Ah, to be in construction again now that the scanties are in bloom.
Stevie Wonder in Japan
Stevie Wonder is playing his first gig in Tokyo and the place is
absolutely packed to the rafters. In a bid to break the ice with his new
audience, He asks if anyone would like him to play a request.
A little old Japanese man jumps out of his seat in the first row and
shouts at the top of his voice “Play a Jazz chord! Play a jazz chord!”
Amazed that this guy knows about the jazz influences in Stevie’s varied
career, the blind impresario starts to play an E minor scale and then
goes into a difficult jazz melody for about 10 minutes.
When he finishes the whole place goes wild. The little old man jumps up
again and shouts “No, no, play a Jazz chord, play a Jazz chord”.
A bit pissed off by this, Stevie, being the professional that he is,
dives straight into a jazz improvisation with his band around the B flat
minor chord and really tears the place apart.
The crowd goes wild with this impromptu show of his technical expertise.
The little old man jumps up again. “No, no. Play a Jazz chord, play a jazz
chord”.
Well and truly pissed off that this little guy doesn’t seem to appreciate
his playing ability. Stevie says to him from the stage “OK smart ass. You
get up here and do it!”
The little old man climbs up onto the stage, takes hold of the mike and
starts to sing…
“A jazz chord to say I ruv you…”
<snerk> IN BED! <snerk>
Oh like y’all didn’t think I would! I actually have that saying on a refrigerator magnet. I bought the magnet in Decorah, IA. Oh, the exotic places travel for work takes me! 
Locked Rooms was good, although I think Mary is a bit of a git in this one.
I bought Rose Daughter and A Wizard of Earthsea today at work. I’m home and exhausted. I think I may have poutine for dinner, as Mr. Lissar is still in bed with flu. He was too sick to play Morowind today. That’s bad. I’m going to force-feed him chicken soup tomorrow.
Spam is one of those foods that was great when I was a little kid, but wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole anymore. Into this group goes bolgna, velveeta, wonder bread, and vienna sausages. I will have to work spamniotic fluid into conversation as soon as humanly possible, though.
Sean, if you add ‘in bed’ to that fortune, I think it’s calling you a big slut! An appreciated slut, but still… And you don’t ever want to come here where I live, anyway. There’s a reason why we’re known as Baghdad on the Border. Just pretend all roads end in San Diego.
I’m totally un-caffeinated, I swear! Which was part of the problem maybe. You see in summer I keep vampire hours, so to make the 11am appointment I had to use the Alarm Clock of Evil. Which never went off, being evil the way it is, so I woke up an hour late and didn’t get to make any coffee, which meant that I wanted to buy a diet peach iced tea Snapple when I stopped to gas the car. Only they didn’t have any diet peach iced tea Snapple. Oh no, the only thing diet without bubbles was some nasty pussberry juice. It is at this point I take a moment to put the metamucil addict-size bale of charmin I forgot I bought at Costco the other day, in the trunk because I’m not driving around San Diego with that in my front seat.
Over the hill I go, smash bang, and then I stop at the Border Patrol checkpoint and they wave me over to the side! 'Cause it’s totally likely that I’m a coyote, what with Miatas having such roomy trunks and plenty of passenger seating. So I stand there by the side of the highway while the officer goes over my car with a fine-toothed comb and that’s when he nearly killed me. He opened the trunk, looked at the metric ton of toilet paper and then turned to me and asked ‘what’s that for?’ All the blood in my body instantly shot to the smart-ass remark center of my brain, completely by-passing the self-preservation lobe. Luckily he realized what he’d just asked me before I could say anything and quickly got rid of me by abruptly ending the inspection.
I made it to La Jolla only two hours late for my appointment and was shown to the operating room because the only available exam room was being remodeled. Just a couple of minutes later, hmph!, and I’m down to my skivvies when Larry, Moe, and Curly walk into the room. The longest, most intense silence of my life occurs at this point and then Curly comes to, flings himself back through the door, knocking Moe and Larry to the floor. That’s when I go over to where they’re jittering around on the floor like beetles on a hotplate, and slam the door shut (with my foot, natch) and yell ‘occupied’. Because I’m a master of the obvious and unneccessary.
