(Title Credit:  Pet Shop Boys / Nightlife / 1999)

We have a digital scale that measures body fat (which I think is a lot of hooey, by the way).  If you stand on it too quickly or miss the little sensors pads or if you look at it the wrong way or say something smarmy right before you stand on it, it displays “EE”.

I always think it’s screaming at me for putting so much weight on it.  Heh.

(Title Credit:  Smile Divine / She Moves Me / 2004)

I woke up with “Little Red Corvette” in my head this morning.  It’s one of my guilty pleasures and I guess it caught up with me!  It made me think of the 80s when MTV played videos and rap was definitely the alternative music.  It also make me think of all of those wonderful Prince music videos - from the time when Prince was a name and not just a symbol.

So now I must ask you.  If I told you that I was going to tickle you until you couldn’t breathe unless you chose one of these Prince songs to hear - no, wait - one of these videos to see (heh!), which one would it be:

Little Red Corvette
1999
When Doves Cry
Raspberry Beret
Kiss

OK --- GO!  Tell me which stunning Prince song video from the 80s you would choose if you just had to!

(Title Credit:  Brad Passons / Set Up for Failure / 2003)

Did you ever get the feeling that you’re being set up for failure?  I don’t know if I’m being paranoid or what but I am getting a really bad vibe lately.  I’m not used to this.  I’d spent many years with people who aren’t into seeing others fail but I’m not with them any more and I’m just not feelin’ the love! 

I don’t like it…

P.S.  I am really snappish and rude when I’m tired!  I never realized how much until today.  Maybe I should just avoid people altogether when I feel like this.  Sheesh!

(Title Credit:  The Kendalls / Cryin’ Time / 1997)

P.S.  Doctor Dictionary didn’t have to rub it in! 

Word of the Day for Tuesday June 28, 2005

woebegone WOE-bee-gon, adjective:
1. Beset or overwhelmed with woe; immersed in grief or sorrow;
woeful.
2.  Being in a sorry condition; dismal-looking; dilapidated;
run-down.

(Title Credit:  Jonny Lang / Smokin’ / 1995)

My mind is mush today.  I am tired on top of tired.  Two nights this weekend, I probably slept no more than two hours cumulatively.  And there was no significant consecutive sleep time.  Let’s face it - I’m pooped!

It was an exciting weekend, to be sure.  And now I’m looking forward to next weekend, which promises to be exciting in its own right.  We’re having the family picnic on Saturday, which doesn’t give me much time to prepare, but in retrospect, it gives me Sunday AND Monday to recuperate before going back to work.  So I guess it’s the best thing to do.

Well, this was a scintillating post, no?  So before I bore you all to death, I’ll sign off now and try to make my next post a wee bit more interesting!  Ciao!

(Title Credit:  Pink Floyd / Dark Side of the Moon / 1973)

Is there any better way to slow down time than to wait for someone else to get back to you with potential bad news about a loved one when you don’t know what’s going on? 

I swear, every minute seems like an hour.

(Title Credit:  Barenaked Ladies / Rock Spectacle / 1996)

Could I please go back in time about 10 years ago?  I was just listening to “What a Good Boy” - the live version - by Barenaked Ladies and it reminded me.  Hoo boy - they are something else in concert!

How do I know this?  We saw them at a relatively small venue (about 1500 people) but we didn’t really know any of their songs except “Jane”.  Which they performed, thank goodness.  But when they started to sing “If I Had $1,000,000” and the audience participated and when, for their encore, they performed “Brian Wilson” and the whole place erupted, we could not appreciate what was happening.  Not like we could now, anyway.

So I’d really like to go back and just listen to that concert again.  It would enrich an experience of my life more than it already was.

I’m not a huge fan of live recordings - being there is one thing, but I don’t really like to listen to live recordings.  But there is one live song that moves me to tears practically every time I hear it (in fact, I posted about it a while back, I believe).  It’s “Break Your Heart” off of the Rock Spectacle album.  There aren’t the right words to describe this song.

And if I had any inkling of how to do it, I’d upload the song and provide a link here so you could appreciate it, too, but I’m a dork and I just don’t know how to do that!  So you’ll just have to go find it yourself.  Not the version on Born on a Pirate Ship, which is fine, but it’s not the same song.  It has to be the live version.

(Title Credit:  England Dan & John Ford Coley / Nights are Forever / 1976)

Isn’t it a shame the way that some music videos can ruin a song for you?  For instance, I just heard “Love is a Battlefield” by Pat Benatar for the first time in quite a while.  It’s a good song and I truly like Pat Benatar.  But, naturally, as I was listening to the song, I filled in things like:

You leave this house now…
You can just forget about ever coming back!

-and-

Leave me alone!!

You know, all those things that got dubbed over in the video.  And then there’s the dancing at the end.  In those outfits.  I wanted to poke out my mind’s eye.

(Title Credit:  Luckey Roberts & Ralph Sutton / 1946)

I have this little Mah Jong game that I play on my Mac.  I always make the tile sets random so I don’t get bored.  One of the tile sets is called Egyptian and it consists of all of these hieroglyphic images, which is kind of cool ‘cause I’m very interested in all things ancient and mystic.

But the other day, I was playing and I saw this one tile that I’ve seen hundreds of times before but I suddenly saw it in a different light.

Tell me - this is an image of someone sitting with their knees tucked up under their garment, right?  It’s their knees and not something, admittedly impressive, but certainly more unsettling, right??

Now I can’t look at this image without thinking about it.

(Title Credit:  Robbie Williams / Life Thru a Lens / 1997)

I hope I’m old, before I die
I hope I’ll live to relive
The days gone by

Last night, I picked up a book that depressed the hell out of me for a while.  I picked up “1000 Places to See Before You Die”.  I flipped through it, hoping to find that I’d already been to a few of these places because, folks, I ain’t getting any younger and I’ll be up against it if I can’t at least scratch a few of these off the list!

