the ky version of the serengetti

ok, so on the way home from picking up chinese takeout, after church, we passed by a field that has changed it usual livestock mix...........these days...there is a flock of emu cohabitating with a herd of longhorn cattle.......such a strange sight.....emu with longhorns........both seemed to ignore the other.......there even appeared to be a few burros here and there, as well...........curious..............the hot and sour soup was especially good today.................

leap year

ok, so i understand the meaning of leap year....the tacking on a an extra day to assure that the calender falls in line with the seasons after 4 years of the 365 day calender being 5 or so hours off......but what i really need is an honest-to-god real extra day........like an extra sunday, not just an extra day in february.......like bill murray in ground hog day, only one time.....or maybe two times.......just enough to regroup, rest my weary brain cells, maybe get all of those pesky pictures in the albums.........

more on martha

ok, so it looks like martha can put away the measurements for her potential 10 year prison cell........she won't be needing those matching single sham/comforter/toilet seat cover now that the major charges against her have been dropped.......according to the comentary i heard on the way home yesterday, she will probably serve no time at this point.........

sign of the times

ok, so the best sign seen carried by protestors across the street from bush's big findraiser in louisville............somewhere in texas, a village is missing its idiot..............

more interesting birthday news

ok, so this is no longer about my birthday, as it is past, and i am over it for yet another year.......i enjoyed this entry on/in writer's almanac, about the writer who had what it took to be the bestest ever blogger, if only he was on-line.....

garrison k. has written.....It's the birthday of the great essayist Michel de Montaigne, born in Perigueux, France (1533). His father was a wealthy landowner and a devout Catholic, with innovative ideas about child rearing. He sent the infant Michel to live with peasant parents, so that he would learn to love the lower classes. Then, when Michel was a toddler, his father required everyone in the household to speak Latin rather than French, so that Latin would be his first language. Michel went off to college and became a lawyer. His father died when Michel was thirty-eight years old, and so he retired to the family estate and took over managing the property. His best friend had died a few years before, so he had no one to write to while living on his estate. He grew increasingly bored, so to occupy himself he began to write down his thoughts for an imaginary reader. He wrote about a wide variety of subjects: sadness, idleness, liars, fear, smell, prayer, cannibals, and thumbs, among other things. He called his short pieces "essays" when he published his first collection in 1580, because the French word "essai" comes from the word for "attempt", and he considered the short pieces he wrote to be mere attempts at addressing ideas.

Montaigne didn't think he had an extraordinary mind, but he believed that every mind was unique, and he wanted to leave a record of his own. He wanted to capture on paper the movement of his own thoughts. He said, "I take the first subject Fortune offers: all are equally good for me. I never plan to expound them in full. . . . Everything has a hundred parts and a hundred faces: I take one of them and sometimes just touch it. . . . I jab into it, not as wide but as deep as I can; and I often prefer to catch it from some unusual angle. . . . I can surrender to doubt and uncertainty and to my master-form, which is ignorance. Anything we do reveals us."

He lived at a time when religious civil wars were breaking out all over the country. The Black Plague was ravaging the peasants in his neighborhood; he once saw men digging their own graves and then lying down to die in them. Still, while he occasionally wrote about big subjects like hatred and death, he also wrote about the most ordinary things, like his gardening or the way radishes affected his digestion.

Montaigne wrote, "Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most."

And he wrote, "Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition."

Today is also the birthday of our good friend jeff thornton, who looks so much younger than 58..........interestingly enough, i discovered last night at supper, during the 'reasons to vote for kerry' discussion, that we should vote for him because he shares a birthday with our middle child, born december 11......... not in the same chinese new year cycle, but the same day................cayle shares a birthday with abraham lincoln, by the way............though his actual name/lineage has been called into question....seems nancy hanks may have been with child by the head of the household to which she was indentured in north carolina, and she may have been sent 'west' to ky with a husband(mr. lincoln) attained for just that purpose...........

oscar picks

ok, so mm has some oscar picks...having actually seen many of the films this year.......for best picture.....there is only one choice..the final installment of lotr.........no more need be said....for best director...peter jackson, for obvious reasons....it was his monumental undertaking to bring this epic to the big screen in a breathtaking way...........and therefore, he should be rewarded for best screenplay using adapted work....even though i am not so sure that he was nominated.......for best original screenplay....sofia coppola for lost in translation...which is as original as it gets.......best actor...johnny depp for pirates of the carribean......not the most dramatic performance, but by far the most memorable and the most enjoyable....charlize theron for monster as best actress......renee zellweger for best supporting actress, and tim robbins for best supporting actor.........the rest i have no clue about.......i am sad that american splendor was not represented well with nominations......i really liked that movie..............sunday night..........we shall see........

emptying nest

ok, so we had a taste of an almost empty nest, what with the middle child out of town at the nhs convention and the oldest at college.........supper with just one child at the table is just so strange.....especially one who wants to eat multiple servings of meat and no vegetables.......thankfully, said child will be back this afternoon......which reminds me of kind words that one of his teachers remarked as i left the big american studies project on wednesday.......'he is such a sweet boy.....such a sponge...he wants to absorb everything....how can you bear to let him leave home and go to college.....'..........gentle readers........these words are music to a mother's ears.............which brings me back to spring break......if we drive, we may be able to go to places we have never been......like winterthur in delaware, and similar historic homes.......few people in my circle of kin or friends enjoy going to such places as much as the middle child.......

