Thursday, May 08, 2008

13 random things about fire, palm trees, dogs, and music. And airports.

  1. There was a chimney fire. Rather than start putting out the fire, my grandfather sat down and started drawing up plans for a new house. My grandmother got help from the hired hand and they put out the fire. My grandfather really really enjoyed building houses, and apparently took glass half full to whole new levels.
  2. Zach and I all have some form of musical ADD. Mostly we only listen to CD's that we have burned. Seriously mixed CDs. Occasionally there will be two songs by the same artist or group on the same CD, but mostly it goes something like this: Frank Sinatra, Linkin Park, Louis Armstrong, Elvis Costello, Italian classical music, Maroon 5, Cake's cover of Kenny Roger's Ruby Don't Take Your Love to Town, Elvis Presley,Kelly Clarkson, the Beatles, something from the soundtrack to Sweeney Todd. No themes, no cohesiveness.
  3. Another facet of our song ADD involves being almost completely incapable of listening to an entire song while driving around in the car. I find that I sit slightly forward in the Suburban so I can reach the next song button within a third of a second...
  4. But I will listen to the same song 5 times in a row for days on end. Then not listen to it for several years.
  5. When I am listening to my Ipod it has to be on shuffle of course, and I get annoyed if it plays too much of any singer or group. Shuffle should not alternate between Elvis Costello and Linkin Park. That's not shuffling. That's just being lazy.
  6. I have to listen to Linkin Park's Breaking the Habit in every airport when I am flying. Even those I am just passing through. I have been doing this for four years or so, ever since I first heard it when Zach played it for me at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam. I forgot to listen to it in Phoenix SkyHarbor when we went to Italy in March. And what happened? Our plane reservations for the flights home were canceled. We were stuck in Rome for four or five hours while they figured out how to get us back to Arizona. Had I listened to Breaking the Habit in SkyHarbor, never would have happened.
  7. I get seriously giggly when I reach a certain point of exhaustedness. I always have. My family remembers a trip to Washington, DC, and how I would laugh at everything and anything around 4:00 every afternoon (I was 4). My kids do this too. So much better than getting cranky, right?
  8. We had a dog -- a beagle basset hound named Theo -- for 16 years. He was goofy looking...he had the classic basset body, with the bow legged front legs, the long body, the stumpy legs, but he had a beagle head. He had a thick neck. You couldn't drag him with the leash, because he could slide his collar over his head -- if we tightened the collar enough to prevent that, he wouldn't have been able to breathe. He was a well-traveled dog -- he lived in Germany with us, and flew back to the US once or twice with me when I was visiting my parents.
  9. My Mom accidentally almost strangled Theo once. She tied the leash to the garage door, and then promptly forgot and opened it. She turned around, and there my poor dog was, dangling from the garage door by his neck (I don't know why he didn't slide his head out of the collar this time. He was a really really great dog, but not the smartest dog ever.) My siblings find this very very funny.
  10. I own palm trees. I cannot begin to express how deeply weird this is. I own palm trees. Four of them. (There used to be five, but the little one didn't survive the really cold snap last winter.) We are not really a palm tree family. Oaks, maples, evergreens, sure. But not palms. Mostly we live in cold or damp climates.
  11. I think palm trees are of the genus stupid. I don't like them at all. I mean, I think they are probably awesome in whatever climes they are native to (sorry. To which they are native. dangling prepositions and all that, don't you know...) but in California and Arizona? Stupid and annoying.
  12. But totally awesome to photograph. I love to photograph the weird textures of the bark and trunk and leaves. Plus I have a couple of really cool photos that I shot straight up under a palm tree...So really, it's kinda crazy I don't like palm trees...But I have never claimed to be particularly sane.
  13. I have never been to New England. I have been south -- Florida, Virginia, one of the Carolinas (I don't know which one. It was a very long time ago.). I grew up in the midwest -- I have lived in Minnesota and Illinios, and traveled a lot in or through the Great Plains. I lived in the Pacific Northwest. I adore the Pacific Northwest. I live in Tucson, which checks off the desert Southwest. But I have not been to New England. This is very wrong. Someday, someday I will be in Maine and Vermont and New Hampshire and which ever other states are the New England ones. Someday. Not today. Or next week. Next week is really busy.




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14 comments:

  1. #4 caught my attention - funny, 'cause I do the same thing...Hope you're doing well. Sure nice to see you again after being away from blogging so long. *Lots of Lov'n*

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  2. Anonymous1:56 PM

    Great list, happy TT!

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  3. Your siblings and I must have similar senses of humor, because I laughed so hard at the strangling dog story that, in trying to keep the laughter under control so the other people in the office wouldn't know I was like blogging or something, I farted. And the guy in the next office heard it and this "EEEEWWWWWWW" came floating through the open office door. I guess if I'm going to read you I should keep my door closed.

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  4. Anonymous2:08 PM

    You are so totally random and nutty, and I love it! Much fun. Much.

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  5. chuck -- my son accuses me of ruining songs for him by doing that. I accuse him of ruining my day by endlessly skipping over songs I love to listen to crap music. People sometimes don't like riding in the car with us...

    Thanks, chris!

    Lou -- I laughed really a lot at your comment. Suppressed laughter is a danger to your health. Or your coworkers's noses...

    Maggie -- thanks, girl!

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  6. You are too funny. Do you think you'll miss the palms when you move?

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  7. Kat...I don't know. I do know I won't miss the one that scrapes across the roof of my bedroom on breezy nights. I'll still own them, for now, anyway. The market is so sucky we are renting the house out rather than trying to sell.

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  8. I enjoyed thatit was a great list Julie! I'm so glad Abe is better too!

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  9. Anonymous7:42 PM

    Ok, Julala, I confess - I started laughing hysterically again when I read about Theo dangling from the garage door by his leash. If I called Mark now and said only, "Theo dangling from the garage door," he would lose his grip. When Mark and James are 96 and 93, they will fall out of their wheelchairs laughing about Mom strangling the dog. Part of the fun is picturing Mom's frantic efforts to get the dog down. My stomach hurts from laughing.

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  10. Thanks, Jientje!

    Marilyn -- my kids think it's funny too. The funniest part to me is that she tied the dog to the garage door and IMMEDIATELY went into the garage and opened the door. She forgot in the time it took her to walk around to the little garage door that she had just tied the dog to the door...It's that doing everything at the speed of light thing. We are always thinking about the next 15 things we have to do.

    Like I have already stopped thinking about the comment I am writing and thinking instead about what to make for dinner (baked chicken salad, I think, with Zach's guacamole salad on top. Yum!)

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  11. Owning palm trees is really strange - I can't imagine. Love this random post.

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  12. Hello - happy TT. I get the song thing as a mix cd is definitely preferable to a whole cd by one band. HOWEVER I am too lazy to actually make them.

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  13. Anonymous7:21 AM

    I definitely agree with your ADD music. I am like that.

    Also thanks, I have Linkin Park in my head now.

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  14. Anonymous5:09 AM

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    ReplyDelete

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