SoulCards
Thanks, Deena.

Lizard: The Other White Meat.

I was listening to Frank Zappa's Make a Jazz Noise Here and it warped my brain. Honest, Officer!

FAX-FAX-FAX-FAX-FAX-FAX-FAX-FAX-FAX-FAX
Subject: The Important Fax Company's Important Fax
From: The Important Fax Company
To: Someone Who Needs An Important Fax

Hey, you there! Wake up. There's an incoming fax, can't you hear it whirring in the distance? Something important, too. I promise. It won't be anything like a randomly-located combination Chinese restaraunt and laundry, soliciting business to not only remove stains, but to also put them in to start with.

One-stop laundry-cycling as it were. For the busy stay-at-home mom or dad who just doesn't have the time for the old-fashioned and time-wasting "traditional" method of first actually putting clothes on, then taking time to go to a Chinese restaraunt and spilling lunch on the clothing, and, even worse, the peak of lost moments, the height of time-wastage, finally, in your-life-is-weighing-you-down, the-world-is-pressing-on-your-soul agony, driving to the laundry to start the whole damn cycle over!

Can you imagine the despair that indelibly marks the lives of those folks? The creases in their souls from folding their lives into smaller and smaller pieces so they can fit the responsibilities of modern life in the few, precious few, free moments stolen from their packed worlds?

The Franco-Roman-Chinese Restaraundry invites you to our grand opening. Come and visit our new facilities, and try our new General Tzo's chicken breast cookies.

No, this isn't that kind of fax, No-siree-mom it's not. This is an important fax. So, if you wouldn't mind taking a break from all that scritchy-scratchy writing you're doing, I'd appreciate it if you'd give this fax to Mlle. Marilyn. The Important Fax Company thanks you. Goodnight.

OK, I admit it. I'm a Suburban Dude. For many years, the house gutters (probably original, meaning 20+ years) have had problems: filling with leaves and overflowing, and leaking throughout the runs. This caused floods down the inside walls of several rooms, leading to bubbles looking like The Blob had impregnated the wallboard. We finally had the gutters replaced a few years ago and leaf guards installed. Which almost completely eliminated the problems (winter snow loads are still dangerous). And every time it rains, and we hear the water cascading through the downspouts, we turn to each other and say, "Working gutters, Eddy, working gutters." Yes, we are simple.

It should be easy to remember after all these times that working in the kitchen is the surest way to calm me down and get me back on track. I wandered around the supermarket today on day 1 of marketing for meals for my guests. Dominick's is in the process of moving everything, seemingly on a daily basis. Back and forth, back and forth, up and down, cursing, swearing at myself, grumbling, arguing. $181 later, more of the same trying to figure out how to get it all in the refrigerator. Finally, at about 7 p.m. I began to make the soups - first the potato-leek, since the leeks had to be trimmed right away, then the squash-corn chowder, and finally the celery-blue cheese. The potato-leek soup is a snap to make and for once I had a light touch with the herbs, in this case fresh tarragon. Unexpectedly delightful! I hadn't prepared the squash-corn chowder since 1995, when chemotherapy robbed my enjoyment of this sweet comfort food. Of course, I didn't realize I had no thyme (I still don't believe it) or bay leaves, so I scrambled for the substitutions book - and guess what? You can substitute thyme for bay leaves! What to substitute for thyme, though? Savory. Finally something I actually had in the cupboard. When it was finished I cautiously took a spoonful. Damn it's good! Very, very good. The celery soup is a well-known taste, though it's far better when Mike makes it, which probably has a lot to do with his measuring everything and likely not eating a spoonful of the blue cheese before it goes in the soup. All three soups were in the refrigerator by 9:30 p.m. Record time. What's so hard about cooking?

ascorbic - 176 points! Spanned two triple word scores, with a blank serving as an i.

