spray painting is more exhausting than you might think

. . .

work and home

The back end.



Tool of the trade (can be exempted from seizure under BK law).


A client's child's depiction of her happy family (little does she know).


The neighbor boys tagged my garage with "weney." It's not just my garage though.



The front end.


. . .

why not YOU?

more people should do this with their cheese wax.

. . .

trails

on the way home from the vet (Lulu's feeling better).

. . .

leftovers

Sometimes it is hard to decide which eenperdag to use. So sometimes, like today, I will post the outtakes here.


Our 8 inches of snow.




At the dog park.

. . .

green is keen

"Green is Keen" is what my old Kermit THE Frog pin said, and which, if I knew where it was, I'd be wearing today. Top of the morning to all you.

Here, enjoy this (courtesy of JAMcS the younger):




. . .

overheard in north platte

"We generally have soy unless we run out."

. . .

R.I.P.

My little red honda (1991-2008), only 17 years old, met her match in a sideswipe and an insurance assessment last week. Surviving drivers include: RPD, HDL, a crazy, catalytic-converter-detaching ex-priest, and myself. Memorials may be sent in lieu of flowers to Barack Obama's campaign. The picture above was taken in her last days, on one of her many trips following the Platte river from North Platte to Lincoln, Nebraska. She wasn't a girl who made life easy for anyone, yet everyone who knew her was glad s/he did. Let it be said that my little red honda drove like a race car, sounded like one, and, in the end, died like one. She did nothing without panache. Goodbye, girlfriend. I'll miss you.

. . .

test drive

Taking a bite out of JR's bagel, I took a Honda Fit out for a test drive yesterday. It was all right. It (like every other car I've ever driven, actually) can't compare to my current Honda for good-time driving, and the thing is so small that every bit of it is pretty much all in your face. Also, the car lot man insisted on going with me, and he was 6'3" (he told me), had a pretty severe limp, and looked rather uncomfortable squished into the car, which wasn't probably the best advertising. But that said, it's got ok pick-up, it'd fit me and my dog, and it'd be easy to put in small spaces. Plus maybe I could get one in this color:



I almost got out of the dealership w/o the hard-sell--but then 6'3" man's boss came over to do what needed to be done. We agreed to disagree and I'm still driving my trusty '91 civic. Maybe next time, manager man, maybe next time.

. . .

shit, drie per dag

I like Mr. Obama as much as the next young liberal lassie out there, but why his staff has not gotten Bob the Builder to endorse him, I cannot understand.



WWBTBS?
. . .

[p.s. If you google Bob the Builder and Barack Obama, you will quickly discover that I am not the first to notice the similarity.]

sweet

I figured out how to stick it in. Over there, on the right. see?

. . .

Een Per Dag

I am now participating in this one-picture-a-day blog.
We'll see how long I can keep it up. I hope a while, as it is pretty fun to be carrying my camera around again.
I might try to figure out how to post my one picture a day here too. Or maybe I'll just do it the old way.

Here is my picture from yesterday:


It is some dead paperwhites in my window-sill. When they are alive, their blooms stink and I don't like them. But they take on an interesting shape and hue when they are dead, and don't stink.

And here is the picture for today:


These are some old tile bits that have been out in the parking lot near my office for a while now. Bon voyage, tile bits.

. . .

why i will from now on groom my own puppy

. . .

yip yip yip yip uh huh uh huh

. . .

the best thing I have seen in a long time

The easiest way to clean your computer screen.

. . .

lambs for school

As some of you may know, I once saved a lamb from drowning. It was epic. You, instead of wading into the Atlantic to grab one, can help educate a Burkinabe girl by buying her one. Pretty unrelated, except that both involve sheep and Africa. Read on:

A description of the program from my sister, who spent 3 years in Burkina Faso (and so knows):

"This organization [Education for 900 Rural Girls in Burkina Faso] buys a young girl a lamb and pays for the first year of school materials. The girl raises the lamb, sells the sheep, and uses that money for her school supplies the following year. The support goes to girls whose parents would/could not otherwise pay to educate them. I think it is really creative, makes sense in the local context, and seems to work! This organization has entered into a fundraising contest, wherein the organization that gets the most INDIVIDUAL donations will receive $50 000.

"I am going to donate the minimum, $10. I know you have already done your donating for the year, but I thought you might consider this! The details are below."

