Take a Vote

If you leave your retainers in your hotel room on a paper plate on your unmade bed, and the housekeeper throws them away... who should be held responsible for replacing them?

 

A.  You are an Idiot.  Cough up the dough.

B.  You are entitled to some sort of re-imbursement.

 

OR

 

C.   Other (Please specify).

 

BTW, "You" is "me'. 

 

 

Murl's Anatomy

Hello all. For those of you I haven't spoken with in awhile... I took a mini-unscheduled vacation. To the hospital.

Last tuesday I had the stomach flu. I was becoming a pretty good shot, vomiting into the tub while sitting on the toilet, when I decided I needed some help. So my CLIENT came back to my hotel and took me to the ER. Where I was given some fluids and some nausea meds that WIPED me out. So my mom and my Monty drove out to Terre Haute to take me home. Before they arrived I was given fluids so they could get a urine sample. I had been too dehydrated before to give one, so they had to wait a little while. I finally had stopped, ahem, ejecting things, long enough to fall into a drug-induced coma. But apparantly I was getting too comfortable. A bald, giant, earring clad nurse bursts in, wakes me from a good REM sleep flips the light on and demands a sample. I wasn't moving fast enough for him yet, so he unhooks my fluid bag, throws it on the bed and wheels me out the door to the bathroom...which was less than 5 feet from my room. It was so disturbing, like coming out of the womb must have felt. I was cold, disorented, nauseous and surrounded by people in scrubs. He really wanted this sample.. maybe for himself.. maybe he was trying to play football and needed a clean one? Who knows. I asked him if I could have a pink tray before I left the bed.. and he said "What? Oh sure, but.. we refer to those as 'pukin-buckets'!"

Lovely.

I finally was discharged and rode home. The next day and a half I spent in a coma and the world just passed by without me. I didn't answer any e-mail or go to work so I ended up with six impromptu days off, and it was wonderful and tomorrow it will be horrible, but for now, for a few more hours it is still wonderful.

Thanksgiving turned into a mini-vacation and I got to visit a ton of folks. Closest to my heart being my good friend Coralea and her baby boys who I hadn't seen in YEARS. But the oldest son remembered me and both boys were so adorable and loving. Most kids I'm around are shy and not so quick to warm up to strangers, but these two didn't have that problem, I think it is an environmental thing. Check out these cuties!

Shards of Skull... the name of my new cover band...if I had a cover band...

Many tings.
My roomate Katie's weddin. Much belated post on the week-ago event... but Indiana happens.


Anywho. Great time. Ended up being a mini-DR reunion special.. Tons of old familiar wonderful faces.. speaking of faces.. This was my super-slick trick on Markus and JRo...


So super... so slick...so unnoticed.. so captured for-ever on film...




Willie!'s attempt at revenge didn't fare so well, totally knew he was there, and captured the pit stain for-ever on film.... :)


In other Katie and Patrick wedding related news... I "hosted" a part of the wedding party at my place, which would have been fantastic... except I picked that weekend to have my sewer pipes replaced in the front yard. In a deft flash of brilliance and planning skill, I had a bobcat and several savory characters in my front yard, a giant truck blocking my drive, seven women in the house and a pile of poo in my basement.

Got that cabled out after the fact and find to my horror, that the bobcat and his band of merry men did not unclog my clot, didn't straighten my sewer... didn't really help my problem. My problem may be under the house, where no man can go...

So stay tuned for the continuing saga of my money pit. I'm sure it will be blog-worthy.

Thankfully, Tim helped me clean up before when went and saw The Departed.. which by far gets my vote as best use of skull shards in a dramatic action film. Loved Leo in that one.. Hate Leo in everything else..

This week I blew a tire on the rented Jeep Liberty.

Good thing I had some good ole' boys there to help me change the tire.. It was a cold, rainy, bone-chilling, frosty windy, not warm 'Cheeseburgers in Paradise' parking lot in lovely urban-sprawling Terre Haute.

Of note.. the good old boy number one asks me where my jack is on the jeep.. since it's not mine, I do not know offhand. They take off on a 21 point inpection of the vehicle to locate said jack.

I look in the manual...The other female in the car says sarcastically under her breath... "Now Lindsey, why would you look in the manual?" I am the first jill to the jack.

O-E-yes!

Warning... Enginerd humor. Safe to say the whole room was crakin up when maybe the dearest little Indian Man on earth dropped the following bombs-o-funny. .

Structural Engineer: "We should put a note that says... Don't drill through beams...seems obvious, but I think it needs to be said."
Structural Engineer, disdainfully, on what scale to draw certain section in: "3/32 is a bastard scale".
Structural Engineer on which floors to pour: "Do the second first and then the first second."

Love that guy.

V Mars slips in the Murl ratings..

Before: After:

Yes.. Jim, Mark, basically I'm dissappointed with VMars after her big change to the CW. They took the best TV detective/comedy/drama and made it the O.C! The show started out with Veronica being a junior in high school with a big story line, great deeply developed characters.. from the gold-hearted motorcycle gang leader, to the confused sarcastic lovable bad boy, to the bumbling simple minded local sheriff who you love to hate, and taken it and scrubbed it of all it's unique-ness and turned it into a typical college drama. Shouldn't the writers have known from the examples of 90210 and Saved by the Bell, that you CAN'T transition a high school drama into a college one effectively... heck.. you can't even do it in real life. This season of VMars has turned Veronica into a jealous "girly-girl", had dropped or ignored HUGE plot lines (maybe because actors didn't return for this season.. but we are just left hanging on major parts of the story..like where is Duncan? Where is her mom? There is no emphasis on the relationship between her and Wallace.. (which is one of the best story lines, and relationships they had going). Ugh.. and NOW her Dad (who also constitutes one of the best Father-daughter acts of all time) is having an affair with a married woman. BOOOO, I say.. HISS BOO. Another example to follow many others of a show that had GREAT potential and was so different, turned into every other pop show on TV.

