Interesting week

In the last week or so I've gained a few new readers. Welcome new readers. Stick around, leave comments, etc....

I bought a car. It was weird. It was sort of like buying a pizza, only it took longer. We've been seriously talking about it for a few months, and we were talking about a bit before since the whole thing that happened last year. But I didn't want a car last year. It seemed like he was trying to buy me back, and I didn't like it when he first mentioned it. Later, it didn't sound like that was what he was trying to do at all, but there was nothing wrong with my car and we couldn't afford to get a new one. But, now the old car was doing odd things and rather than get stranded somewhere in the dark I decided that I should probably get a new one.

So we had been talking about getting a certain kind of car, and we had talked about waiting til the holiday sale time to see if the ad was a gimmick or what, and then when the day of the sale arrived they didn't have that car in stock anymore. So I had a bit of a panic attack. And then we were looking at the car ads and I found an ad for a different car that was really cheap. I don't understand, but it seemed like someone made a bunch of really cheap cars that were orange for some reason. But I don't care what color the car is. If it's cheap and it runs and has an A/C, who cares what color it is. But, the cheap car turned out to be manual, and I only drive auto.

But then we were thinking maybe I should drive one of these kinds of cars anyway. The automatic cars with A/C and such cost at least four thousand more, but often cost even more with all the other stuff added. We saw one that had been 13 something that was marked down to 11 something. And it wasn't orange.

I really don't think all this stuff that they put on cars is worth all of that. I do like the gizmo that melts the ice off of the back window, but I don't think I would pay extra for it. And I never listen to the radio anymore; it is just a distraction. So I would not have paid an extra two thousand dollars for a lot of stuff that I mostly don't even know what it is, even if it includes the thing that melts the ice off of the back window. But, on the other hand, if they want to give me all that stuff for free, why not?

So I drive this car around the block and such. The seat is a bit taller than the car I've been driving, which may take a while to get used to, but I will probably appreciate it later. If I drive the new car for ten years, I'll still have the thing when I'm fifty. I really don't want to be driving around in those low sports car seats when I'm fifty. The back has more space than my old car, but is not quite as long as the car I had when I was an Art Major. But I guess it's close enough, and I'm not an Art Major anymore.

There was not much discussion about the thing. I think my husband was just getting sick of going back and forth with the idea. It went sort of like--you need a car, and here is a car, and you like the car, and that's not a bad price on the car, and the place is nearby if the car needs service. That was pretty much that. So now I have a car.

There is all this stuff about getting a copy of the title of my old car that is starting to be a pain. But I think I finally have the right forms and will get it taken care of soon. Not like they really gave me much for the old car. I've seen other places give you that much if you don't have anything to trade.

Some friends of mine had some fun on TV. There were at least three different segments on two different channels, but this is the only one that I could find on the Internet.
http://www.wfaa.com/video/index.html?nvid=148126

There were a couple of better Klingons on one of the other segments, and they aren't even on the Klingon ship. We rarely see them either, except around Halloween. I saw M and J at a Ren Fest last year. They were dressed as Gandalf and Frodo, and the costumes were really great, but I didn't recognize them as M and J. Someone had to tell me who was wearing the costumes a week later.

But these guys aren't too bad either. Of course, I know the humans in the group, but I'm not sure if I've meet these particular Klingons. I'm sure that they were at the picnic I missed a couple of weeks ago.

Anyway, the point of the news segments was that my friends are going to help out at this Star Trek thing with Robert Picardo (EMH from Voyager) and John De Lancie (Q) at the Dallas Symphony next week. I don't think I'll be going. I have a costume, but my best Star Trek costume is a Borg parody. And, after what happened to a girl who went to the Star Wars thing in the Princess Leia bikini, I think that I won't be wearing the Borg thing unless I am specifically invited.

And of course, I hate Dallas. And I do not plan to drive to Dallas. And I especially do not want to drive to Dallas in my new car, even if it does have gap insurance.

Things I found while cleaning

So I've been trying to do some cleaning this weekend, and I decided that it was finally time to take everything out of the car. So I've found some interesting things, mostly in the car.

I found two non-working calculators. One of them was actually melted.

I found some kind of tool, still sealed in the box. It's rather like a Dremel, but cheaper. I have been looking for the thing, and I remember buying the thing. But if I bought it for something specific I do not remember, and I don't even remember what I meant to do with it the last time I was looking for it.

I found a copy of an email sent to me by the Homewrecking-slut last year. I should post that sometime. There were a lot of things I hoped that she might be sending me, like she misunderstood the situation and thought that we were getting a divorce anyway and now that she knew better she would back off so we could go to counseling. And then there were more practical things that I thought she might be sending me to get me to not try to drag out the divorce, like a promise that they were not going to go on a bunch of vacations and such until he paid what he owed me, or that she might even be offering me some money herself to help things. But for some reason she decided to send me this letter trying to convince me that my marriage wasn't suddenly over because he'd found some slut from London who was constantly talking to him about sex and offering to let him live in London with her. For some reason she wanted to try to convince me that she was doing the right thing and that they were just meant to be together and all of that. At some point she goes on about how she knows how I must feel, but there's nothing that I can do about it so I should just give up and then we'd all be happier. She actually tried to convince me that she was a good person and that most of the stuff on her blog was made-up. Ten minutes later she emailed my husband and told him that she lied to me and told me she was just a normal person pretending to do all this weird sex stuff, but actually she did even more weird sex stuff and just didn't want to write about the extreme stuff on her blog.

I found a lab manual for a science course that I didn't even take. More than twenty years ago I took Astronomy as an elective, without the lab credit. I took Geology as my science requirement. When I went back to college, one of the degree plans required more science credits than I had, so I made arrangements to just do the extra lab part without having to take the whole course again. But then I ended up with a different degree plan and didn't ever use the lab manual. I bought the thing in Spring of 2002, and it was still in my car. I guess that's why I had the melted calculator there too.

I found a bunch of stuff about getting a vasectomy. I've always worried about getting pregnant, and I thought he was concerned about it too. At some point I offered to make it worth it to him to go ahead and get the problem permanently taken care of. I'd also heard a rumor that there were other benefits from the procedure, but I've since been told that was a myth.

I found a bunch of stuff about the divorce. And I found the address and phone number to the motel my husband stayed at when he left me for a few days. I ended up staying at the place with him most of the time he was there. He didn't want it to be over between us, but he was too embarrassed to tell the Homewrecking-slut that after she'd already bought the plane tickets.

I found a jar candle that I put in the car last December, just in case I was in a gift exchange or something like that I forgot about. Funny that the candle wasn't a melted mess but the calculator was.

I had to move a bunch of clay and other ceramic stuff into the house. Class has been over for a few weeks, but the stuff has been in the trunk of my car cause I don't know where to put it in the house. I still don't know where to put it, but right now it is on the floor in the hall.

I found some stuff I got from All-Con last year. There was a fictional newspaper to promote a horror film that I didn't see.

I took out a folding metal chair. I have no idea why I even had that in the car.

And I found a Star Trek 10 movie poster that the theater people gave us for going in costume to opening weekend. Mine got wet, and I left it in the trunk and forgot about it.

I usually enjoy finding old stuff like that when I'm cleaning, but most of this stuff just made me sad.

Monday Morons--Superbowl 2011

Well, they were talking about it last week, but luckily I seemed to have missed most of it. It wasn't the media circus that happened when Tom Laundry was fired. They interrupted my soap operas for most of the week when that happened. And now that we're on that subject, why did they interrupt soap operas for a week with that breaking news? Did they really think that the people truly interested in the politics of professional sports were at home watching The Guiding Light? Or did they think that the fans of fictional Alan Spaulding would rather hear about real life Jerry Jones?

But never mind. The announcement last week was that the new football stadium will host the Superbowl in four years. The new stadium being built at all has been annoying enough. On the one side I have all the traffic and such that bothers me about Dallas, but now I'll have to deal with this new football stadium a bit down the road in Arlington. And it's going to be right on Collins, near I-30, and I just don't care for it at all.

I have all kinds of nasty things to say about organized team sports being a waste of time and money and such, and how I hate getting stuck in traffic when a game lets out and so on. And I hated that they tossed people out of their homes to build the new place. But in addition to that, I was just thinking that it was a bit stupid to plan to have a Superbowl in a stadium that isn't even built yet.

Every once in a while, somebody builds something and it doesn't turn out the way that it was planned. I'm sure everyone has seen the film of "Galloping Gertie" bridge. If you don't know what I'm referring to, look here http://www.ketchum.org/bridgecollapse.html And I heard on the news a couple of years ago about a building that no one uses except for like the first two floors. Somehow when the planners were doing all the math, they forgot about the people who were going to work in the building and the furniture and stuff that would be in the building. The building just can't handle the extra weight of having people and furniture in it.


