Niff.Dot

>A friend of mine was given the task of creating a “choose your own adventure” story, which were books I was addicted to as a kid but had forgotten over the (many) years. In case you haven’t ever read one, “choose your own adventure” books were stories which at the end of each chapter there were several options for what should happen next, and the reader was given the privilege of choosing one. Each choice was given a corresponding page number to flip to in the book which was a continuation of that particular selection. Of course you always cheated and read all three choices, which kinda defeated the purpose, but you were also the same kind of kid that only opened the cereal box for the toy inside and said to hell with the cereal, so you are capable of anything.

Anyway, I thought it’d be fun to write a chapter. So here goes:

Chapter 1: The Unfamiliarity of Writing in the Second Person.

It is Thursday. It is wholly unremarkable.

You lean back in your chair, sigh aloud, stare at the ceiling.

Sitting up, you return to staring blankly at your computer screen, vaguely trying to recall what exactly it was you were supposed to be doing.

(purple)

Shaking your head, you attempt to collect your thoughts in a feeble attempt to regain productivity. What was it…

(purple)

You abruptly sit upright, hands grasping the armrests of your chair. Your eyes inadvertently dash from left to right as your brain tries to comprehend why exactly

(purple)

keeps manifesting itself in your cerebral cortex.

It is far too early in the day for this. Thursday. You could never get the hang of Thursdays.

You once again lean back in your chair, contemplating taking off early. Only…

(round)

Your eyes have forgotten how to function properly. They began darting rapidly around, investigating the situation.

Regaining your composure, you stand and stretch a bit, inhaling deeply, and…

SMACK!

Shaking off the effects of the random assault, you open your eyes in time to notice a rather large, violet-colored tentacle dangling in front of you.

Oh.

You don’t dare look up. You should look up, but you don’t dare look up. You don’t need to. You already know what’s up there.

To save you the effort of glancing upward, the large, bulbous body of the octopus that has discreetly adhered itself to the ceiling of your desk begins to descend.

It is Thursday. It was supposed to be wholly unremarkable.

If at this point you:

Wish to wrangle the tentacles of the octopus around the handle of a rather oddly-shaped velvet-covered broomstick, go to page 12.

Ask the octopus to enroll in tap-dancing lessons at this little studio you know that is rather reasonably priced, page 43.

And if you decide to grab an egg-salad sandwich and head out for some golf, do not turn to any page. I hate golfers. And I’m not altogether too fond of egg salad, either. So go away. Quit reading my shit.

voulez-voulez-vous no happy ending for golfers.

>I find something very interesting.

I use Blogger.com. Did y’all know that? I know, hard to tell.

Anyway.

I find something about Blogger quite…peculiar.

Every time I blog I do a spell-check. Not because I am a bad speller, but because I am a bad typist. And because my space bar does not perform with 100% consistency.

What I find peculiar is this:

In the massive cadre of words included in the Blogger.com spell-checker, there is one noun that for some incomprehensible reason, was not deemed necessary enough to program into their site.

You ready? I don’t think so. You can’t possibly be ready for this.

Here goes.

The word incomprehensibly withheld from the Blogger.com word bank is:

blog.

voulez-voulez-vous incredulity.

>As a tribute to Easter weekend I have decided to take part in my own personal resurrection.

Note: I have not recently delved into the fine art of Necromancy. But I’ll save that possibility for another blog…

No, the resurrection of which I speak is my studio in the downstairs garage. Thanks to winter being so ruddy cold and unpleasant my studio was neglected; I just moved a few of my more important paintings upstairs which made my husband not at all pleased as I kept placing them in rather inconvenient locations throughout the living room. I just closed the door and let my beloved studio sit there for several months as there is no heating and, because of our violent windstorms we suffer here on a frequent basis, the frigid cold air would work its way in, not providing an ideal working environment.

So in a frenzy of boredom and malcontent at having to keep my works-in-progress upstairs, I decided it was time once again to reopen the doors to my studio and get back to work. Unfortunately, I encountered some obstacles.
Despite my own weak efforts, my studio had become an unwilling impromptu storage facility. Christmas decor had taken it’s toll, the old steam cleaner had worked its way in. Folding chairs, bags of old clothes, dog kennels…all of which, unless you are working on a rather odd still-life, are not exactly what you’d call official studio equipment.

Once the extraneous odds and ends were returned to their rightful places, I came across some pieces I had started and completely forgotten about. Which is agreeable, as I do require several active projects going at once. I do this so I can jump from one to the other rather than stagnating on one particular piece for weeks on end and suddenly finding myself resenting it. It’s my thing. Let it go.

