Happy thoughts, Anita, happy thoughts!

Remember this purple wall?



It's in the garden I went ga-ga over on the Shoals tour in 2006. Lavish slobbering was carried on here: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

That gardener, Phillip, started his own blog, called Dirt Therapy. You should check out his Christmas decorations. This one in particular just makes my mouth hang open. Isn't it amazing that real people do this, and not just when they're expecting a visit from magazine photographers?

Anyway, now he's tagged me for a meme about "eight things that make you happy". So here are some recent happies:

Girls Dominate the Siemens Competition. Woohoo!¹

The library left a message that my copy of An Ice Cold Grave is waiting. Yay!

Latin Via Proverbs.

A little birdie told me that we might be getting a few really nice knives for Christmas.

My daily email from The Writer's Almanac (which is really more of a Reader's Almanac if you ask me). Each entry includes a short poem, and "Literary and Historical Notes," which often contains biographical tidbits about writers or artists (on their birthdays). Example from December 4th: "It's the birthday of poet Rainer Maria Rilke … who made a career as a poet by seducing a series of rich noblewomen who would support him while he wrote his books."

Stephen Duffy & the Lilac Time have a new album, Runout Groove. Had to get it from amazon.co.uk, but that's ok because it was dispatched in a hurry.²

Brittlestar's new one is out soon too. Well technically it's already "out" but due to my computer-with-not-one-ounce-of-spare-memory problems, I'm forced to wait for the hardware version.

The last one, I think I'll expand into a separate post.

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¹ Must... resist... saying... "You go girls"!

² You can listen to some of it on their myspace page.

Childhood fears

1. Drawbridges. They were apt to open up suddenly, while you were right in the middle.

2. Foxes. They were cunning and evil and just waiting until your guard was down, so they could stalk and eat you.

3. Lava. It might spew out of any slope with no notice, and race downhill to burn your feet off, and then where would you be?

4. My dead step-grandmother. I'm sure that someone meant well when they told me she was looking down on me from heaven.

5. Driving unawares. I'd be navigating a busy dream-intersection, and suddenly realize that I didn't know how to drive.

6. Driving unawares in underwear. Always where Meighan Boulevard and Noccalula Road met -- the widest, busiest intersection in town. And me in my slip.

7. Every monster from Jonny Quest. But particularly that huge robot spider.

8. Accidentally poking my little brother's brains out. I was warned about the soft spot on a baby's head, but in my mind it was a paper-thin membrane that I was constantly in danger of breaking.

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I was tagged by the Shady Gardener for the "8 Random Things" meme, but since I'd already done the "5 Random Things" I decided to change it to the "8 Childhood Fears" meme, which I just made up.

So, what scared you as a kid?

Blogealogy

Pablo of Round Rock Journal is just about the best blog friend you could ever hope for. Recently he gave me a "Thinking Blogger Award", which I was very grateful to receive. It was especially nice considering that I'm not usually likely to be found, say, debating politics, or pondering existentialism or the like.

I have a hard enough time following regular memes the way I'm supposed to, without smartypantsness getting in the way. And I really wondered about the oddly restrictive rules for this one.

The "rules" are:
1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to five blogs that make you think.
2. Link to (the original post) so people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.

I didn't actually link to the post you're supposed to. Because I suspect that so people can easily find the exact origin of the meme really means so I can get lots and lots of links.

The blogealogy went backwards like this. The date on the entry is written after the blog's name, and they're American-style dates so 4.8 is April 8th, not 4th August.

me
Round Rock Journal 4.8
Arboreality 4.7
Classical Bookworm 3.12
A Work in Progress 3.10
Pages Turned 3.9
Mental Multivitimin 3.9
The Sheila Variations 3.9
Put on Your Big Girl Panties 3.9
One Weird Mother 2.25
Oh, the Joys 2.25
It's Really Me 2.24
Frog and Toad are Still Friends 2.23
Under the Mad Hat 2.22
Bub and Pie 2.22
So Fast Away 2.20
Life: The Ongoing Education 2.18
California Teacher Guy 2.18
History is Elementary 2.16
Another History Blog 2.13
Primordial Blog 2.12
Sandwalk 2.12
Greg Laden 2.11
The Thinking Blog 2.11

OK, so assuming that this timeline is representative, if all had worked as plotted -- if everyone obeyed the rules and nobody got nominated more than once -- the originator would now have roughly 11,920,928,955,078,100 links.

