Helen says Hey

Well, we survived the trip up to Helen with nary an incident. There was a late-night storm on Friday, but it cleared out by late Saturday morning and left us with beautiful weather. In the show, we took People’s Choice in the Late Open class (late model convertibles). And they closed down the main drag through town on Saturday afternoon to let the Tour de Georgia pedal through.

Aside from that, there’s really not much else to tell. Of the five meals that we ate while in town, one was an awards banquet, one was lunch at Wendy’s, and the other three were Huddle House¹. Not my choice, I might add. I stopped by Hofer’s Bakery (more bad polka alert; enter at your own risk) looking for German magazines, but all they had were the German equivalent of Women’s Day. I did pick up one of their Bavarian cream muffins, though. Those alone were worth the trip.

We forgot to take the flamingo with us, though. He stayed home and watched the house.

Last night, Trailerboy turned me on to the wonders of Starbuck’s Light Frappucino, or however you spell it. Basically it’s a Frappucino made with skim milk and Splenda, and no whipped cream. The tall ones² are three points for most flavors, but the mocha is only two points. I had a caramel one last night. It’s actually very much not bad.

Tonight is more Deutsche mit Hans-Peter. I’m actually more comfortable about tonight’s class than last week. I did OK last week, but I’ve been brushing up, so I ought to be able to follow him better. We’ll see how it goes.

¹They have French fries, you know.
²That’s “small,” for the English-speakers in my audience.

Such a vicious attack monster

Apparently my Aussie doesn't like the buzzer on our new dryer at all. Last night I was watching...whatever they call that Presidential TV show with Geena Davis and Donald Sutherland. When the dryer buzzed, she roused herself from her floor-slumber, hurried over to where I was lying on the couch, and proceeded to climb up onto my torso. With all four paws. That wouldn't be a big deal except she's never been allowed on the furniture and she knows it. And she's a stickler for rules and structure.²

Her brother (read "70 lbs of blonde fur and slobber") slept like a baby through the entire ordeal.

So much for my watchdog.

¹The dog, not Geena Davis.
²If that sounds funny, you've never had an Aussie.

Und jetzt fang ich es an

So Rob and I started German classes at the Goethe Institut on Monday. So far, mostly so good. I think I may have referred to Rob as my boyfriend during class. Rob mispronounced a word when the teacher called on him to read and thinks he may have said a bad word in its place. All in all, not a bad start.

Since I didn’t start with the first course in this series, the class has studied some things in earlier courses which I haven’t learned yet. So to help me figure out what’s going on, I’ve got a browser window open to Babelfish. It’s helping, but it’s far from perfect. I’m also availing myself liberally of german.about.com (Gott liebst du, Hyde Flippo!) and my Oxford German dictionary and grammar. I’m telling you, if this is what it’s like to learn a new language, it’s no wonder 2-year-olds are cranky.

Well said

In Andrew Sullivan's absence this week, Walter Kirn has addressed the poor child that had the misfortune of being born to the only folks who can even be considered for the title Weird Public Couple of the New Millenium. To quote:

If unborn children really had rights, the infant daughter of the actress Katie Holmes and the temporarily-humanoid immortal starseed that styles itself 'Tom Cruise' would have been delivered by a lawyer. Breaking the absolute silence of the delivery room, the lawyer, on the infant's behalf, would have sued for spiritual guardianship and demanded that all profits earned from sale of the child's story and image-- including 'virtual' profits in the form of publicity for its parents -- be deposited in a trust account to fund its lifelong psychotherapy needs.

That poor child will need more help than any of us can give her.

Farewell to Fiver1

Dang... they’re dropping like flies. First order of bidness, though, is to correct my earlier math. Our totals went from 1957 in January to 1217 to 917, and then climed back to 1147.

As of today, we’re now officially back down from 1147 to 612, or we will be when the new owner comes by later this week to pick up the car. (But he’s already given us a check and taken the keys.) Now hubby’s asking if I really want to drop that number to 606... and I still sorta think I might. I mean, it’s just a car, right? And hubby’s not giving me any pressure at all, but I feel sorta guilty because he's gotten rid of a couple in good faith.

So that just means that I have to explain my blog address² as “Oh, I used to have one of those cars.” And I can always find something else to replace it. Right?

¹I still don't think anybody ever recognized where this name came from.
²Like I ever have to explain my blog address.

Our neighbors to the south

I’d never thought about this before, mainly because it never occurred to me that Mexico might have illegal immigrants. According to this report from the Center from Security Policy (a right-of-center organization, so do with it as you will), Mexico affords even fewer rights to their illegals than America gives to ours.