Check up done, I go to Fashion Valley mall where I encounter the free-range condom. I’ve got to say, this doesn’t happen very often and for that I’m grateful. I will spare you all the details, for which you’re probably grateful.
I’m done with that mall and head over to another so’s to stock up on weird candy at CostPlus. Which I do and then go to put all that heavy candy in my car before continuing my 2005 Tour of the Great Malls of San Diego. That’s when the rabid bull moose in a german shepard costume introduced himself by thrusting his head out the open window and spraying me with froth and deafening me with his roar. I totally didn’t see that monster-- the SUV’s windows were completely encrusted by small-child finger smegma, and I was so startled I nearly wee’d my pants. But I kept hold of the candy!
As I was driving to the exit, some little cretin deliberately tosses his yo-yo at my car. I stopped and glared at his mother, but after one look into that heifer’s eyes, I could see that nobody was home. I look at the kid and determine there’s nobody staying at the guest house either. So I just muttered a pathetic ‘That’s a good way to get sued’ and drive away from the herd.
Mall numero tres, which is really just a strip mall with a Trader Joe’s. Everything goes swimmingly, I buy purple artichokes and get back in the car. But I do not go anywhere. There is a ginormous tractor trailer semi behemoth thingy driven by what I have concluded must be the world’s only blind trucker, lodged in the only exit for the whole lot. So half the world has to wait while he goes forward and then reverse a few milimeters at a time, until he can finally swing into the lot and hopefully go pick up his new eye glass prescription.
The hostages are set free with no help from Jimmy Carter, and I fly to the freeway and head home. Right in time for a rush hour slow down. Only it’s not a rush hour slow down, it’s everybody slowing because there’s a policecar driving along. People, that cop is about as likely to ticket you as that fire marshall a couple of cars further up. I could be balanced on two wheels doing ninety, while naked co-eds snorted cocaine off each other’s heiney’s in the back of my truck, and that guy isn’t gonna pull me over. Probably. Oh, just get out of my way, okay?
Ice ages come and go, the sun starts to burn out and I am finally abreast of the police car when he starts pulling into my lane! I check to make sure the Invisa-Ray Cloaking Device[sup]TM[/sup] for my car has been de-activated and then I find myself in the unique position of having to honk my horn in order to call a police officer’s attention to the unsafe condition he’s creating. He goes back to his lane after pushing me only half off the road.
So there you go, Ashes’ Big Adventure. I would tell you about seeing the world’s most sad tattoo, but it’s vulgar and mean. The story that is. The tattoo was vulgar and mean as well, I suppose, but in a very different way.
And now, back to my regularily scheduled boring summer, already in progress…
It’s OK. You can just dump your imagination into mine. Then I’ll have two swampy-in-leather-thongs dancing about.
SPEAKING OF WHICH… I still haven’t bought your birthday thong yet. But if you already have one, I guess there isn’t much point.
Today was an interesting day at work. We hadn’t had any orders for the previous ten minutes, which led me to send my two service people (front counter person and drivethru food-hander-outter-person) on break, leaving me to do front counter and drivethru and fries.
Whaddya know, BAM! That place was hoppin’ like a grasshopper on a bed of coals. I ran and ran and ran, and things were under control, and then my two people came back from break. One was 10 minutes late, and the other never clocked back in from break. He ducked outside to smoke a cigarette, and I walked out there, and told him that he was officially On Break™. I then proceeded to clock him out for his break, which he had failed to do. I’m not stupid, guys. Just for that, I left him clocked out for 20 minutes, which mean that he didn’t get paid for his break. (if he’d been back in 15, he would have gotten paid for the entire thing.)