I doubt that anything that bad would happen with the new football stadium, but I'm sure that there's all kinds of little things that could go wrong. And if something major did go wrong, if the place collapsed the first time they had enough people in it, that could kill thousands of people. But more likely there's just going to be a lot of little annoying things, like maybe they needed to put in a bunch of extra traffic lights and stuff like that. If it were me I wouldn't be getting rid of the old stadium until maybe a year after the new place proved to be okay, just in case.


I just can't imagine choosing a site for the Superbowl that hasn't even been built yet. If it really takes four years to plan the Superbowl, and something goes wrong with the new stadium that they don't find out until after it's open, what are they going to do then? I suppose that something similar happens every time they choose a place for the Olympics, and that usually goes okay, but it still seems like a really bad idea.

I was just wondering

I was just wondering if I was the only one getting really annoyed with the new auto-save feature on blogger? It's going to make me nuts. I go to save something but instead of saying Save Now, it usually says saved and gives you the time it was saved. And if you stopped typing for a moment, you think maybe it just saved everything that you just wrote, but if you try to go do anything else you get a message asking if you really want to leave because you have unsaved changes. Then I'm just sitting here waiting for the Save Now button to reappear so that I can save things as normal and know that the whole draft was actually saved.

British Sci-Fi

It's Star Wars Week, and we're all talking about Star Wars on our blogs. I can't say that it's my favorite. I don't hate it or anything like that, but it will never be my favorite. Anyway, other people have had plenty to say about Star Wars this week, so I thought I'd talk about something a little different. Seeing that I don't have much to add to the Star Wars discussion, let's talk about other British sci-fi movies and TV.



Last week I saw 28 Weeks Later. This is the sequel to 28 Days Later. For the most part, this is a zombie movie with a scientific explanation. Sort of like Warning Sign. But Warning Sign is not a British film, so I'll talk about it some other time. Anyway, the zombie-like people are infected with a disease called Rage, and it is highly contagious. In the first movie, nearly everyone in Britain either caught the disease and died of starvation a month later, or they were were eaten by someone else that had the disease. The second movie takes place about six months later, when someone has decided that everything is safe and they should start moving people back into London, or at least someplace near London. Anyway, I liked the new movie, but not as much as the first one. The second one has more gore, and they skipped a lot of the cliche end-of-the-world stuff of the original. I happen to like cliche end-of-the-world stuff. And I have one silly observation about the abandoned pizza place. Why is it that six months later there is a dead guy that has decomposed almost to a skeleton, but on the tables and in boxes there are things that are still easily identified as pizza? I mean, even if the stray dogs and such didn't find the pizza, shouldn't it have decomposed into something that doesn't look like pizza anymore?





So I'm sitting in the theater watching 28 Weeks later, and I'm noticing similarities between the one of the main characters and the Homewrecking-slut. So that added to my enjoyment of the movie a bit, knowing that at least in the fictional world of this movie, she is either dead or one of these blood-splattered lunatics. But, this is a not a post about the Homewrecking-slut, so I won't tell you anymore about that. Let's move on.



There's other end of the world British sci-fi stuff. There's Children of Men, with a whole world of infertile people and a very depressing future version of England being the best of what's left. The place is so depressing, that suicide kits are handed out free of charge. Nice.



And there was a TV series called Survivors. I didn't see much of it, but a plague wipes out most of the human race after a scientist goes to an international airport. 98 people out of 100 die in England, and the survivors try to get get by. I watched the beginning of the series, when they did everything wrong. Maybe it got better.



There was a TV series called The Last Train. A woman on a train thinks that a big meteor is coming, so when they are safely inside a tunnel she freezes everyone on the train. They wake up fifty years later and try to find other people.



One of my favorite end of civilization stories is Day of the Triffids. Most people go blind and then these big plants eat everyone. It's more about the ugly things that the people do to each other, but if you sit still too long, a plant will eat you.



And speaking of John Wyndam stories, movies were also made from another book, The Midwich Cuckoos. The Village of the Damned was based on that, and there was a sequel called Children of the Damned, and then there was a remake and there's probably other stuff out there that I don't know about. Super advanced children were born to mothers who really can't even explain how they got pregnant in the first place. It seems to have been done by aliens, but we're not sure because we never see these aliens. The super advanced children are scary and if someone doesn't kill them all they'll probably take over the world.



I watched a bit of Blake's 7. Blake kept getting arrested for speaking out against the government. In the future there's only one government. I'm not sure if there was ever anything specifically wrong with this government, or just the fact that there was only one and they didn't like it. Anyway, Blake was one his way to jail on the moon or something, and he and a bunch of other prisoners stole a spaceship and escaped.



The British had a couple of sci-fi comedies. The first was The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I believe actually started out on radio. There was later a TV series and about five books, and a few years ago it was made into a movie. It's about the misadventures of an alien who was literally hitchhiking across the galaxy when he got stuck on Earth for several years and a friend from Earth who escapes with him right before the Earth was destroyed to make room for an interstellar by-pass.



Red Dwarf is another British comedy that involves a hologram, a robot, a computer, a guy who's been in suspended animation for 3 million years, and a black guy that evolved from the other guy's cat.



There was a TV show called Space 1999. It wasn't my favorite. It was set on our moon, but the moon was sent flying out of its orbit after a nuclear explosion. They rarely had any plot elements that did anything with the fact that they were actually on the moon instead of a starship or a space-station. And they had a lot of rubber monsters.



Dr. Who also had a lot of rubber monsters. A lot of different actors played Dr. Who during the TV series. So many different actors played The Doctor that he changes bodies or "regenerates" as part of the story. I've never seen the first Doctor, because the video tapes were used over again and no one officially made copies of things back then. I don't care for the second doctor. Pertwee isn't bad at all, but I think most fans prefer Tom Baker, and he is the reason I am making all these ridiculously long scarves. I think the show had three actors after him. There was a movie version of Dr. Who, and The Doctor was played by Peter Cushing. Couldn't quite see him being the major villain in Star Wars after that. Fox tried to get a Dr. Who series going in the US, but they only made the one movie. About three years ago, after the show had been off the air for about twenty years, Dr. Who is back on British television. The invisible man from Heroes played The Doctor for one season, and was then replaced by Masterpiece Theater's Casanova. There's a Dr. Who spin-off called Torchwood, and I believe another one is planned around the character of Sarah Jane Smith and the robot dog K-9.



A company called Hammer Films made a lot of sci-fi and horror stuff. They made the Quatermass movies. There was also a Quatermass TV show. Different actors keep playing Professor Quatermass. The only story I've seen of it that I really like is Quatermass and the Pit, which was released in the US as Five Million Years to Earth. I've probably already discussed that elsewhere in this blog.



And Hammer Films made a lot of Frankenstein movies that most of us have never heard of. Peter Cushing sometimes played Dr. Frankenstein. David Prowse played one of the monsters, as did Christopher Lee.



I'm sure I missed just tons and tons of stuff, but I think that's all I want to get into at the moment.

Finally, a picture from ceramic class

Cool. The instructor sent me this picture yesterday. He was also supposed to send me some other pictures, but I didn't receive them yet.



This is a relief sculpture in terra cotta clay. But not the terra cotta from my home, because we're still doing tests with that. It didn't come out bad at all. It was still drying when class was over, so this was the first time I got a look at it finished. I'll try to pick it up on the 29th or the 30th when the next class starts.



I'm pretty happy with it. Sometimes, things don't turn out the way you hope in ceramic class, and you have to say that it was a learning experience or something like that. I didn't want to learn anything with this piece. I wanted it to look the way I wanted it to look. Anyway, it's good when you like something before it is fired and there are no surprises after it is fired.

Monday Morons--People Who Steal

The first week or so that I worked at the Halloween Store last October, I found a ring on the floor of the ladies room. Not like someone's engagement ring or something like that, but one of the skull rings that we sold at the store. Seemed like it must have fallen out of someone's pocket while she was in the stall. Seemed obvious to me that someone had stolen the ring. And, since we had just opened, and we try to hide the restrooms from the customers (because we don't have a maintenance crew to clean them), it was probably one of the employees that stole the ring.

So that was kind of a dumb thing to do. And the really bad thing is not only did an employee probably do it, but since it was the first week it was mostly returning employees from last season. Probably the thief was someone we already knew and thought we could trust.

Not that you really know a person from working with them a month or two once a year, but it still seemed bad to me.

Anyway, it is bad to steal anything, but it seems particularly stupid to steal some things. If someone got caught stealing this silly ring from the Halloween Store, in theory the police would be called and they could go to jail. If you really wanted a ring, why not just buy one for six dollars? If you didn't really want that ring, why risk going to jail? It just doesn't make a lot of sense.

I did a few things like that when I was a kid. A few times I took something I wanted that I thought no one would miss. I regretted it afterward. I took a few candy bars to see if I would get caught. Both things were wrong and stupid, but I quit doing even stuff like that when I was thirteen.

When I was ten I took stuff from vending machines. It didn't seem the same as stealing from a real person. Hadn't really thought the whole thing through, like someone else would lose their money trying to buy the item I had taken.

