashville underground after lo, so many years - on this fine gorgeous November morning in Tennessee, once again, I bring you the almighty Cheese!

PS - Here's direct links to that one and the rest of the live show Government Cheese videos currently on YouTube:

The Shrubbery's Dead Where Danny Used to Fall

Camping on Acid

Skyline Rant and Somewhere in Between

There's a couple of non-live videos over at YouTube too - enjoy!

Four Four Four for My Headaches

2006-11-24T13:44:00.000-06:00

Detach your nose from the monitor & go do something productive...
Originally uploaded by LynnsterZone.

Detach your nose from the monitor and go do something productive, missy... an everyday thing, really.

Still recycling & moving old site pics but you know what, this is pretty much what I've looked like for the last 72 hours anyway with my nose permanently attached to the monitor screen. And no makeup.

Four quick things before I go take that nap I was going to take about this time yesterday afternoon...

1. I tested Blogger Beta this morning and am very disappointed. It REALLY sucks with IE 7, a lot of functions do not work at all. Needless to say I don't think I'll be moving anytime soon and maybe not 'til they make me. It might work just fine with IE 6 but it is HORRIBLE with IE 7. I might play with it with Firefox later but you know what, Firefox has its good points and all but it's always run so danged slow for me. I don't like slow.

2. I can't remember when I last slept in my bed because I keep falling asleep this week in the chair here at the desk. First because I was working so much Monday and Tuesday and worked through the night. Then after that, just because I keep falling asleep sitting here. And I do NOT have a comfortable chair here. This all sucks and I intend to remedy all that right now - see: nap I intended to take yesterday afternoon.

3. I have four thousand things I want to get done this weekend but, most importantly, I would like to watch at least ONE of the five Netflix discs I've had sitting here that I haven't had time to get to the past two weekends. Any bets on whether I watch any at all, or how many? Let's not even talk about stuff I was supposed to do the past week that I can't seem to make myself do. God, if there's such a thing as Internet/online ADD, I've surely got it.

4. Childhood Misheard Lyric #1: "Joy to the bishops in the deep blue sea, joy to you and me..." (So, I was raised Episcopalian and "fishes" just never occurred to me for, well, years.)

17, 18, 19, 21!

2006-11-23T18:52:00.000-06:00

OK, so I didn't have another post planned for today, but it would seem the one day I decide to toss up a YouTube video is the one day I need to take a new screenshot of the blog, and now I need to get Adam Sandler's big head down further on the page so here - another post about not much of nothin'.

Since I did the Six Weird Things earlier, here's Eight - No, Nine! - Totally Random Things About Whatever, Mostly But Not All Slightly Musical.

1. I can tell you exactly what I was doing every Friday night from October 1970 to March 1974. Sitting in front of the TV (usually the black & white TV in the living room at my grandmother's house) from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. CST watching The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family. Which is a nice segue into...

2. Further embracing my inner bubblegum, I shall now list the top ten 45 RPM records my mother would have surely liked to have burned into a melted puddle of vinyl:

"Dizzy" - Tommy Roe
"Sugar, Sugar" - The Archies
"I Think I Love You" - The Partridge Family
"A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" - The Monkees
"Julie, Do Ya Love Me" - Bobby Sherman
"Jam Up and Jelly Tight" - Tommy Roe
"One Bad Apple" - The Osmonds
"I Woke Up in Love This Morning" - The Partridge Family
"Shambala" - Three Dog Night
"ABC" - The Jackson 5

Only because they got PLAYED SO MUCH. But "Dizzy", especially. She'd have probably loved to have broken that record into five million pieces.

So, another nice little segue onto...

3. Yes, indeed, I had an imaginary friend named Davy who for years was with me wherever I went. Yes, it was Davy Jones. And yes, indeed, I know where I was every Saturday morning throughout most of 1969-1970. The Pink Panther, the first rebroadcast of (naturally) The Monkees, then American Bandstand. Usually at my grandmother's house too, except on Saturday mornings I got the color TV in the den all to myself. Which leads to...

4. (Here's where I shake off the bubblegum and get some of my indie cred back.) To this day I've never met the man, but the first cousin of two boys who were like big brothers to me when I was a little kid is none other than Alex Chilton. It's even odder that we haven't crossed paths - there have been a bunch of occasions since I've been an adult where we have missed crossing paths with each other within a matter of hours. The younger of his cousins used to read to me when I was little and was one of my favorite people in the whole wide world... RIP Peter. Anyway, speaking of my indie cred...

5. My two seconds of fame, I reckon, was being acknowledged in Michael Azerrad's terrific book, This Band Could Be Your Life (I contributed some very minor Replacements swag to the project). So there's my little piece of rock solid indie cred, and that and 50 cents might buy me a cup of coffee (or four bucks at Starbucks). I was invited to participate in the documentary that'll be out soon about Replacements fans, but thanks to my awful lazy habits of procrastination and the fact I don't have a working camcorder of my own right now, I never got around to making a tape. Big bummer, but I'm still looking forward to seeing the finished project.

6. One of my former neighbors & babysitters when I was a kid, the younger sister of one of my best friends since high school, and the daughter of my high school tennis coach all have one thing in common: each is a former Miss Tennessee.

