fionapple

Last Wednesday Pete and I saw Fiona Apple at the Moore and she was awesome!

Before I continue I must tell you of my recent obsession with Fiona. Or I should say, with her new album "Extraordinary Machine". I have her first album, "Tidal", and I like it a lot. I didn't buy her second album because I thought it was annoying that the title was so long. (Ah, fickle music consumer!!!) But then I bought "Extraordinary Machine" the day it came out because I had heard so many good things about it.

I LOVE THIS ALBUM. I am obsessed with it. I listen to it non-stop in the car, which during the week can be between 50 minutes to 2 hours a day. At most moments during the day and night I have a song from that album in my head. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with one of her songs in my head.

(I have taken a few breaks here and there to listen to a different CD in the car. But I listen to it once and then pop Fiona back in and listen to her around and around for days.)

Last Saturday I dropped Pete off at work in Belltown and turned left at the Moore to go home, as I always do. The marquee said "Fiona Apple Nov. 23". I was so bummed! I had no idea she was coming and for sure it was too late to get tickets. I drove home sadly but then cheered up with a couple of episodes of "Alias". (My love of "Alias" warrants its own post; stay tuned.)

The next day I heard Pete singing what I thought was "…something similar" under his breath. These are words to one of my favorite songs, "Please Please Please". "What are you singing! Are you singing Fiona Apple?" He said he was. "How do you know that song, did you burn it onto your MP3 player?" He said, "No, but I should." That means that he has heard the CD so much in the car with me that he had the song in his head.

Anyway that night he gave me my birthday present which was 2 tickets to Fiona Apple! We went to the Dahlia Lounge for dinner beforehand and then the show was SO GOOD. Ms. Apple was very charming, her stage presence was amazing and her band was great. She didn't play our favorite song, "Please Please Please" but she did sing the Willis song, where she sings about missing the maven. That's our Willis!

I had the best time ever. Isn't Pete the coolest?

Dispatch from Colorado: 3

This one doesn't actually have anything to do with Colorado except that I thought of it while I was here.

We went shopping in the little downtown here on Friday and there was Christmas music playing in all the shops and suddenly I experienced a chill through to my core.

You know what this means if you are from Omaha and at this point, possibly other locales. This means that soon we will all be hearing so much Manheim Steamroller Christmas music everywhere we go that we will all be crying and crying and crying and begging for Christmas to be over.

I don't know what else to say. When my parents have that disc in their 5-CD player in Omaha I take it out when no one's looking and replace it with the Messiah Disc 1. Then I put it at the bottom of the CD pile in hopes that no one will find it.

I am off to Boulder for lunch now and then off to the airport and soon I'll be seeing my Pete. My mom's not coming with us but it's because she has to serve sloppy joes at church for a special event. Not because she doesn't like us.

Dispatch from Colorado: 2

I’ve been away from the Blogio for awhile, but I’m going to fast forward to right now. I’m at my parents’ house in Estes Park, Colorado. (Pete didn’t come because he had to work yesterday.) Estes Park is a small tourist town in the mountains about an hour northwest of Boulder. No, there’s no skiing here – they had a ski resort for a couple years back in the 80’s I think but they didn’t get enough snow to keep it going. So in the winter we do snowshoeing and if there’s no snow, then we go hiking. Its proximity to Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) is Estes Park’s main claim to fame. In the summer the place goes crazy with tourists from all over. It’s truly a madhouse.

Fortunately my parents don’t live right in town. They live in a duplex up Highway 7 near the golf course. In fact they’re about one block from the golf course. They don’t golf though. They retired here from Omaha maybe 5 years ago and they do lots of cool stuff like volunteer at the library and at the visitors’ center, do stuff with their church, go hiking and hang out with their friends. Their neighbors in the other half of their duplex have a pool table in their basement so sometimes my parents go over there, have drinks and play pool. If you know my parents you may have trouble picturing that. I sure do. I guess it’s true that parents have real lives outside of what we know. Anyway my dad also goes skiing a lot (he and his friend Mac drive to Winter Park down the highway a couple hours) and in the summer he is part of the Bighorn Brigade.

