I have yet to figure out the mysterious force in my washing machine and/or dryer that takes long-sleeved shirts and turns the sleeves (one or both of them) inside out during the washing and/or drying cycle.  I make it a point to see that the sleeves are all turned right side out before washing them and yet somehow they always manage to get turned inside out. 

This wouldn’t bother me so much if it happened to short-sleeved shirts.  It perplexes me when it happens to long-sleeved shirts. 

That’s some pretty delicate maneuvering for a large capacity washer and dryer!

Why is it that, after you’ve taken a day off, say last Monday, and you have a four-day work week, when Friday rolls around, it’s just about all you can do to get yourself in gear and get to work for that one last day??  It happens to me every time!  Like if I take off a Monday, I should automatically take off the following Friday, too.

Of course, if I did that, I probably wouldn’t want to go in on Thursday, either!  Feh.

Happy Friday, everyone!

Scissors cut paper.  They also cut flesh.  I had always thought that you could get stabbed or knicked by a pair of scissors.  I never thought that you could actually slice into your flesh and chop out a piece of it.  But I learned that lesson last night.

I now have a 1/2 inch long flap of skin that is detached on three sides from my finger because I snipped it off with scissors.  When it happened, I looked dumbly down at my finger and thought, ‘Huh.’

You learn something new every day, I suppose!

I was just watching the news.  It seems that there are towns out there that must outlaw sledding.

Sledding.

Sledding.

Why?  Because some kid broke his leg while sledding and the parents sued and won $600,000.  But bravo to the Connecticut town where, despite the fact that they were also sued for a sledding accident and the plaintiff won $6 million, they refuse to outlaw sledding.

It’s sledding, people.  Next thing you know, there goes bike riding and baseball playing and generally moving at all.  Nope, can’t do any of those - you might get hurt!

This kind of behavior (along with reality shows) is the shame of our nation.  Ugh.

I am outraged!  Sensationalistic journalism should not be a part of CNN.com.  I’m sorry - I expect more from them.  Here’s what I’m talking about…

The headline reads… Leak forces Michigan nuclear plant shutdown

Everyone on this planet will assume that that means a radioactive leak, right?  No, it’s a freakin’ water leak.

Foul, CNN!  FOUL!!

I finished a book over the weekend.  It’s Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson.  I simply loved it!  It was so interesting to me and I feel like I know a whole lot more about deep sea diving now, too.  Enjoyable and educational to boot!  Imagine that.

I realized that the last three books that I read were non-fiction.  This is not normally a genre I dwell in so it was a bit odd for me.  I decided to hop back into fiction and I picked up a book that I saw in the NY Times Book Review - but not being reviewed, only an advertisement for it.

It’s called Plain Heathen Mischief by Martin Clark.  I’ve only read a couple of chapters so far but it’s got me uncomfortable.  Did you ever watch a movie where a seemingly innocent character gets caught up in some shady dealings and finds him- or herself suddenly involved in absolute wrongness?  Yeah, that’s the feeling I’m getting here.  It makes me want to yell out to the character to get the hell away and don’t look back!  Don’t try to make it better - it will only get worse.  Run, Forrest, RUN!!!

We’ll see how this turns out.  So far nothing terrible has happened but I just get this feeling…

Popping in for a brief visit to the blog-o-world.  We got about a foot of snow yesterday and today we’re getting wind gusts somewhere around 30 mph right now, expecting 50 mph gusts.  Fortunately, we don’t have anywhere to go until Tuesday - yes, folks, we planned ahead and scheduled a micro-mini vacation this weekend and took Monday off.  How smart are we??

We’re planning on staying hunkered down, watching some movies, drinking some fun little drinks until we’re silly and generally enjoying being stuck inside.  Buzz cleared off most of the snow yesterday but, thanks to the wind, it’s mostly back.  So we’re not going to even attempt anything today.  We’ll worry about that tomorrow.

I hope you’re all warm and safe and enjoying the weekend.

Yesterday, we got a surprise in the mail.  (I’d post a picture of it, but I’m at work and currently without my camera, et al.) It came our way from Florida from a fellow blogger named Solonor.

