It's about time i changed my blog. I'm not sure what i am going to do about Facebook. It seems difficult to do both. And i realized i made it more difficult on myself by friending everyone who asked to be my friend. I have people on there related to my work that i don't even know and have never spoken to. Why did they want to be my friend anyway? Normally i am not even worried about protocol or politeness but i just couldn't turn them down. One of them is even my boss!
And if i had to choose between Facebook and the blog, i will choose the blog. Even if Facebook does make it easier to share photos.
anyway, here are some photos of last week with Barbara/equeyaya who posts here. We had a great time and we just settled right away into an easy time like we have been vacationing together for years. We talked about big stuff and we talked about little stuff. What we didn't run out of was stuff to say. Kylee joined us in Seattle for one day and we went to a somewhat disappointing lunch at Wild Ginger. That's a photo of us in a wine bar. (Kylee finally turned 21 years old!) I like the guy in the background.
We made the lovely risotto one night. And we drank a lot of wine. Mostly all Washington wines. In fact, i still haven't wanted any wine since so i'm blogging with Fresca! It was a very very good trip.
Oh yeah, the first photo is from Brian cooking and smoking up the whole house a couple of nights ago. It never even set off the fire alarm, so i went out and bought a new battery.
Random thoughts .
1. You know those ziplock bags? I have the HARDEST time ever getting them zipped and unzipped. It makes me worried for when i get to be an old lady. If Brian wasn't around to open up stuff i will starve. I am famous for tearing up cereal boxes like a rabid pit bull might. I think it's called patience. Or lack thereof.
2. Have y'all seen the Old Spice commercials. OMG, let me know if you haven't and i'll come back with the YouTube. They are the BEST.
3. My ex husband wore Old Spice so i would never buy it for Brian.
4. Isn't it weird how a smell can take you back to that time and place and be a reminder of someone, even if you don't want to remember them?
5. Where is louielouie? Are you still in Cannon Beach?
6. I read a whole book yesterday from beginning to end and may finish one today too. Much of my summer escape reading is thriller turn pager kind of stuff.
7. I am having a great summer. I took a nap today and yesterday. I love naps. I love watching the HG channel. I love getting my run done early in the morning. I love sitting on the patio drinking my french press coffee with the paper.
8. I bought Tom Petty's Mojo cd yesterday on iTunes. My favorite song is Candy. I love it when an artist i have loved for years and years is still doing what they do best.
OK, that's all i got. I hope some of y'all come and post about your summer vacation too. I'll keep blogging even if no one is reading because i just like the writing and randomness of it. It's my outlet. And Facebook is limiting.
I just added this YouTube that Brian made when he and Troy rebuilt our patio. It's in fast motion and pretty funny. We laughed at how it looks like when Brian is measuring he is doing so in real time because it takes him longer than Troy, who does this stuff for a living! Obviously you won't want to check out the whole building of it, but near the end at about 6:07 i appear and you can see how it all turned out.
Menu of the Day:
on the iPod: Neil Young's Last Time I Saw Elvis.
Reading: the third book in the trilogy of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I think it's the Hornet's Nest one. (Has anyone been reading these books?)
The best thing that happened this week: Went to a very fun wedding last night of our artist friend Duncan, who at the age of 56, got married for the first time. (We like his wife too!) Great people to meet and dancing to a live band, wine and a beautiful day for their outside wedding.
What i keep procrastinating about: Nothing much really. Because i'm on vacation and i have lots of time to do things.
What i've been doing: I'm nearly done with watching Season 2 of Kylee's Lost DVDs. My plan is to rewatch all of them. I am also watching Glee and loving it! I had no idea how good this show was. My other niece loaned me her DVD set. I just love that chick who plays the cheerleader coach. I forget her name but she was great in Best in Show and the 40 Year Old Virgin.
What i'm also doing: Reading alot, washing windows, putting the patio together after they just rebuilt it (photos above), running, napping, watering plants, checking my mail, reading the newspaper. I think i've taken a nap at least every other day! I have been at the pool for a bit too.
What i haven't been doing: keeping up on the political world or the newest stuff about the Gulf Gush. For some reason i can't get CNN on my new tv to quit pixelating Anderson Cooper. the other channels are bad too but watchable except for CNN. (I think it's a right wing plot against me because Fox News comes in just great!)
Also i have not been blogging because i have been Losting instead.
Here are random observations about Lost.
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1. I think Lost is better the second time around when you watch it. I remember so many things that didn't seem right about it when i watched it once a week with the break in between seasons. This will be boring for those of you who don't watch but not too many folks are reading anyway.