There are bighorn sheep in RMNP and there are periods during the summer when they come down this one mountain to get to these salt licks in this meadow with lots of little ponds (known as the Sheep Lakes). They have to cross the park road to get to this meadow which means a couple of things. One is that a stupid tourist might hit them with their car. Another is that when tourists spot these sheep they go INSANE and stop their cars in the middle of the road causing a traffic jam. Then they even get out of their cars because they are SO STUPID that they think it’d be a good idea if they chased the sheep around so they could get a close up picture. They are awesome-looking and rare sheep and I go bonkers when I see one too (although I always stay in the car!!). In fact I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one close up (Momster, is this true?) and I’ve been coming to this place since I was like three. We used to vacation here every other summer for my whole life. What I’m getting at is they are magnificent to see but the tourists, they need some guidance. And that’s where the Bighorn Brigade comes in. My dad works certain shifts and he has a uniform and a little kiosk where he hangs out and people can ask him questions. And if the sheep come down the mountain then he stops the traffic on the road so the sheep can get by safely. Of course he also has to keep the tourists from getting too close to the sheep. He does this by shooting them (the tourists) with a pistol. Just kidding! My dad is opposed to guns. So he uses a bow and arrow. Just kidding! He kicks them in the nuts. Just kidding! I actually don’t know how he does it. But in my heart, although I’m a peace-loving woman, I do hope he at least gets to give them a smack on the head.

I come here every Thanksgiving. I’ve been doing it for about 6 years or more, and we have the routine down pat. I fly on Thanksgiving Day. My sister A also comes from Wisconsin. Momster and her family come every other year, by car. The opposite years they go to my brother-in-law’s parents’ house in Iowa. This is a year that they’re in Iowa. My sister A and I meet at Denver International Airport (DIA). DIA is a lovely airport if you ever have a chance to go there. The only problem is that it’s out in the middle of farkity-fark nowhere. A and I take a shuttle to Boulder where my dad and possibly other family members pick us up at the Marriott. This year my mom came which is a treat. When Momster and her family are in town, my mom doesn’t come to Boulder with my dad to get us because she likes Momster’s family better than A and I so she stays home with them. Which is totally understandable, as I also prefer Momster’s family to A and my sorry-ass self.

We eat lunch in Boulder and then we drive up here to Estes Park. Since Thanksgiving Day gets eaten up (so to speak) with flying and driving, by the time we get home it’s like 2 or 3 PM. Too late to cook turkey and all that. So we have my birthday dinner instead and then we have Thanksgiving on Friday. That’s today.

In my family when it’s your birthday, you get to pick what you want for dinner. Every year for as long as I can remember, I think it goes back to high school times, I have had black bean soup and rice. My dad orders a special spice mix from New Orleans. It’s so good I can’t stand it. My dad puts a ham bone in it and sometimes also andouille sausage. Oh man. I can’t even tell you how good it is. (My sister A doesn’t like it so she eats tomato soup!)

Also when it’s your birthday you get a birthday cake with candles, and the family turns off the lights and sings Happy Birthday. There is also a tradition where the whole family pretends all day that there’s no birthday cake for you. All day people say things like:

-- "Too bad there’s not going to be any dessert tonight. I guess we’ll have to have to eat stale old cookies."
-- "You better have seconds because there’s no dessert tonight."
-- "I’m so full! Good thing there’s no dessert."
-- Etc. etc.

The birthday person just plays along, as I did yesterday. Surprise surprise, there was birthday cake last night, pure chocolate craziness. Also, it was shaped like a triangle.

Then we read books and stuff by the fire and go to bed. Now it’s Friday which means the Colorado-Nebraska football game is on, and later on we’ll have turkey. (And then, read books and stuff by the fire and go to bed.) It’s a gorgeous sunny day and I can see the mountains out the window. There are lots of trees and the sky is the bluest I’ve ever seen. I hope it snows tomorrow. I miss snow.

