Saturday, March 31, 2007

It's the last Saturday in March.

Already!

Random observations:
  • I want to adopt a Greyhound! Maybe two or three. I thought they were one-way dogs but after getting the chance to love up on one at an outdoor expo, it turns out they aren't. Their fur is softer than I expected, and -get this- they're LAZY. The woman running the booth called them "45-MPH couch potatoes" because they'd rather lay on the couch and sleep all day than go running around chasing things. I've wanted a Greyhound for years; oddly, this was the first time I took the opportunity to learn more about them.
  • Britney Spears articles are a waste of media. However, props to FedEx for somehow managing to come off smelling like a rose. Sure, it's a Fresno rose, which has an underlying aroma of cow manure, but overall he's being lauded as a good guy. Stranger things have happened, I suppose.
  • Speaking of stranger things... Michael Jackson made an appearance during daylight hours and without a veil, dashing rumors that he was once again attempting immortality not by way of a hyperbaric chamber this time but via vampirism.
  • Many years ago I got my left ear pierced. I didn't want to do both in case I didn't like it; easier to get it done than undone, and I could always go back for the other one. (I'd always heard that if you didn't wear the earring or piercing stud the hole would close over. Here it is, fifteen years later, and although I've worn an earring for an hour or two perhaps five times total, the piercing never did close or give me any trouble whatsoever.) Last night I finally got the right one done, for a matched set. Never let it be said that I make hasty decisions.
  • My husband received an inheritance from a family member's estate. He spent it on the complete set of Dukes of Hazzard DVDs.
If you're surfing over from Branded in the 80s, thanks for dropping by. Shawn was nice enough to give a shout-out... he also came up with much more information about my stickers than I ever knew or would have even thought about researching. Totally awesome, dude!

Friday, March 16, 2007

Wearin' O' The... White?

We had a white Valentine's Day and now a white St. Patrick's Day is coming... a white Easter is never out of the question, either.

A storm came through today and it's currently in the process of dumping 4 to 10 inches of snow upon us. After work, I was cleaning off the truck and dreading the slippery drive home... glanced at the road to see how bad it was... and there, in the middle of the road, hunched over, with his feathers puffed out and a very annoyed expression on his face, was a robin. No doubt he was disgruntled due to the sudden weather change from the warm temps we enjoyed last week. I saw what was surely this bird's brother back in February, the day after the Valentine's storm subsided, perched on a tiny tuft of grass surrounded by snow and looking just as pissed-off as the one today.

Of course, robins look angry all year round. They're the pompous jerks of the bird world. The one in the road most likely thought to his little bird self, "Oh, that is IT! I have HAD it with this weather and it better change RIGHT NOW because I am SO not getting that nest built for Matilda until it warms up and if she doesn't get a nest I will NEVER hear the end of her squawking about it. I am protesting RIGHT here RIGHT now and I will STOP TRAFFIC until the sun comes out!!!"
vroooom *AWK!*
"...I will sit over HERE and GLARE at traffic until the sun comes out. Ahem. Don't want to get my feet muddy, you know."

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Image by Richard Bradbury,
www.rsbp.org.uk

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Smells like... adhesive?


Today I was linkhopping and came across Branded in the 80s, a great nostalgia site. There's a section on 8os-era stickers; most of the ones showcased weren't ones I collected (although the name Panini brings back semi-fond memories) until I read the Scratch n' Sniff posts. I *loved* scratch n' sniffs. After viewing the pictures on that site I did some surfing and found more... all those "smells" came flooding back, almost as if I had my sticker books in front of me.

For the past few months I've been wondering how to capture a scent to sniff later... not creating it like perfume, but saving the smell of an early mountain morning or the vinyl interior of a vintage VW beetle or the aroma from a certain pizza parlor. These are scents I want to keep and re-smell, but it just isn't practical (or sane!) to fly 3,000 miles to sniff some pizza, or to visit a junkyard and ask the proprietor if you can smell his Bugs. I'm sure there's a way to do it, right? Maybe not a cost-effective, simple, or reasonable way, but if someone can make stickers that still smell like pickles and cotton candy 25 years later, surely it can't be impossible!