spring break

ok, so mm is sketching out spring break, which will be a mother-son college tour up east.........southwest from louisville to long island/islip is about $200 r/t.........train travel from penn station to princeton junction, or grand central to new haven appear reasonable, but amtrak from nyc to boston is outrageous.......................i like the idea of flying to nyc and making forays out to select colleges, but i am unclear how to include boston area schools............should i rent a car from long island and drive? the estimated drive time from danville to 'upeast' is 17 hours.....everybody i ask says 17 hours..............that means 34 hours round trip....or several days out of my life............if anybody out there has an idea................frankly, i would prefer the train because i can read and relax rather than drive.................thankfully, my mother has already taken the child in question to the ohio schools....oberlin, wooster, kenyon, miami of ohio, and dennison..................centre is still in the running, but it is down the street...............

la dolce vita

ok, so one my birthday cards had a sweet roman mosaic of fruit in a basket on the front, with the sentiment.....Oh, the sweet, sweet pleasures of this abundant life................inside.....today and always, may you savor every moment..............sweet because the card was from my spouse, and sweeter still because it is so true....despite my aches, and pains, and petty complaints, i do live la dolce vita here in danville...............of course, a short visit to florence next january would enhance this conclusion................i am grateful for all of those dear people who called, or wrote, or sent cards........and i am looking forward to my birthday book club tonight.......where 17 of my special family/friends will dine on pecan encrusted honey-marinated chicken, bourbon and maple sweet potatoes, country-style mixed greens, cornbread muffins, red cabbage and blue cheese slaw, and a cold rice salad...................sound like enough?i hope the wine and beer is completely consumed, as i have to go 39 days or so without..................yeh, yeh, i know that lent started today, but on the kcw calender of life, it starts when my birthday is over..........................and i am not even catholic...................

birthday blues

ok, so you say it's my birthday....iam a gonna have a good time..........cut&pasted is the writer's almanac for today...i knew about anthony burgess, he of a clockwork orange, but not the others..i like the guy who wrote travel experiences.....he may also be kin, as may is a family name......sounds like february 25 is a good day for prolific people to be born.....i am not past chapter one in my novel.......

It's the birthday of novelist and critic Anthony Burgess, born in Manchester, England (1917). He was an incredibly prolific writer: he wrote more than thirty novels, hundreds of essays, film and television scripts, translations, and a two-volume autobiography. He once said, "I refuse no reasonable offer of work and very few unreasonable ones." His first love was music: he studied music in college and tried writing symphonies without much success. When he became famous as a writer, he started writing music again with the hope that he would be able to get it performed because of his name recognition. He once said, "I wish people would think of me as a musician who writes novels, instead of as a novelist who writes music on the side."

After fighting in World War II, he worked for five years as a colonial education officer in Malaya. While he was there, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and a doctor told him he had only one year to live. He later wrote: "I had been granted something I had never had before: a whole year to live. I would not be run over by a bus tomorrow, nor knifed on the Brighton racetrack. I would not choke on a bone. If I fell in the wintry sea I would not drown. I had a whole year, a long time. In that year I had to earn for my prospective widow. . . . I would have to turn myself into a professional writer."

Burgess wrote five novels in the year 1960 alone, and continued to write at a frantic pace for the rest of his life. He's best known for his 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange, about a violent gang in a bleak futuristic world. It begins: "There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter."


It's the birthday of the "Father of Modern Pathology", Giovanni Battista Morgagni, born in Forli, Italy (1682). He's remembered today for his book On the Seats and Causes of Disease, published in 1761, in which he describes in great detail the results of 640 autopsies he performed on patients who had died from diseases. It's considered one of the most important works in the history of medicine.


It's the birthday of novelist Karl May, born in Ernstthal, Germany (1842). He's famous for writing dozens of novels about the American West at a time when not very many Europeans had been there or knew much about it. He was raised in poverty, and during the 1860s and '70s he spent a lot of time in prison for petty theft and fraud. It was while he was in prison that he began to read about American pioneers and cowboys and Indians. He got the idea for a series of novels about the adventures of a heroic German immigrant named Charley and his Apache Indian friend Winnetou. As soon as he published the books, they became hugely popular, especially among German adolescent boys. His novels became some of the most widely read books in Europe.

Many Europeans first learned about the American West through May's novels. All of his books were subtitled "Travel Experiences" rather than "Travel Novels", and most people thought that May was writing about his own travels in the West. But he had actually never been to America when he started writing the novels, and when he finally did go he never made it farther west than St. Louis.

May's novels are still incredibly popular in Germany. Since his death, about 100 million copies of his books have been sold. Many of his novels have been made into movies and TV shows, and in northern Germany, thousands of people still go to see an annual festival that puts on plays based on May's plots.