And here are the details, from the manager of the project:

"... [The Lambs for School Project, supported by Friends of Burkina Faso, (FBF)] pay a young girl's school fees for her 1st year of primary school and provide her family with funds (roughly $45) to buy a lamb to raise and use as an income source to support the young girl's subsequent years of primary, middle and senior high school education. Burkina Faso ranks 176 out of 177 on the Human Development Index (2nd only to Sierra Leone) and the adult literacy rate among women is ~15%. Sobering facts indeed but our project has been doing its part to provide an education for many young girls since 2002. To date, we have supported 1200 young girls to get a primary and middle school education and they have done well! We hope to support 900 more with your help!

"FBF is participating in [the] America's Giving Challenge, funded by the Case Foundation (aka Steve Case [of AOL/Time Warner fame]). If we are among the top 4 international charities to generate the highest number of unique/individual donors (not the most amount of money nor the greatest number of donations in total), we will win $50,000 for the Lambs For School Project. Our overall funding goal is $72,000 (to support 13 years of education for each of 900 girls: that's $80 per girl for 13 years of schooling). Winning the $50,000 would get us very close to reaching our goal in a matter of weeks instead of years!

"[We have been rising in the running and as of a few days ago, were in 5th place.] We need at least 125 individual donations (of $10 each) to ensure that we'll be in at least 4th place on January 31 when the contest ends...

"... I know that there are many causes as worthwhile as ours--but if each of you donates $10 today, you stand to have a 5000% return on your investment. $10 from each of you means $50,000 for 13 years of education of 900 girls. That is one awesome way to stretch your money!

"The competition ends on January 31 (just [9] days away!) To donate, please go to the Friends of Burkina Faso web site ( http://fbf.tamu.edu/) On the opening page, you will see links to donating to this project.

"To learn more about the Lambs for School project, please read our most recent edition (page 10) of our organizational newsletter, the Burkina Connection , available on our web site. ...

"Thanks in advance for your help--your support will mean a lot to the young girls in northern Burkina for whom your, and our, support will provide the only opportunity they will have at an education.

That's it, back to me. Here is the direct weblink for donating: http://givingchallenge.globalgiving.com/dy/registry/ag.html?cmd=prevfund&regid=683&RF=fundraiserwidget683. Off you go, ye lads and lassies.

. . .

and a slight chance of fedora

This morning, I woke up, stepped outside to water the pet, saw that overnight my street had received a very slight dusting of snow, and this:

It snowed a hat.

. . .

power suck

This chart, from the Standby Power Home Page, shows the watts that plugged-in-but-turned off appliances eat up.


. . .

a mixed bag, yes and no, part and parcel

I took care of some business today--more work on that project and backed up my computer for the first time in about 11 months. And intervened in a domestic dispute next door. All three, exhausting, the last quite upsetting. Even though tomorrow is Monday, not typically my best day o' the week, love o' my life, pick o' the litter, I won't be sorry to say goodbye to today.

bye bye,

. . .

hiatus

After a 3.5 year law-school lacuna, I have returned to a project started in the fall of 2003. There are others, I'm sure, but this one had the most done and took up the most mental and physical space. It will be good to get it done. I hope to have it done by the end of the week. But right now it's time to drink a Shiner Bock.

. . .

the great english breakfast explosion of 2008

That's how I'll remember today. The tea-tin, top unsecure and upside-down in the cabinet, carelessly grabbed, and cascading e-breakfast everywhere. I haven't been in NP often enough to know why--probably I put it back there in a frenzied attempt to find the surface of my dinner table. Or some tea-spilling set-up bandit made me a visit. Anyhow, there is now small round e-breakfast spheres sprinkled into my wishdasher and the kitchen floor. The dishes will probably come out with a slight accent. On the whole, though, no big loss. As RLY once called to my attention, e-breakfast is rather boring. Nothing compared to, say, my beloved russian caravan. Which I am now out of, alas. Tea.

Here's some more about January 5, 2008. It is the day of Lulu's first carrot. I made the mistake of giving her a big carrot--mostly she seemed to enjoy shredding it and leaving the shreds on the rug. But maybe her teeth are cleaner. Today the carrot, tomorrow, the stick.

January 5, 2008, in NP smells like poop and cigarettes. The cigarettes are because I have a smoky neighbor. I can't account for the poop stink. It only occasionally smells like poop around here. Wrong wind direction, perhaps. Or maybe the times when there was snow that I was not prepared with the plastic bag have come back to haunt me now that it's melting a bit. Regardless of the stink's provenance, today NP deserves AAMcM's moniker of North Poop.

Today is also the day after the day of Lulu's first trip to the NP dog park. Her favorite new friend, and mine, was a baby bloodhound pup. She and Razor (the bh pup) were both a little shy of the older animals (regardless of size). She also enjoyed playing with Britney, a dog of the small yappy variety.

