Month: April 2017

They belong on Tie o’ the Day #1, I tell you. (Tie is from Penguin.) This is where 3-D glasses belong. Where they are a pain is on your face–“exspecially” if you already wear glasses. Maybe some optic genius can come up with 3-D contacts or extended release eyedrops for the masses.

There exists an episode of the tv series Medium for which wearing 3-D glasses is worth the annoyance.  And I wholeheartedly recommend it. But that’s about the extent of any pleasure I’ve gotten out of going down the 3-D glasses road.

My worst 3-D movie-going experience was Jaws 3-D, with Dennis Quaid. The plot was stoooopid, and it made no sense even in its own insular stoooopid plot world. Wearing the cardboard glasses, did absolutely nothing to clear/clean up the picture on the screen. 😎

 

Tie o’ the Day #2 repeats Tie o’ the Day #1’s earlier greeting, sort of: Have a Merry, Merry Rest o’ Easter! (Bow tie is a Nicole Miller. Button-down is a Bugatchi with hearta dots, instead of polka dots.)

Meaningless, pointless, and shady stories resume tomorrow. Visit this site every day, cuz one day there might be a completely true and absolutely necessary story with an actual point for you. 😜

Tie o’ the Day #1–another Stacy Adams–wishes you a Merry Easter! As do I, and Roxy and Skitter the Scared.

 

Tie #1 o’ the Easter Eve Day has Snoopy and Woodstock being proud of their colored-dipped Easter eggs and basket. The Old Navy is a shirt o’ many colors. It was not dipped in colored vinegar and water. We are in true clash fashion today. We stand out, which means our duds are outstanding.

We went to Costco last evening to buy the giant package of toilet paper everyone buys there. (I think it’s a Costco membership requirement to buy that bigly t.p. pack each shopping trip.) The store was packed! I haven’t seen the place that busy even at Christmas time. All the check-outs were open for once, and the lines were still so long they reached 1/2 the length of the building. I kid you not. Crossing from one aisle to the next was like parting the Red Sea. It was a good thing I had my long wooden staff to hold up to the sky and command the shopping carts to part for us so we could safely cross. “Where’s your Moses now?”

Costco shopping is inevitably filled with Costco employees aiming sample-laden toothpicks at you. “Try this teriyaki butter cube!” “Sample this free-range, grass-fed, organic oregano loaf!”

When I went to college at THE Weber State University, I would occasionally starve because of empty pockets. Once when this happened, I resorted to making a list o’ food items, and then knocking on neighborhood doors, pretending to be on a scavenger hunt. “Hello. We’re having a party, and I’m supposed to come back with these things on this list, as fast as I can–so I can win a prize! Could you give me one slice of bread?” Eggs (not colored) were the best things to ask for. Very filling. What a Happy Meal!

And, of course, once when I was broke and hungry, I did go to Smith’s on a Saturday afternoon, when they were toothpicking samples at people. I sample-grazed through the store a couple of times, until my tummy quit growling. No one got hurt. No one got cheated. Nothing was stolen. And I didn’t starve to a painful death. On that full stomach, I most likely went back to my apartment and wrote an assigned essay about a topic like “Poetic Forms Found Scratched Into Public Restroom Walls.”

And although I wasn’t thinking about this at the time, I got a couple of snappy tblog stories out of my broke and hungry adventures. 😎

Roxy truly does love all mutts, regardless of race, religion, or sexual preference. But I thought the “fake news”, tabloid headline above would get your attention. Roxy is, however, wearing a Tommy Hilfiger tie decorated with dachshunds–to portray her love of her dachsie breed. Tie o’ the Day #2 suits her cutely and bigly well. Her t-shirt is an Easter pink Cremieux. In her photo you can see a proclivity of our Roxy: She always gets dressed in order to not be naked when she naps on the living room floor.

