Legend Has It

Every book is a mystery book until you read it.

Genre-lly speaking,
TWS

New Memory Unlocked

 Remember that time I made sushi on Thanksgiving?

Avocado, cream cheese, tuna

Don't worry: I didn't make it for Thanksgiving, I just made it on Thanksgiving.

The trick is to prepare the sushi rice the day before
so it's cold and sticky.

Having the right proportions allows you
to turn out nice, tight little rolls.

Livvy is an expert at being a nice, tight little roll.

This is me in bow pose
with Cooper in a nice, tight little roll in the background.

These backbends don't work themselves,

TWS

H-Ohm Repair

It αll started Sunday afternoon.

The washing machine was on its third load of laundry but then refused to finish.

It would make this horrible clicking sound and then kind of sigh and shrug its shoulders like it didn't know what else to do.

It wouldn't drain. 

It wouldn't spin.

All it would do is attempt to complete its cycle and then blink cryptic light messages at me while I lock and unlock the lid.

Upon realizing its lack of fortitude and stamina to move forward with washing the load, I proceed to take a sopping wet uncentrifuged basket of towels and $2 in quarters down three floors and over two buildings to our on-site laundromat to finish what we started.

The joke here is that we actually had eight quarters in cold, hard cash.

The other joke here is that we thought we were pretty much done with this kind of machinery tomfoolery once we moved out of the house. The washer/dryer is the only appliance we use that is actually ours (besides computers and the `*~Kitchen Mama~*`) that could go wrong and so of course it must.

Later that night, St. Michael emptied out the water manually by taking the drainpipe from the wall, filling a bucket, putting the pipe back in the wall before it leaked too much, running the bucket to empty it in the tub, and back and forth and so on and so weiter.

When asked in an interview later of how many trips he had to take to empty it all out, he responded, "Too many to count. We have the smallest bucket of all time." 

Not in any hurry to fix the washer or call anybody about it, we do a little research and wisely wait until we feel like doing something about it on Thursday.

It could be a blocked drainpipe.

It could be the motor going bad.

It could be something we could fix ourselves.

We may need a new washer.

But then how would we even get rid of the old one?

Before we get too overwhelmed, Michael has divided this into two more manageable tasks:

Part I. Prepare the Patient for Surgery

We unhook the hoses and drain whatever was remaining. 

We move the washer out into the hallway and plug the un-drainable hole with a rag.

We tip the washer and gently lay the baby on its side so it does crush its hoses or die in the night. 

Then, suddenly!

The black hose was so low that the remaining putrid dregs dribbled out.

It smelled so bad you guys 

Like someone had moved a manhole cover    i  f     y  o  u     k  n  o  w     w  h  a  t    I    m  e  a  n

After cleaning up all the residual waste and hanging that towel out to dry, we decide that's enough for one night.

We guard the washer with the closet doors to ward off any mild acts of kittencraft in the night.

Wanted: Perpetrators of Kittencraft

Suspected guilty of "kneading" hot dog buns on the counter after dark

And then it's Friday night.

The Steve Kopman asks if we're going to the dance.

We are not because we have to fix a washing machine.

I make dill mashed potatoes and tilapia for dinner.

Ω-3 Fatty Acids

They improve brain function.

Let's go.

Part II. The Night of Surgery

We watch an instructional video on the medical procedure.

We look at all the pertinent details, like how many screws we need to extract, how many Ohms it's supposed to be running, and what kind of hat you should be wearing to do this kind of work.

Mike laments not having this kind of hat.

Then we get fast to work with Mike unscrewing from under the bottom of the machine.

I'm on Towel Duty, Standing By.

Soon, we would be able to either remove the clogged artery or test the heart for sufficient life force.

In Ohms.

ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ

After all the screws were out, Mike gets to pulling the motor off and sees a grey ball in the drainpipe. Is it cat hair? Is it lint? He has no idea and hands it to me.

IT'S MY SOCK. My little grey sock!

It's not so tiny to have fit through any of the holes, so it must have slipped between the baskets when I dumped it in there two loads ago.

People always blame the dryer for this, but only because it's the last part of the cycle. 
Nobody's counting their socks on the way from the washer to the dryer.
Perhaps you should look to the washer for your answers.
For there they might be lying.
In a drainpipe or somewhere.

A simultaneous victim and perpetrator

I guess it's true that we only found this one because he literally got caught.   

But if the sock had been able to fit through the drainage plumbing, 

who knows where it would've gone, 

ne'er to be found

without a trace 

nor broken appliance 

in its wake

Perhaps we have solved a great mystery that has been plaguing the collective conscious for sometime now. 

