Yesterday morning, my mom, Barb, Lisa and I went garage sale-ing. You should see the treasures I found!!!! I bought a 15.00 MICROWAVE! Now I had no intention of buying a used microwave. What changed my mind was that it was completely clean and when I stuck my nose in the chamber, I didn’t smell anything! No popcorn smell, nothing. I can only assume it was never or rarely used. The guy was asking 20. I offered 15 and he accepted it. This saves me 100.00! And I don’t have to be bothered searching out the perfect microwave.

I also bought a matching Coach hat and purse for 5.00. The thing is, I am almost 100% certain they are fake. The woman I bought them from told me they were her daughter’s and she had bought them from eBay for 150.00!?! Poor girl was taken to the cleaners. I can’t find a serial number on either item and the stitching isn’t perfect. What does it matter? I only spent 5.00!

The last item I bought was The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook. I’ve wanted this book for ages but it just sat on my Amazon Wishlist getting pushed farther and farther back. I paid 50 cents for it! And already I know how to deliver a baby and jump out of a building into a dumpster. Knowledge is power!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, I also bought a marble rolling pin for a buck. I figure I can make pierogies now. They are so easy to make and I was taught how to make them when I was visiting relatives in Slovakia. My father called it Pierogi U. They only used flour, water, and a pinch of salt. For the filling, it was potatoes, mashed. Gosh, they were so good! If I make them, I can freeze them and they would be an easy meal. Of course, it is just as easy to buy Mrs T’s.

Aren’t animals supposed to have a sixth sense regarding weather? I always heard of stories of animals retreating before hurricanes and tornadoes and such. If this is so, then why is it that Bobo is constantly surprised by the rain outside? Every other hour of the day he wants to go outside and each time he looks around with a stunned expression on his little face. It’s as if he thought the sun would be shining. Just now I took him out and he just stood frozen in the yard. Getting wetter and more exasperated, I finally said in my big boss voice, “PEE!” And he did.

For Bobo’s sake, I hope the sun comes out tomorrow.

In response to the comments on the wavelengths entry….

I am an Elvis fan. Every Sunday I listen to the radio program, Elvis and Friends hosted by the great Rockin’ Ron Cade. I made a pilgrimage to Graceland back in 2001. I own a DVD box set of Elvis’s greatest movies. When Lisa and I were pre-teens, we had a seance in our kitchen trying to communicate with the spirit of Elvis. Sadly it was interrupted when my mother appeared outside the kitchen window wearing a gorilla mask. I love Elvis.

With that said, I categorize the eras of Elvis in this manner:
Young, Rebel Elvis, 1954-1958
Army Elvis, 1958-1960
Movie Star Elvis, 1960-1968
68 Special Elvis, 1968
Vegas Elvis, 1969-1976
Fat, Bloated, Puking Elvis, 1977
Dead Elvis 1977-present

There are some subsets, like Hawaiian Elvis, 1973 and Making the Rounds on TV Elvis 1956-1957, but they are simply subsets. My favorite eras are 68 Special and Vegas Elvis. And Movie Star Elvis, too. Especially the later 60’s movies like Live a Little, Love a Little. Gosh, I loved Michele Carey’s character in that movie! Did you know that Live a Little, Love a Little is the only movie in which Elvis sleeps in the same bed with his co-star? Don’t worry, he had a board that separated the bed so Michele wouldn’t get frisky on his ass. This is also the movie where he sings, A Little Less Conversation. And if memory serves me, he also sings a song during a dream sequence where he dances with a person in a dog costume.