It's the birthday of comic playwright Carlo Goldoni, born in Venice (1707). He's one of the greatest playwrights in the history of Italian theater, the author of The Liar, The Coffee House, The Beneficent Bear and many others. In the eighteenth century, most Italian plays were farcical comedies in which the actors wore masks and fancy costumes, and improvised jokes on stage. Moldoni was one of the first playwrights to write more realistic comedies, with believable characters and natural dialogue.

kudos to edith wharton......

ok, so mm treated herself to the video for the age of innocence, starring daniel day-lewis and winona rider...and michelle pffieifer (sp).........edith wharton really knew how to construct a tear-jerker..................i walked on the treadmill during the first 30 minutes, then sobbed into the paper towels for the remaining hour.......................such a sad story of unrequited love................of course, this was not edith's best story..................i especially like a short story that has its crescendo in rome........2 former debutantes who lived across the street from each other, escorting their daughters on the grand tour......who discover that the brightest and the most beautiful is actually the 'daughter' of the husband of the most proud of the mothers..........................back to age of innocence................i really needed a good cry.............many thanks to edith for the catharsis.........................

ralph is running against my wishes...............

ok, so mm has a bone to pick with ralph nadar, who announced his run for president despite my plea for him to just sit back and be pro-consumer rights from the non-candidate section.................however, this time he is running without any backup....without the green party with organized state-by-state mailing lists/volunteers......he will have to figure out to to get his name on the ballot in each state by petition...................assuming he does not wish to go door to door getting signatures on his own.......

aging rapidly

ok, so mm went to the first of two birthday events of the season tonight........i am fortunate to share a birthday trimumverate of sorts with 2 of the running community....our birthdays fall in a 1-2-3 domino effect......and we have celebrated them as such for low these 20 years..................now that birthday #3 has gotten remarried, his new wife has chosen to celebrate his birthday separate from our usual bookclub birthday bash.........so tonight we drove to lex. for a nice dinner with the same friends we will see at our own house wednesday night........in fact...we will be setting up an auxilliary table, as our numbers have reached beyond the max. of what the stephan-family table can hold........my mother always told me that 14 was the most she has ever seen around the table when she was young......we expect 16 on wednesday.....and what to fix for dinner?......i am thinking about chicken breasts marinated in honey and dijon mustard, then encrusted with ground pecans then baked..............................though i am tempted use use my birthday grill for ther occassion........my mother and my spouse went together to buy for me the granddaddy of grills.......stainless steel, side burners.......the whole shebang.......our old grill decomposed after 17 years.....it was time for a replacement................i am also thinking about side dishes......maybe some sort of cole slaw, beet salad, and greens.....................again, i am unsure......so much pressure after having the book club at my house on my birthday for 5 straight years....................

poetry

ok, so mm has a soft spot for edna st, vincent millay..........i read this poem on line this morning, and was nearly brought to tears by its sadness.......

Poem: [What lips my lips have kissed] by Edna St. Vincent Millay, from The Selected Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay (Modern Library).

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings so more

I can recall seeing a portrait of the poetess at the national portrait gallery in wash dc......which had a few brief lines of her verse as an epithet.........my candle burns at both ends...it cannot last the night...but ah, my friends, and oh, my foes, it makes a lovely light..................that really sums it all up for me......as a fitting description of what it means to be a working mother/business person in the ought-fours.......of course, millay was a bit more burning of her candle than i could ever desire to be....................

don't do it, ralph...........

ok, so the mm is praying that ralph nadar will not decide to put his hat into the independent ring in a bid for the presidency....which could take votes away from the democratic candidate............................didn't he do enough damage by getting the corvair taken off the market........i loved my burgundy corvair..................

w.h. auden

ok, so this poem was included on writer's almanac today, in honor auden's birthday, which he shares with erma bombeck, ja hin, anais nin, et al.........

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

the gospel according to mel

ok, so mm will not be watching the mel gibson passion of christ, or whatever he is calling it...........i have taught sunday school for over 15 years..........and i feel no need to see the 'realism' as mel gibson claims to provide in this saga...................the anti-semitism especially troubles me.........if we are to read our new testiment as written........god intended his son to be betrayed...and we cannnot blame either the romans or the jews for doing so..................really, issaih is quoted so many times..........

phase one of sign recycling-complete

ok, so the mm and her kin staged a daring daytime assault upon the only known kerr sign between town and our house.......it was in a public right-of-way......which explain why no one had yet bothered to remove it.......now all we need is a large 'y' to attach to the right side, and black tape to cross out the alice forgy and for congress parts...............saving the earth...one sign at a time...................

jane roe

ok, so the real jane roe, somewhere in texas, thinks that 30 years after the roe-v-wade decision, that she has reconsidered and wants to have a recount.......................a group of lawyers in texas has appealed/apllied to provide a dissenting testimony to this foolishness........................too much water has flowed under this bridge................too many good women's live has been revived/revitalized by that decision....................too late now for jane roe to reconsider...................

political recycling

ok, so mm has a briilaint idea.........af kerr could recycle all of her yards signs...for john kerry.....all she need do is to cross out the alice forgy part, and tape on a y after the kerr...............well, maybe SHE won't be so pleased, but i might just rustle up a sign and do it myself....................at least i can have one of my creations for my own yard..................

