Do the Yak

Joy Unexpected , one of the blogs I read regularly, recently held a contest where entrants had to say one random thing about themselves. Here are some of my favorite entries (you can see all of them here ): I am addicted to Yahtzee. I have an unnatural fear of eucalyptus trees. The summer after my freshman year in college, I had a hairdresser die in the middle of my haircut. I am 35 but still have three baby teeth in my mouth. There are no adult teeth to take their place. I am supposed to use a child's toothbrush to brush them but seldom do. I married my ex-boyfriend's ex-wife's ex-husband. I hope that my son is gay so that his boyfriends will go shopping with me, and have me over for dinner. I have it all planned out. I've cut off three of the fingers on my right hand. In separate incidents. And by "cut off" I mean severed. All have been re-attached and are (relatively) functional. I've always wanted to be feisty. I'm working on that now. I enjoy eati...

When kitsch becomes art I had this radio in 1975. It was bright blue. It didn't matter that it only got AM stations because, well, what was there on FM that could compete with Dale Dorman on "68-R-K-OOOOOO!" It had a special place in my heart because it was the only time I ever won something in a raffle -- at my eighth-grade graduation party in the town hall function room (good times!). I don't have it any more, but I and my friends laughed at the memory of how quintessentially '70s it was. Now it's in the Museum of Modern Art . Go figure. Hitching a ride The scene: Brighton, late 1986. I was sharing an apartment in a neighborhood notorious for being a student ghetto and also for having very little on-street parking, so this meant you grabbed the first spot you could find when you came home from work and you did NOT go out at night in your car, because by the time you got back, the nearest parking would be in the next county. Anyway, one Saturday my car was ...

This was forwarded from a friend of mine by a one of her relatives. It's a bit late for Halloween , but I pass it on in the spirit of ecumenism: Being a Christian is like being a pumpkin. God lifts you up, takes you in, and washes all the dirt off of you. He opens you up, touches you deep inside and scoops out all the yucky stuff—including the seeds of doubt, hate, greed, etc. Then He carves you a new smiling face and puts His light inside you to shine for all the world to see. This was passed on to me from another pumpkin. Now it is your turn to pass it to a pumpkin. I liked this enough to send it to all the pumpkins in my patch. As long we we're on the topic of autumn, I've got to say that I've never enjoyed the fall foliage as much as I have this year. They (or I) don't call it Leafy Suburb for nothing. Even though I grew up here, I was far too unobservant and/or cynical to care how beautiful the maples get. In fact I always felt a well concealed contempt for adu...

Roll 'em This is all I'll have to say about the 2007 Red Sox, I promise. A friend of a friend attended the "Rolling Rally" and took some excellent photos, which you can see here , here , here , here and here . O the horraw, the horraw... I'm sure I was almost asked to leave work the other day due to excessive muffled snorts of laughter when I saw this blog post concerning 1970s fashions. In the same spirit as my all-time favorite, the 1970s Weight Watchers recipes . I found a Weight Watchers cookbook from a slightly later era at my mother-in-law's house and I keep meaning to scan and post some of the more egregious items. Where are Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss when you need them? I feel unaccountably irritated when I see a shark biker. This is what I call those urban bicyclists who are simply unable to come to a complete stop and put one foot on the ground while waiting at a red light. No, they have to circle slowly in the vicinity of their corner becau...