Strength

Something came up this weekend that reminded me of one of my favorite tarot cards. It’s called Strength, and it shows up as #8 in most Major Arcanas. (This image was taken from the Robin Wood tarot, by the way. It's available from Amazon.) Strength is all too often used as a measure of physical power, but it really should be considered more a measure of skill, because let’s face it: the most powerful person is the person who can make things happen.

In other words, the girl on the card will never force the lion to close his mouth. But if she keeps scratching him behind the ears, she can make him want to do it. And that is what strength should be.

Cars and weekends

We spent last weekend up in Charlotte¹ for the Food Lion Autofair with the Lambda Dogwood Region. We showed with the Queen City Corvair club (a terrific group of folks) and won Best In Show with our 1965 Corsa convertible. That was a nice change from last year, when the Corsa was stolen from our locked car trailer as we prepared to go to Charlotte. We ended up schlepping ourselves to Charlotte with our tails between our legs, asking if anyone had seen it and keeping a close eye on the auction to see if it showed up there. (The Duluth Police Department found it a few weeks later. We picked it up the day Jennifer Wilbanks disappeared.²)

For the most part, the weather in Charlotte kept most folks away. There were reports of tornados and hail in the area, but the speedway only had a few heavy showers... and they were gone by early afternoon. It was really odd seeing the track quite that empty.

The most entertaining part of the weekend was coming back to the car mid-day to drop off the umbrellas and finding a large stuffed pink flamingo (in top hat and red bow-tie) sitting in the car. Apparently some of the Corvair folks have been trading this bird back and forth, leaving him in the car of unsuspecting fellow members. Said bird came to us by way of hubby’s dad. Bad move, me thinks. He’s entirely too dapper for us to give him up so easily.

This weekend was plant-o-rama. I put 81 plants in the ground, most of them through landscaping fabric. I hurt this morning. Bad. Also, our dryer died Friday night. (Props to Lowe’s for delivering on Easter Sunday.)

AND the automotive shuffling at our house continues. Our total dropped from 1957 in January to 1217, to 817 a few weeks later. As of Friday it’s back up to 1047. Mars Red with Black leather inserts. Gorgeous and fun, and a far better sound system than BMW has ever produced. Maybe I’ll get to drive it one day.

Next weekend, we’re off to spend the weekend in Helen.³ (I started to include a link, but the website plays bad polka music. Search for it at your own risk.) More Corvair-itude, in a faux Deutsch sort of way. I’ll let you know how it goes.

¹She’s fine. Thanks for asking.
²I shoulda kept that “Missing Lady” flyer. I’m curious how much it would have gone for on eBay.
³I’ll tell her you said hey.

This was rigged

Alright, there were some good ones on this list. I really can't argue with Nirvana, or The Smiths, or Radiohead, or Coldplay¹. And U2 definitely deserves mention for Where The Streets Have No Name. But can somebody tell me how that tripe from One topped the list when Pink Floyd's Time didn't even get mentioned?

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

¹Incidentally, the first few times Coldplay showed up on my radar screen, people referred to them as the next Pink Floyd. And I disagreed, so therefore I didn't like them. Sometime later, I heard somebody refer to them as the next U2, and I've been OK with them ever since.

OK, it made me laugh

Seen this morning on the liftgate of a late model Jeep Cherokee:

My other car is a defunct prototype.

A dilemma I never thought I'd have

OK, I’ve got this quandary thing working over here. It’s actually a good quandary to have, but it’s still a quandary. I’m open to suggestions if anybody has any.

I haven’t quite reached my WW goal weight, but I’m within 10 lbs (down nearly 45 lbs overall) and I’m happy with that. I’ve still got a small gut, but apparently I’ll never be able to get rid of it without making myself look like an Auschwitz refugee. Hubby and several other folks have told me I don't need to lose any more. So my goal now is to maintain my current weight and maybe build some muscle mass. I mean, if there’s gonna be any flab there at all, I’d rather it rode on muscles and not ribs.

In the meantime, hubby’s down about 40 and still wants to lose 20 or so more. And therein lies the rub: how to help him keep losing without losing more myself, and without gaining back what I’ve lost?

Since we’re eating together a lot, I could just make myself a larger portion than I make for him, but I’m not really hungry. I mean, one of the biggest adjustments I’ve made is not eating if I’m not hungry, because that’s what garnered me a fat ass in the first place. And I don’t think I could bring myself to force down a huge plateful of food that I don’t want, especially if he’s just across the table and still hungry.

