Vamp

I am a fan of most things vampire. I say "most" because I prefer this kind of vampire:




or this kind of vampire:



Or even this kind of vampire:




This kind of vampire makes me throw up a little. (Sorry, but vampires shouldn't "sparkle".)




Sure, I think vampires can be sexy and scary at the same time, like this show (it was awesome but canceled too early):



but mostly I think scary and creepy is best.







For years I have have joked around and said that I'm half vampire. I burn badly in sunlight, I'm a total "night owl", I'm allergic to garlic (Seriously. It sucks. Pun intended.) I don't like to cross water... well, okay, that's only kind of true.



Anyway, for my birthday, my dad got me a DNA test. Being adopted, we weren't really sure what kind of mutt I am. I got it back yesterday. And now we know:








Although I'm about as scary and creepy as this guy:

stringfellowart.com

Speaking of ...

 I haven't had much to blog about this week, the brain is just not working the way I want it to. I wanted to post some new art this weekend, but I'm really having trouble with that. Kind of like writer's block, I guess. So I'll do another episode of  "Speaking of..."

Ready?

So I was randomly flipping channels last night and happened upon one of those "reality" shows, "Stupid Housewives of Fresno" or whatever. You know the ones. What is with that crap anyway? Do I really need to watch a gaggle of bimbos with too much money, too few brains and wa-a-a-ay too much cleavage talk about their money, and their cleavage? No. I watched about 5 minutes of it and wanted to claw my eyes out. Don't even talk to me about that Jersey show...what little I have read about it, I think it would make my brain bleed out my ears.

Speaking of "reality" shows, I will admit that there are some I really like. Project Runway just makes me happy. Apparently I love Heidi Klum, high heels and silly gay drama queens. I also like almost anything on Sci-Fi (I refuse to call it "SyFy" - what the hell?) and HGTV, even though I'm still miffed that they didn't give me that Dream Home I ordered.

Speaking of HGTV, Secret Agent Man and I have a new favorite show: "Holmes on Homes".  He is a Viking god that fixes homes for people who have been royally shafted by their contractors.  Mike Holmes is kind of like Ty Pennington, but less obnoxious and more buff. It's awesome. Except if I ever have to hire a contractor they are going to hate me because I'll be all, "Mike Holmes says..." and "Do you have the permits?" and "Have you ever done this before?" and stuff like that. And they're going to be all, "Don't you have something else to do, ma'am?"

Ma'am?

Speaking of "Ma'am..." as previously stated in another post, I am am not 45 years old. I wonder if I look funny to people, cruising down the road, head-banging to The Offspring and Kings of Leon. I have very eclectic tastes in music. King of Leon is one of my current favorites, but I also still love Steely Dan (if I was on a desert island and could only bring one CD it would be Steely Dan's "Gold"), and I have Imogen Heap, Lady GaGa, Spoon, the Weepies, Bing Crosby, Bare Naked Ladies, Bruce Hornsby, Elbow and Lyle Lovett, to name a few. My iPod is having an identity crisis.

Speaking of Apple...can someone please explain to me the big deal about the iPad? Isn't it just kind of big iPod Touch? I just don't get it. I guess I'm not all up on the Apple craze. Which is odd for an artist/graphic designer, so I've been told. I don't own a Mac. I have a  Gateway and it's just peachy. (No apples for me. Unless they are this kind.) What I really want is an Alienware laptop.

Actually, what I really want is an iCoffee, an iNap and an iVacation.


Speaking of vacations, you know what I think would be cool? If those of us who blog back and forth with each other regularly could swap houses for vacations. I want to trade with Pseudonymous High School Teacher...although it might not be as much fun if she weren't there to visit with.  Or maybe Midlife Slices so I can stay in their gorgeous new guest house. Of course, if it's cleaner than my house (likely) I may just stay...

 So, what are you thinkin' about today?

Speaking of Random...

Random Monday stuff.









Yah, that's the stuff. 

I went to the freezer last night to get a popsicle (mmm...grape bars!) and when I reached in for one I noticed a box of frozen pre-cooked bacon. I thought,"Mmm, bacon..." and had a split-second debate before deciding to stick with the grape bar. 

Speaking of "pre-cooked", what the heck is it with "pre" stuff? "Pre-cooked" bacon. It's not! It's just "cooked"! Pre-mixed, pre-cut, pre-chewed! Whatever. It sounds really stupid when you think about it enough.