What is it about a freshly mowed lawn that has such appeal? Is it the newly mown hay smell? Something that echos into lost times, where the smell of grasses being eaten by goats, and the warmth of a summer's sun on your face, promise that your life will be good - if only briefly. Or is it the neatly ordered mower marks, and the tidy lawn, with all the grass the same height and no leaves to blemish it? The philsophy beaten into us by Industrial Revolution. Or, finally, and probably the real reason, is it the self-satisfaction of demonstrably finishing something? Something not too big, something that won't piss the neighbors off because it's so big, something that in fact the neighbors will look at and say, "Hey, he's a good guy - he keeps his lawn neat!"?

Saturday morning observations from the deck...

A gorgeous early fall morning, bright sun lightly shrouded in a hint of high wispy haze, breeze whispery in the trees, temperature cool enough to allow long sleeves but warm enough for shorts. Reading the latest New York Times Book Review, substituting opinions for actually reading the books. Sounds of birds and squirrels and chipmunks, and the water fountain barrel splashing in the background.

Most lawns in the neighborhood are still dormant from the August heat. There are no lawnmowers in the background so far, although I'll be breaking that silence later on.

Hummingbirds really do hum. At least they do when their flight attitudes changes. When hovering and flying straight they're pretty quiet. A lot like sport kites, the early ones with the loose trailing wing edges, except those made noise in all cases except hovering. And hummingbirds are pugnacious, too. I saw one chasing a goldfinch all around the yard before it decided it had terrorized the larger bird enough.

One of our feeders is a finch-only thistle tube, the type where the feed holes are located below the perches. The idea is that only goldfinches will eat thistle while hanging upside down. Except for some black-cap chickadees, which Birds & Blooms magazine calls "oportunistic feeders". At least one has learned to eat thistle upside down. An unexpected contrast with the bright and muted yellows of the goldfinch families. I wonder if finches learned to eat upside down by learning to be tolerant of landing on thin-stalked seed flowers such as cosmos - even as small as the birds are, they cause the stalks to bow over, placing themselves in odd attitudes (even upside-down).

You give me five hundred dollars, I give you the negatives, and no one has to know you were shaking the donuts. Oh my, oh my. She seemed like a shy girl when they met, but a few drinks later, they were buttering the invisible snowman. A euphemism generator! I knew there was a reason Flinka created computers! And PERL, too. Found it posted in the September 15 issue of Need To Know, written by a group of intellectuals pretending to be geeks - he says, making it up as he types...

After a few minor text changes, the Halloween 2000 invitation is done! Not the most laugh-out loud one that we've done, but a most intelligent and witty one. Now to print 93 envelopes and get 'em in the mail...

Whew! A 5 hour marathon, designing the Halloween 2000 invitation, fueled by stir-fry and sugar cookies. Ooh, it's so spiffy: it's a tarot reading using the Celtic 3-card spread. But no footnotes. Dunno about that; we'll have to find a replacement. Now, if only it still seems as good when the sun comes up.

Perhaps it was the rain, rain that has been absent now for over a month, rain that hasn't a hope of greening the end-summer dormant lawn, that irrigated my fertile brain. Who can say? The question was, what to put on that bathroom wall? Stained glass? Too small, too much red and blue. Something ceramic? I thought about those two round bisque faces on the living room wall and then I remembered the glaze chips from the pottery class I took in 1993 through COD. Twenty-eight cookie sized ceramic disks with 28 different glaze combinations. Nail them to the wall in a random pattern! No, too many holes in the freshly painted wall. On small dowels inserted onto a board, with wire connecting the different dowels like spidery framework. Yes! But how? Well, then, on a grid, or a loose frame. Hang them with brightly colored thread from a piece of wood. Here we go again, that darn piece of wood we can never find. The beaver stick! The short one (Mike's) that we got at Sky Lake at URSA shaman camp in 1998. Perfect. Thread? How about the artificial sinew? Too devoid of personality. The embroidery thread - and guess what, we have it in Roy G. Biv colors. Seven colors and 28 disks. Bathmobile speaks for itself.

Do you know what happens when you don't clear lime and calcium build-up off an aluminum shower stall for more than 8 years? It turns into a living piece of stone that eats the chrome veneer off the frame. You have to attack it with a steam-driven chisel and some - small - amount of C4 plastique. And you end up with an interesting, um, "sculpture". Or perhaps a bas relief map of the darkside of the moon.

