Mental Meatloaf

And now for something completely different: THE BILBERRY

2012-02-24T08:13:00.007-05:00

As I was doodling along this morning, sipping my java and scanning my favorite blogs for new tidbits of entertaining twaddle, I came across the word "bilberry". I'd never heard this word in all my life, and as it did not seem to be used jokingly, I decided to look it up.

According to Wikipedia:

Bilberry is any of several species of low-growing shrubs in the genus Vaccinium (family Ericaceae), bearing edible berries. The species most often referred to is Vaccinium myrtillus L., but there are several other closely related species.

Bilberry (especially Vaccinium myrtillus) is known in English by a very wide range of local names. As well as "bilberry", these include:

1. blaeberry ( /ˈbleɪbɛri/)

2. whortleberry (/ˈhɜrtəlbɛri/)

3. (ground) hurts (especially if hit at high speed)

4. whinberry

5. winberry

6. windberry

7. wimberry

8. myrtle blueberry

... and ... wait for it...

9. fraughan (of course!) (?)

The berries were called black-hearts in 19th century south-western England, according to Thomas Hardy's 1878 novel The Return of the Native.^[1] In several other languages its name translates as "blueberry", and this may cause confusion with the related plants more usually known as "blueberry" in English, which are in the separate section Cyanococcus of the Vaccinium genus.

*****

Well! This is what I consider a refreshing little bit of tasty information for a cold, rainy morning. I am going to daydream of ripe fruit today, and may even make a song that goes "Whinberry, winberry, windberry, wimberry" just to pass the time.

Later, I'll make a black-hearts smoothie for my breakfast.

Not trapped under something heavy...

2012-02-23T13:39:00.004-05:00

Springlike weather today! Have been out in the garden since morning, removing the detritus of winter, cleaning and filling the finch feeders, pruning shrubs and uncovering daffodil and crocus leaves where they are making their debuts.

Then it was off to the grocery store for people food, the DIY store for finch food, then home again. Now I'm trying to get a pork roast cooked (already made a shepherd's salad with cucumbers, tomatoes, fresh basil, onions, olives, and fresh mozzarella cheese, all drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper... mmmmmm!) before I have to leave for work.

For those of you who, like me, HATE Blogger's new word verification

2012-02-19T13:18:00.004-05:00

I know, I know, I know.... everyone in the blogiverse is up in arms about the uber-crappy new and (un)improved word verification on Blogger.

HELPFUL HINT:

There is a small, circular arrow that appears just to the right of the empty text box. When you click this, it offers you a different word verification image. As far as I know, there is no limit to the number of times you can click this little arrow. Just click, click, click... until you get one you can read. I have clicked sometimes up to seven or eight times before getting a good one... but fortunately it takes less than a second for each new image to appear.

Meanwhile, let's all bombard Blogger with our complaints and hope they go back to the readable kind!

Welcome to Marcheline's "WILD KINGDOM"!

2012-02-18T13:59:00.007-05:00

This is about the most exciting thing that's happened in my garden, in the wintertime, in the history of my garden, in the wintertime.

Of course, the bugger was trying to catch my birds at the feeder for his own breakfast, but he's so very beautiful I just can't be mad at him. He's got to make a living, too.

***NOTE TO BIRD LOVERS***

This is a peregrine falcon!

Open post to "Secretly Skint"

2012-02-18T08:29:00.002-05:00

Dear blogfriend, author of "Secretly Skint"... I don't know if you're aware of this, but your blog now says "Open to invited viewers only" when I click on your link.

If you have set your blog to private intentionally, and have not included me in the list of folks you'd like to read the blog, I will remove your blog from my blogroll and bother you no more.

If Blogger has foiled you once again, and you're wondering why no one is commenting on your blog any more, this is why.

Sincerely,
Marcheline

Full four times hath Phoebus' cart gone round...

2012-02-17T14:02:00.003-05:00

It's that time of year again, folks. I watched Kenneth Branagh's "Hamlet" in memory of my own dear father's death, and then sat down and put pen to paper to thank Mr. Branagh for his masterpiece. Three years running, I have received kind replies from his assistant, Tamar Thomas, saying that he was away on a project. Last year, as you may recall, she even included a Hamlet photocard (pre-) signed by Mr. Branagh.

This year, I'm hoping to receive a reply from himself. Fingers crossed, everyone, maybe the fourth time's the charm. Any readers who live in the UK, feel free to drop by Shepperton Studios and put in a good word for me. (Hey, can't blame a girl for trying!)

Blossoms from my Valentine

2012-02-16T09:51:00.008-05:00

Doubt thou the stars are fire...

Doubt that the sun doth move...

Doubt truth to be a liar...

But never doubt I love.

Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind...

2012-02-15T10:47:00.013-05:00

When Bear and I went to pick up the mail the other day, we found a queerly shaped, lumpy 8.5"x11" envelope bearing a UK postmark. As neither of us had ordered anything from overseas recently, we were curious as to what it could be.

Turns out a dear friend of ours went and bought each of us "Scottish titles" as "Lord and Lady of Glencoe". The packet came with documentation exclaiming that we now owned an "estate" in Scotland, and that we could have our driver's license, passport, and credit cards changed to read "Lord/Lady (your name here)". Little pins with our new "crest" came along in the package. I got a "Lady" pen, but there was no "Lord" pen for Bear. They must be doing such a booming business, they ran out.

We, of course, were delighted with this sweet, funny gesture, never for a moment taking any of it seriously - because it's obvious that it's a joke, or to the more gullible, a scam.

The website "Fake Scots Titles Exposed" goes into full detail and explanation of how every single "right" the "documents" assured us we now have is complete and utter bunk. I want to make clear - we already knew this at the get-go.

Unfortunately (this is where the happy joke goes sour), upon receiving Bear's email of jolly thanks, our friend replied, asking excitedly about when we would change our our driver's licenses and all ID paperwork to "Lord" and "Lady".

Apparently, he completely bought into the whole scam (with more than his hard-earned money), and is now going to fully expect that we will, too. We love him, and do not want to hurt his feelings, but in past experience once he's got his teeth in something, he doesn't let go.

We used to enjoy spending time with him often, but as time has gone by he has started developing a tendency to buy into completely crazy things and then set about convincing us to agree with him. He's deeply into that paranoid government conspiracy theory stuff, and now this. I wish he knew that his unyielding pressure to agree with him on things that we don't believe makes us not want him around, but so tunnel-visioned is he that even when we've tried to tell him we don't want to talk about it, or we try to change the subject, he just starts back in at the beginning and repeats his argument.

Somehow his "gifts" turn into responsibility on our part to agree with him. It makes me sad - for us and for him - and tired. Like hoeing the same row over and over again. It's not that we can only be around people we agree with, either. I enjoy a good debate better than anyone I know, and you need someone taking the opposite side in order to skillfully discuss any topic that you feel like discussing. Repeatedly trying to make someone discuss a topic they don't want to talk about is not debate, it's the conversational equivalent of seal clubbing.

In normal conversation, everyone in the room has a chance to speak out their opinion. Some others in the room may agree, some may disagree... and then the conversation moves on to other things. But with our friend, once he detects disagreement, he considers it a personal challenge that he must overcome - at once - fully - and the only acceptable outcome is everyone's acceptance of his view.

It even bleeds over into other areas. In the past, I have phoned to ask him to dinner (for which I've bought food and cooked up a whole meal). I describe the food I'm preparing, and if he asks what he can bring, I've suggested a drink or dessert. Every time, he arrives with a huge amount of food and drink (sometimes in a cooler that takes two people to carry from his vehicle!).

This sounds wonderful and generous, if odd. And so we thought it was, at first.

The kicker: he also brings a huge stack of movies. And he wants us to watch those movies - whether we want to or not. If I bring out a movie that we want to watch with him, he absolutely refuses. Refuses. It's as if, by bringing food and drink, he has "purchased" the "right" to own the get-together. His food and drink, his movies, his show.

That particular episode is not going to happen again, by the way. It used to be a little diluted by humor, but the last time he came over he was blatant about it, and said, "NO! I'm the GUEST! We're watching MY movies!" I mean, seriously... have you ever? He is a man in his forties. I am baffled at how any adult could consider this acceptable behavior.

We are not going to watch any movies during his visits from now on, no matter how many he brings. Our company and our conversation will have to be enough.

Sadly, this behavior has slowly separated him from all of his friends over time. His best childhood friend, his closest adult friend, and I think next it may be us. He has developed anger towards them, and has well-rehearsed reasons why he no longer chooses to see them, but his reasons, when listened to and distilled to their purest form, all point to the reality that they got tired of being forced to agree with him, tired of his trying to run the show all the time, tired of his unbending need to control everything. They finally opposed him blatantly, having been pushed to their limit, and from that opposition he took offense and layered coat after coat of anger on it until, to him, it appears a huge and unforgivable crime.

It is a truly odd situation to be in, for you can't prevent someone from sending you gifts. You can send them back, but you cannot prevent their being sent in the first place.

Truly, I would give up all the titles in the world, all the excess food and drink, just to have our friend back the way he used to be, when he used to enjoy having a good time in the here and now. Before the goblins of fear and suspicion ate up his ability to think rationally, before the monster of control overshadowed his personality.

The eyes have it!

2012-02-14T16:02:00.009-05:00

I'm trying to decide on some vintage eyeglass frames. Since I hardly ever wear anything but my contact lenses, I thought it might be fun to buy vintage frames and have my prescription put in - maybe I'll wear my glasses more often!

Trouble is, I can't decide which type of frame looks best on me. Maybe you guys can weigh in and help me decide. I've included photos of the glasses on their own, and if you click on them you'll get a much larger view that shows all the detailing on the frames.

Option 1:

Option 2:

Option 3:

Keep in mind that I've just estimated the size of the glasses as they'll appear on my face... I might be a little off, they may be a little smaller on my face or a little larger, so try not to be influenced by the size - just the shape. If that's even possible.

Just to show you that I came by this passion honestly, I present an old family photo. On either side are my mother and father, before I came along. That lady sporting the great cat's eye glasses in the middle? My grandmother on my dad's side.

Looking forward to hearing your opinions!

Four years ago today

2012-02-14T08:31:00.004-05:00

One for Libby

2012-02-13T09:26:00.014-05:00

I have been "tagged", as they say, to do a thing. Normally I buck responsibility, swim against the tide, and shirk obligation, but since I like Libby, author of D-scribes, I shall do my best to perform well.

Eleven Random Facts About Me:

1. I photograph old cemeteries for fun.

2. In the summertime, I listen to Billie Holiday CDs all day... but only on my days off. It's a treat, you see.

3. I play classical piano, but hate to do so when anyone is listening.

4. Left to my own devices, 99% of the entertainment I watch is in black and white, preferably film noir from the 1940s - 50s.

5. If I could be reincarnated as a human, I would love to come back as a tall, extremely strong man. It would be amazing in so many ways.

6. I daydream constantly about restoring my 1925 house and cottage, even though I will never be able to do so unless I win the lottery.

7. My husband and I have chosen names for every tree and shrub on our property... even the bonsai tree we keep inside.

"Namu" the Korean dogwood.

8. I keep a garden journal in a black and white school notebook, in longhand, and write every entry while sitting on the garden patio.

9. I firmly believe that Shakespeare knew everything.

10. Although I sometimes long for a style change, I am somehow terrified of getting my hair cut above my shoulders, even though I know it grows back. Long hair is like some icon, branded in my brain, that I associate with my self.

11. One thing that I really want, that I have not had since the 1990s, is a close female friend who lives near enough to spend time with... come over for a cup of tea, go antique hunting with, watch sappy chick flicks with, etc.

My answers to Libby's questions:

1. Shoplifting - have you ever? Yes! I steal beer glasses from restaurants if I like the logo. I have smuggled them out in my purse, in my coat pocket, and (once) in my cleavage, in full view of the bartender, who laughed his arse off.

2. Slapping children - yes or no? Yes! I love slapping children. Problem is, I don't have any of my own, so I have to be sneaky about it.

3. Shower every day? It's not really about "every day" as much as it's about what I've done since the last one. If I've just showered last night and gone to bed (to sleep), then I am not showering again this morning. If I've showered this morning, then gone outside in summer heat and done gardening and heavy lifting, it's likely I'll shower again before Bear comes home from work. More easily said, it's "as needed".

4. All is fair in love and war - yes or no? Absolutely. If it wasn't for a protracted, hard-fought war, I wouldn't have the best husband in the world! I pity the fool that tries to get between me and Bear, that's all I can say.

5. Que jumping - do you? I am going to assume that you meant "queue jumping", because "que" means "what" in Spanish, and "what jumping" is illegal in this country, missy. No, I don't cut in line. I usually let other people go ahead of me, actually, since I am a) polite and b) slightly claustrophobic. I'd rather be last and have the extra elbow room.

6. Social class barriers in Britain - vanishing or not? Sadly, I have no way of knowing that from way over here in New York. As soon as my winning lottery numbers come in, I'll have a house in Scotland and will be able to monitor the situation more closely.

7. Cap on benefits - yes or no? No. I prefer my benefits in a silk top hat.

8. Marmite? Isn't that what the girls in "Little Women" called their mother?

9. Why blog? I'm an attention whore.

10. Tribute bands? Yes or no? NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ten questions I put forth:

1. Would you joyfully try a culinary dish you've never had, or do you only eat what you are familiar with?

2. Circus clowns: funny or creepy?

3. Auto accident, ambulances in attendance: do you gawk, or look straight ahead and drive on?

4. If someone forced you at gunpoint to write a novel, what would it be about?

5. Changing your interior decor: freeing or frightening?

6. If you could be assured that you would never again have to see, speak with, or hear from one person ever again in your lifetime, who would you pick and why?

7. Have you ever seen a ghost or experienced something you can't explain away rationally?

8. Chocolate covered cherries: liquid filling or solid white filling?

9. Do you sing while driving?

10. If they ever set up housing on another planet, would you volunteer to go?

At this juncture, I'm supposed to pick ten people to assign these questions to, but as I rarely ever do what I'm told, I'm not going to do that. Instead, anyone reading this post (if you haven't fallen asleep by now) can feel free to answer my questions in the comment section.

It's more fun this way, because maybe some random stranger who has never even been to this blog before will answer, and I'm not pinning anyone down who may not care to participate, and thus will hurt my feelings and cause me to weep for hours into a small lace hanky.

Have at it!

A Saturday night date! And a movie review.

2012-02-12T11:08:00.026-05:00

I know the phrase "dinner and a movie" has been used for ages now... but I've always preferred it the other way 'round. To me, the perfect Saturday night date is an early afternoon movie, followed by a delicious dinner out, during which my handsome companion and I can discuss at length the movie we have just seen. Watching a movie on an empty stomach keeps one awake and finely honed, free to digest the plot rather than dinner, whereas watching a movie on a full stomach makes one drowsy, and wondering when's a good time to skip to the loo.

Yesterday, taking full advantage of my second jury duty weekend day off, Bear and I went to see the 2:45pm showing of "The Woman in Black", starring Dan Radcliffe. It was everything I'd hoped, and more.

