Thanks for the warning

Yeah, so as we boarded our American flight from Chicago to Indy yesterday... literally, as we were setting foot on the plane... the crew announces cheerfully:

"Welcome aboard. There are no operating restroom facilities on this flight. Hello. Welcome aboard. There are no operating restroom facilities on this flight. Right this way. Welcome aboard. Good morning. No operating restroom facilities on this flight. Hello. Good morning. Welcome.... no operating restroom facilities... "

WHAT?????

They were so nice about it all. And here I was, selfishly fuming "could you not have fucking told us this before we got on the damn plane??"

But that's just me.

It was a short flight, thankfully... about an hour. And I swear I heard the captain snickering as he maneuvered us through bumpy, jiggly, bladder-pinching turbulence.

I thought I would explode, I had to go so badly. I held my breath, as though this would help to hold it in. I pressed my thighs together real tight; squeezed my eyes shut and pursed my lips.

Dear god, I wasn't going to make it!! HURRY UP AND GET THERE ALREADY!!

Then we landed, and taxied ever so slowly to the gate. My seatbelt was off, and I was ready to bolt. No fucking way anyone was getting off this plane before me.

They finally opened the door, and I plowed off the plane and into the terminal (out of my way!!).

And then I didn't have to go anymore. No, I didn't have an "accident". It was simply because I now had free and easy access to a restroom, and so the emergency vanished.

Funny how that goes.

Duty calls

Main Man and I are on our way shortly to Bloomington, IN on business until Monday.

I've been to Bloomington several times, but always during the summer months. This will be my first trip there during school season, when there are bound to be swarms of college kids everywhere.

The thing about college kids is that during these first few weeks of school, they are on full-tilt party mode. This is the "weeding" time... by next January, only the kids relatively serious about their studies will still be around. The others will either have died of alcohol poisoning, run out of money (i.e., daddy cut off the credit card), or contracted an STD that scared them home.

I'm familiar with the cycle. I too live in a college town. And I hate the full-tilt party mode.

Still, I do like Bloomington. I especially like the restaurants. I have never, ever had a bad meal in Bloomington.

I'm looking forward to my trip, and sincerely hope I don't step in any puke.

I'm outing myself

Okay. It's time you knew.

My name is Berry, and I'm a Gilmore Girls fan.

No, you don't understand. I'm a HUGE fan.

I've been one since Day One. It's not so much the story lines. It's more about the banter. The brilliant, rapid-fire banter between the characters. And it's also about the between-the-lines jabs at current events or cult classic commercials or public figures or Hootie & the Blowfish (you have to pay close attention... the writers slip 'em in when you least expect it).

Getting hooked on the story line is more like a side effect.

Tonight, the Girls return for a fresh season... and possibly the last one. I will not miss a single episode.

Photo: Mark Liddell/the CW

Things I notice when I'm bored... Part 1

Hey... did you know that when we find something amusing, we exhale suddenly?

Seriously. Look away from the screen for a moment, and think of something funny. Something funny enough to make you want to chuckle.

Okay. Did you notice how your face broke into a smile, and you exhaled through you nose really quickly? I know!! Isn't it cool?

I've been practicing all afternoon... trying to surprise myself with funny thoughts, just to test my theory. The element of surprise is essential, otherwise there's no way to be sure I'm not exhaling through my nose only because I expect myself to. Only... well, it's not so easy to surprise oneself. Kinda see it coming, ya know?

Gotta keep practicing. At least until Desperate Housewives comes on.

Well... you are

Remind me again why it's not okay to describe someone as "fat"? Provided they are, of course.

I just witnessed a scenario while in the cashier line at a store. Two women talking; one is trying to point out another woman (a fat one) standing in another line. Something about a product she has in her basket,... whatever.

The first woman was using different means to identify the fat woman. The second woman wasn't quite understanding who she should be looking at. Woman #1 said things like "the 3rd in line"; "with the sweater"; "with the glasses".

Why didn't she just say "the fat one"? This woman was, afterall, the only fat one in that line. There was no room for confusion with that description.

I wanted to interject every time she tried to come up with a different way to describe her. "She means the fat one". "Oh, yes, I see her now". It would have been so easy.

Seriously, if we could all just allow ourselves to use the simplest, most obvious terms to describe something or someone, we could speed up conversations all over the world.

Why the long face?

There's an apple orchard on the way to the golf course. There's a barn on the property, too, and three animals in a pen on the side of the road that include two cows and a horse.

