good morning! HAHAHAHA.

so this morning on the way to church i stopped at Sonic to get a cranberry tea. damn, but those things are good.

so the girl comes out to bring the food and take my money and says, “Oh, your hair is blue this week.”

“it is,” i nod. this might be a sign that i go to Sonic too much.

“hey, my friend in there *points back to the Sonic building* says she knows you.”

“oh yeah?” i can’t think of a single person i know who works at Sonic, but oh well.

“yeah, she says she knows you from Quest.”

“oh. is that some kind of church thing?” lots of times people either know me from work or church. if it was from the ‘brary i figured she would have said the ‘brary, so i went with church.

her face kinda twitches and she says, “no. it’s a… gay club in Birmingham.”

for fuck’s sake. “oh. then your friend does not know me.”

“so you don’t… go to places like that?”

subtle as a hammer. “no. i’m married actually. to a man. in case your friend was wondering.”

“oh me too!”

“great.”

“hey, i hope you’re not offended.”

“no, i’m not offended.”

“are you sure? are we cool?”

“yes, we are cool.”

“have a good day.”

“you too.”

and God was all, “HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! YOU SHOULD’VE SEEN YOUR FACE! HAHAHAHAHA. No but for real, you’re a good sport, Jaimie.”

July is getting a big head start, y’all.

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17. Blood Oath by Christopher Farnsworth

Category: 50 Books

17. Blood Oath by Christopher Farnsworth

Yes, this is the one I got last week. The one about the vampire who works for the president? Hee.

I’m shocked to admit it, but I liked this book. It was fast paced, the vampires weren’t all dramatic, and there wasn’t really a love-interest. It was straight action from beginning to end.

The vampire, Cade, swore a blood oath to serve and protect the president of the United States (he swore this oath to Andrew Johnson) and has worked for all the presidents since. Wacky premise! I liked it. It was very matter-of-fact. The vamp is used to fight against other dark forces who try to harm the U.S. so he doesn’t fight people. He fights monsters.

At the beginning Cade is introduced to his new handler, Zach Barrows. Zach is a pain at first but he gets into the part and by the end we’re all friends. The book was fast, had a sense of humor, and best of all it had vampires who weren’t all high school, teeny-bopper bullshit. It was blood and guts and laughs.

I’m certain we’ll see more of these characters soon.

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Tags: books, Christopher Farnsworth, fiction

16. Blockade Billy Stephen King

Category: Uncategorized

16. Blockade Billy by Stephen King

You know how sometimes Stephen King books can be hit or miss? Well I can’t figure out which one this is.

First of all, it’s a short story. And it’s about a baseball player. You’d think short and baseball would be right up my alley right? Well, the story was fine and I enjoyed the way he made it seem like an old man was telling him the story. Make no mistake, it would have sucked as a full on novel, but as a short story that kind of story telling is okay.

But this short story is published on it’s own. It’s one short story. In hardback. The price on the book was $25.

This story is not worth $25. Maybe if there had been 3 baseball stories? That could’ve worked. But $25 for a short story with a half-assed ending? (The ending was half-assed, by the way.) Plus, in it’s extra small format and illustrations it seemed like juvenile reading. Take out the swear words and the gruesome In Cold Blood ending, and it would’ve been a kid’s book.

I have no idea what he was going for with this book. It would have been so much better without the dinkiness and maybe, like I said, if it had a couple of short stories instead of just one.

No me gusta.

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Tags: baseball, books, fiction, Stephen King

15. The Cabinet of Curiosities by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Category: 50 Books

15. The Cabinet of Curiosities by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

This is an older book. I’m not sure if it’s part of a series or not. It seems like it is because the characters know each other from something that happened in Utah in the past, but it doesn’t go in to much details about it, so who knows?

I enjoyed this book a lot, it had good characters, a good mystery, a touch of the supernatural, and I really liked that it didn’t have one central character. I liked that the characters weren’t police investigators (well, Pendergast was FBI, but not a typical agent.) the chick was an archaeologist and one of the dudes was a journalist. I was not keen on the ending really. It seemed rushed or incomplete or something. But overall it was good and I’d recommend it to those who like thrillers.

A note on Pendergast: He was supposed to be some kind of southern aristocrat/FBI agent and the whole southern thing didn’t add anything to character/plot. Maybe because I’m from the south that it didn’t work for me. In fact, I kept thinking he was British.

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Tags: books, Douglas Preston, fiction, Lincoln Child

weekend pictures

Category: dribblings

Chairman Meow: Chipmunk Killa

aw, Roxy, why the long face?

she’s embarrassed by her summer cut.

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Tags: Lebowski, roxy

Roxy is at the vet

Category: dribblings

it’s that time again. time for Roxy to go to the vet and get her yearlies and a summer haircut. we took her to the vet yesterday (7:30am). she was supposed to be ready by 5:30pm. at noon the vet’s office called and asked if they could keep her overnight because the groomer was double-booked.

i was mad and wanted to be all bitchy at them, but i also know that shit happens. so i agreed to let Roxy stay. i told them i could picker her up by 10:30 this morning, but they said she wouldn’t be ready yet. (WTF?) so Mr. Fleegan will pick her up after he gets off work this evening.

so now i’m mad because she’ll have spent two days at the vet’s office being all, “SWING LOW, SWEET CHARIOT.” and collecting other dogs’ fleas. and because of this it will be doubly hard to get her to the vet’s office next time. she has one of those elephant memories.

i’ll post a pic of her and her beautiful new haircut.

