As is my habit from time to time, I like to share a story about my children. In this case it involves my oldest daughter. We had discussed how Easter isn’t always on the same day and how I think it may even happen in March every once in a while. She said, “You should look it up.” I said, “I could look in an almanac.”

She paused and politely corrected my pronunciation, “In – ter – net.”

I feel overwhelmed by the season. It’s very close to Christmas and I feel like I have no time to finish everything that needs to be done. Somehow I’ll muddle through, never fear.

Despite the threat of rain, I doubt it will actually happen. Last night the wind was 40mph and not a drop at my place. Tonight there are ominous clouds everywhere except overhead. I’m tired of being disappointed by my ‘monsoon’.

The great wind that carried me through the past week has now left me and I have crashed. I can’t even seem to make a steady stream of diet Mtn Dew give me a pick me up. Fortunately I’ve finished the homework for my class and don’t need to worry about that. Just need to get up at 5 in the morning and everything will be fine.

What are some of your favorite sleeping aids?

For me, the very best one is a good back scratching. Don’t scratch my back while I’m driving or we’ll crash. Another is good food – the kind that’s freakishly delicious as well as good for me (at least kind of anyway) so a big artichoke or some nicely grilled steak are helpers in a good night’s sleep for me.

Any others out there?

Exit signs are meant to show you the way out, but in the case of at least one mall parking lot I can think of, it is only to show you how to go in circles for hours.

Getting into the place is easy. There are clearly marked signs and wide entrances. Once in, however, it is often best to resign yourself to life at the mall. You may or may not find a place to park and you may or may not be able to find your car when you leave. (Just because you know for sure you went in the Green Garage does not mean that you are still in the same garage and there is never a notice of your passing from one garage to another.)

Should you manage to find your car and back out without hitting anyone, you have to deal with two way traffic in lanes designed for one way traffic. Everybody takes their half out of the middle. If you, at this point, think “I’ll just follow the signs that say ‘exit’, you will be sorely disappointed since they will take you along the most circuitous route possible. You may even pass one or two exits along the way (marked entrance only). If you persist, you will find your self at the same place you came in. Somehow, the once wide entrance has become a dangerously narrow exit and your car (no matter what car it is) doesn’t have the turning radius necessary to take the corner on the way out. You end up curbing it a bit and maybe taking a little off the side wall as well.

I tend to ride my bike to the mall now.

I must be totally in love with those sign twirlers on corners because now I’m imagining beautiful, romantic lives for them. Yesterday I saw two on the same corner – one boy and one girl. The girl was dressed as the Statue of Liberty for Liberty Tax Services and the other had his sign turned away from me.

They were talking and dancing on the corner and I imagined that I was watching the beginning of new love. They would date, then marry and have kids and grandkids. They’ll tell everyone they met on a street corner and that it was love at first sight. Only they will know that they were twirling signs on that street corner and that it was less kismet and a desire to pay the bills that brought them together.

True love blooms on a street corner.

Sure you can’t get Cubans nowadays (at least not easily or legally). But you can get a large variety of other cigars (including the worry free candy kind) and the Romeo y Julieta flavor. It might be the kind of thing you want to have on you while watching Eat Pray Love. At least the section where she is in Italy.

Another weekend bites the dust.  The house is still messy (but I didn’t spend much time in it), the hail damage still needs to be repaired (but I got to show it off to a visiting relative) and my hair is going gray (but I dyed it for the first time so no one can tell).

Really, this weekend was rather good.  I’m just so gosh darn tired.  I feel like I went on a really great vacation.  Which, as everyone knows, is the kind you get exhausted on.  Oh well.  Here’s to the long weekend!

I could make a lot of money if I knew for sure what the best fat burner is. I’d walk up to people in a trench coat and whisper in their ear, “10 bucks for the secret to the best fat burner.” And they’d believe me because I’m in a trench coat.

We probably can’t set aside the possibility that they give me the $10 to keep the trench coat closed.

Most of my spam posts sound like Yoda talking.

Like, “Finicky article, finicky blog, I give rise to bookmarked your blog, it is worthy responsibility this. Thank you….”

But anytime a person uses the words “worthy responsibility” they’re bound to sound like Yoda.

“My poo is worthy responsibility this.” for example.  It’s just fact that certain phrases change the tone of a conversation.  Try it sometime after a night of drinking.  It’s good for some laughs.

And if you’re bored of mundane conversation with your friends and don’t want to talk about how Billy and Maggie aren’t getting along and how everything is drama, slip in the phrase “exothermic reaction”.

For example, “Billy and Maggie are heating up just like the exothermic reaction in my mulch pile.”  You’ll get a lot of attention for that turn of phrase.

Going back to my tread of rants about comments on my blog,  I read this one today:

“… You guys possess a wonderful weblog going right here, KIU!…”

My eyes might be getting tired because I read the last part as ‘KILL’ and I got all confused.  I looked closer and realised it was a U instead of two Ls and still couldn’t figure it out because my mind went for acronyms I know starting with K and only came up with KIA.  All this means is that it took me an extra long time to read 10 words.

Now, I’ve succeeded in making you take an extra long time to read them too and I don’t have to feel so stupid.

A quintuple murder/suicide occurred a mile from my old house.  Makes me pretty happy that we left when we did.  So far, nothing like that has happened in my new neighborhood.  I’m in the BIG city now so that may not hold true for long.  And as it happens, in my old city a mile was actually pretty far away.

Out of curiosity, does anyone have any idea how they (as in ‘them’) come up with product codes? I don’t mean the bar code stuff.  I mean the code that you write down on the order form when you want a specific item from the office supply store.   Like 108R00723.  A mixture of numbers and letters seemingly unrelated to the item itself and impossible to remember for the next purchase.  If you understand that gobledegook, let me know because I have a weird desire understand this sort of thing.

IT’S RAINING!!

I love the rain and even if I lived in Seattle I would love the rain.  The dust mite commercial on the TV right now is kind of harshing my rain buzz but I suppose it will end soon and I can continue to watch the cure little rain drops hitting the pool.

Ah, contentment.

I’ve heard of horse saddles and horse shoes and horse flies but until today I didn’t know what horse tack was.  It sounds like something you do on a boat but apparently all the stuff I mentioned before IS the horse tack (not the horse flies).  It’s all the nifty gadgets and toys you could ever possibly want for your horse and then some.  Amanzing.  Who knew?

The clouds are in the sky, the dew point is up and the artificially created start to the monsoon has come and gone.  I think it might rain some day soon.  And it would really be a good thing.  It’s that time of year when I can’t remember the last time it rained and I’m starting to forget what it even looks like.  Of course the last time, 3 inches came down in 3 days and a nearby town got beached.  They didn’t actually flood, they just became surrounded by water.  The kids got a rain day.

Now that oil is starting to show up in Galveston, it may be time for people to start looking for a Texas Maritime lawyer.  One of the few times in the history of man in which the need for such a specific field will be required.  Hopefully the only time.  And hopefully Texas is far enough away that little damage will be done and the lawyers will lose that particular reason for being.

I completed a survey recently that asked about where I would consider getting an auto insurance quote and they listed companies I’ve never heard of. Then they asked me to answer questions about the companies I had never heard of just based on my impression of the name. It was kinda cool trying to consciously judge a book by its cover when I’ve spent a lifetime trying to deny that I quite literally do just that at the bookstore.

Weird how I connected all those topics, isn’t it?