That didn't happen, of course, but depending on which source you believe, that idea did garner somewhere between 1,000 and 162,000 links.

Pretty good thinking.

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Now, whether you're tempted to say, "Hey I've got to get me some of that. What kind of award can I dream up?" or "Help, help, I'm being manipulated," do click on some of the links above. After just a couple I found blogs that I not only hadn't heard of, but who didn't even link to anyone I'd heard of. And some of them are quite wonderful!

So, to sum up:
Nice results from possibly scammy origins. How often does that happen?!

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Since I never leave a meme as I found it, I'm going to list five blogs for you to check out that I've never linked before. They can accept the "Thinking Blogger Award" or not, as they choose, and don't have to follow no stinkin' rules. Unless they want to.

Snow Crumbs
Omniglot
House of Lime
French Word-a-Day

Oh heck. This was so funny that I'm going to link it even though she's already listed in my sidebar. I offer you The Chicken Story. Cackle at will.

More rambling, and a recipe

More natural graffiti

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Stu, Ron, and Chris all did the same "Things I've Done" type meme. I noted that there were three things I'd done that none of them had.

Since I'm anal, I had to also list the things they'd all three done, that I hadn't:

23. Gotten drunk on champagne (Tipsy, maybe. I don't like getting drunk.)

24. Given more than you can afford to charity (Nope. Geez I sound cheap. On the other hand, I can't remember spending "more than I could afford" on anything for me either.)

26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment (Giggling fits, yes, worst possible moment, no.)

29. Asked out a stranger (Too shy, shy.)

36. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking (I think in my dancing days I was always pretty self-conscious about it.)

84. Performed on stage (Not unless you count grammar school stuff. I was brilliant as the tail end of a horse in that Girl Scout skit, though.)

85. Been to Las Vegas

100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over

101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge

132. Petted a cockroach (Roach petting is apparently more common than I'd imagined.)

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Mom's Peach Crumble

Crumble:
1 egg white
1/2 C sugar (100 g)
1/4 C chopped pecans (40 g)
1/2 C rolled oats (use the one minute type) (45 g)

Pudding part:
1 - 1.1 oz fat-free sugar-free vanilla pudding mix (31 g)
1 C skim milk (240 ml)
1 - 8 oz nonfat vanilla yogurt (Mom uses peach instead) (228 g)
4 medium peaches, peeled & sliced

Beat egg white until stiff. Add sugar, mixing until creamy. Fold in pecans and oats. Spread mixture thinly on cookie sheet coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350 for 10 - 20 minutes. Should be a little brown on top. Remove from sheet to cool. Crumble.

Mix milk & pudding. Stir until thick. Add yogurt & stir. In a small casserole dish, alternate layers of peaches and pudding mix. Top with crumbles. Chill & serve. 8 servings.

I think the crumbles should be held til right before eating, since the pudding makes them soggy before long.

The better the peaches, the better the whole Crumble. I don't think it would be the same with canned peaches. (Come winter I might have to try it though.)

To be so healthy, it's actually really good. I may start listing more of my recipes here since I seem to be developing a tendency to misplace them. (If you've seen my recipe that involves lentils, couscous, an onion, and lots of cumin, please let me know! I thought it was from Prevention but I can't find it on their site.)

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For non-American cooks, I used the recipe conversions found here.

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Never mind about the lentil recipe - found it!

Scribe

I don't have to read it.



I wrote it!

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Black and Yellow Garden spider, aka Golden Orb Weaver, aka Writing Spider (Argiope aurantia).

Submitted to the Friday Ark.

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I don't check my sitemeter obsessively like I used to. But it can be barrel-o-monkeys funny now and then, so I try to look from time to time.

"Chicken nest boxes" has taken a back seat to both "white fuzzy caterpillar" and "yellow fuzzy caterpillar" as top search terms.

Apparently, googling "Alcohol and rambling pic" brings first Woody Guthrie, and then me (a post in which I rambled and offered that many alcohol laws were dumb). The ways of the internets are strange indeed.

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It's taking me a while to get back up to speed with all the blogs I read. But I noticed that a few of them had featured the same meme in the past month.

It's one of those "Things I have done" lists and I'm not going to reproduce the whole thing, but here are the things I've done that neither Stu, Ron, nor Chris have done:

11. Visited Paris
75. Gotten divorced
90. Gone to Thailand

I was going to add

108. Piloted an airplane

but that would probably be cheating. My uncle just let me take the controls for a little while.

