Sunday, November 6, 2011

Old Friends

For the record, I just have to post something in order to satisfy the requirements of NaBloPoMo.

See -- I could just publish that sentence above and I'd be good to go. So perhaps you'll forgive me for giving you someone else's story today.

I first heard about Tarra and Bella a few years ago on my beloved CBS Sunday Morning:



I love Steve Hartman's final words...

"They harbor no fears, no secrets, no prejudices. Just two living creatures who somehow managed to look past their immense differences.

Take a good look at this couple, America. Take a good look, world. If they can do it - what's our excuse?"

The video would make the internet rounds on occasion and I'd always watch it and smile first and then cry.

Unfortunately I awoke this morning and learned of Bella's passing. I assumed it was from old age and while I was sad for Tarra, I figured an elephant who befriends a dog rather than another long-living elephant risks losing her companion prematurely.

I should have known these two sweet creatures weren't done making me cry.

CBS News reports: Last week, sanctuary workers found Bella's body. By all indications she'd been attacked by coyotes. Whether Tarra witnessed it, tried to intervene or was too late - no one knows. All they do know is that where they found Bella is not where she was attacked.

"When I looked around and saw there was no signs of an attack here. No blood, no tufts of hair, nothing," said director of elephant husbandry, Steve Smith. "And Tarra, on the underside of her trunk, had blood - as if she picked up the body.

Tarra moved her?

"Tarra moved her," Smith said.

Steve's theory is Tarra carried Bella possibly a mile or more to bring her home.

Whether it really happened that way or not, no one doubts Tarra was that devoted.

"There's nothing we can do to take away her pain," said Atkinson. "The only ones who can help now are the elephants. And that is already happening."

Atkinson said the elephants are "stepping in and stepping up." He said they're spending more time with Tarra and being extra nice - making gestures like giving her a portion of their food.

Of course, anyone who's lost a dog knows you can't eat your way out of the grief - as much we might try -- but it's still nice to know at least Tarra's not alone in this.

It's also nice to see that compassion is much more than just human.


It bears repeating...

"Take a good look at this couple, America. Take a good look, world. If they can do it - what's our excuse?"

Saturday, November 5, 2011

That's Why Sometimes I Love Thoughts... 'Cause They're Just Yours

Thanks to Girlfriend's sweet personality and gorgeous looks, we found ourselves invited into the VIP section of the last ODU (Old Dominon University, for those of you not in the know) home football game today. Yours truly had season tickets, but thanks to some other obligations, this was the first game I had attended this year. What a way to go out!! Thanks to our hostess' connections, we enjoyed free food and many a free beer throughout the game. And thanks to our seats two rows behind the goal post, I actually SAW part of the sporting event, which is a miracle in itself...

Going into the game, I had in the back of my mind that I needed to behave myself to some extent. As inappropriate as I can be, I can also pull myself together when need be. If I wanted to be invited back to the VIP section in the future, I should probably toe the line...

Things were going smoothly enough and we were in the restaurant area before the game (who knew there was a restaurant area?!) when everyone realized the marching band was on the field and they were playing the National Anthem. People starting popping up from their chairs, chatter ceased, and all faced the field from our enclosed area of the end zone. We could hear the faint melody of the anthem from the opened doors until someone made the executive decision to close them. And then we all stood there, some with hands on hearts, facing the field and the flag, listening to the very loud color commentary of whatever football game was on the flat screen TV in the VIP lounge. We could not hear a THING from outside. So we all stood there in deep pride, solemnity, and utter silence as the announcer on the TV yelled out names and plays LOUDLY.

And one of us began to giggle.

And one of us noticed her Girlfriend was giggling.

And one of us realized she had to PULL HERSELF TOGETHER lest she never be invited back to the VIP section!!!! But it was SO TEMPTING to just LOSE IT at that moment.

It was sheer ridiculousness. No one could hear the band. We had NO IDEA where they were in the anthem. I finally harkened back to my marching band days and set my sights on the conductor in an attempt to figure out where they were in the song. But damned if we didn't all clap in the appropriate place at the end.

