Wedding Portrait

I WANT SPINACH!!

This is getting ridiculous.

I was at Subway, getting a turkey & bacon sandwich, cause I forgot to pack a lunch (What I really wanted was a Chili's turkey sandwich, but I didn't have that much time or money to spend. Turned out the Subway sammich was much better!) Anyway, I was just thinking how much better it would be with spinach instead of lettuce - and better for me - when I saw the ever-present sign saying that they are not serving spinach due to the recent blah blah blah...

We go anyplace with a salad bar - I love spinach salad - but noooo, I have to settle for Romaine. On our honeymoon, we went to an Italian place and I ordered Eggplant Rollantini - eggplant stuffed with spinach and ricotta - and they couldn't do it.

Nothing like complete unavailability to make you crave something, eh?

I was thinking this would be just a temporary shortage, until all the iffy produce was out of circulation and they could get a new batch into the stores - a minor annoyance. But when I mentioned that to my husband he said they have to grow a whole new crop, and there probably won't be any more spinach until next year! Apparently, nobody's buying it anymore (stores, restaurants, etc.) so even the stuff that isn't suspect is being tilled under because there's no market for it right now.

Wish somebody would sell some of it to me.

It's Christmas!!

Ok, so it's not exactly Christmas...it's the first week of October. But Christmas comes very early when you work in retail, and at Pier 1 it began this week.

My husband Ken is adamant that no celebration of Christmas should take place before Thanksgiving, and that's how I've always felt too - after all, my birthday is at Thanksgiving, and I've never been willing to have my birthday skipped over in favor of the next, biggest & brightest holiday. But it's hard not to get excited when you're in the midst of preparations, early though they may be, and everything is so pretty and shiny and colorful.

I spent the afternoon hanging ornaments, and arranging pretty things by color groups. We have funny little gold-mesh Christmas trees that look like they're dancing, and Snowmen and Santa Clauses that are shaped like long, bendy teardrops, fat on the bottom, skinny on top. There are cool angels that look like they came straight out of a Bible story, with robes and scarves all draped and tied on one side, and their heads covered.

There are other things as well, that I'm not so jazzed about: I don't know about the bronze- and silver-lame teddy bears. And, as usual, the Pier's choice of Christmas colors leaves me a bit baffled. This year it's pink/red/white, turquoise/lime green/silver, and warm metallics (gold, copper, and bronze.) My Christmas tree doesn't have a color scheme, exactly, but it tends to look like it got rolled through a toy factory on its way to my living room - lots of primary colors. No pink. I like gold stars and silver snowflakes, and anything striped like a candy cane. Not a lot of that at P1 this year, but that's okay. I'm sure I'll find something to add, and I haven't even seen this year's toys - I hope they're good, cause I have lots of kids to shop for now!

43 Things

I've made a list of 43 things I want to do in my lifetime. If you look over to the left and scroll down some, it's there.

There's this really neat site that I found recently, called 43 Things, and that's its whole purpose - to allow people to list some of the things they want to accomplish. It tells you how many other people have the same goal, and sometimes you're the only one. You can also do 43 places you want to go, people you want to meet, etc.

When you've done one of your 43 things, you can check it off the list and add something new, or you look at others' lists and tell them "I've done that!" Or you can keep a mini-journal there of your progress and see how other people are doing with the same goal. You can tell it to remind you in a certain amount of time, and your future self gets an email from your past self asking how it's going.

Why 43? I don't know. My friend Angela has a similar list of "1001 Things to do in 101 Days." 43 seemed like a lot when I first started, but then I began to worry about running out of room on my list. They aren't all major life goals; some of them are simply whims that I've had for a while, or current projects that I want to be sure to finish. But it's fun to get it all in one place where you can look it over often, and to see what goals you have in common with other people.

It's gotta be a code...

Most people believe that the gentle umbrella often satiates the football team of another ocean, but they need to remember how seldom the geosynchronous light bulb takes a coffee break. If the cheese wheel sanitizes a spider, then an umbrella daydreams.