Always shame-blaming the dryer for taking the little sock that might have gone out with the bathwater.

We proceeded to pull out the good ol' multimeter and check the motor for resistance anyway to make sure it was still within the parameters that Mr. Hat told us about. 

The Multimeter had so many settings that Mike was flabbergasted at which section to flip to.

I kindly pointed to the Ω symbol and he was like "Ohm. My Gosh."

Ωygosh.

The motor was perfectly fine.

Its little wheel even resisted a little like it was supposed to.

We reassembled everything, carefully shimmied it back to the wall and ran a triumphant load of drain and spin:

free of worry

free of clog

free of leak

free of sock

And now our dryer is humming peacefully, drying our subsequent load of laundry (i.e. the towels and rags we used to clean this all up, plus a little grey sock. ;)

The dryer balls make it sound like a nice song with soft bongos, ping-pong circulating off the walls.

ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ

~~~~~~~~~~it's meditative~~~~~~~~~

Ω,

TWS

Victor Leans Out

Click the upper right square to expand.

This is a true story if you extrapolate it over eight years instead of a few months,

TWS

Meridian

Hotel art is peculiar in the way that you never see it anywhere else except in hotel rooms.

Just like hotel coffee has a peculiar taste that can only be found by drinking it in a hotel. 

However, you can transform any cup of coffee into hotel coffee by using that little packet of creamer that tastes like the paper it comes wrapped in (do not recommend).

But hotel art can be even more exclusive, more unique and introspective than art in a museum.

It's like waiting room art, but even more abstract, questionable, and aloof.

One time we were building furniture and Mike said I was being aloof and I needed to be more loof.

So then I focused up and we built a dresser.

True story.

The Holiday Inn in Meridian, Mississippi did a lot of things right on our adventure to the 74th National Square Dance Convention. 

1. They existed near a cool park

2. They gave me some goldfish

3. I got to spin a wheel for extra points!

But when we got to our room, the artwork was on another level. 

(Like, literally, I think we were on the fourth floor.)

Our room acted like it was some prestigious gallery, so it was a fun little game that we took upon ourselves to name it all. 

Here are the results:

"Honeycomb Havoc"

This first portrait appears in the bathroom next to the sink. Enjoy the reflection of my creepy face.

I christened this one "Honeycomb Havoc" because of its striking resemblance to the Mario Party Game:

The honeycomb is always the last to fall and covers the patron with bees as pictured above. In the Holiday Inn rendition, the honeycomb is yet to fall. However, friendships have already been broken because of accusations of "colluding with Mark" even though I was just counting the fruit and looking out for my game, playing my life.

It's a complex piece of art with a lot of emotional baggage.

Next, on the wall above the coffee maker, we have:

"Desire"

Because of its rotating likeness to fan blades, none of which can ever be found inside stuffy hotel rooms, Mike dubbed this one "Desire" after the ever-longing ache to have a mere ceiling fan above oneself while staying the night away from home.

This piece of art was important as, if you remember, this same "Desire" is one of his political initiatives should he ever run for office.

Supposedly, if you can't have it for real, a conceptual picture on the wall is supposed to suffice.

Next to some weird chair in the corner, hung this piece of work:

"Crashing Symbolism"

You can almost hear this work of art as you struggle to take it all in. It looks like cymbals, but also not. The lines are broken, but also sometimes not. It's a cacophony of realism and surrealism and makes your ears question what they just saw and makes your eyes unsure of what they just heard.

I suppose the weird chair is precisely for experiencing this...experience.

And then, suddenly, above the minifridge:

"Jackpot"

Mike called it such not only because of the green colors that look like pieces of money floating and falling all around, but also because there is a hint of sevens among the abstract shapes. This one was the most understandable, most congruous with the furnishings, and most forgettable.

And lastly, next to the bed, there hung:

Map of the Holiday Inn

Mike named this after waking up in the middle of the night, disoriented, and saw this, trying to figure out where he was.

I am generally good with directions and finding my way naturally but for some reason, Holiday Inn architecture gets me all turned around. This happened to me in Canada, too, when we stayed at the Holiday Inn in Sudbury last summer, so I thought it was a foreign country thing, but it turns out that Holiday Inns are just laid out weird. 

Their hotel floor plans are not logical lined-up little boxes. They are hallways that keep turning and also there are elevators and circles with stairs. 

I should have compared this to the evacuation map on the back of the door to see how true to form it was, but, alas, I was on the way to the pool and didn't have time for such comparisons.

The fun of architecture is in the building,

TWS

Stranger Things

In this realm, there are things that are strange, and then there are things even stranger than those strange things. Today, we're going to discuss those stranger things.

