Spring!

Ever since the Unfortunate Incident with the Regrettable Easter Hats, I've been a little low-key about Easter.For example, this year I gathered kindling and made lentil soup, and then I snared me some critters and made vittles.

Part of that Clampittian sentence is correct and part is a falsehood--I leave it to you to decide which is which.

I'd planned to go to NH over Easter but had to cancel the trip. Instead, I spent most of the weekend shackled to my computer--darting out for a brief nature walk at one point. From my walk, and some experimental scrabbling about outside, I can tell you that Spring Hath Sprung with Extreme Prejudice Brotherrrrrrrrrr.

Hello!

I have six things that I am writing right now, and all I want to do is play Scrabble on my computer.

Scrabble.

On my computer.

Funny thing: Few clients are interested in paying you for playing Scrabble on your computer. Remarkably. Strikingly. Woefully. Few. While my clients are lovely people, I find this to be a severe character flaw in them.

Nuh-uh. They just don't "get it" when you send them a blank file with a little Scrabble logo in it. You'd think it might be a refreshing change of pace! No. Nope. Clients do not find it a refreshing change of pace.

The worst thing? The Scrabble game on my computer is beating me. And, I am swearing at my computer and accusing it of cheating.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my Monday.

Popcorn Friday: Some Cool Ladies

"She at first made a living selling fiction and cartoons to The New Yorker magazine."

"Her husband Stanley died in 1935, but until her death, she often had 'conversations' with her late husband, occasionally interrupting a scene in a movie. She would then let the director know it was okay to continue the scene, which she did as if nothing happened."
"She grew into a society débutante following high school and graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in political science."
"During the period 1951 to 1963, she was nominated for 6 Academy Awards. She is one of the most nominated actors who never won the statue."
"The Penguin" made her debut in vaudeville at age 2 .
"You gentlemen aren't REALLY trying to kill my son, are you?"
HAPPY POPCORN FRIDAY!

My Monday Motto

My friend gives the early morning news on a radio station far, far away. With the miracles of this new-fangled gadget called the Internet, I can listen to the broadcast on my computer.

Usually, there is something fun and/or noteworthy involving my friend and the news. For example, I like to play a drinking game with my coffee whenever my friend says the name "Vladimir Putin." This is often, so it is a win-win all around; I become more alert with each sip of coffee, and I have the added pleasure of marveling at how fun it is to cry out "Putin!" after my friend says it. If I'm in an especially waggish mood, I sing a little bit of "Puttin' on the Ritz" from Young Frankenstein--retrofitting the lyrics to match the name.

I live in hope that one day my friend will take my bet and say "Today, the weather will be...perfect!" That has not happened. Yet, the hope keeps me listening, and that's good because there was a bonus this morning. I picked up a new motto from the broadcast:

“When the going gets tough, the spores hunker down in the detritus.”

Let this be your Monday motto, too.

Watchful Sidekick

Can't Talk! Reading!

Can't Talk, Eating

These cookies fell off a truck in front of my house. No, there is no chance at all that I bought a vast quantity of Girl Scout cookies and have been stuffing them into my piehole like they are the last Girl Scout cookies on earth. There is no chance at all that has happened. I am simply burning the boxes because I am cold--for no other reason than because I am cold. Certainly nothing to do with incriminating evidence.

Spring Has Sprung(ish): Film at 11:00

I cannot decide whether to call this photograph "Triumph Over Winter" or "Holy Shit" which is what I said when I found the flowers last weekend.

These are snowdrops; daffodils are beginning to pop up behind them in the flower bed, and I think I have some lilies of the valley sprouting up under a tree in the backyard.
The sidekick is deeply unimpressed by this flora. Her attitude is: If it isn't in my food bowl and if it doesn't crawl, squeak, scuttle, hop, trot, or fly, who cares?

Thursday Potpourri

1) Mission Accomplished! I have made someone snot tea out of their nose laughing. This makes me very, very happy because I live to make people snot liquids out of their noses. I began at quite a young age, doing whatever I could to make my sister snot root beer out of her nose. This often won me the gift of not just her girlish laughter, but a fierce little slappy fight; it is very painful to snot root beer out of your nose.

2) Fight Lily the Monster! What is your monster and can it beat my monster? My monster Lily is a Giant Dragon that spins Vast Webs, has X-Ray Vision and a Humorous Nephew Sidekick, and CANNOT BE STOPPED. The Web site that the monster fight is on is fun--check it out.

3) Mission Aborted! Every morning, I pull up the blinds and look out the window at this birdhouse. I love this birdhouse, and the other day I decided I wanted to stick a plastic dinosaur in the entryway of the birdhouse and take a photograph of it. This might not surprise you.

Anyhoo, when I got closer to the birdhouse, I noticed a ton of nesting materials bunched up inside. It would bum me out to have a giant plastic dinosaur butt thrust into my house--yeah, you too, huh?--so I can't take the photograph. RATS!

4) England Beats America!
All these years, we've been deluding ourselves into thinking that we "won" the Revolutionary War. Well, take a look at all of their different kinds of potato chips (aka crisps) and realize the depth of our folly. Here is a very brief sampling: Brannigans Roast Beef and Mustard Flavor Thick Cut Potato Crisps, Brannigans Smoked Ham and Pickle Flavor Thick Cut Potato Crisps, Burts Hand Fried Potato Chips Hot Chilli Lemon Flavour, Burts Hand Fried Potato Chips Mature Cheddar Cheese Flavour, Eat My Goal! Hot & Spicy Cheesy Balls, Eat My Shorts, Golden Wonder Curry Flavor Quite Hot Crisps, Golden Wonder Sausage & Tomato Flavour Crisps, Hula Hoops Prawn Cocktail Flavour Potato Rings, McCoy's Flame Grilled Steak Flavour Ridge Cut Potato Chips. WALKERS ROAST TURKEY WITH PAXO SAGE AND ONION FLAVOUR CRISPS! GIMME!

5) Exercise Moderation in Moderation 
Last but not least, here: Have some festive baked beans with "moderate amounts of wine." To enhance the festiveness, I recommend discarding the idea of moderation and perhaps limiting the amount of beans involved.

How I Used to Spend My Saturdays

Happy Wednesday!