Tag: friends

Visiting Miss Sugar

Tonight I couldn’t stand it anymore. I made a pleading phone call to RubinSmo Manor and begged to see the latest addition to our family of friends. Tim and Tom, too, were willing to leave The Compound, so off we went when permission was granted.

SUCH SWEETNESS! (And joy…and joyness…)

Here’s a face that says, “I don’t know if I like what you’re doing and I don’t know why you’re here, so I’ll just keep a close eye on you and see how things go.” She was also wary of Tom, but of course, she was mesmerized by Tim, Dog Whisperer. And she already adores Lindsey and Rhonda.
see face here

Dreams unwind, love’s a state of mind

I figure a quote from Stevie Nicks’s “Rhiannon” is as good a title as any for a post about mysterious things. You’re going to hear more from Stevie in this post, which is a response to questions from David and Mark.

In fact, an exchange with Mark yesterday made me think of the Brancacci Chapel in Florence. I told him that it’s one of my favorite places to study and think about. That’s because some of the faces that the various artists (mostly Filippino Lippi) painted in the frescoes are familiar to me.
you can read if you want to

With my secrets, with my life, with my hair

It’s possible that I should have waited a few hours before I took a self-portrait for Photo Friday.

Tim colors my hair. Mostly my roots. Because when you’ve been 35 a few times, honestly, you do occasionally get a gray hair or two. My natural hair color is brunette with red highlights. Both Tim and our fabulous hairdresser Larry tend to take me lighter with red and blond highlights. This is what experts say women are supposed to do when they get, well, thirty-five and beyond. Go lighter. But Tim knows that I’ve been kind of wishing to go darker.

He didn’t tell me he was going to make my wish come true. Friday, after he colored my roots, he pulled the color through to the ends of my hair. That’s not unusual. Sometimes he does that to perk up my natural haircolor. So it wasn’t until later, when I was out of the shower and drying, that I began to grin from ear to ear at the DARKNESS.
hair

Keep it up, mockers

You ever just sit back, put up your feet, and enjoy watching people mock your fear of scary movies? Or maybe theirs is an act of compassion. By taking my fear to a humorous extreme, they will rob it of its energy to frighten me… Yeah, that’s it. They’re all GIVERS! Selfless, considerate, thoughtful…

I do have the best friends in the world, which will be the subject of future posts. Like the one wherein I talk about How I Got to Know My Writing Partners Online and maybe also How the Compound Works (though I’m not sure I understand that question, Steve). Or I may first discuss My Theory of Evolution or Some Random Childhood Memory for Todd.

Meanwhile, speaking of friends…

YESTERDAY’s coffee cup, in this photo that I never had the opportunity to post, is one I don’t think I’ve featured before. It was a gift from Sweet Li’l Amy Sue (who some of you may remember is the former Rex-Tender) sometime back in the early to mid-nineties. The cup was designed by and proceeds from sales were contributed to DIFFA, which is the acronym for The Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS. It has long been the coffee cup I reach for most often.

In the photo, you can also see the little V-card that Tom made for me and put in front of my computer monitor for me to find when I awoke. Because in this house, if you want me to see anything? The best place for it is near the computer.

Denece treated me to lunch yesterday. We met at the Galleria. There are many, many places to park at the Galleria. There are several four- or five-story garages and also several underground garages. They are located in the vicinity of different anchor stores. I usually park near Nordstrom, but yesterday I tried a different garage. With my usual ability to step out of my car and go in the exact opposite direction of the one I should take, I ended up in the bowels of the Westin Galleria. If you should ever be a guest of this hotel (as Keelie’s grandmother was in A COVENTRY CHRISTMAS), rest assured: No one gets past the security guard of what is probably the employee entrance.