I mentioned in Tie o’ the Day #2’s post last night that Suzanne’s blouse in that photo was the first girly clothing to have been showcased on this tblog. Girly/womeny clothing will show up occasionally, but not often. I wear clothes that are socially designated as men’s, almost exclusively. But the reason does not have anything to do with my trying to express some kind of butchness that might or might not be part of my identity. Nope. I head to the men’s department in clothing stores because the way men’s clothes are cut make them fit me better. For example, I have absolutely no butt. Women’s pants–especially jeans–cannot handle that. They bag and slide down, no matter how well they fit otherwise. (And, yes, that goes for leggings, as well. )And shirts? Women’s shirts tend to not provide me roomy enough width across my shoulders and chest. My button-down shirts might look too big, but they give me room where I need it.

So there. You learned something about me–and about Roxy– that you may have wondered about before.

Tie o’ the Day #1 is one of those huge, Stacy Adams Big Boys like I’ve shown before. Hard to find, and about an inch longer than regular bow ties. I’m gonna wear yet another Bugatchi this morning. Check out the teeny, tiny light green and gray checks.

I can play a mean game of checkers, but chess has eluded me. I’ve never played it at all. Don’t feel like I’ve missed out on anything, although I know it’s a thinking man’s game–difficult, mega-strategic, and requires thinking ahead many moves. To each, her own. The game I truly love, but only watch, is pro football.

At The Pub a few weeks ago, one of the not-regular guys was stumping all The Wise Men sitting at the bar with this question:  “What distinguishes baseball from other sports played with balls?” Nobody in the place–and there were only guys, plus me–could come up with the answer. Their thinkers were sore. The guy was stretching out the time to give them the answer, to the point of making The Wise Men almost angry. I yelled from my table to the guy that I had known the answer forever. All eyes turned to me. The guy asked me the question. I demurely answered: “It’s the only ball game in which the defense has the ball.” I win. The guys were dumb-founded. And thus, I became a Pub legend. At least I was legendary for the evening. The non-regular said, “Buy that woman a pitcher of beer.” The bartender quickly said to him, “She only drinks Diet Coke, which she doesn’t even have to pay for.” (There are sports like cricket to which ball/defense thing applies, but that comes under the baseball category, as far as I’m concerned.)

The reason I knew that sporty answer was that, despite the fact that my nephew played pro baseball for around a decade, I cannot stand to watch the game. It, like chess, is referred to as “the thinking man’s game”. I love to play baseball, but watching it makes me sleepy.

I analyzed my impatience with the game a couple of decades ago, and that’s when I realized the thing about it being the only ball game where the defense has the ball. That’s a huge part of why the game moves so slowly–more slowly than even golf to me. I can drive over 300 miles in the time it takes to play an average pro baseball game!

Sorry, pro Ronnie. I love ya, man. And you do hit monster homers. Good on ya!

Tie o’ the Day #2 is a many-hued purple harlequin pattern by ALFANI. And no, the “blouse” (which I won’t actually wear today) is not mine. It is Suzanne’s, and it, too, is by ALFANI. It is also the first girly piece of clothing that Tie o’ the Day has featured. Let me just be frank: Suzanne looks suave in this, although she does not wear ties with it or with any other of her outfits. But in fact, these days she is looking fantastic in anything she wears. She is over fifty pounds less of the woman she was just months ago. And I am glad she doesn’t have to be on blood pressure meds anymore. I am so proud of her.

Suzanne has always been aware of and indulgent of my varied eccentricities. She doesn’t mind a closet full o’ ties. She doesn’t mind the bins of bow ties and pocket squares. She smiles at the tiny boxes of cufflinks and lapel pins.

She doesn’t mind stacks of books used as home decor. She doesn’t mind that many of these books have titles like The Toothpick: Technology and Culture. Nor does she mind that I own at least 3 copies of Slouching Toward Bethlehem, by Joan Didion, and Teaching A Stone to Talk, by Annie Dillard. Oh, and then there are probably 5 or 6 copies of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and Other Poems. And even though we are paring down our possessions significantly, it will not even occur to her to pester me to keep only one copy of each book.

