Olympic Observations

I have been good and taking my pictures and thinking of summer-related essay topics, but the first week of August all I did was work and last week all I did was work and watch the Olympics so I'm two installments behind. But I can't help it. Work stuff aside, I'm an Olympics geek. Normally I have a slight preference to the winter games, but during the last summer Olympics I was painting my kitchen cabinets. It was just me and Bob Costas for howevermany weeks painting and sanding and learning the minutiae about every athlete. So this year I feel like I'm being reunited with a lot of old friends. I'll get back to my summer assignment shortly, but to get the typing fingers limbered up again...

1. I am not tired - nor will I tire any time soon - of Michael Phelps coverage. Run him into the ground all you want to NBC, I can take it. Dooce named him to her top five list of male celebrities - twice - and I would have to agree with her. I did do the math first though and while it isn't entirely impossible, I am not realistically old enough to be his mother. So I feel okay in going on and on about him. What is it exactly? Is it that he is both terribly hot and adorably dorky all at the same time? Or that he is hottest WITH the swim cap on. What other human even looks good - let alone BETTER - with a swim cap on? He needs another gold just for that. Or that when asked if he was going to get to enjoy the rest of his time at the Olympics, he said he was, but that he did want to get home soon because he missed his dog. That would have made ten gold medals if I were judging.

2. Speaking of swimming... it's been well-established that I am not a flag-draped, "U-S-A" chanting patriot. I get just as excited for other countries when they do well in the Olympics. But when our men's relay team came from behind and beat those snarky, trash-talking, little Frenchie bastards it was almost like I was nine years old again watching the US beat the Soviets in hockey. Not quite - but still pretty damn good. It was made all the better when they showed such good sportsmanship and class and walked directly over to the French team after the race and shook their hands. Makes me want to wear one of those Uncle Sam hats. Okay, not really...

3. One of the many things that keep me from being a flag-draped, "U-S-A" chanting patriot is someone like the women's pole vaulting coach. If I could hand Michael Phelps gold medals for Wearing a Swim Cap Hotly and Total Adorableness for Missing His Dog, then I would so award this dude golds for Extreme Jack-Assedry and Being a Serious Tool. An American pole-vaulter-woman comes in second, losing only to what is apparently the Greatest Female Pole-Vaulter in the Known Universe Ever. After winning silver, she goes over to her coach in the stands - and he berates her! And he's mic'ed so the entire NBC viewing audience gets to listen as he says things like "When you can't even do [pole-vaulty lingo] what do you think is going to happen!?! All you get is silver! That's what happens!" Maybe it's just me, but I don't think I'd be such an arrogant and condescending pig toward a woman who carries around a giant pole for a living...

4. There are a lot of adjectives to describe gymnastics. Funny and refreshing usually don't make the list though. It's always so serious. Everything is so dire and intense. But with the scrappy US men's team's jubilation in working toward an unexpected bronze medal and Bela Karolyi getting all riled up about underage Chinese and bad judging, gymnastics has been a breath of fresh air. I love it when people on camera stop with all the pretense. So many other times we have to endure people who are disappointed WITH A SILVER MEDAL or are so prepped and rehearsed about what to say on camera that it gets to be tiresome. But when the guy on the men's team turned to the camera and genuinely and excitedly shouted "Bronze medal, baby! That's how we roll!" or when Karolyi in one of his tirades kept shouting "ez repoof!" (is ripoff) about the judging of the women's vault - I was cracking up.

5. There have been several "celebrity" deaths this spring and summer that have really affected me. They each seemed to be a genuinely good person who went about doing what they loved with passion but without a lot of fanfare. Most famously in the news have been Tim Russert and Bernie Mac. And even though I didn't know them, I really do miss them. But while watching the Olympics I have also been missing Jim McKay. For my whole childhood he was the voice of the Olympics (not to mention the Kentucky Derby). I can hear his voice and see his golden blazer perfectly in mind. NBC has covered the Olympics for a while now and in general I think they kind of suck at it (even though I do admit to having a geeky crush on Bob Costas). No one did the Olympics like ABC and that was mostly because of Jim McKay. He would have really gotten a kick out of Michael Phelps, the men's gymnastics team, and Bela Karolyi. Plus I'm pretty sure he would have had a few choice - but tactful - words for the French relay team and that pole-vaulting coach.

I Bet She Can Pronounce Nuclear Correctly...

Every so often someone asks me if I would ever vote Republican.

My response to that has always been "I'd rather eat glass."

Well, after careful consideration and soul searching I've decided that response really needs to be modified.

It will now be "I'd rather vote for Paris Hilton."

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/64ad536a6d

Who knew she was funny? Or had an energy policy?

Already a vast improvement...

