Saturday The Fourteenth

Cats who listen to Weekend Edition on NPR typically look like this.

I lay in bed this morning luxuriating until 7:30 or so and listening to NPR's Weekend Edition by Scott Simons. He covered several news topics: Iraq, Jazz Musicians, LA Kings winning The Stanley Cup, Netherlands win versus Spain World Cup, announced 25^th anniversary and release of some previously unreleased music by Roy Orbison (What an operatic voice!), and for Father's day he interviewed author John Moe. He wrote: Dear Luke, We Need to Talk, Darth: And Other Pop Culture Correspondences. Book was written using correspondences from various well known entities. It was very funny. I promptly went to Amazon.com and ordered the book. I shall giggle without restraint upon receipt and a quick read.

Also having successfully survived Friday the thirteenth, I celebrated this morning. I washed some bed linens (Sounds so much better than tired old sheets) and rewarded myself by making French Toast with walnut topping. I am virtually certain there are at least a couple of vital amines in there somewhere.

I received a jury duty notice this week for the period of July 1 through July 11. Bother. I have an appointment in Roseburg on the first that I shall cancel and reschedule.

Our old buggy has developed a slow electrical leak and/or we just don't drive enough to keep the battery charged. We have been rescued by The Les Schwab boys a couple of times. The Honda had to be jumped as well. I recommend a bit more travel or adopting a teenager who knows no limits of car usage. Slap myself.

The running around I did as a youth: When I lived in the Bay Area in the 60's when gas was cheap it was nothing to put a couple hundred miles on the 57 Volkswagon by driving from San Rafael to SFO just to WATCH THE PLANES LAND....and the occasional youthful military man. Loved the Marine dress uniform.

One very stupid Winter weekend I and my good friend Judy Jones, her sister Betty and two other girls hopped in her very large Pontiac DeVille and drove to Winnemucca from San Rafael. It. Was. Winter. In. The. Dark. As we approached the summit on the California side of the border it began to snow...heavily. Had to stop at one point to wipe snow off the lights. Betty was driving. Judy was coaching “Go to the left.” “Go to the right!”. Made it through Reno and kept right on chugging to Winnemucca. Got there about 2 a.m. We stopped at one of the popular downtown casinos for breakfast. The five of us minced into the restaurant in our finery and there were several Airmen (There was a radar site on the mountain) sitting there. Boy did we get a very thorough male assessment. The weekend passed with a lot of dancing and a 48 hour party. We didn't learn our lesson. Once Betty had moved there to be with her husband who was stationed at the Radar site, we went back for a return trip on 12 dollars for gas between the two of us. Oy! Racked up plenty of miles doing that.

I have reached an age where I need to travel strategically with an eye to rest stops and have come to appreciate the advice to stop and literally rest after an hour or two of driving. And I try very hard to avoid driving at night.

There was also the infamous cross country trip in the late 60's from San Rafael to Gossip Bottom Holler in West By God Virginia to visit my girl friends folks. 33 hours non-stop. Got lost in Kentucky, drove by rope bridges that crossed the creek from the highway to the other bank, saw fire flies for the first time and noted that they were exactly like the ones seen in the restaurant in Pirates of The Carribean at Disneyland. During a thundershower we all washed our hair in the down spouts of her Mom's house. The local car wash was a nicely located water fall on a back road, moon shine was available in a certain stump and fighting cocks were kept in round chicken wire cages here and there. I discovered the town was segregated despite the Civil Rights Act. Black people went to the drive in movie on certain nights and same for the bowling alley. And I learned that the people were exquisetly polite, when shown a baby and they weren't sure of the sex of the child, they would comment, “Oh, Ain't it purty!”. I. Am. Not. Making. Any. Of. This. Up.

Have a nice Saturday. Gotta go put wash in the dryer.

Lost dream

Woke up from a very complicated dream.

Husband and I were headed to the airport to travel somewhere. We parked and walked to the gate and a former work friend said, there are plenty of seats but you need to go to the ticket counter for tickets. So we started walking.

We turned left outside and noticed that the airport was under construction, further down the road was a huge gate in the shape of a gothic tunnel with a bust of Lincoln on the top. There was scaffolding everywhere and people everywhere, there didn't seem to be any restrictions to prevent people from falling into holes and such.

We entered a large terminal area and keep heading towards what we thought was the ticket counter. A young child kept running around me in circles and was headed for an open hole so I grabbed him and thrust him toward what looked like parents and said, “This kid needs to be on a leash!”.

We kept walking and pretty soon I realized that husband had disappeared, I didn't have my purse and jacket. I hoped he had them. I kept walking looking for him. Got to a place with even more construction going on. I asked a couple girls where the bathrooms where and they gestured, keep going and to the left. Sure enough there were two parallel hallways with incomplete flooring made up of what looked like bundles of rebar. I looked down the left hallway and there was a large locomotive sitting there. I couldn't seem to get enough purchase to step onto the right hallway. I decided that I needed to call security for some help and then I thought to myself, “Wouldn't it be easier to just wake up? “ Yep, so I woke up. Below is the dream site interpretation of lost.

