Random mutterings

Thank you to everyone that sent e-cards, e-mails, links and laid a comment regarding my birthday. In addition to my cool trip to Oregon last weekend, I joined my new friends on a pub crawl they already had scheduled with a group. I met them at 4 p.m. and was ready to retire at 10:30. Being slightly drunk during daylight hours and walking around outside was a first for me. My friend, Sara, made my favorite dessert -- a delicious chocolate mousse -- for the traditional Sunday Desperate Housewives meal last night.

After spending the money on good tickets to see a traveling show of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (for the third time), I’m not sure which is more disappointing – to be seated behind a human bobblehead that blocks my view or having the understudy that replaced the female lead be the crappiest professional singer I’ve ever heard.

You know it’s really time to lose that extra weight when an obnoxious Jack Russell Terrier at the dog park jumps up to reach one of your dogs in your arms…and nips your arm flab.

If you ever have a friend that’s looking for a job and you ask them, “So, what else is new” and they answer “nothing,” it means they don’t want to talk about the job search. Asking them about a specific interview or lead that they brought up to you beforehand is fine.

I put together my first piece of personal machinery all by myself for b-day morning…an elliptical trainer. Considering there was some balancing involved and the thing said it should take two people, I was pretty impressed with myself. The dogs just stare at me in utter confusion, while I’m on it, trying to figure out what the hell I’m doing.

I’m wondering why we still do Daylight Saving, for its original purpose seems to be somewhat obsolete in today’s age. Hawaii, Arizona and Indianapolis appear to still be functioning properly and they don’t do it, so why can’t the rest of us stay on one schedule?

One of my goals is to watch the AFI Top 100 Films, and I have to admit that I’m having difficulty with many of the older films because not only have special effects changed, but so have speech patterns, vocabulary, gender roles, racial understanding (or more so than before). I watched 2001 Space Odyssey and thought it was one of the most boring films I’ve ever seen. I can tell that its special effects were “the shit” for 1968, but the rest of it could not pass the test of time in terms of story, characters and dialogue (like Star Wars). I think people watching The Matrix in 2037 will be far more entertained.

Is anyone out there watching HBO’s Big Love about polygamy? The obvious question is: Which is more strange – that three women are willing to share a husband or that the guy is Bill Paxton?

My six-year-old nephew informed my sister that he wants to be a construction worker or a paleontologist because he “just wants to be a digger.”