2. It makes better sense about Sayid loving Shannon than it did before. I felt like they didn't have enough connection before, but in watching many episodes in a row, i see that it works. I didn't buy it the first time because i thought he should be with Danielle, the French Chick. But when you think about the opposites and the yin and yang and the whole island black and white, good and bad story, it makes perfect sense to me now. Everyone who hooked up was an opposite of each other almost. Just as Jack vs. Sawyer was a yin and yang.
3. Jack is so obviously the whole reason for Lost and i didn't see him as the main character. I like him a lot better rewatching it. He used to bug me so much because of his control issues and intenseness and propensity for crying and pouting. I used to watch Party of Five and in some ways he plays a similar character. Also he is way cuter to me this go round too. Not sure why.
4. i like Kate somewhat better too.
5. I had forgotten what a cool character Mr. Eko was. I love his tattered shirt which showed his fab strong chest muscles and i loved his Jesus stick too. I would feel very safe with Mr. Eko.
6. Still love Sayid and Sawyer as always.
7. I love how throughout the first two seasons the minor characters Scott and Steve names are constantly mixed up. One of them died and they still played up the mix up in Season 2. The actors playing them maybe had one line at the most, which made the ongoing joke about their names even more funny.
8. Everyone has such incredibly buff arms (except of course for Hurley and Charley)! I think Kate has been my inspiration for trying to keep up with my free weights. She has the best arms of any woman i've seen!
9. Sawyer is the only guy who can be so incredibly dirty but is still so sexy.
10. I recently saw a YouTube of Josh Holloway on an interview ( think it was with Jimmy Kimmel) and I thought he was kind of goofy and not maybe all that smart, though he may have just been nervous. I like him better as Sawyer and don't think i would want to date him in real life. Good acting!
11. The story of Sun and Jin is much better the second time around too. I don't even know why. But i love their characters. Also Rose and Bernard.
12. I still don't love Michael all that much, just as i never did. Though i felt sorry for him in his backstory.
13. I keep wondering how they get all those great clothes on the island. And i wonder still, as i did before, what do the women do when the tampons and Kotex run out.
14. And every time someone kisses i wonder about their breath.
15. I think i would liked to be kissed by Sawyer. He looks like a good kisser.
16. Boone was also a character i liked so much better this time around. I think i wrote him off the first season because he was too good looking. In a scoobier way than Sawyer was. Boone was actually more beautiful than a woman.
17. Sawyer smoked when they first crashed and obviously would have finally run out of cigarettes. (It's so cliche, isn't it?.... that the way to establish your bad person up front is to have them smoke!) Yet they never wrote anything about his withdrawals in the show when he ran out, and that could have been a pretty funny episode too, like his eyeglasses.
18. I loved the music in the Hatch. But they should have at least had some Bob Dylan you would think. Or Jackson Browne or Jimi Hendrix. Desmond seems like that's more the music he would listen to than the Mamas and the Papas. (Maybe they couldn't get the music rites, though if that's the reason i think Dylan and Browne are stupid for not doing that.)
I'll think of some more. But if any of you Lost fans are reading you might add your own. Just don't do spoilers for the last season since it's not yet out on DVD and Kylee/Ms Hippie hasn't seen it.
I'm adding louielouie's video: this is my very diverse hometown of Tacoma. And it shows all the famous places in our area, some that are within a mile of where my parents live. Warning: it's a rap, so the F-word is a big part of the chorus and lyrics. But the rap is good. I like the dude's car.
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In the old days you called your friends on the land line, only they weren't called land lines back then, it was 'the phone'. If you were unable to visit them in person, face to face, you dialed them up, they answered and you had a conversation in real time.
It was still communication. Live.
Then the computer came around and we all got email, on our home desktop computers, where we could sit happily with a glass of wine or a cup of coffee, play some music while conversing with our friends in writing. This became the better way of communication because, hey, it was a busy world and this way we were not interrupting whatever fun thing they were doing WITHOUT US and they could get back to us then they had more time.
And if you happened to be a good typist (as i am - 80 wpm) then you could actually make your friends a little crazy with your verbosity and keyboarding skills in an email that goes on and on because it only took you 5 minutes to type while it took them 12 minutes to read. (Which is still not a lot of time actually, when you think of how much time you used to spend actually talking on the phone to a live body.) AND if some time had passed since you last saw them, then you could at least attach a photo of yourself in the email so they remember what you looked like.
So the communication got shorter with email, no matter how fast you typed or how slow a reader they were.
But it was still communication, at least.
