Sure, lots of people get "Happy Birthday" sung to them. But how many people get "Happy Birthday" played for them on the trombone?
Mr. BrownA and I had a great time with Laurie the other night. We stuffed ourselves on hearty Peruvian food and great conversation. I suspected that Mr. BrownA and Laurie would hit it off, since they are both voracious devourers of obscure books. There was a lot of, "OMG, you're the only other person I know who has read that!"
It's nice when the folks you meet on Vox turn out to be as cool and as interesting in person as they are in their blogs. I wonder if anybody is ever disappointed in that way. You know: "man, that crankypants--she's so bland and cheerful in person. What a letdown. And Bobavid--he never even attempted to hold anything up to his crotch. And I think he was wearing unscented deodorant. WTF?"
My wonderful and talented older sister, who has been a knitting genius for as long as I can remember, sent me the bestest, most ridiculously perfect Christmas present: she made sweaters for the greyhounds!
Here is Boston, enjoying his dramatic coral snake patterned sweater:
She says she took the sweaters in to work (she's a neonatal ICU nurse) and all her co-workers want her to make them dog sweaters. She whipped these three up in about a month, modifying a pattern she found on the interwebs to fit the greyhound's unique shape (longdog is loooong). I think she should just quit her job and do this full time--she'd make shitloads of money and be way less stressed.
The great, the one and only Oscar Peterson died late last night at the age of 82. Words are inadequate to express his contribution to jazz and music. So I'll let Oscar himself do the talking. Goodbye, Oscar.
I love that Corelli's first name was Archangelo.
I'm posting all the movements for any die-hards (broken up into three files). But feel free to just listen to the first part.
(Note: this is more for the audio than any video...which is nothing more than the still photo).
An old friend of mine in Montreal, who grew up in an almost exclusively French-speaking part of the province, has a charmingly off-kilter grasp of English idioms. For example, he says "badlucky", instead of unlucky, and uses it as a noun as well as an adjective, as in: "Ai 'ad a badlucky yesterday."
It's been one of those badlucky weeks, peeps.
Tuesday night, we were driving back from some errands when--BLAMMITY BLAM!! We hit some debris in the road hidden by the snow and blew out BOTH tries on the driver's side. As a testament to the stability and tank-like construction of the Snaab, the car hardly flinched. Mr. BrownA (who was driving) was able to smoothly turn into the parking lot of a 24-hour box store that we were just passing. We called CAA (our AAA). We were given a wait time of 3-4 hours, since apparently call volume was very heavy. Sigh. We weren't very far from home, so I hopped in a cab while Mr. BrownA waited. At least he could go hang out in the warm, bright store. Fortunately, the accident also occurred not very far from the dealer shop where the car needed to be towed. He still didn't come home until almost 1 a.m., though.
The next day--yesterday, so Wednesday afternoon--he went to pick up the car, which had the two winter tires replaced. The impact was hard enough that it blew out the tire wall. Mr. BrownA went back to the scene to investigate: looks like we hit a huge pothole. There had been a "caution" sign put up by the city, but obviously somebody had hit that earlier because it was shattered all over the road. We probably hit some sharp wood, too, when we drove over it. It cost $500 to replace the two tires, but we might be able to recoup some costs from the city, since the situation in which the accident occurred allows us to put in a claim for damages.
However, that's not the end of it--not by a long shot. So-: Mr. BrownA picks up the car then proceeds to drive out to the barn for his 7:30 riding lesson. Meanwhile, I went straight to my physio appointment after work. That was hell in and of itself: it had started snowing quite heavily during the afternoon, and it took me almost 40 minutes in a bus for a trip that usually takes well under 10. After my physio appointment, around 7 p.m., I'm getting ready to leave and trudge home when I realized: CRAP!! I forgot my house key at home.
Great. It's cold, snowing heavily, I'm tired, sore, and locked out of my house. Oh well, I think: I'll go somewhere nearby and have a nice dinner, and Mr. BrownA can pick me up on his way home.
So I go to a local little Pho place. Nothing like a steaming bowl of Vietnamese noodle soup on a snowy winter's evening. It's even worth putting up with the mental Vietnamese Christmas music (imagine Asian-ified versions of Feliz Navidad and Mary's Boy Child sung in Vietnamese). I call the barn and get the coach, and ask for my husband.
"Um, he's not here. His car isn't here. I was just wondering what had happened to him."
WTF? So I call Mr. BrownA on his cell.
He's waiting at a pub halfway out into the countryside for CAA to come tow the car once more.
Again, I say to you: WTF?