She’s fine with my mismatched socks, and my sometimes mix-matched shoes. She’s okay when I come home with the right side of my head shaved. My sarcasm and jocularity wear her out sometimes, but that doesn’t mean she wants me to be any other way. At least, I hope she doesn’t. Time will tell. 😁

Full disclosure: The above is not to be considered the full extent of my life-long eccentricities. 🤡

Tie o’ the Day #1 is a flowery bow by Stacy Adams. It creates a nice piece of blendy clash fashion with the colorful shirt. The top is a brand called L r g. Maybe that stands for “large”. Maybe it’s pronounced “allergy”–because it is springtime, and there’s the abundance of bloomy allergens. Note the giraffe. Giraffe’s are tall, in case you didn’t know.😜

After I finished Hair Duty for Mom this morning, I immediately drove from Deltassippi to C-ville, hauling the correct sewing project Suzanne needed up here. The mutts were wondering why we had stayed in D-ville for only 20 hours. But they are fine-a-roo.

I have been lucky that all of my dogs have been road warriors. That’s the kind of thing that qualifies as blessing, in my opinion–since driving has been such a huge part of my life. I have no idea what the Heck Tate I would have done all these years if I had a dog that was a sickly traveler. Perhaps I don’t have to worry much about that being a necessary dog trait of future pups now that we will be dwelling in only a single house soon. Of course, there is always that traveling-for-pleasure thing. So I guess any new canine additions really do need to travel well. I don’t want to have to feed them Dramamine or make them wear nausea patches, like Suzanne has to wear on airplanes.

Oh, and I love driving my dogs on rides in the bed of my ancient truck. I love it because they take such joy in truck-riding. Their floppy ears blow back wildly, and they bark at any living creature we pass while we are out on the gravel roads in the desert. Their favorite critters are rabbits and chuckers. They relish seeing the occasional quimp, as do I. They are, however, occasionally frightened by large tumbleweeds that blow towards the truck in strong winds. As am I. 🤠

 

Our second Tie o’ the Day is a plaid Nicole Miller design. Shirt’s another Old Navy polo. Thus, here’s a tiny clash fashion look for this evening’s gallivanting. Bright colors = happy happy, joy joy! (Thank you, Ren and Stimpy.)

This little pink bow tie is another show of support for Whitney Shurtz, who continues to battle breast cancer. She’s doing the fighting. The least we can do is do the supporting. Do your part to support anyone you know who faces this suffering. As important as financial help is for those who are ill, it is not the only need. Do what you can to support their families and friends, as well. The person with the disease needs to know that the people they love are being supported too. It is one less worry for them to carry, while they fight the cancer that dogs them.

Tblog-lodites, hug the people you love as often as you can. And tell them what they mean to you, over and over again.

Tie o’ the Day #1 is a snappy IZOD, on a coral Old Navy pocket polo. This is not clash fashion, so it’s an intelligible, understated ‘fit.

So I’m sitting’ on my butt in C-burg Monday evening, after we had just driven up from Deltabama Sunday afternoon. And out of nowhere Suzanne exclaimed, “I forgot the pillow cover pieces I made, and I need them ASAP!”😫 Anyhoo… This morning I pottied the pups and gassed up Vonnegut Grace, then we embarked on our Big Ride to See Grandma–which term they have learned means seeing Grandma and pooping in Grandma’s yard to their canine hearts’ content. And now, after I gather Suzanne’s pile o’ craftiness from her craftiness table, the dogs and I will be on the road again–off on our Big Ride to See Suzanne, which term they have learned means having fun running up and down the stairs to follow Helen as she does housework, and writes at her desk in the loft, and generally goes from room to room doing things that are mysteries to mutts.

No, I’m not done yapping about the Neil Diamond concert. I keep thinking of tidbits to tblog about. Today’s next little story is two thousand words–as in the cliche, “A picture’s worth a thousand words.” Hence, check out the two pix below. The first is us waiting for the concert to begin. The second is us still waiting for Neil to come onto the stage. Please note my closed eyes in the second pic. Clearly, I am taking over for Mom in the eyes-always-closed-in-photos department. In all her 86 years, Mom has only been able to keep her eyes open in about four pix. Until this selfie, my eyes have never been closed in a picture. I guess Mom’s closed-eye talent is my inheritance. Thank you, Mother.