Notes of a Nervous Harpist

Dragon Slayed

This is my first post via wireless DSL at our house, which I just successfully installed. This has taken only 3 weeks, mostly because our first wireless modem was bad. I am sitting in a chair typing this on the laptop. Larry could also be sitting at the computer working, if he wasn't off at the other end of the house trying to work off a snit. Oh, well, when his body chemicals normalize and he emerges from his cave, he will be happy to have DSL up and going.

The first thing I did was sign onto HGTV's web site to watch a video I couldn't watch on dial-up this morning. The video demonstrates how to "cast on" when you are knitting. I've been wanting to learn to knit, but I can't get the idea into my fingers from the knitting instructions and illustrations. I needed to watch someone do it. Perhaps I'll take a knitting class, too, but the video zipped along perfectly on DSL, and I think that might do the trick!

Beautiful day here today. Have a nice Sunday.

New Blog to Check Out

I found a blog worth checking out today: Right Thinking Girl.

Remedial Humor 101

Okay, readers, I need some help here. Either I'm not funny, too funny, or British. But in any case, a joke I made went (allegedly) right over the head of our house's resident professional humorist -- my husband. Here's the way it went down:

Scene: A living room on a Sunday afternoon in Dallas, Texas. Husband is watching Dallas Cowboys football game on big screen TV. Wife is surfing the Internet, continuing Cowboy boycott she instituted when Tom Landry was fired.

Husband, raising his voice bitterly in reaction to some lame Cowboy play: "These birds can't tackle!"

Wife: "No, but they are really good at making cutting remarks!"

Now, Larry doesn't think that's funny. He says he doesn't get it. I thought it was a riot. I can't explain it to him. Is it me? Is it him? Is it funny?

PLEASE COMMENT and settle this domestic dispute.

Dog & Cat Blogging

Thanksgiving for the dogs and cats at our house:

The day begins at 5 a.m. with a cold trip outside followed by raucous barking while waiting for breakfast to be dished out. In and out to do business about a hundred times throughout the day, with at least one dog hanging back each time so that s/he can bark indignantly at the back door as soon as s/he senses that the humans in the house have either found a comfortable place to sit or are engaged in the tricky part of some task.

Dog naps are taken during the humans' breakfast. Then they wake up and one dog is elected as a group representative to go into the kitchen and position himself or herself in a full body dead faint on the floor against the bottom of the kitchen counter at my feet, right under where I'm trying to cook. This dog's instructions are not to move for any reason -- not for prodding, stepping on paws, or reasoning.

While I'm cooking, the duly elected cat representatives take turns venturing into the kitchen and threatening to run onto the food prep counter and dance about if not watched closely.

As lunch is served, the dogs sit and stare intently, or stretch up with at least one paw digging into your knee while you are eating. All dogs band their psychic powers together in a mentalist choir of "share the turkey, share the turkey, share the turkey," but again their best efforts fail this year.

Time for football? Time for naps all around. Three cats entwine themselves in my lap for the traditional Cowboy game nap. Dogs drape across sofa, chairs, and dog beds. Snoring, dreams of chasing prey ensue. For us, this is the time "Happy Thanksgiving" phone calls begin to roll in.

At 4 p.m., tummies growling with hunger, the dogs mill around and begin yipping and growling and playing, thumping around on the furniture and each other until we regain consciousness from our Cowboy nap and one of us gets up to fix their dinner.

Cats make another attempt at the food preparation counter in the mistaken belief that dog cereal is preferable to cat cereal.

Outside for post-dinner "business trip," the dogs rush around to bark at neighbors arriving or departing. Annie the Puppy discovers fallen leaves in the outside water dish and vigorously paws the offending leaves and most of the water out. Benchley the cat, who occasionally makes a break for it, is staying away from the back door today. Yesterday morning she did a sneak streak out but immediately turned around and ran right back in when she encountered the brisk freezing wind. It was cold and windy but, thankfully, the rain has let up for a couple of days.

After dinner, Griffin takes up his new favorite post, atop a box that Dad brought home from the newspaper when he cleaned out his cubicle last month. If this box is not emptied and thrown away, eventually Griffin will shred it to death with his claws.

After dinner? Dogs and cats all begin to "unravel the knitted sleep of care." In fact, if I turn slightly to the left and shoot downward, this is what I see. Annie. She's in the middle of another growth spurt, and it requires some serious napping, which is a relief from the serious chewing that she does when she's in a state of consciousness.

Let's Review

Still feeling relieved about the election, starting to get bored with the liberal sore losers. Are you?

Meanwhile, here's a reminder:

Make www.readlarrypowell.com a daily stop. It's Larry Powell Unplugged and it's great. Traffic is growing every day, new things are on the horizon, and you'd be surprised what can happen when you unchain the dead tree off a writer's leg!

Ads are coming soon to that great blog, and when they do, click, click, click to check them out!!!

Brilliant

Classic Lileks today:

A minor political note, if you’re interested in such things. The other day a young girl came to the door to solicit my support for her presidential candidate. I asked her why I should vote for this man. She was very nice and earnest, but if you got her off the talking points she was utterly unprepared to argue anything, because she didn’t know what she was talking about. She had bullet points, and she believed that any reasonable person would see the importance of these issues and naturally fall in line. But she could not support any of her assertions. Her final selling point: Kerry would roll back the tax cuts.

Then came the Parable of the Stairs, of course. My tiresome, shopworn, oft-told tale, a piece of unsupportable meaningless anecdotal drivel about how I turned my tax cut into a nice staircase that replaced a crumbling eyesore, hired a few people and injected money far and wide - from the guys who demolished the old stairs, the guys who built the new one, the family firm that sold the stone, the other firm that rented the Bobcats, the entrepreneur who fabricated the railings in his garage, and the guy who did the landscaping. Also the company that sold him the plants. And the light fixtures. It’s called economic activity. What’s more, home improvements added to the value of this pile, which mean that my assessment would increase, bumping up my property taxes. To say nothing of the general beautification of the neighborhood. Next year, if my taxes didn’t shoot up, I had another project planned. Raise my taxes, and it won’t happen – I won’t hire anyone, and they won’t hire anyone, rent anything, buy anything. You see?

“Well, it’s a philosophical difference,” she sniffed. She had pegged me as a form of life last seen clilcking the leash off a dog at Abu Ghraib. “I think the money should have gone straight to those people instead of trickling down.” Those last two words were said with an edge.

“But then I wouldn’t have hired them,” I said. “I wouldn’t have new steps. And they wouldn’t have done anything to get the money.”

“Well, what did you do?” she snapped.

“What do you mean?”

“Why should the government have given you the money in the first place?”

“They didn’t give it to me. They just took less of my money.”

That was the last straw. Now she was angry. And the truth came out:

“Well, why is it your money? I think it should be their money.”

Then she left.

And walked down the stairs. I let her go without charging a toll. It’s the philanthropist in me.