7. If jokes about drug addiction and alcoholism offend you, then you're probably going to get offended here sometimes. The ex, the current, another ex, and many many of my friends all being in long-term recovery or otherwise - I've paid my dues and I can joke about it all I want, and I will and I do. Stuff they do, or did, is pathetic but it's also often funny, in some laugh-to-keep-from-crying kind of way, yeah. And sometimes it's just funny. There's really very little in life I can't find the humor in somewhere, and even in its pitifulness, that stuff sometimes amuses me, so you're forewarned. I'm just sayin'.

8. Many have probably figured this out already, but 99% of post titles on the Zone are, yep, song lyrics. Maybe one of these days I'll run out, maybe not, guess we'll see!

9. The puppies you see on the blog sometimes - well, for one thing, The Edge (Not of U2) keeps asking me when I'm going to stop calling them puppies, seeing as how they're going on three years old now. And I reply I will stop calling them puppies when I have puppies younger than them. Anyway, you might be interested to know their mama was a solid black Lab mix with just a tiny little bit of white on her. Yeah, I don't know how that happened either.

I should probably incorporate some of this stuff in an about me/bio/FAQ/whatever someday, but that's another project for another day. Right now I just need to get Adam Sandler's big head moved down the page a little bit. So, 'til later and Happy Thanksgiving again. I haven't even eaten today and I still need a nap.

UPDATED: Edited to add #9 and to wonder why the hell it's after 8:00 p.m. now and I STILL haven't had a nap...

Laugh, 'Cause the Music is Funny

2006-11-23T15:14:00.000-06:00

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for Adam Sandler (see below).

I am spending Thanksgiving on my own today and could not even guess how many times that below has now made me laugh, all day long. It makes me very happy. Must stop hitting the replay button and take a nap.

50 Million Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong

2006-11-23T04:09:00.000-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

(02/01/2007 UPDATE: This WAS where the Adam Sandler Thanksgiving song video was, but it has been removed from YouTube because NBC sucks. When are these big corporate entities going to realize that things like demanding removal of stuff from YouTube and blogs just serve to piss the public off...?)

(and thanks to Dirty Catholic, who reminded me of it and from whom I shamelessly copied because this just cracks me the hell up every time...)

Nobody Weird Like Me

2006-11-23T03:51:00.000-06:00

I got taggeded (sic) by Sista the other night to post six weird things about me, but the past 24 hours have been a nightmare so I'm just now gettin' to it. I should probably call my former co-worker and see what she says those six things are because she thinks plenty I do is weird, but it's late so I won't. I bet she'd come up with six totally different things than these though, I might have to call her later in the weekend just to see what her six things about me would be.

Actually I have probably already posted six or more weird things about myself in recent weeks - not liking chocolate, for one - and I already posted over at Sista's about not liking to be on the phone except with The Edge (Not of U2 - see? It works!), my mom, my sister, or my future mother-in-law (I don't like the phone because being on the phone was too big a part of my job for too many years). But since I've already gone over all that, I'll think of six new things here.

OK, so here are Six Weird Things About Lynnster.

1. I have my dad's feet and my second toe is longer than my big toe, except it won't straighten out (too many years in tight pointy heels and other shoes probably ) so you can't really tell it unless I straighten it out and show you. But, I can do something with my feet he couldn't. If I concentrate real hard for a minute, I can make my littlest toes stick way far out and it looks pretty strange. The left toe is easier to do than the right.

2. Next to my bed, there are two alarm clocks that have three alarms total - two beeping and one radio, which the latter I keep at the loud end of the dial. Once upon a time the least little noise would wake me up, but nowadays I'm very hard to wake up and can sleep thru most anything. I have had this setup for about 15 years now. Unfortunately now, lately, I've found I can sleep thru all three of those alarms too. Including the one on the clock that was advertised to have an "extra loud alarm". I had an old-fashioned windup alarm clock with a bell in the mix for a while too which sort of worked, but eventually I slept through it too. Lately, I have found that the alarm function on my cell phone will wake me up (the current ringtone is The Vines' "Outtathaway!") but I'm sure it's only a matter of time before that stops working, too. I have two different clocks that were advertised as having "extra loud alarms" and all I've got to say to that is yeahsureright, NOT. Not enough anyway.

3. Back before I started working at home and what few days out of the year I have to go work at our corporate office - as well as out at at restaurants, etc. - I drank my coffee with Sweet'N Low, Equal, or whatever, but never sugar. At home, I only drink it with sugar, never the artificial sweeteners. And it bugs me if I have to drink it with sugar when I'm out of the house, or with artificial sweetener at home. It SERIOUSLY bothers me to have to do vice-versa. This makes absolutely no sense, I know.

4. As much as I love and am obsessed with music, and as long as I've lived in Memphis, I have never been to the annual and huge Beale Street Music Festival during Memphis in May. I'm not too keen on crowds nor traffic, and even tho there have been plenty of bands and artists I'd have dug seeing, they've yet to have a Lynnster-absolutely-cannot-miss one in all the time I've been here, so I've just never gone.