Venus Fly Traps

First off, they look like they grow in some remote equatorial subtropical rain forest, but they are actually natively found in the wetlands of North and South Carolina. 

Can you believe that? These little dudes are more local than we thought.

Also, the slang term for them is a "tippity twitchet" because of its resemblance to female genitalia, but to be fair, a lot of flowers look like those part so, strangely, that's really not all that strange.

I know there are several species of carnivorous plants, but the concept of plants eating animals still throws me for a loop. It's as though they should only exist in a place where mushrooms make you big and stars make you invincible.

iykyk

I feel like it's actually an animal in disguise, like sea cucumbers or sea urchins. The carnivorous ability of the venus flytrap defies the food chain. It's even equipped with trigger hairs and whimsical "jasmonic" acid!

A plant that became so good at photosynthesis, it was like, "You know what? This soil sucks right here. Let's see what else we can do" and then proceeded to trap and digest dumb bugs. 

Is eating bugs even necessary for the plant's survival? 

Or do you think they do the trapping just for fun, like hunting for sport? 

The Georgia $tate $quare Dance A$$ociation

The GSSDA is an organization that loves money but hates to collect it. This group is responsible for organizing the Georgia State Square Dance Convention, and they are supposed to raise funds by selling ribbons to patrons that plan to attend. However, they always come up short somehow and still like to blame their plight on Covid, which happened like half a decade ago.

There are two primary reasons why this is not only a strange thing, but a stranger thing:

Firstly, if you have ever been on the board of the GSSDA, you don't have to pay to go to the convention. I think board rotations happen every few years, so pretty soon, you have a whole crowd of dancers going to the convention and not paying for it because they served once upon a time. 

I get the idea of incentivizing people to serve on the board, but the financial benefit need not extend to those no longer on the board and apply forevermore. This is a huge financial sink hole that only continues to grow. 

Secondly, this group will sell ribbons at a discounted price until a certain date closer to the state convention to encourage participation and also help plan for attendance. But then they will go out of their way to discount the discounted ribbon if you buy the convention ribbon at the state sashay dance.

Discounts upon discounts! Oh, how they love inventing new ways to be poor!

Then in almost the same breath as this announcement, they will ask for generous donations for those not attending the convention. True story.

It's like these people don't know how math works.

Is $5 off of a ribbon really incentivizing anyone to buy one who normally wouldn't? 

At this point, it's like the price of a dozen eggs, so it's probably not really moving the needle for any one person.

However, $5 multiplied by 300 attendees would be $1,500 - a sizeable amount that the GSSDA could use toward the convention by just NOT DISCOUNTING THE TICKETS. The discounts are only hurting the convention at this point.

If they just focused on making it a good convention and charging a standard higher price for those who want to attend, everyone would get what they wanted, and money would never be an issue. 

I feel like the GSSDA is still operating with this pre-inflation coupon-clipping mentality and fundraising strategies like we're-a-non-profit-so-let's-beg-for-money-and-see-what-can-we-get-by-with.

It's like if a church gave you reasons not to tithe while also guilting you into thinking that you should. 

Very strange.

Cemeteries

It occurred to me recently how eerie and bizarre cemeteries are. 

I have nothing against burying the dead; in fact, this is my favorite method of corporal disposal. When I was writing my estate plan a few years back, I found about tree burial pods and right then and there I decided that is the way I should like to be buried. Instead of having my remains tucked away in a dead box of dead wood, I'd rather biodegrade, return to the earth, and be integrated into living wood that will provide oxygen and fruit for generations to come!

Cemeteries are stranger things because they are essentially artificial deserts of remembrance. No other living being on earth does this with their dead; the other biological kingdoms are way more in tune with the cyclical self-existent nature of everything always being in a state of regeneration instead of the human fake-ending timeline. 

I don't think it's unnatural to remember the dead or to honor and memorialize those that have passed on, but dedicating acres and acres to this is weird to me. Cemeteries are so cold with the loneliness and the stones and are also incredibly hot with the lack of shade, so people are really only spending time there if they have to. It's a waste of perfectly good real estate for the sake of being...reverent?

If we all believe in the afterlife, then why don't we do something a little more alive, a little more beneficial to all those still living?

So instead of rows and rows of graves...

We'd have orchards of fruit bearing trees!

So you can bear fruit in life - and also in death

Oh, how beautiful it would be to walk among your ancestors like this. After all, the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that grows and becomes a tree so that birds of the air make nests in its branches.