It’s a CD of his called “Potpourri of Noise” and we started listening to it in the car on the way to work this morning.  How much fun is this??  I particularly love the robot song (can’t remember the title right off), which I believe he wrote.  And the title of my post is from the Lyle Lovett song he covers on this disc.  One of my favorites!

Sol, your sound reminds me of a group I was listening to back in the early ‘90s - The Tom Russell Band.  Ever hear of them?  Also, have you ever considered covering any Lloyd Cole?  I can so hear you singing “Weeping Wine”.

Great stuff!!  Thanks for sending it to us!!

Just so you know, if you’re on a diet, two martinis are the right number.  Three martinis are too many.

Just so you know.

I’ll give you a topic.

Blogs - is there an actual lifespan of the average blog?

Discuss!

A lot of people I know are sort of or absolutely abandoning their blogs.  Or making sounds like they want to.  Or just sort of fading away.  (By the way, you can count this as me making sounds like I want to.) Many of the familiar blogs that I read on a regular basis started at approximately the same time - somewhere between one and three years ago.  On the cosmic scale, that’s EXACTLY the same time! 

So, I’m wondering.  Is this about the lifespan of your average blog?  Sure, there are others who are going to live a long, long time and some that will fizzle out after just a very short time - just like people.  But I’m picking up some definite FEH vibes out here amongst the one- to three-year-olds. 

Or maybe they’re just in my head.

What do you think?

As Buzz and I were walking through the grocery store last night, he gave me a wonderous point to ponder.  He said:

The wrapper on the toilet paper in the bathroom at work says that it’s “facial quality”.

It made me think.  Do you really need “facial” quality in your toilet tissue?

P.S.  I had a pretty damn good night’s sleep last night.  Just a couple of brief waking interludes during the night.  I don’t think I even tossed, let alone turned.  I almost cried when I woke up this morning!  It’s the simple things in life that mean the most sometimes!

I had the best weekend.  I spent the whole time with my husband and only my husband.  Well, the cats were there, too.  We didn’t leave the house from the time we got home from work on Friday until we left for work this morning.  It was like being away on a vacation!  No one bothered us and we had no obligations to anyone but ourselves.  Ahhhh!

Christmas has been put away for another year, the house is organized, we read and listened to music, the exercise room is now completely functional (and I tried it out to be sure), we conducted sleep experiments to see what’s up with my (lack of) sleeping, and we did a lot of talking.  Lots and lots of talking.  He’s my favorite person on earth and who better to spend a weekend talking to than your favorite person on earth?

Indeed.

Anyway, it was great to have such a satisfying and relaxing weekend.  I hope to be able to do it again soon.  Maybe next weekend…

Whoa!  We’re having some wicked weather right now.  I don’t mean that it’s anything like California or Asia or even Illinois, but the wind is fierce!  It’s been howling - no, literally, howling - since about 1:00 this morning.  (I know that because I’ve been up since then!) I’m just waiting for one of our skinny old trees in the back to come tumbling down.

I don’t think I want to be here when that happens!

Batten down the hatches, boys!  We’re in for some nasty weather!!

I looked in the mirror last night and saw big dark circles under my eyes.  I took a Simply Sleep and went to bed at 8:00.  I was asleep by 9:00 but woke up at 10:00, 2:00 and 4:00.  Aren’t those pills supposed to make it so you stay asleep??

Now my back is killing me from being in bed for so long - but not sleeping well - and I actually have dark circles over my eyes.  What’s that?

Buzz told me that those are eyebrows and everyone has them.  Funny!

No, seriously, I’m starting a sleep log today so that I can figure out if there is anything that I can do to make it better for my sleepy time.

Oh, and where does one get melatonin?  Do you have to have a doctor prescribe it or can you buy it in a store?

I’ve had just about no sleep for the past week and it finally caught up with me.  I stayed home from work today and tried to sleep.  That’s not working but I did find a fascinating TV channel that’s been keeping me company all day.  It’s the National Geographic channel.  Cool stuff!

I’ve seen a show about swimming with manatees and sharks (not at the same time), a show about deep-sea shipwreck recoveries, a show about destructive locust plagues in Africa, and right now, there’s a show on about giant lightning.  Wow!

I’m exploring my world!  (But I keep wishing that Jeff Corwin was hosting these shows.  Oh well.)