5. My family would like to be able to say I'm adopted because of the blasphemous-'round-these-parts fact that I hate, loathe, and despise country ham with a passion and beyond almost any other food ever. People outside the South probably won't get it, but country ham is a pretty huge thing down here and, in fact, giving someone a country ham is a pretty generous gift around these parts - it (or a turkey) are employee Christmas bonuses at some Southern companies. Anyway, I hate it immensely. I'm sorry, but country ham is N-A-S-T-Y. There, I said it. And my family can't say I'm adopted because I look too much like them, and now all you Southern folks that come by here think I'm weird because of it too.

6. A hodgepodge of little things for #6 - I don't know how to grill, I am grilling-impaired. With the exception of when I was little and my grandfather showed me how to wash a glass at the family drugstore, I never washed a dish by hand until I was in college. I never mowed a yard until I was 30 years old. When I was little, I had an imaginary friend named Davy (maybe I still do!). And, I always slept with the covers up to my neck until I was a teenager. Because you never know when Dracula might show up.

OK, there's six things plus some bonuses. Now which six people shall I tag? Let's see... whose weirdness do I wanna see (and tagging some folks that aren't folks other NIT folks will likely tag)... how about Contrary, Sister Margaret, kilowatthour (when you return from your trip of course!), Dirty Catholic, Bitter Betty, and pageantmom? (Maybe Newscoma and The New Jan Brady too... except Newscoma, dear, you have to post about something BESIDES Bigfoot...heh.) And anyone else who wants to join in on all the weirdness, of course!

In the Name of Love

2006-11-23T02:54:00.000-06:00

So, I've been thinking The Boyfriend needs a new blog name when referenced, as I am wont to do. 'Cos "The Boyfriend" sounds kinda stupid when you're 40 years old. Which he's not, as he is oh so fond of reminding me (he's two years and two months younger, gimme a break - plus it's HIS friends who keep thinking I'm in my twenties, hahahaha). But anyway, yeah, being 40, "The Boyfriend" sounds kind of stupid to me.

"Significant Other" is too pretentious. "The Fiance" or "Husband-to-Be" sounds even more ridiculous than "The Boyfriend".

I'd ask him for suggestions, but (A) he thinks I run my mouth too much anyway (and I do), and (B) whatever he'd come up with - which would most assuredly be something eye-rollingly and overly generous to himself - I already know I'd be vetoing in a heartbeat.

He's never been one of those people to have a nickname, which is a concept beyond my comprehension since I have, like, a million nicknames from various and sundry folks. But people have pretty much always just called him by his first name, occasionally his last.

Well, I take that back. He had one bestowed upon him as a child that he had rather hoped I would never ever find out about, and once I did, he won't let me say it aloud. "Don't push it" are usually not words my ears can hear (hehe), but even I know better in this case. I am fearless and feisty, maybe, but not stupid. It's kind of a shame too, 'cos it's a cute nickname and nothing really wrong with it, but he hates it probably more than I hate country ham. Which, you will soon learn, is a LOT.

He has one other nickname, tho, that one of his best friends gave him a pretty good while back, and is really the only person who's ever called him that. I'm kinda thinking this one is blog-adoptable and liking it, actually. There's one minor little problem with it, maybe... but it's nothing we can't work around.

So from here on out, The Boyfriend will now be referred to as....... The Edge. Not to be confused with you-know-who of U2, of course. The Edge (Not of U2), maybe. OK, that'll work.

Oh, how freakin' WEIRD. U2's "Pride (In the Name of Love)" just this SECOND popped up on my Last.fm player. I am NOT kidding.

Well, guess that seals that deal!!! That's too freaky NOT to, now. That's weird, tho. Shudder.

He'll hate it, but I can always say, "Well, at least I am not calling you (nickname he loathes more than anything in the world) on my blog, eh? Deal with it."

I win!

The Spirit of One Moment or Place

2006-11-23T02:31:00.000-06:00

In my lengthy daily blog travels this week and last, I've come across a lot of remembrances and essays and other stuff about the JFK anniversary, including the "Where were you..." remembrances.

I, of course, was nowhere and wasn't even thought of at that moment in time. Well, possibly thought of and considered, I guess, but it would be 1966 before I would arrive on the scene.

I have always liked my Dad's "where were you" story.

Dad was in pharmacy school at the time, and I guess it must have been a nice and warmish November day in Memphis, 'cos he and some friends were laying out of one of their classes that day and playing football on campus.

Suddenly, someone else appeared. It was the professor whose class they'd skipped. They thought they were in trouble.

They weren't, and the professor's the one who told them what had happened.

The Job That Ate My Brain

2006-11-22T01:38:00.000-06:00

Zombie Brain Eater & Happy About It
Originally uploaded by LynnsterZone.

Scary! Zombie brain eater on the loose... the last thing you see before I chomp on your head. And obviously awful damn happy about it.

Still moving old site pics and recycling a few...

Really I wish something'd eat my brain. Or like the Ramones song referenced in the title... my job(s) is (are) eating it. I am so stupid. If I'd started the work I have to do overnight soon after getting off work yesterday, I'd be through by now and could go to bed, which is what I really want to do. I'm so exhausted. But no, I do this to myself every time.

Oh well, the holiday is almost here and I will have NO work to do until next week, yay. Be back soon and after I - if I ever do - catch some much-needed zzzzz's...

