stay classy, wisconsin news!

We had a pretty good thunderstorm yesterday.  A good, old-fashioned, stay away from the windows because the grape-sized hail being thrown against it at 70 mph might break the glass, kind of storm.  It's been a while since we had one of those.  Anyway, when the coast was clear and we headed outside to see if we had any damage, (especially since we had no power and what else were we going to do?) we were surprised to see that we actually did for a change.  Everywhere.

And since every neighborhood in town had some sort of damage, be it downed power lines or roofing torn off or tree limbs down or whole trees uprooted, we thought there might be something on the news about it.  They'll run with any little weather story, you know...for hours.

 I checked their websites and this is all I could find:  Two men survive stormy Friday on Lake Delavan.

That's it.

The story of a guy clinging to his beer cooler for dear life for 45 minutes.

Way to represent.

a ray of sunshine

On yet another day when my Twitter feed was making me sad for humanity - the subject was either the terribly depressing and scary situation in Syria or the equally depressing and scary fact that people were devoting brain cells to a 20-year-old former Disney princess who will "rebel" to get as much attention as possible...like many others before her - I found one shining gem of a conversation:

 

 

Billy Zane swoops in with a line from Titanic for the win!  But that's not quite the end...

 

 

 

He gives Val Kilmer a Memphis Belle reference?!  Epic!  My high school self is full of squee!

 

It's moments like this random conversation between two of my former crushes (and the breaking news) that keep me signed up with Twitter.  Though most of it caters to those much younger than I am, Beliebers, people who like to #ReplaceASongNameWithTwerk, and beg celebrities for a retweet, it does give me a smile every now and then.

 

 



get it out of my head!

Ever since I heard this song for the first time at the beginning of the year, it gets stuck in my head and stays there for days upon end.

It's there again, so in an effort to release it from the clutches of my brain, I'm sharing it with the rest of you.  As an added bonus (whether you care or not) I'm including the making of the song, from the movie Sound City (highly recommended, by the way).  It's so cool to see how it all comes together.

Okay, here's hoping I've cured myself...

or not.

fumbling towards ecstasy

We all have a few albums that we can listen to from beginning to end, without skipping any songs, over and over and over again without ever getting sick of them.  Sometimes you have to find yourself in the right mood first.  Sometimes you have to feel reflective or nostalgic before you put it on, but once you do you're instantly engrossed - humming or singing along with every song, transported to another time or place.  One of these albums for me is Sarah McLachlan's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy.

The album was released in 1993, but I never heard it until '97 or '98.  I remember it was in my friend's car and even though we were busy talking, I kept pausing and listening to the music.  It was like I'd heard the whole album before even though it was the first time.  Within a few days, I went out and bought the CD for myself.


From the first song, I knew it was going to be put into heavy rotation on my stereo (ah, the memories of the 5-CD changer).  It was haunting, simple yet complex; full of emotion, yet not melodramatic.  The melody and the harmonies intertwined in something that was completely organic.  It was almost perfection.


As time went on, I found other music that fit more with where I was in my life and I stopped listening to it as often.  With the arrival of mp3's, the CD collection that I had was thinned out, but this was one of the few that I kept.  It's sitting in a box in a closet somewhere with a few select others.


Today was one of those days when the mood was right.  I've now listened to this album twice so far and am guessing it will probably be at least once more before I move on. 

What are the albums that you can listen to over and over without ever getting sick of them?

time-sucking vacuum

So, a day or two ago I decided to join Pinterest because REASONS.

I have no idea.  I think it's just another means for me to gawk at men.  (I blame you, Stan.)

Anyhoo...the boards are much like the things that I post on here, so if you're on, you can find me here: http://pinterest.com/goddessr

I did find one thing that represents me well, I think.  I had to share...

Words to live by.