IT BETTER BE BEAUTIFUL.

the groomer kept telling me what a sweet dog Roxy is. i’m not sure if she was trying to be super nice to me cos she knew i was kinda mad about leaving Roxy there overnight or what. but she told me 3 or 4 times during the phone conversation that my dog was so sweet.

and if you’ve met Rox you know that she is indeed the sweetest dog.

i hope she doesn’t come back all jaded.

“c’mere Roxy! here girl! here’s your cowbearpig!”

“you don’t know me! you don’t EVEN know me!”

“wha- but you love the cowbearpig. it’s your babydoll. you tote it around where ever you go.”

“that was before. you don’t know the things i’ve seen.”

“i… um, it was one night.”

“you don’t know the things i had to do in there.”

“…uh, sleep? cos you sleep a lot anyway… even at the house, right?”

“DON’T JUDGE ME! gimmie the keys, i’m going out for a drink.”

“i really miss the old Roxy.”

“yeah, well the old Roxy is DEAD! and it’s ALL YOUR FAULT!”

stomp, stomp, stomp, slamming door, tire squeal, gravel spray (we don’t have a gravel driveway, but it just sounds cool here), Gen. Lee “Dixie” car horn.

“…when did we get that horn?”

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Tags: roxy

camera obscura jeepovius II

Category: dribblings

the light was way better this early afternoon.

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Tags: art, jeep

camera obscura jeepovius?

Category: dribblings

A couple of days ago West (my favorite art and idea collaborator) and I were having some Art Time. We were drawing or painting or talking or whatever and I mentioned to him that I had seen this art program on the Ovation channel where this guy did an example of camera obscura for his students using some awesome villa in Italy.

At the same time we both said, “We have to do that.”

“We should make a goal to do that this summer.”

“Hell, let’s do it tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

So we did.

We did three of them. The first one was in the bathroom, and it worked all right but the walls were too close together and it threw everything kinda off. Part of it was awesome, but only a very small part.

The next day we did two more rooms. They worked much better. My Pursecam™ would not take a picture of it, well, it would, but not a good one. Not even a goodish one. The longest exposure it would take was 15 seconds. Just long enough to almost work.

Also on Day Two, West and I commandeered Liz to come help us play. It was probably one of the nerdiest mornings I’ve ever had.

Here we are using a small hole (on a metal ruler) to shorten the apperture and then put a piece of acetate in front of it. You can see how it projects the image from outside upsidedown.

On Saturday Mr. Fleegan and I went to B’ham to buy a *Serious Camera™ (by which i mean it can use different lenses). I’ve wanted one for, i don’t know, 5 years?

Well it rained all weekend. so no sunshine was around (which, let’s face it: imperative.)

But today! I was sitting quietly reading a book (nerd) and Mr. Fleegan was watching Conan the Barbarian (like one does on Memorial Day) and he said, “Hey, the sun’s out. Camera Time!”

I was all, “YES!”

BOOSH.

I’m calling this a success because even though it’s blurry, it still looks good. The reason it is blurry is

A. the camera is set to manual focus because it won’t take the pic in AF and

B. the room was much darker than what it looks like in the picture and when looking through the eye piece to focus all I could see was dark nothing.

But hey, you can see the green grass, blue sky, and the jeep almost looks red.

*************

STAY TUNED FOR POINTLESS TANGETS:

*Serious Camera™: Several years ago I did the same thing with guitars. When i was 18 I bought a 12-string accoustic guitar, and played it for, I dunno, two months. It’s a cool thing to own, but it’s not the funnest thing to play. Then I traded it in for a better accoustic/electric guitar (that I still have to this day, it’s the best.) it’s an Ibanez, like you care. I thought that that would be the last guitar I’d ever buy (seeing as how I play bass). But years went by and when I turned 27 I decided that I was an adult, and as an adult I should probably own an Adult’s Guitar™.

If you play guitar and are an adult, you might be thinking, “Ah, good for her!”
If you don’t play guitar you might be thinking, “I hate when people talk about guitars. Who cares?!”

So i bought a Martin.

I know, right? What, you thought it’d be a Taylor? Sorry to disappoint, but c’mon, Martin is a classic.

The Martin is straight acoustic, so no pick-up, so it’s never been played at a gig or anything. But! It is the LOUDEST unplugged acoustic I’ve heard. It’s a sweet guitar, and I rarely play it.
Because I suck, that’s why. No, it’s because the Ibanez has a smaller body and it’s easier for me to tool around with than the Martin, but obviously, the Martin’s sound is boss.

WHAT IS THE POINT HERE?

The POINT is it’s time for me to own a Serious Camera™. (see, if I call it an Adult Camera it sounds like it’s for porn.) So Mr. Fleegan and I made that happen this weekend, despite me being a penny-pinching miser.

CUT YOU TO THE QUICK:

And before the Internet Camera World groans out an audible, “great. another hobbyist.” I’d like to remind you that I have a fine art degree. So don’t “hobbyist” or “enthusiast” me. I may not be a photographer, but I am an artist. bitches.

FOR THE NERDS: My Serious Camera™ is a Canon EOS Digital Rebel T1i. It was the most camera I could get for under $1,000. I was going to get the very beginner-friendly XS or maybe step up to the XSi, but then I noticed that the processor in my Pursecam™ (FOR THE NERDS: powershot something 1200 something something, look, i’m a Canon Girl.) was a digic4 (sorry, Dig¡c4. gay.) and the processor in those DSLRs was digic3. and i thought it would be stupid to get a better camera with a non greater-than or equal-to processor than my dinkcam, right?

well that, and the Best Buy Salesman looked like Melfa’s husband and there was this bundle deal and i’m sucker.