Privacy issues

Something else funny that happened this weekend.

Sunday morning I totally walked in on some kid (probably in college) urinating! It was at the restaurant where I enjoyed a lovely breakfast of an enormous fluffy pancake stuffed with cream cheese and strawberries. And very good coffee. P had broccoli quiche and J had eggs and bacon. I think they were the kind where the yellow oozes out. It was at Johnson's Farm where I met the animals and Farmer Steve.

Here is the scene:

CC: (Approaches bathroom, asks DRINKSPERSON if anyone is in there)
DRINKSPERSON: Nope!
CC: Thanks. (Knocks on door. No answer. Opens door. Gasps, closes eyes, and stammers apology as she backs out. CC and DRINKSPERSON look at each other in disbelief.)
DRINKSPERSON: There is a lock in there, you know.
COLLEGE KID leaves bathroom, makes eye contact with CC and smiles a little. CC enters bathroom, locks door, checks door, and does her business. She returns to her table where she realizes the kid is from the next table over, a FAMILY, Party-of-Five-style. They look at her and nod a little, smiling sheepishly.
CC: (Shakes head slowly, in a wow-that-was-embarrassing way.) Sorry about that! I would have thought the door would have been locked! (FAMILY drops jaws and looks at COLLEGE KID, who reddens.)
CC: (Sits down with J and P, explains situation.) Whoops. (J and P roll eyes.)
J and P: Don't apologize. His fault, not yours!

Later, P claimed that the family was more surprised that I actually mentioned the situation than they were embarrassed for the kid. What the heck!? It's a really nice unisex bathroom in a decent restaurant. What was he thinking? I guess I could have ignored them, but hey! I'm from NY. We actually acknowledge when funny things happen, you know...?

A Blog Cabin writeup...

by the Blog Cabin Queen herself! And now I'm famous! Teehee!

http://blogcabinadventure.blogspot.com/2010/10/who-needs-marshmallows.html

Blog Cabin Adventure is over

I had a freakin' blast! So here are the pros and cons, in no particular order.

Cons:

• Forgot my towel, so I improvised and used my wrap instead (really, my fault)
• Forgot my B.O.derant (my fault again. Hel-lo, Activeion!)
• Smoky-smelling clothes
• Blowing my nose and having soot-colored snot
• Very little indoor light (60s watts for a cabin does not go so very far)
• Occasional mysterious septic smells (popcorn poop, anyone?)
• Port-a-Potties at the Garlic Festival (not BC's fault)
• Forgetting the flashlight and having to use a spiral staircase in the middle of the night because I forgot to pee before bed. I think it took me ten minutes to feel my way to the bathroom. Haha!

Pros:

• The beauty and serenity of a babbling brook, complete with rustling trees and glimmery rocks
• Big campfire
• Tending the campfire
• Toasting marshmallows over the campfire
• Enjoying ice cream and making each other laugh over said campfire
• Licky doggies (many thanks to Grace and Buddy)
• Special homemade oatmeal breakfast and special homemade pizza dinner
• Friends
• Cell phone usage (through Sprint, the only provider to work in the area)
• Good sleeping (just not enough of it!)
• Cider doughnut at the Garlic Festival
• Not being forced to eat garlic at the Garlic Festival
• Learning about sill plates from Their Wayne
• Meeting a friendly bull, horse, and donkey... and their owner, Farmer Steve
• Maple cotton candy (I don't know why, but I just can't resist cotton candy at a fair or festival)
• Appreciating the bones of a building
• So many other things. It was all so much fun!

Funniest parts:

• Hundreds of hippies and hippie children at the Garlic Festival
• J chowing down on garlic, bacon, and chocolate chip cookies at the festival (um, no thanks, I just ate)
• P riding in the trunk so we could park as a car pool at the festival and not have to ride the shuttle bus there
• 18 frogs jumping out of the mud at J and P as they dug around the cabin
• Having to return to the cabin to throw away the rest of my ice cream pint

Scariest part:

• UFO on Friday night! Then I thought I heard a bear. But do bears grunt? We all spooked each other and went running into the cabin. Later, they shared that it might have been the visiting moose. But in the pitch dark, is that any better?

Worst parts:

• Finding out that some leakage had occurred during the rainstorm of the day before. But it's fine, no damage was sustained.
• Digging. The wall of the final footing kept caving in. FOUR times.
• J tried to shovel P's fingers. That'll leave a mark!

