Just Jazzy 320

Live gently upon this earth and leave nothing behind but your footprints in the sand.

Jazzy looks like she’s had a little too much sun, or needs to stop experimenting with the pancake makeup.  I’m sure it’s not too much wine.  Because that isn’t possible.

Planning Ahead

Odd

One Liner Wednesday:  It’s Not What You Think

“You don’t get explanations in real life. You just get moments that are absolutely, utterly, inexplicably odd.”
― Neil Gaiman

Coffee and Other Funny Things

We are running low on the Tassimo coffees I like so I am slowly using up the random pods I can’t remember buying and which they probably don’t even make anymore.  That’s how old they are.  Today I am enjoying a cup of Gevalia Caramel Espresso to which I have added extra water, French vanilla sugar-reduced cream and a dash of Truvia.  It tastes like pancake syrup.

And if you don’t think that’s funny, wait until you see what else my caffeinated brain has found for you.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Happy Sunday.

Deep Thoughts on a Shopping Bag

It’s the attention to little details that make shopping at Chapters such a delight for people like me who love this kind of thing.  If there must be a shopping bag, why not make it say something wonderful?  I forgot to take a reusable bag with me and I was walking, so I reluctantly said yes to a bag, but happily this one will NOT go directly into the recycle bin along with my guilt about the environment.  I will use it again, because you don’t just recycle John Keats.

Not in any way trying to out-do Keats, and everything he mentions in this quote is lovely, but I would like to change the sentiment a little to reflect my own personal preferences.

Give me

a blank canvas, crispy bacon,

Argentinian Malbec wine

soft candle light

&

a little peace and quiet…..

Hmmm… are all these things meant to go together?  I’ve never had bacon with my wine.  Or painted by candlelight either.

I do have some other weird habits though, one of which is reading labels and product descriptions and getting bamboozled into buying them simply because they sound peculiar and interesting.  I bought a hair product once because it promised to deconstruct my hair in to loose textured beach waves.  It contained black figs and sea salt.  Really.  Eventually I poured what remained of it down the sink because what it actually made my hair look like was a very structured haystack.

What is a beach wave anyway?  And why did I think I wanted some of those?  Hard to complain to the makers of a product when you don’t have a clue what they are promising you.

Great books are just the beginning.  Isn’t that an awesome little statement?  Even though it doesn’t specify whether it’s the beginning of something amazing or the beginning of something horrifying we still want to have those great books.  Because beginnings, right?

And we want those great books in great bags!

Thank you Indigo.  For your bags and your words and your little in-store coffee shop making all your books smell like Starbucks.  I will be back for more.  But you know that, don’t you?  Yes, you do.

Sharing My World 23

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Share Your World 2015 Week 12

When was the last time you sat on a park or garden bench for more than ten minutes?  Describe the occasion.

Last summer I spent some time on park benches watching grandchildren do what grandchildren do.  Ford streams, throw rocks, feed animals, drink sweet cold drinks on a hot summer day.  I like this role as grandma, where you just have to be there and observe and aren’t expected to participate in things like mini golf tournaments or spinning tea-cup rides.  Just buy T-shirts for everybody when the day is over.  Then hand the children back over to their parents.

Would you ever be interested in observing a surgery or do you turn away when the nurse brings out the needle?

I skip over fake surgeries on Netflix and fast forward through bloody crime scenes.  I look the other way when I get needles, have blood work done, or get hooked up to IV.  Although I’ve had so much of that done, maybe it’s really not necessary anymore.  But no, I would not be interested in observing surgery of any kind.  Or hearing about it.  Or looking at your stitches.

Where’s your favorite place to take out-of-town guests?

Back to the airport.  HAHA!!  Just kidding.  Out for dinner is always fun.  We live in a place where there are lots of choices.  And I will tag along to wherever guests decide to go if they want my company.  I’m the same way on trips.  I tend to go along for the ride without any real plans of my own.  This is partly about being easy to get along with, but mostly about laziness and lack of interest in getting off my ass and going anywhere unless strongly encouraged by someone who is excited and enthusiastic.  I would be a really poor event co-ordinator.

If you had an unlimited shopping spree at only one store, which one would you choose?  Why?

Is it cheating to say a gigantic department store full of furniture, home appliances, electronics, clothing,  food, books, stationery and art supplies?  Okay, it probably is.  So I will select instead  Wine and Beyond and pick up one or two cases of everything they have in stock.  That should keep me happy for a while and take care of Christmas presents for at least a couple of years.

Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

Every March I am SO DONE with snow, and yet here it falls sometimes as late as May.  So I am grateful that Spring eventually does show up, even though I give up hope about 14 times every year before it happens.

Next week it’s supposed to warm up!  Said the optimistic fool who should move south or get over it.  Okay.  I’m over it.  The sun is shining and I’m grateful to be alive.

Drink Drank Drunk

We drank our coffee, we drunk our coffee.  We did not get drunk on coffee, and that is why, although it is acceptable to ask who drunk all the coffee, we don’t because of the association of the word ‘drunk’ with intoxication.  It just sounds better to say ‘drank’.

I would also like to say think, thank, thunk.  Because English.  It thunks.

Thanks to Electronic Bag Lady and her bag of bits, I now know the meaning of this excellent word:  QUAFFTIDE  Go there for the definition of the word, and stay for many good reads.  I think you will thank me later.

Now if you had asked me yesterday if I was done with homework for the rest of my life,  I would have told you yes.  But then EBL also said this.

Your homework is to tell me your terms for quafftiding like it’s 2015, and ideally also to relate an anecdote about such a party. It may involve Pan-Galactic Gargleblasters if you wish, and be purely hypothetical. No photocopiers should be harmed in the production of your story.

Although it wasn’t written in that exact annoying colour or font, still I have decided to take it seriously.  Never having outgrown my nerdy tendency to complete all homework assignments ever given to me,  I will now ramble off all the phrases I know or have used personally to describe what happens to you when you participate to an unhealthy degree in quafftidling events.

 sloshed, buzzed, wasted, shit faced,

three sheets to the wind, tipsy, pickled, pissed,

trashed, hooped, under the influence, plastered,

hammered, blind drunk,

on a bender, ripped,

looped

blotto

smashed,

wiggy,

stoned,

loaded, half cut,

out of your tree, and totally wrecked.

There are probably more I’ve forgotten (and most of these are no doubt no longer popular in 2015)  but that’s all I’ve got, likely because of what all that booze supposedly does to your brain cells.  Contrary to what you might have been lead to believe (because I often talk about wine and like to put words into wine glass shapes) I don’t drink much at all anymore.  My doctor asked me how much alcohol I consume on a daily or weekly basis, and I said  “Just the occasional bottle of wine.  Shit!  I mean GLASS.  Glass of wine.  Gawd.”

I drink more when I’m on a holiday or with people of like mind who are also drinking of course.  And I certainly did my share of partying in high school and university,  and socially whenever we could get away with it while our kids were young, until we decided we should set a better example for them.

I remember how impressed W’s university friends were on a couple of occasions when I was able to keep up with them consuming draft beer.  Some guys are just so easily dazzled.  I don’t remember ever seeing any Pan-Galactic Gargleblasters though.  When I’ve had enough to drink and can no longer feel my feet, I say goodnight and go to bed.  So it’s entirely possible I passed out before they joined the party.

Typoe

This is what happens when I spend too much time on Facebook. My sense of humor gets warped.

Art du Jour 21

Don’t be fooled by the glasses – I am not missing my optician days.  Although I do sometimes dream about work.  Not exactly nightmares, but close enough.

I am very impatiently waiting for my new printer to be delivered from gawd only knows where.  (I know the company, but not its location.)  Ordered it on-line a couple of days ago.  Received a prompt email letting me know the order had been received and another one telling me the order had been shipped.  By ground.  So maybe dog sled. I don’t know.  Shipping is free, so I guess I won’t start complaining yet.

It’s nice to have a printed colour picture in front of me of whatever I’m drawing instead of trying to use my I-Pad screen which keeps going off.  My life is just so damned hard these days.

Hope everyone is having a happy first Thursday in December!  The fourth one is Christmas!

I know, it was happy until I mentioned that.  Sorry.  Pour yourself a nice glass of wine, you’ll feel better soon.

 

In Good Times and Bad

They  travel by snow machine pulling a heavy komatik behind them, for hours and hours across the tundra and the ocean ice towards the horizon, getting nowhere.

The sunlight reflecting off the ice and snow is blinding and the cold dry air makes her face feel like frozen leather, chilling her body to the bone.

This is not the life she imagined.

Back home at a dinner party he is animated in the telling of their great adventure while she sips her wine with fever blistered lips and a puzzled stare.

Roxy looks at one and then the other and back again, suddenly raising her glass to drink to the notion that theirs is surely a marriage made in hell.

Five Sentence Fiction is about packing a powerful punch in a tiny fist. This weeks word – Marriage.