I used to work at a movie theater. We we going to get a bit of a remodel. Nothing major, but the bathrooms were being improved. We were going to get the larger toilet paper rolls, but before we could have the toilet paper holders installed they had to make new stalls with real walls instead of those laminated cardboard dividers. The flimsy stalls would hold the small rolls of toilet paper like you use at home just fine, but not the larger rolls that we switched to.

While we were waiting for the stalls to be upgraded, we spent a lot of time going up and down the stairs to get rolls of toilet paper. We just could not seem to replace the toilet paper fast enough. Finely, one of the managers said that we could just leave a whole case of toilet paper in the ladies room. That would be easier than making five trips up the stairs to get paper everyday, and if a stall ran out of paper before we had time to check, maybe one of the customers could just replace a roll.

So we took this huge box of tissue paper and left it in the ladies room. Next to it we left a box of softsoap. The soap dispensers were going to be replaced too, and we'd run out of soap that went in the old dispensers, and rather than buy a lot of soap for the old dispensers that we wouldn't be able to use, we just bought bought a few boxes of hand soap in small bottles like you use at home.

Half the stalls needed toilet paper, but we were called away to do something else before we finished with that. About twenty minutes later, we went back to the ladies rooms to finish replacing the toilet paper and found both the box of hand soap and the huge box of toilet paper empty.

People stole hand soap and toilet paper.

I think if it was a few people stealing a lot of stuff we would have seen. So I think that it was a lot of people just stealing a little bit. I think like a hundred people all went in a took one or two rolls of toilet paper and hid them in their purses or under their coats.

If any of them had been caught, the police would have been called, and they would have been arrested.

Can you imagine the phone calls that their families would get?

Hey, I'm in jail. Can you come and bail me out?

What did you do? What's the charge?

Stealing.

What'd you steal?

Toilet paper.

I mean, it's still wrong, but I could see that a person might be tempted to steal a diamond ring or money. That's something small that you can hide and maybe get away with, and it is worth something. Toilet paper is just the opposite, it is bulky and it isn't worth anything.

Why would anyone steal toilet paper?

I am stuck at home

The car hasn't worked for a week. Despite having the starter replaced and the battery replaced and all of that, it still doesn't work right. Something is draining the battery and I have no idea what it is. Having the mechanic find out would probably cost a lot of money, so I didn't even bother calling this time.

So I don't have a car today. Today is the club's annual outdoor meeting. The outdoor meeting is not really my thing, but I usually put in an appearance anyway. And I like eating hamburgers and hotdogs as much as the next person. I just don't get into the water guns and all of that. And I'm not smart enough for to bother with the engineering test either.

So I was mostly okay with missing the meeting, until today, and now I just really don't care for being stuck here. We had invited some Klingons and some Browncoats, so there will be new people to met, and I won't be meeting them. Great. Just great.

The Five Meme

I'm picking up the Five Meme from Dmarks, and like Dmarks, I'm not actually tagging anyone. If you are interested, let me know, or just have at it.

1 year ago I was...Are you kidding? Pay attention people. Here's some links if you need to catch up,
http://insidioustruth.blogspot.com/2007/05/monday-morons.html
http://insidioustruth.blogspot.com/2007/02/year-before-that-horrid-person-invaded.html
http://insidioustruth.blogspot.com/2007/02/i-keep-meaning-to-get-back-to-original.html
http://insidioustruth.blogspot.com/2007/02/monday-morons.html
but basically I was trying to stop my husband from throwing away an almost twenty year relationship because of some dimwit in London he met through a blog. Nothing worked. I have know idea what to do about the situation now.

10 years ago I...thought that the most evil thing that a person could do to you is cheat you out of a lot of money you worked for. There was a lawsuit, and I signed stuff, so I can't really talk about it. But let me say that the lawsuit was mostly a waste of time, and while I would not try to talk someone out of suing an employer, I would say the best thing to do is just get a new job as soon as possible. You think that by taking all of these notes and such that your employer will eventually pay up rather than have you go get a lawyer, but that's not really the way it works. Take the notes and get ready to sue anyway, but you'll probably never get everything you are owed. Cut your losses. Get out at the first sign of trouble.

5 songs you know all the lyrics to--Songs have lyrics? When I was going through all the drama of the past year, it came as a shock to me that all songs have lyrics, and most of them remind me of something unpleasant. Radio stations should not be allowed to broadcast when someone is going through a bad breakup. But let's see what songs I know all the lyrics to. I don't know. Does the School House Rock stuff count? The opening of the original Star Trek had music, but I don't think that counts as a song, does it? I might could stumble through the Enterprise theme. Possibly I know all the words to some hymns. And of course I'd like to buy the world a Coke, but I'd probably screw that up too.

5 things I'd do if I were a millionaire--Well, that would depend on how many millions I had. Give up on the whole get a job thing and become a full time art student. Make take a trip to London and...never mind. Take a trip to Hawaii, Alaska, and the other eight states of the Northwest I have not been to yet. Go to Trek Expo, Dragon Con, World Con, take a tour of the Stargate set, try to hit every Ren Fest in the country, and spend most of an October in Salem. Have someone invent a hovering neon sign that points out cheating spouses, homewrecking-sluts, Enron executives, sex offenders, drunk drivers, drug dealers, etc....

5 bad habits--Procrastination. Bad eating habits. I never learned to clean my room. Not finishing stuff I write. Spending too much time blogging.

5 things I will never wear again--I'm not sure that I have anything that really fits into this category. I have stuff that I don't wear for a very long time. I have stuff that gets made into costumes. I have shoes and such that finally falls apart on me and I throw them away. I save t-shirts that I don't wear anymore but I keep them just in case I want to make quilts from them someday. I would probably save old socks and make tribbles out of them, but I don't cause it's been a long time since I've made any tribbles, and how many tribbles do you need anyway? I would probably say that I'd never wear permed hair again or that I'd never wear blond hair again, but if someone had a Uni perm thing that still worked I might try it, and if my hair gets to be more gray than brown there's no telling what color I might dye it. But the one seems doubtful and the other seems a long way off.

5 favorite toys--my newest favorite toy I haven't actually bought yet, but the school has two screens that I can use to make the mud in my backyard into terra cotta clay, so after the test pieces are done I'm going to go to the ceramic supply place and buy a set. My husband just bought a thing to copy DVDs, so I'm going to copy the second set of Time Tunnel for my brother and a friend. Not really a toy, but I have an emergency cell phone now, which is a really cool thing to have if you can remember stuff like taking it of the charger and taking it with you. I love my VCR, and soon I'll have a DVD recorder hooked up too. Last year before all this stuff happened, my favorite toy had to do with the bed, but I won't go into that. Next year I might have a totally different toy that also has to do with the bed, but I won't go into that either.

Guess that about does it. Everyone have a good weekend.

Horror Film Day

The 19th is Dream Analysis Day, but the 19th is on a Saturday and I don't think most of my readers do much blogging on the weekends. On the 17th we're supposed to write a post that is like a horror film. Maybe I can combine the two.

So when I was a teenager I would have bad dreams after watching scary movies. The second version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers was an excellent film. Jeff Goldblum is just awesome. Of course, at the time I first saw it, I had no idea who Jeff Goldblum was. I wanted to see the film because of Leonard Nimoy.

Anyway, everyone in that movie was just great. I highly recommend the film. The first version is a classic and there's nothing really wrong with the third version either, but the second one was my favorite. I saw it when in a theater when I was twelve. I didn't get to see many movies back then, but I talked Dad into taking me on the argument that he had seen the original when he was a kid, so I should be allowed to see this one.

The Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a good movie, and it would have been a good movie if the plot had turned out to be about something totally different like a serial killer or Donald Sutherland finding out he's insane or some organized crime group getting rid of dead bodies. But the plot isn't about any of those things, it's about an alien invasion totally getting rid of the human race.

So that's pretty scary. It's one of those things that you hope never really happens. You wouldn't be able to do anything about it. Game over.

So I had a nightmare that night. I had a few more nightmares later. Didn't tell Dad about the nightmares til maybe ten years later. It was worth it. I still love the movie, but at the time I did not care for the nightmares.

A bit later came Alien. I did not get to see Alien in a theater. Dad went to see it, and he told me about the movie in every detail, but I did not actually see it for a few years. When I did see it I was babysitting a couple of kids, watching their cable TV. The kids had seen the movie before. They said they didn't mind watching the movie again, but it just wasn't their favorite and they weren't paying much attention to the TV. My eyes were glued to the screen most of the time. I'd look up once in a while and ask if they wanted juice or something, but I was very into watching the movie. The kids went to get some toys from their rooms, and I really didn't pay much attention to what they were playing with.

And then comes the dinner scene, and I know what's coming cause Dad told me all about the movie. And the kids have stopped playing for a moment and are watching this scene. And I'm on the couch, and they're lying on the floor right next to the couch. And we're watching the TV, and right when the parasite jumps out of the guy's stomach, one of the kids threw a red pom-pom in the air.

Yikes!!!!

But it was a bit of fun. And again I had some nightmares. It was still a good movie and I was still glad I got to see it.

