I haven't been that grouchy in the morning for a very long time. While I have never exactly been a morning person (and yet I have always been a naturally very early riser...hmmmmm), this morning was traumatic and for no particular reason at all.

What I learned is this: I hate being the grouchy person.

I miss mix tapes.

I'm going to go home tonight and construct the most perfect ever mix tape.


Maybe a summer themed tape... but that's kind of an obvious theme.

It's another spend the afternoon in the salon whilst reading trashy magazines day!

I leave at 11:30 to go to the salon and I brought my shiny new GQ magazine with Brad Pitt on the cover to read. Exciting.

This Saturday I won $18 betting on the greyhounds at the dog races. Sweet. I also made money off of the Preakness the weekend before last.

Note to self: look into professional race betting as career

My dad and I took a little road trip to the middle of fucking nowhere in south east Kansas on Sunday for a little nostalgic trip to the farm his uncle used to own when my dad was a little kid in the 1950s. He says that some of his best memories are from this place.

If you ever have an opportunity to go to Elgin, Kansas, don't. It's a toilet hole of a town.

The best parts of the trip were the barely on the map back roads we took to get to the farm. At one point my dad turned to me and said,"Do you hear banjo music?" and I'm pretty sure that I did.

Other highlights: a sign in a field with the silhouette of a cowboy kneeling in prayer with the text 'Evenin' Lord'... if ever I were to start praying on a regular basis, this is how I would start all prayers, goat farms, this beautiful stone arch that was built into the side of a wooded hill for no apparent reason... there was a creek running through and maybe at some point it had been a bridge, but it didn't really look like anything had ever been there except for a hill and a creek... I still can't figure it out but it looked really old and pretty.

What I learned is this: I love car rides... like a dog. I just like to be driven places and I like being in charge of the map. Sometimes when I'm at home by myself I like to read maps... I have a lot of them: the World atlas, the North American atlas, the New York City Atlas, the European driving atlas, maps of Cape Cod and New England, Italy and Spain, maps I have saved from old issues of National Geographic of things like the Roman Empire in Turkey and the Mayan empire, etc. I love maps.

But I also like to read the dictionary... so clearly there is something wrong with me.

And then yesterday I went to the book store and as I was casually browsing I came across a book I had loved as a child called The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge. I must have checked this book out of the Valley Center Public Library 15 times as a child, but I had completely forgotten about it. And I'll be goddamned if there wasn't a recommendation on the cover of the book from J.K. Rowling herself. So now I'm re-reading it.

And it's put me in a mood to rediscover books that I read in elementary school. So I'm browsing the past nominees and winners at the Newberry award and William Allen White award sites and.... ahhh the nostalgia: Hatchet; Number the Stars; Sarah, Plain and Tall; The Pinballs; The Riddle of Penncroft Farm, On My Honor, Maniac Magee... God, I could go on and on.

Reading... look into it ; )

A rare King of the Hill gem that someone in chicagocubs reminded me of today:

Bobby Hill: "Jeff Gordon is a racecar driver? I thought he was just a cereal box model."


When I grow up I want to be a cereal box model : D

I have a very non-tempestuous, on again off again relationship history with video games. I could take them or leave them with the exception of a few months obsessing over Super Mario Brothers 3 with my best friend Tiffany (We BEAT it, Bitch!... with the help of Game Genie, of course... I'm sure many of you game afficionados are not as impressed as I am with myself, but we were like 10 and it was a huge deal to us) and a few weeks spent with Tomb Raider (I find this game to be strangely stressful... the dinosaur scared the shit out of me so I just stopped playing).

The first video game I ever played was a Sega game called King's Quest that my brother had in the late 80s. Good Lord did I love that game. It was probably originally one of those games for the computer where you would type in an instruction like: FEED APPLES TO TROLL... except that they had adapted it for Sega.

There isn't really much of a point to this post, except that man do I wish I could find a Sega and play that game all fucking day.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Viticulturists have noticed that wine often
tastes better if the soil where the grapevines are planted is less than top
quality. It seems that when the grapes have to work harder to flourish,
they're more robust. I foresee a similar situation for you in the coming
weeks, Capricorn. The growing conditions might be less than optimal, but
I bet the stuff you produce will be extraordinary.


Normally I don't go in for all of that horoscope shit, but I like this one very much.

Sometimes I think I'm weird in that when I see a movie I really like... as in one that will probably make it into my top 10 or 15 of all time list... I don't like talking about it for a while. It's like I need to keep it inside of me and process it before I want to discuss it with other people. It seems like it should be the opposite... that if you are so excited about something that you would want to talk about it with everybody.

One of the movies that I watched recently was Amélie... and, yeah, I loved it. And I know everyone has seen it, like, a million years ago, but I hadn't and I thought it was beautiful. Movies like this make me realize why doing something as silly as the Monday Night Movie Club is kind of important. I almost used Amélie for an MNMC review, but everything I wrote sounded too flippant and dismissive so I used another movie.

So... in celebration of Amélie I present my list of Likes and Dislikes:

Dislikes:

- When a tv station screws up and plays the same commercial twice in a row

- Tearing the roof of my mouth up on Cap'n Crunch cereal

- The phrase "...and whatnot"

- Watching people sing earnestly a la American Idol or Jessica Simpson

- Sitting down in a seat that is still warm from the previous occupant

Likes:

- Watching people fall down... especially at ice skating rinks

- Driving in barefeet

- Studying the used wax strips after I wax my eyebrows

- The way Norm from the New Yankee Workshop says 'measured drawing'.

- Saying the word 'tintinnabulation'

And I invite any and/or all of my friends to share their 'List a la Amelie' too.

I've just realized that, far and away, my most overused phrase is "I would give my eyeteeth for...."

I must say that an average of 10 times a day.

A person only has 4 eyeteeth... I should be a bit more sparing in my use of this phrase.

... because it's Friday!

This icon cracks me up:



Not sure why other than that it is the two dinosaurs from that comic strip doing Salt N' Pepa.

And I love donkeys:



...especially baby ones.