The Chair That Wounds

You know how it is - you stub your big toe on the leg of a chair and for the next week you are ultra concious of all the furniture in your home. Just walking past the couch and realizing you forgot to put your sneakers on is enough to make you flinch. But ultimately the furniture fades into the background again, and you routinely forget to consider shoes again.

Right now everyone on the eastern seaboard is flinching over the word hurricane. The aftermath is still a fresh wound. We easterners need to let Irene fade into memory. But it seems that's not destined to happen with the news media shouting out to the world that another potential storm  is forming in the Atlantic Ocean.

Could the news folks maybe just wait until there's a little more info before dragging that "chair" back out in front of us again?

A Setting for the Zone

...and so everyone rushed to the shoreline to see what Irene had wrought.

But while most of the curious snapped photographs of the depleted beach, one gentleman turned his camera AWAY from the ocean. Looking over my shoulder I discovered what had captured his attention. On a Sunday morning in August the main drag in Rehoboth Beach was virtually deserted.

If ever there was a setting for the Twilight Zone this was it. Thousands of people gone overnight, turning a tourist destination into a ghost town.  Which had me wondering if those few people around me were really there at all....

Travelling Show

I've had a glimpse of what it's like to work in a circus. Pack everything up - wait a  day or two - and then unpack everything again.

Hurricane Irene had me packing up all of our outdoor furniture, screen room, flower planters, barbecue grill,  riding mower, and more. I took the screens out of windows, filled coolers with ice, and filled buckets with water. 

Two days later I dumped out the water and ice, put the screens back in the windows, and reestablished our outdoor living spaces.

I can check working in a circus off my bucket list - this weekend's small taste was more than enough.

Priorities

Just as I was leaving work today, notification came that the Governor was declaring a state of emergency due to Hurricane Irene.  Which meant my first stop was going to be the grocery store to stock up on drinking water and canned meals in the event of an extended utilities disruption.

I put a call into Media Girl, explained the situation, and asked if there was anything in particular she wanted from the store working on the assumption we would be without electricity for three days.

The first item on her list....  Cool Ranch Doritos.  I guess we all have our priorities.

Here's hoping we ride out the storm okay.

Buttoned Up

Tonight's setting sun was woven through the clouds like a button being pushed through the buttonhole of a garment. The yellow orb stood bright against the purple-gray clouds that spoke of more than just an ordinary sunset.  Given the hurricane in the forecast I question whether the sun can keep the fabric of calm fastened.

Land or Sea?

One of the things I enjoy doing on a hot summer day is floating on my back in the ocean.  So I'm fairly well acquainted with the rocking motion that comes from drifting over ocean swells.

If I spend a lot of time in the water on a given day, that sense of rocking sometimes reoccurs when I lay down in bed at night.

But never have I had an entire office rock back and forth. 

That's exactly what happened today when the earthquake shook the east coast.  The concrete floor rolled beneath me, the walls creaked around me, pencils on my desk fell to the floor. It was as though my office had been transported to the bridge of a ship.

It was quite an unnerving experience. One I hope never to experience again.

Idle Time

Twenty miles north of me there is a stretch of road dotted by houses the size of postage stamps.  The road is a four lane divided highway that was once a rural two lane thoroughfare.  Well, rural by today's standards but back when it was first carved through farm country I'm sure the road was nothing short of impressive.

The houses that seem barley large enough to contain an eat-in kitchen, living room, bath, and one or two bedrooms reflect the fact that the area used to be farm land. I suspect the houses were once called home by working hands.

Today the tiny houses seem completely out of place; for as the roadway widened and traffic increased car dealerships and other business establishments bought up the crop lands. These cottages are now fronted by miles of asphalt and hundreds of high intensity sodium lights.

I can't help but wonder what the folks who used to sit in wooden rockers on the front porches of those homes would think if they returned today.  Perhaps they would feel it was time to level the homes and move on 'cause inhaling gasoline and diesel exhaust ain't to way to pass whatever idle time you might be gifted with.

Lone Walker

Gusting afternoon winds were sending sheets of sand swirling down the beach. There were times when visibility was reduced to less than a hundred feet.

Beach goers had erected wind breaks of all kinds: chairs turned on edge, towels stretched between chairs, boogie boards set like pickets in a fence. Motivated Mom and I had tilted our umbrella on its side and placed our chairs within the striped shelter.

