It's kind of hot in here.
My candle is burning too high.
Beginning of headache just over left eye.
My blog is all messed up.
I don't know nothing about fixing messed up blogs.
It's too early to go to bed and yet I feel exhausted.
On the other hand I made a somewhat yummy dinner that involved chard, which I have never cooked. Yay for chard! And tomorrow I do not have to work or teach. Yay for nothing!
Finally saw Kill Bill V.2 last night. I'm surprised by how much I liked both those movies..I resisted them heartily. I must say, I wish someone would count the number of times Uma Thurman says "Bitch!" throughout. (Hey! a new drinking game! "Drink every time Uma says 'Bitch', bitches!") I really bought Uma as a Killing Machine. I really bought it.
In honor of my 100th post I decided to mess with templates and stylesheets and now I've screwed things up. Yar.
Spent a few days in Vague Ass with Maureen, Gerald, Mike and Jim. We barbequed at Jimmy's house and Maureen made a yummy slad from Sunset magazine that I hope to duplicate. Mike and Jim 'cued the turkeyburgers and I did the corn. Yummy. We stayed up late that night (I think 4:30) and a good chunk of that time was spent watching Olympic gymnastics. Once every four years I go sports crazy and actually want to spend time in a sports bar, watching the screen and cheering along with my fellow gymnastics lovers. Problem is, there is no sports bar in the land that is geared toward my love of the sport. Maybe Olga Korbut and I should go into business--a gymnastics viewing sports bar, full of gymnastics memorabilia (Nadia's white uniform!) You could chalk your hands and take a swing on a set of uneven parallel bars. Balance beams would be suspended from the ceiling. Instead of bar t-shirts, we'd sell leotards emblazoned with our bar name, which would be...um...The Rough and Tumble? Blisters? Kips?
Gymnastics lovers-- are you with me?
This morning I woke up early and saved a neighbor's truck from being towed. (Hero!) Then I went hiking at Mission Trails. It was overcast and relatively empty on J. Serra trail. I noticed a tall man on the side of the trail, staring at something. He motioned me over. Here it is, I thought. Serial kller.
"Coyotes" he whispered. He pointed to the opposite hill.
"Ooh!"
He told me there were two and that they had come tearing up the trail and shot across the canyon, where they now lay. "They're watching something. I think there's something big by the river." He told me to be careful. We both mentioned the possiblity of a mountain lion.
I kept walking. the trail was silent and lonely. Suddenly I heard the racket of a big animal in the brush about fifteen feet ahead of me. Two coyotes came tearing out of the laurel sumac, looking behind them. They raced up the steep hill and out of sight. My heart was racing. Birds were fluttering and crying--it felt like a mass exodus of prey, just getting the hell away from something big.
If they're all running, I thought, maybe I should be too.
I turned and walked the other way, looking behind me, speed walking, jumping at every noise. Hoping, and not hoping , to see that cat if there was one.
i saw a picture recently of a child with rickets, a hideously deforming disease caused by lack of vitamin D. This particular kid got it as a result of being raised in a squalid coal mining town where had little exposure to sunlight. So I want to remind myself to ask Mom if one of our grandparents was a coal miner as I think she told me that. I'd like to look into that. I've had a terror of coal mining for a long time. I think DH Lawrence put it in me. Something about the ponies that were kept underground their whole lives to pull coal carts that ended up going blind. Ugh. On Sundays, when there was no mining, they would let the ponies above ground until they found it was just easier to keep them under all the time. Not so hard to get them to go back in on Monday morning. Makes me want to cry.
Not to mention the small children emplyed by the mines. Hideous!
Twice in recent days I have been reading National Geographic in waiting rooms and have learned things that were fascinating.
1. In cigar factories in Cuba it used to be common to have one person read to the workers while they rolled cigars. Such positions, while rare, still exist. I'd love that job. You get to pick what you want to read and then share it with a bunch of nimble fingered workers.
2. In remote parts of Colombia where cocaine is the major cash crop, an early by-product of the coca plant ( a sort of roughly chrystalline off-white chunky powder) can be used as payment for goods and services. You can take a bag of it into the store and get bananas and bread and they will weigh it and give you back the rest. At a brothel, a shot glass full of the stuff is enough to pay for the business at hand. WHOA!
Fascinating!