la la la life

Ok, so I bought the book. The seventh book. And I read it in less than 24 hours. I must admit it, I am lame. I got snookered into going to the Harry Potter extravaganza by my best buddy and co-worker. To be perfectly fair I agreed to this. But with God as my wittness, I will never go to another like event with two-cont 'em - TWO fourteen year-olds ever, ever again. If it had just been the little sister of my co-worker I'd have been just fine. But I forgot what happens when you get more than one of 'em together. I should have remembered, I mean I was 14 once. I have it on good authority that I was awful. My mother has told me much.
In other news life at the bar is much much fun. Even when it's deader than a doornail. I really love that place. I get to play hostess at a party whenever I work there. That and the fact that it IS a dive bar I can drink a beer or two WHILE I'm working.
Also, the glasses? I love them. Bright orange, bright pink. Who could ask for more? I am definately easy to pick out of a crowd.
One last item. I am well aware of the fact that my spelling sucks. I'm sure that spell check would help that. Aparaently it has some thing to do with the NF, or the NLD that is part of the NF. I could spend an hour just on explaining just what those two things are, or you could google them. I'll even give you the words that the acronyms stand for. NF= Neurofibromatosis. NLD= nonverbal learning disability. They're both online.


--Little Bird is visable at least

Train Ride Anyone?

I got new glasses!! Rather, I got the frames for my new glasses and will get the finished product sometime next week. Maybe. They are orange and hot pink, mostly orange though. No surprise there. This particular colorway has been discontinued, and were not easy to find. But if you like way cool glasses, and don't feel like paying an arm, leg, and first-born to get 'em, try eyebobs. That's the brand name, and yes, they're on the net. They're reading glasses and I just get my 'scrip put into them. I saw a pair of Prada glasses that are nearly identical to my current pair and mine were less than a tenth of the price.
Due to my strange affection for travel by train, I am starting to make plans to go to Tuscon for thanksgiving. That shoul come out to around 2 to 3 days on the train. Every time I take a train trip I tell myself that I'll never do it again. And every time a trip presents itself I opt to go by train. I'm sure they make medication for this. But I have gotten better at it. I've learned to streamline my packing, I bought a travel blanket and one of those sleep mask thingies (orange). I have decided to buy a mah-jong AND a solitaire game for my computer. To be installed the day before my train leaves and un-installed the day after I get back. These two games will keep me occupied for 90% of my journey. The other key to travel by train is to bring a cooler. And fill it with beer. Just don't get rowdy, or they'll kick you off god-knows-where. Most of the people on trains are pretty cool. It's rare that theft occurs, and rarer still that some one gets "removed" from the train.* The food by and large sucks, but that's to be expected. Bring your own in that cooler, so it's not JUST beer in there. Also, if your train happens to hit a car, don't worry, it feels like when the train switches tracks. In other words almost nothing. You will be stuck sitting there for at least two hours while they inspect the engine for damage. Yes, that has happened during one of my trips. Seriously, I didn't even know we hit anything untill about an hour into the sitting and waiting when we finaly cornered an attendant and wouldn't let him go 'till he told us what had happened. Seemed he thought we would panic if we knew. Panic? We were surprised, but we all wanted to SEE the wreckage, not panic. The attendant also told us that every train employee experiences an accident like that one at least once. So that might just be more common than you would think. And lest you think this was the conductors fault, the diver of the pickup truck we hit was drunk and trying to "beat the train". The train won. Also, it takes like a mile or more for a train going at normal speed to come to a complete stop. Also? Cars can swerve, trains can't.

* That being said I shoud tell you that on one trip to Colorado no less than three people were "removed". One of them (who incedently stole money from my bag) was loud cursing and just plain nuts. He was asked to stop using profanity and his response was "I'm not fucking using profanity". Maybe he thought profanity was some kind of drug. He said something to the effect of "I dint sleep wit no bich name Linda an I dint give her no disease! I'm not goin to no psych ward, Jerome is, not me." When he said "psych ward" it all became clear. That and when he threatened to "Shank" some guy in the snack car. He also kept following one young woman every time she went down to the ladies room with her three year old daughter. He was removed by the good people of the Denver police force. The other two folks were let off in the middle of no-where and ALSO met by law enforcement officials because they were smoking funny cigarettes in the bathroom. All in all it was a pretty eventfull trip. But again that IS pretty rare. I travel by train at least three or four times a year (for the last four years or so) and that's the only trip with folks getting removed.

---Liitle Bird is onboard

While this sounds like a cautionary tale, I do like and suggest travel by train, you get more of a feel for the distance traveled and a better understanding of the land.

Happy Fourth!