Summer Lovin' Week 4

"On Holiday"

Just as a little preamble - I do love the way the British say things so much better - what mouthy Yank came up with the word "vacation" anyway? Bah! Send it to the dust bin!

Anyway... Sadly, I was not the one "on holiday" this weekend. But the Tennessee sales tax was.

And before you put your hand on your hip, wag your finger in the air, and say "oh don't you go participating in the 'sales tax holiday' after you chastised Hilary and PawPaw for wanting to have a 'gas tax holiday'!" let me say that it is SO. NOT. THE. SAME. THING. I won't go into too much of a rant since I'm supposed to be using my time for these posts to put happy thoughts into the universe and onto the interwebs. BUT I will just say that a nine-point-freakin'-seven-five-percent-sales-tax on clothes and a slightly less obscene tax ON FOOD is regressive and an abomination. However, a tax on a non-renewable fuel source that is also a major pollutant should be taxed even more than it is now for those reason and whole variety of others. Granted, that tax money should be going toward public transportation and to mitigate the pollution created by gasoline-burning engines instead of going toward - oh I don't know - BUILDING MORE ROADS. But enough...

The Tennessee Tax Free Weekend is a fairly new thing. I had been going with my mom to Atlanta to visit friends and family for the weekends of the Georgia sales tax holiday. And yes, saving sales tax really does not warrant a trip to Atlanta BUT there are always lots of additional sales and such on those weekends AND Atlanta has stores we don't have. The Container Store. Crate and Barrel. A pretty good outlet mall. Nordstroms. Ikea. The Container Store. AND if you already have people there you want to visit and its too damn hot to do anything with them outside, what are you going to do? Go to the new aquarium? That would be nice, yes, but let's compare both activities. Both crowded. Both cost money. The aquarium would be educational, yes, but I already know enough about jellyfish to satisfy me for a while. On the other hand. Stackable laundry baskets? Cute boxes - with label holders on the ends - that would contain my VHS collection of Northern Exposure episodes? A bookcase with a name I can't pronounce that I could assemble myself? Tell me more!

I take it all very seriously. Make a list of things I need. A list of things I want. A pre-determined amount of money and an estimate of what can be spent on the "need" versus the "want" lists. I don't buy shirts I only sort-of like just because it's a really good bargain, but I leave room for the serendipitous lamp or bowl or little tan Kenneth Cole mules (that I'm still wearing four years later and get compliments on every time I do - btw). It's like a hunting trip - lots of preparation and game plans but with the thrill of the unexpected. Only no cammo or firearms or bloodshed. Well, usually no bloodshed. There was the time my step-father decided at the last minute to go with us and then asked if we could spend the afternoon at a used bookstore...

So, finally Tennessee legislators got a clue and started a Tax Free Weekend for us. Not quite as exciting. But good. No outlet mall or Nordstroms, but Macy's proved pleasant and profitable. No Ikea, or Crate and Barrel, or Container Store, but a good time can always be had at Target. And with my ongoing lack of funds and a lack of living room ceiling, anything more would not have been feasible. We did well though. Here's my haul. (Hey, get me - posting pictures of my stuff like the preppy bloggers do. Someone stop me before I get something monogrammed... )

Jones New York classic black dress pants that will from this point forward be worn at least once a week. Not an enormous bargain but I've finally come to the conclusion that I have to spend good money on pants. Clinton and Stacy would be so proud.

Nine West black shirt. You can't really tell, but it has cute little pleats. And I normally hate the way I look in buttoned down shirts so this was quite the find on multiple levels.

Liz Claiborne shirt, but in green. In the picture this color is cute, but in person it was not. So I got it in a much-cuter, grass green, but no picture of it exists in cyberspace for some reason. I promptly wore it the next day to work with dark wash jeans and cute, black, rounded toe flats.

(If I had added "black patent leather headband" or "kate spade hobo bag" to that sentence you would have had permission to come and smack me around with something that stinks of patchouli.)

Target was equally exciting but less photogenic so I won't post any pictures of the hairbrush, thank you notes (God help me, they were pink), or string cheese. But the dogs did get their annual back-to-school collars.

Oliver's

Elsie's

(And hell if I didn't notice until now how preppy they are too. What is wrong with me! Don't worry though, pigs will fly before I put my dogs in sweaters or rhinestone collars. Well, as a joke / photo op, but not seriously. Elsie would smother me in my sleep. Oliver on the other hand would probably enjoy a little something sparkly...)

So there you go... another summer adventure has come and gone. We plotted, we scoped, we stalked, we pounced and we left triumphant. And nothing had to be strapped grotesquely to the hood of the car. Or monogrammed.

