(no subject)

Happy birthday to wicked_wish, whose novel Four and Twenty Blackbirds kept me entertained for much of my Thailand trip.

Bumper Snicker

Saw this on the road yesterday, Gilroy license frame:

Yes, this is my truck

No, I won't help you move

And at the strip mall:

Caution

Driver singing

My Blue Balls, The Sequel

The blue spikey rubbery clothes dryer balls I mentioned in a posting a few days ago did not work as I expected. In fact, instead of removing cat hair and associated puff balls from clothing, there was significantly less flotsam in the filter than there would have been had I used a dryer sheet. This is with using Downy in the washer.

I am disappointed. But not in the makers of the product - all they claimed was it was a substitute for the softener attribute of dryer sheets. The balls also tended to get stuck inside pillow cases and the curved parts of fitted sheets, completely defeating their purpose.

I think they will make fine cat toys.

Hemming and Hawing

What do you get when you cross a donkey with a seamstress?
Something that hems and haws.

Tried to cuff my pants, and it looked awful, so I ripped it all out and went to the Great Mall in search of another pair of pants. Did not find ivory or white dress pants in my size but did snag a pair of linen ones which might do in a pinch. Did not know that I could have brought my pants to the tailor in Burlington Coat Factory and had them done in an hour, until it was too late to make another round trip. And Great Mall is too far to go at lunchtime or after work. But I did find a cleaners downtown Mountain View which may be able to do the deed.

Meanwhile I got home and gave it another try, using the sewing machine's manual and attempting a blind hem stitch. I totally got it backward and it was almost as bad as my first attempt. Will try for professional help tomorrow.

Called the folks, they said the news in Seattle is completely about the Muslim shooting up the Jewish Federation Friday. There were all kinds of police and patrol cars at their synagogue Saturday morning. They did manage to watch the Torchlight Parade on TV yesterday, though. I forgot all about that - odd, since I march in it some years with the UW band. Haven't read the last band alumni newsletter, is why.

The chicken soup I made overnight came out beautifully. Had some for lunch, put some in the fridge and the rest in the freezer.

Sat down at he computer and made two wedding cards for the happy couple. One pretty one with a somewhat brain-dead greeting card poem and a macro photo of a pretty flower (some kind of lily, I think) which is outside my front door. The other using a gag photo from Wondercon which can be found here. Also wrote a letter to the apartment folken giving them my cat sitter info, and put that in an envelope with he rent check and dropped it in then night slot.

Just got a buzz from my cell phone - 9 pm and it's just telling me about two missed calls from about 3 pm. That sucks.

weird dream channel

I'm online, looking at a map. Google or yahoo or mapquest, I can't tell which. And I don't know where he map is of. As I focus on it, the map starts shaking. Violently. I think wherever this place on the map is, they are having an earthquake. But I can't see where it is because the map is shaking, and it's also zooming in and out a little bit, just enough to keep me from making out any details on the map. Nothing else is shaking - my monitor and computer are normal, so is the frame around the web page. I can't remember where I was mapping, but something tells me it is not a place which has earthquakes. But then I think how neat it would be if online maps had that feature - they shaked during an earthquake, twirled around during a tornado, and so on.