When In Doubt, Talk About the Weather

 

Sorry, but I cannot get my head around the concept of ‘first date’ at this stage in my life. Might as well ask me to describe my first steps, or how I’m going to react when pigs fly.

Why must pauses be considered awkward? I like it when people shut up for five minutes.

One day at work a man from Great Britain (he wasn’t more specific than that) told me that he’d never been anyplace before where people were so obsessed with discussing the weather. I guess if you feel the need to fill up the silence with inane chatter that’s as safe a topic as any. (Or maybe not.)

I do love a good rain storm.

(Not me. Deathly afraid of thunder and lightning.)

Hate the cold and the snow though, and these bulky winter clothes.

(Oh, winter is my favourite season!)

I prefer the hot summer sun – I’d spend every day at the beach if I could!

(I get a terrible rash from the sun. My skin burns. Have to avoid it.)

Autumn is nice. All the colors.

(Depressing. Everything dies.)

This is never going to work out.

(Nope.)

Huh. At last we agree.

…..Awkward pause…..

How do you feel about bowling?

(GAG!)

Date abruptly ends.

A Short Little Time Waster

 

Ooooohhh – it’s list time again!

Just for fun I googled “I waste” to see what other people think they’re wasting, and the most interesting thing that came up was “I waste The Buddah with my crossbow.” Funny, but not all that helpful.

Every day I suppose I waste all the usual things that we’re careless with:

1. Time

2. Energy

3. Food

4. Money

5. Gas

6. Water

7. Non-renewable resources

8. Coffee. I brew a full pot and only drink half of it.

9. My beautiful mind

10 My extraordinary life

This is like playing family feud. Did I get all the top answers? The real question here should be

“Why do we think these things have been WASTED?”

Every moment of every day is a learning experience, and therefore nothing is ever wasted because everything contributes to something else. In a big round vicious wasteful circle.

So get over yourself, daydream, take the bus, recycle. And have yourself a lovely wasteful day.

Playlist for W.

Because W. is not a lover of love songs and is quite oblivious to lyrics, I’ve chosen mostly instrumentals.

One time he said to me – hey! That’s our song!  (Cecilia, you’re breaking my heart, You’re shaking my confidence daily…..I get up to wash my face

When I come back to bed Someone’s taken my place…)

THAT’S our song? Have you listened to the words? And of course he hadn’t, he just liked the beat. And maybe we’d danced to it at some point in our relationship and that’s what stuck in his mind about it.   I asked him if we could play “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with” at our wedding, and he said Sure, whatever you want.

So my point is, agonizing over the exact sentimental content is a waste of time in this case. Best just give him what he likes.

 

The Best Instrumentals by Santana

He LOVES Santana.

Free Fall by Jesse Cook

I’ve been subjected to a lot of Jesse Cook guitar, and it’s very good but please put on some head phones after hour 15.

Unbreak My Heart by Il Divo

Yes, there are lyrics, but even if he was listening to them they’re in a language he doesn’t understand so it’s all good.

A Movie From My Life

There will be no movie of my life. Maybe a 10 minute slide show. Hopefully a few people could stay awake for that.

I picked this one because it’s a lot like an ‘episode’ in my life. The one where my future mother in law decided to plan my wedding for me. I never thought at the time that it might be a way to get us to call the whole thing off. But it could have worked out that way.

I watched this movie with a friend who found it hilariously funny, but mostly it just made me want to kill Jane Fonda.

Three Sheets to the Wind

Envy’s a coal comes hissing hot from Hell.

(Oh yeah? Well that’s a cliché, and it’s just SO yesterday’s topic.)

Yeah, but I’m feeling it. I gotta ask, where did you get that righteous toilet seat? The one with the manatees on it? Man. I want one so bad.

(Texas.)

Get out.

(I’m serious.)

Sweet. Hey, I’ve been wondering. Why can’t you buy a Texas Mickey in Texas?

(Same reason you can’t buy a manatee toilet seat in Canada.)

That makes sense.

(No it doesn’t.)

You’re right, it doesn’t.

(We shouldn’t have tried to drink the whole three litres.)

That’s 101 ounces in Texas, man. That much whiskey can make you see manatees in the damnedest places.

(Not to mention wicked envy.)

Did that make sense?

(Nope.)

I didn’t think so.

Difficult to Imagine

The table topic question for today:

how

will our culture

change in the

next 100 years

Who decides where the stupid breaks are in these questions with no question marks, and how do they determine the way the words will line up?  I find that weird, and I don’t know why.  And that’s just some introductory blather to delay having to actually answer this question, because it’s a hard one.

All I can say for sure is that there will be a definite GLOBAL culture.  We’re getting more and more mixed up all the time. We move all over the place and we can travel anywhere in the world.   Traditions are not so ingrained because we allow ourselves to experience and adopt whatever we want from cultures that are different from our own.  And then we incorporate parts of those traditions into our own, with variations. We’re more willing to study and understand our human differences, and that will make us realize how much we are basically all the same.   I think people will be much more open to change, and willing to do new things.  Thinking will be on the lines of – okay, that worked then, but now perhaps this will work better – and we’ll be better able to anticipate the consequences of our actions and make informed decisions and agree for the benefit of the majority, and no one’s ultimate detriment.  We will all have access to unlimited knowledge.  There will be no reason and no excuse for ignorance.

Well, in a perfect world that would all be true.  Maybe our world won’t even be around in another 100 years.  We seem to be hell-bent on obliterating it completely.   If there are wars, I hope they’re virtual ones, fought on computer screens for points. I hope we don’t lose the ability to actually speak to each other, and that all this mad texting is just a phase.  I hope we learn tolerance and acceptance and how to love unconditionally,  and what we have to do to keep our world at peace.