One side of my family is a flying bunch. My mother flew an airplane before she drove a car. One uncle was an Air Force pilot, and another uncle and three cousins flew small planes for fun & profit. One of those cousins became a Delta pilot.

On the other hand, my Dad was afraid to fly. I used to tease him about it all the time. Especially later, after I had flown and really enjoyed it. Then somehow I developed a fear of it too. I can fly in a plane. I just really, really, really don't want to.

I'm rambling again.

Five weird things

Ron from Toad in the Hole sent me a meme, to list five weird things about myself.

I am generally not superstitious, but feel compelled to kiss my finger and briefly hold it to the ceiling everytime I'm in a car that runs a red light.

I have a vivid imagination, and can sometimes spend too much time thinking about the worst thing that can possibly happen in any given situation. (That's why I fainted at the tourniquet portion of a Girl Scout first aid lecture.)

One of my previous goals in life was to have a penpal in every country of the world. A large world map covered with red pins was my wall art. I never achieved this goal, but still get a thrill every time I receive a postcard from somewhere far away. (Karen, Box 203 Allgood AL 35013, if you want to thrill me.)

I have a hard time buying just one book on a subject. Two is a minimum, but I feel a lot better with three, and five or six or twelve is really best.

I have a hypersensitivity to (can smell from a mile away) rancid oil and green peppers. It's fading as I age, though. In the past I could hardly stomach anything that had been cooked in the same oven as a dish containing green peppers.

I think that the thing you put in your mouth (or elsewhere) and the thing you hang outdoors should not both be called thermometers.

OK well that's six things. I was on a roll.

Fore! (A Meme)

Lorianne of Hoarded Ordinaries passed this meme along to me. I'll try to be less smarty-pants than normal with the answers.

Four jobs you've had in your life:
newspaper copygirl
cocktail waitress
traffic counter
electrical engineer

Four movies you could watch over and over:
Little Big Man (my favorite movie)
Paper Moon
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Bladerunner

Four places you've lived:
Alabama (small town)
the north of France
Alabama (big city)
Alabama (rural)
I must like it here.

Four TV shows you love to watch:
Southpark (not so much last year though)
Rome (a lot better than I thought it would be)
The Daily Show (I have a secret crush on Jon Stewart)
American Idol (starts back soon)
House (I still keep expecting Stephen Fry to walk in)
Monk (Just wish they'd make more than 2 or 3 a year)
Yes I know that's six.

Four places you've been on vacation:
I think my favorite four places have been:
Dauphin Island
Nova Scotia
Texas
El Salvador

Four websites you visit daily:
Bloglines
I think that's the only daily one.

Four of your favorite foods:
Nothing will ever attain the perfection of the broiled crab claws at The Sea House, a Dauphin Island restaurant that is no more.
The BBQ at the hole in the wall (downtown Bham - also now closed).
The perfect Philly Cheesesteak sandwich... I'm still looking for that.
Anything chocolate

Four places you'd rather be:
Nowhere.

Four albums you can't live without:
If all my CDs suddenly disappeared, the four artists I'd be apt to replace most quickly would be REM, John Wesley Harding, The Lilac Time (and/or Stephen Duffy) and Son Volt (and/or Jay Farrar). Or maybe Blue Rodeo.

Four to pass this meme along to:
I'd love to see answers from:
Floridacracker
Thingfish23
Hick
Ontario Wanderer

But don't play if you don't want to.

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(Note: edited to correct one of the links. Duh.)

Me me meme again

Nuthatch over at Bootstrap Analysis wanted me to do this little questionnaire meme. I did, but couldn't resist getting all smarty-pants about it in parts.

10 years ago.
I lived by myself in Birmingham, and worked as an electrical engineer at BellSouth. I was growing to dislike the corporate environment more every day.

5 years ago.
I lived in the same house, only now I'd married my hubby and gotten two step-cats in the bargain. I'd quit my job and started a little handmade soap business. Hubby and I had more hobbies than most. One thing we liked to do was to look at land.

1 year ago.
We had bought some of the land we'd been looking at. (Well that's one less hobby to worry about anyway.) We'd moved here to the country and started our critter menagerie in earnest. The soap business got its own workshop.

