Muffins ... Not Just For Breakfast Anymore

Right about the time that I start to think I'm still "with it", I am rudely reminded how far away from "with it" I truly am. And my using the term "with it" pretty much tells you everything you need to know about my cool factor.

Today at work, I overheard the tail-end of a conversation about muffins. "Mmmmm....muffins", I thought. I can join in, I told myself, I love muffins! But wait! What kind of muffins are we talking about here? Blueberry? Lemon? No? I guess I'll listen a bit more .... Huh. What's the big deal about the tops of muffins? The crunchy spill over is the best part! I don't get it....

Then it began to dawn on me that my colleagues weren't talking about those incredibly delicious puffs of joy in a shiny tinfoil wrapper; they were, in fact, talking about fashion. Particularly the perils of sporting the "muffin top" look.

So what exactly is a muffin top? Here's the definition from the always fascinating Wikipedia: "Muffin-top (or muffin-top girl) is a generally pejorative, slang term used for a person, usually female, whose flabby midsection spills over the waistline of his or her pants in a manner that resembles the top of a muffin spilling over its casing. This generally occurs when an individual wears low-rise or hip-hugger pants and midriff-baring tops."

And they thoughtfully provide a picture comparing an actual muffin to the "muffin-top look". Just in case your mental image was not clear.

Ooooohhhhhkay.

I ever-so-slowly tried to suck in my overhanging belly while casually joining in the raucous laughter at the silly, silly people who dress like that. Since I don't wear midriff bearing tops, I am hoping nobody noticed that I could be the walking poster girl for the muffin-top look every day. And not on purpose I hasten to add, it's totally involuntary. Too many muffins, I suppose. But I'm not sure I got away with it; because honestly, they all do have two eyes that seem to work pretty good.

Oh, and the verdict on the "muffin-top" look? It's sooooooooooo 2006.

Leave Britney Alone!

Don't Click Here If You Are A Normal Person - Very Much NOT Safe For Work

I fear for future of our nation. I know, I know, I'm not helping by spreading it, but dayum!

Becks

Does anyone really care that David Beckham is playing soccer (football to the rest of the known world) in America? If you believe all the press and hype he's getting over here, you would think we, as a nation, begged him to come over and save us from the boring old American soccer we all totally ignore the majority of the time anyway.

But I mean, honestly. Do you, person who is reading this blog right now, really give a rat's patoot? I don't.

And bringing Skeletor along for the ride is just too much. She should go eat a sandwich already before all that's left of her are her fake boobies.

I once saw Becks at the Midland Hotel in Manchester, along with Ryan Giggs and Eric Cantona (now I am dating myself for sure) at a Man Utd gala, and he sure is a good looking man. But I still don't care. Soccer will never be a powerhouse sport in the States like it is everywhere else; we like winners or losers. All that nonsense about playing 90 minutes for a nil-nil game is just crazy-talk.

I mean if Pele couldn't make a dent here, nobody can.

Like, Whatever....

I love the English language. It's the most expressive and fluid language in the world, constantly evolving. Although we think when we study English grammar that it is full of complicated "rules", it's actually pretty loose compared to say, French or Chinese. Or Icelandic. I mean, have you ever tried to fathom out what Bjork is saying?

However, it's estimated* that most people only have a working vocabulary of less than 2000 words from a rich language that offers over 500,000 to choose from. And these days it seems that most of those are cliches.

So I was delighted to come across a book called She Literally Exploded: The "Daily Telegraph" Infuriating Phrasebook. They asked their readers in the UK to send in their most hated phrases and words that abound in our culture today, and there are some doozies!

Those listed at the top include, "inappropriate", "escalate", "legend", "hero", "challenged", "take care", "confirmed", "ground-breaking", "moving on", "tipping point", "let's do lunch", "basically", "issues", "leverage", "24/7", "societal", "absolutely", "amazing" and the word "client" when referring to customers, patients or inmates.

People also appear to detest restaurant jargon. "Pan-fried" (what else will you fry in? a shoe?) "oven-baked" (ditto) , "au jus" (gravy), "coulis" (sauce) and "freshly-picked" (as opposed to what?) all make the cut.

They also included a few of my own pet peeves - "facilitate", "rigorous", "core competencies" "cohorts" and "methodologies". These crop up a lot in Educational Theory and make me want to scream when I have to read them. I adored this real example of a job advertisement listing: "Proactive, self-starting facilitator required to empower cohorts of students and enable them to access the curriculum." See?? See what I mean??????? Just gouge my eyes out with a spoon, thanks.

According to the book, the most hated phrase was "at the end of the day" and the most hated word is "like", followed by "whatever". I agree wholeheartedly!

If you've ever lived with a teenager and had the privilege of listening to them talk, you will understand the murderous rage that can overcome one in a split second when you overhear a snippet such as; "She was, like, in the pool, right? And, like, she dived in and her top, like, came off! And she was like, what? And we were, like, laughing, and she was like, whatever, and we were like, whatever".

Sadly, they didn't address the phenomenon of people who obliviously mispronounce words. I have a friend of twenty-odd years who consistently says "pacific" instead of "specific", as in, "I pacifically told him not to do that". She has done this since the day we met. It is a mark of our friendship that I haven't snapped her neck.