As if I really care. I'm too tired to truly think straight. I've been helping one friend at her family's bar (yeah, me in a bar with un-limited access to all the beer I can drink) and another friend at his dry cleaners. Too pooped to pop. As my mother would say. Tonight at the bar (the cleaners was closed today) we barbequed. And drank. And schlepped a bunch of stuff around, cleaning the place up after the sale this past weekend. Don't get me wrong, I love that bar. And the people who work there. It's my new "Cheers", a place where I am accepted. I want to see the place do well, especially since I will be bartending there every so often. Thankfully it's a beer and shots kinda place and I won't have to make fancy drinks. So now as I am either about to fall asleep or get entirely sucked into "Flowers in the Attic" (all hail ShowTime) I must be going.

-Little Bird is beyond tired.

P.S. pretty much all I do at the cleaners is play mah-jong on the computer, interupted by brief periods of actual work

I feel lucky

Ok, I have now seen one of Mother Nature's more amazing sights. Yesterday there was a HUGE thunderstorm here. And I do mean huge, think 7 inches of rain, accumulating on Lakeshore Drive... in 15 minutes. Anyway, I was just sitting around surfing the 'net (on an un-plugged laptop - no frying computers for me!) and I heard three very loud cracks of thunder in very quick succession. I made it out to the living room in time to see lightning hit the lake. In the Harbor. I. Saw. Where. The. Lightning. Terminated.... Twice. It was a scarey sight. The best I can figure is that the three cracks of thunder was actually lightning jumping from and hitting several buildings. Not mine thank god.
Funnily enough, when I got up to go to the farmers market yesterday it felt like rain. The sun was shining, it was swelteringly hot, but it was gonna rain. And rain it did. It rained for hours. Most of that being heavy downpour. And more is expected today. Fun, fun, fun!
Oh, I also found a web-site dedicated to one of my favorite authors, Melanie Rawn. The site is called Exiles, also the title of the first instalment of a series. If I knew how to make that a link I would have.

--Little Bird has seen the light(ning)

Facial Recognition

For all those wondering (all two of you) the movie I was watching was Amityville Horror. The newer one. Not as scarey as the first, but few movies are better in the re-make, or sequel.
Tonight it's "The Man In The Iron Mask". I've been having fun recognizing actors. It should be said that due to the NF and the NLD that came with it, I'm really really bad at facial recognition. But I've done quite well. I was looking at the Three Muskateers, Porthos, Athos, and Aramis and said to myself "that looks like Girard Depairdiu (apologies for the spelling), and... John Malkovich! And Jeremy Irons!!! ". And then later I saw the Kings Advisors and looked harder, lo and behold it was Hugh Laurie!! Of course I had to google it all to find out if I was correct, but I was!! Score for the girl with NLD!!! Maybe it sounds stupid, but it's kind of a big deal to me. I'm REALLY bad at facial recognition, always have been. This really is a feat of, of, of... well of recognition. I know, lame end to that one, but it is true. To give a frame of reference, I once claimed it was Sandra Bullock in a movie that starred Uma Thurman. Yeah, it's that bad.

--Little Bird is feeling pretty good about herself right now.

Suspense

Ok, this is not something I like to admit, but I am terrified of scarey movies. But they have to be scarey, not slasher types. And the new (2005) qualifies as scarey. There must be suspense, the type that keeps you peeking from between your fingers. I am terrified, but I love it. Now if I could only watch them during daylight, all would be fine. But no, the gods of cable insist on showwing these movies at such a time that it will be dark before it's over. And now I'm totally creeped out. I just saw the coffins in the basement scene. And they're off and running, being chased by the REALLY scarey guy holding a rifle. Trying to type this is keeping me from watching to closely and therefore keeping me from throwing up. And for some sick reason I absolutely LOVE horror movies. I like my adreniline rushes to be safe, and without physical harm. To me. What's that old line? Tragedy is when I cut myself shaving, comedy is when you fall down a a pit and die. That or it's all fun and games 'till some one gets hurt, then it's just fun.

--Little Bird is feeling a little sick and twisted right now

Prostitutes and Cheez-puffs

A long time ago, in a city far away, I grew up. When I was around five years old I asked my mother what a prostitute was. I should point out that A, we lived in a not so nice neighborhood with prostitutes around the corner, and B, my mother is famous for giving WAY too much backstory. Apparently it's an hereditary trait. So, here I am five years old, sitting in the kitchen and asking my mother about prostitutes. My mother thinking that in order to tell me what a prostitute IS, she must first tell me what a prostitute DOES. And to do that she felt she would need to first explain sex. Remember, I was five. She launched into this incredibly detailed explanation of what sex is and why people do it. And then how prostitutes figure in the mix. About an hour later (or more) she finishes up by asking if I had any other questions. I looked around the room thinking that this was my last chance to ask anything, my eyes lit on the fridge. Rather on the bag of cheez-puffs on top of the fridge. And I asked "Yeah, how do they make cheez-puffs?". That one she couldn't answer, she didn't know.
Well I have wondered that for years. I have always loved cheez-puffs, for reasons that are beyond explanation. So imagine my excitement when a few days ago "How It's Made" a TV show on the Discovery Channel told us how cheez-puffs are made!!I called my mom at work and told her I now knew everything as I just found out the answer to that long ago question. Yes, she was amused.

Little Bird learns something everyday