My dad just announced that he forgot to put sugar in the pumpkin pie. Eek! He has proposed two solutions: 1) load it up with Cool Whip and if it still tastes too weird then 2) chuck it and eat leftover birthday cake!

My parents have dial-up so I’m not going to put up any pictures of E.P. because that would make me blow a gasket with impatience. I’ll owe ya.

Dispatch from Colorado: 1

Happy Thanksgiving, all you funkhausers! I'm in Colorado at my parents' house. I've been working on some posts offline so I will soon have some new content for you.

In the meantime I hope all y'all are having the swellest of swell holidays.

--Blade

**Go Buffs!**

...named after a duck's dork

Rodley and I were watching Sixteen Candles the other night, and that's how her little brother describes that exchange student named Long Duck Dong. I've never heard that, ahem "item" called a "dork" before. I have only known "dork" to describe a certain type of person. In fact later in the movie, Samantha says "[her little brother] Mike thinks I'm a dork" and her dad says "Mike is a dork."

It makes me wonder. If Tina and I played ducks in Dup's play, and ducks have dorks, then who or what were our dorks?

That's about all I got today, folks. I just wanted you to know I'm still around and kicking it in blogio land.

Rambini is very active in the blogosphere lately

Ol' Rambini has changed his blog template and posted a lot of new content! Check it out.

This Freaks Me Out Bad

[Warning to the queasy folks: there is some gross medical talk at the end of this post. But Tina, there are no knives.]

You know how there are so many things to worry about in the world? If you choose to, that is. There are the old stand-bys such as earthquake; plague; bird flu; terrorist attacks; emperor penguin attacks (those things can be 4 1/2 feet tall which is almost as tall as me, plus they live in the wild [survival of the fittest, anyone??] and have the devil in their eyes!); running out of gas or getting a flat on the 520 at rush hour; "getting lockjaw on the bus" as my college friends used to say; tsumani; plane crash; gunned down in the mall parking lot; someone putting roofies in your drink at the bar; high cholesterol; death, sickness or injury of friends and family; stolen laptop; prejudice and human indecency; what if our kid becomes a murderer; stolen credit cards, identity, etc.; George W. Bush; becoming homeless; getting lost in the woods; seeing the devil behind some bushes near your house; getting stuck in the subway turnstile with tons of people pressing against you, shouting angrily; totalitarianism; sitting in the middle of a large, achingly quiet theatre and you have to go to the bathroom but there's no way you can get out without making a big ruckus and pissing everyone off; passing that point where you've drank way too much and you can't go back; genocide; spraying a criminal with pepper spray but then they grab it and spray you instead; teacher shortage; your dog "puking up a piece of her intestine"; environmental issues such as global warming and depletion of fossil fuels, etc.; how horrible junior high will be for your children and how you can't do anything to stop it; sinking ferry and you're trapped in the car, drowning in Puget Sound, pounding on the car window with your fist, wishing you had bought one of those little car-escape poking sticks; poverty; seeing an alien and having to try to talk them out of abducting you; possible national macaroni and cheese shortage; how will you get those shelves home from IKEA, they won't fit in your car; what if the in-laws don't like you; how will we pay for the kids' college; falling off the top of a train in India; "javelin through the neck!"; going camping and redneck killers slice through the tent and murder you; dwindling arts funding; etc. etc.

Well I have to say that this next one is PRETTY BAD and I would've lived a fine life if I had never known this was possible!

Say you're sitting at your desk typing away on your computer and your nose starts running, so you wipe it with a nasal tissue (no brand names in this particular post, thank you - however "nasal tissue" sounds really gross, it can't be right) but your nose keeps running and IT TURNS OUT THAT IT'S SPINAL FLUID DRIPPING OUT OF YOUR NOSE BECAUSE YOU TORE YOUR DURA (the sort of wrapper that goes around your spine) WHILE FILMING A VIOLENT INTERROGATION SCENE FOR YOUR LATEST MOVIE.