For a while I tried to only see scary movies in the afternoon. It's bad going out to a dark parking lot right after you've seen a scary movie. And you're probably less likely to have nightmares if you have a bit of a break before you have to go to sleep.

But sometimes I still have nightmares about Sigourney Weaver Aliens (Giger Aliens, but people are less likely to know that name), even if it's been a while since I've since any Alien movies.

So I used to have these dreams that had spaceships and scary aliens in them. And then I'd get really scared of something and wake up. Then it was, thank God it was only a dream.

As I got older, the dreams were not so bad. In fact, the dreams were kind of fun. Spaceships and aliens, cool. But then something would jump out at me and scare me and I would wake up. Damn. I was having an interesting dream, and now I'm awake and I can't get back to sleep.

Okay, so here is one of the dreams. I'm on another planet or a space-station or something with a bunch of other people. Some of these other people are Marines. Big handsome Marines carrying laser rifles. Nice.

Anyway, at one end of the place is a lot of people. Normal civilization. Malls. Starbucks. Restaurants. All that sort of thing.

At the other end of this place is a small hive of Sigourney Weaver Aliens. They mostly stay on their end. In between our end and their end is a long hallway with a lot of empty space and a bunch of armored doors. Like airlocks or something. They might get through one doorway, but never more than two, and there's like ten. So if some of them get through a door, the Marines go and kill them and someone fixes the door.

So this is what happens when there are one or two aliens separated from the rest of the hive. The Marines are going to go and kill them and make sure that the doors are all secure now. But if it's just one or two, they can take small groups of tourists to have a look.

It's all perfectly safe. For one thing, you go in with all these big handsome Marines. For another thing, if you get scared, you just run back down the hall and hide behind one of those armored doors. But the best thing is that you're wearing this sort of armored spacesuit thing that's covered with this special acid resistant stuff. So even if one of them gets you, he can maybe get mad and throw you down the hallway, but he can't really get inside the armor to get you. So before you seriously got hurt the Marines would save you. All perfectly safe, see?

So I join a tour group and we get ready and put on the armored spacesuits and head down the hallway. And someone opens the first airlock. This is so cool. And the Marines say that it's all clear and we go inside. And we walk a ways and come to another one of those armored doors and someone opens that. And the Marines look around and give the all clear and we go through that door too. This is so exciting.

So we go through about eight of these doors without any trouble, and then one of the Marines says that if anyone wants to back out, now is the time. We should see some aliens after we go through the next door. But no one wants to go back, and someone opens the door and we walk through. And this is probably the most exciting thing that I've ever done. I'm going to get to see an Alien. There's probably an Alien just right up there, just right around the corner there. The Marines are going first, but it's all perfectly safe, cause I've got on all this armor.

And I'm looking at the armor, and I look down and realize that I forgot to put on my boots.

Yikes!!!

The Aliens are going to bleed acid on my feet and kill me.

I wake up.

Damn.


Okay. Analyze that one.

No, I did not forget it was Martian Cricket Day

I'm just a bit late getting to it.

Nor did I forget it was Monday. For Monday Morons, scroll down a bit.

Did you know that Martian Cricket Day came with presents? At least, it did for me. My friend from the great white north spent a lot of time looking under rocks and such until he found the 1958 version of Quatermass and the Pit. He sent me a copy, and it just arrived in the mail. Haven't had time to look at it yet. Thank you friend from the great white north.

And, there is food to go with this holiday. You didn't know that either, did you? Well, there is a picture to prove it, but as you can see I'm still having difficulty posting pictures. Well, maybe you can see it if you click on the little red X mark at the top of the page.

Have to go now. I should try to do something useful before I watch this. Enjoy the rest of your holiday.

Monday Morons--people will get the dumbest ideas in their heads

Well, after writing a really long post last Monday about certain people, I don't really want to get into any of that right now. And I didn't get especially ticked off at anyone this week. So I was just thinking about the dumb ideas people get into their heads.

And rather than talk about the usual suspects, I thought I'd pick on my little brother for a bit.

Let's be fair. He said some dumb stuff, but he was a teenager at the time. He still says dumb stuff once in a while, but it is different dumb stuff.

So it was like twenty years ago, and I was in college and he was probably a high school senior. And for some reason we were talking about how it isn't fair that jobs that are mostly for women pay less than than other jobs that are just as much work. And my brother comes in and says that men need more money than women.

Well, everyone who has given it any thought knows that for the most part women need more money than men. And it was the eighties, and so if you didn't already know that, and it was a slow news day, there would be a news story about women being charged more for haircuts and dry cleaning and stuff like that.

There are some exceptions. Car insurance is the main thing that comes to mind. Young men are usually charged more for car insurance than young women. But, more men drive fast and wreck their cars and such, the insurance companies noticed a pattern, and so young men have to pay more. It doesn't last forever, and if you don't have wrecks and/or get speeding tickets, the car insurance goes down a bit after you turn twenty-five. If your car insurance is still high after that, it's probably your own fault. (My husband never had a problem with this, since he didn't learn to drive til he was twenty-five anyway.) Or a man's car insurance might go down a bit after he gets married. But generally speaking, young men pay more for car insurance than young women.

But a lot of other stuff costs more if you're a woman. After you've had your two point five children and want permanent birth-control, the surgical procedures for women cost more than for men. And women have that extra annual exam to pay for. And women have to buy more clothes, and women are expected to wear makeup, and women have to buy stuff at the drug store that men don't use.

There's all this kind of stuff to deal with, and everybody knows that. So why was my brother saying that men needed more money?

So we thought maybe he was thinking that the man of the house needed more money so that his wife could be a stay at home mom or something like that. So we said that he should either think about people who were single or married people who both had to work to take care of their children or single parents that didn't have financial help from the other parent. Not counting stay at home parents or people married to stay at home parents, why would a man need to make more money than a woman?

To buy nice cars.

Women need nice cars too. We have to drive to work too, why should a man need a nicer car than a woman?

Guys need nice cars to get girls.

Okay. There it was, spoken out loud. Men needed more money to buy nice cars to get women.

I know that people have dumb ideas in their heads. But I just kind of thought that once a person said something dumb out loud, it wouldn't make as much sense. And that they should hear what they've said and know that it doesn't make sense. And while they shouldn't have gotten the dumb idea in their heads to begin with, once they've said the dumb thing out loud they should be able to hear that it doesn't make as much sense as they thought it did. But, if you're still in doubt, the looks on other people's faces should tell you that you're not making sense.

Guys need nice cars to get girls.

I do not even know what is the most funny about that statement. There is so much about it that just doesn't work.

Okay, so if all men are to be paid more money so that they can all go out and buy nice cars to attract women, doesn't that sort of level the field so that all men have nice cars? Who is going to notice your nice car if all the guys have cars just as nice? If men buy nice cars to make up for what they lack in other areas, but then all men get nice cars, how are we supposed to figure out....

But let's not go there.

I really can't imagine that most women are really looking at the cars anyway. Now, some women just like cars. Some women are just nuts about cars, and if a nice guy who is nuts about cars meets a nice girl who is nuts about cars, and they find out they have other things in common, then that's great and may they drive off into the sunset and be happy forever. But the rest of us just don't care that much about cars.

Now, some women will be impressed that you have a certain kind of car. But I think men greatly overestimate the role their particular kind of car plays in getting a date. My brother-in-law had a BMW when he met my sister. He was sure it was going to impress her. He kept trying to come up with excuses for my sister to see his car. It's funny now, but at the time he was just making no damn sense. He wanted to go get his car and drive her to her car so she wouldn't have far to walk, but it wasn't raining or anything, and she parked closer than he did. Why didn't he just want to walk her to her car? Isn't that the thing to do when you met someone you want to spend more time with?

Me, I care so little about cars that half the time I probably don't even know which car you're talking about. I might notice something about the car that might suggest something about a man. I might notice that his car is cleaner than mine, cause I'm just not known for neatness. Or I might notice that the car seems well cared for. Or I might notice that the car is new.

So I might infer from the well taken care of car that the guy takes care of his things or is a good mechanic, both of which are good qualities in a guy, especially if I am seriously looking for a husband. The type of car is not relevent, though if the car is decorated with orange flames or is a truck with extremely big tires, I might infer something that is not something I would look for in a husband.

And if the guy has a new car I might infer that the guy either has a good job, or at least an okay job and has managed to save up enough money to obtain a new car. Again, the type of car is not relevent. But if the car is some almost useless thing with a label that is supposed to impress people, I might infer something else that is not desirable in a potential husband.

Now other women might show an interest in your particular kind of car. You might have the same kind of car, and she might think that is cute. Or you might have just bought a car that she is thinking of buying, so she might ask you if you're happy with your car. Or you might have a "classic" car that you fixed up that is just like the car her dad used to have. Or you might have the same kind of car that was in a favorite movie or favorite TV show.

Okay, so we are back to why would a guy need a nice car to attract women?

So you've got your nice new expensive car, and the women are all over you. And the women are all over your car, and they just love your car. They don't have have an interest in the car as described in the paragraphs above, but they know that the car is new and/or expensive and they are just so excited about it.

