Verrry interesting...

(Oh, and by the way, Arte Johnson pronounced interesting incorrectly; the emphasis is NOT on "rest." Ahem. Pet peeve of mine...)

Anyway, a very IN-teresting thing happened to me this week. A tire blew out on my car while I was driving it. I've been driving since I was a fresh-faced sixteen year old, and this is the first time a tire has dared to do such a thing to me. Oh, I've had other vehicular mishaps -- busted radiator hose, clogged fuel lines and/or filters (a lot of those, I might add), and that time I ran slap into the side of another car that so totally came out of nowhere, I swear! But never a blown tire.

Actually, I'm not sure this could be classified as a blow-out, since the tire pretty much shredded itself to vulcanized death (no, not the Spock kind of Vulcan) as I was driving down the road. Plus, I've heard horror stories about tires blowing out and sending the car careening all over the road, and mine didn't do that. My car suddenly began to shimmy like a stripper spotting a man with a $100 bill, and I had time to think, "What's wrong with my car?" before the whole pogo stick bounce began. I got it off the road, and into a parking lot without further mishap. No careening at all.

After a brief wait, Husband showed up on a white charger (hey, the truck is white; let me dream!), and replaced the shredded tire with the spare. It works, but it doesn't look nearly as pretty, since the car is equipped with what Husband calls "Mag wheels," and the spare doesn't have one of those. Because of those wheels a former owner installed, tires for my car cost roughly the GNP of a small, Eastern European bloc country. With the holidays coming up, a new tire is low on our priority list. At least the spare is a real tire, and not one of those doughnut things. Functionality before beauty. I guess.

In other news (she says, turning to the camera on the right), I still have no sense of taste or smell. This is getting worrisome, not to mention downright irritating. I made my favorite meal the other night, and didn't get to enjoy a bite of it. Oh, I ate it, but I might as well have been chewing cardboard. I finally found a sinus and nasal decongestant that didn't have antihistamine, but it hasn't done a bit of good. I'm still congested, and wake every morning to a pounding headache. Let's just say things aren't pleasant around here until about 10:00 when the Alleve and Starbucks kick in. You'd think all that bouncing around when the tire blew would have jarred something loose, but no dice.

The book is coming along beautifully, and I may actually finish the thing before the end of the year. I have high hopes, especially since I came across a lovely bit of inspiration:


One of the prettiest pictures I've ever seen of him, and it gives me all kinds of ideas for the main male character. Some of them may even make it into the book!
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Meddle ye not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and good with ketchup

And on a related note, do not mess with the author's head, for it makes her cranky, and prone to blogging about it.

I stumbled across a website today announcing in big letters, "Them Crooked Vultures Announces North American Tour!" Ooh, goody! I love Dave Grohl, and I love John Paul Jones, and I would pay money to see them (or should that be Them?), with those other guys they play with.

Ha.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think four dates in Los Angeles, Oakland, Portland and Seattle constitutes a North American tour. Guys, you're missing an entire continent here. Evidently, this headline was written by one of the same geniuses that heard Robert Plant say he might play at Glastonbury in 2010, adding, "Who knows who will be with me?", and immediately spinned it into, "Led Zeppelin to reunite at Glastonbury!" Where'd that journalism degree come from, anyway? One of those spam emails that tell you you've been "nominated for a degree?" Uh-huh.

Get 'em, dragon.
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Shame on the moon

After all, the moon regulates the tide, auld wives say it has something to do with making pregnant women go into labor, and...and...well, all sorts of other things. Let's add computer snafus to that list, shall we?

Peromyscus is the proud owner of a new laptop, the hard disk on her old one having decided to go into retirement (at the urging of the moon, no doubt), and all the way across the country, my Husband has a new motherboard in his desktop computer. I know what you're thinking -- you've read this somewhere before. You're right, you have. Two motherboards in less than one year? What are we doing to the things? Our computer guru tried to explain this latest refusal to work, saying things like "possible power surge," and "bios." I heard "blah blah blah new motherboard." Luckily, the computer guru is easy to deal with, being my baby brother, even though he did keep the power cord to Husband's computer. (He brought it back.) His fee for the repair work is a huge, honkin' batch of Chex Mix with extra nuts. I can do this.

Oh, and by the way, the motherboard in the computer guru's computer crashed, too. It's the moon.
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Yo! Listen up! This is important!

Drum roll, please....I'm changing the name of my blog. Yeah, I know you'll probably read all about it in the New York Times tomorrow morning, but I wanted you to know first.

See, if I'm writing this blog, then I don't have writer's block, a condition my friend Esther says doesn't really exist, and I'm starting to believe her, but I digress.

So, even though the name has changed, it's still me. And my blog. Which is better than my shadow.
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A zero to zero tie? I don't think so, grasshopper.

American football continues its assault on Great Britain on Sunday. (Although I think they're going to have to play more than one game per year there to make any impact...) All 80,000 tickets sold out in just under seven minutes, so there's definitely a market. I'm afraid this Sunday's game, though, won't be very exciting for our British friends to watch. The two teams playing will be the New England Patriots and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. (By the way, isn't it a little in-your-face to send a team called New England Patriots to England to play American football? I'm just saying.) The Patriots are a very good ball team, and the Buccaneers are...well, not a very good ball team. Still, I very much wish I could go. I think it would be a very cool thing to be able to say I attended my first NFL game in England.

