Good: Floods, Devastating Tsunamis

Stupid: Hard rain, leading to an inch or two water accumulation in the living room, two bedrooms, a bathroom and a hallway

Fortunate: These are my only problems in a world with events such as devastating tsunamis.

My hallway, the light areas of the hallway floor, are reflections of light on the water.



My toes making ripples in the hallway.

Proof Positive

That my neighbors are crazy...

This is there home:


(Click for larger image)

It is decorated for Christmas, complete with multiple moving parts such as a small ferris wheel and ice skaters turning on a rink. I wish I was able to get a picture that did it justice. Those blackish portions on the bottom are people silhouettes. They have posted a sign that indicates it takes four weeks for them to set up and will cost $150 in electricity.

To me, this is just insanity.

I am glad someone else does it.

Merry Christmas.

Hot, One For You-One For Me

The temperature deviation, from nightly low to daily high, has been between thirty and forty degrees.

Yesterday the high was 75 and the low 35.

This basically means you are always dressed wrong. You can dress so you are comfortable in the morning and you are baking mid-day or you are freezing in the morning and comfortable during the day. Regardless, you are generally chilled in the shade and sweating in the sun.

In preparation for this weather, while shopping for Christmas gifts (one for them-one for me), I went looking for t-shirts and a jacket. Neither of these were available. Jackets are not well stocked in an area that is 75 degrees during the day, five days before Christmas. This makes sense. I honestly can't remember ever having a jacket. But it can be in the thirties at night, and a jacket might be nice, and all my friends have them. T-shirts are not well stocked either as major clothing stores forget there are areas of the country that don't get snow. What is stocked? Thick knit long-sleeved tops and sweaters, both too hot for the day.

I did actually find t-shirts, but they only came in small and extra-small. (What the hell!) The store told me to go online. According to online, they are only made in small and extra-small. (Conspiracy of the little boob people…)

After a very unsuccessful (5-0) one for them-one for me Christmas shopping spree I am sitting in my car when a quick set whap whap whap hits my car. Thinking of the newly purchased gifts for them and random recent forwards (always a good source of information), I worried about a clever ploy to steal the gifts.

Then I thought, what the hell, it was only for other people anyway.

But, there was a mid-rift peering through my passenger window (low car). I quickly recognized the super-white mid-rift (on display today as it was 75 degrees, despite being December 20). Apparently bending down and showing her face never occurred to my sister. She remarkably, randomly, parked three spots over from me atop the roof of a parking structure.

Anyway, I have the rest of the week to remedy my one for them-one for me disparity, hopefully including a jacket.

Funniest Item Seen: Doormat that reads: "Nice Underwear"

Have you seen my bomb?

It had some wires and a clock?

From cnn.com:

Airport Screeners Lose Fake Bomb During Training

NEWARK, New Jersey (AP) -- Baggage screeners at Newark Liberty International Airport spotted -- and then lost -- a fake bomb planted in luggage by a supervisor during a training exercise.

Despite an hours-long search Tuesday night, the bag, containing a fake bomb complete with wires, a detonator and a clock, made it onto an Amsterdam-bound flight. It was recovered by airport security officials in Amsterdam when the flight landed several hours later.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/12/15/fake.bomb.lost.ap/index
.html

Do you think they sent it back?

(Would you want to be on that flight?)

On Organization

I have been trying to get back into the habit of putting things away.

Except it is really damned annoying.

Now, when I have put something away… what it really means is I will never be able to find it, ever again.

Needless to say, this exercise, in seeing how many drawers/doors/shelves/cupboards I can search before finding what I am looking for, is being abandoned.

I am going back to leaving it in the dead center of the floor.

That way I can find it, every time I trip over it.

I love horizontal organization.

More Bumper Reading, Participation Required

License plate holder: Master Of The Nuts, King Of The Squirrels

License Plate: YEP NUTS

Please comment; include your interpretation of "Master Of The Nuts" and theories on why the driver has felt so inclined to adorn the car this way.

(Comments should be at least 100 words long, and include at least two words seen on the SATs, but never in real life, used correctly. Comments will be graded according to what I think is most important which, obviously, I will not disclose to you, unless I like you. If I like you, I still won't disclose what is important, but you will get a good grade regardless of how daft I think your work is. If I don't know you, I will be so dumbfounded you are reading, that you will get an A just for starting a comment.)