I call the horse Lonely Horse, and I wave at him every time I drive by.

I figure he must be lonely, seeing as he's the only horse there. And the two cows act like stuck-up bitches and hang out at the other end of the pen, as far away from Lonely Horse as possible. It's so cliquey of them. I hate to see that.

I saw them again this afternoon, and it suddenly dawned on me: The cows know he's not a cow... but he doesn't.

See, each cow can look at the horse and then look at the other cow, and clearly see the difference. They have something to compare him to.

But Lonely Horse? He looks at one cow, and sees a cow. Then he looks at the other, and, well... sees another cow. So he has no idea he's different. How weird that must be.

I'd love to help him out, but you know what they say: You can lead a horse to a mirror, yadda yadda...

Okay, but be gentle...

Funniest thing. I put someone on hold for my colleague, "S". When S picked up, his brain was only half-there, and this is what he said:

"Hi, this is S, how can I hold you?"

The possibilities are endless. And hilarious.

Tainted love...

Reports say the E. coli spinach toll continues to rise.

Are you kidding me? There are STILL people out there eating spinach??? Who the hell loves it that much that they're willing to laugh in the face of bloody diarrhea? Kidney failure? Death????

Spinach junkies are sad. I don't know where they're getting their leafy smack, but it ain't in stores, 'cuz that shit's been pulled from every shelf in North America.

I think we should be on the lookout for an elaborate network of underground spinach pushers.

Finally! Here it is... the animal-related adventure..

Okay... Main Man was home for lunch today, so I managed to snap some necessary pics of his car. Here's the scoop:

We're cruising along Hwy 1 in Delaware, just past Dover. I'm sitting back in the passenger seat, relaxed and gazing out the front windshield.

That's when I saw the mouse. He was peeping out of the front hood at first, and then he pulled half his body out. Here's a visual... the red arrow (expertly drawn by me) points towards the little open gap between the hood of the car and the non-hood part just before the windshield.




Yeah, so you can imagine my surprise. And the mouse's too. He must have crawled in there during our last pit stop about an hour before, and I guess it was getting kinda hot under the hood, and he was looking for some fresh air.

So I calmly say to Main Man (so as not to create any panic): "There's a mouse."

"What?"

"There's a mouse."

"Where?"

"Right there. In front of me. On the vent-grill-thingie."

"What? On the vent? He's inside?"

"Yeah. He's in the car, trying to get out."

"What? Trying to get out through the windshield???"

"What? No. Trying to get out by the vent-grill-thingie."

"The what?! Is he in the car?"

"Well, yeah, sort of. He's in the car, but not in the car."

At this point, I'm sure you can tell that I was not being very clear, and I had inadvertently started a "Who's on First" scenario. And so I finally catch on, when Main Man gets frustrated and spells out:

"I don't understand. Is he in the car???"

"Oh! Well, no, not really. I mean, he's kinda under the hood, I guess. But he's not in the passenger area."

So we keep driving in silence for a moment. By this time, the mouse has decided it's WAY too windy on the outside of the hood (we're doing about 65mph), and he has snuck back in. I begged Main Man to pull over so we could let the little dude out. We pulled into a gas station and lifted the hood.

We stare at the car's insides for a while, and there's no sign of a mouse. Main Man finally says, "Hon, are you sure you saw a mouse?"

Yeah, that's right... he thought I was hallucinating, because seeing mice crawl out of car hoods is a thing I do sometimes.

So Main Man takes the opportunity to use the restroom. Naturally, this is when the mouse decides to poke his head out... while there's only me around to witness it. He wasn't in the engine part of the under-the-hood area; instead, he had sought refuge in the empty space directly under the actual hood. The red arrows show the openings where he was peeping out. Here... more visuals:




So to prove to Main Man that I'm not crazy, when he returned I made him stand there next to me until he saw the mouse too. He finally did. And we waited and stared; waited and stared; until we realized the little dude wasn't going anywhere. He felt quite safe where he was at the moment, so my rescue-and-release plan wasn't going to work.

And so we closed the hood and drove on.

I never saw him again. We arrived at the beach house just 40 minutes later, and I think he may have made his escape then. At least I hope he did. Otherwise, we have a bbq'd mouse trapped under the hood. Which is kinda gross. And sad.

A most awesome night out

Main Man took me to see Pink Martini last night as a birthday gift. It took place in an old, magnificently restored theatre called the Granada. If you look at the pictures in the Granada link, I was sitting at one of the tables up close to the stage (shown on the bottom left-hand corner of the page).

