Don’t ask me why, but I woke up with the Doogie Howser theme song in my head this morning.
Author: meisaj
Living in the Cleve
The Last Gasps of Skunky
Angelo doesn’t do so well with being alone. So Skunky is essentially his best friend when Sam and I are gone.
Skunky has been around for a few years now. He is a cat toy, obviously shaped like a skunk, that squeaks every time Angelo touches him. There were nights where I would be woken up by Angelo batting Skunky around the apartment for what seemed like an eternity. Other nights Skunky would be in the bed next to Angelo, and in the morning I would find him in the living room. Did Angelo move him… or is Skunky a magical toy that moves himself? I’ll never know, but my heart tells me its the latter and Skunky is doing it to mess with Angelo.
Sunday night Sam discovered Skunky was losing what made him Skunky, his loud squeak. It’s going away. I won’t say it sounds like crying…. its more like he’s going hoarse. Sadly his batteries aren’t replaceable.
Last night Angelo discovered it. I was sitting on the living room floor and Angelo came up behind Skunky and gave him a good slap on the back with paws. Like how old friends would greet each other with a slap on the shoulder. When Skunky didn’t make his loud squeak, but instead his low whiny gasp Angelo looked almost offended. He just sat there, and turned his head to me for explanation. While I tried explaining it to him, he looked disinterested. Just walked away, with his head hanging low and leaving his best friend Skunky alone on the carpet.
Essentially setting Skunky free and knowing it was the right thing to do.
Hand Pies
Sam created some Apple Caramel Hand Pies last night.
She worked til late into the night (past 10 pm) baking them, but she was determined when she got home.
And……
They are amazing.
Labor Day gives me weird dreams
So I spent my Labor Day weekend getting outside each day, and also including some lazy time each day. So I think it qualifies as a success.
Sam and I went picnicking and played chess, saw a Robin William’s Triple Feature at the drive-in (although we left a little into the third movie… after Jumanji and Hook…. Patch Adams couldn’t hold my attention enough to keep us awake), slept in and played some video games before running around doing a little shopping, and getting to the park to see the Blue Angels and the Cleveland Air Show.
However…. most interesting was the dreams I had last night. There were three…. all were superhero related. However I only remember details of the first two.
In the first I am Batman. Or some Batman like character (which makes sense…. Sam and I played a lot of Lego Batman 2 lately. Its a game we could both play and pass back and forth to each other. Also this weekend I picked up Batman Arkham Origins). In it there was some gas released by the Joker, and the only way I escaped was by diving through this lake and coming up in the Batcave. But the Batcave was actually my parents’ house. I got in there and locked all the doors and went to sleep. When I woke up (or at least when it was morning) I went to check the doors and the first one I looked at was open. But I didn’t think anything was wrong because the screen door was still closed and locked. I assume I, or someone else not around had opened it, not the Joker. After looking through the house though I realized that every door and window in the house was open, just had the screens down, and that it must have been the Joker. I hid in a large closet, but then heard a rustling behind me.
Then I woke up.
So yeah…. Batman dream.
The second one I was Hawkeye, or Spiderman or some sort of normal superhero. The dream started without me in it, which is weird. I can’t recall ever having a dream that I wasn’t part of the whole time. Anyways it starts with some female spy sneaking into Bruce Banner’s house to steal his secrets. But she is stuck on some locked floor. I come out of nowhere and break open a door or wall or something and we grab a disk drive and hide under the couch. Literally that was the whole plan….. we grab the disk drive and hide under the couch. Solid dream spy stuff. What happens next is that someone sits on the couch. Someone huge. The couch is squishing us. From the voices we know its not Bruce Banner, but his mom. She looks under the couch (and its all weird to be looking out from under the couch), and tells us to just leave. We leave scared for our lives, but when we exit the house I see its my grandparents house in White Hall, NY. We are running scared for our lives that the Hulk is going to kill us down the street for my car. When get there I can see my car being towed away by a tow truck. A cop is still there and we ask him for help, or a ride to my car, or a hotel or something. He laughs and says, “Are you kidding? This is Whitehall. I’m not giving a stranger a ride.”. As he’s saying this I can see the grocery store across the street on fire and people looting it.
