Things are quieter now...
We had been asked to dress up for Halloween at work. And I had gone last~minute shopping last night to find that most stores had already switched to selling their Xmas stock; if a store did have Halloween stuff, the pickins were too slim, the prices too high, and the lines too long.
I remembered then that an office mate had mentioned last week that she'd dreamt I'd dyed my hair red with blond streaks. So I bopped by the pharmaprix, picked up a dark red rinse, went home and got the blonde hair extensions I'd left under the bathroom sink. And I went to work as my officemate's dream of me.
However ~~ to more fully explain the earlier cougar reference: Dame Edna, when s/he played the Just For Laughs festival in Montreal, quipped that it was simply marvellous to see how, instead of going greyer, women in Quebec went redder as they got older... And that, minus the exensions, is now the kind of hair I've now got. I can think of no other way to descibe it. This colour just does not occur in nature.
I am under some severe office peer pressure to keep it this colour, and I yet may buckle...
It's hard to find a link to something halloweeny that isn't a bit fluffy & airbrained; but this one looks fairly respectable {well, the publication called itself a Journal, so I thought it had an academic cachet...}.
I was hoping things would be leisurely at work today; but things have just exploded... so no big or thoughtful posts today. But I'll take just enough time to say this:
I now have Cougar Hair. It wasn't intentional; but there we are.
And I'm dressed half my age. Which should be scary in and of itself.
But everybody is telling me I look good... now that is just warped...
Happy Samhain, everybody. Best wishes & enjoy the New Year.
Bringing a new meaning to the word "Layoff"...
One would hope that this is not so much the indication of economic woes that they claim it to be, but instead an indication of better gender relations overall...
Nevertheless... all I can think of now is a bizarre hybrid of two types of late-night commercials: the ones for the sex industry, and those ones where the guy is screaming "Why is everything so cheap? Because I'm CRAAAAZY!! Come down to Crazy Jack's, everything must go!"*
No word on whether their union might consider something like this** as a golden handshake for those approaching their "sell~by date"...
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
* Which brings to mind that other Ed, and his slogan "Come in and get lost." If Mr. Mirvish ever expanded operations to Amsterdam...
** Thanks to the late great Ms. Bombeck; please see a lovely tribute to her here, and check out these other interesting bits here, and here, and, to balance this one {how on earth could you possibly that claim feminists didn't like the woman who wrote about the inanity of trying to live up to the image of the perfect mother?}, particularly here.
~ ~ ~
Addendum: And here, and here too.
Wow. I'd forgotten just how much I enjoyed Erma...
It's a lovely Xmas Votive Martini recipe. But it's not catproof... *
And that's the gripe I have with most holiday decorating articles. There doesn't seem to be a lot you can do that won't be destroyed by and/or dangerous to pets...
Anybody have any suggestions?
~ ~ ~
* Thought for a moment about using a flat pan instead of spindly & fragile martini glasses... but then realized the likelihood was, I'd come home to find the kitties, those very same kitties who resolutely ignore their {fresh!} water bowl every day, I'd come home to find those kitties playing in it like birds at a birdbath... sopping wet up their elbows from playing waterpolo, heads soaked from bobbing for wax... snorting out water from their noses like waterbuffalo and then rattling themselves dry...
We've been Flamingoed!
{image thanks to GardenWeb}
That is to say, one of our co~workers has had a birthday, and a well~wisher has thoughtfully hired a the services of a company who covered our front grounds with a quaint little flock of pink plastic flamingos.
Wonder if anyone has ever been Gnomed?
Ah, yes; indeed. Saint-Die in the Vosges, for one...
Had my usual yearly visit to the Optometrist for new contact lenses; and since I am getting old & grey, and since diabetes runs in my family, it made sense to get checked for glaucoma & other ocular nasties.
The test for glaucoma involved gauging the pressure within the eyeball; so the Optometrist forwarned me that he would anesthetize my eyes with eyedrops and then touch them with a tonometer.* The next step was to check for other diseases using the slit-lamp examination, in which the Optometrist dilated my pupils with yet more drops and then shone a beam of light into my eyes in order to peer around inside.
Couldn't help but think how much it was like a dental appointment, in the sense of {1} he kept saying, can you open wider, please? when I thought I was at my limit, and {2} it was like that old Cosby routine ** ~~ everybody knows you're not supposed to put things in your eyes or stare into lasers & suchlike, and here I am, thingys being pinged off my eyeballs and gazillions of photons being rammed down the thoats of my peepers.
As it turns out, my eyes are fine. But the Optometrist warned me that due to the eyedrops I might have some trouble reading for some time afterwards, a warning which I did not take to heart {see footnote #1}; and I'm sure I looked a right fool in the grocery store an hour later, holding out packages far and near and far again, trying to figure out what was written on the labels and the price tags. :)
Can't wait for the new contact lenses to show up; it feels like I'm wearing day~old worn~out underwear on my eyes...