THEN came along the Smart Phones. Everyone seems to be getting email and texts on Smart Phones. (Not to mention those damn Tweets).
Everything about communication just now got even shorter and more distant. Not only do we no longer listen to a voice, we have to keep it within a few words.
So i find myself no longer emailing as much these days. It is not because i don't have things to tell you or want to tell you or that i don't want to stay in touch. It's because what i have to say is not conducive to SmartPhones and people on the run.
I believe technology is hurting relationships. There is a certain irony in today's Facebook World that we can have hundreds of 'friends' we never see or talk to, but that's a whole 'nother post.
iTunes:Berry's Dream by The Old Silver Band. (Also my most recent purchase)
Drinking: Fresca and orange juice.
Book:Bad Girls. louie, did you give me this book to read about a woman in prison because she killed her kids? I just finished it. Weird.
Photo: Today we office girls went to the union headquarters for Toni's last day to have cake with the other staff. On the way i saw this truck.(I wasn't driving.) It cracked me up because I always say Toni taught me to cuss. I sent it to her in an email.
What i am procrastinating about: Rehearsing my speech for Saturday. I need to figure out how long it is.
The worst thing that happened. Toni's last day in the office was yesterday. It was a sad and emotional day for all of us.
Video: In honor of Father's Day - a really cool Jackie Greene song.
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1. I like this beta blocker for making me very calm. It will help on Saturday. I was 'practicing' today to make sure it's not too much and it isn't.
2. It's not as much fun as Xanax, though. I really wish that stuff was a vitamin.
3. I am pretty sure i bought too much wine for this party on Saturday. I figured 3 glasses per person and did the math from there.
4. My new favorite cd: John Butler Trio's new one. (Thank you, eque. I just love it!)
5. I have this habit of when i get something new i wear it out. Like a new blouse, or new shoes, and a new cd, new way of wearing my hair. Then i get sick of it all, the blouse goes to the back of my closet, i get sick of the cd and i can't be bothered with my hair. Are y'all like that?
6. Is it my aspbergers? LOLOLOL....
7. Forget wrinkles, we all expect to get them as we age - I think the worst thing about getting older is eyebrows. Mine make me crazy and they would take up quite a bit of acreage on my face if i didn't tweeze them not once, but twice a day.
8. I don't have a book to read.
9. I should say, i don't have a book i WANT to read. I have books. I just like buying new ones and reading those instead of what is in my stacks.
10. I hate when i don't have a book to read.
11. My husband LOVES to watch Modern Marvels on TV and for some reason this makes me smile.
12. I got nothing else. When blog postings don't move, i like moving the blog. Even if i don't have anything to say.
In my glass: That wonderful Darby blend. Even though this drizzly day means it is truly more of a red wine day. (BY God, i am forcing summer to get here by drinking white wine and wearing open toed shoes, even if it is only 62 degrees!)
Music: I had to make a playlist for Toni's retirement party which i am in charge of and right now it's John Hiatt's Master of Disaster.
What i am procrastinating about: i am the first speech of the night for this party on June 19th. I have been making notes on post-it notes (and sometimes napkins) for MONTHS. (Probably since the holidays). And i finally put them all in one place, rubber-banded them together and now they are lost. I keep thinking they will turn up, but it's been over a week.
Why i am not totally worried: Now that i sorta believe i have some tendencies to Aspbergers (earlier blog post) i think just making the list means i already have a memory for what i have written.
The coolest thing this week: i turned my blog post about the students i tutor into a Letter to the Editor. It wasn't easy making it 250 words but i did it. And they put it up online this afternoon so i think it's printed in the paper tomorrow too. and so far the Comments are good. (Usually the people who post online are assholes and hateful.)
About this Photo: i had no photo for this post so i put this one up. louielouie is a very good seamstress. (Is that not the correct term? Cause it sounds like "stewardess". So maybe "Seam attendant" is what i am looking for? "Seam steward?" Anyway before she took over as Director of Voc Ed (is that your title, louie?) she was a Home and Family Life teacher and we used to get together and sew on Saturdays at each other's house back in the 1980s before our divorces. She made this apron i am modeling and many other things including my favorite pajama bottoms (which have been posted here earlier). Sp when she asked me to email her photos of her work so she could keep a file on them, i had Brian take out the camera so i could pose wearing them. (You Facebookers will know that i added that my pearls are real Mikimotos.)