I have a final divorce hearing and a social security appeal hearing this coming week. Final divorce hearings, when there has been a property and/or child custody settlement, as there hs been in this case, are great hearings to have early on in one's career. No cross-examining necessary, about 10 minutes max of routine questions for the plaintiff (e.g. "Is the marriage irretrievably broken?", a ridiculous statutory necessity--it's not like anyone's ever going to bother saying no.) and the only evidence is the settlement agreement. Social Security hearings are more intense and scary, but still not so bad. They are not adversarial proceedings, so there is no opposing lawyer & client trying to trip me up at every opportunity. I just have to convince the administrative law judge, an employee of the Social Security Administration, that my client is disabled.

Anyway, it's a post-holiday Saturday, and those are the best kind of all. That's what I'll say today, anyway.

. . .

it's always jokey time

Bent Objects. Genius.

Here's a seasonable bad joke I made up:

How do residents of Panama greet each other this time of year? (Click here to find out!)

Merry Christhmus!

. . .

skijor

Skijor is a weird word that is Alaskans pronounce not, as I imagined, "ski-yer", but phonetically, "ski-jur." So that's weird. And the gear's weird too. There are straps that go this way and that way around me, and that way and this way around Lulu. And then, in another world where Lulu doesn't don't bop back and forth like a pinball, and I have skis, she could pull me on my skis. But that's contrary to fact, and instead we have a grand old time: she bopping about, and I, b/c of the construction of the harness, not getting my arm yanked off. Many thanks to the Arctic Outpost for its contribution to my wellbeing.

Here's a picture of skijoring I found on the tubes:



Maybe someday when Lulu and I get more coordinated, we'll try this out.

...

hard core

It was zero degrees in North Platte this morning and we have about 6 inches of snow now. However, a local told me that the city council does not budget for plowing any less than a foot o' snow. This means that the streets become sheets of snow, and then, after a thaw and refreeze, ice. But the Platters don't care. They and their SUVs are too tough to care about that. Too tough.

Lulu and I have been fighting the great walking wars of 2007. She pulls, I pull back, my joints ache. But now I have the Gentle Leader (tm) on my side. The Gentle Leader and I will win this thing. We will win a yank-free doggy. We will! Otherwise I will hire someone else to walk her.

Xmas and JEC approach. JEC will be my first visitor since September, I think, and high time.

. . .

and if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out

Without having studied that phrase at all, I have always, when I have heard it, wondered for about three seconds whether it means --if your eye sees stuff that offends you, pluck it out, or if it's the eye itself that's offensive. Maybe a scratched cornea or something. Or a twitch. Either way, it seems pretty extreme.

Whatever its meaning, it is a recurring theme in my thoughts over the past few weeks. I got a twitch right before my first trial (don't ask) and mine eye has been offended by the despicable combination of two often-terrible-on-their-own stylistic motifs: country and christmas. People, it's country christmas out here and I am constantly fighting the urge to vomit.

In other news--my formerly generous anonymous internet provider needs to get "linksys" fixed. I am writing this from a small purple but comfortable NP coffee cafe with the forgettable name of Winfield's. Anyway--that's why no posts. Although work hasn't been very worky in the past couple weeks, it's hard to feel settled enough there to reflect enough to write something about something.

Here's the Lulu news (I spend more time with her than anybody, so she's a recurring topic. hope it doesn't bore anybody too much): she loves the snow. She bounds about and dips her face in it a lot. She gets snow all over her face and then licks it off her nose, so it's the one spot w/o snow. The snow melts between her toes (yet more about her toes, I know) and then turns to ice, which after about 20 minutes becomes uncomfortable. This is a problem I never anticipated. However, 20 minutes is about the extent of my desire to romp around in the snow anyway, so it works out ok. She and I have been working on some new tricks. She can now wave goodbye, and will roll over every once in a while.

There are people singing along with a bad rock'n'roll version of Santa Claus is Comin' to Town here in Winfield's. It's time to go.

. . .

in which I am wrong

Oh how wrong I can be. Today was a doozy of wrongness. I was wrong about the due date of my student loan payment. I was wrong to think that the New York State Department of Money wouldn't bother to audit a person whose 2006 income totaled approximately $5000. I was wrong to think that if they did, I would not somehow owe them $230. But the real kicker was really when I found out that, contrary to my wrong teen beliefs, algebra really is useful in later life. Turns out that if you want to know how many 41 cent stamps and how many 17 cent stamps you can buy using a $225 check without any cents left over, algebra's your friend. But me and the post office guy, we managed with guess and check. Amazingly, we got it to work out evenly. But it would have been faster w/ algebra, no doubt.