We Americans are smart-like when you can hold our attention for more than 30 seconds...

Congratulations to ODU on their 42-28 win over Richmond and thanks for the hospitality! I'm totally spoiled now...

Oh, and as for the title of this here blog? I was just lamenting the need for a blog topic to Girlfriend and that was her response. How could I not love her?


Friday, November 4, 2011

Danke Schoen

Girlfriend and I are training for a half marathon. That's taking place in a week. For which training started approximately one day ago. :/

Now Girlfriend appears to be a natural runner and an extreme oddity -- someone who actually enjoys running -- so this almost complete lack of training probably won't affect her much. She'll have a great run and a great race (that's code for how long it takes to finish), while yours truly will be sucking wind and eventually enjoying a long stroll, forgetting that she's supposed to be running a race...

Anyhoo, we were running yesterday and while Girlfriend was running at a chipper little pace, I was running through quicksand while wearing concrete boots. Knowing I wouldn't make it all the way through our course before dark, I turned around and decided to catch her on the back side of the loop. And I did. Rather, I saw her zip by on the perpendicular while I was about two blocks away. So I Ferris Buellered my way through a wooded area, a school, and a library before finally catching up with her.

Once my labored breathing subsided and I regained the ability to speak, I made my Bueller reference and realized she didn't understand -- she had never seen the movie.

So you know what we're doing right now, dontcha?

"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

Have truer words ever been said?

Danke schoen, Ferris Bueller. Danke schoen, John Hughes.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Ma Bell, Pa Jobs

I’m in love. I was already in love, but I had no idea it could be like this. I’m also a procrastinator. So falling in love with my newly-activated iPhone 4S is downright dangerous. I’ve been happily using a 3Gs for over two years, but she was becoming a little sluggish. She’d lag as I bounced from Words With Friends to texting to Hanging With Friends to Facebook. I’d find my brain working a few steps ahead and figured that couldn’t be a good sign for the phone’s processing speed. I lamented my inability to zoom in and obtain clear photos. I found a disgusting layer of oil on the back of the phone, underneath the rubber Otter Box protective covering.

That wasn’t really the phone’s fault.

And now I have this beauty in my hands. She’s crystal clear and super-fast and…

I’m wasting a tremendous amount of time on her! I activated the phone last night and stayed up well past my bedtime. This morning I discovered the snooze function on the alarm worked very well and proceeded to hit it every 9 minutes for two hours. Then I got lost in absolutely nothing interesting for a few more hours – some while sitting on my toilet seat, which resulted in two numb legs and a deep ring impression on my fat ass – and had to force myself to

put.
the.
phone.
down.

in order to shower and finally get to work. Thank goodness I’ll be in the lab the rest of the day and will have her tucked away safely in a drawer.

I hope she’ll be ok in there. It’s so dark and cold.

Sweet dreams, little [blank].

I need a name for her. My first iPhone was named Mildred; Millie for short. I thought about Millie 2, which made me then consider Audrey 2, from Little Shop of Horrors. But naming my beloved new toy after a man-eating plant seems ill-advised.

Any suggestions?

In the meantime…

If you recall, I mentioned yesterday that one of my coworkers is Scott Adams, the author of the comic strip, Dilbert.

It appears one of my dear readers may be the author of one of my fave strips, Pearls Before Swine. The evidence:


Wednesday, November 2, 2011

A Soupcon of Soup's On

I heart when the blogs write themselves. Especially during NaBloPoMo. What I heart even more is when one of my friends writes the blog for me!

Hold that thought…

Some of us at work are convinced that Scott Adams is in fact one of our coworkers. If you remember, I told you yesterday that the Big Bosses are Big Brothering our internet access – basically, they’re keeping track of who’s online, what sites we’re visiting, and how long we’re online. After announcing this new activity, they then said in the same breath that we should enjoy increased internet speeds thanks to the reduced traffic.

Irony, thy name is IT.