From out of the swirling sand came a bikini-clad woman strolling casually down the beach.  She appeared from the "white out" the way Clint Eastwood appears from the heat vapors on a barren desert. While everyone else was huddled in shelter from the stinging sand this one woman strolled the beach without so much as a pair of sunglasses to shield her eyes.

I watched as she approached, passed, and then disappeared back into the blowing sand - wondering at her ability to withstand the onslaught.

Frogestra

The recent rains have led to the resurrection of the amphibian orchestra.

Hot, dry, quiet nights are thing of the past now that water loving creatures of the night have something to sing about.  The concert builds nightly from a simplistic overture to amazingly complex sets of music.

The beginning act consists of the bullfrog section sending base notes vibrating into the dusk. Then the tree frogs join with their enthusiastic staccato mid-range. As the darkness deepens the fluctuating chirping and buzzing of a multitude of pond dwellers brings the night fully alive.

The layers of sound become tangible things that I feel I could almost pull apart. Of course do to that I'd have to get right up to the edge of the pond, and by the time I got that the close the decibels would have set my ears ringing and the gradients of music would be lost to me.

I'll just have to settle for being a distant aficionado.

Homeward Imaginings

Straight ahead of me the mare leaping over a hedgerow changed into a shark gliding near the surface of the ocean before morphing into Sonic the Hedgehog burying his way into shadows.

 While all of those changes were going on, off to my left a dark cauldron of boiling and bubbling liquid transitioned to a blindingly bright bouquet of marshmallows.

Such was the entertainment provided by the rapidly shifting clouds during my drive home. A drive that seemed to go by in a fraction of the normal time given my wandering attention. While I appreciated the opportunity to let my imagination run wild, I was sorry I couldn't have spent the day lying on my back and wholly losing myself to the sky.

Double Your Pleasure

It's nice to know that in this age of video games, cell phones, and fast food people of all ages can still be wowed by nature.

Such was the case when the double rainbow appeared in the sky yesterday afternoon. The event was cause for everyone in the house to troop down the front steps and stare in fascination.

Stories slipped from everyone's lips - nearly all the stories beginning with: I remember the last time I saw...
I had been present for more than one of those last times and my mind replayed the scenes in vivid detail.

Which served as a reminder to me that the human brain remains the most amazing computer of all. Couple that natural memory chip with Mother Nature's inspiration and you get unsurpassable pleasure.

Inside Voice Please

I realized immediately I should have used my inside voice.

The immediate and extended family was spending the day at the beach. Somewhere around high noon, Media Girl and I ventured into the surf for a reprieve from the building heat. After diving into a series of breaking waves, we got our feet under us.

By a pure stroke of luck, we found ourselves looking out toward the horizon when a seven foot long creature leapt straight out of the ocean.  The breathtaking event happened some hundred yards off shore, but I was still able to recognize the distinctive shape of a sand shark.

Did you see that shark? I asked Media Girl.  That was awesome!

Voices sounded all around me. Shark? Where? Do we need to get out of the water?

I knew a sand shark wouldn't be a threat to the swimmers, but no one stuck around long enough for me to explain that.

Yep, I definitely should have used my inside voice.

Bread Distortion

You've seen them, those "recent search topics" that show up as lists on various websites. I generally pass right over them but tonight one topic caught my eye - vending machines for bread.

They have to be kidding.  I can't even get a loaf of bread from the store shelf to the checkout line without squishing it.  Imagine bread coming out of a vending machine.

Notice I didn't ask you to imagine the vending of a loaf of bread.  Even if it did start out as a properly shaped loaf in the deep recesses of the machine, by the time it rode through the steel spiral drivers, fell two feet, and then was yanked through a narrow plastic opening the bread would like either like a cinnamon twist doughnut or the belly of the Pillsbury Dough Boy.

Would you like your bread cream or jelly filled?

Location, Location

They say location is everything when it comes to home value.

Apparently the same does not hold true for billboards - or if it does there a twisted logic to the location.

In our area, positioned so it can be seen as travelers head away from the water is an advertisement for a marine supply establishment "just 80 miles ahead".

80 miles - just -  really?  After 80 miles the only thing I'm going to remember is that I need to find a rest stop.

Baffled By The Wear

I've tried - I really have - but I just can't grasp the concept of displaying underwear.