I was excited to see Dan in a role other than "Harry Potter", but I will admit to being a bit nervous that I would only be able to think of him as Harry the entire time I was watching... however, that was not the case. Dan has really grown up, and in full period dress, complete with sideburns and eyes shadowed with the grief and loss that comes with losing a wife, he was completely captivating as Arthur Kipp - and no one else.

There were a few scenes in the movie that reminded me of the Harry Potter movies (there was a ride on a steam train, a Fawkes-esque baby bird, a scene reminiscent of Professor Trelawney's real prediction, and a stairway full of portraits... which did not move or speak, thankfully), but none of them had to do with the character of Harry.

Well, except that one time where Dan does that thing where he blinks, but only one eye closes (he did that all the time when he was little, in the HP films). As that's completely involuntary, we can't hold it against him, can we? No, we cannot.

But back to the movie. It was a completely old-fashioned gothic horror story. Perfection, in that it did not detectably use computer graphics for the scary bits. It was all well-crafted suspense, supported by some of the most miserable weather, dourest villagers, and most forlorn houses I've ever seen on screen. (The sun only has a cameo appearance in one scene.)

An exquisitely forbidding Eel Marsh House is one of the main characters...

... complete with an access road that disappears under each high tide, leaving the occupants stranded from all outside help for hours at a time.

Ciaran Hinds plays a wonderfully gloomy character named Sam. He's basically the only person in town that tries to help Arthur Kipps, despite his own problems... such as a dead son and a wife who's lost her marbles.

Another of my favorite characters is Sam's dog, Spider, who stays with Arthur Kipps at the Eel Marsh House "for companionship" (read: protection). That little dog has such a personality, he doesn't need to speak.

The house is full of antiques, cobwebs, and taxidermy, not to mention...

... several...

... extremely creepy...

... toys!

The brilliance of the use of these toys, actual antiques, and their real mechanical movements, is that they are scary on their own. The jerky, horrible motions they make, the eerie, realistic eyes, the off-key music that emanates from their inner music boxes are all much more effective than any computer generated effects that I've ever seen. If the nursery scenes in this movie don't raise the hair on the back of your neck, I'll be a monkey's uncle.

You will note that I have not included any clips from the movie, nor still photos of the "gotcha" scary moments. I'm a firm believer in not reading the last page of a book first, of not telling anyone the ending of a book or movie before they've found it out for themselves, of enjoying things purely.

And so, I leave you with this. If you are a fan of true gothic horror, suspense, and great old-fashioned ghost stories, this is the movie for you!

Disclaimer: In the interest of complete forthrightness, the plot of this movie does involve the death of children, both graphically in the present tense and also in the past of the characters, so if you have ever lost a child, this may not, in fact, be the movie for you.

P.S. Dinner was exquisite. We had a gift certificate for a local eatery, and we enjoyed a perfectly creamy seasoned spinach artichoke dip, a fine shiraz, and tender 10oz. filets mignon accompanied by broccoli rabe and sweet potato hash. Special mention goes to the basil-infused butter they served with the rolls. Since it was a special occasion, we splurged and had cappuccinos, and I ordered a creme brulée. Scrumptious!

R.I.P. Whitney Houston

2012-02-12T09:55:00.005-05:00

This is how I will always remember her. I was not a dedicated fan, I never owned an album of hers or went to her concerts, but her music was a sweet musical ribbon winding its way through the backdrop of my late teens and early twenties, and what a voice!

My younger sister was particularly fond of Whitney's music, and she could lip-sync and dance to "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" as if she was channeling Whitney. She had every facial move down, every hand wave, it was really amazing. Once, she and I performed it together for my mother (I did the "backup" parts) and she was laughing and clapping and it made a memory for all of us.

Before fame and bad choices marred Whitney's face and her voice, she was like human champagne. Beautiful, bubbly, and contagiously cheerful.

And so I choose to remember her the way she was - at her best.

20 reasons to lose your head over "The Tudors"

2012-02-11T14:00:00.026-05:00

Darling, did you hear that? "Lose your head" she said!
Have her thrown out of court immediately.

Anne holding the Holy Hand Grenade.

Looking like the real Anne Boleyn.
Who also wore a huge gold gangsta "B"
on a chain.

What goes more perfectly with a mermaid's crown
than guppy lips?

The Yule headpiece: Holly, ivy, berries,
acorns, and pinecones. Exquisite!

If you say one word about the Marilyn wig,
I'll peck you to death - do you hear me?

Guess which one is the Sorcerer's Stone and you
win a private audience with J.K. Rowling!

Fashion me a circlet so beautiful that it will
distract all viewers from my bad dye job. AT ONCE!

Black and white ermine and silk... oh, my!

In case you had any doubts that I am, in fact, a goddess...
LOOK AT THIS TIARA!

From the back, from the front... equally delicious!

My hat, of course... what did you THINK I meant?

Crowns of pain and sorrow.

Beautiful pain. Beautiful sorrow.

Holy headgear hounds and mad hatters, your majesty! In the cranium crowner category, Anne Boleyn is leading by a head! And this is only from the first two seasons... I haven't watched season three or four yet, and didn't want to spoil the experience of catching my breath at every new and amazing topper to appear.

There are other reasons to watch, of course...

You just had to ask....

2012-02-10T17:25:00.015-05:00

Someone was foolish enough to ask about my past employment, and rather than answer their specific question (way too easy) I'm going to give you the long list.

Get ready, here goes.

I have been (in some semblance of chronological order):

A waitress.

A chiropractic assistant.

An opthalmic technician.

A hot stamp ribbon press operator.

A door-to-door salesperson, selling tropical plants out of a van.

A stripper.
Honestly, I was going to try out and didn't,
due to the intervention of a guardian angel
in the guise of a stranger who asked me to play
a game of chess with him in a pub.
He found out what I was on my way to do,
and he talked me out of it.
I never saw him again.
Strange, but true.
Thank you, stranger.

A stable girl.
(Have never been accused of that since.)

A secretary.

An assistant to a business broker.

A cop.

A flight attendant.
Unfortunately, without the cool boots.

A radio operator.
Using only slightly updated equipment from that
shown in this picture.

After this little slide show, I must add a disclaimer that several of these jobs reappeared several times over the decades - they were not just one time deals. Such as waiting tables. I've waitressed on and off through my entire career, using it to fill in between "real" jobs in several cities, and to pad my income while doing other "real" jobs. I've served food and drinks at every kind of establishment - from cafes to diners to upscale restaurants to catering halls... you name it, I've worked it. Secretarial work was also a re-emergent skill on my long and winding resume. I've been secretary to one person, to a small business, right on up to being secretary of a central branch of a HUGE corporation.

To put it mildly, I've had more jobs than Carter's got pills. Happily, I think I have finally found my calling, as it were. I am hoping to remain at my current place of employment until they pry the earphones off my cold, dead ears. Ooooh, no. Not that. I meant, until I retire and enjoy lots of time on warm, sandy beaches. Yeah, that sounds better. But not quite good enough. I hope to remain at my current place of employment until I win the lottery and quit, spending the remainder of my YOUNG LIFE alternately skipping through the heather in Scotland and refurbishing my house with my darling husband.

Yes, that's it!

Jury Duty: The Photoshoot

2012-02-08T15:09:00.011-05:00

Well, I went in this morning for jury duty, and it turns out that my suppositions about the whole thing were right. It was a drunk driving case, and since I was a police officer in the same county as the arrest, I stated that I could not truthfully swear that my decision would be completely unbiased. The boys in blue are still my brothers, after all.

But that would make a boring story. Except for the fact that I got to eat lunch with my handsome husband, which is always a plus!

Instead, I bring you "Jury Duty: The Photoshoot". A lot of time and preparation went into my getting ready this morning, so rather than have it all go to waste, I might as well share it with you people who have nothing better to do than drink wine and read blogs all afternoon.

Let's start with my ensemble:

I will admit to being momentarily panicked when I read the dress rules on the juror card: "Proper Dress Required". Proper? Proper for what? Tea with the Queen? A night on the town? A job interview? There are so many varying layers of "proper" that the mind boggles at those three words, with no further indication. Are jeans prohibited? Must shoes be high heeled? Do I need to go shopping, for gods' sakes?

In the end, I went with my good old standard. The fact that I didn't get kicked out onto the sidewalk on my arse means I chose well. And once I got a gander at what the other jurors were wearing, I have to say I chose more than well... (ahem).

A sleeveless leaf green knit top which clings alluringly to my magnificent chichis, over which I wore an olive green long-sleeved faux suede number, complete with seductive side-slits. Black jeans, complete with circlets of tan cat hair around the ankles, and black leather high-heeled Mootsie's Tootsies boots, circa 1980-something.

Now, on to hair and makeup:

There's a really snazzy word being thrown around the styling world lately (okay, okay, I heard it on reality TV... and promptly forgot it) that means "hair that's lighter on top and darker at the bottom". Some folks pay a couple hundred bucks for this result at a high-end salon.

Me? I just wait until my roots show, and then I buy a seven dollar bottle home coloring kit for ladies of color (it's cheaper and more gentle on the hair) several shades lighter than I used before. Results? YOU be the judge! (HA! Jury duty humor thrown in at no cost to you!)

I recently indulged in a new bottle of foundation by L'Oréal, and I have to say I'm pretty happy with it. According to the label, it contains an "age defying serum". Which makes me think of an anthropomorphic syringe dancing around and saying, "I laugh in the face of age! Age, I defy you!" Last I checked, though, I'm still 45. Looks like age gets the last laugh here.

My lips, thanks to Holly of Nothing but Bonfires and her stellar gloss advice, are sparkling with CoverGirl Lipslicks in Daring. Because, you know, courthouse life needs a little excitement now and then.

Hair by Caruso. No, that's not some high-priced salon stylist, darlings... I'm talking Caruso of "The Caruso Styling System"... you know, the kit they sold on television in the 1990's where you put those little foam rollers on the steamer, then put the plastic holders on the steamer before clasping them over the rollers to envelop your hair in its own little pocket of steam?

But of course they never said "steam"... it was always "molecular fusion" or some magical-sounding shit, but we can talk plainly here, can't we? It's steam.

In any case, cheesy television hawking or no, Caruso curls ROCK. I left those curlers in my hair for less than half an hour, and these photos were taken four hours after styling! Not half bad, eh? This picture also illuminates the fact that my shirt goes perfectly with my eyes. (And also my earrings, which you can't appreciate due to the abundance of Caruso curls. Suck it up.) Case closed.

Since I didn't get to actually be ON the jury, or make any crucial decisions, I set up my new camera on a tripod and took some photos of the faces I might have made, had I actually gotten to be on a jury for a hugely famous murder trial.

"Oh, honey... I may have been born at night,
but it wasn't LAST NIGHT."

"You want the truth?
YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!"

"Guilty, or not guilty?
THAT is the question!"

Well, I hope you have all enjoyed this little ride on the jury duty roller-coaster, sponsored by the justice system. Thanks for going along with me.

My final judgment: The best part of getting called for jury duty was getting to have SuperBowl Sunday off.

I have heard the call!

2012-02-08T07:38:00.003-05:00

I report this morning at 9:15.... more later!

P.S. I totally regret eating those leftover nachos with Corona and lime last night when I got home from work at 11:00PM. Like, totally. Ugh. *cue music* Tum, Tum-Tum Tums.

Jury Duty: The Update, Part Deux (or is it Trois?)

2012-02-07T12:37:00.003-05:00

Now they're just rubbing salt in the wound.

Dutifully, I checked the government website yesterday after the designated time, and.... foiled again! They've only reached juror numbers 800 to 892, so I am once again relegated to the "check back tomorrow" group.

Sigh.

This jury duty service is much ado about nothing, so far. I would think that since I have never in my life served, they would have put me at the top of the list, to make sure I got some live action. I received so many official pieces of mail about registering and answering this summons that it seemed to me the entire judicial system was teetering on the edge of a precipice, unable to proceed until my arrival.

Now, I realize they've just led me down the garden path. Used me. They've built up my hopes, just to string me along like some courthouse trollop. I swore I'd never let myself be treated like this again.

Damn you, jury duty!

Jury Duty: The Update

2012-02-06T11:43:00.007-05:00

Well, I dutifully checked in with the jury duty website on Friday afternoon, and my jury number fell into the only group that was not assigned to a court. I am in the group that was directed to check back again today after 4:30PM.

Which means that I have to go to work this afternoon, which is not high on my wish list... but I did get to stay home on SuperBowl Sunday (something never awarded to peons low on the seniority totem pole at work) with Bear and my mom, eat an obscene amount of home-made nachos and guacamole, and drink Coronas with fresh lime! And I got to watch the Giants win the game in the last five hair-raising seconds! WOO HOO!

I chose this photo not only because I wanted to show off the massive platter of nachos (there are two bags of tortilla chips and more than two pounds of ground beef under all that melted cheese, people) and guacamole, but because it perfectly captures the spirit of watching the SuperBowl at my house.

Note my mother, perched on the edge of her seat, awaiting the kick-off. Notice Bear, who couldn't care less about football, sitting and paging through a book on the other side of the couch. HA! My place was directly between the two of them. Although I don't follow football, and don't watch it at all during the year, I do love the SuperBowl and thus was also leaning forward on the edge of my seat.

As soon as the platter of nachos had been sufficiently destroyed, Bear disappeared upstairs to find something more interesting to do, which left Mom and I to sprawl across the couch and scream at the television until the final points were scored and the Giants won the game. He didn't even come downstairs to watch Madonna's half time show, which I grudgingly admit was actually okay, as halftime shows go. I was kinda hoping she might fall off those high heeled boots just once, a little cosmic vanity smackdown for my comedic pleasure. She teetered once, but didn't go down. Ah, well.

More jury duty updates to follow, as I get the info. Hope you all had a great weekend!

GO GIANTS!

2012-02-04T23:21:00.003-05:00

Not that I care about football in a specific way. Any game that features large men in tight pants is okay by me. My mom is here, I've got the day off, Bear is off, and we're going to make loads of yummy munchies and watch the SuperBowl, commercials and all, and have a blast. YAY!

I might as well root for the home team, since NY made it into the game, eh?

****** LATER NOTE*******

Oh yeah, uh huh, oh yeah, uh huh, Giants won, Giants won, oh yeah, uh huh!

Having fun!

2012-02-02T12:22:00.008-05:00

The very day Mom arrived, we snuggled up on the couch and watched all four plus hours of Hamlet... and she loved it as much as I hoped she would! Though not, of course, as much as I love it, because no one could ever love it as much as I do.

Today, I have to go to work and she is going to an enormous retirement party for an old friend of hers - and yet we managed to fit in a viewing of "Father of the Bride", one of my all time favorite movies. The original, not the remake. Filmed in 1950... oh, the gorgeousness!

Spencer Tracy as Dads, Elizabeth Taylor as Kay, and Joan Bennett as Moms... with a few good-looking boys as Kay's brothers - because, as any movie buff knows, no wedding movie is complete without brothers running around and throwing snarky remarks in. (You've all seen Steel Magnolias, right? If you haven't, don't tell me. I'll only be disappointed.)