a democratic legacy

ok, so mm was born into a family of republicans. so she wants to acknowledge the influence of her grandmother helen kreager crown, who seems to be the sole democrat between both sides of kin......she was a died in the wool democrat based on the party's social programs.....even when whe did not know how to drive, she cautioned my grandfather that she would vote democrat if he took her to town to vote.............

no coattails

ok, so mm really enjoyed the national nbc news story last evening that highlighted the special election in ky....and predicted that it might indicate an erosion of not only dubya's coattails, but also may indicate the turn of the tide.....democrat chandler won with double-digits over republican alice forgy kerr...whose ads featured her walking nearly arm-in-arm with dubya on the white house porch................we also had an astonishing voter turnout for a special election.................though chandler's newly elected term is a mere 8 months.......anyone who chooses to run against him for relection this fall must be shaking in 'they shoes' because it won't be the cakewalk pundits predicted after chandler lost to republican e.f.for the governor's mansion...............but then, the state of fresh off the governor's mistress scandal.............and that stench appears over..........................congrats to chandler....................

identification

ok, so this morning, when the mm was at her polling place at 8:05 am.....there was a new person at the official sihn-in book......and i was asked for SOME FORM OF IDENTIFICATION.......gentle readers......mm has voted at this same location for 22 years, and only had to give id the very first time......because the polling people were either.....people who lived near to me...or people i went to church with....or people who had attended a class that i had given on cholesterol....or people who read my article........this morning there were no such people in eyesight...........but as i turned to run out to the car to get my wallet...........a little lady came walking from the vicinity of the bathrooms, and said...i know her...she once put me on a diet...........i voted my quick little special election selection............and went on my way..........the issue of identification has been huge at trc this past week.............due to an altercation in which we refused service to a young -looking person who could not produce a driver's liscense...........her parents were with her, and they became angry because we could not take their word on her age...........legally, all who have been served alcohol must have proof of age available to show an ABC inspector, who has the right to do so at any given and unannounced moment...........in fact, the 'my daughter is old enough to drink' ruse is one that was mentioned in our alcohol training class as a favorite used by inspectors..........granted...........this child had graduated from college, and could have been old enough to drink, but i personally know one darling prodegy who will graduate college before she is old enough to drink............so even that argument won't hold up.......no id, no alcohol...........this person actually lives close enough to have gone home and gotten her purse if drinks were that important...........

maybe part of chapter two

ok, so the second chapter of my great novel/screenplay will include, among other things.....recycling.......i have recycled from the second week or so.......when i realized that a large volume of waste paper/cardboard/plastic/glass/metal went through our restaurant...i decided that i could take these things to the recyling center myself..................in the past 3.5 years, i have personally taken countless loads of stuff in the back of my van to the bypass.........and still.....there are people who work with me who cannot do simple things....like empty the beer bottles before putting them in the bins......or put the bottles in the boxes rather than in the plastic trash bag that lines the recycle bin..............last saturday, i had to nearly disrobe because beer leaked down my person as i was carrying a hefty load to my vehicle..............much as i like a nice cold one........old, skanky beer that spills on one's shirt and jeans is unpleasant.........................even tonight, i had to go behind people that i pay to take beer bottles out of the trash, and place them personally in the recycling..................how is it that cictzens of this earth cannot see the big picture when it comes to solid waste?????????........yes recycling will be in the second chapter.................

gay marriage

ok, so mm has an opinion the subject.......i was so touched to read about the couple who were married yesterday in sf........they had been together almost as long as i have been alive.....and they chose to be publically cemented as person and person..................and yet the neysayers have already filed suit...................as if those two people's odds-defying relationship somehow impacts their sense of family/home/values..................how silly....................in my own life...so many hetero relationships did not last out the 1year/2 year or anywhere close..............and they spent outrageous amounts of cash on a doomed relationship..............the bottom line.............in a country where government separates church and state....how can the legislature rule on marriage anyway....................................isn't it the churche's job....................

france

ok, so mm has perused 4 separate dk and rick steves books about florence and venice.............and none of these places lights a candle to paris.............they seem like places one goes in place of paris.......not in front of paris..........or because paris was booked...................i did not see anything in the guide books that would persuade me that i should really dream of a trip to florence rahter than a 12th trip to paris........................by the way...nancy alcock today asked me how much i spent going to paris.........................and then asked me did my husband know................so laughable...............

florence

ok, so mm has checked out the prevailing prices for airfare to italy.......delta from cincinnati to paris to pisa is now $854...the least number of stops for the least number of dollars............oh my.....................

