Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Monday, September 15, 2008

The right and wrong way to handle yourself in a wind storm

This is mostly an example of wrong.

1st off, I was a good neighbor and moved a big branch out of the street. Yes, right there near the abandoned beer. Good on me. That's nice. It's a little windy today. No big.

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Now we're at the mall. The power goes out. Hun... No biggie.

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Overturned metal benches. Those fluffy lightweight popcorn balls. Somebody should have nailed those to the floor.

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Whoa, more wind. See the blown-over tree in the background? Right behind my left ear? Didn't notice that until now. We're still good. Life and limb still intact.

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Whoa, down tree.

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But no, what is this? No power on the street lights? Probably no power at the apartment. Oh well, lets not think about why we don't have power. Lets just go somewhere with power.
A movie theater! Yeah, a large mostly empty old dollar theater with no basement. Schmmmmmart.

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Get Smart. Dumb movie. Doesn't deserve any more than that.

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My shoe just got blown off! Would have blown off my socks had I been wearing any! Wild.


Fountain water being blown out of the fountain and pine needles being blown into our faces. It was fun for a few minutes but then we had trouble standing upright and large sheets of something like cardboard or plywood starting flying past our heads.

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Then a street light blew over. Ep! Thinking maybe we should go home.

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Lots of trees down.

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Look, we're missing some roof.

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Oh, there are the shingles.

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And debris... and colorful cars. Spiffy.

And no power in the apartment. No way to make dinner. Maybe we should go out and drive across town without street lights and over fallen trees and try to find a restaurant with power to eat at. Long story made shorter, the roads were blocked off by police officers and the only restaurant in town that had power was Red Lobster. And husband doesn't eat fish or steak.

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After an hour wait...

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He was bored but smiley and black and white because in Red Lobster, all photos came out very red and man-that-lives-on-the-sun colored.

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I was deep in shirimp/lobster/clams/crab/all-of-the-above heaven. Can't decide, want it all.

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Husband just ate about 12 servings of chicken tenders.

By around the 7th chicken tender I got a call from the hotel letting me know that we are without power and going to be closing down and moving 200+ guests and I need to come into work at 4am.

Gah?!?

Yeah.

So we ran home, fumbled around the apartment by candle light, as we don't own a flashlight, then went to bed. Without a fan. Without aircon. Next to a man born in the tropics. I broiled... for about an hour before I had to wake up.

Unless you've been there, it is impossible to imagine what 4am at a powered-down empty hotel is like. It's hard enough to be awake at 4am, but try to stay awake in the dark... in the quiet... with no TV, no computer, no coffee... good lord. I tried to psych myself out with thoughts of crazy killers popping out from dark stairwells. That was my savior.

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After about five hours the it was light enough outside to brighten up the lobby through the skylights. The library there? That's how dark (so much darker) the rest of the hotel is. We had to pee by the light of a key chain flash light. While someone decided the chandler is an "emergency light" and should be run by the generator, they didn't care about those poor people stuck in the hotel who may need to pee.

Check out the outside, though.


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Ouch.

And so ends the story of why you should own a little charcoal grill, a few flash lights, know where your hand powered radio is, live in a place without so many trees and turn your phone off when you go to dinner.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Husband Art:

An unfinished doodle from his GNC notebook.

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Found while "spring cleaning".

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This is all the stuff that has nowhere to go. It's going to continue to sit on floor in the middle of the room.

Apartment Life: new additions

Nothing like a muggy rainy day to make you want to go out and buy some rain-coat colored pots and some new tropic plants.

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I love them, I love them, I love them.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Summer Foods

I heart farmers markets. And the only thing better than stumbling across a cute little farmers market in the ghetto, is finding a random and previously laundered $5 bill in your pocket.

*Squee*

Check out the $5 bounty.

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Except for the fancy chocolate covered yummies—those were a just-‘cause husband gift. But they were darling with fresh strawberries and cherry tomatoes. Ah, heaven.

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I just rotated between chocolate, strawberry, tomato, over and over again. And that was pretty much dinner.

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That looks like a gorgeous ball of summer sugar? I'm trying to soak up as much as possible. I'm afraid we might be skipping fall and going right into winter. Yesterday was the first day I had worn jeans since about April. And today, I'm wearing jeans and a sweater and socks. It feels like December. I'm sorry, but I might need to go crawl back in bed.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

The Husband

My husband works for a company that sells life insurance and offers financial planning. Today he was in Toledo for a class and while in class, it seems that he was doing less note-taking and more daydreaming about selling life insurance to Mario and Wario.

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I could be wrong, but that's what I'm getting from this doodle.

P.s. isn't he the greatest? His cartooning is amazing and always makes for the best birthday cards.

The Fall: my little movie review

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IMDB blurb: In a hospital on the outskirts of 1920s Los Angeles, an injured stuntman (Pace) begins to tell a fellow patient, a little girl with a broken arm (Untaru), a fantastical story about 5 mythical heroes. Thanks to his fractured state of mind and her vivid imagination, the line between fiction and reality starts to blur as the tale advances.

Unparalleled acting, fantastic light and colors, and it made me want to cry quite a bit. The crying part was emphasized by the fact that I watched this movie while lying all sickly-like on the couch.

I wish I had seen the trailer for this movie to begin with, as I wouldn’t have been as surprised by the adult themes as I was. From the start I expected a childlike fantasy story told between two unexpected characters that were stuck together in this sad hospital while they both healed from their subsequent falls. Sounds like a crappy summer flick. And while that is more or less what does happen it’s much more real life and less childlike. The movie starts off innocent enough, but as our main character, Lee Pace, dips into a deeper depression the story turns violent and quite heartbreaking. Thankfully, the end of the movie makes up for all the sad.

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5 stars from my little corner.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeAyIQ_OT_I