Run for your lives! The plow is here!!!

It's moving day / moving week this week. My house looks like a tornado struck. There is stuff everywhere! At least I'll finally get my car back this morning. There is too much to do, and too little back muscle to do it. Where have all the big, strong men with big, strong pickup trucks gone???

Glitter might not be dead, but my car is.

My friends were supposed to be here an hour ago to check out my mattress to see if they want to buy it. That way I can go pick up my dead car from the barn, where it's sitting all sad-like, waiting to be towed to the shop. *sigh*

I dodged the bullet of the poorly constructed ignition cylinder for 60,000 miles. According to my recent research, most Ford Focus ignitions fail after 30,000 miles or so, and at regular intervals thereafter. So ... actually I'm pretty lucky. But I just found out my warranty was shorter than I had originally thought, so I'm no longer covered by that. Ford says they won't recall due to this known issue because it's not a safety problem. Granted, my car is stuck at a rather nice boarding stable, and is mostly an inconvenience for now, since it's moving week and all. But I can just imagine if I was stranded in some less-than savory neighborhood, as has happened with my Firebird, it could quickly become a safety problem. Or if it dumped me in the middle of nowhere during the 100+ degree heat that we'll be having this week. Ick!

And to think, I used to love cars ...

Glitter is not dead!!!

Last Thursday's disaster with Christmas Carol still needs to be documented. Now that the glitter has all finally disappeared, but for a few bits I discover after getting out of bed, I can finally speak of the incident.

After a horrendously long changeover, I was ready to have a nice long soak in the tub and spoil myself with a reserve freebie from my Christmas orders from Lush. I love Lush. Their products are fan-freakin'-tabulous. Things are starting to get a little haywire, though. Recently, I found out that the shower gel I really really like has been discontinued. I only have a quarter of an inch left in the tiny bottle of Skinny Dip that I bought in London.

Anyway, I grabbed the innocuous-looking Christmas Carol out of the closet, and broke off her head under the running tap. Then I thought to myself, what the hell, and chucked the rest of her in, wings and all. She fizzed for a while and the water turned a light periwinkle color. The room smelled heavenly, and the water was marvelous. I simmered in the tub for ten minutes or so, reading a magazine, before the light refracting off of the surface of the water caught my eye. It was an unusual color and pattern. I noticed then that the water was completely covered in glitter, which was sinking, piece by piece, onto my body.

When I climbed out, much later, it became apparent that this was no ordinary glitter. It had invaded everywhere, and refused to come off even under the most brutal of scrubbings. Sooo ... I had dinner with the girls with a heavy coating of glitter showing on my chest, arms, neck and hairline. That's just the parts that weren't covered by clothes *sigh*

So, Lush, I love you, but we need to talk about our future. No, really. I think you're trying to sabotage our relationship, and it just makes me sad ...

Misdirected Hatred

Today I was going to blog about yesterday's unfortunate Lush glitter incident. While driving this morning and listening to the news, I became more and more unsettled, and decided to preempt my ramblings about the dangers of bath bombs in favor of the current media death sensation.

When Saddam Hussein's sons were killed during some bombing in Iraq, I found myself vaguely unsettled, but couldn't place why. Of course, the images plastered on every newspaper and every news station were horrifying, but there was something else. During this recent period of self-exploration, I've realized that the unsettling feeling I had was disgust. Disgust that everyone around me was so thrilled at the deaths of our "enemies." Granted, I've heard these two were not the nicest guys ever to walk the earth. Does that make it right for us to kill them? No. And the pride that saturated the citizenry in the days afterwards was equally wrong - it shows the lack of perspective that we have all developed.

So today as I listened to the radio, I was nauseated by the declaration that today is "Zarqawi Death Day." Again, here was someone who probably would win no Mr. Congeniality competitions. So we pinned all of our anger onto this man and crushed him. Now we see his photo everywhere, and slaver over the story that he was not quite dead when the troops rushed in, that the last thing he saw was an American soldier before he finally expired - as though we got the last word. Is his death a reason to party? Is it morally right to cheer over the death of someone's father/brother/husband? No. It's unfortunate that the majority of people will see things this way, blinded as they are by the hate they have to feel in order to feel something. Our country has to direct the people's hate somewhere ... and after the deaths of these three men and three women (yes, five other people died in addition to the "target"), it will be directed at someone else and whomever happens to be dining with them at the time.