chapter one

ok, so gail and i are sitting on oprah's stage, made-over in the very subtlest of ways...with nice outfits and professional make-up...nothing poofy or rude..........and oprah turns to me and asks.....so how did you meet your millionaire friend gail?.....................i guess it all goes back to lisa......one of the waitresses we hired to get us through the very first day.............she either answered the ad, or knew joyce....i really don't remember............but early on we decided that we needed an extra person, and lisa said that she knew somebody................now lisa was wound tight, in the classic typecast of hattie mcqueen in gwtw..........she would talk a mile-a-minute....and say absolutely nothing..........and she seemed unable to think outside the box.......at the time we did not have a liquor license, and it was customary for people dining uptown to 'bring their own'..........we were unsure how to handle these bottles.......we had a corkscrew, but it was unclear as to whether our waitstaff could legally open a bottle, or if we could simply supply the corkscrew to a table with the glasses and pretend that we did not know what the guests planned to do with these items.............a table of four came in with a nice bottle of red, and began to hand the bottle to lisa to open.....the litterally threw her hands up in the air and jumped backwards.......Shrieked, and said that she could not touch their bottle for fear of losing her job...................all i could thinkabout the story when i heard it was ...i don't know nothin about opening wine bottles...........anyway...........lisa introduced us to gail...where lisa was all drama..........with her hair, her over-the-top nails, her family problems, her shrill voice........gail was so laid back as to be a slow burn................she was slow to react, slow to anger.......and so personable as to be just like family from the get-go............and then there was the figuring out just what we had in common...............at first, i found out that i had worked with one of her sisters, eartha, at the hosital for the past 18 years................they had a vague resemblance.......so that was easy..........i also think that i had met her mother in some professional capacity..............but that was not the biggest revelation................at the time trc was not open for dinner unless a private party was booked......we would create a custum menu for the group.....often paid for by a drug company rep....who brought beer and wine.......and worried over taking home the leftover shrimp cocktail..............typically such events lasted as long was the alcohol lasted............giving the lowly kitchen help time to chat whilst serving up plates or running dishes through the machine................yes.....gail has three children.....no, she had never married their father, despite the longterm relationship..............she referred to him as jimmy two.............which reminded me of someone i had worked with at the hospital in the kitchen..........she called her husband two-ly...............gail shrieked..........................just like lisa, only with more emotion.........i was wondering when you would figure that out.........................here is the bottom line.........my friend sheila had been married to jimmy two sometime before/during/after the time that gail had 3 daughters with him...............and...at the time we were speaking, gail was dating the man who fathered a child with another person i worked with in the kitchen named valerie..............whoooooooo...this was almost too much to be revealed at one time........................sheila has since been divorced from jimmy two and married a white man who fathered her child, then killed himself by shutting himself in his garage with a running vehicle..........though the family denied that it was intentional.........it happened to occur just when sheila threatened to divorce him.................according to gail, sheila now lives in lexington, had gained substantial girth, and is quite settled...................anyway....back to my friend gail....................we did turn out to have many meaningrul things in common............our oldest children were in the same class at the high school, and we also had children in the same class at the middle school.............her middle child and my youngest did not match up...but no matter.............the notion that my children went to the city schools depsite our residence in the county was a topic of conversation in it's own right-......do you have to pay to send your kids to danville?......no, because they were grandfathered in..................at the time andrew would have gone to middle school from montesorri, most of his friends were going to the city schools......the statistics on high school-to-college advancement were compelling.....many more city kids went on to college.............and then there was the 'cultural diversity' question.................the faces in the city schools looked more like the real world.............while the makeup of county classes resembled the fading memory that i had of growing up in rural ohio................everyone was white, or shades of white..........and blacks were people you heard about on tv..........i had gone to school in an integrated system briefly in the 5th grade, but we had moved back to a purely white county with my dad's work by the 6th...........i never saw another person of color until i walked into the kitchen of mount carmel medical center in downtown columbus, ready to start work at a diet technician........code for kitchen skivvy..............anyway............we purposely sent our children to the integrated school.....despite warnings...............your child will be afraid to even go to the bathroom for fear of getting beat up or having his lunchmoney stolen.................yeah, right...................anyway..........back to lisa...................her daily dose of drama became tiresome........and her last catfight with joyce soured us on even considering retaining her.........but that brought up the question of gail...............she and lisa spoke on the phone before work every day,.......and after work every day....and during work every day.........if lisa quit, would gail quit, too?...............................

disappointing birthday, mail, oprah, people

ok, so my poor 11 year-old, whose birthday was supposed to be celebrated this evening.....missed out on her class's valentine's day party because she took ill sometime after lunch..........this is horrible....to be 11, and to have both your birthday and valentine's celebrations messed up...............i gave her one of her gifts early....lion king 1 and one half.......as a consolation prize for coming home early...............and when we got home...there was the mail...............even though it was cayle's birthday.........she recieved less than 1/5 the mail that her college-prospect brother received.............which almost brought tears............we may need a wheelbarrow to bring in the college mail if this keeps up................before i got the call from school, my millionaire friend gail and i were just about to peruse the people and us issues that focused on janet's stunt, and oprah's birthday bashes.........we have decided that our longterm goal should be more than to be guests on oprah...we want to be invited to her next birthday bash....................

crescendo

ok, so i am in need of a climax................i cannot think of what a realistic restaurant climax would be............fire, water, gas leak/explosion..........none of these sound like anywhere i want to go.................maybe the climax needs to be something in gail's life............a marriage proposal/job opportunity..........or maybe our lottery win puts the future in question...i lie awake at night thinking about how i want this story line to go.......now that i have centered on the white/black aspects.........i cannot think of a climax that both gail and i would repect in the morning...so to speak..............is an effective climax supposed to be a choice, a catasprophe.....a turning point......maybe a bad health department inspection......or a drug bust with all of our night employees secretly selling cocaine beneath our radar...................i cannot decide................maybe hemingway would just have another plate of oysters and a bottle of dry white sancerre........and eventually the solution would come to him...............

