Surprise Mr. Prime Minister...I'm Here!

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Is anyone else just terribly embarrassed about the rudeness of King George this week? I mean, giving the Prime Minister (yeah, Prime Minister, dufus - ya know, like "head of a country" and all) of Iraq FIVE MINUTES to prepare for your visit? Not a very Southern-gentlemanly thing to do!

Here's a list of things that Mr. Prime Minister might have been doing that he would be disinclined to interrupt for a visit from King George:

1) having a root canal
2) laying on his bed contemplating the popcorn ceiling
3) reading an Ann Coulter book
4) getting a spinal tap
5) eating a baloney sandwich
6) posing for photos in the middle of his rubble-filled city
7) meeting with his "new friends" from Haliburton!
8) doing a live telephone interview with Rosie O'Donnell and The View girls
9) trimming his nose hairs
10) getting a back wax

But, NO, Georgie barged on in assuming that his Banana Republic's leader would just love to stand around blinking into flash bulbs and wondering if he looks fat with that fifty pound flak jacket under his Armani suit.

Ugh - it bugs me.

Daily Writing Exercises

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This is a really great site for those of us who need a little kick in the booty to get writing.
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We don't play well with others.

We had an early "celebration" for our Memorial Day. For the first time ever we swallowed hard (ok, not the first time, but....) and went camping with people other than our families. We knew we would hate it. And we did.

About a week before we were to leave, I e-mailed my friends and asked what their al fresco dining preferences were and offered (because I'm a former chef and because I'm a control freak) to do all of the cooking for the trip. No dice. One of them, who most definitely is a great cook, said that she had already planned the menu in her head and loved to cook outside also. Fine. Technically, they invited us, so I thought it would be rude to quabble.

However, she was planning on doing the most unexotic of all campfood (besides beans, I suppose): hobo packets. You know, potatoes, onions, bell peppers, etc. wrapped in aluminum foil and thrown in the fire. Well, I hate that shit. So, I just said we'd fend for ourselves and do it sort of potluck style.

We left early on Friday (or, we intended to leave early, but ended up getting out of town at about 5). They weren't coming until Saturday, so we thought we'd at least have one night of al fresco dining to our own tastes - with our prefered dessert. We drove east listening to hardcore eighties punk, and were just tickled to get the heck out of dodge.

When we reached the camp site, however, things got a little ugly. Of course, it was MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND and all, so what, really, did we expect? PEOPLE, PEOPLE, PEOPLE. Of the Red variety. There was so much smoke over the river from all of the campfires that it looked like fog, or a forest fire.

And then it started lightening. Big time. So, with no room in the "inn" and an approaching maelstrom, we decided to just drive on in to town for the night.

TWO HOURS LATER we ended up in Polaski, TN with the very last room for miles and miles. It was a beautiful, if a bit frightening, drive through the hills of south central Tennessee. The lightening was like a club strobe, freeze framing white clapboard houses and oak trees as we zoomed down highway 69.


I'll have to write about the rest of the weekend later. Sweet K is spending his Memorial Day ill and working, but horizontally. He's downstairs in bed hacking and snorting while trying to speak spanish to some "guest worker" on his radio while holding a phone in his other hand trying to speak "east memphis" to some prim lady out in her yard for the holiday with a yardstick checking on the length of her grass...bless his heart.

Y'all Come!

check out more of his stuff at www.lamarsorrento.com

Schoooools Out For Summer....Sorta

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so, i'm finally done with my first year of grad school.....sorta. i still have four small papers to write. sound familiar? (see my posts from about this time last year. actually, don't, it's really rather embarrassing.) it's not that i'm a procrastinator, maybe, it's that there is just too much shit to do and, at about 4pm every evening there are cocktails and backgammon games to be played. a girl's gotta have her priorities straight, and, frankly backgammon and cocktails with K somehow seem to almost always trump studying. this is going to be a problem if i'm gonna be a real live writer one day i guess. but, i'd rather have a happy marriage than anything else. the flip-side is that my happy marriage is invested in getting me to the point where i can write or teach or whatever the hell it is that i'm going to school for, so i need to figure out how to get there and maintain all of the above.

in other news: i submitted my first (for grad school) conference panel proposal. it's called "Blogshop: The New Blog Culture and Writers That Love It." it's for the 2007 AWP conference in Atlanta. i really, really hope the proposal gets accepted! cross your fingers. i got Steven Church, author of The Guiness Book of Me: A Memoir of Record, which i thought was really interesting, to agree to be on the panel ..... yehaaa. i'm pretty excited about that.