Brothers in Arms

2006-11-21T16:14:00.000-06:00

Brothers in Arms
Originally uploaded by LynnsterZone.

I have bitten off way more than I can chew this week with freelance work, I got ZERO sleep last night, and I am destined to be insane by morning probably.

So unfortunately it's another quickie day for me blogging. Much more to come this week once I come up for air under all this work, when I will be blessedly and blissfully off for days and days. Yay.

In the meantime, here are Buster and Petey today, who are usually too busy beating each other up to be looking all comrade-ish like this. However, here they appear to be plotting against the new puppy next door (who, oddly enough, looks like their mama did - a black Lab mix - so you would have thought they wouldn't have such issues with this one).

Or probably more likely, Petey's just wondering if the new puppy has food and asking Buster if he sees any food through the fence. Because Petey is all about food - to hell with territorialism if there's food involved.

Somebody's Watching Me

2006-11-20T17:34:00.000-06:00

Somebody's Watching Me...
Originally uploaded by LynnsterZone.

Petey, self-appointed guardian of the whole doggone neighborhood today.

Except the only thing on his mind is whether someone might steal our (his) food or not. Or if someone out there's got food. Or if someone out there might have food later.

I guarantee you the only thing on this dog's mind is food. Well, and protecting me, as he is my big protector. But I can guarantee you, too, that protecting me is secondary to food any day.

Cats in the Cradle

2006-11-20T03:15:00.000-06:00

The beginning of what would become a lifelong obsession...
Originally uploaded by LynnsterZone.

I don't have much today so here... CATS!

The beginnings of what would be a lifelong obsession leading to what would be owning five billion cats in my lifetime. Or rather, them owning me. Well, 150 or so anyway probably. Maybe more. I grew up with indoor/outdoor cats and we always had cats having kittens back then so if you count them ALL, it's a lot.

These two are Tiger and Cuddles and they were my first cats ever. Yeah, wasn't very creative with the names back then. Tiger grew up to be HUGE. We have video of him when grown where it looks like I am trying to hold a small lion in my arms. Once out on my own, I took to keeping the cats I had indoors, so I've had fewer and they've lived longer then all those many many we had throughout the years of my growing up did.

Anyway, the weekend kind of slipped away from me, though I did manage to squeeze in lunch with an old friend from high school and dinner with one of my former co-workers in between it all. It was an OK weekend, just didn't get nearly as much done as I would have liked. Which is not necessarily unusual for me, but frustrating always. Weekends should be three-day weekends every weekend.

Which brings me to today, which is the start of what's going to be a crazy week. Due to the upcoming holiday, I've taken on a kamikaze load of work for the early part of this week, so you won't be seeing much of me until Wednesday, though I'll try to come up with a thing or two to make your visits to the Zone at least not a total and complete bore. If you drop by and mutter to yourself, "What is that flaky fruitcake blonde chick up to NOW?"... then my job is done. Heh.

It's a Shame About Ray

2006-11-20T01:45:00.000-06:00

Well, no doubt I love a musical challenge, so taking Sista Smiff up on her challenge today... let's get out the MP3 player and see what happens... feel free to join me.

What's the Soundtrack of YOUR Life?

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc).
2. Put it on shuffle.
3. Press play.
4. For every question, type the song that’s playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button.
6. Don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool and no disclaimers allowed.

Opening Credits: "Minority", Green Day
Waking Up: "Hotel Yorba", The White Stripes
First Day At School: "Zero", The Smashing Pumpkins
Falling In Love: "Control", Puddle of Mudd
Fight Song: "Outtathaway!", The Vines
Breaking Up: "Two-Timing Touch and Broken Bones", The Hives
Prom: "Commando", The Ramones
Mental Breakdown: "North Knoxville", Apelife
Driving: "Wasted", Black Flag
Flashback: "Sex and Candy", Marcy Playground
Getting back together: "Drunk on a Train", The Painkillers
Wedding: "Lipstick", Fun Things
Birth of Child: "Futuretarded", The Vines
Final Battle: "Police Story", Black Flag
Death Scene: "Warning", Green Day
Funeral Song: "It's a Shame About Ray", The Lemonheads

OK, that came out plenty weird and somewhat disturbing... "Birth of Child - 'Futuretarded'" - eek.

It's the Little Things (The Sequel)

2006-11-19T10:08:00.000-06:00

PostSecret updated. Whew.

My mom mentioned my Creomulsion post from the other day. And said not one word about the fact I admitted I used to sneak around and eat baby aspirin like Sweet Tarts.

It's the Little Things

2006-11-19T01:48:00.000-06:00

It's almost 2 a.m. on Sunday and PostSecret hasn't updated yet. PostSecret DTs are imminent... ack!

I wish I had a dollar for every time I have told an animal of the feline persuasion "Move" or "Go away" in the past 24 hours.

My Favorite Thing Is What You Are

2006-11-19T01:20:00.000-06:00

If you don't know what this CD is, then we can't be friends anymore.
Originally uploaded by LynnsterZone.

If you don't know what this CD is, I don't know if we can be friends anymore.

Well, OK, we can still be friends. But I reserve the right to say your taste in music sucks.

(Moving and recycling pics from the old website. I might actually start posting new ones soon - hey, what a concept...)