I breezed past the first four-fifths of the book that covered Europe, Asia, Africa, The Middle East, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.  ‘Cause I’ve never been out of the country, except for two trips to Toronto.  Then I headed to the section on the United States and Canada.  After reading about all of the places from Alaska to Wyoming and from Alberta to Quebec, I believe I was able to check off eight entries.  I didn’t even bother to finish the book because that was all Latin America and South America.

So that’s it.  I still have 992 places to see before I die.  I simply don’t have that much time left and I certainly don’t have that much money!

On the other hand, I try to remember that there are probably people who don’t even get to eight in this world.  People who spend their lives in the same place from the time they’re born to the time they die.  I guess I should be happy that at least I’ve seen eight places, huh?

Oh, screw that!  I want to go see the other 992 places!!!

(Title Credit:  Sheryl Crow / Tuesday Night Music Club / 1993)

Yeah, so why is it that when the weather is beautiful and gorgeous, like today - mild temperature, low humidity, no clouds - I want to not go into work so that I can stay home and play?  And when the weather is rainy and cold and miserable, I want to not go into work so that I can stay at home and sit on the sofa with my cat, a cup of tea and a good book?  And when the weather is hot and sticky and humid, I want to not go into work so that I don’t have to go outside and sweat?  And when the weather is snowy and icy, I want to not go into work so that I can stay at home and light a fire and sip some brandy and watch a black and white movie?

All I want to do is stay home.  Every.single.day.

(Title Credit:  Eddie Palmieri / La Perfecta II / 2002)

Up until a little over two months ago, I was without routine.  Sure, I would get up every day and shower but that was it as far as consistency went.  Even when my kids were small, I had no routine.  I always felt a lack because of it.

Amazing where you can find your inspirations.

We fell into a routine quite by accident.  When the doctor told me about my exciting new life of eating straw and WHOLE foods and taking supplements, I was suddenly bound to my food.  Gone were the fancy-free days of being able to eat on the run!  Now I have to plan every meal (and all those in-between snacks I’m supposed to be eating).  So our new weekday morning routine looks like this:

Alarm clock goes off at 5:30 and Buzz gets up and takes a shower.  I hit the snooze bar until he’s done.  Then he heads downstairs to feed and scoop the cats and start the coffee.

I get up and take my shower (it takes me longer because I have to dry my hair and put on makeup and pick out just the right jewelry).  Then I head downstairs and start putting breakfast together.

“Oatmeal or cereal?” I am often heard to ask.  It’s usually oatmeal.  While the water is heating for the oatmeal, I get out the supplements and start building the piles of pills.  Then I get a big glass of water and take mine, refill the water glass and leave it on the island for Buzz, along with his vitamins.

We fix our oatmeal and then sit down at the breakfast table to watch the birds at the bird feeders and eat.

Oh, and somewhere in there, one of us usually gets up to clean up the cat yak that Phranc has so nicely deposited on the floor.  Ah - there’s nothing like the unmistakable sounds of a cat yakking and then the fun sprint to find out if it’s on the tile or on the carpet. 

But I digress.  Then we check e-mails, figure out if we need to take anything out for dinner, gather snacks for the day, pack up and leave for work.  It’s our routine.

We finally have a routine and I feel so grown up!

What’s it like in your house?  Routine or fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants?

(Title Credit:  Elvis Presley / From Elvis in Memphis / 1969)

As I was sitting at my desk today, my phone rang.  I looked up and the display said that it was a PRIVATE caller.  I don’t answer these calls.  I like to know who’s calling me, so I wait for that person to leave me a message and then I call them back.  This particular person did leave a message.  It was an odd message:

I was immediately suspicious.  While I do have a relationship with XYZ Corp., I had no idea why they would be calling me.  I pay all my bills on time and there has never been an issue.  It felt like a sting operation to me, but I don’t really know why I was so uneasy.  (I think I’m probably a naturally suspicious person.)

But I called just to see what was up.  Well, it seems that Eric has a lot of time on his hands and he noticed that a change was impending on my account that was going to adversely affect my bottom line.  I knew this was approaching, of course, but didn’t know there was anything that could be done about it.  I never dreamed that I might be able to call and renegotiate my contract.  After all, I’m not Terrell Owens!  But good ol’ Eric had done some homework and figured out a way to save me some considerable money in the long run.  And decided to make me an offer I couldn’t refuse!

Now, how’s that?  This doesn’t mean I’ll be answering those PRIVATE calls in the future, but the next time someone tells me that they have great news for me, I might be a little bit quicker in returning the phone call.

(Title Credit:  Alison Moyet / Raindancing / 1987)

Hoo boy!  I don’t know what’s wrong with me but I just want to sleep and sleep and sleep.  I am a cyclical insomniac - I will go for months and not be able to sleep through one night or I will have precious weeks where I’m sleeping very nicely.  Right now, I’m in the “sleeping very nicely” phase.

Buzz went fishing last night so we didn’t come home from work together.  I came home, fixed myself a little dinner, watched a little TV, read a few blogs and then sat down in my comfy chair to read.  Next thing you know, I woke up and Buzz was home.  It was a little after 7:00 PM.  I am a lousy napper so I never really woke up and I went upstairs to bed a little after 8:00 PM.  I was asleep by 8:30 and woke up when the alarm went off at 5:30 this morning.  That, combined with four or five prior nights of good sleep, would make it seem like I’d feel refreshed. 

Not so.  I’m more tired than ever and it’s making me feel miserable.  What up???