taking a look around

as loyal readers know, there is a move afoot, and the experience has provided us with a lifetime of sweet, sweet memories.

for instance, we went to our new rented place in palm springs to sign the lease, get a tour from the owner, etc. imagine our surprise when we arrived to find him...totally nude! and he stayed that way. for one hour. whilst showing us utility closets, bathrooms, funny little things about this door lock or that window. actually, the showing of funny little things was quite the order of the day, methinks.

the best part? a small little ocd tic, which required him to lift and then drop his balls approximately every 5 minutes, and only with the left hand. needless to say, i shook his right.

footloose

i'm warning you now, i could unexpectedly disappear from the blogosphere, only to resurface once the house is packed and we are moved, so i thought i'd leave with a little video i took of myself this week. i don't know who that bitch is in the fuchsia sash, btw, but that is why you should always lock the door behind you.

cover your ears

this is what our dog jackson does every time he sees another dog. and i'm not kidding.

home sweet home

this sweet tale comes from a town about 15 miles from where my father lives:

A gay couple together for two and a half years says that Affordable Suites of America, a long-term stay hotel located in Sumter, South Carolina, turned them away because they are gay. Jason Pickel and Darren Black Bear say they inquired about renting a room at the hotel while they search for a home.

Said Pickel: "We were inquiring about the price, deposits, extra person fee, and she asked who the room was going to be for, and I said for my partner and I. She said, 'Oh we don't rent to multiple people of the same sex.' I said, so you don't rent to gay couples? She said, 'No, we don't rent to gay people at all.'"

News19 of Columbia called the hotel to follow up. They were told by the hotel receptionist: "Our policy is we don’t rent to two people of the same sex if we only have one bed." Carol Atkisson, the hotel's owner, says there was a misunderstanding: "He says any couple can come to the place and they will rent to them, period. Atkisson says the policy was not mean to target homosexuals. He says they were just trying to stop two single people from being in the same bed."

According to News19, "Currently, there is no state law preventing a hotel from refusing service to a same-sex couple. However, it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color, national origin, gender, disability, or marital status."

mad libs

a list, cause it's all i can squeeze out at the moment:

* please accept my apologies if i have been out of touch with you and you are someone i should be in touch with. i promise to make everything right after april 6th, and before if humanly possible.

* the internet is great because it keeps your head from exploding. today, to give myself a much-needed break from teeth-grinding, i headed over to ifilm and downloaded one of my favorite video clips from the golden age of mtv, randy newman's 'i love l.a.' i couldn't believe how much of it i remembered like i'd watched yesterday. bonus: seeing a wonderful and close friend appear in it as a nurse (and a brunette).

* i'm dying to see that movie '300,' but i probably never will. kind of like when 'crank' came out. you connect the dots on how they're related in my mind.

* one of our major to-do's - finding a place to rent in palm springs while we continue the neverending search for a permanent place that meets our ever-changing criteria -- is finally marked off the list and it's modest, pet-friendly and totally rad (pics to follow).

* i read on mayoclinic.com today in advance of pulling week-old takeout lasagna from the fridge that four days is the max for safe consumption of refrigerated leftovers. consider yourself warned and me spared.

* the pic at the beginning of this post is a thank you in code to someone who is very publicity-shy and wouldn't let me thank them specifically in a public forum. you know who you are and you know your toes are pretty.

* lunches out with old friends on sunny days with blue skies are da bomb, yo.

i don't like mondays

...not to mention that i have a HUGE presentation that I have been hysterical over for days happening today at 3:00 and not to mention that i am at the particularly horrible clarion hotel (motel) san jose airport.

just to get out of my own head, i jumped onto phriedz's site for a minute of distraction to find out that 'campus ladies,' one of the funniest shows on television and least-watched, has been cancelled.

dammit!

if you're feeling down

let the chupacabra turn your frown upside down!



(sorry about this post. i found an open jar of rubber cement on my desk and couldn't help but inhale deeply.)

french tickler

i love france, which is one of the reasons i am so excited to go there in may. one of my favorite things about the french people is their flair for dramatic phrasing.

for instance, today the french government announced that they are opening all files pertaining to UFOs, which makes them the first country to do so. i couldn't help giggle when i read about the aeronautical agency head's '70s-popcorn-flick-worthy commentary on the data:

Patenet's answer to questions about evidence of life beyond Earth was sure to inflame the suspicions of those convinced the government is holding back: "We do not have the least proof that extra-terrestrials are behind the unexplained phenomena."