Isn't She Pretty (wasted) in Pink

2006-11-18T23:15:00.000-06:00

After Sista Smiff shared with us her prom photo the other day, that got me to reminiscing about my own. Though I think Sista and I probably didn't have the same prom experience, being that she was a good Baptist girl and all and seeing as how I was one of those wildass Episcopalian girls. You know us Episcopalians, we like to drink and stuff.

So this was prom my junior year in 1983, which was much funner (sic) than my senior prom 'cos junior year, none of us girls were attached and we all went together. Which was pretty much what we did that whole year, stayed unattached and hung out and went to parties all the time and got in trouble sometimes and just had a large time.

Within two or three weeks of the time this picture was taken, ALL of us had a new boyfriend apiece, and though we still did plenty of hanging out together that summer and our senior year, not so much as we did the year before. And we all went to the senior prom with boys, and while it was OK, senior prom wasn't nearly as much fun as junior prom had been the year before. Which leads me to conclude that boys are stupid.

No offense to any regular male readers, all of whom are intelligent and have excellent taste in blogs. (ahem)

Junior prom was also more fun because the mother of one of my friends was working as a bartender there at the time. Of course, this was a school function, so she was just serving cokes and punch at the bar. And graciously ignoring the fact that there was a bottle of Seagram's 7 hidden at the far end of the bar in a very dark corner that had not been part of the original bar stock that evening.

This photo marks one of the last school dances at the country club, as it burned down to ground a short time later, which was a sad day for us, having enjoyed the convenience (as mentioned in this blog before) of drive-in service to the back door. We'd pull up, wait for one of the college-age guys we knew to come out. They'd go back in and come back out bearing a carload of 7&7's, and off we'd go back uptown, to the beach, wherever.

We missed that convenience later, 'cos after the country club burned down, we had no choice but to go across the river for liquor. Which, now that I think about it, is probably why all us girls who thought we didn't like beer at ALL started drinking beer most of the time instead. Hmm.

But before the country club burned, that drive-up service sure was nice. Too bad we didn't have cell phones back then - we could have called in our order ahead of time and not have had to wait around for some guy we knew to come walking out.

Those poor guys. We never paid them a dime, but they never asked and probably wouldn't have taken any money from us anyway.

I love small towns. :)

Lala How the Life Goes On

2006-11-17T19:25:00.000-06:00

Just wanted to add that even though it's a sad day today all over Tennessee, it is perfectly okay to:

(1) Make fun of my desire to buy the entire line of action figures from the film The Warriors so I can recreate pivotal scenes from the film with them - a different scene each day!

(2) Scare me with smoke inhalation stories. And yes, I still smell it, tho it's getting a little better and not as frequent.

(3) Comment on my comment to your comment from the other day on my comment from the other day about your post from two and half weeks ago.

(4) Whatever.

I'm just sayin' don't feel any need to be quiet on my account. Besides, it's my understanding (and from reading her own blogging) BJ had an exceptional sense of humor and seemed to be a really fun person, and this afternoon AT said everyone should pop a beer if they had one, that BJ would have wanted things that way. I imagine she would approve of blogging fun going on in her wake. So I'm not going to make any attempt to contain whatever silly goofy wacky barrels of monkeys I may or may not have been saving up for the weekend.

So, eventually tonight I might post what was supposed to be the REAL post for Day #17, as both the fire one and the announcement were unplanned. (Or I might just be lazy and save it for tomorrow.) And then I might taste-test some of these dozen or so mini-bottles of liquor I've got hanging around since last Christmas for a while, and then go drunk-commenting around my fave blogs. You know, like drunk-dialing, but in blogdom.

Oh! Remember the candy discussion? I discovered another new, non-chocolate candy I like last night - well, not really new but new flavors - Jolly Ranchers Smoothies. They're awesome! Except I had one of each flavor sitting on my desk today and now one's missing, why are my cats stealing my Jolly Ranchers...

Watermelon Smoothie Jolly Rancher - good. Except, ow - Jolly Rancher stuck in back teeth now. Bad. Ouch.

She Talks to Angels

2006-11-17T12:28:00.000-06:00

Late last night (early this morning actually) I asked for extra thoughts/wishes/prayers towards East Tennessee for the Oak Ridge family of GAC/BJ, AT, & their two little boys at Atomic Tumor, as things had taken a turn for much worse overnight.

Very saddened to report that this morning, she is gone.

Even though I never knew BJ personally, I am honored to have been able to get to know her thru AT's words. As well as so many wonderful things I heard about her, and them both, from others that knew them, some of whom are my own friends, acquaintances. I am grateful to have had this all too brief opportunity to learn about her and her - again, all too brief - life. 29 years old is too soon to have to leave, especially with two young children.

This tragedy has touched so many hearts all over the country, all over the world now. BJ will live on through AT's love for her and through their sons, most definitely; and through the memories of their good friends and family. But she will also live on through the hearts of all the hundreds, thousands of people who have been witnessing this electronically over there the last few weeks as well, all those with whom AT shared her in his grief and pain. I think it changed the world a little bit and has made it a little bit better place today.

I think it would have anyway, even if it had had a happier ending, if she was awake and with her husband and her boys today instead. I wish that's how it had turned out. I wish there were more I could do.

