I can live for most of two months in Paris for the price of a Detroit -> Buenos Aires -> Paris -> Detroit plane ticket.

Sheesh.

Last night all I want to do is go home and watch The Shield. I am:

1. Locked out -- forgot my key for the first time in years.
2. My cable is out.

Big sigh.

Yeah I saw the previews and I could tell that it was going to be good. They re-run it pretty often so I think I'll be able to catch it.

The good news: My rickety old backyard fence is being replaced.

The bad news: 1) New fencing is too short to hide the ugly iron spikes behind it. The contractor will think of something. 2) The wooden planters are in even worse shape than I thought, and fell apart when moved away from the old fence. The contractor will think of something.

I can hear the $$$ escalating....

there are fences in manhattan?

Irk. I can't come to San Francisco this week because I have to get new tires instead. Irk.

Rain check, please.

icky, murky water coming out of all our taps.

That's Guiness

OK- can I complain about my day? I spent the night at my dear mother's home with her cats (I'm allergic). Woke up at 3am to leave the house by 3:45a to make it for check in at the airport at 5am for a flight at 6am. Arrived in San Diego at 7:30am for a funeral at 10am. Attended the funeral (with all the very complicated relationships exposed), had a nice reunion with my brother and cousins then flew back at 3pm arrived at 4:30, dropped my mother off at her home after all the rush hour traffic and drove another hour plus to get home. I'm spent!

So there I am, about halfway through Hermann Broch's high modernist classic The Death of Virgil in an attractive used paperback edition I aquired at the Mercantile Library sale in December for next to nothing. As I turn the pages, there's a bit of unnerving creaking from the old spine, but I am being careful and think nothing of it.

Then - the volume splits neatly and perfectly in two, right down the centre of the spine. Never had that happen before. Of course, I can continue reading either half, but the pages will now start to flutter to the floor as I turn them. Hmph. Now I shall have to go and buy a decent edition.

You know what's annoying? People who dig the "cheese" part out of the brie leaving behind a mangled piece of rind. That's what's annoying. Gah.

Jury duty!

I am at the tender age of 45 and have had jury duty 8 times and served on 3 juries. I feel as if I've done my bit for this cause. At least until I'm 55 or so.

I can't believe this merde- I was picked again for an actual jury! I vow never to answer another jury summons or lie in the future. I hate this system! I am so behind and I have to close my doors. I'll do the trial all week, work nights and then on Saturday I have the farmers market. I must have some bad karma or astrology going on.

I was called last week. Put in half a day, voir dire for one civil case but my belligerence must have sent a bad vibe, excused, then released from further duty. I've got a bye for the next 6 years. Funny thing is I wasn't even trying to get off.

You must have a certain kind of face.

I suppose it's a reason to be cheerful that a lumbo-sacral x-ray related to arthritis doesn't appear to have anything to do with lumbar punctures. But it is still an annoyance to have my joints causing enough pain to make x-rays necessary. Hmph.

Also, working in front of a screen all day is starting to make my eyes sore and watery. Of course, playing in front of a screen is harmless.

I run on multiple tracks simultaneously. Yoga, no, but I have the physical therapy thing in hand, and I have been doing Feldenkrais on and off for more than a year. The latter has helped my posture and changed the way I walk, and this has been to a degree ameliorative.

The x-ray/blood test/diagnostic track on which I am also running is designed to tell me whether or not there is some underlying pathological condition responsible for the only-sometimes-severe but these days pretty-much-constant pain. If not, whoopee, and I will continue to work on flexibility etc.

I find Sarno's comments a bit dispiriting. If the solution is a life free of tension and anxiety, I'd better keep taking the pills.

One man's meat........

edit: one man's chicken sashimi......

Don't get me wrong - I welcome suggestions. Although I did back nervously away from an alt. medicine guru who diagnosed "silent inflammation" and wanted to give me baby food and coffee enemas.

Backing away was the right thing to do

Feldenkrais is good, IMO.

My organic veg box arrived today as it does every Tuesday. (There is 2 of us so I order the small mix box. 4 veg, 3 fruit and spuds)

Whilst this in itself is a good thing, one of the veg today is a 4.5lb swede/rutabaga!!
This thing is the size of a human head!!

WTF do I do with this much swede?.........off to recipes thread I go....

I've only been questioned once and got dumped by the prosecuter after talking about a documentary I shot about the San Quentin Gospel Choir. I guess she didn't believe me when I said I wouldn't have any trouble conviciting someone knowing where I was sending them. I wasn't unhappy about that, but it was really discomforting being openly questioned by the judge in front of everybody about certain aspects of my private life. I almost forgot I had worked on that film too when the judge asked me what kind of movies I made. Oh yeah, I was inside San Quentin prison, cell blocks and all!

The other time I made it into the court room after filling out a questionaire, they seated the jury before they got to me. What's disturbing though is both cases were about sexual assault. Is that just random chance or are those cases that prevalent?

2/3 of my recent music purchase on amazon arrived a week before amazon indicated it would (why do they bother with the fiction of the 9-10 day delivery with the free shipping?)--this by itself is a reason to be cheerful. however, one of the cd's arrived with the plastic bit in the middle of the case (the teeth that hold the cd in place) smashed, and it is a soft-back case and i cannot replace it.

I'm bored.

And it's so pretty outside.

i'm driving back to jersey - i enjoy driving but i don't want to leave

which goddam forum is "clueless questions" in?

General Food Discussion, because it was originally clueless questions about restaurants and cooking.

General food and drink--gets me every time.

Edited to add: Not as swift as Wilfrid.

What is it called when you come down within the space of a few hours with flu symptoms - aching joints, headache, fever and bronchial spasms, but are fine within forty-eight hours?