Monday, March 26, 2007

My Visual DNA



What am I doing, making up for lost time by posting two a day? Apparently. Nifty little website.

I'm in the basement of that bagel shop again, listening to a group of students converse (or try to) in German. I love living in a college town, have I mentioned that lately?

Medieval Helpdesk

A coworker sent me this sometime last week. Finally got a chance to see it today, as it seems the cold I had a few weeks ago was in reality an advance scout for the stomach flu I had from Wednesday evening on through to Sunday. I found a new crash diet! 10 pounds in 4 days! And you don't even feel hungry. Seriously. Food frightens me right now.

But I digress. This has been floating around on YouTube for a week or so now. It's from a Norwegian sketch comedy show. Some kind soul has given it English subtitles.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Flotsam and jetsam

For the laundry impaired: Saw a man in a T-shirt that read, "Same shirt, different day."

Talking to one of the bus drivers a couple of weeks back:

Driver: So did you have a nice Valentine's Day?
Vee: Yeah, it was pretty good.
D: How'd you spend it?
V: Throwing pots.
D: At...whom?
V: No, no, no. Not lobbing kitchenware. Throwing pots. Clay. On a wheel?
D: Aaahhhh.

Little novelties:

I got my eyes checked a few weeks ago. I was test-driving a pair of contact lenses there for a while (I did eventually decide to buy contacts, but not that brand. Boy, were they uncomfortable!). After I put them in the first time I wandered around the store, shopping for frames for the new glasses. It was a new experience to put the frames on and not have to put my nose almost to the mirror to see what I look like in 'em.

And then a few days later, while walking along the sidewalk squinting in the sunlight it hit me: I can wear sunglasses now! Woo-hoo!

Pretty silly, isn't it, to spend close to $100 on your eyes just for the ability to wear a $10 pair of sunglasses.

Friday, March 09, 2007

Fevers make the best dreams

I've caught some sort of cold. Well, considering I work with the public and take mass transit to and from work, what were the odds that one of the sniffling multitude around me was going to breathe on me and give me something yucky?

This is my second day off work, and the first time in about 24 hours that I can string together coherent thoughts. Yesterday I managed to call my supervisor and croak out, "Sick. Fever. Not coming in." before I lost all track of time. Pretty sure I'll be back on Monday.

Favorite symptom: bizarre dreams. It's like watching some sort of arthouse movie, heavy on symbolism and subtext, light on actual sense. The one that I woke up to this morning featured a walk in the woods with someone I knew at the time (but of course is a stranger to me now) and encountering a little bear cub with a bright red streak on its muzzle. Not blood red, more like fruit punch red -- like something a punker would do to his hair. My companion wanted to stop and pet the bear (come to think of it, the cub looked a lot like my parents' little black dog Pippin), while all I could think was, "Mama bear's around here somewhere, we better get away from her cub or she'll tear us apart."

And then suddenly we were at the shore, this person and I, running some sort of hotel on a beached ocean liner, where we'd call the room numbers "wave 72" instead of "room 72." There was some sort of mystery involving the theft of jewelry that turned out to be (when I finally got to see it) silly souvenir-type stuff -- paua shells and turquoise chips and coral pieces.

Interesting what the mind will do when the body's a little warmer than normal.

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Clay tribute

They've put together a memorial service for my friend Mary. It's today. I'm not going. It sounds like some large, long, intricate thing. Not like Mary at all.

The course I'm taking in wheel-thrown pottery includes 15 hours of time to use the facility outside of class. I've decided that instead of going to a funeral where everyone will be all long-faced and sniffling, I'm going to go throw pots. It will be a more fitting tribute to a woman who was a potter, a teacher, and a life-long learner.