AT, their sons, and all their many family & friends could use your prayers, thoughts, wishes, whatever it is you do, more than ever now and in the coming weeks, especially with the holidays afoot. I thank you for whatever it is you choose to do, if you do so.

Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire

2006-11-17T03:36:00.000-06:00

So, last night I was shopping at one of our fine local grocery establishments (rhymes with giggly ziggly), when a small electrical fire broke out in the vicinity of the store where your Intrepid Blonde Blogger was perusing potential edibles for the evening's dinner.

I was just a few feet away from it but didn't actually see it, as it was around the corner from the aisle where I was standing - which was actually the corner I was next intending to round on my way to the frozen vegetables. But the rising smoke from around the corner and stocker dude standing at the foot of the aisle looking at me frantically with one hand up, going "Ma'am, back up please. PLEASE back up, ma'am" - probably would have tipped me off soon enough. And if not that, the store manager with the fire extinguisher arriving on the scene, certainly.

I wasn't in the general area but a couple more minutes, grabbing what else I needed to and getting the hell out of there pretty quick. Even within just a few minutes, the smoke was getting pretty icky and the smell was just plain awful.

Ugh. Obviously I was there just long enough and just close enough to get a nice little dose of for-real smoke inhalation. I can't get loose of the smell!!!!

I get home and change clothes immediately - which I was gonna do anyway. Hair - eh. Couldn't do much about that, at the moment anyway. But smell, smell, smell. It won't go away.

It has now been over eight hours since I left the store. I have showered and washed my hair TWICE.

IT WON'T GO AWAY. I can still smell it, and obviously it's not on me, it's IN me. ICK.

I mean, it's not constant. Just, like, every five or ten minutes it's back again. Yuck.

This is worse than when I was in high school and college and our TV at home kept getting zapped by lightning. Several times I'd come home late at night on the weekends and I'd open the front door and that smell would just hit you in the face. But it wasn't, like, stuck in my nose and head forever. Of course, maybe that's because I was never there in the room when it happened.

I hope it's not going to be like this all weekend. Blah. It's going to go away soon, right? Please?

PS - Anyone who's been following the situation at Atomic Tumor... things have worsened extremely and I think she needs nothing short of a miracle now. But please continue to keep BJ, and especially AT and their children in thoughts, prayers, wishes - whatever it is you choose to do. I think AT & the boys probably need prayers and thoughts for strength and getting thru all this more than ever right now... thanks.

It's Survival in the City

2006-11-16T22:26:00.000-06:00

This should have been a Halloween post, but as most of my friends and family will tell you, I am late for everything anyway. So, no reason why this should be any different.

In post trick-or-treat years, I didn't have much occasion to dress up in costume again and most of the time whenever I did, it wasn't Halloween. One of my batches of friends from college (hello, Swams!) had a habit of throwing costume and theme parties year 'round, not just Halloween. Beach parties in the middle of February, that kind of thing. My costume for most of these events was usually that of Drunk Blonde Chick. For the beach party, it was Drunk Blonde Chick with Red Ray-Bans, Sandals, & a Lei. You get the general idea.

The one time I did actually go in costume at Halloween was a Halloween party one of the school clubs was having my senior year in high school, fall of 1983, and that was my favorite costume ever. I wish I had an picture of me dressed up, but for some reason nobody took any photos that night, so you'll just have to use your imagination. I borrowed an old baseball uniform and bat that had once belonged to my then-boyfriend's older brother and went as this guy you see here. Actually, I didn't go as this one, I went as one of his comrades - the blue-faced Fury, to be specific. The purple-faced action figure was just the only one I could find a decent picture of. Anyway, this is pretty much what I looked like, except instead of purple and black, blue and black, with some subtle differences. And I am not made out of plastic. But I was pretty scary looking as a Fury, or at least as scary-looking as a 5'2" Baseball Fury could be.

So, if "The Baseball Furies" means nothing to you, I'm not sure we can be friends anymore. Well, OK, I guess we can. But you're on probation now. I'm just sayin'. Unless you're under 30-35 and then I guess to be fair I'm forced to cut you some slack, I s'pose.

When I was zipping around looking for photos, I must have come across a bazillion pics of folks dressed up as the Furies - including one of my fellow NIT bloggers who's done the Fury thing before (and also Luther!) - so that kinda tickled me to find the Furies continue to be a popular costume. For those of you who don't know (and that are now on probation, heh), the Baseball Furies were one of the many gangs who tried to stop the Warriors from getting back home to Coney Island in the 1979 film of the same name (The Warriors, duh).

Unfortunately, the Furies were also probably the biggest pussies of all the gangs that came across the Warriors' path, but they had the coolest costumes. (And a bit of Warriors trivia - rather than other actors, the Furies were all stunt men who were working on the set.)

There was no film more revered in Camden, Tennessee in the early to mid-Eighties. There are probably about 116 Camden natives of a certain age (mine) that have the dubious ability, still to this day, 25-ish years later, to be able to quote that movie from start to finish, because we all watched it forty hundred and eleven times. Around 1982-83, not too many people had VCRs yet (I know that's incomprehensible to some these days) - I had one at my house, a few of my friends had them at theirs. It just became a ritual. Too boring uptown? Let's all go to JBird's and watch The Warriors. Too hot and tired of swimming at Lynnster's? Let's go inside and put The Warriors in. Snow and ice falling everywhere and they've canceled school tomorrow? Let's all go out to Ang's and watch The Warriors. Twice. And spend the night (girls upstairs, boys in the basement) and all get up in the morning and watch it AGAIN.