I love black and white movies, I prefer them to colorized versions every time, but I will admit being slightly regretful, what with all the close-ups of Elizabeth Taylor's beautiful 18-year-old face, that the color of her eyes is not detectable.

And so, the movie over, breakfast eaten, coffee remnants once again cold in the bottom of cups, we jump full force into "getting ready mode". One small bathroom (sans electrical outlets), two women. Luckily, I can wear jeans and sneakers to work and do not need to primp. Ha!

My mother arrives today, Hamlet soon to follow

2012-01-31T09:03:00.004-05:00

"Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper, sprinkle cool patience."

The last sip of my coffee is always cold - and I never seem to be able to get through a whole cup before that "ugh" sip. Perhaps should invest in a desktop mug warmer, as I can't stand to gulp coffee. Morning coffee is meant to be sipped. But I digress.

It's now 9:00AM. I must get to the airport to pick up my dear mother at 11:14AM. Which means I have two hours to do the following:

1. Scrub the tub, toilet, and bathroom sink.
2. Change the linens on the bed and clean the bedroom.
3. Grocery shop for last minute things like cream for the coffee, etc.
4. Clean the cat box.
5. Shower and wash my hair.
6. Stop faffing about with this blog and get to items 1-5.

Am so excited because Mom has planned to watch Kenneth Branagh's "Hamlet" with me while she's here... all 5 hours of it... and I can't wait! It's the best thing EVER, and I'm so happy to be able to share it with her, especially as she's taking a Shakespearean literature class just now, so it's super relevant.

Okay, must stop typing and get to that list.

Nevermind who's bearing the fardels,
scrub that tub!

And now for something cheerful... JURY DUTY!

2012-01-30T08:50:00.005-05:00

Knowing my sarcastic tendencies, you probably thought that title was tongue-in-cheek. Not so, my little chickadees! I am actually looking forward to jury duty. I hope I get chosen for a really juicy, extended case in the court closest to my house. (Gas prices, darlings.)

Yes, it's all because of my strong sense of civic duty. That's it, you see. I'm dedicated to the furthering of justice! My patriotic inclinations to support this fine country's government and its inner workings, my neeeed to be a part of it all - that's what kindled this burning fire in my soul!

It has nothing at all to do with the fact that I will have actual weekends off during any week(s) that I'm serving on a jury. (That's SATURDAY AND SUNDAY for you folks keeping score at home.) Nope, nope, nope, nothing like that. It's all about civic duty. Yep.

Kismet is alive and well in my world, and so the very week that I received my summons to beautiful, wonderful jury duty, I stumbled across this movie on TCM. It's called "Perfect Strangers" - with stars Ginger Rogers (as in "Fred Astaire and"), and Dennis Morgan (best known as the handsome soldier in "Christmas in Connecticut").

This movie was a tap on the head from the cosmos. The very first scene shows the 1940s version of the jury selection process. No computers or button pushing here, folks. We're talking one person counting drawers and another turning pages... OH, the RIVETING ACTION!!!

What's more, Ginger Rogers plays a lady who is summoned for jury duty!

The TCM website was kind enough to provide embedding codes for these two clips so that I can share them with you, but you have to make your own popcorn.

Stay tuned for more exciting updates on my quest for personal fulfillment through ~~getting weekends off~~ serving on a jury!

Marcheline's rant: The Library

2012-01-29T08:37:00.008-05:00

There's something that's been sticking in my craw lately... and it has to do with my local library.

See, if I took a book out, and found that pages 23 through 40 had been torn out, and I took the book into the library and showed them the damage, what do you think would happen?

I'll tell you. The nice library lady would take the book back, perhaps put in a request for its replacement, and she would dispose of the book - however library ladies do that. Not sure if they burn them, repurpose them, throw them in the bin, recycle them, or use them for toilet paper... but what I can tell you is that they would not put the unreadable book back on the shelf.

Now, that precedent having been established, let's move on to the next media format. Movies on DVD. Time after time after time, Bear and I have taken a movie out of the library, curled up on the couch after a hard day at work to watch it, and upon taking it out of the plastic casing found the discs inside looking like they'd been mauled by a pit bull. Or perhaps attacked by an angry three year old armed with a screwdriver. And, right on cue, said movie would hang up, freeze up, refuse to go forward... usually right smack dab in the middle of the crucial scene.

We have taken these movies back to the library, shown them the damaged discs, and told them that the movie is unwatchable due to said damage. And what do you suppose they do?

They put them right back on the shelf for someone else to take out and not be able to watch.

WHAT IS IT WITH THAT?!?!?

Does the library get popularity points for how many movies they keep on the shelves, regardless of whether you can actually watch them or not? Is there some local regulation stating that no library can discard a DVD once they have accepted it into their collection?

I mean, some people look at me and say, "but it's free." As if that makes it worth watching eighty percent of a movie and then not being able to see the ending. Please notice I am not railing against the people who are careless with, aggressive toward, or downright abusive to the DVDs... I know better than to expect the general public to give a crap about their fellow man. I'm not expecting people borrowing free movies to actually keep them in nice shape so that other people can watch them... no, no, much too jaded am I.

But the library should take some responsibility to remove damaged materials from the shelves when they've been advised by their patrons, am I right? And the library isn't exactly free, you know... we pay taxes! And late fees, on occasion.

Thus endeth my rant. Anyone want to weigh in on this?

*******UPDATE*******

Prompted by a comment-section discussion with How I Roll, I made a phone call to my local library and found out two interesting pieces of information.

1. All those books and movies I've donated to the library over the years? They don't go on the shelves! They get sold. All the books/movies in the library are purchased new. Hard to believe, but apparently true.

2. When DVDs are turned in and reported damaged, they get sent to "the workshop" where they are "buffed out" and "repaired" and then put back on the shelves. Obviously an exercise in futility, ineffective, and pointless... but there you have it.

Happy Saturday!

2012-01-28T13:38:00.001-05:00

I would sit here and type a luscious, fascinating blog post, but I have to go and get ready for work now.

That sound?

Never mind, it's just weeping and gnashing of teeth. I'll be fine.

Why?

2012-01-26T13:25:00.002-05:00

1. Because I didn't have anything better to do.

2. Because I missed Rabbie Burns day with nary a bagpipe, a haggis, a shot of single malt scotch, a poem, a neep, or a tattie in sight.

3. Because no one should go through life without watching the movie "Vampire's Kiss"... or at least the best scenes from it.

You're welcome.

All is well.

2012-01-23T16:25:00.004-05:00

The reunion was a resounding success. Handsome father brought flowers to fair daughter. They had so much in common - a love of reading and an aptitude for foreign languages, drama, and drawing... emails are being exchanged, and future visits are sure to come.

Bear is relieved beyond words that his daughter has turned into a sweet young woman - no trace of the jaded, gum-popping teenage angst that is so prevalent on Long Island. She's involved, interested, active, and when asked for the name of her best friend, she had a whole slew of close pals. She's well adjusted, has a great sense of humor, and made her dad very proud, indeed.

I look forward to the day when she is old enough for unsupervised visits, so that she can come to our house (assuming she wants to meet me, that is...) and we can get to know each other. Maybe in the springtime, when everything is blooming in the garden.

Thank you for your kind thoughts and hugs and well wishes yesterday. I'm not very good at that kind of suspenseful waiting, and I just didn't know how things were going to play out. I feel much better today. It's good to know folks out there in the blogiverse are pulling for you, isn't it?

Everything changes

2012-01-22T12:19:00.002-05:00

Bear left the house just fifteen minutes ago, on the way to see his daughter for the first time in over ten years. She will be 16 this year.

I have always been comfortable with my choice not to have children, but I guess I never fully realized until now that life comes with deep, pulling emotions no matter what side of that fence you end up on.

I am a daughter. I had a father. I know the intricacies, the complications, and the unbounded love that can go along with that relationship. And after today, Bear will have a connection with his daughter. His.

It is an odd thing to be a link attached to a circle that you will never be on the inside of. I so wish I could be there when they meet, laugh and cry and hug and take pictures, but I don't belong there. My presence would detract from their reunion. Knowing this makes it difficult to concentrate on washing and drying the dishes, which is what I always do when I am waiting or thinking, or both.

It makes me so happy that he and his daughter are finally getting together. The circumstances that kept them apart were far from good ones, and the fact that everyone is older and wiser now, willing to let bygones be bygones and move forward, is a cause to celebrate. The reasonable, mature part of me is glad, so glad.

There is also a part of me that mourns, I think. Mourns that which I will never have, that literal, physical connective tissue that Bear and I will never share. That child with big eyes, a wise mouth, and a great sense of humor that will not exist in this lifetime.

It is a fact that nearly every man that I have ever loved has had children with another woman. It's not like today is any different than any other day, really.

But, of course, it is.

Here we go 'round again - WINTER'S HERE, Y'ALL!

2012-01-21T13:24:00.008-05:00

The above photo was borrowed off the interwebs,
as I am too hungry to photograph my own dinner.

Awoke this morning to the sight of soft, white drifts over cars, driveway, and houses. Flakes came down out of the steel grey sky, adding to the pile.

Happily, our new tenant (a young whippersnapper who teaches shop at a local high school) was feeling very energetic and came outside to shovel the entire parking area! I think he did the driveway, too, but as I cannot see around the front house I won't know until I leave later on. He is a sweet kid, very respectful and nice in that way people from Illinois often are. He also has a lovely family, who all turned out to help him move in back in the summer.

Of course, on second thought, if your entire family turns out in the middle of the hot summer to help you carry furniture up to a second story apartment, that could also mean that they are anxious to be rid of you. I prefer the first thought.

I've been on a Paleo winter food roll lately... when I got home from work last night, my hands were frozen solid (the heater on my truck didn't warm up until I pulled in the driveway... result of having an old truck and living very close to work) and I was craving HOTNESS. So I ~~called up Antonio Banderas~~ whipped up an impromptu batch of pumpkin soup, and Bear and I had huge bowls of it with leftover roast chicken while we watched the first episode of the first season of "The Tudors".

This morning, after coffee and blog reading, I went down and made a delectable batch of "Paleo spaghetti"... a kick-ass meat sauce with yellow squash and zucchini and mushrooms in it, and boiled up a spaghetti squash for the "pasta" part.

The trick to making perfect spaghetti squash is not over-cooking it (boil it for about 25 minutes, or until a fork will just stick through the flesh to the skin), and then to suspend it over the kitchen sink on a rack for a few minutes before serving it so that the water can run out. Nothing worse than a bowl full of watery spaghetti squash under your kick-ass sauce, I always say!

Spaghetti squash has exactly the same consistency of al dente pasta, and exactly the same ability to take on the flavor of whatever sauce it's served with. And, best part, none of the harmful-to-your-health properties of pasta. This is one guilt-free dish that makes your mouth as happy as your tummy.

*Note to non-Paleo eaters: This is only a guilt-free dish if you are not eating bread, processed flour, and sugar the rest of the time. Paleo eating only works if you do it exclusively. It does absolutely nothing for you if you eat a Paleo lunch in between french toast for breakfast and hero sandwiches for dinner. Eating Paleo "once in a while" is like being "sort-of pregnant". It doesn't exist, and you're not getting into those skinny jeans any time soon. It's an often misunderstood point, and I didn't want to mislead anyone. *cough*PAULADEEN*cough*

On a completely different topic (I can hear the sighs of relief from here), I am SO EXCITED about something, I just have to share. My dear mother is currently taking a college literature course studying Hamlet! (Get ready for lots of !!! in this part, I love Hamlet more than is recommended by the USDA.)

And, what's more, she has NEVER SEEN Kenneth Branagh's version of said play (full length, I might add) in movie form!!!

WHAT?!?!? Shocking!!!!

aaaaaAND... she is coming up for a visit on SuperBowl weekend and has promised to watch it with me!!!!!! All five hours of it!!!!!!!!

I'll drink to that!

I am anticipating this viewing with thumpings of the heart. It will be like introducing your beloved to your parents for the first time. Like an artist's first gallery showing. Like the first time your dad gives you the keys to his car.

The shades will be pulled down, cell phones silenced. There will be pillows and cozy throws aplenty. There will be illicit popcorn with "shake cheese", and there will be wine. It will be a hedonistic party of Danish proportions, I warrant.

R.I.P. Etta James

2012-01-20T23:16:00.000-05:00

Marcheline on the rampage

2012-01-20T10:43:00.009-05:00

Yesterday, I went to get my mail. Alongside the requests for donations, the bills, and the... bills, there was a soft, squishy package. When I unfolded it, I saw that it was my sister's Christmas present. The one I'd mailed in December, before... you guessed it... CHRISTMAS! There, in the upper right hand corner, were my holiday "forever" stamps (perhaps that indicates how long your mail will take to get there), uncanceled, as perfect as when I'd stuck them on. All over the envelope were ink-stamps saying "returned for postage". The real kicker, however, was the hand-written note with a big arrow pointing at my stamps. It said "these stamps were cut off of another envelope".

I was accused of stealing stamps!

You can bet your sweet bippy that I hauled my... my own bippy, and that much-abused padded envelope, right down to the post office where I had mailed the dang thing from and demanded to know why my perfectly accurate number of postage stamps THAT I BOUGHT MYSELF, thank you very much, were not deemed acceptable by the U.S. Postal Service. The same service (term used WAY loosely), by the way, that is in danger of going out of business. Customer service much?

The lady at the counter took my package back to the postmaster's office, and he proceeded to come out and try to make it my fault. "Well, you know, if you would have come in here and had us stamp it with our machine instead of using these stamps"... to which I replied "it was CHRISTMASTIME, like I had time to stand around for two hours in holiday postal lines for you to machine stamp a simple padded envelope? Have stamps become illegal? Unusable? Why are you still selling them, then?". At which point he back-pedaled, and said, "Well, with an envelope this size, if it's above a certain weight it's not legal to use stick-on stamps, anyway."

I rolled up my sleeves. "Sir, I am 45 years old. I have been mailing things for at least thirty years, and I have never in my LIFE had a package returned because I put stamps on it. Please don't try to tell me that this is my fault. Besides, the accusation is that I stole the stamps off of someone else's envelope, NOT that the postage was the wrong kind." There may or may not have been some foot tapping on my part at this juncture.

Meanwhile, postal lady behind the counter had put my package on the scale, and she said "Oh, it's only 9 ounces... that's way under the weight limit." I turned to the postmaster, who resembled an inbred version of ex-wrestler Jesse Ventura (in case you were wondering), and raised my eyebrows.

Only then did he say, "Well, I'm sorry this happened. No doubt it was the North Carolina post office that did this, because it took so long to come back to you. We'll take care of it." See, even though that sounded like an apology, he managed to (yet again) push the blame off on someone else.

Honestly, I don't have much faith that my sister will ever see that Mystic Pizza tee shirt.