Ah, the challenges of management! I don’t think I’d survive more than about 5 minutes in the fast food biz; I’d have to throttle people.
Ashes[sup]2[/sup], dearest, I know that you keep trying to reassure us that these are caffeine-free posts, but…nope…not buying it. Of course, I suppose it could be the leftover adrenaline from all of those adventures. Scary. Glad the falling rocks didn’t cause too much damage.
Bobbio, you know what song is now stuck in my brain? I’ll bet you can guess.
Finished up Harry Potter 6 last night. Almost made it in the morning, but I had to get up and go to work and I didn’t want to read the very end on the bus. So I came home from work, changed, and read the last 70 pages or so. Really liked it, but I’m still mulling it over. And I’ve gotta go read all those threads with spoilers in them now that they’re not spoilers anymore.
Catching up from Monday: Glad beckwall is walking again (getting to the hidden ice cream is very important). Sounds like Mr. Anachi must be doing better if you’re able to leave him at home for a bit, Puggy. Yay!
Started to write all of this last night, but my connection went away mid-post. It’s back this morning, hopefully to stay…(it went out twice yesterday).
GT
You should try this sometime. Just for the sake of science and all.
And get pictures while you’re at it. You have to document things for science.
[QUOTE=chaoticdonkey]
It’s OK. You can just dump your imagination into mine. Then I’ll have two swampy-in-leather-thongs dancing about.
SPEAKING OF WHICH… I still haven’t bought your birthday thong yet. But if you already have one, I guess there isn’t much point.
QUOTE]
My bday isn’t til Friday, so you still got time to shop. Oh, and if you’re seeing two of me, maybe it’s time to get out of the bushes and go inside for a while. I mean, we do have heat advisories out now. Maybe I should leave some water out just in case.
Bobbio I forgot to do this last night.
BWAAAHAAAHAAAHAAAHAAAHAAA!!!
Y’all better stock up, because Swampy’s birthday is Friday, Vunderwife’s is Saturday, and mine is Sunday. Only 6 more years until AARP tries to foist one of their damned membership cards on me.
When you’re planning my party, remember that I can no longer eat birthday cake without getting violently ill, and I can only have sugar free ice cream.
That right there’d be enough to wreck every birthday for the rest of my life. But everyone I know always has something better to do on my birthday, so no cake isn’t such a downer.
I have slept roughly a total of six hours since Sunday night. I’m going to spend the morning hoping that if I walk around looking pitiful enough, someone will send me home.
Fat chance. sigh
ashes, it all makes sense now…sorta…
gardentraveler, maybe ashes had a caffeine build up or sommit. It can happen.
I caught Mr. Anachi watering his flowers yesterday afternoon when I got home. It was okay though, cause he was pacing himself and I know he’s getting bored. He’s just not a sitter and light exercise is good for him. We’ll just keep a hawk eye on him.
My, my, what a lot of birthdays this week! I’ll have to prepare something and post it on Friday in honor of alla yas. 
fcm, meatloaf? And no recipe??? 
Tupug
Our very own edition of Bucky (see cat #3 in the pics above) has recently graduated from monkeys to the super-sized lunch!
If you like spicy, try this meatloaf recipe. It’s just yummy! And it makes a lotta meatloaf, so you can have leftovers for sandwiches or whatever else you like to do with leftover meatloaf.
Ashes[sup]2[/sup], you do have an exciting life! Sorry, I laughed when Larry, Moe and Curly saw you in your undies.
beckwall, it’s good to hear you’re doing well with your new bionic hip! Ice cream is a good mood improver (well, chocolate ice cream is, anyway–I wish I could send you some Maple View Dairy Double Chocolate ice cream. It’s a happy drug!).
Lissla, I hope Mr. Lissar feels better soon!
Bobbio don’t knock the American Association of Retired Putzes. You won’t believe some of the stuff you can get discounts on! I gots no problem whippin’ that card out all over the place. Gimme my geezer discount I say! Gimme!