Don't just lie around waiting for the resurrection: go ahead and BE the tree of life!

In any case, it's more environmentally conscious than traditional cemeteries and more financial sustainable than the GSSDA. If the bones don't decay in time, just throw in some jasmonic acid courtesy of the venus fly trap.

Death is a doorway,

TWS

FIFO

There, I found myself.

In the bathroom.

Pulling out rolls of toilet paper from under the cabinet

For the purpose of putting new, fresh ones in behind them.

As if the old ones are going to expire sooner 

Or somehow lose quality over time

And so must be used first.

First in, first out, you know.

Old habits die screaming,
TWS

Black Dog; Taylor Swift

Oculism

It's always amusing to change one's mind because doing so changes one's reality.

A mind change, or third-eye laser surgery, is also useful for looking back at how we used to see things and be like wow, that's not the way it was. Subsequently, you realize how easy it is to stop believing something when it just doesn't work for you anymore.

Now for some nostalgic amusement where I also talk about topics censored elsewhere on the internet:

Dumb Things I Thought As a Kid

1. Subway Restaurants Were Train Stations

I spent much of my childhood reading books where I learned the vast majority of my vocabulary. I read Madeline books and Curious George among other classics and thus my little kindergarten brain was formed. I learned that a subway was an underground train in cities where people would go to travel to work and go around the city. 

Since my only experience in a "city" at this age was the small town of Perry, GA, I began to see the signs for the restaurant Subway and assumed that those were the terminals wherein patrons would descend and travel upon the vast, unseen, underground metropolitan landscapes of little ol' Perry. 

My family preferred submarine sandwiches from Baldinos, so I did not know Subway was an actual restaurant until much, much later in life.

Similarly, I was really confused when I saw what Harriet Tubman looked like. I thought she'd at least have a conductor hat or whistle. The underground railroad was cool but not as cool as I was led to believe by use of such literal diction.

2. Drug References in Songs Were Admissions of Guilt

I remember a particular conversation with my mom about the Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". She explained that later in the Beatles' discography how they became "druggies" and that the song was actually about LSD. 

How very strong the DARE programming was in me at that age! 

By the way, the "programs" that you go through in school are literal programs for your brain computer that shape your worldview from a very young age, so you gotta watch out for that.

Naturally, I was appalled that singers could "get away" with drug references in their songs. They were obviously doing drugs; how else would they be able to write about their experiences? I was sure that cops would surely be all over fighting crime, catching and arresting these baddies just upon the mere references to substances in their lyrics!

My young brain had not yet the capacity to understand pop culture.

I also thought the Beatles were a band named after the animal (e.g. the Beetles) like the Monkees, the Eagles, or the Turtles. I think I was in eighth grade when I finally realized the correct spelling and the pun therein.

3. Mexican was a language spoken by Mexicans in Mexico.

I mean, who had ever heard of a Spanish restaurant? Tacos were and are and will probably forever be my favorite food. Mexican cuisine and Taco Bell were my jam growing up, and that's all I knew about the place of Mexico. Oh, how embarrassed I was to be doing a unit in fifth grade on the country just to find out that the Mexican language didn't exist.

Ironic or not, I am now a B-2 student in Spanish. Que padre.

4. Miscellaneous Childhood Delusions

a. Mountains were made by stacking rocks and pouring water on them. This was my theory prior to learning about concepts like tectonic plates and volcanoes.

b. I was quite certain that my stuffed animals said kind things about me when I wasn't around, like in a very Toy Story kind of way.

c. I thought astigmatism was an object and not a condition. As in "a stigmatism": I thought it meant that you had something in your eye that made you see all weird, like a cataract. 

d. Concentration camps were places where people were put to concentrate, to focus, to think about what they had done. With the whole ideological conflict of the holocaust and WW2, I thought there was a bit more "re-education" going on in the prison camps, a little more brainwashing, a little more concentrating on changing one's beliefs to assimilate to whatever world awaited at the end of the war.

I didn't realize until this week, this very week, while reading Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning that it dawned on me that concentration in terms of the camp meant a concentration of people.

Don't worry; it gets worse.

Because of the whole war, rations were scarce. If you wanted Jews then, you had to get them from concentrate.

From the frozen section of your local war-torn Europe

Financial Beliefs As a Kid

1. Banks