Except for the whole Steve Trevor thing.  Seriously.  Stop doing everything for one stupid guy who keeps getting himself kidnapped.

funkytown

I've been in a bit of a funk this week. Melancholy, down, spacey, blah.  I hate that kind of funk.

In an effort to drag myself out of it, I'm posting a whole slew of "funky" music.
Stuff with the word "funk" associated with it - not necessarily true funk music...at all.

today's horoscope

Well this sounds encouraging:

You may find yourself bursting into tears for no apparent reason today, Aquarius. Seek comfort in sitting by a body of water where you can let your emotions flow. Tension builds as the storm draws near. Once it has passed, however, there is calm as the sunshine pierces the clouds. This time of peace and serenity may seem far off, but it's closer than you think.

 

I burst into tears this morning, but that had a reason - I had to go back to work after having four wonderful days off.  Waaahhh! 

 

I don't want any more tears and I want my serenity and sunshine now!

 

 

wisconsin's not so bad

You know, sometimes I get down on Wisconsin.  I get pissed off at the stereotypes of the fat beer-swilling, cheese-loving, cow milking, backwoods hicks.  I think about the politicians like McCarthy and Walker and Ryan, and I forget all of the great people who have come out of this state.  I took a moment today to take a look at some of the awesome people who have called the true mitten state home, and found some who I hadn't known about.  Pleasant surprises!  Here are some of the greats...

Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker - you know, the people who brought you such classic scenes as this:

And while we're on funny people, let's add a few more: Chris Farley, Joel Hodgson (you know, MST3K), Frank Caliendo, and another of the greats, Gene Wilder:

Then there were more actors listed like Willem Dafoe and Heather Graham, Tom Hulce (though it's not certain), Tony Shaloub, Spencer Tracy, and a couple of people I was pleasantly surprised to see: Mark Ruffalo - my favorite Hulk...

...and the vampire I want to be when I grow up - Kristin Bauer van Straten (Pam from True Blood) Oh, and this is completely NSFW


And there are so many more names that you know, like Harry Houdini, Georgia O'Keefe, Frank Lloyd Wright, Orson Welles, Liberace, Les Paul, and a whole slew of others.  Let's just not get into the whole serial killer thing like Dahmer and Gein, okay?

Yay for Wisconsin!  We're not all backwards-thinking, 19th century-living, paranoia-instilling douchecanoes.

ostriches from hell - updated with illustration!

I pass an ostrich farm on my way to work every day.  Considering I've been driving this path for the past nine years, I kind of know how they usually look and act on any normal day.  (Not to mention I've seen them doing things that I really have never had any desire to see.  Ostrich luvin')

Oh!  Did I tell you I hate ostriches?

They peck hard, they kick hard, they're really fast and birds just shouldn't be that big.  At all.  Unless they're a Muppet with a person standing inside them. And even then they're still kind of creepy.

Anyway, as I was getting up to the farm on my drive this morning, I noticed that the ostriches were standing in a group up near the fence line and they were holding their wings down in an odd way that I hadn't seen before.  Hmm, wonder what that's all about?  Then I get to the point where I'm right in front of them and I saw something horrific.  They were all staring in the same direction with almost zombie-like eyes and their mouths (beaks? bills?) were all gaping open like you see in horror movies - think Invasion of the Body Snatchers. 

Ahhhhhhh!

Okay, the picture above is from wiki commons and is only one bird, but imagine seeing twenty of these things doing exactly the same thing.  I'll have to update this later with my own illustration.

EDIT:  I've done a quick sketch of what I saw.  Well, a smaller number of them anyway...

They don't look happy, do they?

So now I'm convinced that their demon ostrich overlord is sending the message that it's time for them to attack.  The human race will not be wiped out by global warming, disease, zombies or even a Sharknado, it will be taken over by possessed ostriches.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

tiny ducks and brain-dead boy-teens and psychos

Well!  What an interesting few days it's been.  I could easily write separate posts about each of these events, but the way they've been running one right into another calls for one longish post.  Consider yourself warned.