so many books, so little time

ok, so i have been informed that barbara kingsolver's book pigs in heaven includes an oprah interview.............i am devistated, as my entire project rests on the fantasy converation that gail and i have with oprah on a daily basis................surely oprah is a big enough personality to handle both me and turtle from the bean trees....i apologize that i have not made time to read pigs in heaven.....in louisville last year i almost bought it at a goodwill, but i bought cayle a pair of pants instead........................anyway.......................the oprah interview is at the core of our story...right up there with our bi-racial friendship.........this march my mother is traveling to arizona to meet with her cousin who blew open the story....that a brother of a great great or something grandfather was married to a black woman.somewhere in ohio...and that the family basically disavowed them...and that gail and i have spent time trying to figure out if we are ,in fact, related.because her daddy's people were from ohio..............my middle child has looked at opberlin, which was a college first to allow black students...this is a positive connection..........as is my family history.............my grandparents home in indepedence, ohio (10 miles from lake erie) was built by german immigrants and sensitive to liberal causes....................it was a last stop on the underground railroad....my mother remembers the secret place under the steps....................when my grandpa died, the picture of the house was in the paper..........my mother cannot find it now, of course..................i am sure of one thing about my novel/screenplay.......it is an uninvestigated genre.........how many white women try to figure out who they are related to in the black community..............i say that this is uncharted waters and i will be there for the publishing of such..............

bush's national guard record

ok, so some microfiche has been located in some file in colorado that includes dates in 1972 and 1973 when bush WAS PAID for national guard service in alabama.........however, the commentator who i heard on the radio this afternoon raised the more important question......how is it that someone who served for 2 years can produce no 'buddies' of any kind who remember him? how is that the first time this issue came up..in the 2000 election...no person who remembered bush from the national guard came forward............sounds like daddy arranged for his boy to be 'paid' for dates in which he was elsewhere....and now that the pay dates are public record.....i am confident that some brilliant reportor will find some hard evidence that he was not in alabama on those days..........wouldn't that be rich...if bush had, say, a dui in new haven on a day in which he was paid to be in alabama.........i can only pray.............

Proselytizing

ok, so mm is up in arms about the american airlines pilot who asked his passengers for a show of hands on 'who was a christian'...and then commented that those who were not should be.........this episode is precisely the kind of thing that gives christians a bad name.......christians should be known by their action.............if you have to ask someone if they are christian then they are probably not good and faithful folk who understand what being a christian means.............an interesting aside.......mm recently received an e-mail from a directory of some sort that wanted my permission to list my blog as christian/methodist..................i can describe my blog in many ways, but christian/methodist is not among them.........................actually, i am aiming for egalitarian/worldly/intellectual..........................if there is such a subgroup in america............

family ties

ok, so today my friend gail and i were talking about the perfect family...what it means, to whom it applies.....gail contends that not only do i have the perfect family ,but that we remind her of the sitcom family ties......elyse and steve keaton...northern liberal idealogues................i don't know about the conservative son who wears a suit.....nobody like that here.......................

soundtrack

ok, so we have given some thought to the sounds that go through our mind during our workday....there was a time when the outkast song was really in pour heads...the one where the cat and owls on the video bounce their heads up and down.....and the older lady in curlers is a subject of mockery......well, we used to think that she resemble my millionaiore friend gail.................................other than that, songs are not a big part of our reality.................

1000 pop-ups blocked

ok, so having google as our homr page has blocked over 1000 pop-up ads as of today.....such a milestone....................i have not missed any of these ads, by the way.......in the past 48 hours i have watched the following films......l'auberge espagnole, the hours, under the tuscan sun, lostin translation, and wings of the dove.....the first 4 were rented...the last one we own, and i watched it for contrast to wings of the dove........i am still troubled for having seen the hours twice....mostlt because i so love woolf's work...i have read to the lighthouse numerous times....and her short piece...a room of one's own is a classic in feminist thought.................the way that she was portrayed by nicole kidman was breathtakingly tragic.....................she was so emotionally fragile, and too intellectually brilliant to live long.............despite the love of a good and caring man..............on the other hand....under the tuscan sun was too lame as to deserve criticism.............such a bastardization of the book/sequel to the book..................does a screenplay require a lesbian chinese woman about to deliver an in-vitro baby in order to get the desired audience?........................

the muses

ok, so gail and mm's screenplay is projected to be a blend of the following movies...amelie, american splendor, lost in translation, office space, le placard, l'auberge espagnole, and barbershop/barbershop 2...............i have not seen the latter movies, but they have been successful in their particular genre...............

top 5 lists

ok, so gail and i worked lunch today, and spent our time working on our top 5 lists...........here goes.... top 5 reasons we read people magazine 1. redcarpet fashion 2. fashion dos and don'ts 3. royal family news (we still miss princess diana terribly) 4. kennedy news (we miss john john, jfk, and jackie and like to read about caroline) 5. julia roberts news

top 5 people we are tired of reading/hearing about 1. jacko 2. janet and her breast 3. bennifer 4. jessica and nick 5. clay and reuben 6. britney's wedding 7. paris hilton and the short girl whose name we have forgotten ok, so we have 7 but there are so many people who have outlived their 15 minutes of fame......

