Failure to Launch

I am sitting at the computer terminals at the Mississippi branch of the library around the apartment that we rent so that Joe can work and keep his sanity. Because of the terrible market, we have decided to keep the house in Indiana and just rent down here. Both he and I spend out time traveling back and forth a great deal.

Now that the time has come that it is imperative that I find a job! I have taken a couple and quit both of them, much to Joe's chagrin. Now that I absolutely must have a job, they are very hard to find.

Especially if you are middle aged. And I mean, really middle aged.

Joe and I were sitting on the "couch" and I asked if 40 were the new 30 was 50 the new 40 and I didn't really look my age did I? Didn't I look like I was cool when I was younger?

I'm pathetic.

So I am going to resurrect Alphawoman. She rises from the ashes. A long time ago I created another jnl. on Blogger and I guess I will continue to keep up both. Alpha is my first attempt and my first true love.

I am rambling.

I went and saw the latest Brad Pitt movie, the Curious Case (?) of Ben. Button.

It made me cry and every so once in a while I would think, this is a long movie....but I still really liked it.

happy New Year.

Nightmare on AOL Street

I woke up a little while ago almost worn out from the dream I was having. It was one of my three reoccurring nightmares. The theme to this one is I am back at school because I have failed to complete all the credits required to graduate. It is usually college where I wander around some unfamiliar campus looking for some obscure building that I have never seen before!

This time I was a rotten teenager. Or rather I was 20 years old. I know this because as I slipped on my ten ton back pack, my half ton purse loaded with all my essentials, my lunch which was a sandwich crammed into a tiny plastic Tupperware thing and the top didn't fit and my sandwich got wet because it was raining I calculated how I was too old for this....at 20. I decided to skip school and was farting around looking for the text books thinking that "Dad" would leave to go to work and I would be home free. Only Dad was Gabriel Byrne (wow!) and was on to my tricks, reluctantly I struggled into that damn back pack when this witch arrives on the scene and says she is Gabriel's fiance and that erupts into a shouting match of some magnitude. Then I wake up and go "Wow!" and I was exhausted.

This is one of those many times when I really miss Joe (who is on assignment). He always listens patiently to my rambles about the dream and inevitably the questions, "What do you think it means?" or "What do you think about that?" and the usual one, "What brought that on?"

I suppose I was just unsettled because of the forced evacuation of AOL Journals. Yesterday I began to back up my journal by engaging in the laborious task of copying and pasting into Microsoft Word. In a way it was soothing to revisit many of those entries. Some I had sought out, like the one about the Jesuit who told about the possessions of people and places, but most were tiny gems of the necklace of my AOL Journal. I was prolific at the beginning and I breath a sigh of relief knowing that I slowed down in time!

I am lucky because I have been blogging on both AOL and Blogger since the beginning, so the majority of my entries are also parked in that journal, which has assumed many names. The beauty of Blogger, you can change your name!!

And as many of my AOL friends will find out, Blogger is a safe haven. And as they become more comfortable they will marvel at the tools available to them to continue the community outside the confines of AOL.

Among the nany advantage, your counters will always work!! You can manipulate your pictures to insert them into different areas of your text. You can write an entry and save it rather than publish it right away. You can link up to Flickr and Slideshow and a multitude of other fun stuff that was unavailable on AOL. You can take on advertising yourself and reap the benefits rather than AOL using us and our journals for gain.

The list goes on and on, but I have not had my coffee yet.

 

Who Moved My Velveeta?

As of late I do not go into a grocery store very often. Since finding ALDI, I run in and grab a gallon of milk and a bag of chicken and that's it. I wanted to join one of those farm community things earlier this spring, but the cost was prohibitive considering it was only me (with the Memphis situation looming large). So I realized that I could shun the Walmart and Kroger produce aisle and with a conscience free of guilt shop with abandon at the Farmers market and Paul's Fruit Market.

Yet, I still must go to Walmart and grab the essentials.  Usually I'll keep a running list of things I need and I always fail to grab it on the way out the door. What that means is as I run through the store I am trying to recreate that absent list! Bottled water, laundry detergent, Crystal light etc. etc. etc.

Heading towards the check out counter, after three (three!!!) return trips down the aisles I realized I had forgotten cheese! Damn!! I must have cheese.

And there it was in the, piled high in "action alley" calling to my inner child with a yellow comforting beacon.

Velveeta!

I tossed the two pound brick into the jumble of items in my basket and felt a surge of pleasure at the sheer recklessness of my decision! I remembered those oozing cheesey margarine soaked artery clogging grilled sandwiches my Mom use to make for us kids on those days when school was called off due to snow. I love my Mother dearly, but that woman can not cook! And her grill cheese sandwiches, usually burnt on one side and undercooked on the flip were delicious.