I thought that when I made a deposit at the bank, they had it all safely tucked away in a vault somewhere, Harry Potter Gringott's style. I mean, the post office could do it with their silly little PO boxes; surely the bank had a similar system. When my dad told me that they throw it in a draw with everybody else's money and that's how they made loans and stuff, I was appalled that no one had told me this was the deal beforehand.

But then I learned how I could make money by just keeping it there instead of inside my Miss Piggy bank, and let's just say I was interested.

2. Gas

I did not realize that gas prices were per gallon. I thought that the price on the sign was the price of this product called gas, period. In the 90's, the lowest gas price I remember seeing with my pre-K eyes was 88 cents. I remember it going up to $1.29 and my mom exclaiming how much it had gone up. In my mind, it was only like 30 cents. Not a big deal. I didn't realize that there was some multiplication involving the quantity of gallons purchased...

3. Paychecks

When I got my first job and saw my pay stubs, I got so excited that there was money being withheld that I would be able to get back later. I would sit in my room and add it up, giddy with delight that I had extra savings waiting for me somewhere under my social security number. I was absolutely thrilled to pay social security and Medicare, thinking that I would be able to get refunded later. I forgot at what point my dad told me that, no, it's just the withholding piece you file for & the FICA is pretty much gone forever. 

Suddenly jaded as a teenage lifeguard, I found out that it is better not to add it up at all.

Perhaps it's best not to know how much you're being robbed on a weekly basis.

Later, as I learned more about the largest, questionably legal, ongoing Ponzi schemes that are the behemoths of social security and Medicare, my exuberance to support the government and any of its programs at all, especially NASA, has wizened quite profoundly.

But cheer up, kid.

It's not all hoodwinks and satraps.

Smart Things I Thought As a Kid

1. Everything I ever said or did was being recorded.

This wasn't a belief in creepy hyper-surveillance or any of the Snowden-type information we're aware of today. I'm talking about how I believed that everything I said or did was being recorded and known by a higher power, and I didn't want to disappoint. I remember walking into K-mart and thinking about the big pads of paper that my teachers would write the DOL on and thinking how somewhere, angels (or my imaginary friends Eric and Catherine) were writing down everything that I was saying so I wanted to make sure I wasn't failing the story.

It was classic Main Character Syndrome. But it worked! In like all of my elementary report cards, my teachers were always calling me "conscientious". Heck if I knew what that meant. I got straight S's and that was all that mattered to me.

But now thinking back, how wise I was to conduct myself this way! What a gift - the practice of thinking first and speaking/acting second. The personal responsibility - to my God and to myself - that this created! Years later and now I am even more aware that I AM the author of my own story.

The whimsical scribbler who tells true stories.

And I still do not want to disappoint. ;)

2. 9/11/2001 was sus AF.

I remember that day in fifth grade being rushed to the library to look at the real-live-current-event happening! I was sitting there thinking to myself how staged everything looked, like it was an action movie. I couldn't figure out why everyone cared so much about the world trade center when it was the first time I had ever heard about this building.

And then a passport was found among the debris and all the sudden it was confirmed that he was one of the hi-jackers?

Bodies and planes can disappear, but a paper document just floats out of the sky and suddenly the FBI is like, this guy. This guy is a suspect.

Are you kidding me? 

And everybody just latched onto this and believed it to be true because not only did they see it on TV, they wanted justice, right? They wanted someone to be responsible and pay for the crimes against America!!!!!

The thing that really clinched it for my 10-year-old self was when I got home from school that day and saw building 7 fall. Why was a building collapsing several hours after everything else? The official reason didn't make sense then and still doesn't make sense to me. Burning buildings just don't fall that way. 

I may have believed that Mexican was a language at that age, but at least I had critical thinking skills.

3. Life is actually eternal.

I used to think about what would happen after the end of the world, and then what, and then what, and even then what...?

I was always looking toward the next thing. Being venture focused, the only thing that held me in the present was so I'd have something to write about later. But when it came to what would actually happen after the world, well, then there was heaven. What was there after heaven?

I would think about these things to fall asleep. When I got tired enough, I just resolved that we would curl up like kittens and keep dreaming, which I still think is pretty accurate. 

Upcycle the energy and become something else. Like a star!

Seshat in the meantime,

TWS

Lack Toes In Tall Her Ant

You have heard it said: Do not cry over spilled milk.

I was just wondering if there ever is an appropriate time to cry when milk is involved.

Do drive past a cow field and just weep for all the unspilled milk?

Important things from the important things store,

TWS

Table Talk

