You never see them in the same place at the same time...
Mood:  quizzical
Topic: Deep Thoughts
Are Thomas Dolby and Alton Brown the same person?

Uncanny!
Mood:  a-ok
Topic: Deep Thoughts
Friday night, Kevin and I took Cole to Olean to see X-Men 3 for a very fun (and geeky!) time. He's such a hilarious kid. I hope he took away the message of the movie - simply put, that it's okay to be different even if other people don't think so. I've been a geek my whole life, but it's only been in the past few years that I've come to see the value in it. Hopefully, Cole can feel confident in himself and be spared the self-doubt I went through.

Enough philosophical pondering over a cheesy summer blockbuster! Speaking of which, apparently you can't have one without Sir Ian McKellan and/or Ben Stiller. Oh, and don't forget to play "Carmina Burana" in the trailer! Never fails...

Nature red in tooth and claw
Mood:  sad
This morning, as I was attending to my morning toilette, I heard Shui (our Shar-Pei) barking like crazy and Kevin shouting at Jack (our Shiba Inu), followed by Jack snarling like I’ve never heard him before.

Turns out a rabbit had found its way into our backyard unbeknownst to Kevin, and when he let the dogs out this morning, Jack immediately ran it down and killed it. At least it died quickly, but Kevin was hugely upset. He got incredibly mad at Jack last year when Jack killed a nest of bunnies. Both of us are incredible softies when it comes to animals, but I tried to tell Kevin that he couldn’t blame Jack for following his programming.

Shiba Inus are one of the world’s oldest known dog breeds, and they’ve been bred for thousands of years to hunt small game – Jack was just doing exactly what his genes told him to do. So I wrested the poor dead bunny from him, and congratulated him on his skill. He trotted around like he was king of the world. From a Taoist perspective, nothing happened that should not have happened. But it still didn’t make me feel any better about the whole thing.

Rub me the right way
Mood:  lazy
Tonight, I had an hour-long massage from Larry at Lisa’s Hairport. Ummmm….. he used hot stones all down my back and legs. Damn, that felt awesome! He’s a very very good massotherapist, I recommend him highly. One caveat: he talks a lot more than I would prefer, but he is good enough that you can forgive him for it. He likes to tell you the muscle groups he’s working on, and the type of techniques he’s using. That’s fine, but just shut up and let me drift off please. That's what I'm paying you for.

Spam, Egg, Sausage, and Spam
Mood:  happy
Kevin and I went to Laura’s house this evening for dinner with her and Diane. It was a very good meal and a very good time – and I was pleasantly surprised that Kevin agreed to go so readily. He really seems to like both Laura and Diane, so apparently he felt comfortable enough to go to her home.

(I’m still trying to figure out after all this time if Kevin is just anti-social, anxious or agoraphobic – or all of the above. It’s generally a struggle to get him to go do something at someone else’s place.)

At any rate, Laura made shrimp kabobs, grilled asparagus, fettucini alfredo and garlic bread, and Diane brought cream puffs. Dee-lish!

The running gag all week had been that Laura was going to make us “Hawaiian” kabobs with cut-up hot dogs and canned pineapple on skewers. She said that if she felt like she really liked us, she’d use fresh pineapple instead. Of course, to be truly authentic, she’d have to use Spam.

Backslap, booby trap, cover it up with bubble wrap...
Mood:  quizzical
Why is popping bubble wrap so addictive? Today my boss got a painting for his office, and it was cocooned in layers of bubble wrap. The really good kind, with the BIG bubbles. You should have seen us, hovering like vultures over a fresh kill, just waiting for him to finish unwrapping it so we could divvy it up and ration it out. :::pop!:::

Hot, Hot, Hot!
Mood:  on fire
Remember last week when I said they had predicted snow? Monday it got up to 95 degrees, which is obscenely hot around here. (Summer temps tend to be around 85 as a maximum.)

Kevin and I were able to get the vegetable garden transplanted at last, and I put in brick edging around the front beds. Had a reunion of sorts with the Philly 4 – Clare hosted a Memorial Day party and Diane and Laura were there too. I made stuffed grape leaves and tzatzki, which went over well (once I explained what they were and what was in them.) Kevin wasn’t feeling so great so he went home to lie down in the AC for a while. I think he got dehydrated from working in the garden in the sun. I hung around for a while but then the heat started to get to me too, so I went home to nap in the cool as well.