I'm not talking about underwear seen in advertisements, on clothes lines, or on fashion models. It's the men and boys' boxers appearing in everyday life that has me baffled.

Somewhere along the way it became fashionable to let the waistband of boxers show above the pants.  Then belts were discarded to allow for the daring "oops" of a little more exposure.

Gradually the street urchins, as I call them, decided there was no need for underwear to be under anything anymore. Giving full disclosure meant lowering pants to a level where gravity should have taken over but somehow didn't.  Why bother with pants at all at that point?

Today I saw an adult (I use the identifier questioningly) crossing a city street with the tops of his pants stretched across his thighs; leaving no question as to where the boxers stopped. This - person- had found it necessary to return his belt to service as the only way to keep his pants above his ankles.

Was I wrong to want to jump out of my car and tighten his belt to the point where the next attempt at a step would have landed him face first on the asphalt?

Surprised?

First of all - why is anybody surprised by the news the U.S. may not be a good investment? 

The only surprise should be that a country struggling to climb out of a seemingly endless Great Recession and getting by on a wing and a prayer would have continued to be viewed as a credible place to invest some cash.

Speaking of credibility - Standard and Poor lost theirs (from my perspective) when they owned up to a 2 trillion dollar error in their analysis documents but said that didn't change things. 2 trillion seems like a pretty significant number to me.

Apparently being a financial analyst is a lot like being a weatherman, you can be wrong - big time wrong - and still keep your job.

Which leaves me surprised that... anyone, anywhere is believing any economic news they hear.

Apologies for straying into the political arena. I promise to get back into a stress-free zone with future blog posts.

Concocting the Recipe

With a relatively good garden harvest this year, Motivated Mom and I have been "putting up" pickles, cauliflower, salsa, and spaghetti sauce.  Well, okay, it's been mostly Motivated Mom doing the putting up but, hey, I grew the vegetables.

We found a new pickle recipe on the internet this year and have been excited by the results. Some of the ingredients are familiar - sugar, onion, vinegar.  Others are a little more unique - such as one inch of cinnamon stick and 6 allspice berries.

And I got to wondering...  What in the world inspired someone to try putting a cinnamon stick in the pickling mix - and how did the person decide one inch of cinnamon stick was better than two inches? And then there's those berries. Six. Really?  I mean, why not five or ten?

It would have to be a dedicated "putter upper" to come up with such precise counts.

Budget Balancing

I received an e-mail today.  I don't know if the content was factual, but I definitely liked the message so I thought I'd share.

According to the e-mail, the following statement is attributable to Warren Buffet.

I know how the U.S. budget could be balanced quickly. Pass a law that anytime the national debt goes beyond 3% of the GDP, any seated U.S. Senator or Representative is ineligible for reelection.

Just How Did You Come By Your Trade?

The book stood out in sharp contrast to the others on the library bookshelf - Hair Styling for Dummies.

With that title, I just had to look.  I pried the book loose and, with mingled surprise and horror, observed a great many dog eared pages.

Just how many people, I wondered, had been using this book to learn how to cut and style hair?

I decided then and there that the next time there's a new employee in the local barber shop I'm going to take the time to scrutinize his barber license.

Fish Wisdom.

Fish are smarter than some people might think.  Take the free smorgasbords that go untouched on a daily basis along the Delaware beaches.

Every pleasant weather day during the summer hundreds of fishermen stand at the water's edge and cast hundreds of rods bearing fishing line fitted with hundreds of hooks loaded with hundreds of bite sized morsels into the ocean.  You might think the nearest fish might yell free food thereby triggering a feeding frenzy.

Not so.  Every half hour those hundreds of fishermen haul in their hundreds of lines and shake their heads as they worry over why the ocean's inhabitants don't find the offered bait appetizing.

I don't think appetizing has anything to do with it.  I'm convinced fish live by the same adage as our own learned ancestors.  If it seems to good to be true, it probably is.

Hmmmm.  Perhaps if the fishermen baited their hooks with beets.....

Express Dining

Move over Burger King, Wendy's, Arby's, and McDonald's. I've got the ultimate in express dining.

I pick a vegetable combo from my garden and deliver it directly to my dining room table. No traveling, no lines, no preservatives - and bursting with fresh flavor.

Tonight I had the tomato and cucumber combo with an unsweetened tea.

Tomorrow it will be green pepper and tomato. Perhaps I'll splurge with a side order of cucumber and an icy cold soda.