About those Mikimoto pearls: my first of the two ex-husbands bought those for me in 1983 or so when we had no money but we had a loan to build a house. he used the draw for the house to buy them and the check bounced. I found out they cost over $1000. Which was weird to me that i would own such jewelry because if you added ALL of my clothes in the closet during that time it wouldn't cost that much money. (I was NOT the type to wear expensive pearls, but to this day i love having them even if i don't wear them, because they are an heirloom that i will hand down to my niece Ashely, (Ms. Hippie's sister) who was also my goddaughter and Maid of Honor when i married Brian.
What just occurred to me: Kylee/ms hippie, you have to make sure that Ashley doesn't pawn them. LOL.
Something that made me laugh today: I was at Barnes and Noble at lunch which is near a playground to an elementary school. As i got out of my car there was a huge clap of thunder. and the kids out in the playground all in unison let out this giant high pitched scream.
Another cool thing! My HTML Dreamweaver class was cancelled. So i am now learning Joomla web design and i am loving it. A communications guy yesterday spent the day training me one-on-one yesterday and i think web design is going to be the challenge i have been looking for to keep me interested in my job.
Today would be Josh's 25th birthday. He is the second son of my brother Troy (who was also a second son) & Brian's younger brother.
Photo: i took this photo in January of 2009. I sent it to him in an email and told him he looked like Jake Gyllenhaal. He was so handsome.
YouTube: For his memorial last Labor Day my Brian and I made a video and it included this song at the very end (along with quotes from Mitch Hedburg and Demetri Martin scrolling through as credits because Josh liked their humor.) I can't hear any of those songs anymore without thinking of Josh. We also included "Above the Bones" by Mishka and Ben Harper's version of "Beautiful Boy". (This Mraz song is the least sad to me.)
I wasn't going to do this, but then i was running and just thinking about him and i felt like i just needed to do something as a tribute, so here it is. i just felt better doing something to honor his birthday.
Here is what i was remembering about him today:
1. When he was a little guy and you went to his house he always wanted to show you his room.
2. He had this turtle that he wanted you to meet when you came over. (I wish i could remember his turtle's name. Maybe his brother remembers, i'll have to ask Brian.) Anyway, i loved how he pronounced 'turtle'. . . He said 'toitle'.
3. He once asked me in his room to show me a video game when he was about 8 years old. In looking around his room i noticed a cd or a video with a Parental Advisory sticker and asked him about it. 'Oh, do your parents know about this?" He answered that it wasn't THAT bad, it just had some bad language. I said to him, "Josh, you wouldn't use bad words would you?" and he gave me that sideways look and kind of squinted his eyes and sheepishly said, "Well .... I do kind of like to say the F-word sometimes, but don't tell my parents." ( I can still see that look he gave me when he told me this.)
4. I loved babysitting him and Kylee the most as little kids because they were so easy and so good-natured. And really beautiful little kids in a way that made people gravitate toward them. Josh was more of a homebody type. He would sit close to you when the other kids were playing. I remember clearly, him watching through the window while his brother and cousins were making a snowman outside. I asked him why he didn't go outside too. He said it was too cold. He was quite content to just watch.
5. My second ex-husband had a full beard that was going gray, and a bit of a pot belly ( he was 11 years older than i was). One Mother's Day (the point to make here is that it wasn't even during the holidays) were were all going out to brunch with my family. Josh was about 3 years old and it was the first time he had met Don. He looked right up at him and asked him in his cute little 3 year old voice: "Are you Santa Claus?".... I howled at this because Don was fairly conceited about his looks and his weight was an issue for him at the time.
6. I have written this story before: Josh didn't like frou frou cheerleadery type of girls. But he did go out with one he said who has always talking on her cell phone and he hated that. He told us that when he picked her up she was already on the phone within minutes. He said as they were driving to where they were going she kept talking on it. Finally during a break in one of her calls he said to her, "That's a pretty cool cell phone, can i see it?" and she handed it over. He snapped it shut and threw it in the back seat of the car. I thought it was such a super cool move.
7. Josh was never much of a drinker. He didn't smoke. And his brother Brian tells me that he never did drugs because Brian made sure of that. Josh was a very level and calm kind of guy. He was the kind of guy you needed around if a party got out of hand or someone was getting too rowdy because he would calmly know how to diffuse what could otherwise be escalated.
8. He wanted to be a Marine for a long time which worried all of us immensely especially after Nine-Eleven. His room was orderly. He and i used to joke about how we like things in straight, like pictures or levelor blinds. He said when he was driving the forklift to arrange cases of Coke or something that he just HAD to make the stacks very even. I totally got it.
9. He loved movies and could recite many lines from them. His cell phone ring tone used to be an Office Space bit. My Brian and Josh used to go to movies often together.