Scott Adams, thy name is coworker:



Back to my friend-induced blog post…

Bert emailed me a few weeks back to announce the arrival of fire, wine, and soup season in New Jersey and to alert me to a certain opera singer’s voice being used in a Bertolli commercial. The commercial can be seen here:

Bertolli Soup Opera

My affinity for one of the singers can be explained here:

The Opera Singer

Be sure to read the comments afterwards for one of life’s happy little coincidences.

And now, we’re done with NaBloPoMo Day 2. Thanks, Bert!

To be continued…

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

And Then...

Huzzah!! Happy NaBloPoMo Day, my friends!!

That’s all I’ve got.

And you know what? It counts. :)

For those of you not in the know, today is not only the first day of November and All Saint’s Day (shouldn’t that be All Saints’ Day?!); it’s also the first day of National Blog Posting Month, better known as the questionably-catchy, “NaBloPoMo.”

The goal of NaBloPoMo is to post a blog entry every day in November. Seems easy enough, yes? I can tell you from experience that it’s a little more nerve-racking than one would think. I have an alarm set on my Outlook calendar to remind me to write every day. I have an alarm set in my phone to remind me to write every day. What I don’t have is an endless list of interesting topics to write about. And now thanks to a Big Brother move at work, I can’t surf the internet looking for ideas. I can’t find cute/funny/disturbing pics and/or videos to help support my ramblings. I have to fit this exercise into my free time when I already have trouble working exercise into my free time…

So why do it, you ask? Because I might win a prize!! Yes, it’s true. The folks that started this nonsense scan the participants’ blogs to see if they’ve written every day and then throw the names into a virtual hat and some lucky bloggers are selected to win prizes. Of no significance. I’m pretty sure someone won a spider ring last year.

So why do it, you ask?

I don’t rightly know. Writely know?

Well that’s enough of that. And really, I could stop right now. Write now.

But I shan’t.

You can’t make me. All you can do is stop reading.

Guess it’s just me and Bert now….

So Bert, I took The Girlfriend up to DC to see Sting this past Saturday. I know!

But first we had to run a 10K that I was ill-prepared for. And then we had to skip the beers and chili we so rightfully (writefully? Please make it stop.) deserved after the race because we were pressed for time. And then we had to get caught in a frigid torrential downpour as we walked over a mile back to our car. And then just when the car was packed up and we were ready to go, we had to discover that my dear old dog SH*T THE SH*T OF ALL SH*TS on the front passenger seat of my car (!!!) and I had to clean it up fast enough so that Girlfriend wouldn’t back out of the trip. And then we had to pull a U-turn on a one way street and travel the wrong way down the one way street into a major intersection in order to avoid a lake that had formed across the one way street. And then we had to drive out to West Bumblef*ck to drop off the pooping machine at the home of the two kindest people on the planet who agreed to watch her so I could take Girlfriend up to see STING in DC! And then we had to hurry ourselves to DC in the middle of an October snowstorm. And then we had to sit in separate seats on opposite sides of the theater because the concert sold out in 30 seconds and yours truly could only find individual seats, but wanted Girlfriend to see one of her favorite singers so much that sitting separately seemed like a small price to pay. And then I had to beg and plead with an usher to let me sit with Girlfriend when the single seats on either side of her remained empty after the show started. And then I shuffled back to my seat to watch the concert alone and to beg the Asian woman sitting two seats over who was devastated that Girlfriend and I couldn’t sit together to PLEASE get up off the floor and return to her seat and that Yes, I realize if you sit on the steps there’s room for Girlfriend in your seat and that's unbelievably kind of you, but the usher won’t let her up here without a ticket!! And no, thank you, I don’t want any trail mix right now… And then I was finally able to sneak up to Girlfriend’s seat and see how happy she was and we were finally able to hold hands and watch The Sting for a couple songs. And then we stopped by the White House which was temporarily orange to say Hi to the Prez and I almost lost Girlfriend to the Occupy DC tent city. And then we hiked a mile-and-a-half in the freezing cold up to the Shake Shack and stumbled upon what looked like a mob of hungry hamburger eaters but was really a huge Halloween celebration outside the Shake Shack. And then we ate our delicious organic beef cheeseburgers and drank our divine chocolate shakes and then we hopped in a cab back to our hotel.