Another bonus involved a box of stretcher bars I had ordered some time ago but had never unpacked. Also a bonus. I just have to make sure I have enough canvas on which to stretch it. Then it has to be primed, a subject matter must be decided upon, then I will have yet another active piece to add to my already impressive arsenal of unfinished canvases. I should have them all finished sometime next decade.

So this is where I have parked myself.

I should try and sell some paintings to pay off my ruddy cell phone bill.

voulez-voulez-vous I do not have unlimited minutes.

>Fog.

I am in a fog. A depressing creative fog which has impaired my ability to conjure up any wit or cleverness and hence impaired my ability to blog. A blog-fog. Yep. That’s it.

So this is all I’ve got:

I’ve recently decided to alter my typical conversational response from “uh-huh” and “yeah” to indeed. It throws people off a bit. Intimidating, in a way. Most people aren’t prepared for it. We’ve become indeed-desensitized. Intolerant, even. Obsrerve:

– “So, my man callz and say, ‘I want tostadas for dinner’ and I’m like, ‘foo’, get ya own damn tostadas’ and he’s all, ‘bitch…you do-za what’s I say, and I-za wantin’ some tostadas!'”

To which I reply,

– “indeed.”

I am thus presented with:

– “Indeed? What da hellz that, indeed? What, choo tink youz all bettah than e’erybody else? Bitch, ya don’t know shit. Indeed. To hell witchoo and yo’ fancy talkin'”

(Note: the above conversation is indeed fictitious as I could not tolerate conversing with nor being associated with people who actually spoke in that manner. I would have to thump their skull with the Blue Book of English Grammar.)

I think I shall attempt to resurrect other words in the English language that seem to have gone the wayside. I’m sure we can re-integrate them successfully into modern conversational vocabulary. It will take some work, I’m not denying that. But if we band together, things will happen.

Such as:

Feckless: lacking purpose or vitality; feeble, ineffective; careless, irresponsible; from Scottish “feck”, for efficacy, short for effect+less.

(I particulary like this one…)
Chasmophile: a lover and seeker-out of nooks and crannies.

Isn’t that brilliant? It just rolls off the tongue…“chasmophile”…

I’ve got some more alluring yet curious words for you, but since I am a victim of the blog-fog, I shall save them for a later date to preserve blogging material.

Voulez-voulez-vous chasmophile.

Postscript: if anyone has some fascinatingly odd words to contribute, please feel free to leave them in my comments section. I assure you I will accept full credit for them and give no mention of you.

>That if you run out of cell phone minutes and, as unaware of this fact you may be, keep chatting away for days…weeks…it adds up. And if it adds up enough, they will take your cell phone away.

Happen’d to me.

I now owe Cingular about $500.00. Isn’t that just obscene? Who the hell have I been calling, anyway?

In light of recent events I have thus resurrected my home phone. ‘Twas a bit dusty. It is functional, yes. But I do not have the same emotional attachment that I have with my cell phone. I left it at home this morning and felt virtually naked without it.

If any of you are the ones I phoned, I hope you appreciate the words we shared. They were expensive.

It was probably a bunch of mundane, arbitrary drivel of no real importance.

Story of my life.

Needless to say, without my phone, I am distraught.

The cherry on this blissful cake of joy is that my husband is out of town for three weeks. I am the epitome of self-pity.

Poor poor me.

Please leave me comments of sympathy and well-wishing. Thanks to my not giving anyone my home number, I am officially cut off from the world. I need some reassurance that it is still out there. And that the Spurs are still kicking ass.

Voulez-voulez-vous poor me.

>Bryan seems to think the back of my desk chair makes a suitable clothing rack.

I tend to disagree.

Granted, I live under the assumption that any stationary object in our apartment was intended to be a storage site for my various waterproof hiking jackets, but, I am extraordinarily gifted when it comes to double standards.

But in my defense my coats are never intruding on his personal, active space. I usually prefer the vacuum cleaner, unused floor lamps, the back of the sofa.

Although when using the back of the sofa, I must use caution. Not because Bryan uses the sofa. Because that would be included in the realm of his active space, thereby contradicting my above statement, and exposing me as being completely full of shit. Bryan does not use the sofa. No one…no human…uses the sofa. They couldn’t even if they wanted to.

You see, it’s already occupied.

This is Gee. This is Gee on the sofa. This is Gee’s sofa. I think one day she may become permanently affixed to it. I fear that day. It could be messy. I might need a new sofa. And a new Gee. Something tells me I couldn’t find that on eBay.

