Happy Halloween!

My Halloween started with glorious sunrise. Being so close to the mountains we rarely see much of a sunrise here; today must have be a special day!

It is an unseasonably warm Halloween for a change; t-shirt weather and a few sprinkles instead of a blizzard. Sarah and I made jack-o-lanterns last night, and I put up the graveyard yet again... I'm such a kid at heart! I'm also thrilled that my 16 yo daughter will still carve pumpkins with her mom! Despite our decorating efforts, we never get very many trick or treaters on our quiet little go nowhere street.

Silly Kitty..

What is with my silly kitty? He likes to drink from anyplace other than his own bowl. Actually, he can't drink out of his own bowl, because we don't bother to fill it anymore. He loves the dog water bowl, my bead soaking water (I hope bead release isn't bad for kitties!), but his favorite thing to drink out of is whatever beverage glass one of "his" people happens to be drinking from. He really likes my on-the-rocks glasses... his head fits in just perfectly.

Yummm...lip lickin' good!!!

A Night Out...

Sarah called me at work Tuesday afternoon to tell me "the Notwist are playing tonight at The Venue". The Notwist is German band my son introduced me to a few years ago that I really like. She had mentioned a while back that she had heard they were coming (she's much more in tune to the local concert scene than I am!) and we talked about going. Obviously, she and I didn't exactly plan ahead for this, and she had other plans for the night. So after some hemming and hawing I decided I just be a "brave" girl and go by myself.

Since I don't really get out much, I'm not especially 'up' on how the local concert scene works. Smithtix said the The Notwist 7pm so in my naivety I figured that's when I should go to the concert. So I arrive at 7 and sure enough the doors open at 7 and there are about 4 people in the room. The Venue is an all ages place, so there's no booze, but to accommodate the drinkers they have a club in an adjacent room. Since clearly the concert isn't starting for awhile I decide to go get a drink. I traipse up the steps the desk, where I have to present my ID (yup I'm 47 and I still need to show ID), sign my name to the roster and get handed a card that gives me clearance to enter the club. Unfortunately the club is full of smokers, and since I can't take my drink back to the concert room I pass on the cocktail. So I wander back to the smokeless room and stand around and wait until 8 when some unknown (to me at least) guy sang, then more wait and wait until after nine when the band I came to see finally played.

I suppose I should have felt a little weird standing there for two hours by myself, but I don't actually mind doing things alone. What did feel weird is that I think I was the oldest person in the room - by about 2 decades. I guess the over 40 crowd doesn't like hip music? Or maybe they don't go to concerts in skanky all ages clubs?I for one am thrilled when my kids turn me on to some new music that I like. Good music should have now age boundaries!

Sadly, despite that it was a really small venue, (which I love) the concert was a little dissapointing because he accoustics in the warehouse-y room where really bad. Live and learn. I guess I should get out more so I know the good places to hear music. I think the Notwist would have been spectacular in a better place.

If you're curious about The Notwist they have some music clips on their Myspace page.

Absent again...

It seems that I've been ignoring my blog again... Funny how real life gets in the way of my cyberlife sometimes. I spent most of the last two weeks working on a top secret project... A gift for my parents 50th anniversary, which was this past Saturday. 50 years! What an amazing milestone, one that most of us will not see. My sibs and I put together a scrapbook of pictures and family remembrances and stories. It proved to be quite the project, especially for my sister, who had the job of collecting all the pages and stories from we four kids, (who are scattered across the country), and assembling the book and overnighting it to my folks on their anniversary. Thank goodness for email, phones and overnight shipping. I think my folks were quite touched and surprised. It will be a surprise for all of us, as my sis is the only one besides my parents who's seen everyone's contributions. She scanned copies of everything so we can all have an electronic copy... I can't wait to see it.
So what has happened exciting in my blogging absence you ask? We had our first valley snow on the 12th... that's right, a good 4 inches in the middle of October. I think it was a record. Then last week I had plumbing issues, a clogged drain that caused the washer to overflow. Of course this happened the day Sarah was leaving for her fall trip to California. She had to take her soaking wet clothes to a friends to get them washed before her trip... she ended up being lucky to not have missed the bus. (Hmmm... I did suggest she do her laundry the night before. And because bad things come in multiples, when I turned off my sprinkler system I found a leaky valve.... way down deep. So I spent Sunday digging and digging and digging, and I'm still not sure the hole is big enough... guess I will find out when the plumber comes!

Egg-xcellent!

Perhaps it is because I work in science, and biologists are a little unusual, but I have lots of crazy friends. Friends who like to do back yard biology. I have my friend with 12 ducks who I call the crazy duck man. I have another friend who owns chickens, he's the crazy chicken man. He has a several different kind of chickens, and he's given them all silly names. One of his chickens is a Brahma, and her name is Braaack O'Brahma. An election year chicken I guess. You have to stretch out the Braaaaaack when you say her name so it sounds like the noise a chicken makes. My friend gave me some eggs the other day, beautiful brown eggs. He can tell me which of his birds laid which egg my looking at their size, color and shape. (My crazy duck friend can do the the same with his duck eggs). It turns out that Braaack has the most distinctive egg shape; kind of long and pointy. I haven't eaten Braaack's egg yet, I can't bare to crack it, it's too pretty. I may have to blow it out and save it.

Good Morning...

I'm the first one to admit that I'm not really a morning person. My zombie like morning routine - get up, get dressed, feed the dog, out the door to work. A stop at my morning coffee shop for my favorite elixir, a glance at the newspaper and perhaps a moment or two of chit-chat with my coffee shop friends. All on non-thinking, unobservant autopilot. But once in a while I notice enough of my morning surroundings to have a little smile. Like this morning, getting out of my car and noticing the sun peaking over the mountain, and how pretty the sun rays were, even as the they filtered through the signs and poles and utility lines of 33rd south.

Then at a stop sign near the U. I noticed a sticker in the back left window of the car in front of me. St Xavier.... a flash back from back home in Ohio, a Cincinnati college. The right side of the window had sticker for University of Dayton, another school back home. For a few moments as I followed that car I felt transported to my past life in southwest Ohio.

After parking my car I had sweet morning moment. As I walked past the little day care center next to work two adorable little blond girls probably 3 or 4 years old stepped out of separate cars. They spied each other, and with big smiles on their faces gave each other a big hug, and started running together toward the building. They giggled and laughed as they skipped down the sidewalk leaving their fathers behind. There smiles were infectious, they really made me smile too.

I'm glad that for some odd reason I payed attention to "morning" today.