you have always had the wrong manual. good lord. poor messed up head.

I think my version is for those of us with intimacy issues. Some of the rules are different.

you and me? we should plan an LC trip for late Aug/early Sept. we can eat ourselves sick.

Mmmmm... I've got some possible family obligations in the midwest around then, so hold off on the tickets just yet....

Today's APOD photo. Measuring particle sizes in Saturn's rings. Very cool. [link]

Speaking of Tom Cruise and his tut-tutting, it would be fun to see some karmic payback head his way. Possibly something about going on a bender, trashing a hotel room, and waking up in bed with a goat.

I'm from a small town, and therefore have an extreme bias against All-Up-In-Other-People's-Business behavior.

Phil Spector retires the Art Garfunkel prize for Most Unfortunate Honkyfro:

[link]

All of the strawberries I've had this year have been fantastic.

Can't a girl just be abducted on the basis of her charm and pretty pretty hair?

And pleasant copper scent?

Right! I need talents in addition to smelling like pennies? Life sure is hard.

What are your plans for the long weekend?

I've got a four-day weekend (the company is making it up to us support staffers who had to work on President's and MLK Days by giving us this Friday and the Friday before Labor Day off), so I'm taking the car into the shop on Friday (and praying it doesn't cost over a grand to get everything fixed), and going to see Crash on Saturday.

Where was your best vacation ever and why was it so freakin awesome?

1982, I was 16, and my mom, sis and I took a 2-week drive to New England. Saw Niagara Falls, drove through the White Mountains in NH, stayed in Bar Harbor for four days and spent a wonderfully foggy day at Quaddy Head State Park (the easternmost point of the US) listening to seals bark just offshore, drove for two days in Nova Scotia, and then did a quickie tour of Boston (which I must go back to for more than an afternoon someday). Very fun!

I missed the dinner for the seniors this year, should I 1)bake them all cookies and frost '05 on them? 2)bake a nice cake for them? 3)bake cupcakes and frost '05 on them? 4)buy them all '05 keychains?

Cupcakes, definitely.

say something happymaking or nice that has happened this week.

Another cute cat week here--she had the crazies on Monday night tearing around the apartment and attacking the legs of her cat condo, and then was Ms. Cuddly last night, beginning with her curling up on top of my book (of course!), and then not leaving my bed all night (which she rarely does).

What are your plans for the long weekend (if you have to work on Monday - spew about your job/boss/company)?

Friday night will involve building fake swords. (No flourescent lightbulbs or flammable liquids involved, thank you.)

Saturday will involve getting together with a bunch of people and hitting each other with said fake swords.

Sunday I'll be going with the lady I'm seeing to a drive-in burger joint followed by a drive-in movie. Should be a fun themed evening.

No idea what I'm doing Monday, yet.

Where was your best vacation ever and why was it so freakin awesome?

I haven't done much in the way of vacations. The best would probably be spending a week in the Baton Rouge/New Orleans area staying with a good friend.

I missed the dinner for the seniors this year, should I 1)bake them all cookies and frost '05 on them? 2)bake a nice cake for them? 3)bake cupcakes and frost '05 on them? 4)buy them all '05 keychains?

Go cookie. Choose cookie.

say something happymaking or nice that has happened this week.

The auto body place replaced and re-painted the bumper they did a crappy job on without complaint and free of charge.

Plans for the weekend: As Hec said, crazy baseball craziness, but on Saturday before the game I'm probably going with my dad up to Vacaville where he will get his new car and I'll drive home with the old one, which will then become our new car. Which makes me SO FUCKING HAPPY I can't stand it. I do so very poorly with financial and bureaucrazy/important-paper-filing worries, and I have so many of both, and now some big big ones have just vanished.

Best vacation ever: I was going to say our long lazy lagniappe-filled honeymoon, but since Hec said this:

the second one was probably the most fun.

and I'm fairly sure the honeymoon was his third trip to NOLA and he is thus referring to his trip with the tall blonde goddess who immediately preceded me and who still makes me feel insecure and short and porcine, I'm instead going to glare narrow-eyed at him and say my best ever was the 10 days I spent in Rome with a friend from school. She was originally from Tokyo, where she'd been one of a tiny, tiny band of Japanese Catholics, and her godmother was a nun who'd since been reassigned to a convent in Rome. So the day after Christmas she and I went to the convent, and used it as a home base for 10 days of art and history exploration and wallowing.

18th or 19th century building. Could hold 26 nuns, presently held 6, 5 were back in Japan visiting relatives for Christmas. I had a small but magnificently high-ceilinged room to myself, with tall narrow windows looking out on a sun-drenched piazza.

There was a convent dog, a large aging German shepherd devoted to my friend's godmother, following her everywhere and living for the moments when she sat down and he could rest his head on her knee.

There was my friend's godmother, who spoke not a word of English but was warm and smiling and happy to have two young people to fuss over. She'd gotten an Italian cookbook for Christmas, and for 10 days we had enormous gourmet breakfasts before going out to drink in art and history, with enormous gourmet dinners upon our return, each meal accompanied by an enormous thermos of hot and heavenly espresso with steamed whole milk. Sometimes we had Japanese food -- not sushi, but artful barely-cooked vegetables and colorful sauces and bowls of noodles and eggs and mmmm. And more hot milky espresso.

And there was the gelato on every corner, and the crowded trams and buses, and dickering with vendors of sunglasses and bootleg pop music tapes on thousand-year-old bridges, and the catacombs, and the New Year's Day mass at the Vatican, and the steps Audrey sat on when Gregory Peck walked by and offered to buy her an ice-cream cone, and ohhh.

Happymaking thing that happened this week: The car, the car, the car. Also, Emmett and I had a nice easy rambly conversation this morning on the drive to his school. Nothing important, just relaxed and good and peaceful. So happy.