First impressions:

• The Blog Cabin is much smaller than it appears on the blog.
• Plywood in quantity is actually very pretty.
• Construction sites do not scare me.
• For a work-in-progress and construction site, it was actually quite clean. And safe.

Fun facts:

• The toilet used to be located in the kitchen.
• J and P have burned all the original wood from the cabin at their campfires.
• Solace the Cat prefers the BC to his regular city home.

All of this and much more, in less than 23 hours... and that includes travel time! Hey J and P, when can I go back???

Tulip Fever

Lovely, lonely, young Sophia Sandvoort has married older, wealthy Cornelis. His love for her consumes him. Unfortunately, they are unable to conceive. Like a flower, his desire for immortality grows so much that he commissions a painter (Jan van Loos) to capture their likenesses on canvas.

Hmm. Whoever would have thunk a breathtakingly beautiful young woman would be attracted to an talented, tempting young artist? And so the story begins, during the 1630's in Amsterdam... during the time period known as Tulipomania.

Suspense! Intrigue! Love! Deborah Moggach paints this picture cleanly and intricately, with obvious love for her characters. The short chapter introductions from various 17th century household manuals, Jacob Cats, Leo da Vinci, and other players of the day added to the word-by-word pleasure. Also, I like tulips. *smile*

I actually willed myself to set this one aside every once in a while to draw out the reading process as far as I could. Hey! Debbie! More, please!

110%? I think not

Ahem! I feel I must inform you...

There is no such thing as more than 100%. So anyone who claims they have given it 110%, or 150%, 200%, or some other arbitrary percentage, is presenting you with a crock of shit. In the real world, extra credit doesn’t exist. Extra credit is nothing but two words placed next to each other. If you have truly given it your all, poured yourself into the task or the work or the product or the relationship and done your best, your absolute freaking best, you should be proud as punch to receive 100%.

Think in terms of college grading:

A = 100-90 = Excellent, or “Hot damn! You did an amazing job!”
B = 90-80 = Very good, aka “Well done!”
C = 80-70 = Good. “This has been completed.”
D = 70-60 = Passing. “Almost inadequate.”
F = 60 and below. Failing! “Utter crap. Look ashamed!”

Readers, please try to get As with good deeds, and at work, with your family and friends, and at tasks and chores and generosity and how you treat people and your general daily doings. When grading yourself, be honest. You know whether you have done something excellently or adequately. But tip the effort toward the higher grades, and hey what? The As will extend to other areas of your life as well.

By the way, grades of A+ are completely imaginary. And in life, forget about a grading curve. It’s just not gonna happen…

Green ash floors

His philanthropy aside, I'm not a big fan of Ty Pennington (from his annoyingly indulgent Trading Spaces days, way back when), but I absolutely love his choice of palest, jade-ish green wood: Eleuthera Ash. I'd love to do my living room in it, still with my red sofa and keep my black and light wood color palette intact. Walls? I dunno yet.

Aw, who am I kidding? Ideally, I'd do the entire place from room to room, including my pale pink bedroom. All I'd need is simply $6K for flooring...

Social Intelligence

http://www.meetup.com/Social-Intelligence/

I recently got an email about this meetup group because one of my interests is listed as "singles". But this one just sounds like educated people acting out and acting uneducated under the guise of social development. I feel bad that they have not been true to themselves until now!

"You may discuss just about everything as long as it's done tastefully. If you feel offended it's a good sign this is not the right group for you." Interesting concept, but ugh. I find this kind of opening statement neither cool nor offensive, but tiresome. So I guess this is not the right group for me!

But the funniest part about it is that "intelligence" is spelled wrong in the first two words of the description. Or did they do that to be cool, hmm? *sigh*

I love books

And I especially love bargain books. I have even been known to spend gas money to go out of my way for book bargains. What can I say? I get a thrill from it.

And that was my plan for today. Hit the Nevins Library book sale in Methuen on its last day for exciting additions to my reading and crafting libraries. Last time I got two reference binders full of flower and plant pictures for crafting, along with an old, hilarious Better Homes and Gardens Handyman's Book from the 50's, complete with adoring-looking wives in wide skirts and tips on cleaning white-wall tires, for one dollar each. I also got an old Navy seaman's book from the 30's, for fun.