No, I've not ever attended a professional football game. I have been to quite a few Major League Baseball games, but no football yet. Nor have I ever been to a professional basketball game. But I could go to one of those with no problem. In fact, if I were to be anywhere near the Mississippi River on a night when the Grizzlies play in FedEx Forum, I'm sure I could go. I think Grizzlies representatives go out and snatch unsuspecting Beale Street tourists off the street and drag them into the game, so that when ESPN shows replays the next day, there are people in the stands. Otherwise, the sound of crickets chirping would drown out the court announcers.

Oh, yeah. I forgot soccer. Despite David Beckham's completely mediocre efforts, soccer hasn't caught on in America. It's not going to, either. There's just too much about it that perplexes us, and just doesn't make any sense. Take David Beckham, for example. He's being paid roughly nine million dollars an hour to play soccer for the L.A. Galaxy. But he's being loaned out to Real Madrid to play for them. Say what? Sports teams don't loan their players to opposing teams! That's just...words escape me. Another reason soccer isn't going to catch on is because games frequently end in a scoreless tie. Seriously, if no one's going to win a competition, why bother having it? We Americans want someone to win, even if it's not our team. We'll sit through 15-inning baseball games (the usual length is 9 innings, by the way), double overtime in basketball, or seven overtimes in football, as long as the game ends with a clear winner, and a clear loser. That's just the way we roll.

Will American football ever catch on in England? Doubtful. Great Britain probably has about as many American football fans as America has soccer fans. It's a delightful diversion, but not to be taken seriously. When I move to England, I'm going to have to find some way to get my sports fix that doesn't include soccer. I'm sure there's a way, and I'm sure I'll find it.
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Just hum along if you don't know the words

I woke up this morning with Led Zeppelin's How Many More Times playing on a continuous tape loop in my head. I've yet to figure out why this is, as I've not heard that particular song in quite some time. Perhaps it was the soundtrack to a dream I had. If so, the soundtrack was more interesting than the dream, because I can't remember the dream, but the song lingers on. And on. And on.

As I've gone through my day with this tune reverberating in my head, I realize it's just the tune. I don't know the words. In fact, I don't know the words to most of Led Zeppelin's songs. I'll give you a minute to stop laughing here.

Anyone who walks into my house knows almost immediately that I love Led Zeppelin. I'm not sure what tips them off. Maybe it's the Jimmy Page action figure posed in front of those LZ pub glasses. Perhaps it's the framed poster of the band hanging in my bedroom. (I have a very patient and understanding husband, I might add.) Or it could be the myriad buttons and badges, patches, sheet music, coffee mugs, concert ticket stubs, and books. (We won't even mention the CDs, DVDs and records, including bootlegs, because that's a given.) Or the file on my computer containing nothing but nine million pictures of Jimmy Page that I look at for...inspiration. Yeah, inspiration. You'd think I'd be able to not only sing all of Led Zeppelin's songs, but sing them backwards. Yeah, I can't. Even with all that sheet music lying about, I still don't know the words.

Oh, I'm not completely ignorant. I do know the lyrics to quite a few of the songs they recorded. After all, I've been listening to this band since the early 1970s when Jimmy single-handedly kick-started my hormones. Stairway to Heaven, Black Dog, That's the Way, Tangerine, The Rain Song...I can sing those plus a few more for you. But tie me to a chair and demand I sing most any other Led Zeppelin song, and I'll remain tied to the chair, mute. And even when I attempt to sing the songs whose lyrics I do know, nine times out of ten I'll stumble over the words, or get them in the wrong order.

For me, it's just the music that matters. Yes, the words are nice, and Robert Plant even managed to reach levels of profundity (it is too a word!) from time to time. But I don't particularly care about them. I think I realized this the first time my friend Maureen and I were listening to either You Shook Me, or Dazed and Confused. We were both thirteen years old, and hot for Zeppelin. Maureen was madly in love with Robert Plant, which caused no small amount of amazement on my part when she agreed with me that Robert needed to just shut up and let Jimmy play. For the most part, I've felt that way ever since.

I suppose I'll have to Google the lyrics to How Many More Times, so I can sing it to get it out of my head. That's the only sure-fire way I've found to dislodge an earworm. But I can almost guarantee that I won't remember the lyrics in the morning.
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But I'm not

Things I should be doing:

• Sweeping and mopping the floors


• Washing the rest of the dishes by hand, since the dishwasher was completely full, and I used the last of the automatic dishwashing detergent


• Removing Husband's shirts from the dryer before the wrinkles become a permanent part of the fabric


• Cleaning the bathroom


• Working on The Book

I should be doing these things. But I'm not.

I blame the weather. Last night the local weatherman superimposed a photo of the Space Needle over the camera that shows a shot of the local scenery. I fully expected Seattle to issue a rebuttal, since they don't get nearly as much rainfall as we've gotten over the past several months. And if it's not raining, it looks like it's going to. I cannot even begin to articulate how fed up I am with gray, gloomy clouds. So I won't even try.

I leave you with a quote The Pen Whore shared: "Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon."-E.L. Doctorow.

I think if I could summon up the energy to write, I'd have that rained upon feeling down cold.
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