This happened to George Clooney, the poor fellow. GOOD GRIEF! I can't stop thinking about it. Blech!

Nothin but a rainy day

Here's the lyrics to a song called Poptunes by Daniel Johnston. Reading them won't be as effective as hearing the song but it's a rainy day here and maybe you will like what he has to say.

Monkey middle with a fiddle
In a real tight ragtime band
Calls the plays of fame and fortune
Heard so loud across the land
And those little people who buy those records
Sit lonely in their homes with funny faces
Falling into the great unknown

They got little polka-dot undies
And you know they have their fun
They got matching ties and curtains
And they get their washing done
But come evening comes that feeling
When they lay their burdens down
When they put that record on
The house is jumping with excitement
Everyone's acting out of character
But everything goes back to normal
A half an hour later
And everyone acts like nothing happened
As that record goes back in the sleeve
That's one houseguest that'll never leave

And to end out this post, here's a pic of Pete surfing.

Mystery Solved!!!

I finally got down to some real detective work last night and we now have the answer to who took a piece out of the top layer of our wedding cake. Before I reveal the culprit, please take a look at the photographic evidence and see if you can figure it out for yourself.

Exhibit A. The cake in the Tupperware in our freezer. Note missing piece. This photo was taken on Saturday, October 29.



Exhibit B. Our wedding cake. This photo was taken on the day of the wedding.


Exhibit C. Pete and I cutting the cake at our wedding.

Clues

1. Exhibit A. Note the cake in our freezer has very smooth frosting and is pretty small. I actually just measured it and it's about 5 ½ inches across.
2. Exhibit B. Note the top tier of the wedding cake has little dots of decorative frosting on it i.e. it is not smooth.
3. Exhibit C. NOTE THE CAKE WE ARE CUTTING IS SMOOTH AND SMALL AND HAS A FARKING HOMIES TOPPER ON IT.

Conclusions

1. The cake in our freezer sans piece is Pete's groom's cake.
2. It has had a piece out of it since July 30, 2005.
3. I just forgot that it was his groom's cake and that it had a piece out of it because I hadn't noticed it in the freezer for awhile. I think it was behind some old Poppers and ice cream that I chucked for being too old to eat.

How the Mystery Was Solved
Pete and I had decided to just eat the cake since the frosting barrier had been broken. Make lemonade, as they say. Especially since there was another leftover cake layer in there. I pulled the violated cake out of the freezer last night and opened the lid. I saw little pieces of coconut in the cake. Only Pete's groom's cake had coconut in it; our main wedding cake had lemon filling. So I ran and looked at the cake photos in our wedding proof book and alas, you know the rest.

What a farking idiot!

What I Have Learned

1. Do not panic.
2. Do not jump to conclusions.
3. Investigate the evidence BEFORE you freak out on your blog and yammer endlessly to all your friends at work about it.
4. Pete is the best husband as he was very supportive while I freaked out. I mean I already knew he's the best but now I am even more certain.
5. My sweet friends get totally pissed when they believe I've been wronged.

I am so sorry about the false alarm, my dears. Please don't hold it against me. I have certainly learned my lesson. KWW, my partner in our childhood detective agency, "Flippin' Beetle Private Eye" or, as it is more commonly known, "F.B.P.E.", will be ashamed of my shoddy detective work!!!

And to all of you who thought Pete ate it, next time I will listen to you! Ha!

Oh and one more thing. I think I forgot to mention in previous posts that there was another leftover layer of cake from our wedding. It turns out that that one is the top tier of our actual wedding cake. And yes, it's intact and ready for our 1-year anniversary. I know I should be really happy that a) the mystery is solved and b) our actual top tier cake is intact. But really I just feel like a bummed out idiot!

Halloween

From left to right: Herbert Burglar and Jacques.