But it's raining cats and dogs out there and by the time I was in my car after work I couldn't bear the thought of driving to the library and to Target for an errand, fighting the rain the whole time. So I went home instead!

I put on pajama pants! I put on a cotton-knit top! I put on fuzzy slippers! Then I sat down to write this. And wow, am I comfortable right now or what!? (I can't remember the last time I put on pajamas after work without the reasoning of not feeling well. But I feel fine! Lazy, but fine. Teehee.)

So here is my plan for tonight:

• Have a bite. Maybe make white rice
• Give the cats a good brushing and clip their nails
• Catch up on yesterday's Dancing with the Stars dances before tonight's elimination
• Read something?

And that's basically it. I feel so free right now... hooray!

Idiots' Books

Very cool. http://idiotsbooks.com/

I snagged a copy of After Everafter at Paqui's Alley today for their amazing price. Who would chuck a fun book like that because of two drops that smudged the title? Their loss, my win.

Also, if anyone wants me to buy me a present, I'd love the Makers Tile Game, currently on sale for the low price of ten measly bucks. http://store.idiotsbooks.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=IB026-01

On that note, perhaps I should do what Cory Doctorow has done. Write novels, then let everyone read them for free. Some people will buy copies, and some won't. Something to think about. The difference is that he's not interested in cash donations, whereas I am. A girl needs new accessories occasionally, yes? I don't expect to become rich from it, but a few books a month would be a smile-maker.

Alternatively, I'm ok with letting people read/download/tell their friends about my book for free, but there are other things to think about with that, too:

What if someone wants a hard copy? I still need a publisher. So I'm back at self-publishing through Amazon? The thought of talking to publishers still has me shaking in my boots! (Which may be silly, but still the way I feel.)Also, I still find the Creative Commons licenses confusing for some reason. But now I wrote it, and I want to get it out there, away from me. Out into the world! And I'm tired of whining to myself about it.

Ok. I've decided I am going to make a decision about what to do by the end of October. Keep reading, readers!

My Blog Cabin Adventure

Garlic Festival, here I come!

My Blog Cabin friends invited me to their cabin somewhere in western MA (I don't even know where it is, actually) for the weekend… to visit the North Quabbin Garlic Festival and help with the final footing! It will be the first time I have seen the cabin in person. Although I can’t dig or pour the footing because of my carpal tunnel symptoms for the last 1.5 weeks (flare-up almost all better, hooray!), and I don’t enjoy garlic so much (I like it, but it doesn’t like me) I just love festivals. But I won't be sitting on my butt just looking pretty. I’ll be acting as waitress for the parched tradeswomen and Their Wayne as they sweat up a storm.

Sooo, guess who will be featured in this weekend’s post of the Blog Cabin blog? That’s right! The Clever Cat herself, in the (soft, but non-furry) flesh! Maybe I can even get a pic with Budrow Wilson (a doggie), the newest addition to their fam. I haven’t seen them in months and this is going to be so much fun… stay tuned for the follow-up!

p.s. I will try to blog from the phone, but they are so far out in the sticks that there isn't even any cell reception! So you might just have to wait. Sorry!

They are with us

Sometimes, I swear I see Max at my parents' house.

Max, also known as Maxie Paxie, Maxie Paxie Pudding and Pie, El Baroncito Maximiliano (when he was small), El Baronissimo Maximiliano (when he got fat for a while), Max the Manx, and of course The Cat, was the premier pussycat of my family. He was the smartest, fastest, most charming, funniest, boldest cat of them all. Oh, one more thing... he's dead.

But he comes around, visiting. Yes, really.

He's not there all the time, but when he does pop 'round, I usually see him in the kitchen or around the stairs. And Thursday I saw him in the dining room peeking out from around the wall! He was interested in the sukkah on the deck. Before I realized what I was doing, I had closed the door and said, "No, no, hon. You can't come outside." But of course he could have come outside. Anyway, he looked at me with those gorgeous eyes, blinked, and was gone.

My dad was upstairs during all this, and when I told him I saw Max, he was dubious. Very dubious. I explained, and he kissed me on my forehead and told me he loved me very much. Harrumph.

Next time I'll invite him Maxie onto the deck... if he's careful not to fall off, that is...