. . .

one sixth of 2007

My gallery is taking a much needed break. But that doesn't mean that you and I can't like us some pictures. Here are (parts of) October and November, 2007.

My across-the-street neighbor, an estimated octogenarian retired railroad man, Dale, gave me this dahlia from his beautiful, too-tropical-for-this-climate-so-he-has-to-dig-up-the-bulbs-every-fall garden.


Lulu at SWT's.



SWT, followed by HDL & me, at 9 Mile Prairie, outside of Lincoln.


HDL looking for the bee-striped fly.





Sunrise, sunset. O, how the little babies grow up.



My grandmother's measuring spoons. The plastic is so old they've started to fall apart. Now they are for admiring.


My not-entirely-successful papier-mache bowls.



SWT's very successful and, to me, dearly beloved paint can painting.




A typical sight at chez PDDD. She likes it under the coffee table.


Men in Hats.


RLY getting ready for the fete of the year, the EG-SP nuptials.


TJC ready to go.


The view from the fete.


Some Fs and an R, at said fete.


The pet cemetery in the alley next to my house. I believe Sniffles and Buddy were hamsters (or guinea pigs).






People have these in their yards here in the Platter. If only it were hooked up to some energy-producing machine or well or something.


A few more projects. The first is a scarf TtF and I began last winter. It's not clear what its future is: another skein? or a cast-off?



another project.
My new flag, care of CMcCMcS


A house-warming rubber plant, from the inside. I believe the stripes come from the window screen.


Another birthday present, from JAMcS. You can't see them from here, but sticking in it are lots of flower-shaped pins marking my past.


Yet another new project: a recycled t-shirt rug. I taught myself to crochet for this. It is much easier than knitting.


Morning in the kitchen.


A much-needed November! Party! at the House! of! Lounge!

SWT & friends:


HDL & SWT preparing the party mix.


Me & Tiny Dabbers.


J&J.

Good times.

. . .

in which I use a thesaurus and the series of tubes

DMB posed me the following: "what is the word for people who live in north platt [sic.]?"

I had no idea. So I asked my colleagues, both of whom were born in NP, attended high school here, and are around 50 years old. One has lived here pretty much her whole life, the other moved down the road to Ogallala for a while and is looking to move back. Neither of them had any idea either. The best guess was "Flat Rockers?" Apparently Flat Rock is a nickname for NP, for reasons unknown. (The mystery deepens. Platte, I believe, is french for flat, but the rock part remains obscure.) Conversation on this topic led us to NP's other nickname, which is, of course, Little Chicago. My colleagues couldn't enlighten me regarding the provenance of that moniker either, but Wikipedia could: "During the 1930s, high crime rates and corruption caused North Platte to be infamously known as 'Little Chicago." This is ludicrous. Of course, that leaves "Little Chicagoans" as an option, but no one would ever know that it referred to North Platters (as I choose to call them, and as the receptionist at the North Platte Convention and Visitor's Bureau reluctantly suggested). The last alternative is just to refer to them all as the afore-blogged Bulldawgs. This cognomen, like "Little Chicagoans", does not obviously identify the denizens, but it at least retains some of the local flavor.

In other NP news, NP has graced the lyrics of at least two songs. Here are the lyrics to one, Superslab Showdown, by C.W. McCall, complete with interpretation. And here are the lyrics to another, A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left (originally called to my attention by HDL).

Yesterday, my trusty sidekick, Lulu, and I took a beautiful drive through midwestern Nebraska. I found the first few towns quaint (in an entirely un-Annapolis way) though smelly. Later I discovered that my trusty sidekick had barfed on the backseat. So they are probably merely quaint. Anyhow, I do have photos to show for it, but it's hard to post them w/o internet access at home. Maybe next weekend. At that point I will give more detail on our trip.

This was our route:


View Larger Map

I can't speak highly enough the beauty of the Nebraska sandhills. If you don't take the opportunity to visit me while I'm here, you perusers of the series of tubes, you will have forgone a wonderful, and uncommon, opportunity.

bonne soir,

. . .

the series of tubes has been rerouted

I don't have the series of tubes at my house right now. I don't know when I will again. This means less blog. It also means that my primary source of reference material is gone-o. I have many questions (e.g. What to do w/ leftover salad? hmm) that I like to pose to the tubes on the fly. I rarely remember the questions when I get to work, and besides, I'm supposed to work at work. So no fly answers to my fly questions (e.g. What is a molly bolt?). I just have to hope that someone in the neighborhood decides to give me some more free tubes for xmas, I guess.

. . .