A fundraiser goes deep sea fishing with the bowling ball over a briar patch, or a roller coaster from another light bulb buries the geosynchronous. Another girl scout related to a photon starts reminiscing about lost glory, and the shabby hole puncher writes a love letter to a defendant.

If another industrial complex trades baseball cards with the federal pig pen, then the line dancer nearest a grizzly bear hesitates. Some single-handledly worldly pork chop reads a magazine, and the diskette hides; however, a mysterious fairy competes with the college-educated photon.

Furthermore, an unusually spartan light bulb gets stinking drunk, an earring pours freezing cold water on a soggy tornado, and a traffic light gives a pink slip to a dust bunny.

And now, here it is...your moment of Zen

4 a.m.

If you can handle it, even just once, go for a drive sometime at around 4a.m. Watch your town sleep. Find out how different it can look.

There's a fairly specific window - up until about 3a.m. you still have the late-night bar-crawlers, out looking for something to eat after last call; after 5 people start stirring, getting up & getting out (yes, it's hard to believe if you're not one of those people, but you'd be surprised how many lighted windows I see after 5a.m.)

At 4 o'clock everything is very still. Traffic lights are blinking, morning radio isn't on yet, and one out of every three cars you pass will be a cop. Wendy's and Taco Bell are closed. Businesses have their overnight lights on - those lights that, for whatever reason, never get turned off. At the State Bank on 66th, there's an office in the back that always has the light on. There are ad posters, and some clothes hanging inside - promo stuff? - but I've never seen anybody in there...probably because it's 4 in the morning.

Anyone you happen to run into at that hour will be surprised to see you.

Here in Lubbock, in the middle of the night, the local ducks leave their ponds and wander the streets. I've come across ducks in the weirdest places...

If you stay out until 6, McDonald's and the grocery stores start to open, and people start looking outside to see if the paper's there. Breakfast options abound, because everything in the bakeries is first-thing-in-the-morning fresh, and there's usually a pot of just-brewed coffee somewhere.

If you're still out & about after that, and it's a weekend, you can probably find a few garage sales and get the good early-bird items.

Or you can do what I'm about to do - go home and go back to sleep.

Announcement

http://www.kenandsteph2006.com

The Half-Blood Prince

Who is the Half-Blood Prince? Easy. I figured that out in the first quarter of the book.

What I still can't believe is how the dumb book ended.

I think this is definitely the best Harry Potter book yet. Up till now, Goblet Of Fire has been my favorite, and this one is as good, if not better - funny, witty, light-hearted even while dealing with the deadly issues of school, war, and teenagers in love. I read it in twelve hours, and loved it - except for the last two chapters.

How could she???

Stupid thing is, I think we all knew something like this was going to have to happen sooner or later. And if it had to had to happen, then it was done with all possible flair and grace. But I still can't believe it really ended like that...

Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince does indeed provide a lot of answers to things we've been wondering about for a while now. But it raises as many new questions, and leaves a lot of things up in the air.

Was the locket really destroyed, or is it still out there? Who is R.A.B.? (My guess is Regellus Black) Was that really McGonagall talking of closing Hogwarts? Is Snape still playing at some weird, two-sided game, or was what he did really real? Will Harry go back to Hogwarts for his last term, and if not, what's in store for him? And when are Ron and Hermione ever going to come to their senses and get together?? What happened to Dumbledore? - that couldn't have been real, it just couldn't. It was too easy, too simple - Dumbledore had to've known, figured out some double-trick - something, something, isn't what it seems. It can't be...

Ms. Rowling, you better write that next book fast! Please, please, I don't think I can wait another two and a half years.

This post is dedicated to Jessica, Lindsay, Monica Q. and Shari - all my fellow Harry Potter fanatics.

If I Had A Band

Here are some ideas for what I'd like to call my band if I had one,
and what the title of the first album might be:

Drowned Wednesday - Don't Kill Kenny

Poppaveda - Blue Pearls

1415 - Going On Seventeen

Rudgepot - Moments Of Dyslexia

And if I sang by myself:

Halaylah - Call Me Hal