~ ~ ~
* I was suprised to discover that one's eyes can be anesthetized, but ~ forehead slap ~ of course, they are of muscle & tissue like the rest of the body.
This is an example of when learning makes you feel stupid; i.e., when you realise you ought to have known it all along, so instead of feeling just a wee bit smarter for having made a new synaptic connection you're suddenly painfully aware of how excruciatingly dense your grey matter is on a normal day.
** "DENTISTS. [pause] Will tell you. NOT. To SCRAPE. Your teeth. With any. Sharp... Metal... Object... [pause] And then you get into their chair. And the first thing they go for. Is an Iron Hook."
PostScript:
The inability to focus due to the anesthesia & dilation would be akin to the bit where Cosby says,
"Riblblblnse? Yblou blwablnt blme tblo riblblblnse? Hoblblw cablbln blI riblblblnse? blI hablblblve blno blbottoblm lblblip!"
"blI hopebl thblat blyou are blsatblisblied..."
SOHO (link via Goddard Space Flight Center) is seeing spots. Which, according to the CBC, means we're in for a geomagnetic storm, which in turn may mean more power outages. Or maybe not. But then again... who knows?
They're expecting it at around 3PM, Eastern Daylight Time. So I just thought, hm, I ought to post that right away befo
Could've sworn I heard someone on the radio make a request for "Cry Me A Liver"...
In lieu of content, please find below a whack of links that, at one point or another, I found more or less interesting...
.
Have you just arrived in New France? Maybe you'd like to build a house of stone? Then check out the Maison Saint-Gabriel online tour, The Mark of Time, to give yourself some idea of how it's done.
Your house is now complete, and you want to throw an informal little housewarming dinner, just a few guests. Perhaps you're thinking of having a glass of wine with the Borgias? Impress them with your horticultural knowledge! Courtesy of Killer Plants: Plants That Changed History.
So now your garden is well~stocked; but your groundskeeper is nowhere to be found. How odd. Oh well. Must devise some sort of structure to shade your guests from the sun, something DIY... ah! You can build your very own Stonehenge. Wally Wallington will show you how.*
Clearly, keeping good staff is becoming more difficult nowadays, so you may wish to consult a list of butler schools worldwide to avail yourself of the perfect accessory to your little black dress. Sometime a proper old~fashioned butler is simply indispensable...
Don't know your upstairs from your dowstairs? Swot up with a review of Manor House from PBS; and refine your manners with a lesson in etiquette from Ms. Emily Post.
And when it's time for a quick getaway, do so in retro style with Scootart.
~ ~ ~
* Wally's work was profiled by The Daily Planet {link via EXN/Discovery Channel}. Two names in the running for the completed stone circle are "WallyHenge" and "Stonehenge Reloaded". :)
I don't speak French very well; often I have to turn to Boyfriend for clarification on denotation, connotation and grammatical usage, which means I end up asking Boyfriend a lot of stupid questions.*
So when we drove by a daycare centre called "Bimbo Garderie" I had to turn to him and ask, Do they really have the word "bimbo" in French, and does it mean something different than it does in English? Do you think it could be a case of cultural misappropriation, and that they didn't quite grasp the entire meaning of the word? Or, god forbid, do you think there's some poor soul out there from another country who opened up a daycare, and who just happened to be named "Bimbo"?
Boyfriend said, perhaps it's supposed to be the name of a clown.
* There was {and will continue to be?} a francophone progamme called Le Plateau ~~ it seemed immensely funny. So in order to improve my French, I used to force Boyfriend to tape it and translate it for me scene~by~scene, which involved a lot of rewinding & replaying, and asking a lot of questions... the kind of thing that drives a poor dear Boyfriend crazy...
Found a spider on my desk. These things are lucky, I think.
I'm not a fan of insects; so while I'm not keen to cozy up to spiders, I do appreciate the benefits of their company.
So I don't squish it; and it runs all over my desk all day, all over my monitor, all over my paperwork, all over my phone. And I enjoyed some silly, self-indulgent moments of thinking, hey, this spider could go anywhere in search of food, yet it stays here with me. And I was gratuitously pleased.
And then, just before the end of the office day, someone came by and said, You have a spider on your desk; he knocked it off, and just as I said Don't step on it! he stepped on it.
There's a hurtin' country song in there somewhere.
News flash for thanksgiving, heard over CBC Radio One:
Ooooh, gurgled the British voice excitedly, it's possible to compose a Canadian thanksgiving menu entirely of food from Canada!
Yea, verily, my dear lady; you have indeed stumbled upon the very point of having a harvest celebration in the first place.
To be fair, I did come in halfway through the conversation; and the exclamation was prompted when reference was made to Mrs. Isabella Beeton, "the inventor of the modern cookbook" and how Mrs. Beeton had described turkey as a Canadian bird (?!?!?). So more than likely it was a discussion on Canadian vs. American Thanksgiving culinary traditions; and under such circumstances, a comment like that is to be expected.