Summer Lovin' Week 3

"Lord of the Rings No More"

I'm not slacking. Honest. I made a very legitimate attempt at taking a couple of different photos this weekend. One was of lightning bugs. Enough said. The other was of a trip I only dare to make once - maybe twice - during the summer. To Krystal. Please don't judge.

If you live north of the Mason Dixon Line you are perhaps unfamiliar with the "wonder" that is Krystal. (Please note - it's not "Crystal" as in something pretty and sparkly. No, no. It's "Krystal" as in "we've changed the spelling to be more like a strip club.") Up North your closest equivalent would be White Castle. So you get the picture: little mystery meat burgers that you purchase by the sackful and eat late at night when your judgement is impaired. Very popular with college students and rednecks. A friend of a friend, who is a police officer and works the night shift on Saturdays, gets the majority of his DUI arrests just by observing the behavior of folks waiting in the Krystal drive-through. Like shooting fish in a barrel.

I have been known to eat at Krystal every once in a great while, but usually only in the summer. Why? Because in the summertime Krystal makes onion rings. Vidalia onion rings. But only in the summer. Why? Because Krystal is ALL ABOUT seasonal cooking with locally-grown vegetables, of course! But seriously, I have no idea why. I just know that once or twice, between June 1 and August 31, I will suffer the tragedy that is Krystal because somehow (and most of me doesn't really want to know how) these onion rings are de. lic. ious. And to top it off? A frozen Coke. Because that's just always yummy.

So late Saturday afternoon I was starving and - have I mentioned? - had been ripping out my living room ceiling all day and I thought that if ever there was a legitimate excuse to go to Krystal, this was certainly it. I scrubbed some of the black soot from my face, put on a ball cap and a giant pair of sunglasses and ran to my car hoping no neighbor would see me.

The drive-through was just as I imagined it would be. The car in front of me had a woman in the driver's seat in a tank top with a cigarette dangling from her lips as she ordered for herself and the free-range toddler who was busy trying to climb out the passenger seat window and/or breathe clean air. When it was my turn I pulled up to the speaker. The voice from inside said "Whaddayawant." I glanced at the menu and felt a small sense of panic. "Ummm," I said fearfully, "do you not have onion rings any more?" "What!?" said the voice from inside. "On-ion-Rings" I repeated. "No," they answered indignantly, as though I might as well have asked for flan.

I was crushed. But luckily - and you have no idea how luckily - I was at the Krystal on the east side. Not at the west side Krystal near my old apartment. Because at the east side Krystal you can get out of drive-through if tragedy strikes. The west side Krystal has a retaining wall around the back that creates a drive-through-point-of-no-return. And if, while you're waiting, say a fryer catches on fire, or someone passes out at the wheel before making it to the window, you are trapped like a rat with nothing to do but ponder your poor life choices.

It happened to me once and I vowed that as God as My Witness it would never happen again. A few years later it did almost happen again in a late-night, post movie race with two friends to find an open donut store via cell phone while waiting in the west side Krystal drive-through as back up. I won't bore you with the details as I'm sure you've had enough of trans-fat-related lore for one day. But, just to warn you, I might have to resort to telling it if yet another photo shoot goes awry. For now I will only say that it does have a happy ending. And that it will be titled Ode to the Krispy Kreme. See!? More interesting already.

So here's to yet another week and to the end of July. Summer's point-of-no-return, if you will. Here's hoping the rest goes by enjoyably. Or at least without incident. (And, if you happen to have your own source for vidalia onion rings, please call me...)

Have I Mentioned...

1. That I'm in the process of tearing out my living room ceiling?

It's an older home with a plaster ceiling that, back when it was a rental house/crack den, the former owner/slum lord had - in lieu of just drywalling over it or (God forbid) repairing the plaster - nailed panelling over it and then glued ugly little paperboard ceiling tiles to the panelling ('Cause what? JUST panelling would have been tacky?). So last week my brother and I ripped down the tile and panelling and over the weekend I began ripping out the damaged plaster and lathe.

The plan was to rip all of it out - good plaster and bad plaster - and then take a gander at what the exposed ceiling looked like to see if we could leave it all cool and groovy and exposed and put in a ceiling fan and other things... But of course it turns out that we can't even put in a ceiling fan because the house that I was told had up-to-date wiring only has up-to-date wiring for one outlet so that it would pass codes. The rest is all knob-and-how-the-hell-hasn't-my-house-burned-to-the-ground-yet-tube-wiring. PLUS, the space above the ceiling is also woefully lacking in insulation and what is there is this ancient black, sooty crap that comes crashing down on your head during demolition and embeds into your pores. So now that I'm going to have to pay to have the whole room rewired AND have experienced the joy of what I would look like if I worked in a mine, the plan has been revised from cool and groovy to just patch it, drywall it and lets move along... Grrr....