Queen of Denial

Paula Deen, long-time host of a cooking show on the Food Network, has recently come out with the news that she was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes... three years ago. She says the reason she didn't tell her public sooner was because she "didn't have anything to bring to the table."

I am not a follower of Paula Deen's show, I don't use her recipes, and she in no way impacts my daily life. But there is a reason I'm ranting about this. A few reasons, actually. Millions of people DO use her recipes, watch her shows, and listen to what she says. No matter what she says, there is some responsibility that goes along with that - and the megabucks she's pulling in as a result.

According to Mrs. Deen, a lucrative partnership with a diabetes drug company is "something to bring to the table." And she has gone on national television (looking like the above photo) to spout the following garbage:

1. Diabetes is "not a death sentence".

Um, honeychile? Yes, it is, if THIS is what you consider a good meal:

Yes, that is a bacon cheeseburger and fried egg on a glazed donut. Yes, that is a Paula Deen recipe. I really shouldn't have to say anything else, but I'm steamed up. You might want to push your chair back from the monitor a little.

Oh, and here's a little factoid-o-rama from the Department of Health:

Among U.S. residents ages 65 years and older, 10.9 million, or 26.9 percent, had diabetes in 2010.
About 215,000 people younger than 20 years had diabetes—type 1 or type 2—in the United States in 2010.
About 1.9 million people ages 20 years or older were newly diagnosed with diabetes in 2010 in the United States.
In 2005–2008, based on fasting glucose or hemoglobin A1C (A1C) levels, 35 percent of U.S. adults ages 20 years or older had pre-diabetes—50 percent of adults ages 65 years or older. Applying this percentage to the entire U.S. population in 2010 yields an estimated 79 million American adults ages 20 years or older with pre-diabetes.
Diabetes is the leading cause of kidney failure, nontraumatic lower-limb amputations, and new cases of blindness among adults in the United States.
Diabetes is a major cause of heart disease and stroke.
Diabetes is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States.

2. "Since my diagnosis, I've given up drinking sweet tea and I walk on the treadmill."

Um, darlin'? You just said you were diagnosed three years ago.

If this is what you look like three years after diagnosis, you aren't doing it right.

3. "I'm not going to change the way I cook... I'm not your doctor. And I've always said to use moderation."

Um, sweetpea? This sounds a whole lot like passing the buck. If you were just cooking artery-clogging junk for your own family, swilling down drugs with your un-sweetened tea and plowing through glazed donut cheeseburgers in private, I'd say you were well within your rights. But because you are a national TV celebrity and people are buying into your shit, don't you think it might be a better idea to say, "Hey, folks... I'm going to get healthy. And here's how you can get healthy with me!" Your current tactic is selfish, and you are trumpeting to the world the fact that you basically don't care if the people of your country end up as bloated and disease-ridden as you are, because you makin' da fat dollah, boo-yah!

One more thing, Paula. I have a right to voice an opinion on this topic because my husband was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. The disease has affected my family. It's a scary thing to have to deal with, and your refusal to admit that your crappy cooking advice has an adverse affect on people's health is a slap in the face.

The light at the end of the tunnel is this little quote by my husband's doctor: "Un-managed diabetes is one of the leading causes of death in our country. Managed diabetes is the leading cause of NOTHING."

Immediately after his diagnosis, my husband started researching the best diet and lifestyle choices for diabetics, and came across the Paleo way of life. He gleaned important information from Robb Wolf's website, also from Sarah Fragoso's, and from Mark Sisson's. And he started doing the right thing.

Two months (not three years) after his diagnosis, he walked into the doctor's office, twenty pounds lighter. The doctor took him off all meds, and asked him how in the world he had managed the amazing transformation. My husband has now lost 80 pounds, and is still medication-free. His blood sugar is under control. We are joyful.

See, when someone like my husband does the right thing and gets healthy, he benefits, I benefit, and the folks that he meets on a daily basis might benefit, if they ask him about how he did it. But when someone like Paula Deen, who has viewers across the country, passes up the opportunity to help inspire a gazillion people to get healthy by doing the right thing, and instead says "just take drugs and keep eating junk", it's not only disappointing, it's downright disgusting.

Here endeth my rant.

Don't talk

2012-01-18T00:29:00.001-05:00

JUST LOOK

Okay, so I was wrong...

2012-01-16T10:21:00.018-05:00

Sadly, this promo poster for the Golden Globe Awards was spot on... minus the scissors, that is. Ricky was hardly even IN the darn show, and his jokes sounded like they came out of a tin can bearing a Dharma Initiative label. No telling how long they'd been in there.

Possibly his funniest joke of the night (and that not so much) referenced the movie that Mel Gibson made with Jodie Foster. He said he was told not to mention Jodie Foster's beaver... then added an aside that none of the men in the room had seen it, either. It was as uncomfortable as the armpit area of the dress Ms. Foster was wearing.

In the "credit where credit is due" department, we have a trim and handsome Ricky Gervais, in a gorgeous wine-colored suit with black accents. He did his best, as always. I blame the writers and producers for hog-tying his performance.

Easy on the Eyes Awards go to:

Kate Winslet, who is still so creamy and fresh you just want to spread her on a scone and eat her up.

Gerard Butler, whose tousled locks and sparkly eyes combine perfectly with his Scottish burr to create the effect of a recently imbibed glass of champagne.

Oh, Those Awkward Moments Awards go to:

Madonna, (her dress was truly lovely, if very boob-punishing) who managed to turn her acceptance speech for an award for a SONG she wrote into an acceptance speech as though the movie she directed had won an award.... which it didn't. If I had a dollar for every time she said "MY MOVIE" during her speech, I could buy a pizza. A big pizza.

To Ricky's credit, he really did try very hard to get a comedic exchange going with Johnny Depp, but the fact that Mr. Depp was a) stoned out of his mind and unable to form a cohesive sentence and b) suffering from a case of lice sort of put a damper on things.

It was difficult to concentrate on Ricky's desperate attempts to get an intelligible answer from Johnny, because Johnny kept reaching up to scratch various areas of his greasy, degenerate hairdo. I just hope there were little bottles of hand sanitizer in the gift bags that night. Ew. Seriously, dude - you make a meeeeellion dollars every time you fart, do you think you could, I dunno, SHOWER before an awards show? Shampoo is cheap!

Classiest and Most Moving Presentation and Acceptance Speech Award goes to:

Honestly, I can't tell you which was more emotional for me... the presentation of the Cecil B. DeMille award by Sidney Poitier and Helen Mirren, or the acceptance speech by Morgan Freeman. It was a warm moment in an otherwise awkward program, with respect and love emanating from both sides. Very touching. Reminded us all, just for a brief moment, what it means to dedicate your life to a craft, and to be appreciated for that dedication. It's so gratifying to see anyone being encouraged, being told that their life was well lived, that people all over the world are looking forward to their next endeavor. Sniff...

David Bowie Wannabe Award goes to:

I started out this paragraph ready to trash Tilda Swinton for her style choice here... and as I kept writing, I realized that I actually admire her for not giving a good goddamn that she showed up for a "beautiful people" awards show looking like one of David Bowie's 1980's alter-egos. So I erased that paragraph, and now you're stuck with this one.

Most Comfortable, Funny, and Titillating Presenter Award goes to:

George Clooney! I don't think he even read a word off the prompters. Earlier in the night, Brad Pitt had come onstage using a cane due to a recent foot injury. George stole the cane for his presentation later in the show, and since the two of them are great friends in real life, the gag came off funny but warm and enjoyed by all. I get the feeling George Clooney is a pretty nice guy. But that aside, he smattered his chatter with a little titillating tittle-tattle regarding Michael Fassbender's part in the new movie "Shame".

Apparently Mr. Fassbender (who I developed a crush on in the recently-remade "Jane Eyre") appears sans fards (I believe the actual words used were "full frontal") in the new flick, and George even went so far as to say Fassbender could play golf with both hands tied behind his back. Hmmmmm.... wonder if "Shame" is at the library yet?

Stunning Queen of the Night Award goes to (as if you didn't know what I was going to say here):

Angelina!

She really pulled out all the stops with this one. Class, elegance, an absolutely perfect fit. Just the right shade of red in the accents: perfectly matched lipstick, dress collar, handbag, and toenail polish. Sexy yet sovereign. The dress hugged her every inch without a trace of trashiness. She looked like an empress from another dimension. As if her timeship awaited departure just behind the big Golden Globe banners...

Queen of the Night runner-up:

When the cast of the TV show "Homeland" got up on stage to accept an award, I zeroed in on this statuesque beauty. Having never seen the show, I'd never seen her either, and I didn't know her name. Thanks to the interwebs, I now know that Morena Baccarin is the synonym for "exquisite".

Happy birthday, Dadder

2012-01-15T12:24:00.004-05:00

Miss you.

A pensive, pre-work post

2012-01-14T13:23:00.007-05:00

There's something so pre-emptive about having to work on a Saturday. Yes, since I work in the evenings, I do get to sleep in and enjoy a cuppa (or two) and breakfast with my hubby. All that homey goodness mostly just serves to get me in a completely relaxed and lazy mood, after which I am not remotely tempted to get in the shower and go to work.

Having yummy, fuzzy kittens taking turns snuggling on my lap doesn't help my motivation, either. Nor does the fact that I just got some new yarn in the mail (to be turned into a present for a friend's birthday, which was on the third of this month) that I am "yarning" to start work on...

Another reason I don't want to go to work today is the book I just took out of the library, which I am in love with even though I've only read two chapters so far. It's called "This is Where I Leave You", by Jonathan Tropper. It was suggested by Holly of "Nothing But Bonfires", and I am heartily glad I picked it up. However, I'd much rather read it curled up on my antique sofa, surrounded by kitties and a husband, instead of between radio contacts at work. C'est la vie.

In other news... I've just received my very first summons for jury duty. I am actually sort of excited about it, because my employer not only pays me full pay for the duration of my service, but also CHANGES MY DAYS OFF TO SATURDAY AND SUNDAY so that I don't get ripped off having to go to court Monday through Friday! I'm kinda hoping I get chosen for a really long trial. A long, very interesting trial. Maybe it will be so intriguing that I will have a ready-made topic for the 2012 NaNoWriMo that is only ten months away and closing fast.

Not that I'm panicking, or anything...

***** postscript*****

Another thing I'm looking forward to is tomorrow's Golden Globe awards. (Which I will have to record and watch later because I am W-O-R-K-I-N-G.)

Not because I care who wins what, but because it will be another chance to see Ricky Gervais laughing and slamming people. Or is that slamming people and then laughing? Either way, I love his laugh, I love his smile (very wolfish) and watching him do either is high up on my entertainment scale. For those of you who agree, don't miss the upcoming return of "Idiot Abroad", which airs on January 21st! More laughing! More Ricky! More Ricky laughing! Good times!

Marcheline's fabulous day off

2012-01-11T10:52:00.020-05:00

Yesterday was a day off for me, and I was feeling liberated and particularly saucy. I donned my orange Fluevogs and my fedora, consulted my magic weather vane, and headed due east.

I found a comfy bench that invited me to sit and relax the day away, but I politely declined.

I met a friendly fencepost, but instead of stopping I just smiled and sang "Don't Fence Me In" as I walked by.

I saw a beautiful, wintry chapel cheerfully raising its hand so as to be seen above the treetops. I waved right back and kept on walking.

I nearly tripped over this very important boulder, bearing a plaque in honor of a very important invention. I think boulders may be second only to ball bearings on the list of things that impede walking. I stopped long enough to take this picture, and then resumed my journey.

I greeted several still-festive houses, understandably reluctant to hang up their Yule ball gowns:

I found a magical place where the sun shines up from under the water instead of down from the sky:

I discovered evidence that some people really do respect nature:

And then there was the nursery rhyme:

This is the church...

This is the steeple...
Open the door, and see...

Rosemary's baby?!?!

Ah, well - one should always remain alert when rubbing shoulders with nursery rhymes. They have a tendency to be a bit on the rebellious side.

Back in December when my mother was up for a visit, she gave me some birthday money. As always, she told me not to do anything practical with it, but instead requested that I get myself something that I really wanted, something frivolous and fun and completely unnecessary.

Happily, this year I was able to do just that. I pointed my bright orange oxfords towards my favorite antique shop, hoping against hope that the items I had been longing for were still there.

And...

They were!

When things "Taint" what they seem

2012-01-10T11:36:00.006-05:00

Say it Taint' so!

Before those of you with dirty minds get all het up, let me 'splain. On the left, we have my 2011 Anne Taintor retro calendar. On the right? Not so much. You see, I didn't buy my 2012 Anne Taintor calendar in time, and now the bloody things are selling for upwards of FIFTY DOLLARS on the interwebs! Methinks not. Retro and cheeky though her calendars may be, Anne Taintor's pimps ain't makin' no fifty simoleons off of my cherry-apron-covered arse (yeah, I wear it backwards - so what?) for a damn wall calendar.

So I looked for another retro calendar, and found it on ebay. It arrived the other day, and as you can see it's about a quarter the size of a regular wall calendar. It was listed alongside all the other normal sized wall calendars, and nowhere in the description did it say "wall calendar for Mickey Rooney", or "tiny wall calendar", or "this wall calendar is only six inches square" or anything of the sort.

I smell a negative feedback coming down the pike for a certain ebay seller... and yes, I learned my lesson. I pre-ordered my 2013 Anne Taintor calendar (just eleven smackaroonies and change) from Amazon.

Marcheline hits the big time

2012-01-09T23:25:00.003-05:00

Whoa, dudes... it's like... Kismet! You know how I was telling you about the good stuff that happened to people I know lately, and I was spreading the good vibes around like peanut butter, and thinking maybe I would create a scenario of spiritual osmosis and partake cosmically of the nectar of success?

Well... when I got home today there was a CHECK in the MAIL! A CASH SETTLEMENT from some class action suit that I don't ever remember being a part of! FREE CASH! FREE MONEY! With my name on it!

Okay, it was a check for eighteen dollars.

But still.... FREE MONEY, PEOPLE! After taxes, I can get a hamburger or something!! (See, it's good to get excited about good things, so the universe will see how appreciative you are and send more good things. Maybe good things with a couple of extra zeroes, who knows, hmmmmmmm?)

Spread 'em!

2012-01-08T13:42:00.007-05:00

(Good thoughts, that is.) Yesterday, within about a half an hour of each other, two people contacted me to tell me something great happened to them.

My sister got a huge promotion at work. She is now the Regional Director of Something (she works in the world of finance and I can never get my head around what it is that she actually does... one of the side effects of never having any money, I guess). Her salary was increased by 70% and she now has a built-in pay increase schedule, so she no longer has to wait and wonder if and when she will get her next raise. No, I don't know what her original salary was, but I can only imagine that ANY salary raised by 70% has to mean a great deal to the person earning it.

A co-worker approached me and turned sideways, pointing at his non-existent belly. He told me he started "going Paleo" at the end of September (after talking to me about how I'd lost my 30 pounds), and he has now lost 30 pounds! He was very happy, bouncing on his toes, even, and he kind of psyched me up to get back with the program (read: get back to the gym) and lose the next 30 that needs to go.