My personal computer hasn’t shut down on its own, yet. My work computer, on the other hand, decided to act funny yesterday. It was moving so sluggishly I decided to reboot. Looking at the desktop, I thought, “let me see if I can clean this baby up!” So I ran System Maintenance and I deleted and compressed tons of old files. Next I ran Crap Cleaner and Ad-Aware. Once finished I felt proud of myself. I rebooted. The computer turned off, it turned on, I logged in and it hung at the Windows Wallpaper screen. I have a mouse. I have a Task Manager. I can even click the New Task button and view the contents of my hard drive and I can open Word documents and run certain applications. I just don’t have a desktop or Start menu. I called my company’s help desk and they told me I would have to send it to Chicago. This wasn’t the answer I wanted and so I tried to troubleshoot on my own but I got nowhere. Finally I realized I had no choice but to send it to them. I called them up and said, “My computer is in a box and on the way to you guys via FedEx. Please overnight me a loaner laptop, the programs I need loaded on it are…”
“Just send us an email, Donna”
“An email?”
“Yeah, put it in an email.”
“Let me repeat myself, MY COMPUTER IS IN A BOX ON A FEDEX TRUCK”
“Oh! I guess you can’t send an email then can you?”
And this is the person who will be fixing my computer. Ugh!

Critical Inquiry: Torture & Punishment

Expressing himself has always been important to John Beck. Whether through his acting, writing, producing or his painting, he has always aimed to impart his intimate, unique perspective on life.

John’s art has an uncommon gift of defining complex metaphors and shared feelings in a style that is at once poetic and striking. His works are clear and lucid, yet intellectual and transcendent. They summon deep glimpses of far deeper principles and beliefs than the surface immediately reveals.

They evoke and provoke, but fundamentally, they allow John to tell his truths.

I plagarized this text from Lori Petty’s Web site. I don’t feel guilty. Not at all.

Please stop raining. I can’t take it any more. I feel like I’m living in a Ray Bradbury story. The one nice thing about working from Chicago is the office there has no windows. You walk in and the outside world disappears. Who knows if it is summer, winter, spring or fall. Is the sun shining? Is it raining? Who can tell? Here, I am constantly confronted by the dreary outside.

My laptop has once again started to mysteriously and spontaneously shut down. I called Toshiba and they told me to remove the battery to see if that might be the cause. Twelve hours or so later, the computer shut down. The battery wasn’t the problem. I called the service center Toshiba provided and spoke to a technician. He told me I would have to leave my laptop with them for a WEEK! I told him that would be difficult.
“Honey, everyone says that.”
“Well I mean it!”
“Let me try to save you some time, dear…”
He then told me to turn my laptop over and look at the fan.
“If your computer is turning off, it’s because it is overheating. All we do is blow some compressed air in there to get rid of the dust clogging the fan.”
The fan looked fine but I had my father bring over some compressed air and we shot it in there. My fingers are crossed that this is all it needed. We shall see if it turns off today.

I miss my microwave. My father and mother came over yesterday around lunchtime. They brought hoagies! I showed my father how when I turn on the microwave it pulsates in flashes of sparks, like a veritable electrical storm.
“Turn it off!” my father screamed.
“But Daddy, I think it just needs a little duct tape.”

I am now pricing microwaves.

Tuesday evening I met Erin at Starbucks and then we went shopping at the mall. Before I left, Lisa asked me to cast on some stitches for her. She can knit, she just doesn’t know how to cast on or off. I asked her how many stitches she needed.
“Oh, I don’t know, I’ll just tell you when to stop.”
Ha ha, silly Lisa. I slave over the Mike Nesmith hats I knit. It takes me days to finish a hat and I count every stitch. You can hear me saying, “knit purl knit purl” as I knit away. So I left to spend the evening with Erin. We had a great time. When I got home, Lisa exclaimed, “Look what I made, Donna! A beret!”
A BERET! SHE MADE A BERET! In a little less than 3 hours. Without a pattern. Completely winging the whole thing. She made a beret. I think it may be time for me to hang up my knitting needles.

It’s gray and raining. I would so prefer to spend the day in bed. Of course that would only last an hour and then I would get antsy. My coffee is brewing and that should remove my sleepiness.

Yesterday I took Lisa to the doctor. She has an ear infection and strep throat. On the way home I began to feel almost woozy. I just kept repeating to myself, “I can not get sick, I don’t have time to be sick!” It must have worked because I feel fine today.