rock band singer!

that's right. who got 99% on 3 songs in a row singing for rock band?

i did!

Rest in Peace Morpheus

this is a pic of my new (second) fish...

my first fish, morpheus "mo" fishser, died between noon and 2pm yesterday.

i took his fungusy body, in its fungusy tank, back to the pet store. and pleaded for help. the nice, kind man at the fish counter... we'll call him trent... cause he looked like a trent, trent took the bowl from me, said he would take care of mo. and for me to go pick out another one.

i was tempted to think i failed at my first pet experience, but mo had that fungus on one fin when i bought him. and when i saw the fungus had spread to more fins, took him in for fungus drops. administered them as i should, and it still got worse... so now i'm tempted to tell myself i did everything i could...

either way, i think trent sent mo to a fish amusement park, and right now, he's riding the water slide. :)

so, trent disinfected the tank, the rocks, cleaned the live plants, and put everything back with fresh warm water. and my new fish... my small, dark, and handsome, ladies' manfish... seemed italian to me... so his name is giovanni. gio for short.

and he's happy. he swims a lot. he's smaller than morpehus, but he's got a fan fin, which makes him very easy to look at. :) but he's a little harder to find in the bowl.

holly days

i am really really looking forward to thanksgiving with my brother.

cody and i will grill steak and foil-wrapped potatoes. and i'll bring a pie. and he'll play the piano. and i'll play with the kitty catties.

and we'll relax and drink whiskey. :)

"private" blogs

this blog... is not private. you read it. yes you. and i write it. and while it's intention isn't to be a journal, i sometimes feel like writing personal things here. but then you come along and read it. and i guess i have too many of you reading it to feel totally comfortable writing what i want sometimes. because it's public. and vulnerable.

and then i think... ok. i'll get a journal. but i don't think i'd write in it that often. and the things i would write, well i'd rather tell to one or two close friends.

so yeah.

that's all i have to say about that.

-p

p.s. trish says hi.

here fishy fishy fishy fishy

i now have a pet! that's right. i am officially a pet owner. he's a beautiful red betta fish. morpheus (but i call him mo for short... he likes it). and he lives in a fish bowl with real live plants. 3 kinds. he sleeps on the leaves.

and he loves to eat. and swim.

and... well. we haven't really had time to bond yet, so i don't know about his family or what music he likes...

but i will soon.

over the rhine

last night was awesome. met up with Blu and mr. hurricane. and got to meet mr. hurricane's sister. very cool. then went to doug fir. saw over the rhine. great show. she played ohio, my favorite of theirs. i missed my big sister and i cried.

after the show, went upstairs doug fir to have a few drinks to sober up. hah. 2am, 3drunk people stumbling to an office couch. ended up home at 7am. woke up 10:30. am now on couch, on phone keypad. hungover. nauseous. tired. awaiting little sister's arrival.

over and out.

pure creation

so my brother creates music. GOOD music. he recently put together his own mobile recording studio. he took it to the music hall on campus to use the grand piano, and he played pieces he wrote.

then he sang "tomorrow" from annie while he played the piano part behind it. and it was SOOOO good. he has a great voice, nice tone, with fantastic control. really really impressive.

i'm so proud of him.

to be able to create, to have found a way to record it, and to have wanted to share it with me. and he did.

i have them. and i listen to them. and i love them. and i love him. :)

so happy.

take-out

i got on the bus after work tonight. really hungry. and i put a dollar coin in the change-o-meter and a bill in the bill-eater. and the driver mumbles something about a dollare fifty. and i said, "it was a dollare coin" he mumbles something about "can't see...mumble...cough... go ahead."

i'm sorry, did he just give me permission to sit and ride for the ride i paid for, after accusing me of coming up short?

then. as i sit down. i recognize a smell. my stomach actually twisted in pain. burger king. trust me. not mcdonalds or carl's junior. i haven't eaten any of those in years, but i've definitely done my time. and it was burger king.

how rude! someone bringing food with those kinds of smell units on the rush-hour, starving people, on-the-way-home-bus...

then i realized if that was as bad as my day got, i was doing pretty good.

:)

girlfriend shopping on the bus

i felt a bit like a commodity this morning. i got on the bus to go to work, sat by the window in an empty 2-seat... as had about 12 other women. yeah. at a glance, i'm pretty sure they were all women.

so picture the bus, 2 seats on each side of the aisles, with all the window seats filled by stunningly beautifully glamorous women like me. ;)

next stop.

a very tall, long-haired man in a red jacket gets on. a dirty jacket. a dirty man. unshaven, hair a bit dreddy.
he pays. bus starts moving. he slowly but surely roams towards us. all of us. no sense of urgency usually seen in someone trying to plant their ass in a seat before the bus gets going too quickly to maneuver on foot...

walks slowly up the aisle. sizing us up. at this point, i'm reading, so my peripheral is all i've got to work with. but it's sufficient... sufficient enough to see that he's checking us all out. perhaps the one he sits by today will accept his odd overtures of love at first sight, by returning a comment in response to his mention of the cereal he just ate.

her hair's too big. she's shallow.
her coat looks like something from goodwill. she's cheap.
and he gets to me. and i'm SURE he's going to choose me. all cuted up in my white knit hat, blue scarf, red gloves, black jacket and homemade scrabble earrings, intently reading, proving i'm literate.

and he passes me by! and for a second, i don't know if i'm relieved or insulted.

i decide neither.