Lost

To dream that you are lost suggests that you have lost your direction in life or that you have lost sight of your goals. You may be feeling worried and insecure about the path you are taking in life. If you try to call for help, then it means that you are trying to reach out for support. You are looking for someone to lean on. Alternatively, being lost means that you are still adjusting to a new situation in which the rules and conditions are ever changing.


I think that hits all of the points actually, I am retired haven't picked out a hobby and my only excuse is that my new hobby seems to consist of doctor's appointments and tinkering with medication. Old is boring. The weird thing is that the airport in my dream is an airport I have been in many times while dream traveling. Need to set a goal, I guess. That and I am literally lost without my husband. Awwwww.

Baby drive my car!

Dear Google:

Please select me for a test driver in Oregon.  I would dearly love to have a vehicle for around the town shopping.  I'm thinking that trips out of town might be difficult, there are no lanes for slow cars in logging truck territory.

Also I like the option of sending car to the local pizza place for pick up, yeah?

Odd dream

I woke from an odd dream this morning.  I dreamt that I was working and I had to pick up some tapes at one place, drive to another and transcribe them there.  It was a new job and not everything was familiar.  I drove for quite a while and finally arrived at a large doctors office.  I want into a larger office and found a desk with several cassette tape transcription units with all sorts of stop and go buttons but no foot pedals.  I tried every combination I would think of but nothing worked.  It didn't dawn on me until later that there was no computer or typewriter with which to do the actual transcription. 

I surmised that this represented frustration but no according to the dream interpretation site....

Cassette Tape

To see a cassette tape in your dream suggests that there is worth and truth in what you are saying. Alternatively, the dream means that you need to get out of the same rut. You are going around in a loop.

Apparently there is worth and truth if what I am saying and I am saying it endlessly.  Nap time.

Mrs. Poff never mentioned this in the eighth grade.

PARTS OF SPEECH:

I have been pondering how to resolve my current puzzlement regarding a style of speech that does not seem to have any classification of any sort. I may be the only one who has noticed this particular irritant however here goes.

Have you ever noticed a news piece or an interview piece in which a young woman is asked her opinion. Her voice then drops a bit, she frowns a bit and replies in a serious voice that sounds earnest and gritty. Sounds a little like the woman in “Back to the Future” exhorting her family ...”come to dinnerrrrrrrrr.” only gritty.

I think if I have a label that identifies this sound it will smooth out the inner spasm that occurs whenever I hear that hapless young thing going for her five minutes of fame speaking.

As this is the age of the Internet I Googled a few things. I found a fascinating paper “Trends in Speaking Styles Resecearch”, which while it did not offer anything regarding my young-woman-speaking-seriously style I did find a number of fascinating big words. And in the fashion of Aunty Mame who told her nephew to make a list. Here is my list:

Geminate simplification: Wikipedia didn't like this until I wrote geminate. Turns out this is a long vowel.

Monopthongisation: Wikipedia didn't like this either and offered monopthong is another vowel sound.

In conclusion, I found the authors e-mail and sent off a query to France and I also found a professor emeritis in Finland who may or may not comment. Have a nice day!!

Oh dear, I have been cooking leftovers again.....

It had been two or three days since the last of the very good home made potato salad and tomale pie had been consumed.  The dishes were all washed and in respose.  A mental scan of the kitchen cupboards revealed a box of stuffing mix.  I knew that all of the frozen turkey stock was exhausted.  But wait I sez, there is frozen pinto bean soup.....

Searched out an onion, chop chop chop.  Saute gently in pan, add frozen pinto bean soup, add salt and pepper to taste.

Pour stuffing mix into my largest tupperware bowl, add generous sprinkle of celery seed, couple shakes of crushed red pepper flakes.
Poured onions and beans into stuffing mix, added one egg, mix, Mix, MIX, freaking MIIIIIIXXXXXXX!!!

Poured into the usual glass casserole.  Open can of large olives and inserted them manually into the rather stiffish stuffing mixture.
Baked at 350 for 45 minutes.   

Notified hubs that his taste buds were in peril and asked for honest review of the dish.  He very diplomatically tasted it and allowed that some of my other dressing dishes were better but that he would indeed eat this one.   So I took a taste test.

Bleah....bean...Bean...BEAN.....BEEAANN!!!! 

I did take a picture but somehow my memory chip has been misplaced.  You didn't miss mutch.  

Woke up fr4om a weird dream....

I was helping dress a man in a costume.  He was wearing a sleeveless tunic with red spaghetti straps.   Across the top was a frieze of flattish tassels.  My job was to paint those tassels blue.

Okay then, dream site has several entries regarding dress, dressing, dressing rooms etc.  All common aspect describe feelings about change or your personal attitude about your present circumstances.  
I better go back and see if I can make any sense out of paint, painting.  Oy!