Oh! I’m gettin’ me some creme brule for my birthday. YAY! Ok, it’s actually the day after my birthday but still, YAY! See, Friday I am actually hosting our annual staff pool party. It’s our third annual pool party cause, well, I’ve only had a pool for three years now. Ok, actually, I’ve only had the pool for two years, but I had it all summer of 2003 and 2004 so that makes it the third summer I’ve had a pool. We all clear now? Anyways, we close early (2 PM) and everybody comes out and we drink, snack, lounge around the pool and stuff. It’s always fun. I decided that since my birthday is on Friday anyways, we’d just do it that day. So, Saturday, ACBG and I are going to dinner with a bunch of friends. Afterwards, two of my friends have invited everybody over for cake and creme brule for my birthday. She had promised me many months ago to make me some creme brule for my birthday and I had forgotten about it but she didn’t. Ain’t that sweet of her! So, YAY! I get creme brule! YAY! Did I mention that I really, really, really, really like creme brule? YAY!
Now for a shameless plug for Staples[sup]TM[/sup] office supply store. See, this afternoon the Board of Directors is having a planning meeting. This morning I dug out the overhead projector (it was actually where it was supposed to be, which can only mean the apocalypse is upon us cause nothing is ever where it’s supposed to be around here!). Well, both bulbs were blown out. So, I call up Staples[sup]TM[/sup], tell the nice lady I talked to named Connie the model of the projector (Apollo 2100) and the size of the bulbs I need. She asks if she can put me on hold while she looks to see if they have em. She comes back real quick and says they have em and would I like for her to put em on hold for me at register one? I say yes thank you please. She did! I went to Staples[sup]TM[/sup], went over to register one, said Connie told me there would be two overhead projector bulbs on hold for me here. There they were! In and out of Staples[sup]TM[/sup] in two minutes flat! YAY Staples[sup]TM[/sup]! YAY Connie! I like it when things work out like they’re supposed to. Oh, and I only have to futz with the BoD for about half an hour at the start of the meeting then I get to leave. YAY! Last year I was there for four hours. BOO!
puggy glad to hear Mr. Anachi’s up and about some. He does need some light exercise, just don’t let him overdo it, especially since I’m guessing y’all are having the same horrid heat advisories we are right now. Heat indicies of 110F-115F every freakin’ day! Even though I am a summer baby and love me some summer, that’s a bit much for six days in a row now. Stay cool!
-swampbear [sup]I like using the sup thingy.[/sup]
Ashes[sup]2[/sup] - San Diego. Now it all makes sense. We opened up an office out there last year. I told my boss that there isn’t a big enough gun to make me go to San Diego. Unless, of course, it’s one of those really big cannons that shoot people into a net. But it would have to have a really long barrel and a lot of gunpowder to fire my slowly-getting-bigger-butt from Virginia to California in less than one bounce. And if there is one of those that can do the job, I’d like it tested before I go into it. I’ll nominate Roundboy from the office here, 'cause lately he’s really been getting on my nerves.
It certainly helps to explain Ryan Leaf.
I went fruit shopping last night, and I’m glad that it was like 1 in the morning, because I would have had lines stretching through the front doors behind me had it not been. I’m the pickiest produce shopper ever. My fruit has to be completely free of blemishes, which is hard enough to find, and then on top of that, it has to smell good too, for things that you can smell through the skin, anyways. 5 minutes, at least, and I find two good peaches, a pluot (which I still don’t know what it is… plum+apricot? I ate it already, and it tasted plummy.), and a whitefleshed nectarine.
swampbear: Don’t call it an annual pool party! Then people will expect it.
and it’s crème brulée anyways.
You and your hoity-toity accents. 
So you go around eating stuff when you don’t know what it is? :eek: Too late on the annual thing, it already is, at least til I’m not around here anymore. And I can to say creme brule! I looked it up. It’s spelled both ways. SO THERE!
Creme brule! YAY!