A mural in the town park amphitheatre

It was very uplifting to hear two tales of glee in a row, and it left me feeling kind of hopeful. Like maybe I might have a tale of happiness or success of my own just around the corner. Since I just bought two lottery tickets, I sincerely hope that's true.

In any case, I thought it would be cosmically prudent and generally generous to spread the good news around, to say something uplifting in lieu of my usual curmudgeonly grumblings about the things that annoy me.

One of my neighborhood favorites

Don't get spoiled, though... I will no doubt be ranting again soon. In the meantime, enjoy some more photos taken with my Rebel!

Road tar

A day off

2012-01-07T13:24:00.016-05:00

Yep, I took the day off yesterday. Just called in and did it. Bear did too, and we walked down to the docks and I practised with my new camera. Then we came home and made the best batch of chicken and sausage fajitas that ever graced the planet, and ate them with a side of fresh avocado slices while curled up on the couch (next to our still green Yule tree), watching movies. HEAVEN.

Click the pics to see them in their full glory!

Yes, it is possible...

2012-01-05T12:48:00.002-05:00

... to have a crush on your own shoes.

Something to leave behind

2012-01-04T00:25:00.006-05:00

Chair Cat isn't buying your line of shit.

Right now, bloggers all over the 'verse are posting about New Year's resolutions. Whether or not they have them, what they are, what last year's were, whether or not they kept them, ad infinitum.

For the most part, I am happy to read about other people's thoughts on this subject, but I have no interest in joining the discussion. I am pretty sure that I over-think and re-evaluate everything I do, every single day, without making a yearly event out of it that I have to waste valuable capital letters on. People are worried about the rain forest, but no one is paying attention to the callous squandering of capital letters in today's world.

However.

I have recently realized that I am guilt-tripping about my own Christmas present. And it occurs to me that this is a stupid thing to do, but I cannot seem to STOP doing it.

Your collective brows now have more furrows than a Shar-pei puppy, indicating confusion, or possibly a secret case of constipation. Of course you don't understand what I'm on about, because for the last three posts I've been all "CANON REBEL" this and "CANON REBEL" that, and oh, did I mention that my husband gave me a "CANON REBEL" for Christmas? Sure I have! I've told you all about it. I've posted pictures I took with it. I am superlatively, ecstatically happy about it, and am taking a lot of time and effort to make sure that you all know about it.

However. I didn't give any of you presents! See where this is going?

Example: We had some friends come over for dinner tonight. Friends that we wanted to buy presents for, but could not come up with a) a good idea or b) the money, pre-holiday, to do so. They came over and not only gave us a really nice present (gift card for a local restaurant), they also gave me a birthday present (tickets to go see the Glenn Miller Orchestra this spring).

We decided to take them out to a nice dinner at a fantastic restaurant we know of. At some later date. Which is great. And yet, because we didn't actually get them a Christmas present, I felt guilty about telling them that Bear gave me this great camera for Christmas. Because I know the camera cost a lot of money, and it's like in my head there's this ghostly cash register kind of chinking and chiming away, singing "Oh, sure, they could spend money on gifts for themselves, but no-o-o-ot for you-u-u-u-u" in a Jacob Marley sort of way. (No, Jacob was no relative of Bob's, in case you were wondering. Jacob had no rhythm.)

I do the same thing with my family. I mean, Bear and I honestly don't have a lot of money. We just barely scrape by most months. Bear saved and scrimped for a very long time to get me the camera he gave me this year. Neither one of our jobs gave us any holiday bonus AT ALL... not even a cookie or a piece of cheese, never mind a taxable check. My family knows this. And because of this fact, if we ever find ourselves able to go out to dinner, or do anything special or above and beyond... go to a concert, or what have you... I find myself almost unable to mention it to my family.

It's not like any of them have ever jumped up on a table and pointed an accusing finger, screaming, "SURE, you have no money, but you can afford to (fill in the enjoyable experience of your choice)!!!!" but I feel some reluctance to admit we did anything that costs money, lest they think we've been faking it all along.

My family has no such compunction, I can tell you. My sister drives a brand new red Mustang, and bought her husband a Ford 250,000,000 Diesel super-extended-fifteen-wheel ULTRA pickup rolltop towbar whammy with six fuel tanks. Or something like that. Whatever it is, it costs $500 a week to drive it to work. Is she apologizing or hiding it? Nope.

Does anyone else but me do this? Feel obligated to remain mentally cached in the proper financial substrata of their friends and family?

If I was the sort of person who made New Year's resolutions, leaving this particular self-imposed guilt-trip behind would most likely be it.

For those of you who cannot relate to my psychosis, here's something to watch several times in a row:

Some new photos to share!

2012-01-03T11:31:00.016-05:00

Click these pix to see them livin' large!

This is how I am going to look to everyone in the foreseeable future. Like a Canon Rebel with arms and legs. It will certainly save me money on makeup!

A vignette of the top of my antique kitchen cabinet. It's like a circus, without the smell of elephant poop.

Here's looking at you, kitty.

The windchimes I gave Bear for his birthday this summer. Just about the only thing in the garden that still has any color!

The shell that lives by the cherry tree.

I call this picture "The Survivors"... they are the few, the brave... blossoms still going strong from my birthday bouquet.

The mutual adoration society meets regularly in my kitchen. All together now... AWWWWWWWW!

A self portrait.
If you don't see it, click the picture and you will.

Beauty berry!

Our Thai temple bell, by the front gate.

Hydrangea skeletons.

My dream man!

Black on white, in color.

An antique ornament my mother gifted me during her recent visit. I am absolutely crazy about the old Shiny Brite ornaments!

2012-01-01T11:15:00.004-05:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

This is one of the very first pictures taken with my new camera... right now I'm in the cursing and pulling my hair stage (mostly with figuring out how to get the pictures from the camera to my computer, which thankfully is now a done deal). I'm looking forward to having a day off to go out and play, visit some photo-worthy sites, some bone yards, etc.

For the first time in years, Bear and I got to ring in the New Year together last night. I got off work at 11pm, and so was home in plenty of time for the big countdown. We were watching an episode from the final season of LOST, but we switched over to the NYC ball dropping in Times Square just five minutes before midnight. We counted down, and kissed (wowowowow!) at the stroke of midnight, and they played Auld Lang Syne, and I actually got a bit weepy. A lot of stuff has happened this year, and who knows what's around the corner. Am hoping it's good stuff, but I know it will be a mix, as it always is.

Hoping you all had a great New Year's Eve wherever in the world it came to you, and looking forward to another year of blogging and sharing our lives with each other!

{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{HUGS}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

Marcheline's short-lived stardom: Part Deux

2011-12-29T12:49:00.022-05:00

A while back, I did a post all about my fifteen seconds of fame as a dancer in the music video for Ricky Van Shelton's song "Wild Man".

Well, there were one or two other little projects I did while I was down in NashVegas, but since they were of the movie type, and very off-off-Hollywood, I never knew if my little scenes made it safely past the cutting room floor.

Over the years, I've searched for these projects on DVD, but for a long time it was no dice. The first was a TV movie called "Following Her Heart", starring Ann-Margret (yes, the one who slept with Elvis Presley), George Segal, and Brenda Vacaro. I finally got hold of an uber-crappy copy of it, and I think I see myself in one or two background shots, but honestly it's so blurry I can't be sure.

BUT... (dun dun DUNNNNNNNN!)

The other project, "Crocodile Shoes", was a TV series from England done by the BBC (who else) starring (and written by) actor Jimmy Nail. Just recently I found a website selling copies on DVD. When I popped it into the machine today, I found out I am on screen for several minutes! Very exciting.

My scene (right, it's mine) happens in Series 1, Episode 4, called "The Trip". I'll set the scene before showing the pics. Jimmy Nail's character and a friend of his go to a bar in Nashville, where some rednecks beat up on a black guy and Jimmy Nail steps in and defends him. During this entire exchange, yours truly is line-dancing in a black leather biker vest and pants in the background. Hee hee!

Here are the pics, labeled professionally so you don't miss the really important bits. (Smell that? That's sarcasm!) Since you've all seen recent pictures of me, use the picture at the top of this post to ~~wash your brains of the awful truth~~ refresh your memory of what I looked like in 1994... you'll see that skinny girl with the long hair in the pics below.

(You'll notice that I stopped labeling Jimmy Nail after one photo.)

I wish I could provide a link to a clip of this scene in motion, because one of the funniest things about it (aside from how earnestly I am enjoying the hell out of fake line dancing) is the sound of our shoes. The "country music" (just repetetive guitar riffs with no vocals) was turned way, way down so the actors' voices could be heard, but with girls line dancing directly behind the main characters, you hear the "tap tap scrape scrape" of our shoes quite loudly... something you'd never hear in a real bar.

Between takes, Jimmy Nail sat outside the club on a bar-stool height canvas director's chair. (Nail is upwards of six feet tall so I guess they gave him that chair for the extra leg room.) I leaned up against the wall next to him and we chatted a while. He told me that Harley Davidson of Nashville had loaned him and his fellow cast-mates some bikes to use while they were in town, and I thought that was the coolest thing ever. Mr. Nail, despite being the writer and star of the show, was very personable and not at all stuck on himself.

I suggested that he and his crew stop over at The Sherlock Holmes Pub for a bite to eat... not only because it was my favorite hangout, and located literally five minutes from where we were shooting, but also because I was friends with the Brits that owned and worked the place. I gathered that Jimmy Nail was a pretty big star in the UK, and they'd probably get a huge kick out of meeting him. Unfortunately, Mr. Nail said that the last thing they wanted to do while in the US was go to an English pub... they wanted to do "All American" stuff. I guess I kind of understand that. I would never go to Scotland and eat at Burger King.

I kept a few shards of the sugar-glass bottles that Jimmy Nail broke against the bar (there were so many takes of that scene, they kept having to sweep the floor) as a memento of the day. Just that one five or six minute scene took us all day to shoot.

Well, folks... that's about it. My big fifteen minutes of fame. Unless I find something else to get myself into. Stay tuned.

Bear's response to my comment about his reaction to my new shoes.

2011-12-28T23:33:00.001-05:00

Post-holiday blues

2011-12-28T11:26:00.007-05:00

I can't recall if I go through this every year, or if this is the first time I've had the post-holiday blues. I didn't think I was particularly "geared up" beforehand, which would seem to precipitate an expected downward slide later... and yet, since Monday ended, I've had a face like a dog's dinner.

Maybe it's because now that the jingling and merrying and ho-ho-ing are done, my grandmother's death is sort of sinking in. I dreamed about my father last night, though he's been gone for nearly three years. It wasn't a good, heartwarming sort of dream, either, and it left a hollow feeling in my heart when I woke up. Sometimes it really irks me that we can't "dial-a-dream" and ensure our sleeping hours are full of laughter, calorie-free sweetness, flying without wings, and winning the lottery.

I'm usually a pretty cheerful person, so this slump thingy is just as annoying to me as I'm sure it must be to Bear. We were supposed to have a couple of friends over for dinner and a movie last night, and just as I was putting dinner into the oven, the power went out. I called the local police precinct, and they informed me that there were wires down in town and lots of people were in the dark.

As annoying as the power outage was, I was actually relieved to be able to cancel the get-together... I just wasn't feeling social at all. Bear and I lit some candles and played chess in the kitchen. That was lovely, even though I lost (as usual). Later, the power came on and I went ahead and cooked the very late, albeit very tasty, roast.

"I wish to report a mutiny. I can name fingers and count names."

Bear and I ate dinner while watching "Pirates of the Caribbean - On Stranger Tides", and we enjoyed both with gusto. It's almost impossible to spend an evening with Captain Jack Sparrow and not smile.

But this morning, again with the blues. I didn't want to let Bear go out the door to work. I wanted to keep him here and wrap up on the couch with him and disappear into another imaginary world on dvd. What I did instead was curl up on the couch with the fluffy tan cat and the last few chapters of Nelson Demille's "Night Fall". Good book, but as it centers around the suspected terrorist activities to do with the explosion of TWA flight 800 and the actual terrorist activites of 9/11, it did nothing for my mood. I'm glad it's finished. I have upheld my side of the book-reading bargain with my mother. Now to see if she ever finishes "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone"...

In the face of the doldrums, I am focusing on two cheerful thoughts.

1: I ordered the memory card for my new Canon Rebel - it should arrive here on Friday. I can't wait to get started taking pictures!

2: I used the gift card my family gave me for my birthday and ordered my very first pair of Fluevog shoes. Here they are:

I don't expect anyone else to like them (I wish I had a photograph of Bear's carefully blank face when I showed this picture to him), but they make me smile. True, they aren't the ones I really lusted after, but I would have had to add more than a hundred non-existent dollars from my anorexic wallet to get those, so... these shoes are the coolest ones that could be paid for entirely with the gift certificate. I mean, the other ones were dress shoes... and I rarely dress up. They would probably have sat in my closet looking pretty. But these? I can wear these to work with my jeans and bowling shirts and my fedora! I will wear the HELL out of these.

Trying not to think about going back to work this afternoon... it's totally killing my camera/shoe buzz.

YULE 2011 - a review

2011-12-26T15:33:00.016-05:00

Those of you who are fans of "LOST" will recognize how much this looks like the character John Locke...

... from the back. Those of you who don't watch the show now know what the hell I'm on about, anyway.

DESMOND

Every year we name our tree. It's always a Scottish name. Since there is only one Scottish ~~hottie~~ character on LOST, we chose his name this year. Anyway, he kind of looks like a Desmond, don't you think?

Someone whom we won't mention by name has once again adopted the tree. If she is not behind it, or next to it, she is striking adorable poses under it out front where it can be photographed. She may be distantly related to Phoebe Price, now that I think of it, but with naturally poofy cheeks (Phoebe's are implants).

A totally natural, un-posed Christmas kiss.

Our very first Yule together, back in 1999, Bear took a photo of me sticking my head out from behind the tree while hanging lights. It made us laugh, and he called me the Christmas Dryad. Every year since then we've taken another one. I must dig them all up at once sometime and make an album... "The Christmas Dryad Through the Years". I'm sure you'll all be holding your breath for that one.

I'm HELPIN, Dad!

The loot!

Movies: Ip Man 1,2, and 3 (martial arts). The most recent Pirates of the Caribbean. The last Harry Potter. Pillars of the Earth, entire series. Spartacus, entire series. Robin Hood, starring Russel Crowe and Cate Blanchett. Cranford, entire series.
Tasty goodies: A stack of free trade, dark chocolate bars (70% or higher cocoa content) especially for the very special, very occasional snacking joy of a certain diabetic husband.
Wearables: A bunch of man-type underwear, appropriately gifted in a "Chock Full O'Nuts" can. HA! Raunchy holiday humor! Also, a pair of new work boots for the man (not pictured).