10. When he was about 11 or 12 years old I took Josh and Ashley to Borders once so he could buy a cd. He was trying to choose between Verve Pipe's cd with the song The Freshman which he really liked and a new group called Hansen because he liked the song MMMMBop. We used to laugh about how lame Hansen was as he got older when his taste in music got better.
11. He and his older brother Brian were very close. They didn't fight like many brothers do. They actually looked out for each other and sometimes it would seem to me that Josh was the older brother to Brian. They didn't complain to me about the other as sisters are inclined to do about each other. (Kylee, you know what i mean! LOL.)
12. Josh loved Lost. He and his best friend Brandon and Brandon's girlfriend came over to our house for a spaghetti dinner one night and i loaned them my first boxed season of Lost because they had not seen it. It was a great night and we sat outside on the patio i think until 1 in the morning. (Those kids stay up so late!) I emailed him the next day and said, "tell the truth, i bet you all stayed up til 4 or 5 in the morning watching Lost. He responded that the did exactly that and how did i know that?(I knew because i had done the same thing.)
13. My oldest of the nieces and nephews is my sister's daughter Jessica. She couldn't pronounce my name correctly as a toddler and it came out as "Aunt Joo". The name stuck. But Kylee and Ashley liked feeling older so they never ever called my "Aunt" anything. I was always just "Jo" to them and i like that too. But Josh always called me "Aunt Joo" through his teen years and in his 20's. It cracked me up.
14. One time he sent me an email after i sent him some photos by email of his birthday party. The email said: "Aunt Joo, you take fucking awesome photos." And it made me laugh because maybe "aunt" and "fucking" don't belong in the same email.
But i liked it because it reminded me of how he trusted me at 8 to tell me that he liked saying the F-word. And i never did tell his parents.
15. Josh was so cool. And so handsome, but not in a way that he played it up, which made him even cuter to girls. He was really smart and intuitive, but not in the way you could put on a school test.
16. If you were a mother, you would want your daughter to date him. If you were an employer, you would want to hire him. If you were a Marine platoon leader, you would want him in your charge. If you were a parent, you would want him as your kid. If you were an aunt, you would want him as your kid too.
17. I just wish he knew all that and believed it about himself.
YouTube: This is a deleted scene from Pirate Radio that has one of the funniest and coolest dance scenes (To the tune of Stones' Get off of My Cloud). It's worth watching all the way through. The subject line here comes from this scene.
Music: Chris Pureka, Silo
Book: I just finished Hippie/Kylee's The Kitchen Readings about Hunter S. Thompson. I read it within 24 hours. I loved it. Brian's reading it now.Now i'm reading that Jodi Picoult House Rules book about a kid with Asbergers.
In my glass: Fresca with a splash of cranberry juice.
The best thing that happened: I finally found a makeup foundation that works with my skin. I've been searching since i found out at Christmas that they were discontinuing my Estee Lauder color. I tried their compact creme foundation and i love it alot! Also going to the Mandolin Cafe on Sunday and listening to open mic with Brian, my brothers and Kylee was a best thing. And Lee Dwyze winning American Idol was AOK with me.
What i keep forgetting: I forget.
Quote: What's the point in a secret if you can't tell someone? -- Pirate Radio
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1. These will be fairly short because i am not feeling witty or energetic at all.
2. I think it has something to do with 10 days of rain and clouds in a row. I took 2 hour naps every day of our long weekend.
3. I was going to put away my winter clothes and get out the summer things but i still need my winter things.
4. Who was it that said the coldest winter was the summer they spent in the Pacific Northwest? Or something to that effect. I think it was a famous person.
5. Why do i live here?
6. Don't laugh, but i actually bought another can of paint of paint today. ONLY a quart. Brian and i both decided i need to lighten the color of the one terra cotta-y colored kitchen wall so i'm using the lighter color i have used elsewhere in the kitchen. But i still love the terra cotta color in the halls.
7. You would think i live in a 5,000 sq foot home for all the painting i've been doing. But it's tiny, only 1000 sq feet.
8. I am SHOCKED by Al and Tipper's separation! Shocked i tell you! Who would have thunk the Clintons would stay together and they would break up?
9. I had nothing to do with their split, even though i used to refer myself as the "Gore Whore" back in 2000.
10. If i were going to do a politician, it certainly wouldn't be Al. i think i would pick Rahm Emanuel or Harold Ford Jr., though technically HFJr isn't employed as a politician anymore.
11. I almost can't watch Anderson Cooper in the Gulf anymore. It's sickening to see what is happening to my poor homeborn state of Louisiana.
12. If you were asked the question, What does make sense in the world? How would you respond?
