Easily Amused » 2003

Ack! The cats found the bottle of chocolate milk I left sitting on the craft room floor earlier. A very very bad move on my part. Now there are huge nasty brown stains all over the carpeting.

I think there’s only one room left in this house without carpet stains, and that’s the guest room that stays closed up 90% of the time, but the carpeting right at the doorway is messed up where a very naughty kitty tried to dig her way into the forbidden room. If/when we try to sell this house, we are totally going to have to replace ALL the carpeting first. With the state of our carpet, we could not get away with just offering a carpet allowance.

I hope the next house has all hardwood/tile floors.

Jun 15, 2003 @ 5:17 PM »

Crazy Cat Lady

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found scribbled on Holiday Inn stationary

A dark sun rises over the horizon,
shadowing hills and hiding life.
Whispers seek the sheltering doorways
Fleeing the Blind Wolf, the Lord of Strife.

The rolling echo of a mute woman’s scream
chases the night birds from the skies.
Frightened faces peek from windows,
seaching for the Blind Wolf, talking in sighs.

Breath appears in frozen gasps,
visualizing thier silent rapport.
A muscle twitches, the spell is broken,
and the Blind Wolf hunts no more.

Booted feet foolow the track.
The sun glints off the hunter’s blade,
stabbing cold flashes of light at the world
as he tracks the Blind Wolf from the blasted glade.

Jun 15, 2003 @ 3:53 PM »

Odds and Ends

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hair, movie, lightning, motorcycle

Post accident, yesterday got a lot better. After we got home, Dale did some maintenance on his motorcycle while I messed around on the computer. When Dale finished, we plugged in the new electric trimmer and I went to town on Dale’s head.

Dale has had pretty much had the same hair style for the last decade, barring a couple of experiments with growing it long and bleaching it (I cringe at the memory of that). We were chatting the other day about his friend Jeff’s new haircut, and Dale made some comment along the lines of, “yeah, he has 30 year old hair now.”

Since Jeff used to have a cut similar to Dale’s, I said, “Does that mean you have 20 year old hair?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. Do you want to get it cut differently?”

“Yeah.”

“Funny, I’d recently been wondering how you’d look with a different hair style.”

We talked a little more and decided to leave his sides and back the same length (short), then cut down the hair on the top of his head. So, yesterday afternoon, I put the 1″ guard on the clippers and mowed Dale’s head. About 30 minutes later (hey, I’m a novice at this) it looked like we’d shaved one of the cats in the bathtub, and Dale’s now-short hair stood out all over his head in a fuzzy mass. Although Dale had a LOT of hair, it’s very fine, and he has a couple of cowlicks, so his hair mostly stood straight up and swirled in weird directions in a few spots. When I finished, Dale looked in the mirror and said, “it’s awful.” I told him to go shower, and then we’d apply some gel, which we did.

Using gel to smooth down his hair and to spike the front up a little did wonders for the cut. He no longer looked like a buzzed teddy bear. We did agree that the cut would look better if his hair was a little longer on top, but overall it wasn’t bad.

After the hair cut, Dale turned on the TV for a bit and did some channel flipping. He came across a show on TNN called Most Extreme Elimination Challenge. The description on the TNN web site isn’t really accurate. The show appears to be an odd Japanese game show where two teams compete in assorted silly (and often wet and muddy) physical challenges. The rub is that the show has been dubbed in English, and the commentary is often quite colorful.

One challenge had contestants clinging to what appeared to be a giant corn on the cob while swinging over a pool of water and trying to drop and land on a “pat of butter” (a huge yellow foam disk floating on the water). This challenge was dubbed “Cornholding.” Another challenge had them sliding on a small board across a ledge fitting with rollers and trying to stop a foot from the end without going over the edge into the water. The American title for this game was “Little Man in the Boat.”

If you don’t get the sexual references of those challenge titles, I’m not going to explain it to you.

We watched two episodes, usually laughing our asses off. The challenges are funny and creative, and the dialogue is hysterical. (And it does not contain the type of carnage described on the web site.) The Tivo is now set to record upcoming episodes.