It started off on Friday when the hubby received a call from one of the tenants saying that there were a bunch of ducklings following everybody around outside.  We had known that there was a nest there and that it would be full of little ducks soon, but for some reason the mother was nowhere to be found and the six little fuzzy chirping babies wanted to be led to food!  They followed people into their garages, up hills, around driveways - it was so dang cute!  But we also knew it wasn't safe for them.  As the neighbors gathered, it was decided we'd call the people over at Fellow Mortals, an amazing non-profit wildlife hospital in the next town over, to see what they recommended.  While we waited to hear back from them, we thought we'd better gather them up and thought maybe if we left them by their nest, the mom would come back.  You know, like those starlings last year.  We grabbed a big plastic bin and gently placed them inside.  We shortly got a call back from Fellow Mortals and they said that it's not right for the mother to be absent like that after her babies have hatched and to bring them in to their facility in the morning.  Our only other question was do we leave them outside or is it too cold?  Too cold!  So I brought the bin of tiny ducks into our apartment where they spent the night.

Rub-a-dub-dub, six ducks in a tub

I got up on Saturday morning, went to work for a few hours (more weekend joy) and then went home to collect the bin and the babies and take them to the facility.  They apparently fall asleep on car rides just like baby humans.  When I got there, they took them right in the back and checked them out.  They looked pretty healthy, but because they didn't know if maybe the mom ate something poisonous and fed it to them, they were going to keep a close eye on them for a while.  Turns out they were about three days old (therefore hatched on our kid's birthday) and were about a month behind normal egg-laying schedule.  They would have to be housed there probably until next spring when they could safely be released back into the wild.  Wow - this place is amazing!  (Seriously, if you want to give to a worth-while charity, please give to this one.  Follow the link above and click on "Donate". You can even say it's in the name of the ducklings admitted on 8/3/13.)

Napping in the car

  

So, with the little duckies taken care of, it was time to head home and mentally prep for my son's birthday party - a sleepover and trip to a local waterpark.  With a group of 4 or 5 thirteen-year-old boys.  Give me strength!!

There was an interesting phenomenon that I saw though that I'd never seen before at one of his birthday parties, and I've shared this with a couple of friends already, so excuse the repetition, but it baffles me.  Apparently when one-on-one with a thirteen-year-old boy, he comprehends what you're saying, follows directions (to a point), is a normal human being, but put him in a group of kids who are the same age and all of that disappears.  They become easily distracted, don't finish sentences or thoughts, start doing something like heading to the locker room to change, but instead stop after one step and try to whack each other with towels...for five minutes...before we had to start leading them to the locker room physically.  It was like we had never said anything at all.  I knew this day would come eventually, but I was hoping it would wait until he hit high school, and my hope of it ending around 18 was squashed by the hubby telling me it lasted until at least 40.   (Still glad I had a boy though)

We eventually got them to a place where they could change and went back to our place for a  sleepover.  Pizza, Doritos, Combos, soda and video games.  They were pretty content and the hubster and I went to bed at 11:30, leaving the dogs to make sure they didn't tear up the place.  The dogs did well.  Everyone survived and we sent them home in the morning.  Success! 

Sunday was a day of recuperation for everyone (booze and naps!), but today became interesting.  The hubby was accosted by some psycho ex-boyfriend of another one of our tenants.  Apparently this guy thinks that she's such a winner that every man who has ever talked to her (my husband included) is obviously boning her and must be dealt with. Even though he's not with her anymore and hasn't been for quite some time (gee, I wonder why). Can we say loony?  He threatened him, threatened to f*ck up his family (meaning us), blah blah blah, and drove off. 

Well that's awesome!

      

Now I get to make sure I carry my phone with me at all times and watch out for his car and keep the doors locked, but of course I'll do all of this without being paranoid because I'm freaking Wonder Woman, dammit!

So, yeah.  That's things here.  How have you been?