Preventative measures may be in order. Short of coating my sofa in Teflon I’m not sure what would be most effective. Waxed paper, maybe. Not that it matters. The sofa’s only real function, other than a Gee display case, is to provide balance and mass to the assemblage that is the living room. I tend to think of it as a placeholder for the day when we get another large, overstuffed leather recliner to match the one we currently have. It’s a nice recliner. Great for Spurs games and playing XBox.

Anyway, I’m tired of fighting Bryan for it. So we need to get a new one. And since our living room is an apartment living room, space is not one of it’s attributes. The sofa, Gee’s sofa, must go.

Preparations are already in progress. Right now I am working on how to best communicate this to Gee. I am not sure how she is going to take it. I’ve tried to talk to her about it, but I don’t think I’m getting through to her. We just don’t relate the way we used to.

I think it may be denial.

I’m just wondering where the hell I’m gonna put my coat now.

voulez-voulez-vous denial.

>Nothing more exhilarating than giving a “two-weeks notice” to a job you just don’t love anymore.

Of course, one must deal with the inevitable psychological syndrome known as, “whadd’re they gonna do…fire me?”.

Nice attitude, eh? I thought so.

Hangin’ in the PJ’s again, while Duke is trying to lick my feet. Ew. Bad dog.

So new job starts this week…server job, Monday-Friday, 10am-4pm (lunch shift). The most amazingly rare yet idyllic schedule in food service ever. In a very, very nice restaurant with $80 lobster and an impressive wine list. Good times will be had. I can actually sleep in with my husband on a weekend without putting a request in two weeks in advance, signed in triplicate, notarized, sealed in a vault in Bulgaria then shipped to management via African Swallow.

And no more waking up at bloody 4:30 in the morning. Bliss.

I’m off to bed. I had a 2-hour training session which included bouncing a 6-lb medicine ball off a wall, catching it, squat, throw, bounce, catch, squat, in 5 sets of 20.

I will indeed be in pain tomorrow morning. So off to bed I go.

Voulez-voulez-vous lactic acid.

>Okay, I did it. Took the plunge. Did the deed. Summoned all my courage and the first time in almost a year, I got my hair cut.

I have a strange relationship with my hair. It’s more of an emotional dependence for reasons which are unclear to me. My mother always kept my hair waist-length when I was a kid…I suppose out of habit I kept it long…until when I was in college I cut it chin-length in a fit of, “let’s try something NEW!”. As the beautician handed me the mirror, terror struck. Immediately I mourned my missing locks; then began to resent those that remained for being a mere remnant of the glorious tendrils that preceded them. I thus engaged in a full-scale, balls-to-the-wall growing-out process, which, in case you didn’t know, is long, arduous, and ultimately unbearable. Which is why I shall never get it hacked again. You have to fix hair more the less of it you have. This is coiffure irony.

So, minus four inches now and I must say I like it quite a bit. My ponytail is significantly shorter, but considering I work in a restaurant this is probably a good thing.

It was rather sad to see my four inches laying, rather dejected-looking, on the floor. Perhaps I should have gathered them up and bundled them in a hankie, assuring them that I still loved them and would take good care of them, split ends and all.

voulez-voulez-vous gotta love low-maintenance.

>I am trapped in an orb of mucous. Dammitall I hate being sick.

So, the Spurs lost. We’re still going to the playoffs, so stick that in your ear, Ray Allen.

I’m supposed to go to the gym today. I cannot delude myself into believing that I am exempt from such activities due to alleged illness, as my trainer informed me that so long as the symptoms are from the neck up, physical activity is permitted.

Bollocks.

Okay, back. Bry and I weightlifted together. We kick each other’s asses. It’s a good thing.

I do adore dates. They are deliciously tasty. What I like most about them is they curb my sweet tooth in a nutritionally sound manner thereby preventing me from running to the convenience sore across the street and gorging on an entire bag of Double Stuft Oreos.

That, too, is a good thing.

Never tried dates? Blasphemy. Go and get some. Now.

Besides, I need a crack-addict-esque fruit to hold me over until pomegranates come back into season. Six months…that’s a lot of dates. I shall be very regular. Ew. Overshare. My apologies.

Voulez-voulez-vous no necesito Metamucil

>

Tonight:

SPURS @ SONICS

4:30 pm. LIVE, at the Hardwood.

I’ll be wavin’ at ya from the first row, center court..

Fools.