Writing letters to inanimate objects, concepts, & ideas helps me to accept things as they are and allows me to calmly and respectfully move on with my life.

Here are some examples:

Dear Arugula, 

 I have really tried to like you. I see you in my salad mix. I try to make you feel included, but your pungency clashes with everybody else. It really is too much. I do not know why you insist on being as strong as you are. Therefore, I must move you to my list with cucumbers and treat you as I would treat poison ivy who at this point has got to be some distant botanical relative to you.

 Dear Ardha Chandrasana,

I love your nickname, Half Moon Pose. It's so whimsical, so unassuming. You are delightfully simple, and yet you are incredibly difficult! I appreciate you because there is no other stretch quite as awful as you are.  I feel so two dimensional in your pose. Is it me? Is it because my legs are different lengths? I can balance just fine with your buddies like Warrior 3 and Tree Pose. Alas, I am not giving up on you. I will use my blocks, and I'll start to bring them out for you like I do for Trikonasana. 

Consider yourself special.

Dear Zing,

I really, really like you. Why are you not on the mainstream list? You are so closely related to Zoom, my favorite mainstream call, and all you ask for is just a quarter more. I was so glad to have found you on the C-1 list, but I just think you should work on being moved up from Challenge to Advance to Plus to Mainstream. Heck, go for Basic. Bring your friends Press Ahead and Jaywalk, too, since it turns out all these little cued calls actually have names. Try talking to 2/3 Recycle and Shakedown about moving lists too, at least up to the Advance list since we already know how to counter rotate.  

Dear Papa Johns,

Why is your pizza just mostly bread now? Where did all the sauce go? And the toppings, too? I don't understand why you think that including buttery garlic sauce in your boxes is any substitution for actually just putting sauce or flavor on your pizza like you said you would. Also, why do the leftovers become almost as dense as neutron stars overnight? Your crust goes from being mostly bread to something like osmium in just a few hours. I've never experienced pizza behave in the way that you make it. I think you are a focaccia factory disguised as a pizza shop partially government funded for conducting weird space food experiments on the general public. I remember when you actually used to advertise and compete in the pizza market, but now you just mail it in like it doesn't even matter anymore.

Dear Facebook Marketplace Patrons,

When I post something, there is no need to message me privately and ask me what is the lowest I will go. The price that I post is the price that I will sell it. 

Period. 

There is no other lowest I will go. 

That is why I have posted it at all, you see.

If you insist on offering me a price so low that even my cat could walk over it, you really leave me no choice but to snarkily respond with an even higher offer so that you can personally experience firsthand how insane and petty you're being.  You want to offer me $50 for my $80 sofa?

Congratulations, now I will sell it to you for $110. 

You want to haggle on a social media site where you can't see how hard I'm rolling my eyes at you?

Let's go. I literally have all day.

Dear Greige,

I'm all about fun new names and colors, but I do not like what you are called now. I feel like everyone was getting what they wanted by calling you "khaki", but somewhere down the line an intern got ambitious and took it too far and then you were invented. I do not like the way you sound. And you look like a Greg that had a spelling crisis. Could I just instead make every letter in your word silent? Can you go on existing as a color without having to be called greige? Could you do that for me?

Where I talk to you, at a table,

TWS

Oligopoly

Some people play board games.

Some people play video games.

Couch co-op Mario Party can really feel like both.

You may be familiar with the board game Monopoly, but have you ever played Oligopoly?

It's a version of playing Mario Party where you make a truce to team up together against the other computer players. It is a compromise based on trust wherein we agree not to sabotage or steal from each other and agree to make decisions in-game that work for our greatest good in alignment with each other.

It's great team-building, really. It usually results in either Mike or I winning and keeping the computer players too poor to do anything more competitive than Chance Time.

We always make it a point to steal stars from the computer players. We even call them our suppliers.

Except the other night Mike got impatient at the Boo and spammed the A button, resulting in an UNAUTHORIZED STAR STEAL from me, Daisy. It was truly accidental; I was more shocked than appalled when it happened.

Mike realized right away and permitted me to steal back from him, but with the computer players our suppliers still having ample star inventory, it didn't feel right to break the truce just to get vengeful. 

The game went on to get out of hand, as this was the leaderboard at the end:

I think Mike ended up with 16, BJ with 9, me with 8, and the mole had 5. 

Just for a little context, a score in the double digits - even on a 30-turn game - is pretty substantial. Mike felt like the unauthorized star steal from me led to this over-the-top performance and so he offered a future permissible star steal but even more generous: an entire turn of stars!