But, then again, the more fool me: further research would seem to indicate that the quote above may have inadvertently been, in point of fact, not too far off the mark...
Uninspired today.
Ergo, poetry.
.
..
...
..
.
~~ {tourist trap of the soul}
The phrase A cog
in mind... and
I got... cardboard.
~~ {borrowed knowledge}
one
cup of
Popular
Mechanics
from the library and then down to the
employment centre for a cup
of work
and halfway through the
bar for a cup of Boyfriend missed
my exit and had to
drive all the way to the next small town just
for one bloody
cup
of Joe
my dishwasher is half~full of unwashed cups
unless you've got a cup of soap
until then I'll call it half~empty
~~ {intimate future}
Palms... And knives
insinuating things that are always fatal
~~ {if hell had been outgrown}
a little jewel of guilt
no longer
used to you
~~ {I imagine a different route home}
A shelter is an observation that,
yes, that is: worth exploring. You
reminding me
to try your hand on for size
~~ {consumption of Scale}
Superhero of disbelief; exasperation
destroyed
Our economy
that and opium
plus the doublespeak.
~~ {Ruminating Bride}
still,
never learned to be mercilessly hunted
as
far afield as Bridesmaids
was
perfectly satisfied with the heat of life
but
for having a magnetic poetry about her
would
be expended as innovative; ugly as she was.
~~ {the last of the two~car garages}
commercials extolling
tangental connections;
a synonym
for some ideas from history There some
historical reconstruction company
Syndicates this lovely historical perspective for me
~~ {the hands of Why}
so in a
while, I will inspire you
the past is
a few clothes
and the remark to guide them
~~ {Hell, you and the igloos}
has anybody noticed how people
who were used to buying Poetry
and who are bordering on dependency on it for meals,
are crowding us now. If only they could raise
vast crops of it in this hell of a soil and quite a raising hell
it would be, too.
~~ {the Klingons of office politics.}
Corporate Darwinism
Not just for humans anymore
~~ {an inflatable sex toy is propaganda}
desire is
old
nothing is
new
they dare
flinch from saying
they
can
see
the
wee bit
in The temperate region of the
hands
~~ {A thing that is ~ by whom it is spoken ~ barely acknowledged }
a massive
Embarassment
slowly crushes
the world.
You
for instance, might enlighten me
you have brilliant flashes of
this social
sphere
until then,
am taking
emotional temperature
in terms of
discretion
~~ {my shoulders like balancing scales}
you have been hiding all the time
to make my mind, up for me and
How to pass on the things
differently there. I resist
the phrase
another nuance of identity, abandoned
~~ {TV, is an internal monologue}
it is tremendously significant that the
warrior is fabricated from sponsoring
Unfortunately, most
of my preliminary research
seems integrated
into Klingon...
~~ {no one wants to buy a used citizen}
two
cents on everyone. you can't count
on living an everyday life
~~ {? in Heraldry, a Rhetorical Device}
that short . time .
Search Search Search Search out &
that WE ran
down and destroyed .
what's the reward for
this God person, anyway?
~~ {ingesting nothing to carefully controll the increments that inspire you}
this is
not a criticism
of endorsement. my feet have their logos
but
I must have updated
the Bible
a number of times
and it still hasn't sped up my metabolism
~~ {coordinates}
when you are? essentially wearing a day
take away nowadays,
and what have you got?
~~ {plimsoll mark of the same bellyful}
Graze on historyWHOOPSYdaisy! Oh, my, Dearie, I've
forgotten it is preserved in
money
stumbling upon a
sense of duty, people forget to break into
circumstances
surrounding
this livingroom of a place To tell
~~ {A short student film about}
have
felt like
the
only
thing existing. Oh,
well...
~~ {Egad}
are all tourist attractions Mother Theresa?
they can
make a tight~lipped
little corporate
suit on
everything.
~~ {breath}
at
best
rather limited...
a bit
of being in a bell jar
but, this scaled~down to
the fundamentals
piece of any pun, in productive environments is tied to boundless by
a
ghostly
world of
on the other hand
~~ {the livingroom of himself}
. until
he saw:
THESE. years. There
is now, he thinks
certain evidence that a warrior is
one with a day
or curious.
~~ {risk of a Pale Hound}
I do remember
it breaks you
but that's it. That's
all I remember
~~ {I and I especially}
I feel I {feel,
feel, I and I} did come
back to it, and it was still lived
in. That unpredictable, supernatural, living element
keeps me coming back, every time.
~~ {synaptic boom}
the language barrier is broken
google towards the light
Of course I'm concerned about the danger innocent people have incurred by this revelation. But I am a fallible & flawed human; and thus, I can't help but think:
Man... talk about SuperMom.
I mean, most women have trouble just juggling family life with a career.
But to juggle raising children and faking a career and, on top of all the volunteer work on the side, to also be a CIA operative...
Egad. The bar for SuperMom~hood has been set a little higher today.