And if we don’t get it right and the earth blows up, oh well.  Catch you later in another dimension.

Safe Vs. Sorry

If you’re expecting some kind of breath taking story involving a decision about skiing in an off-limits avalanche zone….sorry, this isn’t it.

Family ski trips for us were an awesome thing as long as nobody tried to kill themselves. I was all about traversing a hill, taking my time, enjoying the scenery, and getting back to the parking lot at the end of the day with no broken limbs. I don’t know what my kids did all day, once they got to the point where it was too embarrassing for them to be seen skiing with their parents. I suspect they checked out a lot of the black diamond runs, but also took an extraordinary number of hot chocolate breaks with their friends.

W. was a whole other story. He wanted to get his money’s worth I guess and to him that meant ripping down the hills and up the lifts at rocket speed over and over again from the minute the lifts opened up in the morning. If there’d been a contest to be the absolute last person off the hill, he’d have won it many times over. And that’s no doubt why he was a brilliant skier who could go anywhere always looking all skilled and fantastic. And that’s also why we rarely skied together, because I was so much less of a fanatic, and our ideas of “fun” were polar opposites in that sport.

We did try occasionally to do a run or two together. I remember in particular the day W. decided I needed to challenge myself beyond the ho-hum intermediate runs. I don’t know why he suddenly wanted to put my life in danger, or why I agreed to do it, but there we were at the top of a horrible mogul run. And there he went zipping down four or five turns before stopping to look back for me. I was still standing there contemplating the steepness of the incline, and looking for a route, thinking I might just side-slip the whole stupid hill. Safe and boring. It’s how I ski.

W. started to give me what I’m sure was probably excellent advice that I had no intention of listening to when one of his skis pointed east as the other began to head west. He flailed. For a few seconds he struggled. And then he did the most spectacular face plant I’ve ever seen.

So this is where the safe rather than sorry part comes in. In the time it took him to get himself straightened around and brushed off and finished with the expletives, I was able to compose myself and rearrange my features into an expression which I hoped looked sympathetic. No laughing going on here, not even a smirk. Just loving spousal concern for your safety, that’s all I’m feeling. Uh huh. I took the scowling glare like a pro. Because it was of course all my fault that he’d turned around to help me. Would NOT have happened otherwise. I assured him that yes, I’d be fine, he could go on ahead.

He turned around and took off down the rest of the moguls like he had something to prove to them. Only then was it safe to let myself laugh hysterically, which I did pretty much all the way to the bottom of the hill, stopping every so often to wipe the tears off my face. Some of those were no doubt for having forgotten my camera that day. No worries though, that image (how it looks when the mighty have fallen) is firmly planted in my brain forever.

The Weirdest Food I’ve Ever Eaten

Lutefisk!

The first Christmas I spent with my husband’s family (his mom is Swedish and has Norwegian friends) this dish was part of the festive meal. It was a stinking, repulsive looking gelatinous blob about which one of the quests was downright rapturous. He liked to eat the leftover lutefisk as a sandwich filling on white bread with sliced onions. I thought he was kidding, but later I saw him make that and actually eat it. It was all I could do to control my gag reflex when I succumbed to everyone’s encouragement to ‘try just a little bit’.

It was disgusting.

This quote from Garrison Keillor’s book “Pontoon” says it best:

“Lutefisk is cod that has been dried in a lye solution. It looks like the desiccated cadavers of squirrels run over by trucks, but after it is soaked and reconstituted and the lye is washed out and it’s cooked, it looks more fish-related, though with lutefisk, the window of success is small. It can be tasty, but the statistics aren’t on your side. It is the hereditary delicacy of Swedes and Norwegians who serve it around the holidays, in memory of their ancestors, who ate it because they were poor. Most lutefisk is not edible by normal people. It is reminiscent of the afterbirth of a dog or the world’s largest chunk of phlegm.”

Nope. Won’t be eating that again.

Three Sing-Along Songs

La la la la…. Loooooove those sappy love songs…..

Poetry Man by Phoebe Snow

Ooooo, ya ya ya Ooooo, ya

You make me laugh
‘Cause your eyes they light the night
They look right through me, la, la, la la
You bashful boy
You’re hiding something sweet
Please give it to me, yeah
Ooh, oh, talk to me some more
You don’t have to go
You’re the Poetry Man
You make things all right, ya, ya

Ooooo, ya ya ya  Ooooo, ya
You are a genie
And all I ask for is your smile
Each time I rub the lamp, la, la, la la
When I am with you
I have a giggling teen-age crush
Then I’m a sultry vamp, ya

Talk to me some more
You don’t have to go
You’re the Poetry Man
You make things all right
ya ya

Etta James by At Last

 At last, my love has come along
My lonely days are over
And life is like a song
Oh, yeah, at last
The skies above are blue
My heart was wrapped up in clover
The night I looked at you
I found a dream that I could speak to
A dream that I can call my own
I found a thrill to rest my cheek to
A thrill that I have never known
Oh, yeah when you smiled, you smiled
Oh, and then the spell was cast
And here we are in heaven
For you are mine
At last

Songbird by Eva Cassidy

 For you there’ll be no crying
For you the sun will be shining
Cause I feel that when I’m with you
It’s alright, I know it’s right

And the songbirds keep singing
Like they know the score
And I love you, I love you, I love you
Like never before

To you, I would give the world
To you, I’d never be cold
Cause I feel that when I’m with you
It’s alright, I know it’s right

Naming the Boat

Pontoon Boat (Photo credit: phil_g)

The table topic for today is:  if you owned a boat what name would you choose for it.

I totally forgot, it already has a name.  Omayja called it the GAZEE-Boat.  I think that’s a keeper.

Going up the river on the Gazee.  Who would not want to do that?  😀