That evening, we went to Bob and Kathleen's for their MD party. She had done a slow cooked pork shoulder on the grill and it was outstanding. Hung out with the kids and Bob's family. Good friends, good food… you can’t ask for better than that!

Going the distance, going for speed...
Mood:  caffeinated
Topic: Scoot!
What an absolutely, grade A BEAUTIFUL freakin' day!!! Yesterday was incredible too... good scooting weather. Yesterday, I went on my longest and fastest excursion yet - all the way out past the Marilla resevoir, up to a speed of 50 mph! It was just thrilling! As I got closer to the reservoir, I could feel the damp, cooler air and the resinous scent of pine... I got about 5 miles past there, and the speed limit went up to 55 mph. I chickened out and pulled off the road and turned around. I didn't want the cars behind me to get too pissed off. But I did it, and I survived it! Tomorrow, Kevin and I are going to a Memorial Day picnic or two, hope the weather holds up!

Ah, Gemutlich!
Mood:  chillin'
Had an absolutely splendid weekend, despite the wretched damp, cold weather. They call Bradford the “Icebox of America” for good reason. They were predicting SNOW for Sunday. We didn’t get it, but we got damn close.

Anyhow, Friday night Kevin took me out to dinner at the Westline Inn. A tiny little place way out in the woods, isolated and romantic. Very good food, very sloooow service. But so pleasant… as long as you don’t mind being completely surrounded by the accusatory stare of the deer and elk heads that hang on every wall. (Taxidermy and gastronomy don’t mix well in my opinion. But did I mention the food was really good?)

On Saturday I had my friends Laura and Diane over for lunch and a movie. I’d been threatening to make them watch “The Station Agent” with me for months, and we finally were able to co-ordinate the time to do so. I made steak bruschetta for us and it wasn’t too bad. (Kevin would have done a better job, but he had to go in to work that morning.) He was able to join us for lunch and it was nice for all of us to get to sit around and BS for a while, as Kevin hadn’t really had an opportunity to get to know Diane before this.

It was interesting to see their reactions to the movie. Laura cracked me up – somehow she got the impression that it was going to be a science fiction movie, and that the titular “station” was a going to be a space station. (Dink in a spacesuit?!?)

But she said she enjoyed it, and that was the important thing.

Diane threatened me with bodily harm if the movie didn’t have a happy ending, so since I’m still here and writing, apparently the ending was sufficiently upbeat for her. She did seem quite impressed with “The Voice” and was keen to hear more of it. (Meg, go chalk up another one!) Maybe she’ll quit with the “Winkieman” jokes now… but I doubt it. ;)

After the gals left, the weather was sunny so I hopped on my trusty battlescooter and took a nice little ride around town for an hour or so. Cold, but invigorating. Kev & I had planned on going to the movies that evening, but somehow we just never got around to leaving the house. ;)

Sunday was just the perfect day for doing nothing but dozing in front of the fireplace with the furkids, so I made a fabulous Greek stifado (stew) and that’s exactly what we did. So cozy! (And that, my friends,
is what "gemutlich" means in German.)

Is it always better to serve in Heaven than to rule in Hell?
Mood:  sad
Topic: Pete
I got my copy of “Testing Bob” in the mail today and popped it in the DVD at lunch. All I can say is – Oh, for what could have been!!!!

:::sigh:::



Pete absolutely, totally, utterly ROCKED. Anyone who has the slightest doubt that he could carry a show of his own should see this.



The role was perfect, the premise good, supporting cast uneven – Dave Foley as the exasperated principal was the best of the bunch, and you could tell he and Pete could have had a great time doing this. Tina Majorino (from Napoleon Dynamite) as a gifted student with Aspergers was a bit over the top, as were the rest of the cast. It had a couple of terrific lines, and some sappy subplots. But Pete was so damn good it didn’t matter.



I sort of wish now that he’d decided to go with this instead of Threshold – my guess is that ABC would have picked it up, and it would most likely made it through one season at least. Maybe it didn’t have the drama, sophistication, heavyweight talent, or budget, but what a fun show it would have been to see!

I can't see that "Ultra" would have topped this in any way. Still, it would be nice to be able to see this failed pilot too.