and still other news: i love shawn mullins and he's going to be at the peabody rooftop party tonight (barring the ubiquitous memphis in may rains, i suppose), so, if you want to see me drool and squeal like a teenaged girl, come on down!

bu-bye ;)

TODO

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I am so proud! I just eeked out 994 words of critical crap, er, analysis of How to be Good. And now I'm going to do a to list:

1. pay s.t.
2. pay artists
3. find a new epithet for business partner (motherfucking, cocksucking, asshole, piece of shit just seems so inadequate)
4. sweep up the dog hair
5. get photos printed for upcoming show (my very own show at NOT my very own gallery, they like me, they really like me)
6. mat and frame said photos
7. mat and frame bean's december birthday present (i haven't forgotten, just lame)
8. frame e&s's painting that i've had for a year
9. drink three or four more draft ciders before bed
10. take two or three valerian pills before bed
11. go to sleep on k's chest
12. wake up at 2am with a start; think of things that i forgot to add to this list; roll over twenty three times before drifting off at 5:33am
13. wake up at 5:50 am
14. brush teeth
15. take a shower with k - nice, big, new shower!!!
16. don't forget cooler and thingymabob for stuff for party tomorrow night
17. meet with death penalty dude (why did i have to squeeze that in?????)
18. party in the wonderfully unairconditionedplace that is my gallery
19. bitch at business partner about unairconditionedness of the place and use new epithet under my breath as he consumes an entire county's share of wine and cheese that i've paid for while he opines on and on about the virtues and contemporary need for recognition of ayn rand's atlas shrugged and brags about the "fact" that he is just as skinny (not) and fetching (not) as k.
20. go home with k -maybe have sex, maybe just play backgammon.

g'night.

Mission

I just spoke with K. who tells me that he took Sadie, our 9 year old lab, with him to work today. He had taken the 2 year old yesterday, because one of his clients had wanted to meet her, bu Sadie was so sad that he had to give her a turn. Now this dog is the best dog ever - even better than Dooce's Chuck I'd wager.

But, in reading about Chuck today, I remembered a funny picture we have of our little darlin'. We always close off the kitchen because we have open cabinets instead of pantries (comes from years of cheffing) and Sadie, well, she gets hungry when we're not there. So, we, like I said, always, always close the kitchen off. Well, not always apparently.

After returning home from a big ole party a while back, we found that she had eaten an entire bag of tortillas. Nope, I don't know why they were sitting out, other than the fact that I am one heinous housekeeper. But Sadie seemed to enjoy them, and so we decided to punish her by making her wear the bag:

Wasting Time

I cannot believe that I have just sat here in my office and wasted at least an hour reading, not a blog, but the comments on a blog. On sleep methods for six or something month olds. What the hell?! I mean, I do not give a rat's patooty about the subject and I certainly don't give one about what other bloggers think about the subject. And yet I scroll...... hanging on every meaningless (to me) word.

I think I'm mentally ill. I have two books to read for next week, an essay to revise (one that I'm reading in public in Oxford on Saturday, no less), four papers, no five, that are already past due. I think I'm mentally ill...oh I already said that. Must be true.

How in the world can I get on track?

Is there a support group for blog addicts???? Apparently it's a real thing: I googled it (the phrase "blogging addiction") and came back with no less than 13K hits. Yep, that's thirteen thousand hits, like this one, for instance.

So, I'm off to read EVERY SINGLE MEANINGLESS WORD OF THEM.......... grad school will have to wait.

She couldn't wait to say..."Are You Nick Horn-by?"

Yesterday I got to have lunch with Nick Hornby. Yup, that Nick Hornby.

His appearance was disarming for some reason. I suppose that it is because the way that I most commonly see his image is the cartooon bust in The Believer (a t-shirt for which he was wearing - give 'em a raise Eggers!). He's not very tall; his face has a sort elastic softness that I found very interesting and appealing; of he's bald, of course - we can see that at least in the cartoon; and he carried himself with a sort of slouch that insinuated a shyness or reticence, that was present during the lunch but which disappeared when he stepped on stage later in the evening for a reading to about 1000 people.

He doesn't sound like John Cusack, which, though I thought I would be terribly sad about having to let go of Cusack's voice when reading Hornby, was actually a very cool thing.

The best thing about it all, besides one of the most excellent readings I've ever heard, is that I came away liking Hornby's work more. I mean, I already really liked it, but I'm so often put off by "famous" people (in my glee I've mentioned my lucky lunch to several people who had not heard of Hornby - go figure - so I guess maybe he's not universally famous, but anyways....) who seemed to want you to only come to them as a sycophant or who attempt to capitalize on their notoriety by acting inappropriately or narcissitically.