Let's see. I think there's a name for women who are into cars that way. What are those women called?

Gold-diggers, right? You've bought a new car to impress women who just want to spend your money. And it seems to be working. Congratulations.

Are you sure that's a good idea? Is that really a good way to meet women?

Hey, I've got an idea. If you want to buy a woman's affection, try this. As long as it still works, keep the car that you already have. Put a bumper sticker on it that says what kind of car you wanted to buy, but you decided to save the money for her engagement ring and the honeymoon trip instead.

Central Market, Whole Foods, and the surplus store

Seeing that this is cheese day, I should write about what I did Monday. Monday we went shopping in Fort Worth. We used to live in Fort Worth, and we used to shop at this surplus store a couple of times a week. You just never know what odd thing is going to be there.

One December I went to this store twice a day looking for Jelly Belly brand jelly beans. They usually cost about seven dollars a pound. Once in a while this place would get eight once packages for fifty cents. I'd pick up some on the way to work, and then stop by on the way home and see if they'd opened a box of a different flavor. So part of my husband's Christmas gift was about fifteen pounds of jelly beans, and I made smaller gift baskets for other people. Monday we bought more jelly beans, about two and a half pounds at a dollar a pound. We don't know what kind they are, but they aren't bad, and they're white with red question marks on them.

We bought a bunch of other stuff Monday. The really cool thing is to go to Central Market or Whole Foods first, look at all the cool stuff that you would think about buying if it wasn't so expensive, and then find the exact same thing at the salvage place for less than half price.
So after I took my final on Monday, that is what we did.

Central Market is this really cool grocery store owned by HEB. The produce section is just huge, and I usually go home with something. All kinds of cool stuff there, like blue potatoes, starfruit, more than a dozen kinds of mushrooms, and probably twice that many kinds of apples, but I didn't really need any of it this week. But I always look just in case they have something really exotic like dragon-fruit, and it was still just a bit too early to buy my husband any figs.

Next is meat and seafood. Hardly ever actually buy anything there, but there's always free samples of stuff to try. We always look at something in the seafood department that reminds us of something we had in Maine or New Orleans or maybe just the Texas gulf coast, but we never end up buying any of it. It's expensive, and we'd probably screw it up anyway. Usually for that much money we might as well go to a restaurant and leave the cooking to someone who knows what they're doing.

Next is a whole room of wines, but I don't drink alcohol, so we skip this part except for my husband commenting on which bottles would make nice photographs and this is an interesting name and this is a cool label and so forth.

Lots of soap and Burt's Bees stuff and bath salts. Don't buy much there either, but it's fun to look at anyway.

Next is just regular non-refrigerated stuff, like pasta and cans of soup and jars of honey. Except that they might have some kinds of honey that you've never heard of. Fireweed is very subtle. We bought some at a ren fest once and have been looking for it ever since.

Then there's the stuff in bins. Dozens of different coffee beans. All kinds of candy, grains, cereal, dried fruit. I got a pound of soy-nuts and some granola.

We mostly skip the frozen food section, except when there's free samples of ice cream. And I don't need any free range eggs or anything like that in the dairy section. They have lots of bakery stuff, but I can't remember ever buying anything other than a dozen tortillas and some bagels.

And then there is the cheese. A whole room of cheese. A bunch of cheese that you've never heard of. But if there's a free sample of it, I'll try it. Marinated mozzarella is good, but don't think I've ever bought any. There's a similar room in Whole Foods, and if there's something interesting in the three dollar cart I'll buy it.

Then there's pizza and sandwiches for sale, and a salad bar, and a soup bar. And then they sell tamales and all kinds of other cooked food by the pound. And then there's dips and pesto sauce and olives and all kinds of stuff like that.

At the end we have a bunch of strange sodas and stuff like that. Maybe not so strange as some of the stuff at the Coca-Cola Museum, but some of it is interesting. We had samples of blueberry lemonade. I liked it, but he wasn't fond of it, and we didn't buy any. Just got an energy drink and a regular Coke instead.

So we spent about ten dollars buying four things at Central Market, and then we went to the salvage store, where we spent about three or four times that much money.

My husband bought a lot of noodles and stuff to take on trips with him. Not like the cup-a-noodle thing, but like the Asian stuff that's already cooked and just needs to be microwaved. Not worth the three or four dollars the stuff sells for at other places, but certainly worth a dollar. For fifty cents I bought a large bag of spring greens, and then a small bag of colored cauliflower. A jar of lemon curd was also fifty cents. We bought a pound of smoked cheese for three dollars. Four bags of potato chips were fifty cents each, and sometimes they have Terra products. I bought a pound of sesame tahini for two dollars. For a dollar fifty I bought a jar of blackberry jam, just like grandma used to make. My husband bought a couple of boxes of flavored green tea for a dollar each. A pound of soy flour was fifty cents. We bought two jars of Italian olive salad, a jar of mixed olives, and a jar of regular pepper stuffed spanish olives for a dollar and a half each.

I think I already mentioned the jelly beans. There was three kinds of some fudge sauce called Fudge Is My Life or maybe Chocolate Is My Life for a dollar each, but we passed on it cause we still have left over chocolate from Easter and maybe Halloween.

So now I've got all this stuff. Now I should cook something.

Thought I forgot about Coke Day?

Well, yesterday came and went without me blogging about Coke. What's wrong with me? I love Coke.

Okay, it's a bit late, but I thought I'd say a bit about the Coke Museum in Atlanta.

We went to Atlanta in 2000 for business. While we were there we did a bit of tourist stuff and a lot of food stuff. There's a big Krispie Kreme Donut place almost across the street from one of the places where we worked. We went to Mary Mac's and had stuff like fried green tomatoes. We went to The Varsity and had hotdogs and onion rings. We went to a Dwarf House and a few fast food places that they don't have around here.

And we went to the Coke Museum. And they tell you the history of Coke and you see new commercials for Coke and old favorite commercials for Coke and old ads for Coke. And we'd already been to some other soda museums here and there like the Dr. Pepper Museum in Waco and also the one in Dublin, so it a lot of it was like that only much bigger.

Someone ahead of us on the tour was complaining that it was nothing but a big ad for Coke.

Duh.

What did you think you were going to see at the Coca-Cola Museum? Dinosaur fossils? What did you come here for?

Near the end of the tour there is a room with free Coke and Sprite and the usual. And have you ever seen one of those fountains that is supposed to look like someone is skipping stones? Water is shot from one platform to another and then to another in sequence, so it looks like the same drops of water are bouncing across the room. They had a few of those, except that Coke and Sprite were in the fountains.

And then in the next room there are samples of hundreds of sodas made by the same company as Coke, only they are for sale in other countries, and for the most part you can't buy them here. I liked a lot of it, but none of the really unusual stuff appealed to me enough to buy a six pack. So we made ourselves really sick drinking all the samples and then went back to the motel.

Monday Morons

Told you'd I would get around to this eventually. Sure, you've maybe heard most of this already, but read it anyway if you have the time.

Every once in a while I get a new reader who wants to know what is the deal with the name of this blog, etc... And the question doesn't really bother me, I just hate to bore the readers who have been around for a while with the same details over and over again. But I originally started this blog to be mean to the homewrecking-slut who came after my husband. That was like a year ago. I haven't given that woman the tiniest percentage of what she deserves.

And of course I've never actually done anything to her. I've just told other people about what she does. I don't understand people who go out and do horrid things to other people, and then whine about people being mean to them and not respecting their privacy and such afterwards. They somehow think that they're just supposed to be allowed to go out and do whatever evil thing that they want to, and no one is supposed to say anything about it, and no one is supposed to try and stop them. Back-stabbing, rape, theft, breach of contract, all sorts of bad things just happen in life and you're just supposed to accept it and not do or say anything about it? I don't think so.

Really. It's like no one ever told this dimwit that she was a slut before. Somehow my reaction to her coming after my husband was a total shock to her. Like she didn't know it wrong or something.

You would think that at some point over the years that maybe she would have maybe seen or heard of some other homewrecking-slut and that other people have low opinions of such creatures. Maybe she would have thought that being a homewrecking-slut was a bad idea because she didn't want other people to talk bad about her. You would think that just common sense would kick in at some point and she'd figure out that was a bad idea.

Okay, so even if she doesn't have the sense to figure this stuff out for herself, other people did warn her that this was a bad idea. She had all kinds of advice against it, and while I'm not sure that anyone actually told her that she was being immoral, she was at least warned that it was a bad idea and that there might be consequences. She was specifically warned that she would never hear the end of it from me. She was warned about this several times, and those warnings did not just come from me.

Somehow, she was still surprised.

Okay, so I have this blog that I originally started to have some fun at the homewrecking-slut's expense, and I think that I have mentioned her ten times. Ten times out of like a hundred and fifty posts. Sorry to disappoint, but I'm not spending 24/7 with the Bimbo bashing. I have other things going on. I have other things to write about. I can and do reserve the right to go back to the Bimbo bashing whenever I want to do that. But I have a lot going on right now, and even when I have the time, I'd rather spend it doing something else.