22 seconds later, he comes back up the aisle to sit in the front. guess none of us were good enough to be his bus girlfriend.

hmm... i think the book about autism that i'm reading is jading my perception... or my perception. can't figure out which one...

sneaker toss 101

ok. take an old pair of sneakers. tie the two laces together. stand back, hand them to your friend Blu, announce that a bottle of tequilla rides on his ability to succeed. and watch him silently ponder and calculate for 10.3 seconds, then witness, as the sneakers catapult through the air, poetically swinging towards the power line, catching, heading towards each other, tangling, and settling, happily, around the line.

first try.

that's right.

that's skill.

all 3 of us were impressed.

and we will smile whenever we drive under them.

shoes batch!

bringing back a classic... i so love this.

dream # 9,543

just woke up from a very real, yet surreal dream.

high school reunion. 10-yr (which i skipped in real life... probably for the reasons i'll mention below)..

gym. with bleachers. no music, booze or schmoozing.

gym. with bleachers. and teachers. and classmates. but i can't find my friends. we're all sitting around the bleachers with random articles. some girls have.... wow. just occured to me. there were no boys. except the teachers. ok. bizarre. anyway, some girls have barbies, some have scarves. one girl has ratty tennis shoes, that belong in a sneaker toss.

and flande. female gym teacher built like a german brick. flande says ok. what are we gonna do? and NO ONE has ideas. so we all start talking. and we're taking a localized poll (in my bleachers) of who's still 29, and who's 30. so, nerd that i am, i suggest that we all go down to the gym floor, and divide everyone in half. north end is 29 or younger. south end is 30 or older. sure... mumble mumble. flande hears, and announces that's what we're doing.

so on the way down the bleachers, i get met by mr. phelps (what did he teach, anyway? geography, driver's ed, politics?) he comes down, huge grin, and gets on my side of the line (29 and younger) and hands me a pink ribbon, that has printed on it: "for completion of high-octane physics course" yeah. that look on your face. the confused amused look, i had that on in my dream. so then this other teacher, short, squirmy, kinda skeezy, comes over and gives me a big hug. a tight hug. a groping hug. i don't even know this guy. and he says "oh! so good to see you! been so long!" so i squirm free, smile politely, and say i'm wanted near the middle of the gym.

i get there. and there's me, flande, my sister liz (who graduated 2 years before me), and 9 other girls. the misfits, nerds, etc. everyone else had decided they had more important things to do than this... which, granted. it was a dumb activity. but we coulda made it fun. we could've lined up in the shape of a penis and taken an aerial shot. haha.

anyway, liz and i decide it's time to bail, so we go get in my car. but she's in the passenger seat, and i'm in the backseat (situating my physics ribbon, given to me by my driver's ed teacher, so proudly in my back window), and the car starts. and liz thinks it's a brilliant idea to put it in drive. while no-one's in the driver's seat!

we rear-end someone.

but only after liz spending 32 seconds giggling and steering, half-assed, i might add, and 32 seconds of me, head first, down by the petals, ass over the shoulders of the seat, feet kicking wildly, bumping my newly displayed ribbon of imaginary skills.

so we get out of the car, and all of a sudden, there's a traffic cop. female, short, orange-hair. riding one of those hover-scooter thingies that marvin the martian's planet-dweller's rides (which, i suppose, would make them martians?)

and she tells us that don't we know that cars are illegal?

and hands us two overhead sheets. clear plastic sheets which, let's face it, are NOT going to cover our asses. and we're supposed to sit on this, feet forward, and SCOOT along the ground. crazy bitch.

but we do it. and we go FAST! i got mine up to 40 miles an hour (put grease on the bottom... lard, cause i saw them adding water to lard fires on mythbusters last night... and lard is powerful). so i larded mine up, but when i got to my destination, which was a job interview, next door to a hospital, where the overhead superhighway ended, i got up, and the sheet of plastic had morphed (no doubt due to the friction of riding it so fast) into a tiny little golden reeces pb cup wrapper. which, honestly, seriously. i don't know how my butt stayed on it.

and i got to the interview and walked into the office, and then my real-life house heater kicked on, making it a little too uncomfortable in my room to remain sleeping.

i'm gonna have to close that vent a little more. i can't have something as benign a heat interrupting these massively entertaining dreams i have.

;)

musique nouveau

my favorite music right now....brought to you in part by my friends and family and npr's all songs considered podcast...even though i can't STAND Bob's voice...

grant lee phillips
josh pyke
mogwai
pete and the pirates
the bird and the bee
fleet foxes
presets
and of course... metric.

and whatever happens to be playing in my head upon waking... which, this morning, was "she works hard for the money"

do with that what you will.