I Still Can't Believe It

Flowers of Congratulations Originally uploaded by Corn Dog . To my dear friends Anna y Jorge.

devon's birthday pie-off Originally uploaded by Corn Dog . Back story: My youngest brother was 14 or 15 when one night another brother stopped by the house to see if Shorty D-Bone wanted to go to a party since Mom & Dad were out and SDB was home alone. Upon arrival to pick him up unannounced, SDB was not ready because, as he so succinctly stated, "What about my pie?". Turns out SDB, in a state of hunger so dire he'd barely avoided gnawing his hands off, had just popped a pie in the oven. Yeah, 15 and baking pies on a Saturday night. We were merciless in our ribbing once we all heard the story. And forever since. So this weekend was SDB's 18th birthday. Here in the states, he's now considered legal, but only because he can vote and be drafted. Still can't imbibe alcoholic beverages with impugnity, although don't tell the Piney that. So how does his loving family celebrate? With a pie baking contest of course. SDB was the judge and I'm...

My horoscope today said that "my insecurity has taken on a life of its own". That's comforting. Now I remember why I quit reading horoscopes. Although, I thought I was just making the title up with this reference to Saturn rising, but as it turns out, my astrological chart really does say that Saturn is my ascendant planet right now. I'm super fucking in tune with my planets, so just keep that in mind. It's my secret weapon. In other news, have you ever had that problem where you have absolutely so much going on and so much to do, that you find yourself unable to start and complete one simple task? Take for instance, a blog post. I must have started writing on four separate posts in the last week, yet you can easily see nothing new posted in that time frame. I'm guilting on the fact that I haven't posted in so long. Generally, I wouldn't care so much - at least not enough to feel guilty about it - but the wicked knowledge that there are a few hardy sou...

I'm off to London - quick trip this time. Just going for a one-day meeting, but somehow we're working in a dinner cruise on the Thames, so that should be fun/interesting. Since I'm not bringing my camera (have the cameraphone with me), I'm sure I'll see all sorts of cool shots. That's how it usually goes it seems like. All weekend I had my camera with me and whenever it wasn't literally in my hand, I had all kinds of ideas for shots. When I did have it, all I managed to take photos of were the river (moving F-A-S-T and coming up about an inch an hour at one point) and of the dogs (which I'm guessing everyone but me is sick of). Oh well. At least I didn't drop the camera on the concrete floor, like some people do at the Piney. Ride is here - back in a few days!

...I hate taxes with the fiery hot hate of the ant looking at a magnifying glass. ...I'm glad Kurt Vonnegut was a writer. His wit and unique worldview are immortalized in print and that makes me happy. ...I'm the oldest person I know that still gets an Easter basket from their mum. She even puts money in a plastic egg. She's such a softie. ...I think once the grandkids start popping out (not me, my sister-in-laws. don't freak out), my Easter basket getting days are over. ...I'm really sad my iPod got jacked up on my last work trip. The sound only comes through on one channel now and it's not the headphones - it's the jack in the iPod. Boo. ...Work sucks so bad it's actually funny. Not the hours I'm working, but the sheer amount of chaos is amusing. Silly work people. ...My fantasy baseball team is wank. I'll never win with that motley crew. ...I'll think of something actual to post over the weekend. Piney is rejuvenating like that.

Will that post title work to distract you from the long slog between posts that seems to have become the norm? If yes, awesome, you're my kind of distracted. If not, toughen up, there's an arduous journey ahead of you and you should really save your strength for something more important to worry about...like toe hair and nose grease. And since that last might have sounded like some kind of advice, please heed my warning to never ever EVER, under penalty of looking stupid, take my advice on anything. "What do I know" is a common disclaimer I add to the ends of sentences in real life. If you want to get into the semantics of it, what do any of us really know ? Nothing is a foregone conclusion - I mean, just ask Pluto. You go for years being considered an equal and then some squinty-eyed scientists decide to strip you of your very lifeblood - who will ever learn to care about a non-planet? I guess lately I have been fooled into complacency, thinking I know somethin...