So I hadn't mentioned her for a while. Right now the nice thing in my life is ceramics. I realize that some of my readers are bored to tears with the ceramics and would rather I go back to Bimbo bashing or some such thing, but I just haven't felt like it for a while. Then someone in my real life mentioned something about her, so I looked at her blog, etc... And I wrote about why I did that and I also wrote about something I read in her friend's blog.

A friend from the great white north had all sorts of humorous suggestions about what to call this particular person, but for now she will just be referred to as Bimbo's friend. The post I made about the Bimbo's friend going to a sex party was like two months ago. The post was no big deal. I didn't give a lot of details, except for the number of people there, and I didn't post the woman's name or anything like that. And I also wrote a bit about the homewrecking-slut herself, since that what got the whole things started in the first place, but again it was not a long detailed thing.

Anyway, the Bimbo's friend, who supposedly does not read my blog very often, (I'm surprised that she reads it at all) happened to find the post like a month later. So I'm not sure how she found the thing, unless she went through and read the whole blog, or at least a whole month of posts. It wasn't titled "Sex Party" or "Bimbo's Friend has Sex with Four Others" or anything else that would help a person find it, even if a person were looking. So that was strange. And the really strange thing is that she claimed she found the the thing when she had nothing better to do. Not true. For one thing, she was supposed to be doing something very important and should have been getting ready for that, not wasting time on blogs. And the other thing is that this happened in the middle of a trip, when she could be visiting people that she hasn't seen for months or maybe years, so if she just needed a break from the work she could have gone to visit a friend or relative. I can't imagine being in her situation and then wasting all that time blogging, much less looking for something on a blog she supposedly doesn't read.

I mean, I like you guys, and I like blogging and everything, but if I have something important to do, or if I get to visit another country, or if I win a cruise or a trip to Hawaii, how much of my time do you think will be spent blogging then?

In case you've didn't read it the first time, here's a link
http://insidioustruth.blogspot.com/2007/03/i-dont-even-know-what-to-call-this-post.html
cause I just don't think that you'd even find it without a link. If I ever get around to doing the serious labeling thing, I guess I will go ahead and label it "Sex Party" or "Bimbo's Friend has Sex with Four Others." But I can't be bothered with such things now, so here it is.
So weeks after this post, the Bimbo's friend wrote in her blog about reading something that upset her. And she understands why the person who wrote the upsetting thing might have a reason to dislike her. She wasn't so much writing about what she read as she was writing how upsetting it was and how surprised she was that it upset her. And I really didn't think much about it. She's mentioned being upset by reading other things, mainly stuff by someone dating her ex.

So for a moment I did wonder if she was upset by reading my blog, cause sometimes I add two and two and then jump too far ahead and come up with 16. But then I usually backtrack and say, no, the answer probably isn't 16, it's probably just 4 like it says or maybe 6 or 8. So that's what I thought, very briefly, I wonder if she's upset cause she read something in my blog? And then I thought, no, she probably doesn't read my blog, and even if she remembers that I have a blog she might not remember how to find it, and even if she looks at it occasionally she wouldn't be wasting her precious time reading it right now, and certainly not reading several weeks of stuff to find that particular post that.

Unless her friend the homewrecking-slut wasn't being much of a friend and told her to read that right before she had this important thing to do. Now that I think about it, that probably is what happened. The homewrecking-slut wouldn't have sense enough to keep it to herself for another week or so.

And so then I thought what I usually think about such things. Who cares? She can read it if she wants to. No one held a gun to her head and made her post about her sex life. If she doesn't like people making fun of her, then she shouldn't do things that people make fun of. Or, she should at least keep that sort of thing a secret. I would think that doing that sort of stuff in secret would make it more fun anyway, but that's just me.

So then two days later, there is this other post, with some things specifically addressed to me. So I guess it is safe to say that my post about her is what got her all upset. Still not sure why she was reading my blog, but that's definitely what she read.

First, she talks about learning that people are praying for her. So when I read the title of her post, I wasn't really paying attention, and I just thought it was like, pray for me, or wish me luck, or cross your fingers cause I've got something big coming up. But then it was like those people shouldn't be praying for her cause she's Jewish and since we think she's going to hell anyway why bother. Again, I'm not one of the ones praying for her, but this is exactly why she's being prayed for, because someone is worried about her soul.

Next she complains that if I really wanted to know about her lifestyle that I should have just asked her. Actually, I did just that a few times, and the last time she deleted my comment and I took the hint and asked no more questions. And when I did ask her questions, I did so anonymously, so I didn't link to a blog or anything like that. I would have hoped that she would have done me the same courtesy, but she didn't, so I deleted her comment.

But to be truthful, I wasn't that interested in why she decided to have go to this sex party. She went. That's enough. I think having sex with more than one person is wrong, and if you're not going to keep quiet about it, be prepared that someone is going to make fun of you.

Then she goes on to she that she doesn't understand what I have against her. Funny, but two days before she seemed to know why I might have a problem with her. True, my problem is mostly with her friend, but who held a gun to her head and made her be friends with a homewrecking-slut in the first place? You want to be friends with someone like that, then I don't like you either. Get a better class of friends. No wonder she has problems with men thinking that she'll do this same sort of crap.

But, really, I do have more problems with her than just that, though if she had stopped being friends with the homewrecking-slut, I probably would have taken that under consideration. The whole thing started with her blog. My husband is obsessed with London, and he started reading this blog because she was from London. And then one day she posted about all kinds of weird sex stuff. He should have stopped reading her blog then, but he didn't. So that was the first thing about her that bothers me, that she writes all this stuff knowing that married men and teenage boys are reading it. There could be all kinds of people reading her blog, but she knew for certain that at least one married man and one teenage boy were reading, because they left comments, and their ages and marital status are in their profiles.

So she knew that people who shouldn't be reading stuff like that were reading her blog, and they were hooked, and she kept writing.

And then comes the homewrecking-slut. The two of them comment on each other's blogs, and they are friends in real life. They both live in London. They are both into weird sex. The blog of the homewrecking-slut just wasn't as interesting, and my husband didn't read that one.

So there maybe is some online flirting going on, but I thought it was harmless. There's an ocean between them. Even if either the Bimbo's friend or my husband got any crazy ideas, well, first they would both have to be dumb enough to get the same crazy idea at the same time, and then there's that ocean to deal with. And I didn't get suspicious of my husband doing crazy things that anyway. He's obviously very much in love with me. He wrote about me in his blog and all of that. He just wouldn't cheat without someone seriously being after him. And there's no reason anyone would seriously be after him. He's pretty average in looks and he doesn't have any money. So the idea of the Bimbo's friend being after my husband seemed pretty ridiculous.

I knew he was talking to them. The funny thing is that for a while I really felt sorry for them. They were being used. But, they seemed to get off on being used, and to be honest I was getting something out of it myself. On the one hand I think parading your sex life to the world like that is wrong. But on the other hand, if someone else is stupid enough to do it, and your partner is easier to get in the mood because someone on the other side of the globe is letting herself be used....

And anyway, I got tired of being his mother about six years ago. I decided that some point he's just going to have to grow up and behave himself, and I'd mostly be happier if I was patient and just waited for it to happen. But I guess some people just never get to the point when they realize their actions have consequences, and I just had no idea that I even knew anyone like that.

At some point the Bimbo's friend writes about how she hates married men hitting on her and answering her personal ads and so forth. I don't know if that was supposed to be a message for my husband to back off or if that was just on her mind because of something that happened in her real life or what. Anyway, once in a while she makes it very clear that she does not get involved with married men.

So her friend the homewrecking-slut jumps up and down and says "I do! I do!"

Okay, not exactly. But my husband starts reading the other blog. He'd known about her for three or four months before he stared reading her blog. She's a slut, and she lives in London, but she's also a dimwit and just not very interesting. But, he's a writer, and she was the main one feeding his ego. So after about a week of reading her blog, he sends her his email address. I still don't know if he meant anything bad by it. I read what he sent her, and it didn't sound like anything. Two days later she answered him, and she obviously thought that they were going to be a couple. He tried to set her straight and said that he wouldn't do anything to hurt me and that he was only even talking to someone like her because she lived so far away. She wrote back something like, "but don't you want to come to London and f*** me in the ass?"

I don't know what they wrote after that during the first week. I do know that she very quickly invited him to come stay with her in London, and I know that she agreed to do something like in the movie "Same Time Next Year", and that he had the idea she was going to pay for all of this. She said "Don't worry, I'm good at making money."

She still had to work on him another two or three weeks before he really thought he was going to leave me.

Anyway, while this person who doesn't even know me tries to convince my husband to ruin my life, her friend tries to tell her that it's a bad idea. I'm not sure that she was worried about what would happen to me or that she actually has a moral stand against people sleeping with other people's spouses or ruining marriages and so forth, but she was at least concerned that the homewrecking-slut might get chopped up into little pieces for her trouble. I don't know if she seriously tried to do something to stop this, only that she didn't do anything that worked. She didn't do anything like say I can't believe that you would do something like this and if you go through with it I won't be friends with either one of you afterward.