I liked him. He was cool.
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I'm a very bad juggler

I'm juggling again...trying to keep about ten breakable balls in the air. One of these days I'm gonna get caught up. I hope. Maybe it's my personality, a problem with the way I take on the world.

...

It was a perfect weekend. Friday night we had the grand opening of the newly remodeled gallery. It was a HIT and I can't believe that it actually came together (I was hanging pictures right up to show time). We had lots of new people visit the gallery and we sold more than we have in a LONG TIME! Whew!

And then K and I went hiking on Saturday at the Wolf River Trail in Germantown. It was a really beautiful day and we found about four or five rope swings that people had hung. This one even conveniently had steps. Made me wish for summer, though I never would have thought I'd even consider swimming in the Wolf.

Sunday was a rainy day - great day to veg on the couch and then work on art projects, which is what we did. Then dinner with the parents. We had gin martinis - first time I'd ever had one. Yummy! (But, oh so stout!)

I'm wishing I could go back and do that one all over again.

Thinking about a friend

K's best friend K2 is having brain surgery today. He has cancer, and we're crossing our fingers for him.....

He's already really a living miracle. When he was diagnosed his wife was pregnant with his second child, a son. The doctors told him in May that he would not see his son born. That was six years ago.

So, K2, I'll put on some Al Green and say a prayer for you. Hang in there. We're all proud to know you.


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The surgery went well!

Austin Rocks

Man, oh man, does Austin rock! I just spent a week there, well, actually five days, and was so thrilled with the city. I love that there are hiking trails right in the middle of the city and a river (resevoir, actually) on which people were canoeing and kayaking and rowing. How cool, how cool, how cool!

more dubai

www.dailyreckoning.com: Port Deal Causes Protectionism to Rear Its Ugly Head

BALTIMORE, MD - Republicans and Democrats are up in arms, declaring a threat to homeland security after Dubai Ports World acquired London-based Peninsular & Oriental Navigation Company, which manages five U.S. ports. However, one expert asserts that not only are these fears unsubstantiated, but that this wave of protectionism is actually counterproductive for the U.S. economy.

“America’s trade deficit hit an all-time high for 2005, and the country is not in the position to start dictating where foreigners can invest,” says financial expert and Daily Reckoning columnist Chris Mayer. “The only way the United States is able to sustain such a deficit is by getting money from abroad, by attracting investment dollars.”

“It is short-sighted protectionist measures – like the ones being pursued by members of Congress – that helped precipitate the Great Depression,” says Mayer. “The more difficult politicians make it to do business in the United States, the more they risk triggering global depression and economic stagnation.”

Mayer warns that the protectionist measures mean that dollar assets are not going to be as attractive to investors abroad – and that means bad things for the U.S. dollar and the health of the economy.

“For those who say they don’t want a foreign government running our ports; well, here’s an interesting fact,” continued Mayer. “China already runs a terminal at the Port of Los Angeles. Singapore runs terminals in Oakland. The fact is, around the world this is commonplace. If the U.S. government is going to exclude foreign companies (even government-owned ones) from running its ports, it will only slip back further in the global competitive race, isolating it from the biggest and most efficient port operators in the world.”

Among emerging markets, the United Arab Emirates – of which Dubai is a part – was the second largest purchaser of U.S. companies last year, with over $1 billion invested. That’s a small fraction of the Middle East’s buying power. Currently, the Middle East holds over $120 billion in U.S. securities, excluding trillions of dollars held by foreigners in other parts of the world.

“America can either encourage the open markets it so often trumpets,” says Mayer, “or it can retreat into the ugly cocoon of protectionism – with racist overtones to boot.”

Come

I saw this here and thought it was purty funny!

Dubai - Part Deux

ok, so i now know that the company is state owned (by the emirate of Dubai, that is). still not sure that it has to be such a big deal and still very sure that we look really bad in making such a big deal about it.

Dubai

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I just don't understand why everyone is freaking out about the company from Dubai (mind you, not the country of) managing a port in the US. I mean, what kind of message are we sending here? What, would we rather have, uh, maybe, Ken Lay managing it or Donald "The Perennial Bankruptee" Trump than to have some people from (not the government of, mind you) a largely Arab nation doing it? I mean, if the point is that we ought to hire Americans, fine, I guess. But the point seems, to me at least, to be that this company is based in an Arab country, and since it's an Arab country, we've got to know that, of course, they're more likely to produce and/or harbor terrorists.

And it's not just one side of the "aisle" that's screeching about this either - it totally baffles me.
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Smoke in the Bedroom

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So, we're finally having our bathroom remodled (THANK THE FREAKIN' STARS) after having lived for almost four years with copious amounts of black mold, an uncleanable shower, a bare concrete floor, walls that were only half hanging onto their studs, and SLUGS!