I do, however, have a very odd crush on the guys from This Old House (Nahhm, Tahhm, Rahhgahh, Richahhd, and cutie host, Kevin O'Conner) and am wondering if they might consider venturing out from their beloved New England to come down South for a little house repair / cultural exchange. They could do something crafty with my living room and I could cook them grits and okra, teach them how to say y'all correctly, and sing a few bars of "Coal Miner's Daughter." It would be lovely. (Yes, I know, I wouldn't begin to know how to cook grits. Or okra. Or sing. Humor me!)

Who knew that one day my Shaun Cassidy poster
would have competition like this?

2. I'm going to be walking 60 miles in October.

Yeah. Seriously. The things I get myself into... If you're a long-time reader, or have lots of free time, you might have read/remember my inaugural post last year about going to see my Aunt Jean and our friend, Lynn, in the Atlanta 3-Day walk to fight breast cancer. Somehow, as I'm still not sure exactly how, I was coerced :) into walking this year. I'm actually very glad I'm doing it - it just all seems to be a little daunting at times. It does sound more enjoyable than home renovation at the moment though, so I guess everything is relative...

Anyway... we formed a team - Jean, Lynn, my mom and me - and have been training for several weeks now. And we've got our own website / blog. AND we have to raise money. So, if you're interested in visiting our site (or maybe even donating a little something) - go to FourWomenWalk.blogspot.com. If you're interested in learning more about the event, click here. And, most importantly, if you or someone close to you has been affected by breast cancer and you would like to add their name to the list of women we are walking in honor, and in memory of, I would love nothing more than to add their name to our site and probably to a T-shirt of some kind when we get closer to the event.

So, that's the news from this end of the world. Anything unexpected in yours??

Summer Lovin' Week 2

The Dog Days

It got really hot this weekend. Like 90-degrees by 10 in the morning hot. So hot I decided that it was worth it to brave my cute-but-spidery detached garage to drag out the kiddie pool as well as waste a bit of water filling it up for the dogs. Nothing makes you forget that your back is dripping sweat into your underwear faster than watching your two endearing, but neurotic, dogs slowly recall that they love water and that they will in fact not get a bath in the purple tub so they can go ahead and stop barking at it.

They couldn't figure out how to both get in at the same time so Elsie would jump in, splash about, and then jump out and take off running so fast with excitement that her back end would try to go faster than her front end and almost flip herself over. She would then circle the pool as Oliver would leap awkwardly - and with much gusto - into the middle and run in circles, making a whirlpool full of all sorts of waves and splashes. That he would then try to bite. He would then leap out of the pool - with equal awkward gusto - snorting and gasping as he tried to get the water out of his nose, leaving it free for Elsie to get back in. This went on and on for about an hour until they and the water were disgustingly muddy and I could sense my neighbors thinking that I had better not leave that disgusting mud pit in the middle of the yard and infest us all with West Nile.

Before the pool party came to end Elsie got to where she would lie down in the water and rest her head on the edge (pictured above). Oliver could never quite get the hang of not biting the water and sucking it up his nose, but he still managed to enjoy himself. Here are the rest of the photos from our canine adventure.

The spinning hound.

Oliver circling inside the pool. Elsie circling outside the pool.
You can see that one of his ears has flipped backwards in all the fervor.

Elsie telling (biting) Oliver to wait his turn.

Hope your weekend was as amusing - or at least not as hot!

Chickens Just Back from the Shore

On the list of things I find annoying, the Feist counting song / iPod commercial and the new format of Sesame Street would both be on there somewhere. Not as high on the list as say drivers not using their turn signals, gladiator sandals, or Kenny Chesney. But annoying nonetheless.

Anyway... I've mentioned before how the Feist tune is catchy but irritates me. And as for Sesame Street, well, let's just say I'm a Sesame Street purist. Before the format change I was known to watch it from time to time even as a childless adult (what else are you supposed to do on a sick day?). I own the behind-the-scenes book, Sesame Street: Unpaved. "Ladybug Picnic" is one of the ringtones on my cell phone. I hate Elmo. I am old-school. I can't help it. I'm a child of the 70's. It's sacred. Just like Star Wars. And if you monkey around with it too much it's sacrilege. So this newer, Elmo-centric, monotonous, not-clever, not-funny Sesame Street is exactly that. Sacrilege.

But redemption is always possible, my friends. And so I give you a sneak preview into the 2008 season of Sesame Street and probably one of the more adorable things I've seen in a while:



I also read that James Blunt will be on at some point this season to lament the loss of his favorite shape in "My Triangle." If I ever get wind of a Kenny Chesney/Elmo duet though, it may be the end of me.

P.S. All of this made me want to see REM singing "Furry Happy Monsters" and lo and behold, it is on YouTube as well:



Happy Wednesday!!