Yesterday.
Spent most of the day online, shopping for (and ordering) new things to go into new gift baskets I'm planning for the fall. Got a sore back from sitting down too long. Wanted to look around the yard for more birds, but did some cooking instead. (I'd waited, but those veggies from the farmer's market just didn't want to prepare themselves!)

5 songs I know all the words to:
Eastern Meadowlark
babbling brook
wind in the leaves
dog day cicada
spring peepers

5 snacks:
sweet
salty
rich
crunchy
fruity

5 things I’d do with $100 million:
Besides the obvious (give some to charity, give some to family):
Start the Karen Museum of Modern Art (KMOMA). Mostly buy works from as-yet unfamous artists that I like. Scour the country to do so.
Buy up all the surrounding neighbors' property, and put up lots of fencing to keep coyotes and trash-dumpers out.
Buy up a bunch of property where we like to watch birds, so it wouldn't get developed.
Become a patron for local musicians or artists I liked (The Karen Endowment for the Arts).
Follow the Formula One racing circuit for a year.

5 places I’d run away to:
I'd really rather stay.

5 things I’d never wear:
Never say never.

5 favorite TV shows:
Documentaries are really my favorites, but as for recurring shows, we currently like House, Rome, Monk, Southpark, and anything with "Law and Order" in the title. We loved "Six Feet Under". We also like "Huff" but series that make five episodes and then take two years off are getting on my last nerve. I'm exaggerating, but only slightly.

5 greatest joys:
I don't want to jinx them!

5 favorite toys:
The portable dna analyzer.
The machine that stops time.
The levitator.
The cloak of invisibility.
The jetpack.

Search story

Several months ago I came across a hilarious search story on the blog Frogs and Ravens. She took some of the Google search terms that brought people to her site, and made a story of them.

At the time my blog was still new, and I only had a few searches per day. Then I seemed to achieve a critical mass (other than in my diet) and the search engines found me. Lately I remembered the search story meme and decided to try it myself.

I used all the searches, not just Google's, and I did them in the order that they appeared. This group of search strings is slightly different than usual, because it doesn't include searches for chicken and couscous salad, Leunig prayers, or turtle egg pictures, which I think are my top three search terms at present. But I writes 'em like I sees 'em, and just took the first 30 or so. So here you go. The search terms are bolded.

I needed a crash course in identifying caterpillars. While dining al fresco, I'd accidentally swallowed one that dropped into my zuchinni soup! I'd been worried and inattentive all day. With the chickens broody and denuding the trees of cedar berries, I couldn't stop agonizing: why do roosters pick on my hens?

That caterpillar must have been hallucinogenic. I imagined I could converse with weird looking turtles. They had good names no one else would think of, like Kitkitdizze! Their chief told me that they were all devoted arachnophiles. But their main job was to destroy all toads. Sevin was their preferred poison. After we spoke, they all crawled together into a chicken nest box, and enjoyed a catawba moth spread with witch butter that some Mergansers had sold them.

I set off on foot for the house of Jenny Zelle, who had a job sexing young chickens at the local hatchery. She liked my crazy chicken pictures, and knew a lot about herbal medicine.

Although it was broad daylight, a chorus of owls sounded from the trees. "At night they hunt catawba tree worms, Virginia" I whispered to my shadow.

Was I still hallucinating?

"A sapsucker! A chicken roosting in nest golf balls!" I exclaimed, when I reached the end of the country lane.

"You're not making sense," Jenny recoiled.

I sat down hard on her steps. "I need help identifying fuzzy caterpillars," I moaned.

I watched a Muscovy duck snatch a Japanese beetle from the Cataba in her yard, as I struggled to regain proper use of my tongue.

Jenny gasped. "Yellow fuzzy caterpillar?" she queried. "Near the chicken nesting boxes?"

I nodded vigorously. Jenny looked worried, but prescribed a strong dose of alcohol. "It's the worst caterpillar in Alabama. Buy Jack Daniels!"

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It's Friday! Don't forget to view the Friday Ark. And there is a new "I and the Bird" over at Charlie's Bird Blog this week too.

Stop shouting those animoles

Mira and Turtleheart I owe you one.

1. Total number of films I own on DVD/video:
Free, free, set them free

2. The last film I bought:
hook line and sinker

3. The last film I watched:
halfheartedly

4. Five films that I watch a lot or that mean a lot to me:
sillyfluff
eye candy
meaningful story
heartwrenching allegory
understated avant-garde comedy

Deja vu, all over again, only with music.