So, the action figures! If I had a lot of cash to blow, I'd be tempted to buy 'em all. They have them at ToyW iz.co m. The original series all came in dirty (bloody) and clean versions. The Ajax one is quite rare and priced high. They also have the blue Fury (MY Fury) priced at $749.99 but I suspect that's an error. And here's the funny thing... they all come with several little accessories. For instance, the Luther action figure comes with a tiny broken bottle, so you can re-enact the whole "Warriors... come out to pla-ay..." scene perfectly. If you do that kind of thing. Which I would never do. (ahem)

I was a big Twin Peaks fan back in the day and it just pleased me to no end when David Patrick Kelly, who was Luther in The Warriors, showed up in Twin Peaks as Jerry Horne. But I digress yet again...

Anyway, back to my Halloween costume as the blue Baseball Fury. There was one really bad thing about that costume that was an unpleasant surprise. About two hours into the party, that makeup started itching like hell. By the time I left the party, I'd scratched a good bit of it off, and what didn't come off was a bitch to get off later. And my face looked like a tomato for the next week, it was so red and swollen from all the itching and scratching.

But still, it was worth it. Best costume EVER.

If there's a next time, tho, I think I'll just dye my hair black and go as Mercy. Much, much easier, and for anyone who doesn't get the in-joke, they'll just think I'm dressed as a hooker anyway.

They Go Crunchy Crunchy Crunch

2006-11-15T21:59:00.000-06:00

Subject: New Quaker Oatmeal Crunch

Flavors: Maple & Brown Sugar, Apples & Cinnamon (Mixed Berry was unavailable)

Verdict: Okay, though disappointing. The crunchies aren't very crunchy. Nice try, though.

OH. UPDATE: Also disappointing 'cos it doesn't come in my favorite Quaker flavor to begin with, dammit. (Raisins & Spice)

What's the Word Up?

2006-11-15T21:07:00.000-06:00

Don't have a lot today and I have a HUGE project due in the morning, and an all-nighter's ahead. This is pretty typical for me on Wednesdays.

So, in order to not totally hose the day's blogging, I grabbed the first meme I came across. So without further ado and thanks to a tag-all from Sarah, here we go:

You can only answer with one word.
No explanations.

Yourself: Overworked
Your Partner: Stubborn
Your Hair: Straight
Your Mother: Hero
Your Father: Missed
Your Favorite Item: Quilt
Your Dream Last Night: None
Your Favorite Drink: Coffee
Your Dream Car: Free
Your Dream Home: Elsewhere
The Room You Are In: Dining
Your Ex: Freeloader
Your Fear: Heights
Where You Want To Be In Ten Years? Elsewhere
Who You Hung Out With Last Night: Cats
What You're Not: Rested
Muffins: BananaNut
One of Your Wish List Items: Desktop
Time: Dragging
The Last Thing You Did: Phoned
What You Are Wearing: Sweats
Your Favorite Weather: Rainy
Your Favorite Book: Coupland
Last Thing You Ate: Oatmeal
Your Life: Trapped
Your Mood: Stressed
Your Best Friends: Treasure
What Are You Thinking About Right Now: Wales
Your Car: Handicapped
What Are You Doing at the Moment: Blogging
Your Summer: Horrific
Relationship Status: Edgy
What Is On Your TV: Nada
What Is The Weather Like: Rainy
When Is The Last Time You Laughed: Phone

I tag: Whoever else is dire need of a post today!

PS My bloglinks are getting out of hand, I am finding way way way too many fun & interesting & hilarious places and I haven't even been thru the NaBloPoMo or NIT blogrolls fully yet! I feel an OCD-induced fit of reorganization coming on again... ugh.

Take a Break, Driver 8

2006-11-14T12:42:00.000-06:00

Work - not feelin' it today. Good thing I have a whole 30 minutes not to feel it right now. Eh.

I just wanna crawl back in bed with my laptop and the five Season 1 discs of Carnivale from Netflix that I haven't had time to watch the past two weekends, turn on the electric throw, and take a very long nap in between episodes. It's been raining off and on all morning, and cold, and they're talking possible snow (!!) this weekend, and that's making me even colder and sleepier.

But no, I have five hours to go and probably five MORE hours of work tonight. This is, like, the longest Tuesday EVER.

On another note - so what about Blogger Beta? I know they're gonna make us all convert soon. I don't like unsure or unstable change, is it safe enough yet to switch? I keep finding conflicting stuff that gives me pause. Should I or shouldn't I is what I really wanna know. No centralized location that's not owned by Blogger that's making me feel good enough about it yet to go "Yeah!", not that I can find anyway.

And, should I go back to bed? Yes, I think so. Can I? No. Dammit. Yawn.

Sticking Your Hand in the Medicine Jar

2006-11-14T05:23:00.000-06:00

So, I really probably shouldn't even be alive to be here typing to you fine folks. Actually, for many and varied reasons and occurrences. But I have a specific reason for bringing such a jolly and pleasant subject up today! I find it at least slightly humorous tho in some sick & twisted way tho, read on...

