ablutions 2

here is our living room rug, three days later, painstakingly suspended atop an assortment of table chairs and little tikes stools. chance of thunderstorm today: 30%.

as we keep telling Dog, it's all his fault.

useful info

here is the answer to the nagging question every one of us avid facebook-ers must have asked at one time or other: what happens to my facebook account when i die? we get a niche in the online columbarium, no less. 

social media meets internet geekdom meets miss manners.

spare me

there is a pernicious habit that ranks even higher than spidiocy in offensiveness, and that is the way some people have of sidling up to you with their kids' fundraising card and girl scouts cookies and banking on your polite capitulation to the unspoken demand for cash. i rank this up there with people unblushingly peddling their home-cooked food/tour to china/insurance policies/tupperware to unsuspecting friends and acquaintances.

the warm cocoon of mutual regard and respect is under threat.

howdy!

after the earthquake hurricane and tropical storm

the flooding and power outages and road closures

the economy and the partisanship

and the sick dog

you tend to appreciate a nice day a lot more.

ablutions

here is our living room rug, cleaner than it has ever been in all its years with us, as a consequence of Dog's tummy discomfort. we even get to discover pretty new flowers in the border where an amorphous beige used to preside.

dysania

i have a bone-deep, limb-weighting, brain-softening attack of dysania this afternoon.

new word

dysania n. the state of finding it hard to get out of bed in the morning. [f. Gk. dus and wiktionary]

i call it the five-minute syndrome. this has the advantage of pithy characterization (5 minutes more...) as well as the potential for indefinite expansion (5 more minutes...).

blushworthy 2

now, i hold that one has an incontrovertible right to make an ass of oneself, in the honorable tradition of freedom of speech an' all.

but i do think one should pause before doing so. as i tell HOM, if he makes a fool of himself he looks stupid and perhaps his family is discomfited. but when an elder statesman does so an entire nation blushes with him.

the seven dials mystery - a christie (1929)

shades of the secret adversary and jane austen's mr collins in a delicious romp through post-war still-gentrified england. lord Caterham tries to dissuade an ardently misguided suitor: i really shouldn't if i were you. just go home and think it over like a good fellow. count twenty. all that sort of thing. always a pity to propose and make a fool of yourself.

this is dame agatha at her irreverent best, effectively and effortlessly spoofing the thriller. jolly good fun, even if the plot is strangely familiar.

blushworthy

read this. in summary, the q & a goes like this:

earnest young lady: what can we do to create a sense of belonging and foster social cohesiveness?

elder statesman: how old are you? are you married? do you have a boyfriend? don't waste time. i hope you get a boyfriend.

this could become the textbook example of the non sequitur.