Most Awesome Gift EVER: A CANON REBEL DIGITAL CAMERA, Y'ALL!!!!! Bear totally snowplowed me with this one, after telling me that this year we should only give each other "little" gifts. He got underwear and a couple of movies. I GOT A CANON REBEL!!! This thing has so many great functions, you can practically drive it to work. I'm ecstatic, and boy are you guys in trouble once I figure out how to use it. This blog may well be re-named "Marcheline's Photo Blog" ... but probably not. You'll just have super amazing photos to enjoy with my usual, stunningly witty posts. HA!

Yuletide Greetings
from the whole famn damily!

Yuletide Greetings!

2011-12-25T09:42:00.001-05:00

Wishing all my blogfriends the
veriest merriest of all!

A Christmas miracle ... or close enough

2011-12-24T11:56:00.001-05:00

And now for something completely different...

2011-12-23T11:05:00.002-05:00

A Christmas card for you all, from Terry Gilliam of Monty Python:

T'was the week before Yule, and all that...

2011-12-22T08:59:00.004-05:00

First, a thought about Christmas. It always confuses me that everyone, including myself, gets in a holiday tizzy. I have no guests coming for the holidays, I have no kids, and my tree was decorated a week ago. But still, I have found myself telling people I can't _________ (insert your favorite chore or responsibility here) "until the holidays are over". As if the holidays, merely by existing, preclude my ability to get my arse to the gym, or clean out my bill drawer, organize my closet, or any of the other things that need doing. Is it just me, or does everyone use this time of year as a huge excuse to lay about eating and drinking too much? I mean, those folks who are having the family to their house, and actually DO have loads to do... those people aren't included, of course. I just think there are very few of them.

My mother came to visit us last Friday morning, and stayed until Tuesday evening. She took us out to dinner for my birthday, and while I was at work she went shopping and stuffed our freezer chock full of food - roasts, chicken, ground beef, you name it. She's a wonderful, generous woman. We treated her to showings of our newest Brit series love, "Cranford" and "Return to Cranford", starring Judi Dench and Imelda Staunton. She fell in love with them, as we had.

Towards the end of the visit, as usual, there were a few "crispy" moments, such as when she pointed out that there was cold air coming in around our front door and asked why we didn't just go to the local DIY store and purchase weather stripping for a few dollars and fix it, and did we realize how much money we were throwing away on heating bills... and when I woke up on Tuesday morning with my throat still sore she started with "why didn't you gargle with salt water last night like I told you to".

I'm not proud of it, but when such things are put to me my temper gets very short, peeps. Yes, I know my weather stripping is shot, and it's cheap to replace, and I should buy some. But I don't like it being pointed out. Yes, I should have gargled with salt water last night. But since I didn't, let's just get on with today and maybe I'll work it into my schedule this evening, what do you say?

That sort of thing always makes me feel guilty, because here's my lovely little mother traveling during the holidays just to spend my birthday with me, stocking up my pantry, and I can't even prevent myself from getting irked when she nitpicks me? No, I can't. Sigh.

One rather amazing thing happened while she was here. We were out to dinner, and were discussing books and authors we liked. She has been after me lo, these many years to read Nelson DeMille. I am sure he's a fine author, I just don't have any interest. So when she brought it up again at dinner, I figured I had just the thing to stem the tide. I said, "I will read any Nelson DeMille book of your choice if you will read the first Harry Potter book."

You must understand that my mother is a dyed-in-the-wool religious person, living in the "Bible belt", and the Harry Potter books have been roundly condemned as evil witchcraft by the majority of her peers. She has shown no interest in the books, and promptly fell asleep the one time I attempted to show her the first movie in the series.

And you know what? She accepted my challenge! She took "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" with her on the plane back to North Carolina, and texted me later that night that she was enjoying it!

Will wonders never cease?

What's up, doc?

2011-12-19T07:31:00.004-05:00

Here it is, the first day of my "weekend", and I'm up at 7AM. Why? Because, after being sick since the end of November, I am heading back to the doctor's office to find out why.

Sore throat, swollen tonsils, and no sick time left at work. I've been sucking down hot tea, trying to make my voice last for 8 hours at a time. Working air traffic on the radio is not easy when one is completely healthy, but when your vocal chords desert you, it's moidah, I tell ya!

My mom, a retired nurse, is up visiting for the weekend, and she was livid that the doc didn't test me for strep when I went in there the first time. So now I go back, to request to be tested. Apparently, untreated strep infections can weaken your heart valves... scary stuff! I hate what antibiotics do to my stomach, but better that than a bad ticker.

Thanks to all of you who came to my birthday party last post, it cheered me up immensely to see all of you here! I hope some of the first-time visitors come back again soon. I promise to be more interesting next time and not talk about my ailments like an old lady... HA!

Am looking forward to going out with my lovely mother and my handsome husband tonight for a birthday dinner. There's this wee little town just west of here that's all decorated up for the holidays, with antique shops and gift stores and cafes and a big outdoor live pine tree that they always festoon with those dark blue lights that I love so well. We're planning to go in and walk around a bit, enjoy the ambiance, and have dinner at one of our favorite cafes, which has delectable food.

Merry Yuletide, y'all!

Happy Birthday to me! (And Beethoven)

2011-12-16T07:28:00.006-05:00

Well, folks, here it is... or, rather, here I am, forty-five (that's 45 for you non-analog viewers) years on the planet! I am visiting all the blogs I know and announcing that fact, in hopes that everyone will come by to say hello. And also because I'm 45 and I don't give a crap anymore! 8-)

Grab a party hat and a cocktail weenie, have a whiskey sour (or two), and press play:

Annnnnnnd.... thanks to Holly over at Nothing But Bonfires, here's the newest (and funniest) German star of YouTube:

FLULA BORG!!!!

It's beginning to feel a lot like rugby! Yes, that, thank you Libby!

2011-12-13T17:29:00.003-05:00

Well, last night we pulled out all the stops. The tree had had a whole day to relax in the stand and open its branches to the warmth. It was my first day off, and so I spent the early part of the day decorating the front windows with garland and lights and over-sized ornaments. Pulled all of the tree ornament boxes out of the attic, ready for action. Washed all the dishes, trimmed all the window plants of dead leaves before putting them back in the windows between the ornaments.

I also managed a trip to the post office, sent off my Yule cards, and went grocery shopping. By the time Bear got home, the Santa hats were by the front door, ready for action.

Bear ordered us some Chinese food to give us more time to decorate, and we watched "A Christmas Story" while we ate. Then we decorated the tree. It was gorgeous! The kitties were happy to help, and Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby chimed in to make the spirit bright.

Just towards the end, Bear got a glass of iced tea and settled on the couch, while I bustled around finishing up the last of the tiny blue ornaments that we always hang on the very tips of all the branches.

I was standing on the piano bench, as I have done for lo, these many Yuletides, hanging some of the tiniest baubles on the highest branches.

Then, suddenly, I wasn't. I was face down on the floor, with pine needles up my nose and a horrible crashing sound around me.

I'm still not sure whether I overturned the piano bench or whether the broken bench leg happened first and overturned me... but whatever it was, it happened all at once.

I broke the curved glass door on our antique book cabinet. That is the worst of it. It will probably cost more than we paid for the cabinet to replace. I broke one large ornament on the tree... but happily not one of the really old ones. It's a miracle that more didn't break. Thank goodness we have carpeting, because several large ornaments fell to the floor... it was the rug that saved them, no doubt.

It's also a miracle I didn't break my leg, or worse. I came down directly on top of the overturned bench, cracked my left shin something horrible, wrenched my left shoulder, and got a good bruise on my left hip to boot.

I also scared poor Bear out of his mind. He didn't know if I'd had a heart attack or stroke, or been shot through the window, or something else awful, and he leaped out of his seat and tried to physically haul me up out of harm's way. Not easy to do when the haulee is heavy and face down in the Christmas tree, I can tell you.

It took us about an hour to clean up all the shards of glass and get the tree back in order (thank the gods our tree stand was one of those heavy duty Martha Stewart jobs - the tree didn't budge an inch!). The cats fled the scene at the smashing sound and didn't reappear, which was handy since I was afraid of their little paws getting sliced up by broken glass bits.

Then we turned off the lights, lit the tree, and tried to get our heart rates back to normal before heading off to bed. I put an ice pack on my shin and took a couple of aspirin.

I spent today watching old movies, and trying to count my blessings instead of moaning and feeling like a total eejit. Truly, things could have been a LOT worse.

Ah, the joys of the holidays...

I dare you not to smile! P.S. Hi Margs 8-)

2011-12-10T12:05:00.004-05:00

Living a financially challenged life is a tricky thing, but can be very rewarding as long as you remain open-minded, never give up the search for magic, and learn to seek out the myriad small treasures that the universe offers free of charge.

I am going to share one of the very best of those with you, dear blogfriends. And I dare you... DARE YOU... not to come away with an uplifted heart and a smile on your face.

I'm sure most of you have heard of the free music website called Pandora. If not, now you have.

The instructions are simple. Go to Pandora's website and click "create a station", then type in "African Essentials". Then turn up your speakers. No matter how bad your week has been, this music will fill your heart up to the brim with joy. This is the kind of joy that comes from the soul of people who have nothing in the world but music, and it is powerful magic.

Ladysmith Black Mambazo

This joy, this magic, transcends musical taste - it doesn't matter what kind of music you listen to in your home or your car. I have yet to find the person whose face does not light up when they hear it. The urge to dance while smiling is also a regular side effect. Sometimes laughter and tears join the party.

Another way to access this particular wonder is through YouTube... search for Ladysmith Black Mambazo or the Kenyan Boys Choir, for starters. Here's a taste:

I'm not a joiner, so it's starting already

2011-12-09T07:23:00.013-05:00

Panic is one of those words which, if stared at long enough, seems to be spelled wrong. If you just say it quickly in a phrase, like "hit the panic button" or "keep calm, don't panic" it seems okay... but just stare at the above picture for a few moments, turning the word "panic" over in your head while you keep reading the word. In a few moments, it will seem to be written in French, it will whisper that perhaps it needs a "k" on the end, or it will simply cease to mean anything.

Maybe I just didn't get enough sleep last night.

I should still be asleep right now. It's 7:30 in the morning, dudes. I didn't go to bed until almost 2AM. WTF? The answer to this is that I am not a joiner. (For my British blogfriends, this does not mean that I cannot wield hammer and nails to great effect. I actually can.) No, what I mean is I make it a point not to join things. I am a strictly "no strings" individual. When I owned a Harley Davidson, I refused all offers to join the "Harley Owners Group" (H.O.G.). The whole point of riding a motorcycle, it seems to me, is to be autonomous - to get out there on your own. Sure, ride alongside whomever you like... but the moment you want to be somewhere else, zoom off into the sunset. No ties. For me, the sure fire way to quit doing something is to sign up, join a group, or in some way obligate myself to a mass mind.

(What's a skrink?)

That being said, I have recently "joined up"... made a commitment and spoken it aloud... and it's already eating into my brain. There's this thing called National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) that has been haunting me ever since I started blogging. Several bloggers that I follow have either participated in it or written about it, and up until now I have batted the acronym away like an annoying fly. I mentally skipped over any mention of this thing, being almost as allergic to acronyms as I am to joining up.

The first hundred times I saw it mentioned in print, it was always called "NaNo" or "NaNoWriMo", so I never really had a clear idea of what they were on about anyway, other than that it involved writing, signing up in a group, having to write a lot, yada yada yada. At some point someone actually wrote the whole name out, and then the 40-watt bulb floating over my head blazed to life for a few seconds, and I got it.

Because I am so against committing to things in the future rather than just doing them now, it took a real kick-in-the-arse inspiration to consider getting involved. My inspiration is Erin Morgenstern's book "The Night Circus", which she wrote the first draft of during said NaNoWriMo a couple of years ago.

My first impulse was to explain to myself how committing to participate in next year's NaNo (it happens every November) was not actually "joining", as there is no sign-up fee, no dependence on anyone else to do anything, no responsibility to anyone but myself to complete the task. "See?", I said, "You just do it. Like that." I also consoled myself with the knowledge that I have a whole year to ponder ideas, think up a unique topic, find my muse, form at least a vague plot line in my mushy kruller.

And so it begins.

The very first time I seriously pondered what to write about, I was faced with a huge, misty expanse of space that, sadly, turned out to be the inside of my brain. Ask me to find something for a good price, tell me you need a brick patio laid in three days, wish for a hand-crocheted whatsis or a ride to the airport, and I'm on it. Give me an open-ended writing assignment, and I go completely blank, apparently. Suddenly that "whole year" seems really, really short.

Then a few ideas started coming. Excitedly, I jotted them down. After about an hour of seriously considering each one, I also came up with several hundred reasons why they were completely stupid. Everything's been done before. Everything. Except the things that haven't. J.K. Rowling took the absolute last great book idea. Oh, gods, I should have spent more time reading! If I'd read everything ever written, I'd know if my plot idea has already been used! Sigh.

And the internet? Easy access to huge amounts of information? HUGE curse, people. I can, in three quick seconds of tappity-tap-tap on the keyboard, find out whether a book title has already been used, by whom, and whether that book sucked or not according to the New York Times. Instead of being a mind-easer, this access to information has narrowed my choices considerably.

Then there's the whole "genre" issue. You know, is it going to be a fictional drama portraying imaginary characters in the real world, or is it going to be a fantasy? Is there going to be a mystery, will there be a murder, are there aliens involved, or is it going to be an emotional journey? Will there be men in trench coats, or will there be dragons? Or both?

Gaaaaaahhhhhh. Honestly, I think the best way to write a book is to be born on a desert island and have a shipment of pens and paper air-dropped in. All this thinking, all this information, all this comparison to other writers before the fact... it does nothing for one's creativity.

The thing is, NaNo itself is not to blame for my crushing self criticism. There is no rule that says what you write during NaNo has to be good. There is no rule that says you have to write only the next best-selling novel. The only rule about NaNo is that you write a certain number of words in the allotted time. But my brain is insisting that there's really no point in starting something like this if the story is not going to be really, really good. Really unique. Really publishable.

Which brings me to yet another obstacle. Am I joining up to write a story for "the masses" or for myself? Am I writing to be marketable, or writing to fill a page? Am I going to be concerned with what age group or layer of the social strata may or may not be interested in my topic, or is it bugger 'em if I feel like writing about the little pink fairies that paint the stripes on candy canes? It's sort of like blogging, in a way. What started out as an online format of my personal journal, written to myself, has morphed into a sort of collection of letters to the blogiverse. Something I write with my readers in mind.

I know I can write. I've always written, I've been published in very small, very unpaid venues a few times, and I've won a few writing contests. But that was always when a goal, or a topic, had been set out for me. Challenge me to write a poem or story with any number of limitations or rules, and I'll charge in screaming a war cry. The greatest challenge, it seems, is not having any rules. No box to fill in. The empty page.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not quitting. Come next November, all things being equal, I will write! I will not cheat and write anything ahead of time. I will do NaNo the way it was intended to be done.

I just wonder if I will get any sleep at all between now and then.

Combining passions

2011-12-04T23:14:00.010-05:00

While some of you probably watched "LOST" when it was actually airing and no longer care about it, and others of you who don't live in the US have no idea what "LOST" is and don't care to know, there are probably also some who live in the US, know what it is, didn't watch it, and don't give a hoot.

