I should do this for a living. Nah...

On the way home today, I decided that it was time to fill the ruby-red glass vase that I got three Christmases ago from a co-worker. I've always like the vase, and it was just screaming for some calla lilies...but I just had never gotten around to doing the arrangement. But Michael's was having a sale on silks this week and I decided it was time. Besides, now that we're in the new house, we need to have a few nice floral arrangements around.

Anyway, I started with the callas and some eucalyptus. But more color was needed. And this was going in the sunroom, so it needed to be cheerful and bright. Callas tend to be elegant and dressy, not good by themselves for a casual arrangement. I had also thought about some sunflowers, but they were a little too casual for the ruby vase. So I decided to go down with the callas and dress them down. A spring of lavender gladiolus. A couple of burgundy lilacs. And for an infusion of sunny color, some little yellow flowers. Michael's label said they were "baby's breath." Uh, right. They weren't but they looked nice. Finally, some ivy to fill out the vase.

While I was there, I was looking around at some of the pre-made arrangements. Most of them were yawners. The cheapest ones, which were very stark, were $49.99. The ones that were the size I was interested in making were $109.99 and up. $109.99?!

So I picked out all my flowers and acoutriments and went to the register. $35.76. A lot better than $109.99, and mine turned out better than the ones in the store!

Anyway, as I was putting the arrangement together, I was thinking, "is there anything gayer than this?" And thinking about a young gay friend of ours who tells us he doesn't think of us as his dads, but thinks of us like a couple of gay uncles. And thinking, man, I feel very old and very gay.

(Really) Dumb luck

Some people just have all the luck. Even the ones who should be victims of Darwin's theory of natural selection. This entry is about one of those people.

A woman, eastbound on the boulevard that runs right in front of my place of work, had apparently spent a little too much time at the mall and was in a big hurry to get back home. In her haste, she blasted through a red light and clipped a car carrying an older couple.

As she clipped the car, she swerved and hit a power pole; this tossed the car into a roll, forcefully ejecting her from the vehicle onto the pavement. The car rolled three more times before landing on its roof, barely recognizable as a car.

When the police showed up about three minutes after the accident, they were surprised to find that the woman was conscious and was attempting to sit up. Her back, shoulders, and forearms were fairly severely lacerated, but she was alive. The car had virtually no roof as it was crushed completely into the passenger compartment.

Policeman: "This is crazy. She was lucky beyond belief. If she would have been wearing her seatbelt, which would have been the smart thing, she would have been dead. Of course, the smart thing would have been that she didn't run the light."

Fortunately, the other couple was not badly hurt. They were wearing their seatbelts. The front bumper of their car was sheared off by the idiot's car, and there was some other body damage, but considering the speed of the impact, it could have been much worse for them.

At any rate, idiot woman should have been dead, but her incredible luck left her with merely a trip to the hospital. I wonder if the bitch played the lottery today. If she didn't, she should have. Or maybe she did play and this was the luck that was meted out to her instead of the lottery winnings.

I've been a bad boy

It's been a long time between posts. I've been overwhelmed by the amount of work to do around here lately, and it doesn't look to let up soon. This weekend, Jeff is coming out from the city, bless his heart, to help us move more crap from the old house and throw stuff away as well. He is such a big help. It's always nice to have an objective third party who can say, "this is crap. You aren't going to use it, are you?" because then it can be thrown away. The only problem is that we have so MUCH stuff to throw away that we really need to rent a dumpster, because a lot of it is big: old computer monitors, desks, a 1960s TV cabinet (with no TV in it)...all sorts of stuff.

Even though we are in the new house, we're hardly finished with the old one. There is still plenty of furniture to move and plenty of junk to box up. It worries me. We have far more living space in the new house than the old, but the old house had twice the storage space of the new house. And Jess and I are packrats, so storage is important. But we're going to have to make it quick: the couple that is buying the old house is in a hurry to close.

I just can't wait for the weekend!