Rocky Horror Picture Show too radical, too racy, too strange for you? But you like talking back to the screen, as if you were at home in your living room watching TV? Is that your problem, Bunkie? Such a deal we have for you! Join the Clean Cut Brigade in New York City (now that's an oxymoron if ever there was!) at the Ziegfield Theatre and sing along with Maria and the von Trapp children at the Sing-A-Long Sound of Music!

Imported from London, the show is now in NYC and possibly will tour the States. Just when you thought it was safe to take your toast back into the theatre...

Thanks to George W. for this link!

Things you learn while working on assembler code late at night: the bottle caps on Sobe drinks have "unusual" slogans under them. My Energy drink (guarana + yohimbe + arginine) says "Boycott lizard burgers"! Turns out Sobe runs contests - if you collect certain slogans you get a t-shirt.

Tonight I played volleyball at Suwanee Sports Academy, a large facility with 7 full size courts. Only one was set up for open play; two others had volleyball league games and the remainder were basketball or something wifty like synchronized floor bouncing. Mostly 'B' or better play, which was nice. George gave me back-road directions - otherwise I would have had to take I-285 to I-85 and I'd probably still be trying to get there. And once I arrived I remembered that I'd been there once before, to play in the final match of a volleyball season by invitation of one of the team captains. 50 minutes there, 30 minutes back. I played OK and I'll probably go back, even if it is a hike.

Inti and I took a long walk at Danada today - almost 4 miles, I think. Some time has passed since last we walked out that way - perhaps I've never been there at summer's end to see what prairie looks like in September. Well, it's about 5 feet tall, yellow, blue, white, green and brown, buzzing, flapping, chirping and stirring in the breeze. Never have I seen so much goldenrod, wild white and blue and purple aster, sunflowers and milkweed. At times it seemed we were leading a parade of monarchs and dragonflies. Goldfinches were everywhere. Against the clear azure sky their color faded somewhat but their whistling calls give them away. From a distance there was no way to tell how tall the plants were and it occurred to me that we were swimming here, deep in an ecosystem that is totally hidden away from our prying eyes. Every now and then Inti would put her chin up high in the air as if she were trying to look over the milkweeds to see what lay beyond. Way out on the Blue Bird Trail, we were all alone and the prairie must have been burned last season, as it was considerably shorter. We could see a long way, and I felt safe to let Inti off-lead to see what she would do. Of course, it probably helped that she was already quite tired - but she walked perhaps 50 feet ahead of me, at most, and her gait was natural, rolling, beautiful. If I stopped walking she would stop, too, and turn her head to see where I might be. She came to me almost every time I called - I say almost because sometimes she just stopped and looked at me, waiting for me to catch up to her! On the way back a small monarch butterfly flew around her again and again. It seemed to follow along with us, much like the dragonfly who visited with us for a full three minutes on the Blue Bird Trail. Beautiful blessed day.

The stealth wrens have fledged sometime in the past week, when we weren't here. We don't hear the parents' song or the tiny calls of the babies, nor do we see Mom and Dad flying back and forth with food, over and over and over... It was an unexpected treat to have a second brood this summer - we didn't think the male was ever going to attract a mate, and that for sure he was doomed to batchelorhood for the year. But he must have met this babe at The Worm Bar's last call and had unprotected sex, because all of a sudden he was lugging diapers and baby food. Now they're gone. They don't write, they don't call, they never stop by any more. And they didn't even clean up their room before they left. Sigh. What's wrong with birds today, anyway?

Ah, a fresh new driveway coat. First time in 8+ years. Looks nice: good and black. The guys who did it (Barreca Sealcoat) worked like dogs, in 85+ degree heat, and unpleasant humidity. Took 'em less than 45 minutes to do some 50' of driveway and the walk at the side of the house. Of all the fix-it jobs a homeowner can do, this is not one I have an interest in taking on - hot, sticky, messy, smelly. (Sounds like sex, but not as fun!)