Ah, Velveeta! How I've missed you.

Hometown Closing it's Doors?

Does this mean the AOL Journals are going away?

Bummer and double bummer. I just commented to someone not to long ago that I feared the Journals were on the chopping block!

Ode to Pancakes

I have searched and searched for the quote from the late Mitch Hedberg about pancakes. But, it went something like this....

                "Pancakes, all thrilling and exciting at the begining, sickening as s*** at the end."

Kind of like keeping a weblog for five years! Good Lord, five years. Things feel forced and stilted when I sit down and try and write an entry. The first year, and in truth, for a long time, it was easy. Stuff just flowed from my fingers. Of course, it was new , thrilling and exciting! Now it feels that my writing is out of practice, or I am out of practice.

So, I should just do it write the sickening s*** daily.

Thank God Maksie is back on Dancing With The Stars. I did not even watch it last season because he was taking a break. Tonight he danced the Pasa Doble with his new partner. Nothing could compare when he and  Mel B set the dance floor on fire dancing the Pasa Doble! Mel B was robbed by the way.

I have it bad for Maksie.

 

 

 

No Crying in Baseball

Around these parts you would have to be living in a cave (as some of us just may be due to the wind storm event Mother Nature and Hurricane Ike presented to us)  to not know that the Ryder Cup was held in Louisville this past weekend.

300,000 homes may have been knocked out of electricity when the remnants of Hurricane Ike blew through here but the Valhalla Golf Course was put back on line within moments. The Show must go on.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against golf. I just had to be educated that the Ryder Cup is Super Bowl to their fans. I know lots of people who worship at the alter of the Golf Links. I even tried it once, was horrible at it and quite frankly, did not like it much.

I have endured the golf metaphor for years. My boss once developed a "score card" complete with a boogie and a birdie and all that jazz that had to be explained to me. "Now a boogie means its good?"

It has even spread to the sermon I sat through at church this week end. First a video was show of the pastor participating in the Ryder Cup (this church has remarkable editing staff!) that was hokey and too long....but I got it, I am in the minority when it comes to my boredom with golf. Then we were delivered the sermon which was good, but still the golf metaphor began to get on my nerves.

I did like the part about a Mulligan. I did not know those existed in golf! Every body deserves a Mulligan now and then (which is a do-over) and I certainly agree with that.

Yesterday I was in conversation with two guys. Two golfers, don't you know.

"Golf is like life, a metaphor for life." one said the the other.

I interjected, "I though Baseball was a metaphor for life."

They turned to me and shook their heads, "No, it's golf." Like I was really asking a question!! I was making a statement.

I prefer baseball. You keep swinging until you get it right. If it's a foul you keep swinging until you get it in the ball park. Sometimes you strike out, sometimes you hit a home run. You work as a team and everyone plays their part. You run really really fast to be safe! You get your manager to go nose to nose with the authority if they think you have been done wrong. Then at the seventh inning everyone gets to stand up and stretch and sing! You get to eat hot dogs and throw back beer!

Yup, baseball sure seems more like real life than that golf game.

Later: Oh, its Bogey not Boogie! lol!! (I told you I know nothing about golf)...but, later today he expounded further about the golf metaphor and I have to admit, it sounded pretty good...all about living by rules, trying to better yourself, only you know you are cheating.

(I still like beer better than golf!).

What's A Little Wind?

I was listening to the weather report yesterday morning before making a drive to Cincinnati. Or maybe I just overheard the report. But I did hear that we were going to have some high winds from around 10am until 8pm that night. Courtesy of Hurricane Ike.

I was on the way back from the trip and about 20 miles into I-71 I realized the wind was blowing kind of hard. The gusts were pretty strong. Another few miles and the leaves and debris began swirling all about and the gusts were becoming stronger.

About 10 miles outside of Louisville I was very concerned and driving as fast as I could to beat it home. I didn't know what I was beating, or if I just wanted to get home.

But first, I had to go to a birthday party. In the Highlands, which is a very mature neighborhood in the Loo. Beautiful trees line the roads, beautiful big old trees. And as I exited off the interstate and headed into the city I realized it was very bad.

Was this a hurricane or what? Wait, I have lived through a category 4 hurricane...this is just some high wind, I reassured myself, keeping a sharp eye for flying foreign objects.

It was slow going and it required many detours to arrive at my destination because of this...

 

....and this

 

 

And oh yes, this...

 

Taking care, I pulled my car in a parking lot without a lot of trees about. It was very windy!

Very windy. I flew into my brothers house. Literally!

 

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