I guess the more frequently you fly, the more opportunities there are for weird shit to happen. On the flight from Vienna to London, our plane "hit several birds" according to the cap'n. All I know is that shortly after takeoff, there was a loud thump after which proceeded a fairly noxious smell and the flight attendant getting up and looking at both engines, then getting on the horn to the cockpit. The cap'n's little speech also included the comforting "these engines are built to withstand such events, so we're proceeding as normal to our destination". I thought the whole flight after that point felt wonky...just kind of off. Then again I had basically only had a nap the previous night, instead of being a normal person and getting a full six or even seven hours of sleep before undertaking a marathon of taxis (1), airports (4) and planes (3) in the span of 15 or so hours. Right. Looking back, it seems like that was a recurring theme to this trip: get...

I just lost my post about the trip to Vienna. Am typing this so I don't continue with my preparations to commit Harry Caray on this mutha fucking computer. I'm buying a Mac and that is final. FUCK WINDOWS XP. I hate you with the burning hot hate of a million rivers of lava. LAVA!!!!! Carry on. Will have to update later on the trip. Once my brain can muster up something other than this string of invective currently overtaking all other thought.

At least, I'm hoping to get lost today during my walking tour of what is a stunning city. Across the street from my hotel is park where a famous Mozart statue and a famous Goethe (pronounced gerta, thanks JoySoy) statue live. The weather is ideal with mostly sunny skies and cool, but not cold. Magnolia trees, forsythia and any number of other early spring blooms pop out against the architecture. I can definitely see why Vienna is considered a romantic city. On the other hand, this keyboard has caused that last paragraph to take me about 10 minutes and now I must run to catch up with my sightseeing companions. Why must they put the z where the y is supposed to be? And none of the punctuation marks are in the right place. I guess they had to get creative in order to have these: Ä Ö ß § µ € °.

...you get a new phone? I am bursting with pride over my new little friend. It sings to me and she retrieves my email...I love it so. The only downside is that I'm bound to become one of those people pretending to pay attention in a conversation but am actually checking my emails on my phone. But, I'm breaking it in with the firm assertion that I WON'T become one of those people addicted to their email. I'm not that important and I don't ever want to be that important. ...you have a party and the cops are called because people are having too much fun for stodgy suburbia? The third (or was it fourth) annual Jamexican party had probably it's largest turnout ever (thanks in large part to Anna and her party coordination skills) and I think everyone had a jolly good time. By the time the cops showed up to let us know there had been "several" noise complaints from neighbors (which maybe? I have a hard time believing since two of our five neighbors wer...

Chicken feet salad. Yum!

Which means I'll just have to tell the rest of the story via pictures. The lake outside the Summer Palace. Just a short drive from Beijing city, it was raining proper by the time we arrived. The lake was pretty much invisible. But I really like how this picture turned out. It's not shot in B/W either. These are candied sweet potato fries. They were piping hot when they were served. You grabbed a few with the chopsticks and pulled them straight up off the pile. The little strings are like molten hard candy and once you have a lot of longevity (as evidenced by how high you could pull the fries up and still have candied webs), you dipped the fries in that little bowl of water next to Plate of Fiery Love in order to cool them off to just under the temperature of the sun and eat them. De-fucking-lish. A path outside the Temple of Heaven. I really love this picture. I wonder what those two were talking about. I wondered that a lot on this trip. Not being able to communicate makes me ...

On Friday, we went to the blah blah blah Jade "factory", then the Ming tombs, then the enamel "factory" then the Great Wall, and then finished off with blah blah blah Peking Duck. I think I peaked too soon with that ginormous post yesterday. It's true that the first day was a fucking whirlwind and I was cream crackered at 9:30 when we finally got back to the hotel. And day two was another day of Dead Emporer Sites galore. Can you believe I've only been back for three days and I'm already this jaded? Standby while I slap myself and then climb out of my Hole O' Pity. Right then. Where was I? Yes, day two in Beijing. The "factories" were government-owned shops where a girl (always a girl, lower to mid-20's) would rattle off a brief history of the intricacies of whichever factory we were at. At various points during the guided tour, we went to the jade factory, the enamel factory (where they make cloisonne trinkets and vases and jewe...

