Robo-call how I love you

Robo-call, robo-call you seduce my machine
with the enlightening grumblings of Republicans moaning
the praises of the two-headed modern day Cerebus known as PalinMcCain.
Oh, the praises you sing.
The internationally-experienced savant hockey-mom

who handles the strained relationship of crab
fishermen glaring at each other across the frozen Bering Sea;
the flashpoint verbal lunge of your candidate searing the competition with charges of
pandering to and being a traitorous terrorist.
Redistribution of wealth destined to upend my life as Joe the Plumber’s
business swirls down the S-tube
Woe, woe – I am next – even if I never see more than $34,000 a year.

Robo-call, robo-call you seduce my machine
With the informative snarkings of Democrats decrying
the platitudes of the one-headed beast Obama* (who is the other guy, again?).
Oh the platitudes resonating through my voice mail.
The change we need, now, as opposed to tomorrow, coming from a family man who
is a community organizer of unknown talents.
And the ghost of the ticket. Um, what’s his name?
Your charges pointing out the cracking fault lines in your competition’s haute-couture
shopping bills, and travel plans.
Hailing to the twined, lockstep devotion the other candidate showers to the status quo
should lead you to say status no.

Robo-call, robo-call
Leave my phone the crud alone.

Too, too cold. Too, too soon.

Winter has arrived way too fast. It's not so as the photo, but, it was in the low low 40s in the morning and never climbed above 49 all day.

In fact, to help out the chill factor, mother nature saw fit to dump a heapin' batch of wind on us - enough to fill an advisory complete with gusts up to 40 mph.

MMM

Cold, freezing wind that drops the temperatures into the 30s. Enough so that the few random rain drops that have been forced squeezed from the sky were compressed into ice crystals, aka, snow flurries.

This cold weather is way too soon in the calendar. It's not supposed to snow until November. The almanac is calling for a snowy winter - yuck. So, I'm calling it now, in writing: 12-16 days out this winter.

Oh and yeah? What am I wearing in the horribly cold weather?

At school, flip-flops, capris, and a light cotton dress t-shirt. By lunch, my room was hot enough to cause a general lethargy in me and the kids, and topped out at 80 degrees.

At home, where general sanity rules (ha, not) shorts, jeans, sweat pants, wool socks, turtle neck, tee-shirt, sweat shirt, and fleece hoodie.

It's howln' like a mad dog driven to the brink by a full moon, and the smell of fresh blood wafting on the breeze.

I HATE winter.

My goal is to morph into a bright songbird and fly south for the winter. Somewhere warm, Florida, Costa Rica. . . .

Baseball really stinks

I now know what it feels like to have an aneurism.
Well, not really, but the point being: I sat down with my favorite drink in my nice easy chair in front of the tv. I turned on the infernal machine. And then about fainted.
No football. Yes, I am a football freak. Growling, I start channel surfing to find out why Sunday night football wasn’t on. And low and behold, the baseball World Series is on.
I had no idea. Now, I know the McCain camp is falling to pieces and Palin has been labeled a rogue and she spent $150,000 on clothing but plans to give it to charity, and the new season of 24 is gonna start soon.
But I had no idea that the World Series had started. Not mention who the teams are (which I do know now). Has baseball fallen so much that it doesn’t even register on my, a sports fan’s radar? I never liked baseball, I find it trite and useless, but still. . .
So questions for you (rhetorical; meant to make you think):
1. Who are the two teams in the series?
2. Where are they playing tonight?
3. What is the game count?
4. Who were the starting pitchers for tonight?
5. What are the mascots for each team?