So what do I have against the Bimbo's friend? She's the one who started this whole thing by writing about her weird sex life and flirting with my husband in her blog, the homewrecking-slut and my husband met through her, and I think that if she wanted to put a stop to this she was in a position to do so. People like that are never going to stop what they're doing if other people keep wanting to be friends with them.

And there's one last thing that the homewrecking-slut did, and I think that the Bimbo's friend might have given me some warning, but she's not a good enough person to do that either.

So knowing how her blog was the start of something horrible for me, did the Bimbo's friend change her ways?

Nope.

The Bimbo's friend doesn't blog as much as she used to, but she still blogs about once a week. She doesn't have as many readers as she used to. Or at least, she doesn't have that many people leaving comments anymore. I think the last one to leave a comment was that teenage boy. Sometimes the homewrecking-slut leaves a comment. But the rest of them seem to have lost interest.

The Bimbo's friend posted about the sex party to entertain someone new. The new reader happens to be another forty-something married man. She tracks her readers, so she must know that I've read her blog regularly this whole year, and she must know that a few friends of mine are reading too. And apparently someone from Virginia is reading, and it rather annoys her.

That might be all of her regular readers: a teenage boy, a middle age married guy, the homewrecking slut, someone from Virginia, and a few of my friends. Those are the people reading, and she must have a good idea why those people are reading.

I'm trying to remember what else she said. Actually, the Bimbo's friend left a comment that I deleted. I thought that I had a copy, and I was going to add it later without the link, but I can't find it. It wasn't like what she usually writes. Now that I think about it, it sounded more like the homewrecking-slut. Sort of whining. I think that she said she didn't know why I hadn't changed the name of the blog. She just couldn't believe that I was still using that name. And why was I still going on about this stuff and why didn't I just get over it?

I thought that was an odd comment. Why would I change the name of the blog? I'm not hiding from them, and why else would I do that? Getting a new blog and a new blog address and telling everyone I've moved seems like a lot of trouble to go to, and I don't know what the purpose of that would be. Other than explaining the name to a new reader once in a while, it isn't causing me any problems. And for all I know there's someone out there who wants to talk about just this sort of thing, and she probably won't find me under Trek Girl or Fembot or JaneDoe of Dallas or whatever I'm supposed to change the name to.

And as for getting over it, actually, writing stuff in this blog was part of getting over it. I try not to talk about it in real life anymore. Certain friends still talk about the homewrecking slut in my real life, and it bugs me sometimes. I've got this one friend with his own problems that I don't mind talking about her, and even then he asks first. He doesn't just blurt out stuff. So I talk about it with him sometimes and once in a great while I want to talk to someone else about it, and I realize at some point there will be counseling and I'll have to talk more about it then. But for the most part, this is the only place I want to talk about it. I'm prepared to deal with it here. If I'm not up to it, sometimes I just won't sign in.

Of course, this isn't something that I'll just get over. Everyone knew that. I keep thinking that at some point maybe I'll almost get over it. I told him he could come home if he talked to someone at church, and I thought if he became a Christian that I would get over it. He had no intention of talking to someone at church, so I don't know why he even bothered to call me much less come home. I thought that after like six months I would mostly get over it, but that didn't go like I hoped. And I've thought that maybe after the divorce I'll mostly get over it. But it turns out that there's not going to be a divorce, at least not this summer like I thought. And I thought that taking a ceramics class would help me, which it did, just not in the way that I imagined. I guess the closest thing that I'll ever have to getting over it is if I someday meet someone else and have a different life, and that's not likely to happen any time soon.

The other thing that I can't get over is the health issues. Some are minor annoying things that I haven't had to deal with for years until this happened. They were stress related, and they are back. Other things are possibly also stress related, but maybe not so minor. I don't know yet. I still have to see a few more doctors. Maybe some of this stuff is permanent. I think if it is that I'm going to be reminded of this everyday when I have to take some pills, even if nothing really bad ever happens because of it. Kinda hard to get over that.

The good news for the moment is that the homewrecking-slut has gone back to the members only blog thing. If you don't have the password, you can't read. I'm not sure what the point of that is, since probably my friends and I are the only ones left reading her blog, other than her friend and the teenage boy. I think that she's just blocked half of her readers. Still, it is good news for me, even if it turns out to be temporary like before. And until that blog goes back to being open to the public, a certain friend and I will stop accidently clicking on her blog instead of mine.

I've already addressed the praying for people bit and the didn't your mother teach you not to make fun of people in other posts. I can't remember anything else that was supposed to be addressed. If I think of something else I can always write about it later.

I keep thinking that I'm going to write this one post about how stupid homewrecking-sluts are in general. Not so much about their lack of morals, but just, what the hell were you thinking? Anyway, after I finally get around to getting that off my chest, I don't think that I will talk about it anymore, unless someone else wants to talk about it. And I'm not telling you not to talk about it. If anyone wants to talk about it, hey, this is the place, so go ahead and talk about it here. There might be someone else out there who wants to talk about something similar that happened to them. I'm afraid that I'm not going to have much in the way of advice, except to say that people like this should be confronted and maybe if more people took a stand against this sort of behavior it wouldn't happen as much. But other than that, maybe you'll just feel better if you vent. So if you or a friend are in a similar situation, this is a good place, go ahead and vent.

I think that's about it. Sorry I posted this so late, but I was at school and such.

Iowa and Cookbooks

Well, people of this part of the blogsphere are supposed to talk about Iowa today. I have very little to say about Iowa. It is on the way to Minnesota, and I had the odd experience of stopping there once to get a hot fudge sundae, and we asked for nuts, and they looked at us weird and then brought out our ice cream covered with salted spanish peanuts. So I don't know what was up with that, if that's a thing people normally do up north or in Iowa or if those kids were just clueless or what.

At some point we were in or near Iowa the year after The Bridges of Madison County movie came out, and we went to see the bridges. The people in the area seemed to want to make it a tourist attraction, but there wasn't really anything to do. They didn't have much in the way or signs or good maps at the time. You couldn't even get to some of the bridges. I can't even remember an interesting place to have lunch or get ice cream.

Once we had to go to Iowa on business. We went to Mason City. Two days later there was like a blizzard or something, so we didn't get much done. I do not care for cold weather or snow or any of it. My husband liked the place cause that was supposed to be like the place where The Music Man was set, and there was Music man stuff at the fast food place we ate lunch.

But the main thing about Iowa is that it is the future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk. He will be from Riverside, Iowa. For the last twenty-five years or so, Riverside has had a parade every July to celebrate. I have been to Riverside, and I've had my picture taken with the starship floats and such, but I have not been there during July to see the parade.

I'm pretty sure that Iowa has a Field of Dreams now, but I haven't been there. And I once lived near a place called Iowa Park, which was not in Iowa. And I once ate at either The Iowa Restaurant or The Iowa Cafe, but it was in Arizona.

I think that pretty much does it for me and Iowa.

So in between the on going drama and the ceramics class and the drama with the car, I keep thinking of cleaning the house and such. Thinking about it is usually all that gets done. So I'm looking around, and there's all this stuff.

I never realized it before, but so much of it is my stuff. I mean, I used to think of it as "our" stuff. There was my clothes and his clothes and my makeup and his camera equipment and his books and my books. But somehow I thought that a lot of the other stuff was "our" stuff. Well, this is "our" computer. And in the other room is "our" bed and "our" TV and like that.

But I used to think of some other stuff as "our" stuff. Like I thought that the Christmas lights and stuff like that was "our" stuff. But I guess it isn't really. He couldn't care less about Christmas lights. So I guess they are my Christmas lights and my wrapping paper and so on.

So I guess most of the stuff is mine. Most of the stuff that he has are books, and he's recently gotten rid of a lot of books, so I guess most of the books are mine now.

So we've got too much stuff, and a lot of the stuff is mine, and a lot of the stuff is books, and a lot of the books are mine. And I should get rid of some stuff. So I should get rid of some books.

A lot of my books are cookbooks. I like cookbooks. I like to look at them. I like nice tall ones with big glossy pictures. But I also like all the info on the side like how many calories and how much fat. I have a couple that are supposed to tell you how much it cost to make a recipe. The perfect cookbook would have lots of big glossy pictures and the nutritional info and the cost of the recipes, but I don't have one that it just like that. But I do have a lot of cookbooks.

I don't actually use the cookbooks. I just look at them. There's different kinds of cooking. There's the kind of cooking that people do to feel good. They spend all day preparing something so they can say, look, I made this, and everyone can tell them how much they like it. My husband likes to do that sort of cooking. There are drawbacks to this kind of cooking. You need a really good kitchen (which we don't have) and you need lots of time to cook (which he doesn't have anymore) and you need lots of fresh food (which we may or may not have) and possibly lots of cooking gadgets (which we may or may not have but probably can't find if we do have). The other drawback with that kind of cooking is that sometimes it costs so much to make something that you'd have been better off just going to a restaurant.