Books on my Kindle that I am simultaneously reading:
"Fragile Things" -Neil Gaiman
"The Heart Is Not a Size" -Beth Kephart

"A Wind In the Door" -Madeleine L'Engle
"The Painter of Battles: A Novel" -Arturo Perez-Reverte
"Frankenstein" -Dean Koontz
"Alice In Wonderland" -Lewis Carroll 

Speaking of Alice, a little late to the game, but Secret Agent Man and I went to see Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland in 3D the other night. If you haven't taken the time to go see it yet, you should, before it's out of the theater. Way cool. 

Speaking of Secret Agent Man, later this month S.A.M. and I will have been married 7 years. We have lived in this house the exact same length of time. We had this kind of weekend 7 years ago:  Wednesday - the house was done being built. I went by on my way home from work and peeked in the windows. Friday we both had the day off, went and signed off on the house and got the keys. Saturday we got married. Sunday I had to go back to work. Sunday and Monday  S.A.M. and his parents moved my apartment-worth of stuff into the new house. I vowed, even though I did not have to move the majority of it, that I would never - ever - move again unless I absolutely had no choice. 

Speaking of moving, my parents are looking at moving back over here. They have been looking at houses when they come over and have been sending me listings to check out. I love looking at houses. Now I want to move again. 

I think I must be a gypsy. I have moved 32 times. Seriously. I'm 45 years old and I have moved 32 times. All but 2 have been since I turned 18. What the heck? (The sad thing is, I just counted them again, and I feel like I'm missing a couple...)

This is my new favorite thing this week.
This is my other new favorite thing. It made me laugh and cry at the same time. I don't know why. It just did.

And last, but not least, I really appreciate you all for stopping by and checking out my silly blog and my art stuff! I guess that makes you my other-other favorite thing this week! :)

A Little Randomness aka "the Stolen Meme"

I am so far behind on my reading of other people's blogs - it's redonkulous! So I am randomly going through blogs and picking random old posts and checking stuff out and while I'm at Dances With God I find this gem of a meme. It's usually one of those things that you do and then "tag" someone to do it also. Well, I'm not tagging anyone, I just thought it was fun. But hey, if you wanna, you sure can do it too!
(Thanks Pastor Sharon...by way of Reddirt Woman, who also has a lovely blog!)


1. What's your favorite article of clothing? An oversized black baggy sweater with pockets. I wear it all the time so even though it's relatively new it doesn't look like it anymore!

2. Who was the last person you hugged? The hubs.

3. What's your favorite dinner? Pizza. No- Mexican. No, wait! Italian. No...wait! Um...too many things to decide. Depends on my mood.

4. What's the last thing you bought? This bag. In red. (On sale, at least) I'm a junkie. Someone help me!

5. How's your head feeling right now? Ok. My back now...that's a whole different story...

6. What's your favorite weather? Late spring, when it's warm but not too.

7. What is your least favorite season? Winter. I'm so not a cold weather person! (S.A.M. is, but he's ca-ray-zee!)

8. What's in your purse? Oh my gosh. Everything. My wallet, emergency makeup, gum, cell phone, iPod, antacids, Tylenol, gum, old movie ticket stubs (go see Sherlock Holmes, awesome!), more gum, coffee stand cards...and I'm sure about 47 more things I've forgotten.

9. Say something to the person who tagged you. Well...since I stole this, I guess this one doesn't count!

10. What is your favorite dessert? Gobi. Oh wait, that's 2 s's, i'nt it? (Ha!) Well, I'm not much of a dessert person, but I would have to choose either Key Lime pie or pumpkin pie.

11. What did you want to become as a child? Not so much a what as a who. I seriously wanted to be Shirley Jones.

12. What do you want to be now? A full-time artist. ...sigh...

13. What is your favorite song? Oh goodness, I love all kinds of music, I don't know if I could pick just one. But some of my faves are "And Dream of Sheep" - Kate Bush; "All Will Be Well" - Gabe Dixon; "Consolation Prizes" -Phoenix; "Cobrastyle" -Teddybears; "Feel Good, Inc" -Gorillaz; "My Divided Falling" -3.

14. What is your favorite country/state? I would have to say USA. I haven't been to a lot of different states so I don't know if I would prefer one over Washington. I need to travel some more and get back to you on that.

15. If you could go anywhere in the world in the next hour, where would you go? To see my parents. Or Machu Picchu.

16. What are my most challenging goals right now? Figuring out how to make my business/art work profitable.

17. What is your five-year plan? Getting my business/art work profitable!

18. What is your favorite sport to watch? Uh...sport? What is this "sport" that you speak of? Oh, um, if I have to watch sports it would be baseball.