First, I must say... no matter what your taste in music, or your age, or hair colour, if you ever get a chance to see this band perform live, by all means, DO IT.

I've seen too many concerts to count, and this was the most memorable. We were joined by the most eclectic audience of all walks of life, and I think that added to the experience.

The band performs songs in all kinds of different languages (English, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese.... yes, Japanese!... Croatian, etc.). Since they were in Quebec, they figured they should speak French to their audience last night. They did a fantastic job, and occasionally, when they didn't know a word, the audience was happy to jump in and help them. It was all very warm and friendly and set the tone for the evening.

There was a moment, though, when the band leader attempted to introduce a song called "Hang on Little Tomato". He explained the origins of the story, which stems from a Life Magazine article from decades ago about the making of ketchup. Anyway, long story short... the band leader was trying to say "big and juicy tomato", but inadvertently used the wrong French word for "juicy", and ended up saying "big and orgasmic tomato". Yes, well... the audience went wild and clapped and cheered, much to his confusion.

I'm not sure anyone ended up telling him what he said. But I'm buying ketchup today...

p.s. - I'm going to see Roger Hodgson (of Supertramp) at the Granada in November.

Weird degrees of separation...

Okay, so there are a couple of recent dramatic events that have touched me in a weird way.

First, let's start with the unbelievable crap that went down in Montreal yesterday. I know this particular area of the city very, very well. I could see the apartment where I used to live, as I watched the drama unfold on live TV. I know folks who have kids at Dawson College. This is, of course, all anyone is talking about around here today.

Secondly, I've been keeping an eye on the Anna-Nicole Smith drama as well. Without offering too many details here (in the interest of keeping some anonymity), I will explain: I spent most of my adult life in Nassau. So has Main Man (it's where we met, and it's where Step Son lives). I know that private hospital very well; her ob/gyn was my ob/gyn. Her current local lawyer is an acquaintance of mine, and interestingly, he too lost his 17-yr-old son tragically a few years ago.

Anyway, all of this puts me in a funky mood today. I actually have quite a few humourous things I'd love to say about Anna-Nicole... like, for example, the fact that we shared a gynie makes me want to take a shower; a lot... but I figure she's taking quite a beating right now, so...

On a bright note, way to go Lukas Rossi!!!

p.s. - I have not forgotten about my promised animal-related adventure story... I just need for Main Man's car to stay parked in the driveway long enough for me to take a few pictures first. I'll bet you're intrigued now...!

I almost forgot!

What's a post from me without some sort of animal-related adventure story, right?

Well, I've got a good one for ya. It took place during our trip down to DE. But I'm gonna need to prepare some visual aids, first.

Stay tuned...

I'm back! (... did you miss me?)

So here's how it went down:

We drove a lot and then got there; we went to the beach web cam and waved at y'all; we frolicked; we shopped (oh my god Delaware has NO SALES TAX!! Why didn't I know this???); we golfed with a retired New Joisey guy named Jimmy; we frolicked; we rode the waves; we smiled for the beach cam again, in case you missed it the first time; then we drove a lot again and got home.

It was a fantastic week, and my batteries are officially recharged.

I have one very important observation to report: Folks in the DE, MD, DC area lack people skills. They do not smile when they speak to you, and they are not impressed when you smile at them. They suck at customer service. Well, at least they suck at appearing friendly while dishing out customer service.

In an interesting twist, we were blown away by the extremely warm and friendly customer service we received in NY (where we spent one of the travel nights). Who'da thunk?

I'm still off work until Monday, and my schedule is probably more packed during this week than it usually is. It will be almost restful to return to the office.

And now for the fun part...

Okay. (phew)... it's happened. I watched the clock strike midnight last night, and I officially turned 40. And guess what?.... I didn't turn into a pumpkin, or implode, or get swallowed up by the earth!!!

Piece o' cake, I tell you.

Heh heh... literally. I had a piece of cake, leftover from my family celebration on Saturday night.

So now I take off for a week of carefree fun. I will return on Monday, hopefully armed with all kinds of adventures to regale you with.

Oooooh, I did have an encounter with a coyote on a golf course on Friday (not my usual course), but that happened way back when I was in my 30's, so... it's old news, now.

In the meantime, feel free to browse the fine bloggers listed on the right. They shall keep you entertained.

Au revoir, mes amis!