A Violent Day of Worship!

According to the BBC website, the fear of the number 666 is known as hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia.

The Dutch are very hexakosioihexekontahexaphobic. The Ambassador Ministries will be holding a fun-filled day of solid prayer with more than 2,000 people today, in the Netherlands alone. Sooo ... if no big evil occurs today, we know who to thank! I'm already addressing my cards - it should take a while.

A Letter of Apology

Dear Sid,

I am so sorry. Next time I will buy you a drink first.

Love,

Amanda

Curioser and curioser ...

There is a HFBW (that's huge effin' black widow, for those of you who aren't creative enough to guess!) outside the door to the back patio at work. It's been wiggling in pain for a few hours now. Eep!

Also, my horse seems to be having personal hygiene problems. As soon as I get out of work, I have to go change my clothes and put my hands back where the sun don't shine. No, not that place, the other one. And yes, a person's hand does fit up in there. Luckily, my hunny won't be around to smell the curious smells that go along with the necessary maintenance for horses. That lingering odor will be around for a full 24 hours I suspect, for the deep clean.

Ice Creamy Doom!

When I was about eight years old, and still a bit shaky on the old bicycle, I managed to ride into the back of a parked utility truck. Not in the clever movie-style way, where I might have sped up a ramp, flown over the cab, and landed unharmed on a pile of grass clippings. Oh no, I managed a quite ungraceful slam into the back bumper, smacking my oversized helmet on the tailgate, and wedging my fender under the truck's wheelwell. The cause of my uncomfortable situation? The ice cream man. I had been terribly distracted by the clinking music and the tasty treats plastered all over the outside of his van, and couldn't tear my eyes away to watch where I was going.

It didn't take me long to let go of my grudge against the ice cream man. I learned to be more cautious when he was around and I was tearing up and down the street on my streamer-handled cruiser. My parents gave me money for ice cream exactly two times, but he still drove by daily, due to the hordes of neighborhood children who did more than drool longingly as he passed. Occasionally, when I was at a neighbor's house, their parents would dole out a few dollars for my friend and I to share. It gets ridiculously hot in Davis, and we played outdoors a lot, so those popsicles and ice creams were like Christmas presents every time.

UK health officials want to ban ice cream vendors from certain areas not because of the obvious danger to new cyclists, but because, of course, children don't know any better than to stuff themselves into morbid obesity when tasty capitalism is allowed to run unchecked through their neighorhoods. I'm curious whether this trend towards eliminating parental accountability is going to continue. If parents are willing to hand over enough pocket money to their offspring and neglect to impart any knowledge of nutrition, what makes the government think it is their duty to eliminate everyone's choice in the matter? I say, fill the streets with the tinkling sounds of rickety old vans and their garish posters. Those of us who would never even buy an Its-it or a Rocketpop will still get a kick out of the nostalgia.

Curse you, UK! Try to save some fun for when I get there!

In other news, look what a search for rocketpop popsicles turns up!

I am a totally normal human being ...

Okay, I've just switched back to graveyard shift after eight grueling months of reluctantly creaking upright sometime around 4:30 each morning. Unfortunately, my body hasn't figured out that I really mean it when I give it permission to stay in bed past noon. So, when I was perusing the BBC News website, I though perhaps I was hallucinating this article about a boy with three arms -- two left arms and one right.

You've probably noticed that people usually have two arms. So, in its exhausted state, my mind immediately began to wonder if there is some sort of balance of arms in the world. We know that, according to some law I'm too confuxled to remember, matter is neither created nor destroyed. Rick Allen, the drummer for Def Leppard, lost his left arm in an accident and now embodies the "sound of one arm rocking." I can vouch for his fantabulousness - I went to see Def Leppard at the California State Fair a few years ago. While I couldn't actually see the stage, since several basketball player-sized people parked themselves in front of me, they definitely sounded great. Maybe his arm has finally found a place to rest in a young Chinese boy's shoulder. Ironically, Jie-Jie will probably never become a two- or three-handed drumming prodigy as both of his left arms have limited, if any, function.

Welcome to my mind, pre-graveyard acclimatization.