Once I found my way to Denece, we had a wonderful six-hour visit at the restaurant. (We go between the lunch and dinner rush and we’re always generous with the waitstaff, who let us take a table for the entire afternoon.) Denece always gives me so many things to think about, including insights into the complexities of human relationships as well as the wonderful world of animals (I daresay no layperson knows more about every dog breed than Denece). Plus I got to tell her one of my dirty little secrets. (HA HA HA!) We also made a little trip to Borders, where I ran into the manager, J., and got to thank him personally and hug him for his attention to A COVENTRY CHRISTMAS. He said he just ordered more copies of all the TJB books because he’s building up the stock of the GLBT section. He’s the best.

I have to mop the floors now and ponder my next post, which I may title Gone With The Exorcist, my being a SAP* and all.

*Southern American Princess

Monday Miscellany

First, hey, Steve in Florida, hope you had a memorable fiftieth birthday yesterday. Happy belated! (Also, happy belated to Becky in Mississippi and to Miss Squishi, who may or may not be reading here and could kick EVERYONE’S butts at TJB trivia.) I celebrated all these February birthdays by going to my friend Trish’s play “You Go Girl,” then later taking my mother some early Valentine’s Day goodies and treating her to dinner, but mostly working on my tax stuff. There’s nothing more exciting than doing a bunch of financial paperwork on Sunday night!

For those who asked… When I post a photo for Photo Fridays, traffic to my LiveJournal picks up considerably from all over the world because I put the link on the Photo Friday web site. I just try to keep those posts as simple as possible. No moods, no music, no comments. But thanks for saying you like the photo! Rex watched with great interest from his second story window as I messed around with the camera at midnight. He was like Rapunzel. Only without the hair. Plus he’s a he. And no one was holding him prisoner. But other than that…

Have a great Monday, everybody! Maybe I’ll come back later after I get the tax stuff to my tax preparer. If I do come back, what would you like for me to talk about? Give me a topic. I’m game.

What’ll it be?

Will Famous Author Rob Byrnes force me to wax rhapsodic about the virtues of Irish oatmeal, of which I just had my first bowl ever, compared to the plain old oatmeal I grew up eating?

I’ll be reading…

(Readers may remember that Kieran made Irish oatmeal for Phillip for their first breakfast in THREE FORTUNES IN ONE COOKIE.)

Which reminds me, Gary in KY, did you ever see that I said yes, emphatically YES, to more “Reading is HOT!” photos?

Why I should always listen to Tim

Force of habit makes me do something that almost no one I know still does. I do virtually everything on the Internet through AOL. Others scoff at me and throw around browser names that mean nothing to me, but Tim in particular (Mr. Mac user), who has to listen to me shriek each time AOL betrays me in some heinous way, always says, “If you won’t try anything else, at LEAST use Explorer and stop being tormented by AOL.”

And I do try, but it’s hard to stop after ten years. I KNOW AOL now offers free use of their e-mail and a lot of the other services I access. I KNOW I could have AIM up and still stalk communicate with people no matter what web browser or Internet provider I use, but I just like having AOL open so I can keep my eye on my mail and my buddy list. All my favorite places bookmarks are set up on AOL, and it’s just too much freaking trouble to start over elsewhere.

However… after many hours of work through the night on a web site, when I was checking all my pages to make sure everything was loading and linking correctly, and I suddenly started getting messages like, “This web site does not exist,” and pictures weren’t loading, I thought it might be best to reach for a credit card and book a trip somewhere, anywhere, yes, EVEN FLYING, to escape the wrath of Tim. I was sure I’d destroyed all his work by tweaking things here and there, creating a page or two, teaching myself some new things. And the idea of telling him that…

You know, Tim is a really great human being, and I’m sure he’d have forgiven me. Fortunately, he doesn’t have to. Because about ten minutes into my panic attack, AOL crashed on me. And I thought, Hmmmm. Maybe it’s not my work. Maybe I didn’t destroy everything Tim (and Timmy before him) ever did. Maybe it’s AOL.

So I rebooted my computer, went to Explorer, and everything worked like a charm.

I don’t have to overcome my fear of flying. Just my AOL habit.