I could add some higher calorie foods (like cheese and fried foods) back to my diet, but I don’t really want them. Besides, my cholesterol is still higher than I want it to be, and I want it to come down. (I’m still over two-freaking-hundred.)

Logic tells me that since I want to build muscle, I need to add more protein to my diet, like maybe peanuts or peanut butter. And I certainly don’t mind the taste of peanut butter, but I don’t really crave it. And since I’m not hungry, and I’m not craving it... there’s no point in eating it.

There is, however, one thing that I do crave: Pastries. Scones. Biscotti. Cookies.

Dare I say it? Yes, muffins too.

I’d love to add one of these to my diet every day... but I know from experience that my weight will start climbing back up. I’ve already tried it a couple of times. Plus, those kinds of sweets are sorta like a drug addiction. First I start feeling like a deserve a scone. Pretty soon, one scone isn’t enough. Then it’s a scone and a cookie. Next thing you know, I’m broke and hanging out in the Starbucks just so I can watch other people eat their muffins and hoping they’ll leave a few crumbs behind so I can lick the table.

I’m telling you, it isn’t a pretty scene.

So that’s it in a nutshell. I wanna help hubby keep losing, but I don’t wanna lose any more weight. I don't want to give my cholesterol any reason to climb again. I don’t want to eat anything I don’t really want, and the food I do want is going to lead to a desperate life of fat-assedness and rummaging through the trash for Otis Spunkmeyer wrappers. Any ideas?

Gardening tip of the day

Poison Ivy sucks. That is all.

My voice in Washington won't shut up

Dang. Have you folks seen this yet? When you get to the point that CNN refers to your interview as “bobbing and weaving,” and Soledad O’Brien pleads for “somebody, anybody... lawyer? congresswoman?” to answer her question... and all of that happened 3:45 minutes into an interview that lasted nearly eleven minutes... can we get this wench arrested?

U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer deserves a medal for having the presence of mind to say “People cannot hit policemen when they disagree what the policemen are doing....Even the high and the haughty should be able to stop and say, ‘I’m a congressman’ and then everybody moves on.”

Soledad also gets extra points for ending the interview with, “If I had gotten answers a little more quickly, maybe we could have gotten [into other allegations] as well.”

Don't let the door hit you where the Lord God split you

For the record, I didn’t really have any problem with Tom DeLay. There might be one or two people in Washington whose existence keeps me awake at night, but he wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t even on the radar screen. He struck me as not much more closed-minded than the rest of the GOP, at least as far as those letters G-O go. But Sully makes note of some public comments that he made recently to a “War on Christians” meeting in Washington:

"Sides are being chosen, and the future of man hangs in the balance! The enemies of virtue may be on the march, but they have not won, and if we put our trust in Christ, they never will ... It is for us then to do as our heroes have always done and put our faith in the perfect redeeming love of Jesus Christ."

With those words in mind, is anybody short of James Dobson gonna miss this guy?

And he's off!

Well, hubby officially finished his first auto painting project late last night. The 535i is back together, cleaned up, and he’s driving it today. And I have to say it looks pretty darned good. Not perfect, but excellent for a first attempt. Let’s just hope he makes to South Carolina and back today unscathed.

Why is this news?

Does anybody really care where Katie Couric goes or what she does? Has anybody at all lost sleep over this??

Some things just leave you speechless

You know those movable-letter backlit signs that you see outside cinderblock beauty shops? The church just down the street from my house has such a sign. As I drove past this morning, it read For all you do, His blood's for you.

But my dog eats dead animals too

I get home from work yesterday to find a flyer taped to my mailbox. Alternative Living: Change your Life, Change your Heart, Change your Diet. No more killing – Be healthy and loving

Yup. I’ve been targeted by a roving band of vegetarians. No idea who created it, but it’s in color on high-gloss paper, with crappy clipart graphics of a hen and her chicks saying We Pray For You. And a Dolphin saying Long Life. And they give four different web sites for my perusing pleasure. Yippee.

I'll let that sink in: the hen and her chicks are praying for me.

I’m guessing this went over better at my house than it did with my neighbors. Them boys lervs their ribeyes out there in the burbs.

Fresresh Greereen Cabbabbage

I figured I needed to post something today, so there it is, basking in the glow of its random absurdity. And my brain is still trying to parse the phrase, “Doo-doo in your soul, Miss Candylicious.”