Lately seems like lots of folks I know, some members of my family, and a slightly disturbing number of bloggers I'm acquainted with have either been really sick or recently have had some pretty scary surgeries. And then there's me, with gallbladder on the warpath and involuntarily anorexic of late. (I haven't given the thing a catchy name yet, guess I should come up with one, darn it.)

Anyway - from this point of view, the world is a sick, sick place right now. (cough)

So I was thinking about illness and surgeries and medicine this weekend because - I don't know why. It just seemed like something to think about at the moment.

And then I thought, "Hmm, I wonder if they still make Creomulsion?" So off I went Googling, and by gosh, they do. Even though it's still on the market, I bet you probably don't remember this stuff unless you were born in the '60s or before, maybe.

Now, let me explain something. I basically grew up in a pharmacy. My great-grandfather was a pharmacist, my dad followed in his footsteps, and we had a drugstore on the court square of my hometown for ages and ages. As a precocious three-year-old who could already read anyway and spell "pharmaceutical", I further honed my reading and spelling skills sitting on the counter up there with people reading me off drug names to spell. And one day I would become the 1978 Henry County Spelling Bee champion, yep, sure was. But I digress...

(Oh, and they took the soda fountain that had been there for YEARS out of the store RIGHT before I was born. My luck has pretty much been just about this sucky since birth, yep. But I digress again.)

Anyway, probably needless to say, we always had lots of different medicines around. Much like there were various foods at my grandmother's house (squash, boiled okra) that never was seen at my house, there were some medicines in my grandparents' medicine cabinet that never was at our house.

Oh, how I loved being sick with a cough at Grandmama's. 'Cos then, and only there, I got Creomulsion!!

It shocked me when I was Googling the other day and saw how many people were complaining on various message boards that they'd hated the taste of that stuff. I'd have drank buckets of it were it possible. I loved it! (It's a wonder I didn't turn out to be a teenage cough syrup head in later years.)

Actually, there was something even BETTER at my grandparents' house. My grandfather had a bottle of plain old creosote. Put a few drops of that on sugar and - mmm!

So there was that, and again - only at Grandmama's. 'Cos I was my father's guinea pig for every antibiotic and cough syrup under the sun growing up - I had pretty bad sinus probs year 'round and was sick all the time in the winter - so at home, it was always whatever was the next big thing in cough medicine. And some nasty stuff we had forever that they stopped making in the '70s that I've blocked the name out of my mind 'cos it was so gross. But it worked - you took one and you didn't cough - and my dad kept that bottle and I took my last dose ever of it around 1991, even tho that bottle was made in, like, 1973. **(UPDATE: The pill was Calcidin and apparently is still made, but not widely used anymore. Old, old drug. Tasted like crap, that's for sure - whether new or almost 20 years old.)

Anyhow, so there was me and the Creomulsion which, admittedly, wasn't really all that potentially dangerous (well, unless you went drinking buckets of it). And neither, really, were the wild cherry flavored Sucrets sore throat lozenges, which I would secretly eat boxes and boxes of around the house. Oh sure, wild cherry Life Savers were close. But the Sucrets were better.

Here's where it gets a little tricky. Baby aspirin. You know, the orange kind. (DISCLAIMER - DON'T DO IT - DON'T DO IT - DON'T DO IT!! YOU CAN GET REYE'S SYNDROME AND DIE!! I WAS A STUPID DUMBASS KID SO DON'T EVER DO IT, KIDS! Okay, done screaming now.)

Anyway, let's not talk about how much - or how dumb - I'll just revel in the miraculousness of my being here today to tell about it, and that they never shoulda made those things taste like they do, nope. I am a firm believer that they should never make medicine that tastes good, for that very reason. And, much like my dad always was, I've grown up to be not much of a medicine taker anyway.

Mm hmm. Strange little kid, yep. But I could spell!

As a postscript here to having grown up in a drugstore with a pharmacist as a father... boy, was it sure an eye-opener for my mom and me, after my parents' divorce and after my dad had his stroke and could no longer work. We had NO idea how much medicine really cost. We had been totally clueless all those years. Ai yi yi!

If I ever have kids, I'm pushing for pharmacy school, veterinary school, or disinheritance. I think that's fair.

(Oh, I'm kidding! There's nothing to inherit ANYWAY. Heh.)

Animal Machine

2006-11-14T03:58:00.000-06:00

The fabulous fun Contrary made a very obstute observation yesterday and left a comment saying I should have saved up the pet photos I posted over the weekend, in order to better be able to make my one post per day. It was, indeed, a good idea.

And, I thought about doing that, I really did. But as I told her, in the end I decided not to do it 'cos it felt like I'd be cheating the purpose of NaBloPoMo if I did, like that'd be taking the easy way out. 'Cos I have a LOT of dogs and cats and that would have taken up nearly half the month of November already.

Yeah, it would have definitely been easier. But we do everything the hard way here at the Zone! Or, maybe I just don't have a brain, or all the peroxide ate part of it. Hmm...

Besides - I didn't post all of them! There's still pets (well, at least of the feline variety) to come, I just gotta scrounge 'em up...