top 5 things we will do with our millions when we win the lottery 1. pay off our bills 2. donate our due to our respective churches 3. donate a significant sum for scholarships at danville high school 4. give a tidy sum to each of our workmates 5. travel to the south of france, wearing fashion do's........does dolce and gabanna come in size 12?

the blackout

ok, so mm has thought of a way to include the fact gail and i discuss our trials and tribulations with children, but without actually bringing up anything specific about our children that would haunt them in anyway..........we will simply have yet another cartoon, of ourselves holding up a placard that reads.......this is the part where we fuss about our children...the brief lapse in the script reflects the lack of remaining dialogue after each and every child had a chance to edit out their own 'stuff'. we apologize for lack of full understanding that you the veiwer would have gained from knowing just how difficult it is to be a mother in america.........

the ending

ok, so at lunch today i sketched out both the ending and the begining of my saga....................one needs to know these things.............i like the idea of 4 endings....choices a,b,c or all of the above............gail and i have discussed each possibility at length...........in fact...........we have discussed most of this screenplay at length...we just did not know that our musings merited such attention................i would like to incorporate the best parts of american splendor...the cartoon parts.......i see in my mind's eye new yorker cartoons throughout.......the first is like this......a script thinner than a best buy ad....labeled...our screenplay as our family and friends would wish us to disclose about our lives/their lives...................the next is a whopping nyc phonebook-type script...labeled.....our screenplay about our lives as we recall it..........and the third......a modest little script....labeled compromise..................this afternoon, we watched l'auberge d'espagnole.....which had some amusing elements......then lost in translation, which my family who had not seen it before did not like at all.....then under the tuscan sun....which is a distruction of what had been a delightful novel...............lots to learn about plot development, backstory, pace.....dialogue.....if i never get this done....i have had the glee of the notion of it..................

starring......

ok, so my friend gail and i have already debated on who should play us in the movie...............gail suggested that meryl streep would be perfect as the mm.......she has such a gracious elegance laced with spunk.............gail at first wanted halle berry, but she confessed that halle was so pretty that people would not forget that she was halle berry and not believe that she was gail griffin........she she opted for angela bassett, who plays many strong black women on the big screen...............the novel will open with gail and i imaging we are on oprah winfrey, talking about our novel/film/screenplay...............we often do imagine what we will say when we are on oprah as her special guests...............mostly we are invited because we have given so much of lottery winnings to scholarship funds..................which brings me to the working title......my millionaire friend...............

more on the novel -to-be

ok, so why not a novel on a woman who has been faithful to the same father of her three children she never actually married......the father who was married to someone who i actually worked with for many years at emrmc.....whose subsequent husband killed himself, by the way...............anyway.......we really might have something here................

why the hell not?

ok, so our screenplay opens with prom night 2 years ago, when we hosted a prom dinner for many couples, but not for my own child, who went elsewhere....................when the father of gail's children arrived with many cameras to record the event.......................yes, that is a good place to start...............

the novel

ok, so my good friend gail told me tonight at the catering event, in between periods of salad assembly and such, that she likes to read my blog because she can see the novel that will come out of it..............now this is news to me.....who has finally come to grips with my personal learning disabilities.....i think that i reread novels not just to revisit the content, but because i skim when i read...i simply cannot read every word as it is presented...ergo...i must read and reread to get all of the words/phrases/paragraphs................i also wonder if i have some sort of left handed dislexia.....as my misspells are related to my left handed/right brained typing...............anyway......my friend gail and i....i should call her my millionnaire friend gail....as we play the lottery every wednesday and saturday (for the past 4 years....) we have determined just how we will spend the money to up the ante for the danville school system with scholarships/grants/book reimbursement.....we only have to win the money in order to implement our plans.........anyway......my friend gail should really write a screenplay, like sofia coppola..............like her lost in translation except in danville, ky about the people who come and go in the restaurant/catering business................that could be our niche..................and why not?.....she went to school with frank x walker...................why couldn't we hit it big, too?.................even if we do not......she was generous in her affirmation of my blog, which i consider part diary/ part cathartic outlet, and part fiction workshop...................as oprah says, everybody should have a gail as a friend...................

food and more food

ok, so mm catered a huge event at the new convention center...for 150 people...which entailed wrapping bacon around scallops for most of the morning, and carving up 'meats' most of the afternoon..amongst other preparations......there was a two hour gap between the setting out of the appetizers (4 different items....) and the serving of dinner............that is a long stretch for a caterer to keep up the appetizer table and but wait til just before dinner to assemble salads, plate desserts so they will not be warm or limp....................ah well...but the event is over and i am so glad that i am home................

court tv

ok, so mm has a waitress who will soon fly to chicago for the taping of one of those judge so&so shows......where she will appear with her ex-roommate who is suing her for $1000.........i have no idea what the suit is about..............but i will have to tape the show just to see what all the fuss was about..................frankly, i owuld have enjoyed the whole thing more if she were going on springer............

signs of the times in texas

ok, so mm is outraged about the following news from cnn.com.............