But then he added: "Nor do we have the least proof that they aren't."

case closed

think homosexuality isn't genetic?

think again

sip, sip, hooray!

welcome news on the carbon footprint reduction (and wallet-lightening) front (and yes, it's the sf chronicle again -- maybe i should move!)

cluck

the mister requested a roast chicken for dinner yesterday, i agreed, and it was an eye and mouth-opening experience. it was my first foray into the new frontier that is our newly-remodeled kitchen (sans paint or new floors, but un-sans all new cabinetry, appliances, counters and built-in dining table). first of all, fisher & paykel is a wondrous new zealand-based appliance company, and all of their appliances seem out of science fiction to me, esp. not having had new kitchen appliances except for a dishwasher and fridge ever in my adult life. so that was fun.

then, onto the best cookbook ever, 'how to cook everything' by mark bittman, my cooking bible given to me lo these many years ago by one half of the nagwells when i blithely said i was going to take up cooking. well, take up cooking i did, largely thanks to the bittman bible. anyhoo, i consulted several cookbooks to figure out which roast chicken dish worked best, and went with braised whole chicken with tarragon, baked in one of our le creuset dutch ovens (which i blame for my back problems of 2006 - have you ever lifted one of those suckers?).

cut to dinner. delicious, nutritious and fully organic. success!

sfgag.com

i love reading sfgate.com, the online version of the san francisco chronicle. i never loved the chronicle when i lived in SF. in fact, when i moved down south, i couldn't believe how much better the l.a. times was then the chron (local tv news, however, is a different story altogether -- i'll never forget staring slack-jawed at the television when i happened upon my first l.a. 'newscast').

anyway, sfgate.com is a daily read for me, partly because of my job, and partly because of their salacious coverage. it's like a tabloid, but not, but sorta. to read sfgate.com on any given day is to enter a world of bizarre murders, death by freeway pipe-impaling, and assorted other jaw-droppers. funny, but i remember it being a lot more bucolic when i lived there!

anyway, i got a real kick out of this story today. i think the reporter got a little carried away on the style front. any time a subhead includes the phrase 'slipping a mickey,' i have to stop what i'm doing and read.

in search of...

'in search of' was one of my favorite shows as a kid. i loved anything creepy or supernatural, and it often fit both bills. my favorite was the show on bigfoot, another childhood obsession.

anyway, creepy & supernatural was the theme here, so let me relate two quick stories. re: creepy, we saw 'zodiac' this weekend, and it is a spellbinding two hours and forty minutes (bring your hemorrhoidal doughnuts, kids!), so much so that i really wasn't processing any of it as i was watching it. the minute the movie ended, however, i got seriously creeped out, and it lasted for hours afterwards. neat trick, david fincher!

re: supernatural, we are still in demolition phase here in los angeles, though nearing the end of what i guess you could call phase two (with third and final phase three happening sometime in the next six months). anyhoo, they have unearthed some interesting things demolishing 60 year-old cabinetry, walls, etc., including ancient matches from a detroit-area body shop, a yardstick from a venice, ca. hardware store, etc. today, however, the house spirits pulled a good one on us.

we are in the midst of some crazy palm springs real estate action, as i've related before, and this morning found us waking at 5:30 to complete two and a half hours of paperwork pursuant to said real estate action. needless to say, our days and nights are filled with talk of palm springs -- our house being sold, the house we're attempting to buy (but may have to walk away from due to mounting concerns), what to do if we end up with no house in palm springs, etc. so it's palm springs channel playing in our heads non-stop these days.

imagine my surprise, then, when one of the contractors came in and said "look what i found under the bedroom closet." lo and behold, a circa 1940s viewmaster slide of palm springs, browned with age yet looking fully-operable, with such images as 'palm canyon,' 'the desert in bloom,' 'el mirador hotel,' 'the desert sun.' what are the chances, right?

it's goosebumps city over here, people!

see my fingers sticking out, wiggling? there's an arm attached, and a body attached to the rest of it, but you wouldn't know it, because i am BURIED! yes, buried---under real estate paperwork, uninstalled cabinetry, reams of to-do lists (undone), and a lot of residual southern baptist guilt, to boot.

as i wait for the crane to come and lift all of this detritus off of me, enjoy yourself some fair & balanced news coverage, won't you?

brit hume is sexy

back in the saddle again

ok, so now i really am back in the blogger seat. let's see, where to begin. crazy flu, too much real estate and work, work, work have kept me from my favorite little cyber haunt.

where to begin? we went to new york and had a blast...it'd been 8 years since we'd last been there, and while it has changed quite a bit (best buy? home depot?), we had an amazing time and hung out with some friends from palm springs who live part-time in the city. it was krazayzay, flitting from yummy dinner to yummy dinner and yummy apartment to yummy apartment. sprinkled in there was a trip to 'spring awakening,' the broadway sensation of the season (we enjoyed it, but it does take a while to get used to the idea that you're not at a community theater production). we went to brooklyn for the first time, which i loved, and i can see why they equate williamsburg and silver lake. anyway, it was great, and being there with the knowledge that our house was sold (whew!) let us be particularly footloose and fancy free.

now we are in a neverending cycle of appointments and document signings and all kinds of yucky adult stuff, but the worst part is yet to come---packing. anyone in the general vicinity any time soon is more than welcome to come by and pick up a box and a beer. PLEASE!

please stay tuned for lots more of the vapid yet vaguely amusing posts you've perhaps come to expect from ye olde blogge. they are on their way to you, sealed with a kiss and smelling vaguely of sawdust, bubble wrap and cheetos.

i'm still here...dammit

sorry for the lack of posting, my friends, but i came down with le flu on the plane back from new york and am only just recovering. i promise to regale you real soon with tales of the big apple as well as what it feels like to hack up a lung.