Weblog 152

January 04, 2009~ 12:20am
New Year's arrives like a train we'd forgotten about, pulling heavily into the station. What's in the boxcars is anybody's guess. I suppose there are people who love this whole 'new slate' feeling.....me.....I most often accost it like a thief in an alley. With dread. It's the emptiness that does it. The hollow where what's to come has yet to fill the tub....



and yet we see a residue of what will not go down the drain, still remaining from the year before. (Does that picture creep you out? Me too. Found it during one of my surfing episodes, and I was both repelled and drawn to it. Kind of like the future, right? Maybe not all a memory of that tub in the compelling movie "True Confessions"- a favorite of mine- but oh, it's close.)

The week between Christmas and New Year's Day is like a subway ride. We feel it, though we can't always put that feeling into words. We're on a short journey from the past to the future. The subway greenish lonely-



and we have no idea what's at the next stop. We fill it up with camaraderie and friends and visiting, culminating in the crystal-covered ball being dropped in Time's Square-- and lot of folks get drunk, and think they're happy-- but I believe we all face the future with a strange combination of hope and trepidation, trepidation often winning out.

Then, 'BOOM!', January first arrives



and we emerge from the underground to enter a world familiar, yet not...and there is an eerie yellow light. The trees are still bare..all the 'old' is right in front of us, and along with it, a vague specter of a future not quite seen against a sky we don't trust. The shadows are long.

The real journey's begun. Yes. That's what it's like.




January 04, 2009~ 1:15pm
Have a gander at this really wonderful slideshow of the collected photos of Darrell Sapp, who contributes so many images to our local newspaper.

To get a feel for Pittsburgh, click to see houses stacked on hillsides in what look to be impossible angles, the bridges in the mist, the rivers, rivers, rivers... a bit of the flavor of this very colorful and diverse region that I call 'home'.

And for some fun (after the gloominess of my first entry...lol) if you have flash enabled on your computer, have fun feeding these HUNGRY TURTLES! lol!!! One of those cute online things I could fiddle with all day long .....just watchin' 'em gorge. Click anywhere on the screen to drop their food pellets, then see them scramble to gobble them up.



As to movies for this new year, I've already received 'Hancock', but probably won't get to watch it for a week or so....and I've consulted my swami out in Los Angeles....



and entered into my Netflix queue a 2006 movie called "The Painted Veil"-- recommended by my old time chum, Annette, who told me via Christmas card that it's one of her favorites. It stars Naomi Watts and Edward Norton in a tale based upon a Somerset Maugham short story. (I may have to watch it alone... lol.....no 'takers' on this one) but I know I'll love it. I think it'll be a' hankie movie', with me and the cat, some snacks and a box of kleenex. A good cry is a therapeutic thing.....so thanks, Netto. It'll be something we girls can share, albeit long distance.

And so the new year stumbles along, trying to take shape, blinking and gawking like the newborn it is. Maybe if we treat it nicely, it'll turn out o.k. The confetti's been thrown......here we go.....




January 06, 2009~ 5:45am



Yep. That's the weather report for today, from 7:00 am till 7:00 pm, and this middle-aged-- quaking with fear-- hyper-sensitive caution prompted me to make a call to work and leave the message that I'm staying put today.
The older I get, the more reactionary to such weather predictions.... I have no intention of getting caught in a spin-out on Rt 28 with tractor trailers doing the same around me. (Goofy thing is today was supposed to be merely 'cloudy, but cold'-- but the gods have spoken, and they sound pretty nasty today)- all day.

So it's books... old cat whining... and repetitive peeks out the window at the weather that'll be occupying me this morning. Old Man Winter is a tough opponent.




January 06, 2009~ 9:45pm
Post-Christmas PIG OUT!Yes, the Germans have found a way to recycle their Christmas trees nutritiously and wisely. LOL!!



This, from the National Geographic site: "Holiday leftovers aren't just for humans. Elephant calf Thabo-Umasai at Germany's Zoo Dresden joined camels, deer, and sheep in a traditional new-year feast of Christmas trees yesterday.

'Elephants around the country will enjoy a delicious lunch today consisting of about five Christmas trees each,' Ragnar Kuehne of Zoo Berlin told the Reuters news service on January 3."

I think this calls for a song.....

O Mastodon, O Mastodon,
thy teeth are ever chomping

O Mastodon, O Mastodon,
our Christmas trees
need stomping.

Not only good for ornaments

but snacks for
hungry elephants.....

So what is next
to gnosh
and mow?

Will you eat
lights
and mistletoe?
O Mastodon,
O Mastodon, you handle our
un-pomping.

(This has been a public service announcement to lighten the hearts of those engaged in the misery of 'undecking their halls'.)





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