And then my head hit the pillow and I looked at Girlfriend and I thought about how very thankful I was and how this was the best day and the best trip I had ever been on. And since I had been on all the other trips I had gone on and they weren’t all that wonderful (please see Rome If You Want To, Rome Around the World), the only new variable I could identify was Girlfriend.

And then I smiled.

And then I probably snored.

Until tomorrow, Bert.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

You're Once, Twice, Three Times a Random

Random 1:

I wonder where he stands on gravity and the earth being round... Ladies and gentlemen, Governor Rick Perry in Parade magazine:

"Q. Governor, do you believe that President Barack Obama was born in the United States?

A. I have no reason to think otherwise.

Q. That’s not a definitive, “Yes, I believe he”—

A. Well, I don’t have a definitive answer, because he’s never seen my birth certificate.

Q. But you’ve seen his.

A. I don’t know. Have I?

Q. You don’t believe what’s been released?

A. I don’t know. I had dinner with Donald Trump the other night.

Q. And?

A. That came up.

Q. And he said?

A. He doesn’t think it’s real.

Q. And you said?

A. I don’t have any idea. It doesn’t matter. He’s the president of the United States. He’s elected. It’s a distractive issue."

You had dinner with Donald Trump -- and I presume, his HAIR -- and you find the "debate" over the existence of President Obama's birth certificate a distraction?!

Do you think Trump just stared dreamily at Perry's perfect pate all through dinner? "I used to be the richest man alive and still I was unhappy. Why, oh why, can't I have hair like that?!"

Random 2:


For my Westie friend, Michele:


McDonald's McRubber Sandwich (McRib to some) has returned for a limited time. Get yours through November 14th. Not available at all locations. GACK.

Random 3:


Lars Ulrich of Metallica admits in the October 24th Newsweek that his biggest mistake was saying, "No." to Quentin Tarantino's request to choreograph his "Kill Bill" fight scenes to Metallica songs, including "Enter Sandman."

DUDE.

My best friend, Lauren, did that back in the early 90s to snippets of "violent" Saturday morning cartoons. All perfectly edited and timed. DAH dah dah dah DAH dah DAH dah dah dah dah dahhhhh. It was brilliant. I think of it whenever I hear "Enter Sandman." Laur, you should call Quentin and see if you can give him some ideas. :)

Off to never never land...
HWAH!!

Monday, October 24, 2011

Boo!




"Actor Patrick Swayze's wax figure is unveiled at Madame Tussauds in Hollywood, Calif., on Tuesday, Oct. 18."

He haunts me still.......

Thursday, October 20, 2011

When It's Time to Change

You've got to rearrange...who you are and what your blog looks like!

Shalalalalalalalala...shalalalala!

Of the 12 website choices on my browser's pull down menu, my blog wasn't one of them. You know what that means... I'm a total blogging slackass!

As usual, there's been mucho mucho stuffo going on, but I haven't felt compelled to share it with y'all. I know, I feel bad about that. But I've got to keep some things private, for various reasons. Anyone who knows my penchant for posting my every move on faceboook will find this statement somewhat startling. :)

But for you particularly curious folks, I'm a pretty happy camper. Just floating the usual mundane questions of who am I, why am I here, what's my passion, what will make me leap out of bed in the morning, how do I make a living doing something I love, just what IS that thing on my yellow shirt, and why are even the easiest relationships so difficult at times?

These seem like Magic 8 Ball questions, don't they?

ANSWER HAZY. TRY AGAIN LATER.

I hope you're all happy and healthy. If you've become wealthy and wise, I'd gladly take a little of both, if you're sharing.

To be continued, my dear friends.................

Wednesday, October 19, 2011