DENTON, Texas (AP) -- About 40 people gathered outside an Eckerd pharmacy Monday, protesting what they said was a decision to deny a rape victim a prescription for the morning-after pill.

A spokesman for the Florida-based company confirmed that Eckerd has taken disciplinary action in response to an incident at the store.

"Apparently there was a request for a prescription to be filled and the prescription was denied based on a moral or ethical decision made by the pharmacist, and that's not in accordance with our corporate policy," said Joan Gallagher, vice president of communications for Largo, Florida-based Eckerd Corp. Gallagher told the Denton Record-Chronicle that she could provide no other details.

The protesters carried signs. Some stood silently and others chanted slogans. Morning-after pills have been sold under the brand names Plan B and Preven since 1998. Taken within 72 hours of sexual intercourse, the hormone pills are at least 75 percent effective at preventing pregnancy. An unidentified friend of the woman seeking the prescription told the newspaper she got the drug from a neighboring pharmacy.

Gay Dodson, executive director of the Texas State Board of Pharmacy, said state law allows pharmacists to decline filling prescriptions if the medication could harm the patient. "The law does not say that the pharmacy can decline because of moral ground," she said. I find the refusal to fill a physician prescribed medication reprehensible.......it is the woman's choice to bear a rapist's baby, or not to do so, not the pharmacists.......

so many mysteries......

ok, so mmhas had her xray, and now anxiously awaits the results.......obviously, the outcome is not in my hands.....so i am trying to focus my attention on solving those small mysteries that i can potentially do something about.....like why my blog comes up in disturbingly big print on our home screen, but in a diminutive size at work......i have gone into the template, but can see no reason why 2 screens show it in different sizes...........also, there is the business of my sienna's brake light, which seems to stay on even when i know that the brake itself is not on.........and then there is that pesky missing library card..............

janet jackson

ok, so the jacksons have done it again..........and it wasn't pretty..........janet's right implanted breast popped out of her costume with help from justin timberlake at the end of their lame duet at the superbowl halftime......she was wearing a pastie, so it is likely the stunt was planned...........now the fcc is going to investigate the indecent incident, as half-time was still in primetime, when familys were watching...........so silly......as her breasts are so swollen as to be pitiable not shocking................

disapointment

ok, so mm finally got to watch le divorce, based so loosely on the diane johnson novel that i barely recognized it.......the pared-down screenplay left most of the subplots unfilmed or on the cutting room floor.......and left out so many characters and combined so many others that i had a hard time figuring out who was who in the reinvented version........the few things that remained true to the book.......roxanne is having a baby, but her french husband has left her for a crazy russian writer/painter......her sister isabelle is having an affair with her sister's husband's aging (age 55) uncle........he buys her a herme kelly bag worth beaucoup euros at the beginning and a hermes scarf worth beaucoup bucks at the end.......and the crazy russian woman's husband goes crazy himself at the finale........other than seeing fine food on lovely plates in upscale restaurants in paris...the film was a bust.....except for the fine aging uncle edgar, played by theirry ______...now he was just perfect as the 'aging' lethario..............we should all be so lucky...........

no memory

ok, so at lunch we had 'everybody' for lunch, and the discussion somehow went from the picture in the danville advocate with our little our group and nicole and her friend in montmartre........and how the meal at that restaurant was bad, and how we took the bus back from montmartre because nicole insisted, and how on this trip i finally got to see the small statue of the liberty that stands up river from the eiffel tower on its own little island.....my mother informed me that i had seen that statue in 1972 when our family of four first went to europe.............i have no recollection of this, and other facts she reclled like they were yesterday........like how i took a gideon bible from the hotel in amsterdam and left $2 american in exchange.......and how i had seen my cousin nancy in the metro on the way to the louvre where we were to meet her, and how my mother had been upset when she saw me waving to someone in a country where we didn't know anyone..............these things did not stick in my brain........either they were non-important details, or i have selected what was important to remember in my limited brain slots and have forgotten the rest, or my mother remembers things that did not happen....either way it is clear that one's relatives will always remember the oddities in one's life, even when we have conveniently forgotten them............

triple feature

ok, so the entire c-w family has rented 3 dvd's, and is systematically working their way through them.......last night we watched nicholas nickelby (sp?), a humerous rendition that was nominated last year for some golden globes........dickens really had a way with satire as well as wit and wisdom.....then we watched seabiscuit, a fine retelling of the bestselling book.....both ecw and i had read the book...........which was nonfiction.......the director did a great job of making this true story into a dramatic film........today we will watch the royal tennenbaums, less of us due to the rating and acw's return to uk....i have heard that it is humerous as well......regardly of how much i enjoyed the movies i rented, i did not go to the movie place to rent any of them.....i wanted to see le divorce, but all of the dvd copies were out and the video place hadn't bothered with vhs copies at all......i also wanted to see my house in umbria (out.....) and the one with diane lane about a house refurbishment in tuscany (not yet released in dvd form......)....so i rented what seemed like the best of the rest............