Amazing how the assignment is always more complicated that the subject matter.

You’re not supposed to…

You’re not supposed to find out over I.M. that someone you know had died.

People you know, who are good, pure, and honest are not supposed to die, accidently, on a Tuesday afternoon.

Where do you get your reading material from?

I love reading the back of people’s cars.

Fortunately, people place reading material there…. Otherwise it would be a lot less entertaining.

There are also the symbols, like the Jesus fish and the Darwin fish.

Today, I saw my first Gefilte fish.

Going Vertical In New York City

While in NYC, I stayed at a friend’s. Her place is on the 27th floor. Being on the 27th floor was an experience. I live in a place that actually has an ordinance limiting the height of buildings to three stories, so my movements are predominantly lateral and not vertically.

I cannot remember the last time I took an elevator above the sixth floor. I imagine it has been many years. In fact I think it was in Little Rock in 2001. (Why was I in Little Rock you ask? Well, for money, obviously. What other reason is there to be in Little Rock?)

I am not afraid of heights per say. This is not to mean I go hanging over roof sides. I just prefer to give them a little space, of approximately my length, lest I stumble and fall over.

Actually, what I hate the most is elevators. This comes from an in depth exposure to elevator horror stories my freshman year of college. I am sure you have all heard the story from my college where a ton of people squeeze into an elevator for a picture, in standard freshman fashion. The elevator slowly starts sinking from its stop on the eighth floor. A guy at the front gets half way out of the elevator, when the elevator drops two stories, cutting him in half and leaving the rest of the occupants bumped, bruises, and stuck with half the body of their friend.

It stands to reason this is traditional freshman lore. That being said, my sophomore year two elevator repair men, on an elevator car, plunged from the top of an elevator shaft crashing to the bottom, over six stories. That is not lore; it was carried in the papers.

So, I don’t like elevators.

But this elevator didn’t have any of those scary characteristics found in elevators: acceleration/deceleration that requires airbags, excessive delay in door opening, bottom of the elevator cab being six or more inches below/above the destination floor, and there are more, but since I reference them so rarely, I can’t remember them. So this elevator passed my inspection.

Being on the 27th floor had some interesting qualities. First, you always have instant hot water. You never have to wait for the hot water to push out all the cold water in the pipes. This was a great novelty. (Obviously, I was not the only one on the 27th floor.) Second, they don’t build with wood to 27 stories. In CA, everything is wood. So I walk around my house, and nearly everything gives a little. Not on the 27th floor. It felt so solid.

I would say, I have lived the majority of my life capable of changing my clothes in front of my windows, risking flashing a hibiscus, oak trees, ivy, bamboo, etc. To be on the 27th floor, and have people, potentially hundreds of people, about 150 meters away capable of looking into the window, that is just weird. And even worse was my friend’s pair of binoculars sitting window side accentuating the fact that people were looking.

The view was amazing, just lines of skyscrapers stretching away, and little yellow taxis zigging and zagging in no apparent direction.

And more importantly, the nice quiet respite was so needed for the country mouse after a day at play in the city.

So, if you ever go vertical, I recommend the 27th floor.

On Neighborhoods

I came home to my entirely dark neighborhood on Friday night, parked and went inside.

On Saturday I intended to repeat the practice, but apparently I missed the local memo. I, unlike the rest of the neighborhood, did not spend Saturday day quadrupling my electricity use by anointing my home with an excess of small glowing lights.

I also managed to miss the cherry-pickers on Saturday. (I was at the beach.) We have a few fifty-foot high palm trees in the neighborhood. (Imagine that in southern California!) All the palm trees were decorated, to the very top.

THIS gave me the warm and fuzzies.

The silly lights on houses are quaint.

But a long string of lights wrapped all the way up a palm tree, now that is the Christmas spirit.

Oh to be a so-cal girl...

Best Laid Plans... May be run over by reindeer Or parade floats

Ambitious: Parking downtown to go to the gym at 4 pm on a Friday
Ridiculous: Doing this during the Christmas shopping season
Ignorant: Doing this two hours before the Christmas Parade starts
Stupid: Thinking I would get out alive.

Misuse of Appliances

There is something terribly wrong when the purpose of your fridge is to make sure your food stays warm enough not to freeze.

This is especially wrong in Southern California.