Yeah. I was scared to admit it.. but I'm not happy. I will say the first two seasons are some of the best work I've seen on TV, and this third season leaves me with an "eh" feeling.

Don't get me wrong.. it's still a good show.. it just used to be a great show.

And it make me sad.

Bold, Scandalous Hope

Ok. So I think I've had a revelation. Not one that I haven't had before... but somehow it seems to have more stick power, and less emotion driven as previous "yay-God-type" revelations. Ever since my bff Angela mentioned the lack of a "Bold Hope" driving back from Greenville, the ring of that phrase hasn't left my brain. There are so many reasons to be cynical. Countless reasons. It is absolutely justifiable to be hard, and cold and self-protective and to look out for number one. It really makes a lot of sense. Good advice from the 'wiser' older to the younger. Watch out for you, because no one else will. My spirit is crushed daily with the weight of this world, I stood at the polls today wanting to kick the booth over with angst for the lack of real solutions, I see the droves of homeless around Monty's loft and I want to get a bull horn and chant "GET A JOB" out the side of the car, but I also want to make them sandwiches, but I don't want them to mug me. (How awful am I?), I want to take the fowl mouthed people who yell at each other on the reality shows and I want to force them to watch video of themselves while tied to a chair, but I keep watching them while not tied to anything. I want all politicians put in a boxing ring in sumo suits with built in tasers and let them fight to the death. I want fat people to be thin, I want emaciated people to eat, I want the sick to be healed and I want wrong to be RIGHT. But how? It's overwhelming to the perfectionist in me that says ALL or NOTHING. But there is one BIG giant reason to be hopeful. And that reason is that God is at work. And the God of scripture DOES have power and has purpose and is all that is good and light in the world. It is all things worth forwarding in an e-mail that warm your heart, it's all things that are so beautiful, that stand out against the stark white cold hardness of the world we live in. They are often very small things. The diary of Anne Frank was a very small thing. Very small words from a little teenaged girl, in the midst of a hurricane of hate and tragedy. Those whispered words spoke much louder and lasted much longer than the Hilters did. The trials of Martin Luther King Jr. who was up against violence and hate whose voice now rings out victoriously in a world that more and more (I feel) sees people being judged by the content of their character. In a backyard example...I see men like Monty. He may be unpolished on the surface..the things he says make me cringe sometimes, he may have scary tattos, but his heart is one that is beautiful. He loves people who can't love him back. He loves people who have hurt him.. loves them radically, even monitarily and wouldn't imagine playing it any other way. He cares for people whose lives are messy, and he gets into the mess for them. He loves freely and often and doesn't count costs before deciding to love. He isn't ruled by fear. Period. He isn't concerned with appearances, says what he thinks and isn't afraid to be wrong. He feels things and isn't afraid to feel what he's feeling, fully and completely. Isn't afraid to chase after a girl who dumped him. Is isn't afraid of anything really..except God. Mmkey that was a mush-fest-over...sorry. With all of the examples I could give of the merits of hoping, of trying. I still I see people, including myself, plugging into a world that wont heal. It refuses medicine, it refuses love, it refuses to drink, it refuses to breathe. I get too smart for myself sometimes because i don't "see" God working. Or it seems better and smarter to play the odds that things are going to turn out badly, that people are going to hurt you and that life is going to dissappoint you terribly if you start getting this "hoping" notion into your head. Can we rise up? We are engaged in an epic battle (oh geez John Eldridge...) and it is a grand shame that i forget it so often, because I'm surrounded by smart people who don't believe. People I admire for their brains and talent, who can't see what I can see. And it, honestly, makes me feel a bit stupid. It makes the little girl in me stick her chin out and fold her arms and choke back hot angry tears. B-but he IS real. Why wont you see? Oh ok, to maintain the 'coolness' factor, I'll take my God down a notch. I'll what? Am I serious? I can do no such thing. May God not smite me. I can't because it isn't true. It shames me to say that these are my thoughts. I pound the nails in further. My revelation is this. It's ok to hope. It's the better deal. And I'm going to...damn it. Don't care who thinks I'm a Pollyanna. I don't care. I have reason for hope. I mean the Cardinals won a freakin' World Series this year... ANYTHING is possible... ;)

True Story.

My brothers hilariously inappropriate friend, Steve, sent Dusty this video he took on his phone.

This is in a long drive comptetition. Note this particular contestant's lack of shirt, shoes and the presence of the HOUSE ARREST anklet.

Oh yeah.

Riddle Me This..

How do you find exactly THREE white castle burger boxes in the abandoned fish tank in the backyard? One, maybe... I could see it accidentally getting blown in there from God knows where... but THREE? I'm thinking deliberate deposit of the crave cases into said water-laden fish tank. Oh yes.. someone..some late-night good-timer PURPOSELY used the abandoned fish tank in the backyard as their own personal trash-can... and WHY are they wandering out in my backyard??

I'm setting up cameras...
Crochety. party of one.