To all of you, my brief apologies. Which means I just said "I'm sorry" to your underwear. Nevermind.

I tend to like to mix my passions, when possible. I mean, if one is passionate about chocolate, and also passionate about, say, peanut butter, then... you get my drift, certainly.

As Bear and I have recently been watching - no, devouring is the more correct term - episode after episode of "LOST", this in no way precludes my regular stream of Turner Classic Movies on the side. Lately, it has come to my attention that several characters from "LOST" resemble actors from classic movies. How lovely!

Here are a few of my LOSTpelgangers:

On the left, Libby from LOST, played by Cynthia Watros. On the right, Evelyn Keyes, who starred in "Mr. Soft Touch" with Glenn Ford in 1949.

On the left, Kate from LOST, played by Evangeline Lilly. On the right, a young Katharine Hepburn.

On the left, Claire from LOST, played by Emilie de Ravin. On the right, Marian Marsh, who starred in "Under Eighteen" with the dashing Warren William in 1931.

And lest we leave out the fellas, here on the left is Desmond from LOST, played by Henry Ian Cusick (who just happens to have a gorrrrrrgeous Scottish burr). On the right, Dustin Hoffman. As it turns out, I was not the only one to notice this particular similarity.

Last but certainly not least: On the left, Hurley (aka Hugo Reyes) from LOST, played by Jorge Garcia. On the right, John Belushi.

Vintage bangs - living on the fringe!

2011-12-03T12:38:00.013-05:00

A recent comment from Libby pointed out the US/UK difference in nomenclature for a certain hair style. In the UK, they call it a "fringe". In the US, it's "bangs". Wikipedia gives a full description of why.

Rather than go into semantics, I thought it would be fun to do a pictorial of famous vintage beauties sporting the "do". The undisputed queen of bangs is, of course, the lovely Bettie Page (above). She became such an icon for vintage pin-up lovers everywhere that you can now walk into any hair salon and ask for "Bettie bangs" and they will know exactly what you are talking about. Or, if you're a non-salon-er like me, just google it and see how many hits you get.

Bettie bangs are not for the faint of heart. A good portion of the hair is committed to these bangs, leaving a lot less hanging down in back than one may normally be used to. Folks with super-thick hair can pull this one off with ease. The rest of us use teasing/rolling to make the rest of the hair look fuller.

Audrey Hepburn carried off "waif" or "pixie" bangs to perfection... sometimes combined with longer hair in the back, sometimes short all over, the intentionally wispy, uneven edges complemented her sharp oval face and brought attention to her luminous eyes.

****

Sophia Loren really owned the sixties fringe - she wore it both straight and side-swept, with long hair and with poufed bee-hives as well.

I like to think of Elizabeth Taylor's bangs as "noncommittal". She basically had short haircuts, sometimes brushing the front forward into bangs and sometimes curling them upward as part of the rest of the "do". The hair she used for fringe was not cut solely for that purpose... "occasional" might be another good word for it. Sort of like her men...

Some vintage bangs are hard to classify. Here, Lana Turner sports the classic side-swept romantic curling bangs which almost don't qualify, due to their length and the way they blend into the longer hair. The longer the bang, the more "just out of bed" the look can be.

The actress that wore the most varied array of bangs styles would have to be Barbara Stanwyck. Above, the classic "roll". Similar to Bettie bangs, but they sit a lot higher on the head, especially at the sides. They are a crashing wave on the forehead shore.

Here, Ms. Stanwyck sports bi-level, pin-curled bangs. The top layer is combed in a similar way as the "roll" but the bottom layer is pin-curled and placed carefully with styling lotion so that each curl remains distinctly visible.

I like to call this bang the "pompadoodle". All the bangs are pulled forward into one swooping twist, resembling a reverse pompadour. On a poodle. I'm guessing a pin is holding that massive chunk of hair in place.

Well, hope you've gotten a bang out of this little foray into the vintage fringe. I sure had fun!

Breaking the rules

2011-12-02T12:55:00.004-05:00

It's possible that I noticed him because he was also wearing an army field jacket (I was wearing Bear's), but I don't think that was it. I think I noticed him because he was trying so hard to be invisible.

The grocery store was fairly crowded, and I am sick with the flu and was just trying to get in, grab a few necessaries, and get home to my medicine, my hot tea, and my Turner Classic Movies.

I was in the soup aisle, looking for the Lipton's Chicken Noodle packets. There were several other people with shopping carts in the way, so I was maneuvering and searching at the same time.

He was tall, and his thin shoulders poked tents in the dirty field jacket. His hair was long, and he kept his head down or turned toward the shelves, so I couldn't see his face. He picked up a few items, read the packaging closely, then looked at the price and put them back. I tried to convince myself that he was just an old soldier taking his time with his shopping.

I couldn't find my soup, so I went on to get the other items I needed, and then asked a grocery store employee for help finding the soup. He said he was pretty sure it was in the soup aisle, and walked back there with me to show me. Sure enough, it was - but they had relocated the dried soup mixes to a different shelf than they used to be on. Funny how much we depend on routine. I thanked the grocery guy sheepishly, grabbed my boxes of soup, and turned to go, and there he was - field jacket guy. Still in the soup aisle, still picking up one thing at a time and putting it back.

I thought of my rule. My helping rule. Since I'm not one of those people who has enough money to send donations to all the charities that send me pre-printed address stickers at the holidays, I have instead vowed to help anyone in the here-and-now, face-to-face world... anyone who asks. And helping is helping, whether it's reaching the top shelf for someone in a wheelchair, or whatever - it's not necessarily money.

But he hadn't asked. He hadn't even looked at me. He hadn't looked at anyone. I left the aisle, then backed up and looked at him again. I know from experience that talking to "street people" can be an iffy thing. Some of them are mentally challenged, and feel threatened when strangers try to interfere, even to help. Some of them just want money for booze or drugs. Some of them are looking to take advantage of other people's kindness, especially if that other person is a female without a companion alongside.

Keeping all of this in mind, I walked down the aisle until I was just next to him. I said, "Excuse me..." and he looked at me. His eyes had the look of something hunted. He said, "Yes?" His voice was clear and he didn't smell of alcohol... just dirty clothes. I asked if he could use some help. He half-smiled, saying, "What kind of help?" I was trying to maintain some dignity, to keep from insulting him, so I just shrugged and said, "You know... help."

He looked down at the floor, then at me, and said, "I'm living in the woods right now. My brother is dying of cancer, and I just... I don't... I'm trying to make this work. I've got about three dollars and I was just trying to find something...". I handed him some money, and he shook his head, and I asked him to please just take it. He stopped again, and took the money, thanking me. Then he asked if I had been in the military. I told him the jacket was my husband's, and we chatted a moment or two about the service.

As I walked away, my self-critical brain reminded me in a sarcastic voice that the liquor store was only two doors down from the grocery store. It also threw in a few laughs about how gullible I was, that this guy probably took in every bleeding heart that went down the soup aisle. I mentally put my hands over my ears and hummed along with the holiday music playing on the loudspeakers, and tried not to think about what living in the woods was like with December coming on.

I grabbed the rest of my items and headed for the checkout. On the way, I passed my friend. His arms were full of food, and he wished blessings on me as he got in line. I smiled and waved.

Sometimes breaking our own rules is exactly the right thing to do.

Mystic, CT - Day Three, Part I ... or, Would You Want This Woman at the Wheel of Your Submarine?

2011-11-30T09:59:00.025-05:00

On our third day in Mystic (the rainiest of them all) we pulled ourselves reluctantly from our down-topped, king-sized bed at the inn and went out to find adventure on the high... make that LOW... seas. The first half of the day was spent at the Submarine Force Museum / Nautilus Submarine. The above photo makes me laugh. I look crazed.

The museum was very museum-y, full of neatly labeled displays and gobs of information that went in one eye and out my ears... not much to take pictures of. Except this wonderfully steampunky diving helmet. I was trying to figure out how to get it into my handbag without anyone noticing.

This item is called a quaich. Sadly, no one who sees this display will ever know that, because the display card underneath calls it a "bowl". Things like that annoy me. It's a missed chance to expand cultural awareness. Scottish culture in particular. Which is verra close to my heart.

From the back windows of the museum, you can look out (across the train tracks - ???) to the Nautilus submarine.

1803 USS Nautilus 1954
World's first nuclear powered ship
The sixth ship of the fleet to bear the name
Keel laid 14 June 1952 - by
Harry S. Truman, President of the United States
Launched 21 January 1954
Sponsored by Mrs. Dwight D. Eisenhower
Commissioned 30 September 1954
Tripoli 1804, Derne 1805, Midway 1942, Makin 1942
Guadalcanal 1943, Attu 1943, Gilbert Islands 1943
Leyte 1944

14 War patrols 1942-1945
Presidential Unit Citation 1942

I will admit to a small stab of worry about boarding the Nautilus, as I am a bit claustrophobic. With me, it's not about tight spaces, but being surrounded by people in tight spaces. I was very, very glad that we went during the middle of the week on a very rainy day in October - we practically had the entire sub to ourselves. The tight quarters didn't bother me one bit, as Bear and I were able to traverse the entire sub without anyone in our "A.O." (area of operation).

I fell in love with the depiction of submarine life "back in the day", complete with old sweetheart photos and pinups in the sleeping quarters. All of the areas on display had the outer walls cut away, with thick plexiglass installed to give a good view. It also helped make the place feel a little roomier. If you look closely, you can see the photographer in the mirror.

Here's another pinup picture, but I like this one because you can clearly see Bear in the reflection, listening to his hand-held audio tour thingie, facing in the opposite direction. And the reflection of his face in the plexiglass on the other side of the hallway. It's like a picture within a picture within a - yeah, like that.

If you click to enlarge, you'll see this is a daily schedule for the submarine... and the movie of the day? "Love with the Proper Stranger". I'm such a sucker for the old stuff! Wait a second. This movie came out only three years before I was born. Uh, what I meant was "the really good stuff."

The above periscope room portrayal reminded me immediately of the scene from 1936's "Born to Dance", starring my all-time favorite, Jimmy Stewart - who, incredibly, sings and dances pretty well for someone who wasn't famous for it.

See for yourself! Jimmy comes in at around
2:23 .... but the whole thing is pretty hysterical with the
tongue-in-cheek naval humor (especially the bit about
polishing someone's torpedo). HA! They sure pulled the
wool over the censors' eyes in this one.

This photo was included not only to show how narrow the stairs were, or how steep (very!)... but also because these were the very first stairs ever installed on a submarine. Before that, it was all ladders. Narrow, steep ladders.

No cause for alarm, folks.

Me, down the hatch, Betty Page bangs askew. It's difficult to keep one's bangs properly arranged when ducking and climbing through small openings.

I am, apparently, inordinately fond of catching myself in reflections while taking photos.

Even though I know those are plastic hamburgers, I swear I can see steam rising off the griddle in this photo. Is it my imagination, or does the chef look as though he's planning murder?

Had no idea that Nixon used to wash dishes on a submarine...

View from the deck of the Nautilus on a rainy day.

I love train track photos. These tracks run directly between the Nautilus and the museum (weird) so this one was "natch".

This one is just too easy. I'll let it go.

I thought it only proper to end a bawdy nautical post with a full frontal.

Happy/Sad Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T13:25:00.004-05:00

My grandmother died this morning. I am thankful that she is no longer in pain. I am thankful that my poor mom is relieved of the immense burden she has been under the past three years. I am thankful that Gram was at my wedding back in 2002, and that Bear and I were able to go and see her one more time last week. The last thing she said to us was, "Hope y'uns can stay longer next time." I wonder if she knew, as we did, that there wasn't going to be a next time.

And even though I am also thankful that I have a good job, I have to say that the last thing I feel like doing today is getting dressed and going to work. But it must be done.

Side effects of "LOST"

2011-11-23T08:27:00.008-05:00

Bear and I, in our usual stubborn fashion, had refused to get embroiled in watching the TV series sensation "LOST".... until it was all over, that is. We do this regularly, trying hard not to listen in on people's conversations about the plots at work. We did it with Battlestar Galactica, Dexter, and a few others.

Once the series is over (however many years that takes) or at least seriously under way (hi Dexter), we get the DVDs from the library and are able to watch the series in about one quarter of the usual time, due to the fact that we watch three or four episodes at a gallop, and can watch some every night as opposed to having to wait a week between each episode.

One of my favorite things about LOST is Evangeline Lilly, who plays Kate. I mean, holy cow - why haven't we heard of her before?

She's sassy and funny and pretty, while simultaneously kicking ass. Sort of like Angelina Jolie used to be, back in the day.

She's one of my favorite characters, and contributes heartily to my current "LOST" addiction.

Marcheline reviews "The Night Circus"

2011-11-21T17:02:00.009-05:00

Well, today I finished listening to it on CD - read by the dulcet-toned brit Jim Dale (who also reads the US version of the Harry Potter books on CD).

The characters are well formed and intriguing - from the Asian tattooed contortionist, to the man in the grey suit known only by his initials, to the red-haired psychic twins. The main characters, magicians Celia and Marco, are consumed by a love that is vibrant and palpable, even though they spend much of the story barely touching fingertips. Perhaps it is the modern media trend of protagonists falling into bed with each other on the first date that caused some of the tepid reviews that I read concerning these two. Their restraint (despite obvious longing) was rather titillating... the way courtship was meant to be, back when ladies wore gloves and hats and men carried canes and wore spats.

The circus itself is really the main character. Does it have magic? In spades! To describe the circus here is really just an attempt to take the author's place - and Erin Morgenstern does it better than anyone could, so I won't attempt it. I will say her description is like walking through a wonderland. No sense is deprived. Scent and sensation, taste and touch, vibration and veritas... all mingle with anticipation and sometimes dread. Even in a world where the physical world can be manipulated and crafted by skill, there are mishaps and dark days. Those who cannot be trusted.

What I drank while listening

Things I especially love: the references to Hamlet (and Shakespeare in general), the quotations from Herr Thiessen, the steampunk elements of clockwork and Victorian ambiance, and the use of tarot cards and playing cards as indicators. Ms. Morgenstern writes about what she knows, which is a real joy when compared to the plethora of authors who try to write about occult things based on nothing but popular opinion.

Note: Because I am obsessive, I took the CD back to the library and checked out the book, which I took home to satisfy a curiosity of mine. The answer? 16.

Fluevog lust, or thank you very much Ms. Morgenstern

2011-11-18T23:21:00.004-05:00

These lovelies are called "Pearl Hart". They can be found on the Fluevog website, which I only know about because Erin Morgenstern wrote about it on her blog. As you all know by now, I'm besotted with Ms. Morgenstern, so it's only natural there should be side effects.

The shoes at Fluevog are as ridiculously expensive as they are fascinating, so I am actually relieved that these particular shoes are only left in size 11.... which precludes me from ordering them, since I am not a Percheron stallion. Of course they do have them in black in my size, but I am conveniently remaining adamant that the coral color is the only one that will do. I lie a lot.