19. What show would you be a cast member of? Fringe. Or Sanctuary. Or CSI (the original one).

20. What is your most prized possession? Material possession? My laptop. It has all my artwork on it.

21. Name a favorite childhood memory. When I was little, maybe 3, my parents took me "ice skating" down a street next to the lake near our house. I remember them holding my hands, one on each side, as we slid down the street on our shoes, in the cold.

22. What is your favorite movie? Field of Dreams. A Walk In the Clouds. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

23. What is your favorite quote? "You can't have a light without a dark to stick it in" - Arlo Guthrie.

24. What is your favorite book? Yah...how much time do you have? Okay - Anything by Sherri Tepper. Dean Koontz's "Lightening". Stephen King's "The Stand". And about 400 others.

25. What sport would you compare your life to at this time? Mountain climbing!...but I'm gettin' there!

The Name Game

In this little bloggy world of ours I understand that many of us have a desire and even outright need to maintain some kind of anonymity. Very few give their full names, or even the towns they live in. I'm okay with that, and think it is probably very wise, what with all the weirdos, wackos and cyber stalkers that are out there these days.
Therefore, I'm fine with you all having my first name, but unless I know you I'm not putting the rest out there (unless you're inviting me to some really groovy party like PW had recently, or I'm inviting you to come visit my bomb shelter or something). And because of same, I have been calling the Mister "the Hubs". I don't really like that title, but it's all I could come up with on short notice. I have decided he needs a new name.

So here's some background.
Before I knew the Hubs, I was working, working, drawing a little, working, and playing in a Celtic band. No, really. I played this and sang. We called ourselves Free Whiskey. We were...fantastic terrible sometimes good, sometimes okay, often erratic. We had the occasional gig and also got together to play at a little Irish pub on Tuesday nights with other local Celtic musicians. (I no longer play with them due to the fact that they are a bunch of flakes conflicting personalities schedules.)
Hubs and a couple of his friends started hanging out there after their usual Tuesday night haunt started sucking. I did not know him at all at that point.

One night some guy at the bar bought a round of drinks for the "band" (20 odd [in every sense of the word] musicians). Huzzah!
A couple weeks later that same guy bought another round for the "band". Huzzah again!
This started to become a habit with him. (I have since been informed that it was because he liked the "cute blonde drummer".)
We just thought he was some nice, rich strange guy stranger (and if he was acting like he was rich, he isn't anymore because he has a life wife now).
Eventually I decided someone needed to thank the guy for all the booze. I somehow got shoved toward the bar nominated.
Not being particularly shy I wandered over and struck up a conversation with him. He was a little shy, but he seemed nice. He was funny. He was smart. I still, at that point, knew very little about him except he worked for a government contractor and did not talk about his job. It kind of became a little joke with my friends and I that he was some kind of hit man for the government or a spy.
I later commented to my friends that he seemed nice and it was too bad he didn't have a girlfriend. They all looked at me like I was some kind of idiot at which point I decided I probably was so I went over and talked to him some more and eventually asked him out for a beer. He surprised us both by saying yes.
The rest is, as they say, history. We dated 8 months and 23 days and then got married.
Huzzah!

So on with the story.
Hubs, for the record, is not a hit man. He is not a spy. However, he does indeed work for a government contractor and is not really allowed to talk much about his job. What little I do know I'd rather not know (lets just say the terrorists are real, folks, and they really do want to kill us all and we'd better stop listening to the idiots that run this country and start paying attention to what's going on around the world. But I digress.)
My friends still joke that he is a spy, however, even though they know better, partly because a couple years ago the local piece-of-shit-not-even-fit-to-line-a-birdcage newspaper did a story about the black ops compound facility where he works and stated people have seen black helicopters and other strange goings on out there. (Probably because there are a lot of pot farmers out there, is my opinion.) And just yesterday a guy I work with called him "Mr. CIA". Hubs did not think that was funny. I, however, thought it was hilarious.
In any event, I spent some time thinking about it. Pioneer Woman has her "Marlboro Man" or MM. Midlife Slices has her HBL or "Hunka Burning Love". Smart Mouthed Broad has her Harley Stud. And so on.

Anyway, I decided I like that everyone thinks the Hubs is a spy. (Which make me Mrs. Spy!) So henceforth, Hubs will be known as "Secret Agent Man" or SAM, for short. It's a new identity...like witness relocation or something.