1. Total volume of music files on my computer:
area times depth

2. Last CD I bought was:
indy Canadian

3. Song playing right now:
soundtrack from the movie of my life

4. Five Songs I Listen to a lot, or That Mean a lot to Me:
by nice southern boys
by Canadian alt-country group
by US-based Dylan-influenced British pop-folky
by UK-based Dylan-influenced british pop-folky
by various people named John

same end for both:

5. Tag 5 people and have them put this in their journal/blog:
A dermatologist has removed the tags, for now. I am converting this one to a true meme, which means that you only copy it if you want to.

Me me meme

Trix at Whippoorwill has tagged me for a meme.

When I first started reading blogs, it took me forever to figure out what a meme was. It's kind of like a blog virus, only a voluntary one. Someone has an idea and then other people copy it for their blogs. The most famous is the "100 things about me" lists that you see on lots of blogs. (I haven't done one, mainly because I would find it difficult to stop at 100. I'm thinking of starting a "100 things about me before the age of 5" meme for egotistical blabbermouths like myself. Feel free to run away screaming at any time.)

Anyway, recently someone decided that people weren't paying enough attention to their memes I guess, and memes became more like chain letters. You get "tagged" or "handed a stick" or something similar. I generally defy chain letters on general principle. But if chain letters were about books...?

Smartypants version:

1. Total # of Books I’ve Owned:
They have owned me instead

2. Last Book I Bought:
on a whim

3. Last Book I Read:
in bed

4. Five Books That Mean A Lot To Me:
a b c d e

At heart I am truly a smartypants.

My more conventional (boring) answers:

1. Total # of Books I’ve Owned:
Before we moved, we ran out of room for bookcases at 11 and started piling books on the floor. We've since downsized and used the library more.

2. Last Book I Bought:
Two from Lee May, after hearing him speak. In the interest of space-saving I'm trying to use the library. Unless I have a chance to buy directly from the author. Or it's something I really want. I will probably buy John Wesley Harding's book Misfortune too.

3. Last Book I Read:
Still haven't finished both of May's, because it has taken me so long to get an eye exam appt and then to order new glasses. My eyes had reached the limit of my arm's reach, it was hard to find someone to turn pages for me in the next room, and I'm a terrible procrastinator when it comes to doctor's visits.

4. Five Books That Mean A Lot To Me:
Too hard. Field guides and poetry and art and literature and language and neurology and everything else. I listed some of my favorite authors and a few books in the blogger profile if you're really interested. It has everything except my favorite color (blue).

Since I ducked out of this question I will quote my favorite book passage for you though. It's from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. Chapter 3 to be precise, "The Night Shadows".

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!

That is my favorite part. I think about it all the time, especially while driving at night. The rest of the paragraph is good too:

Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life's end. In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?

5. Tag Five People with this list.
Charles, because he needs something to write about, and I stole the smartypants style from him anyway.
Jenni, because she sent me a book meme before
Rhodent, because she has proven her willingness to go along with memes
Jenny, because we've talked about books before, and
Maikopunk, because her blog has "book" in the title, and if that's not asking for it I don't know what is.

Anyone on the list, please feel free to ignore it, you won't hurt my feelings. I'll assume that you're fed up with memes. (Jenny peut avoir ras-le-bol avec ces memes.) Anyone not on the list, no you are not chopped liver. I almost put you on it, really. Please go ahead and participate anyway if the spirit moves you.

More like a baton

I don't normally do these things. But when Jenni asks, I can't say no.

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be:
One that's hidden.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
In high school I had a crush on Strider (from the Lord of the Rings series). More recently, I liked Daniel Pecan Cambridge from "The Pleasure of my Company" (Steve Martin).

The last book you bought is:
"Trilliums" by the Cases is in my shopping cart right now.

The last book you read:
Girl with a Pearl Earring.

What are you currently reading?
"Gardening Life" by Lee May. Also trying to read through 50 million magazines so I can get rid of them.

Five books you would take to a deserted island:
1 - a book on the natural history of the island
2 - a book about how to live off the land on an island
3 - a book of poetry thick enough to stun an ox
4 - an encyclopedia of similar size
5 - a book about how to get off of islands

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons)? And Why?
Anyone who wants it, have at it.