And the dream ends there.
Bizarre superhero dreams. I kind of like it. Nice way to end a long weekend.
A Cure Morning
Last Saturday I got up, picked up the living room (as I’m apt to do on Saturday mornings) and put on a record.
Most weekends when I get up I put on some background noise of some sort. Usually a TV show while I read the news, clean, or futz around on the internet. Instead of TV last weekend I thought I should put a record. I have a nice leather bound Califon record player. Its pretty ancient. I saved it from a dumpster when I was in college at Niagara University back in 2000. Originally it was going to be a gift for my dad, however it grew on me and I kept it for myself. It’s a Califon 1430k Solid State Phonograph. What all that means is a loss to me… what I do know about it is that it plays records well, looks good open or closed, and sounds as good as I’d expect my records to sound.
So last weekend I listened to Beethoven. I have a 7 record collection of Beethoven’s Symphonies that I picked up for three dollars a few years ago. I got through four records that morning while drinking a French Press of coffee with Sam. It was a nice, lazy, relaxing way to start the weekend. We went out after that to the zoo, got some food and just enjoyed the day.
Today it is the Cure starting my weekend. I have a few Cure records, but chose their greatest hits album Staring at the Sea. Actually its called Standing on a Beach. Interesting fact I did not know about til today (and it shows how closely I looked at the record when I bought it), on vinyl (record) and tape cassette it was called Standing on a Beach. On CD it was called Staring at the Sea. Ahhhh Wikipedia…. you teach me so many things.
For a long time I considered the Cure my favorite band. Smashing Pumpkins competed with the for top spot in my musical tastes for all of my formative music years (late high school and college). At one time I owned more Cure cd’s than all of my other cd’s put together. Granted it was like 22 out of 40 total cd’s I owned at the time, but I was that interested in all things Cure. I bought all the singles I could find, t-shirts and other memorabilia. Aside from Wussy, and maybe Patrons of Sweet – that’s right Matt… you count – the Cure are the band I’ve seen most in concert. But that doesn’t say much, as I don’t go to too many concerts… particularly bigger names.
The Cure have been out of my listening rotation for a while. I’ve been on a Wussy, Guardians of Galaxy Soundtrack and Angel Olsen kick. Yeah… The Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack is as good as everyone says it is. Angel Olsen I found after Google Play suggested her on some playlist. A quick view to watch her Tiny Desk on NPR concert and I was hooked.
Anyways… yes. The Cure is a great way to start my weekend. Up until Wednesday I actually thought we had school on Monday. But we do indeed get Labor Day off. So yeah… Long weekend. I can dig it, and the Cure are setting it up as a good one.
The first week of school….
The first week of school is a long one…. and usually only has three days with students there. So it’s good that today is Friday.
However this week has been full of bizarre dreams.
Last night I had a dream that Pat wanted to go to Germany. And we were at an airport (my titanium set off a metal detector). I got through scanners and caught with Pat only to tell him that I didn’t actually buy a ticket, and wasn’t going to Germany with him like he had hoped. I”m pretty sure I had never said I was going, Pat just assumed that if he was going to Germany I would be too. Pat, Sam and I then drank at an airport bar for a long while. And this was a real airport, not some Portland, Maine Jetport (that thing is tiny).
Not sure what made it so strange. It could have been the part where we were short 1 penny of our bar tab, and we had to jump in the dumpster behind the airport and search through the trash to find a penny. It could have been that Pat was able to pick up the giant dumpster with one hand. Or that despite being a huge airport no one was there but Pat, Sam, the bartender and myself.
Whatever. It was a dream. Pretty good one. Seems like the shenanigans Pat and I get into on occasion. Sam didn’t seem to mind. That’s what makes her awesome.