It was getting late, almost 9 pm, so Dale and I decided it was time to plan for dinner, maybe a movie. We opted to combine the two and went to see “The Italian Job” at Alamo Drafthouse. Dinner was ok and the movie was quite enjoyable.

As we were leaving the theater, we noticed a lightning storm off in the distance. When we got home, we threw a couple of folding chairs into the trunk, drove to a small park in our neighborhood, and sat down to watch the display. After 30 or 40 minutes of that, bug bites started bothering me, so we went back home, got suited up, and went out for a very late night motorcycle ride. We headed west along 1431 and ended up in the hill country around the lake. We’d traveled a good distance and been out for a while when rain drops started to fall. Turning around, we raced the rain, beating it back to the house.

We had such a wonderful evening. Overall, yesterday was one of the scariest and happiest days of my life.

Jun 15, 2003 @ 3:50 PM »

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terrified

I just had one of the worst scares of my life. Dale and I were stopped at an intersection, waiting for the light to change. We were in the left lane, of two lanes. I looked up and out the windshield in time to see a white van flying at us. It struck the Ford stopped next to us in the turn lane, and tipped over onto it.

As soon as I realized neither Dale nor I was hurt, I jumped out of the car and ran around the van, which for all intents and purposes was lying on its side. I pressed my hands around my face so I could peer through the windshield. Inside, I could see a stunned looking guy buried up to his check in trash and papers, holding a cell phone like he was about to make a call. Another man had joined me at the windshield, and we hollered at the driver asking if he was ok. Still looking stunned, he nodded his head and stood up in the cab of the van. He was able to open the passenger door and climb out that way, with the help of several people.

While he was getting out, I realized there was still someone in the car he’d hit. The windshield of the Ford was cracked, but held together, luckily for the driver. I could see her airbags had deployed. She was looking away, so I knocked on her window and asked if she was ok. She said she was, then got out of her car.

Dale came running around the backs of the cars and I hollered at him to get my cell phone. Someone had already called 911 though, because we could already hear sirens. Someone suggested that we move our car to not block that lane, so Dale drove it to a parking lot nearby. Before he moved the car, I saw that we were only about 4 inches away from being part of the accident. The van’s roofrack, now lying on the Ford, had ladders and lengths of PVC pipe strapped to it that just cleared our car.

Once everyone was out of their cars, we moved off to the side. I wanted to cry or throw up. I was shaking very badly. I was so very relieved that no one appeared seriously hurt. I’m sure those involved will be bruised and sore tomorrow, but the Ford driver and van driver both declined medical attention.

I hadn’t witnessed the cause of the accident, but Dale had. Until about 25 minutes later, I hadn’t even known that there were two other cars involved, though I’d seen a Jeep Cherokee and Chevy truck pulled over on the cross-street. Dale was finally given a witness form to fill out, and I learned what had happened.

The van driver was heading north. (We were waiting to go south on the same road.) He ran the red light and was struck by two cars (Jeep and Chevy) that were westbound. They spun him 90°, he slid into the Ford, then fell over on to it.

Dale said the van was traveling at regular speed when the accident happened (meaning he didn’t speed up to get across), so he thinks the driver may have been talking on his cell phone and didn’t realize the light was red. Two lanes of traffic in two directions were blocked by wrecked vehicles. Emergency vehicles shut down several more. After Dale and I were able to leave, we saw that the accident had northbound traffic backed up for several miles. I’m sure it was as bad for southbound traffic as well.

All the cars involved in the accident were pretty crunched up. Only the Chevy truck looked all right to drive away, despite broken lights. The entire front of the Jeep had been ripped away. The two or three people in those vehicles were also shaken but unhurt. Dale and I walked by them and their vehicles on the way to our car.

Dale and I were amazed. Despite the severity of the accident, the number of vehicles involved, and our proximity to it, no one was seriously hurt and there wasn’t even a scratch on our car. I am so glad that no one was really hurt or bleeding. I don’t know what I could have done if someone was. Probably nothing but throw up.

Jun 14, 2003 @ 4:32 PM »

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