I made a physical coupon to commemorate this transaction.

I am now painfully aware that I misspelled permissible on this and now I can't unsee it.

I apologize. My typewriter does not have spell check.

You see, Jamboree buddy/multiple methods permits taking advantage of an opportunity to STEAL MULTIPLE STARS from Mike during this one turn of redemption. 

Additionally, there is ample opportunity to use this on another Mario Party game. 

Perhaps a more difficult one. 

Perhaps one where we play with a friend from college and I whip this out like a secret weapon because it has been so long since all of us played together and Mike has forgotten it and they're too busy sabotaging each other anyway but then suddenly I come in there and win everything.

I gotta make it worth it. 

I am also posting it here so that you can testify to my long game strategy and watch it turn into a true story. 

You know, like a two or three witnesses kind of thing.

Every day I wake up and play an augmented reality game called Pilgrim's Progress,

TWS

Jury Duty: Impressions

It felt like church. 

I was sitting in a wooden pew just waiting, waiting, waiting and gradually being surrounded by strangers. It's that awkward feeling of being seated at someone's wedding before all the important people show up. 

I almost expected a hymn to start playing to woo me into the spirit of democratic legal proceedings.

After a thirty minute meditative moment of silence, roll was called. That felt like school, with the usual cut-ups making smart remarks or showing up late.

And then I really had to pee. 

But not before I made a Jury Duty Scavenger Hunt for you!

• Someone's buttcrack
• Someone wearing a hat even though the jury summons (paper? notice? invitation?) went on and on about the dress code and how they're not allowed
• A guy that just looks like he smells like after shave and hair gel
• A sugary beverage
• A clock that is set to the wrong time
•  Fort Valley actually had multiples of these. I had the rare privilege of serving right after the time change for daylight savings, so everything was already super off and, yeah, I only got like 3 hours of sleep.

It was really cold in courtroom, but the bathroom felt like a warm, cozy shoebox.

Ok, so more ways that it was like church:

There were large, arched windows that might have been stained glass, but they had the blinds all closed so you couldn't see in or out. Sequestration at its finest.

There were also flags of country and state in the front of the room because Romans 13:1 exists and so it's just comforting to be reminded that God has appointed specific authorities and institutions over your butt.

The bailiffs were like ushers: there to answer your logistical questions, opening little doors for you. These are your tithes hard at work.

And then a guy clothed in black robes came out.

Judge, perhaps.

Preacher, maybe.

The black robe also bestows upon its possessor the spiritual gift of administration.

There was a little back and forth while the associate pastors (district attorneys) approach the pulpit (bench) to talk to him. Probably about communion wafers or something.

After welcome and announcements, we all raise our right hand to take an oath so that now we all know about the perjury thing. The unison agreement felt catechismic, like saying the apostles creed.

"We all affirm...this to be true."

I've always felt weird about oaths because of Matthew 5:37.

What if you refuse to oath?

Isn't it just a tad heady to absolutely swear by what you think you know?

Does one also have the right, yes- even the choice, to not oath?

Full story at 11. 

It's just that I'm in such a habit of telling true stories here that taking an oath seems superfluous. 

I can swear by what I know, but what I know is always in a state of learning, expansion, so...

(I feel like no one has ever thought about the ambit of this.)

Then the judge dives into his sermon about what's actually going on here. 

Years ago when I was summoned by the jury gods before in Savannah, they had a spiffy video to say this whole spiel at an adequate volume with catchy music in the background to inform you of your humanly importance and inspire! you! to be a great! juror! 

They also gave you a sweet $15 and validated your parking.

Not so in Fort Valley.

This is the part where I learned that a grand jury decides what actually has the balls to go to trial. 

And by balls I mean "probable cause". 

After this homily and a few sips of that sugary beverage we spied earlier, the preacher then instructs the choir director to randomly call in order the first 25 members from the audience to join the grand jury choir.

Then the rest of us all sit and listen while they sing to another oath: the grand jury oath!

It's a beautiful hymn of promise, where they all vow to deliberate deliberately.

But here is the full, juicy story at 11:

One of the tenors in the choir didn't sing at all.

He was the one that was out of dress code that we saw in our scavenger hunt earlier.

He didn't make the oath!

After a solemn moment, the church discipline committee approached the pulpit.

The black robed one nodded his head, probably convening in prayer.

Then they swiftly dismissed the non-oather from the choir and called in an alto as a replacement who proceeded to perform a beautiful solo oath.

So it turns out that the old addage "You don't have to do anything you don't want to do" rings true.