I'm going to start out by saying that I think everyone should try to travel internationally at least once in their lives. One of the things I really noticed on this trip was how much being in a foreign place makes you question your assumptions. Everyone knows assumptions are bad mmmkay, but that doesn't stop us from making them. But when you're someplace so far from home and so far from the culture you were raised in, the obvious doesn't seem so obvious. And questioning things keeps us alert and young and...I don't know...alive in a way? We (my boss, her husband and another co-worker) had a guide/translator and a driver. We paid $340 plus about $100 in tips for six days worth of driving and sight-seeing, as well as our lunch and dinner meals. Beijing is working on adding a lot of English signage at tourist sites and in common areas for the impending Olympics in 2008, but it's pretty much impossible to get around if you don't speak Mandarin. So, this was a go...

To those who haven't yet said "to hell with that blog and that bitch that never updates" you will be rewarded with photos (with titles and explanations! it's the time-consuming part) and posts about my recent trip to Beijing. Veddy, veddy soon. I even took notes while there so I would remember all the stuff I saw in order to share it here. I have officially become my grandmother. As for the mobile blogging experiment, well, I think you can tell how that went. The test worked and then my subsequent attempts at posting from the phone failed. I probably spent $16 in text messaging fees for posts that never showed up. I think I may have figured out the problem though and thank god too - I can't wait to see how the picture of the chicken feet salad turned out. Seriously. A salad with chicken feet as the main ingredient. I also tried to post from an Internet kiosk at the Hong Kong airport. The site was blocked though and the nice little pop-up said CDB was bloc...

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Happy Year of the Boar from Macau. I arrived last night at about 7:30 pm, which was about 9:30 am Friday at home. I left my house at 4:15 am on Thursday, so for any mathematically challenged out there, that means I was en route for 29 hours. Which, let me tell you, was about as much fun as I can take. It really wasn't that bad of a journey, although the leg from St. Louis to Chicago for some reason really had me anxious. Maybe it was the part where we started doing circles in the sky about 30 minutes into a 45 minute flight. Just flying around in circles over Illinois. The long haul part was uneventful, for which I'm eternally grateful. We took the same route as we did last year when I made this trip, which is to say, straight north from Chicago, over the North Pole and then straight south over Russia, Mongolia, China and then finally landed in Hong Kong. Things I saw during the flight (amongst other things I won't share out of love for you, my dear reader...things ...

And it's been happening under my nose. Literally. I made an appointment to get regular maintenance on my car. After arriving at the shop, I was cleaning up some loose papers, mostly receipts that were around in the car and there was a folded newspaper. As I pulled the newspaper out from between the seats, a newspaper that hadn't been there more than a week, a fluttering of newspaper bits went all over the floor. Hmm . Weird. So I unfold the newspaper and that's when I see the first knock-me-on-the-head-I'm-an-oblivious-bastard clue that something is terribly wrong - not with my car, but with it's inhabitants. A few months ago, I spilled some coffee on the little in-between the seats console. I grabbed some napkins out of the glove box and in the midst of sopping up the spill, I notice that the napkins are all frayed on the edge. I figure they got caught in the latch. A few weeks after that, I was on the street outside my house, where SB usually parks and noticed thi...

I'm conflicted. Should I post about my love for spuds or how burned out I am on work? Such a toss up, I'm sure you can see how this dilemma is not easily solved. See, on the one hand, my love for potatoes is deeper and more meaningful than any mundane work-related issue and I could speak poetically about the tuber at length. But on the other hand, the very real and almost tangible drain on my psyche that's occurring in large part because of job-related blahblah is a contributing factor in why I haven't been able to muster up the energy to write much of late. Mmmmmm. Taters. I kind of feel like Bubba from Forrest Gump about le pomme de terres. I can eat them fried, stewed, skewered, boiled, broiled or baked. Add them to any dish and I'll pretty much guarantee I'll eat it. Starchy little nuggets of love, that's what I call potatoes. I love me some fucking po-tay-toes. These are the thoughts that get me through the day. These and thoughts of the reveng...