3404 Sadness

Friday, November 25, 2011

What happens in Vegas stays …
on the internet, forever.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Daughter is sad today.

In, I believe, 1997, when she was working at a high-paid engineering job in Philadelphia, she bought a new silver 2-door Honda. It's still healthy, with 197,000+ miles on it.

Now the Honda's two doors make it difficult to get the 20-pound Nugget in and out of the infant seat in the back. So I gave her my 2003, 53,000 mile, 4-door Suzuki, a.k.a. Suzie.

Today, Daughter sold the Honda to George-the-neighbor's granddaughter. (I think she got $5,000 for it!)

Sadness.

We do tend to get attached to a car. We remember how dependable it was, how many wonderful places it took us, how sometimes it seemed like our best and only true friend. Selling a car is almost like finding a new home for kittens. You hope the new owners will love and care for it, and appreciate its unique qualities as much as we did.

(Yeah, I wish Suzie were a Hummer. Or a tank.)
.

3403 Proportion

Friday, November 25, 2011

What is perceived is not always what had been seen.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TV news this morning is full of shopping shopping shopping. Yeah, ok, maybe there are some deals, but at what cost? Are most of those people fighting over gifts, or (as I suspect in many cases) for stuff for themselves? If gifts, can't you give something you can ordinarily afford? If for yourself, aren't there other equivalent sales throughout the year?

I don't understand.

Maybe I'm just jaded by getting great deals in live auctions and online shopping. And I never feel that I absolutely have to have exactly what I want.

-------------------------------

I read something a few days ago that resonated with me, and explained part of my unhappiness with the new house: "A house could subtly abrade your nerves if the proportions of its rooms were wrong."

Yup.

The upstairs of this house is fine. It's pleasant and comfortable. The rooms feel "right".

The downstairs is wrong. It twists me inside. The hall and living room are ok, not perfectly comfortable, but ok. The kitchen, breakfast area, and dining room are "wrong". They are all connected, wrapping around a very shallow "U" (halfway between "U" and "[") , kitchen on the right, dining room on the left, and breakfast area between them. It feels wrong. Annoying. It's like one large oddly-shaped room with differing levels of formality.

I want to put a partial wall, columns, arch, whatever, something, between the breakfast area and the dining room to separate them.

Daughter doesn't like that idea. She says it will break up the sight lines and make the whole area seem smaller.

Uh, yeah, that's sort of the point.
.

3402 Pork chops

Thursday, November 24, 2011

"Dry clean only" means it will make it through the washer and dryer,
or it won't,
and I'll soon find out which.
-- Silk --

------------------------------------------------------

The kids decided not to make a big deal of Thanksgiving this year, which suits me just fine. Hercules gets a gift turkey from the office every year, and last year he and Daughter hosted a bunch of friends. This year, with the baby, it seemed like too much trouble, so the turkey went into the freezer, and they hosted me for a lunch of stuffed pork chops.

Finger food! Well, food they're letting me eat with my fingers...Makes good finger paint, too.

Here, Gramma, have some avacado:
----------------------------

A few of the MeetUp groups I joined have more than 200 members. I haven't gone to anything with those groups (mostly singles' groups) because they have like 50-60 people at everything, and that's just too many people for me.

Well, I had hoped nobody would start it, but some idiot did, last night. I cringed when the first "Happy Thanksgiving!" email dropped into my inbox. Sure enough, in short order I'd received about 300 of the damn things.

I hope that someone has gratefully noticed that I am among the silent.

[Muttering, "...buncha grinning sheeple..." Bah, humbug.]
.

3401 Parade?

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Can we all just agree to ignore Blue Ray? I don't want to have to restart my collection...again.

-------------------------------------------------

I love me some marching bands, drums, high school kids strutting. I love me some floats (or in the case of Macy's, balloons).

I haven't watched the parade in years, so this is a serious question --- when did it turn into a series of ads for Broadway shows? Note I'm not talking about the TV commercials. I mean much of the "parade" is performances from musicals.

Has the definition of "parade" changed?
.

3400 Turkeys (two kinds) and dust covers

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Bad decisions make good stories.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Want to find stuff on eBay or other auction sites that no one else is likely to bid on? Misspell the search terms. Looking for tassels? Search for "tassles" or "tastels". The seller will be desperate because no one is bidding on their items. I found a beautiful "sweeter" with sparkly "sequence" on the front.

I'm serious.

Sequence.

Well, at least they tried spell-check, I guess.

--------------------------------

I got a notice of a new Meetup group, "...for whoever are annoyed by incorrect grammar, for whoever are annoyed by illogical arguments, for (etc.)...."

I sent a note to the organizer, that his "whoever" should be "whomever", and "whoever/whomever" is singular, so it should be "...for whomever is annoyed by incorrect grammar." (A better fix is "...for those who are annoyed by....")

I got a response from him. He argued with me. Sigh. I did not respond. But I don't think I'll be joining that group.

-------------------------------

The contemplative closer on Sunday Morning is usually some idyllic natural scene. This past Sunday it was wild turkeys strutting along the edge of the woods.

Now, Jasper never watches TV. He has never shown any interest whatsoever no matter what's on the screen. (Well there was that one time we were watching the "mare cam" on the laptop, a real-time camera trained on a horse in a stall. For some reason that did fascinate him. But nothing before or since, and never anything on TV.)

Anyway, a turkey on the TV gobbled, and Jasper's head shot up from a sound nap. Instant attention. He jumped off the chair and rapidly stalked the sixteen feet to the TV, belly to the ground, tail twitching, ears up, focused on the turkey on the screen.

The segment ended before he caught one.

--------------------------------

You know how hardcover books (except textbooks, reference books, and professional tomes) come with dust covers? The original purpose was to protect the hard covers from dust, dirt, and oily handprints. Then they became a vehicle for lurid eye-attracting graphics. (Are you old enough to remember when the dust cover and the hard cover underneath had exactly the same pictures and/or imprinting? When did the hard covers become so plain and cheap-looking?)

Eventually, in the used book market, a book with an intact dust jacket became worth more than another of the same condition without the jacket.

Then something weird started happening. People took the dust covers off to protect them! They'd put the dust cover back on, over the fingerprints and coffee stains, when they finished reading the book. And that book became worth more than a pristine book with a slightly worn dust cover.

I don't understand.

Of course soon and for a while this may be moot. Books are going out of fashion. The resale market is shrinking. But mark my words - just like vinyl records are coming back as collectors' items, in twenty or thirty years books will become eagerly sought-after treasures. I doubt that the condition of the dust jacket will matter.
.

Confess. Do you do protect the dust cover at the expense of the book cover?
.