Yep, slugs in my bathroom. Can you really imagine anything much worse than stepping on a slug in the middle of the night when you've stumbled into the WC for a pee??? Nope, there's not much worse I'll just tell ya. 'Cept for the time a slug slithered up onto the toilet seat.....but, my parole officer and therapist suggest I not talk about that anymore, what with the arrest for streaking down the street naked and screaming my head off at 2pm that followed the episode.

But, here's the actual creepy part: there are people in my bathroom. Several people. And I don't want to talk to them. I want to pretend that they're not there.

So, I'm sitting here trying to study when I get a whiff of cigarette smoke. There's a potbellied man wearing a rebel flag/beer/toby keith or somethin' t-shirt SMOKIN' IN MY BEDROOM! (Did I mention that said bathroom is the master bathroom? Which, of course is a misnomer of gigantic proportions, since the bathroom was once a side porch and measures a whoppin' 4ft. by 8ft - but that's beside the point because it is essentially IN MY BEDROOM.)

I had to do something RIGHT AWAY! So, I called my husband, who was a good 15 miles away, to tell on the guy.

"Well, go tell him to stop," he says, almost as annoyed at me for calling him about the problem (I was whispering into the telephone, also, which really annoys him too - but, ya know, I didn't want the guy to overhear me and get the wrong idea that I might be a little, uh, tooky.) as he was about the guy actually having the balls to SMOKE IN MY BEDROOM.

"Um," I squirmed, my face pressed upon the glass of the front door, "I don't really want to tell him to stop. You're coming home for lunch soon aren't you?" (It was 11:30 - that was a reasonable assumption.

"I may not be home for another hour. You gonna just sit there and suffer until then?"

"Well. Yes. I'll just wait."

Now, if you had ever me, you would know that I am often ridiculously outspoken - about things that do not matter, unlike some rotund redneck SMOKING IN MY BEDROOM. But, I can't, just can't, --cough, cough--, say anything.

Hope K's hungry and will hurry.
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Let it Snow, er, Ice. Oh, bah humbug!

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So, there's supposed to be an ice storm this weekend. Yuck, yuck, yuck! I really, really hate ice. As a matter of fact, I also hate snow. Now, if I lived somewhere, like, say, Jackson Hole, where snow was not the debilitating demon that it is here in Memphis, I might, maybe, like it. K., on the other hand, is like a kid about it. He cracks me up! We've been married nine years (on Monday) and he is still cracking me up, among other things.

We were going to go to Lafayette or Oxford or Eureka Springs to celebrate the anniversary, but, and now I know we're getting old, we decided that it might just be too much trouble what with the ice and all. Granted, the Oxford forecast mentioned ice pellets. Ice pellets? Sounds awfully violent, doesn't it? And the high in Eureka is going to be 29 - ick! And Lafayette is, perhaps, only halfway recovered from Katrina. So, we're gonna head to Cafe Society like we did after our wedding (hopefully this time I won't pass out on the table); and maybe catch a movie. At least he's promised not to try to drag me to his rock club meeting tonight!
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Obsession

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He got a little offended when I said that he was obsessed, or maybe I said he was a little bit geeky, about rocks, and especially his NEW ROCK TUMBLER!!!!! Perhaps I shouldn't have said it - I certainly didn't mean it as an insult. Not exactly. He's always really been into rocks, it's one of the things I thought (er, think) was (is) so cool about him. I mean, passion is passion, right? Right. Absolutely. And it's a smart passion too. I have learned so much over the past twelve years about really cool stuff such as quartz and, uh, rocks. But really, he is cracking me up with it lately.

A few weeks ago he made me go to the local rock club meeting. Oh boy! Now that was FUN!!! It is EXACTLY what you would imagine - I think there's probably some cross-membership going on with the Trekkies! I had a hard time not giggling through it.

The funny thing is that Ks not a geek. At least, I don't think he's a geek, and that's really what matters isn't it? He's just reached an apex in his "interest" in the subject lately, and I'm trying to be a good sport about it. The rock hunting is actually a pretty peaceful activity, even if I have no idea what I'm picking up. At least we're outside together.

But I've been laying in bed for five days now (with pneumonia) watching him scurry about every afternoon after work putting the final touches on his new ginormous rock tumbler that will hold something like fifteen pounds of rocks. I'm terrified at the racket that it's gonna make in the basement.

I guess that's all I have to say about that right now.

Oh, wow, Freebird just came on!!!!! (Thanks Bean!!!)
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