They will inhabit the earth

I’ve been a tad sick with a cough thing, turns out its viral and I get to have my cough thing for about two more weeks. I will miss my cough thing, which I have since named “Enrique”, when it leaves me to find a home with another lucky soul who will have the pleasure of being sleep deprived and being bent at the waist while “Enrique” forces you to the ground in a spasm of hacking.
I digress.
To find out why I was still hacking after finishing antibiotics, I returned to the doctor. She, too, was puzzled and so ordered a series of chest x-rays to determine if I needed to be hospitalized (yippee). So, after our chat in the patients’ room, she lead me to the internal waiting room outside the x-ray area in the office. The nice x-ray quickly collected me (after I was able to read two chapters in my book) and showed me into the x-ray lab.
With a great flourish of her blue-covered scrub arm, she pulled out a puke pink dressing gown. I inwardly groaned at its appearance. She happily smiled.
“I need you to take off your top and bra and put this on with the opening in the back. Like a kitchen apron.”
“Yup,” I agreed with as fake of a smile as I could muster. Quickly, I disrobed and slipped into the oh-so-sheik crinkly paper dressing gown.
Next up with the x-rays themselves – no big. Turn this way. Turn that way. Hold your breath. Release your breath.
And it was done. So, I was asked to remain in the dressing gown until she could develop the film and see if it turned out. Not a problem, I thought. I plopped down on a stool and waited.
And there it was. My epiphany. A small piece of the great puzzle of life.
It was black and intricate lattice work comprising four sides of the object and sitting incongruously under a blue vinyl patient chair.
The Bob & Bob Dairy Works milk crate.
You know what I’m talking about. The crates that milk companies use to carry milk cartons into schools and some businesses. The ones with the “Property of” stamps plastering any and all free space and letting any wrongful user know who the true owner of the poor little lost crate is. This particular crate wasn’t holding chocolate milk cartons waiting for grubby school children’s hands, but, instead a variety of lead line protective covers.
I have seen these milk crates everywhere. In wood shops, with construction crews, on apple farms, and now, of all places, in the x-ray room. It boggles the mind that milk is so expensive today. I know why. It isn’t gas or production costs. It’s because the general public keeps jacking the milk crates, and the poor dairies have to keep replacing them.
Oh, and yeah, I have two deep red milk crates at my house; both filled with books.

Backyard fall photo blog

Don't Chase Bears

I am now a firm believer that some people should never be allowed to breed, thus continuing their line of inbred stupidity. Case in point: the most stupidest thing I have ever seen.
I was in a national park today, checking out the changing leaves(see pics below), and the park was just jam-packed with tons of people. Bumper to bumper traffic, actually. At one point the road was clogged with people yanking their cars to the side of the road and passengers jumping out of their side of the vehicle with cameras dangling from their necks; racing to join the crowd at the base of a steeply wooded incline. Once at the base, the passengers would frantically wave their arms, indicating the drivers should pull over.
In fact, people were starting to pour into the woods and run up the steep slope (the type where you need to hang onto saplings to keep your balance) cameras to their faces. I, of course, wanted to see what the big deal was about, so I too, jumped out of my vehicle.
When I reached the crowd, I caught site of the rump of a big ol' black bear. Being of a sound mind, my first thought was "What am I doing out here ticking off a bear?" I backed away from the edge of the base and jogged back across the road. But I soon realized that I was perfectly safe - the idiots who were scrambling and actually chasing after the bear on the slope would prove to be easy targets should the bear turn and teach these fools some respect for nature.
I had to be able to outrun about 50 idiots sliding around on a leaf-covered slope - no problem. Who in their right mind would chase a bear, armed with a camera, in the bear's natural habitat? Realizing the hiliarity of the situation, I quickly began rooting for the bear to turn and maul someone - just so I could get some good snaps of natural selection at work.

Skyline Drive - Photo blog

Coffee zombies - a scary, but true story

With coffee cups and 34 ounce hot liquid containers in hand, a band of rag-tag, thirsty, and very grumpy teachers huddled around an empty coffee carafe capable of holding about a gallon of hot joe.
Eyes darted left and right, shifty and wary, wondering who it was that took the last cup of coffee and didn't refill the percolator and make a new pot. A random growl was heard from the back of the pack. Finally, someone was coherent enough to speak up.
"Who the hell dared drink all the coffee. Now what will we do?"
The group-think mentality quickly turned ugly and morphed into that of an angry riotious mob - nevermind the first bell was about to ring in 10 minutes. Someone's grip on their plastic cup loosened from his or her weakening system and lack of caffiene.
"Let's find 'em and string 'em up," a growling female voice suggested. A general consensus murmur ran like lightning through the now-scary group of educators. Like a pack of rabid wolf-hounds, the group moved as one and, with mouths drooling, shuffled out of the lounge and in search of warm coffee smell.
I, the only one amoung the soulles gathering who was on their second cup of hot dirt, decided on a more rational solution. Using centuries worth of rational thought, I made another pot. Soon the warm, sensual smell filled the lounge. Lured by the heady aroma, I quickly found myself huffing the coffee as it dripped, maddeningly slowly, into the carafe. Tempted to just open my mouth under the dripping portal to heaven, I heard the groaning and shuffling of the crazed mob of teachers. I emptied what had dripped into the carafe into my mug and backed away from the coffee as the teacher-zombies brainlessly reentered the room - drawn by the smell of the cafe.
Within moments of drinking the coffee, the teachers quickly transformed into recognizable human beings again, and chipperly wandered off to their classes - evil thoughts forgotten.