You can choose to not take an oath.

You just have to know that you can.

Shortly after, the benediction was given and the assembly was dismissed, except for the grand jury that had to stay behind for choir practice.

I don't know if this blog post is even lawful because I'm not supposed to reveal secret information like it's some freemasonic fraternal blood ritual.

But yeah. I went to jury duty. 

And lived to tell about it.

All four couples right and left grand jury,

TWS

Update: I got a $20 check in the mail for my services. Your county tithes hard at work!

Trade Secrets

This isn't a recipe blog, but here is a recipe.
It is still a true story because I made them and I have photographic evidence.

Midnight Cookies

1 c of flour, heaping

.5 tsp baking soda

.5 tsp salt

2 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa

.5 cup of butter, melted

.5 tsp vanilla

1 egg

1/3 c sugar

1/3 c brown sugar

1/3 c mint chocolate chips

1/3 c dark chocolate chips

Oven at 375.

Mix wet ingredients & gradually add in dry and then stir in chips

Bake on parchment paper for 9 min.

Cool for 2 min.

Makes an angel dozen (11 cookies)

Dark chocolate is really just esoteric chocolate,
TWS

Beyond Beef

I would like to correct one small, itty, bitty, ridiculously stupid thing that I've heard too much. 

For almost three years now, Mike and I have been square dancing and have been, comparatively, the youngest square dancers on the floor more often than not.

Which is fine. 

There are the usual comments like, "What do your friends say?" as if we have any that would want to listen to us talk about this, or "How can we get more young people like you into this?"

IDK? Ask them to not bear children, I guess.

Answering to all that isn't the annoying thing. We dance at the advanced level now and are learning the first level of challenge. Because of our perceived age, we get asked how long we've been dancing because we obviously have had to learn quite a lot in a truncated period, comparatively.

After whatever inquisition ensues, it always seems to be summed up into the following stab:

"Well, you have a young brain."

And I'm just wondering at what point will our age stop being the sole reason for all our success?

At what age exactly will I just get to exchange my young brain for an old one so I can, too, make this excuse and forgo putting in effort anymore?

When will I just finally give up and fall in love with mediocrity?

Or will the excuse for doing anything, and doing it well, perpetually and eternally be me and my "young brain"?

Because that reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally discounts all of the other things that went into it.

No, no, no nevermind all the hours and effort, the self-training and repetition, the commitment to stay the course, the money and time spent travelling to get more hours of experience and buying the resources to learn the things that I want to learn how to do.

Just to be told ...

*~(It's 'cuz you have young brain.)~* :P ;)

As if intelligence and self-discipline are just inherent traits of "young" people everywhere, whatever ambiguous number that refers to.

Like my age is the only reason why I still have energy to do things.

Please, instead, recognize that I still have the energy to do things I want to do because

~*( I still want to do them.)*~

The truth is that learning has N.O.T.H.I.N.G. to do with brain age.

You just do the things you want to do.

It's that simple.

If you really want to do something, you have the privilege of deciding to control your own mind to figure out a way to do what you want to do.

And then, once you have decided, it is the persistence and commitment to becoming that character that knows how to do the things that physically builds the neurons and creates the brain connections to make it happen.

Now, you all know because you have seen this video that time is fake. 

And so my audience is obviously aware that you can make things happen perceivably faster by just being ready for them, increasing energetic output, etc.  

So, if time is fake, then so is age.

Which means then so is that comment that stabs me so.

*dramatic reenactment*

It is passion, it is care, that moves the energy to collapse realities into the talent you see before you.

Have you ever studied outside of class to actually know the definitions so that you could competently dance-by-definition?

Have you ever loaded the boat in a Microtel hotel room because you had just learned it the week before and wanted to be sure you knew it before you went out onto the floor again? 

Have you motivated in your living room with six other phantom dancers from every position so that you know where to go regardless of whatever help you may receive in the square?

Have you ever reverse-engineered a two-couple tip from Tony Collingwood on paper in order to properly visualize where your distorted box formation would be in order to accurately zing?

Have you ever courtesy turned yourself?

(j/k j/k)

I've just noticed that people like use their age as an excuse instead of just being honest with what they care to do.

And to be noticeably remarkable at something just to have your passion be smushed into a small little age box for discussion.

Psh.

That is so cheap.

You're missing all the character, all the passion, all the care that went into it that makes it fun not only for me but synergistically awesome for everyone else in the square.

Good thing I don't take things personally anymore,

TWS