As if the Pearl Harts weren't enough to keep me up nights contemplating selling my body for profit and fun, there are these:

That loud clunk you just heard? It was only me, feverish and passing out from an accute case of the Flu(evog).

Six degrees of Ingrid Bergman

2011-11-18T07:31:00.006-05:00

One of my favorite actresses from the good old days is Ingrid Bergman. The movie "Gaslight" is one of the best ever made, and "Notorious" is also a great flick. She's in both. Need I even mention "Casablanca"? Of course I need.

Ingrid Bergman's daughter, Isabella Rossellini, lives on Long Island. When I was waitressing a few years ago, I was fortunate enough to serve her a small garden salad and a massive order of calamari, which was sold as an appetizer but eaten as her main course. She was lovely in person, and had interesting friends - gaunt women wearing large rings, and men in black turtleneck sweaters.

Ms. Rossellini has a line of perfume. I bought a bottle of Manifesto. It smells like herbs and green things. I like to think wearing it connects me to Ingrid Bergman, in a cosmic way.

Postscript: My mother just gifted me this little bathroom book. One of the authors was the screen writer for "Gaslight". The six degrees of Ingrid Bergman continues...

Shadows

2011-11-17T12:24:00.002-05:00

No matter how creatively we sometimes layer our lives with positive thinking, no matter how we focus our intent on the good, how often we declare the glass half full, we inevitably come upon days when we just have to face the other side.

On Monday, Bear and I flew down to see my grandmother, after a sad phone conversation with my mother which indicated that Grammy might not be long for this world.

We were only able to stay the one evening, and blessedly my grandmother was in a pain-free, conversational state while we were there. It was a wonderful visit, both with her and other members of my family that we rarely get to see.

Leaving was hard, wondering if we'll ever see Grammy again. Hoping her days of pain are few, hoping what days she has left are filled with love and light instead.

Home now, watching the leaves fall off the trees under a grey sky, pondering the way we have control over when someone comes into the world, but none over when they leave it.

Crushing

2011-11-13T10:37:00.016-05:00

You know how life is like going through huge piles of unsorted paper, and every once in a while you come across a torn piece of map, and when you find it you whoop loudly and pour a glass of your favorite wine, and then you spend an hour scrutinizing it (the bit of map, not the wine, silly) to see if anything looks familiar or gives you a clue to where you are or where you might like to go, and you see that there are not one, but several familiar waypoints on this particular scrap, and it gives you a warm, happy feeling in your gizzard, and you quietly dig through another pile of paper until you find a suitably blank piece of parchment, and you write down the list of familiar waypoints before you carefully smooth out the section of map and add it to your collection, which you keep in an old leather map case from France that your true love bought for you on your last trip into New York City?

This is like that.

It's not that I don't have friends, or that I'm not a friendly person. It might just be that I believe in quality rather than quantity. I can count on one hand the people that I consider dear - or even actual - friends. One would think I'd be inherently immune to the emotional roller-coaster that is the "blog friend crush". You know, that non-romantic type of crush where you find someone's blog and become absolutely certain that you would be the best of friends, if fate were ever just kind enough.

Immune? Not so, not so. I'll admit that it only happens rarely, due to the odd specificity of my specific oddities. Perhaps I am actually more susceptible to it because none of my female friends live anywhere near me - thus I am deprived of gossip over a cup of tea, girl talk at the wine bar, regular rambles through the vintage dress pile at local antique stores with someone who will definitely tell me my butt looks big in that satin number, and then completely agree that it was way too expensive anyway and suggest a latte as a viable alternative.

Well, it's just happened again. And I haven't even read her book yet. I've just spent the last few evenings reading her blog, from the very first post to the most recent. This is how it starts, you see. You read, and then your brain starts picking up more and more similarities, until you reach the last post completely convinced that this person is your lost twin, your sistah from anotha mutha.

Then, as if you aren't already feeling enough like a stalker, you make a list. Of all the things you have in common. The list is an important part of the friend crush, sort of like doodling hearts and initials on desktops in school. Any one of the items on the list, taken singly, would seem silly and insignificant. One sign post pointing at an empty field. But count all the similarities up like calories, and they put a couple of pounds on your theory, however incorporeal any actual friendship may be.

The List:

* We both have two cats. (See? Silly. Just wait - there's more.)

* We wear old skeleton keys around our necks.

Hers, above. Mine, below.

* We feel it's important to have a special, artisan-made mug for tea. Handmade = special.

Hers, above. Mine, below.

* We are fans of Harry Potter, The Princess Bride, Tori Amos, LOST, Neil Gaiman, Rob Brezny, The Hunger Games, Etsy, and Stephen King.

* We are artists and writers.

* We have odd sleeping habits.

* We regularly use words like "waxing", "waning", and "widdershins" ...and we know why.

* We both love and use tarot cards.

* We have absorbed words from "Lord of the Rings" into our everyday lexicon. Example: tricksy

* Our go-to writing implement of choice for regular stuff is the Sharpie. For fancy stuff, it's the fountain pen.

* Antlers are acceptable interior decor. Of course.

* We have both written about wanting to "squee" about something, and then immediately added a disclaimer saying that we are not the squee-ing type.

* We have both posted photos of trees covered in birdhouses.

You know the deal by now.

* We both over-use the word "lovely" when describing people and experiences, most likely because it subconsciously lends a lovely brit flavour to any sentence. You know, without actually speaking in a fake british accent, which Madonna and Angelina have proved is a sure way to be mocked forever.

* She knits. I crochet. Neither one of us deign to use patterns. Or, more honestly, patterns scare the bejeebers out of us so we pretend they don't exist. Sort of like clowns.

* She collects vintage luggage, I collect vintage tablecloths.

* We both have a thing for old hats - she likes bowlers, while I gravitate towards fedoras. Top hats rock, across the board.

Well, that's as far as I've gotten with the list. You must admit that a list like this would definitely get us matched up if there were a platonic friend version of e-harmony.

I am not so naive as to harbor any real hope that a friendship will spring up between us. After all, she's just hit the big time, she's becoming famous. Her eyes are full of stars, and flashing cameras. She's being courted by magazines, TV shows, and Hollywood itself. She probably doesn't have time to keep in touch with the friends she already has, never mind come over here and hang out on my insignificant little corner of the blogiverse.

But just in case...

Hi Erin! In gratitude for your introducing me to BPAL, goodreads, BloodMilk, and Fluevog shoe lust, here are some things I think you will love.

The Enchanted Doll site!

This movie.

These books and the ORIGINAL movies
(not the US remakes).

This art website.

And, last but not least, an answer to your question "Who eats just one Milano cookie?": Former flight attendants, that's who. As a matter of fact, after gorging on the ever-present Milano cookies in the first class cabinet for a month or two, you don't even want to see the package any more.

Mystic, CT - Day two!

2011-11-11T11:16:00.045-05:00

Day two... it was cloudy, but not raining - so we spent the afternoon at Mystic Seaport. I was thrilled to find out that it was not just a historical re-enactment village, but an actual working shipyard! Shipwrights are constantly working there to restore and keep historic ships seaworthy.

The Charles W. Morgan is currently completely out of the water for hull restoration, but we were able to climb some very tall scaffolding and get inside her anyway.

Rudder nonsense!

A harpoon handle.

Click these for a closeup - the view is worth it!

Bear talking to Mel, one of the volunteer staff
members.

Screw this!

Me, trying my hand at using a manual augur,
which worked surprisingly well.

This is called the "rope walk". Men would wrap huge hanks of raw hemp around their waist, and then walk backwards down this aisle, spinning rope with their hands as they went.

Upstairs, spinning wheels for making hemp into strands later to be woven into huge ropes for the ships.

Dan, information guru aboard the Joseph Conrad.

Ginger, that diminutive girl in the green sweater, climbed all the way up onto the yard arm, as seen below:

She had to lean backwards to get over that platform just above her, and my stomach dropped out just watching her. Yikers!

Geoff Kaufman, sea chantey singer extraordinaire. Bear and I volunteered to help hoist the yard arm, and he taught us a chantey to sing while we did it. Total geek heaven!

At the blacksmith's shop.

Inside the 1800's seaman's home.

Barrels and buckets being made
at the cooper's shop.

The printer's shop. They hand-print all of
their own pamphlets and things for
events held at the seaport - something I
especially liked.

At the bank.

Where Ebeneezer Scrooge must have sat. 8-)

The woodcarver's shop - a nifty pedal lathe!

After a day of wandering around in the salty air, we headed over to the Voodoo Lounge for a cup of hot New England clam chowder and some crab cakes. This enormous mask was hanging directly above our heads. If the crab cakes had not been so deliciously distracting, I might have been nervous.

Quote of the day, overheard at work:

2011-11-10T08:30:00.002-05:00

"I can't read this smut anymore... it makes me want to drink!"

A perfect day for the boneyard

2011-11-09T07:51:00.011-05:00

Yesterday, by happy chance, Bear had home training on the computer instead of having to drive in to work. When the "webinars" (my least favorite non-word currently banging around the universe) were over, we still had plenty of warm, sunny, leaf-filled afternoon to ourselves.

I'd just accepted two more assignments from the Find-A-Grave website to photograph headstones in a local cemetery, so we headed out a-hunting. I put in a call to the cemetery curator, got her voicemail, and left a message asking for the plot numbers and directions to the headstones. As it turns out she didn't call me back in time, so it was going to be a "by eye" foray.

Harry Rooge
Drowned at Fire Island
July 20, 1874
Age 30 years 7 months & 5 days
Native of Bremen, Germany

Hunting gravestones by eye is enjoyable when you just want an excuse to ramble through a boneyard. You drive once through the entire cemetery, slowly, scanning the largest standing monuments for the target names, really not expecting to come across anything because there are so very many stones that are lying flat in the ground, only readable when standing directly over them. But it's the quickest way to "hit the high spots", after which you park and start covering plots on foot.

Because gravestones tend to face in both directions, I suspect we "photo tomb raiders" look rather like someone watching a tennis match when we're on the hunt. Look right, look left, look right, look left, so as not to miss any names and have to cover the same area twice.

William H. Pratt
Co. "C", 9th Regiment
U.S. Infantry
Veteran of Mexican War
Died 1890

However - the spirits favored both of us with a find from the car! Within fifteen minutes of our arrival, Bear spotted the first stone and I spotted the second. Since neither of us were ready to go home yet, we parked the vehicle and did a little sight-seeing on our own.

Note: The photos I am posting here are not my assignments - they are other stones I found interesting or beautiful or touching in some way.

Headstone of Gloannah Terry
Bottom of stone reads:

Could tears or prayers have held her here

She had not passed away

Could love have bound her to the earth

She had been ours today

But tears and prayers and love were vain

The messenger to stay

This last stone I bring you, belonging to Captain William Liscum, was beautiful to look down at...

... but just as interesting to look across, as the area within the wreathing was rounded - odd for a stone lying flat in the ground. Almost as if Capt. Liscum had a pot-belly. Not likely for a seafaring man in the 1800s, and only 33 years old, at that.

It made me wonder if perhaps that stone used to be standing up, and no one bothered to raise it again. Or perhaps it broke, and was unfixable, so they left it lying where it fell.

In any case, it's lovely, and added pleasurable moments to our boneyard foray. We thank you, Captain Liscum. And I'm sorry you missed Christmas.

Today's enchantment

2011-11-08T10:06:00.005-05:00

Found another favorite Erin Morgenstern tale here.

And this makes me certain in my as-yet-unconfirmed belief that she changed her last name because of the faux author "S. Morgenstern" mentioned by the grandfather in my all-time favorite movie, "The Princess Bride".

Marcheline's retro kitchen, continued!

2011-11-07T16:34:00.013-05:00

Some of you more regular wanderers in the halls of Mental Meatloaf may remember my obsession with making my kitchen "retrolicious". Well, folks, another step forward has been taken!

After much dithering, shopping, comparing, extra dithering, and final caving to my 1940's sense of thrift, I decided NOT to buy these expensive cabinet handles that I found online:

Instead, I decided to go with these handles, which are actual, original vintage hardware from a real 1940's or 50's kitchen... and they were also less than one quarter of the price of the above handles - yay! Practically speaking, they also free me up from being "tied" to one color in particular. I can switch out the dish towels and other doodads in the room, change the whole color palette if I want to, and never clash with the cabinet handles.

In a fit of complete generosity on Fate's part, my handsome and handy Bear was home today - with me, on my day off! - and proved willing to partner me in the Great Cabinet Handle Caper. He's a wonderful man. And here is the shiny, happy result of our afternoon's labor:

Begone, cheap plastic handles, begone!!

Those of you who click on the picture to embiggen it (a Tess-ism I picked up at Willow Manor) will be able to pick out a number of otherwise too-small details:

1. The mead I'm drinking this afternoon

2. The paint chips on the wall in colors I'm dreaming about painting the room.

3. The nifty fall dish towels my mom gave me.

4. I didn't put away my drying dishes before taking the picture, thus hampering your view of my vintage porcelain cannister set.

5. This photo was taken as the sun was setting, whereas the first one was taken in broad daylight.

6. I'm running short of onions. We eat a frickin' lot of onions around here.

7. The fact that my cabinets are, in fact, hung quite crooked. If you squint your ears at the picture, you will most likely hear the cabinets screaming "former rental unit!!!!".

If you join me in a few glasses of mead, you won't notice a thing.

Whaddya say?

********

Added note for my fellow DIY-ers... the most incredible and indispensable gadget for this project is available at your local Lowe's or Home Depot for TWO DOLLARS:

It's a drawer and door handle template, with a drill bit included! Does life get any more exciting?

You first hold your new handle up to it to find which holes match up, then you put masking tape over all the wrong holes, because you think you'll remember which ones are the right holes but you never will, and you use the un-masking-taped holes to make marks on your cabinets to drill... you guessed it... new holes!

These are great for when the handles you're buying aren't available in the same size as the handles already on your cabinets.

Which is, like, ALWAYS.

Marcheline is waiting to read... The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

2011-11-07T10:01:00.007-05:00

While toodling around the CNN website at work last night, I came across a two-month old article about a girl named Erin Morgenstern who wrote a book called "The Night Circus".

This is Erin's first novel, and apparently it's hitting big. There was a "bidding war" for publishing rights, and she made a huge pile in advance from Doubleday, who won said war. The producers who made the "Twilight" movies snagged the movie rights to her story, and David Heyman (Harry Potter movie producer extraordinaire) is in talks to produce the movie.

Intrigued equally by the book cover(s), the plotline, and her Bjork-esque mien, I did a little plot researching, a bit of review reading, and a little library sleuthing. I now have the CD recording of her book on request.

Her website/blog has now been added to my blog list on the left there, for any who care to visit - it's an intriguing place. My favorite part of her site is called "flax-golden tales", in which a friend of hers takes photographs and Erin writes ten-line stories to go with each. My favorite so far is this one. Gave me a downright chill at the back of my neck. In a delicious way.

So, there you are lovelies, enjoy. Back soon for more adventures in Mystic!