The way he tells it, about 20 minutes after he left the dealer, the car suddenly started rattling violently. Every warning light on the dashboard came on. He lost all electrical, power brake, power steering, etc. He managed to limp to the closest civilized parking lot in the snowstorm, with the engine rapidly overheating. By this time it was 8 p.m.--he told me that CAA had said that they wouldn't be long; he could come pick me up soon. I was pretty skeptical, considering the weather, but ok, whatever.
By the time I finished my dinner, it was 9. I call him back. Still no sign of the tow truck. I didn't feel like just hanging out at this restaurant indefinitely, so I took a cab the few blocks to my office, since I had my passcard. We have a nice employees' lounge with couches, computers, tvs, magazines, etc. So it was a comfy and safe place to hang out while I waited.
By 10:30, there was STILL no sign of the tow truck. When Mr. BrownA called to find out what was taking so long, he was told that the wait time could possibly be several more hours.
"The car is dead," I pointed out. "Nobody is going to steal it. Can't you just leave the keys under the visor and tell them to just tow it to the dealer?"
Which is just what he did. His cab ride back into the city cost almost 60 bucks. But at least we weren't stuck waiting until god knows when.
Today, we found out that we need a NEW ENGINE. This when we've never had a minute's engine trouble ever. Apparently with all the heavy snow (more than 2 feet) we've had in the just the past couple of days, a huge amount of ice, slush and crap wound up getting in under the engine cover, clogging the engine and damaging both the coolant hose and the oil hose. I suspect that the impact we had with Mr. Pothole was the coup de grâce, but that would be difficult to prove.
At least we have insurance that will cover this, but there is still a $500 deductible.
The $1,000 in car-related costs, coupled with the $700 I am shelling out to get an MRI in a private clinic (oy--more on that later) suddenly means an extremely financially strained Christmas.
But I should also count my blessings:
1-Nobody got hurt in the car-related mishaps.
2-If I lived in the US, I could possibly be owing thousands and thousands for this knee injury by now.
Here is what I have discovered: people are much nicer and more courteous to you when you are limping around with a cane. They hold doors open for you. They offer to help carry your bags. A city bus driver stopped in the middle of the road to let me cross, because there was only one small gap between snowbanks where I could do so.
And when people aren't so nice, it's a good weapon. Case in point: as I was hobbling home this evening, I was crossing a side street on the green light. This asshole in a piece of shit red Hyundai hatchback comes tearing up the street and wedges his way across my path, almost knocking me over, just so he could turn right on the red light (which you are allowed to do in this city, but not when there are pedestrians in the crosswalk!) So what did I do?
As he drove off, I whacked the back of his crappy car as hard as I could with my cane. Oh yes, I did.
It felt gooood.
I am *so* going to be one of those uppity, belligerent little old ladies.
Since all the peeps have been posting Xmas tunes, here's my contribution. Who could forget this classic? And the outfits! Oh my Lord, indeed!
Santa's chopper shot up over slum
Tue Dec 18, 2007 10:33am EST
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Not even Santa Claus is safe as the violent Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro celebrates the Christmas season.
Drug traffickers in a Rio slum opened fire on a helicopter carrying a Santa to a children's party, apparently mistaking it for a police helicopter, police said Tuesday.
"They thought it was a police operation and started shooting. Luckily, nobody was hurt," a police official said.
The helicopter had to return to its base after the attack. Two bullet holes were found in its fuselage.
Police said the pilot, contracted to take an actor dressed as Santa to the party in the Nova Mare slum, was flying over the neighboring Vila Joao shantytown when it was fired upon on Sunday.
Santa later returned to Nova Mare by car to distribute Christmas presents.
Most of Rio's 700-plus slums are controlled by drug traffickers and are not regularly patrolled by police, who instead go into the slums in military-style raids, often using helicopters and armored vehicles.
(Reporting by Andrei Khalip; Editing by Bill Trott)
I am a prisoner inside my house.
We got almost 40 cm. of snow in yesterday's storm. The main streets were plowed, but not the sidewalks (fuck pedestrians, right?) . Also, the massive snowbanks have not been cleared away, which means that if you're on the sidewalk and want to cross the street at any point, including at corners, you have to scale a mini-Everest of rock hard snow and ice taller than your head. Needless to say, with my knee, this is impossible and even dangerous. Two weeks ago we had half as much snow and I still wound up stumbling and falling, hurting my knee again. So even though I live only five blocks from work, and should therefore, out of all my coworkers, be able to make it in no matter the weather, I had to work from home today. If they haven't begun clearing the six-foot high snow mountains, I will have to do the same tomorrow. I have a ton of meetings and shit to take care of before the holidays and it's really stressing me out. Plus I haven't been outside my door in 48 hours and I am starting to get cabin fever.