I don't do so much of that kind of cooking. I did more of the kind of cooking that you do just because you need something to eat and either don't have the money or the time and energy to go to a restaurant. That kind of cooking usually involves a box of macaroni, a can of tuna, and maybe a can of vegetables.

So I get out these cookbooks and I look at the pictures. Sometimes it inspires me to make something a little better than the mac and cheese with tuna and veggies. Sometimes I make mac and cheese with tuna and veggies, and then add a sprinkle of paprika and/or an herb garnish on the plate.

It's not like I've never cooked anything that didn't start with a box of macaroni. But I really don't use these cookbooks much, and even when I want to try a recipe, I don't even want to take the cookbook into the kitchen. I might make a mess and ruin the picture.

So I'm trying to go through the books and find ones that I'll never use and get rid of them. Or, at least, that I should copy the few recipes that I might use and then get rid of the rest of the book.

I just thought that was a brilliant idea. I'd get rid of a lot of books that way. And then I'd have the recipes I might actually use in a notebook where I could find them. And the recipes would be protected in plastic, so I might actually be able to take them into the kitchen.

In the past two weeks I've only managed to part with five thin books and empty like two inches of shelf space.

Maybe I'll try again later.

I think I will need a while to recover from yesterday

I do not feel good. I do not feel really sick, but I am glad that I am not expected to go anywhere or do anything important today.

There is yet more drama with the car. But I cannot deal with it this week. I had stuff to do at school, so my husband drove me. He didn't like doing that very much, and he spent about an hour sitting out in the van while I tried to get things done in the lab. I borrowed about twenty bricks and I had to put those back, and there were other things to deal with from when I poured plaster on Tuesday. So the plan of just going to the lab to get the plaster mold took a bit more time than I imagined. And I didn't have time to do anything with it other than get it in the van and later into the house.

So after my husband helped me with that, we went to lunch. We went to a sandwich shop with Saigon in the name. We ordered a couple of sandwiches before we noticed the sign that said no credit cards for purchases under $10, and we didn't have any cash on us. So the two sandwiches became four sandwiches and soup, which we took home. My sandwich was the house special, which wasn't bad at all, but there is no telling what I ate. The only things on it I recognized were carrots, jalapenos, cilantro, and a pickle. But it was good. My husband had the grilled pork sandwich. It is hard to mess up a grilled pork sandwich. It might be too many calories or something, but they taste good.

We had a little time to rest before we both had to go to the doctor's office. We were both supposed to have physicals this week, but that was before we found out that he had to go to Oklahoma for a few days. So we asked if maybe he could have my appointment and maybe I could come in later, or maybe they could squeeze us both in. So the doctor saw us both, but told us that we couldn't get the blood work over with because we didn't do a twenty-four hour fast. Well, no one told us that we were supposed to do that, and that sort of thing is usually done first thing in the morning, not 2:00 in the afternoon. Whatever.

So then they tell me that my blood pressure is way too high. Okay. Someone told me that back in March, but it was such a freak thing that they didn't do anything about it except to tell me to get it checked again. So two months later it is still high, so that is not a freak one time thing, so they gave me some pills for it. Okay.

My husband is having pain in his arm, so they hooked him up to some machine for forty-five minutes. I don't know if that really helps anything or not. Half the time he doesn't really think he's even hurt, and half the time he's just watched someone with similar symptoms on House and is convinced he's dying. I never know if I should be worried about him or not.

So after that we went home for a bit. My husband worked on the computer for a while. He's always doing something to make the computer "better," usually with something I'll never use, and then the computer doesn't work for a while after that. So the new DVD burner, which I might actually want to use to copy something for a few friends, didn't work like we expected. So he was trying to "fix" it. Great.

Then we had more of the Vietnamese sandwiches for dinner. And then it was back to school to load some more of my stuff and do a raku firing. My husband really did not want to go back to the school twice in the same day, so I was trying to time it so that we got there right before the stuff was pulled out of the kiln and wouldn't have to stay long. So I walk into the lab about an hour into the class, just like the professor said, only to watch the professor grab his head and say that he totally forgot that he had to do a raku that night. So I helped him set up the raku for a minute, and my husband and the professor talked about cameras for a bit. Okay, I really should start loading some of my other stuff in the van and not keep my husband there all night.

It was starting to rain, but I'm not afraid of a little water. I grabbed some of my stuff and headed to the van. It was a bit annoying, since we had to park in the next lot over from the lab, but I'm not afraid of a little exercise either. For a moment I couldn't find my husband, and then I thought, I can do this myself. I asked my husband for a ride, not to do all of the work for me. So off I went.

I got a bit away from the building when my husband opens the door and yells at me. I turn around, he says never mind, and I head back towards the van. I'm carrying a bunch of stuff, so I can't walk as fast as I'd like. So I was getting a little wet. So what?

After I cross the first parking lot I start to think maybe this wasn't such a good idea. But by that time I am closer to the van than the lab, so I keep going.

I nearly get to the van when the wind really picks up. I'm not afraid of a little water. I don't care if I get a little wet or if my hair gets messed up or whatever. But right when I got to the van it got really messy, and the rain actually started to hurt. When I got right to the van I got something in my eyes and I couldn't see. It took several minutes to even get the door unlocked, and then getting inside the van and putting my stuff away took a while. So I decided to just stay in the van for a bit and maybe the rain would pass.

So the rain did not pass. In fact, the wind got worse and the van started to shake for a bit. That didn't last very long, but the rain was still bad for a bit.

I was really wet. I had taken off my soaked sweater and found that my shirt was soaked too. My husband had several T-shirts and such in the car. But there was no point in changing into one of them if I was just going to end up walking through the rain again.

I thought maybe I should drive to the ceramics lab, but there still wouldn't be a place to park the car. Not even like an illegal parking space, like a faculty space or a handicapped space. And even if I wanted to just give up on the ceramic stuff I still didn't want to drive home in this weather. I decided to go ahead and walk back. I would still be wet, but the kiln room would be warmer than the van.

It was still raining a lot, but the wind stopped for a moment. We usually have dumb stuff in the car like those thin plastic rain panchos, but I guess we left all of those in the other van cause I couldn't find one. I walked back to the lab. My husband was waiting for me at the door. Someone had a TV on and the news had come on about the bad weather just when I had left the building. So that's why he was yelling at me earlier, but like me he thought it would be more annoying to turn around at that point that to just keep going to the van. I went to the ladies room to clean up a bit. I took off my socks.

After I could see again, I noticed there was a lot of water in the kiln room. The doors and windows had all been shut at the time, but a lot of rain came in under the doors anyway. We have like six of those roll up garage type doors, so there was water everywhere. The professor had turned off the raku, just in case a tornado was coming. After the rain passed the weather people said that the high winds were headed somewhere else, I helped him turn the raku back on. About half an hour later he pulled out our tiles.

One of mine will be done later this week. Two of mine were done last night, and they look really good. One of the sea turtles is shinny copper, and the matt one turned a lot of different shades. Some of the others turned out nice, but unfortunately a couple of students ended up with broken tiles.

I wonder if the white glaze has sulfur or something like that in it. The fire from the last few tiles smelled really bad and made yellow smoke. The raku did not seem quite as scary as it did a few years ago. Or maybe I was just less likely to have my clothing catch fire after I was already soaked like that.

After the raku the rain was mostly finished, and we took my sea shell and about half of my supplies and tools home. The electricity at my mom's house went out, but mine was mostly okay. The lights when off a few times, but they came right back on.

And the slight power disruption did not even interfere with recording LOST.

Well, it is Wednesday

I will be busy today, but not doing the usual thing I've been doing on Wednesday. There are no plans to hang out at the library today, even though the final is next week. It is so odd to be studying for a final in an art lab class anyway, but I still have no plans for the library this week. I'll look back over the quizzes and maybe Google a few things, but that's about it.

Today I have to go to school and pick up a giant block of plaster. I tried to mold something yesterday, and somehow it ended up being a lot bigger than I pictured. I had to mix so much plaster that I couldn't pour it by myself, and then it wasn't deep enough and I had to mix more plaster. I probably should mix a third batch to get a really thick wall, but the thing is so big already and I'm running out of plaster. I don't think that I can pick the thing up by myself.

And where am I going to put this thing? And how am I going to pour slip from it? What was I thinking?

There may or may not be a raku firing this morning, and I don't know if I'll be participating in that or not. There should be a raku firing tonight if he's going to having one for every class, since tonight is the last regular class for the Monday and Wednesday night class. Unless he wants to do one during the time scheduled for that class's final exam, I guess it has to be tonight. So I might go back to see that.

So that's class this morning and probably class again this evening, but I can't stay in Arlington all day because I have an afternoon appointment elsewhere.

Oh, and my husband will not be home all week like we thought, so we have other errands to run today which we had originally planned for Thursday and Friday.

I've only been up an hour or so, and I'm already tired.