Maybe I should write a book .....



**I read this fact somewhere recently but can't be bothered to go and find out where. But it's true!! I swear on the interwebs!

The Simpsons

For my friend Brad, the newest Simpsons Movie Trailer. Spider Pig, hehe. And get yourself to The Simpsons Movie Website pronto. Be sure to play with the Wrecking Ball of Death. This is what I have been doing for the last hour. Hey, I'm not proud. D'oh!

Jerry Falwell 1933 - 2007

Posted May 15th 2007 5:10PM by TMZ Staff

TMZ, an entertainment website, ran this headline yesterday reporting the death of Jerry Falwell. I am almost ashamed to admit that I snorted coffee out of my nose from laughing.

Not the classiest thing to do, but funny!*

I have disliked Mr. Falwell since the 80's. To me, he was a perfect example of what religious extremism has to offer; i.e. wild-eyed scary rants full of violence and retribution. He blamed the ACLU and lesbians for 9/11. He claimed that "if you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being". He is probably most famous for taking Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler magazine, all the way to Supreme Court for libel (he lost). So I was impressed to read that Larry Flynt had this to say about him:

"My mother always told me that no matter how much you dislike a person, when you meet them face to face you will find characteristics about them that you like. Jerry Falwell was a perfect example of that. I hated everything he stood for, but after meeting him in person, years after the trial, Jerry Falwell and I became good friends."

You can read the whole article HERE. Jerry should be pleased; Larry shows signs of being a Christian after all. Who would have thunk it?

*In case you don't remember, he denounced the Teletubbies "Tinky Winky" character as gay for the following reason: "He is purple - the gay-pride color; and his antenna is shaped like a triangle - the gay-pride symbol."

Happy Mother's Day

A classic ...

How To Get Severely Burnt And Love It, Part II

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How To Get Severely Burnt And Love It

At the craft gallery I work for, we recently had our annual Spring Festival. Cedar Creek Gallery is not just shop; although it was started almost 40 years ago by potters Sid and Pat Oakley as a studio and space to sell their work, over the years it has developed into a fairly large complex that houses three potter's spaces, two glassblowing studios, a full-time landscaper, and has become a place for visiting artists to come and "play".

I have a special relationship with Cedar Creek; I grew up right down the road from the Oakley family, and their daughter Lisa, is one my best friends (we have known each other since we were ten). When I moved back here from the UK, I started "working for pottery". In other words, most of the money I make goes right back to the shop!

Lisa followed in her parents footsteps and has her own glassblowing studio at Cedar Creek. She blows vases, glasses, ornaments and furnace-pulled glass beads which she then uses to design and make her own line of unique jewelry. Her assistant recently moved on and I have been helping her as much as I, being an untrained idiot, can. For this Festival, she let me assist her in the weekend studio demonstrations.

The first thing a glassblower does is "gather" the glass on a long hollow pipe from a furnace full of molten glass. The temperature is around 2200F and the glass has the consistency of honey; it will fall off the pipe if you don't keep rotating it. The heat is intense and every fiber of your being tells you to get away from it. I suspect this is where a lot of people decide they're actually not that interested in the craft.


At this point, the artist can make any number of items; this weekend, Lisa was making beads. Here she is adding color to the hot glass so it can be worked. She rolls her "gather" in tiny pieces of colored glass called fritt.

She then reheats the glass in the glory hole. Now that you've finished snickering at the use of the term "glory hole", I will point out that's me standing next to her, looking nervous. After it's reheated, Lisa blows the glass out to make a giant bead.

The next step is to cool down and shape the class on a marver. That's usually a solid steel table, like hers pictured. She works the glass until it is the shape of the bead she wants. In this case she is making a round bead.


Lisa then continues shaping the bead with her hand using a wet pad. Traditionally, these are made of newspaper. It does need to be re-wet periodically or it will catch on fire, which is always exciting.

The bead is reheated in the glory hole again. She has her assistant make a 'pancake of glass' on another pipe and she attaches the bead to the center of the foot. The bead is now attached to pipes on both sides.



Lisa and her assistant then pull like a tug of war - the glass is still molten and stretches like taffy.




Lisa has to put some weight behind the bead pull as the glass starts to cool and get more stiff. She walks backwards to keep the cane from drooping onto the ground.


While the glass is still almost 1000F, the bead is cut into 2 foot sections and placed into an annealler to cool. This stops the glass from cracking or becoming too brittle to cut later. After 24 hours, the glass will be cut into small beads on a diamond saw.

*An interesting note about using a diamond saw: it won't cut your skin, but it will shear a fake fingernail right off your hand that you paid fifty bucks for not three days before.




This is a bucket of cut and washed beads. You can usually get about a pound of beads per hour.

The beads are then lined up according to size, thickness, and height on a high-temperature kiln shelf. They will be brought up to a temperature of over 1,500F, then flamed by hand using a propane torch to melt and polish the beads to their final luster.

The final step is to make jewelry. She painstakingly assembles earrings, necklaces, bracelets and barrettes from the beads she makes. Here is a picture of some of Lisa's finished bracelets. Each piece is a one-of-a-kind and absolutely beautiful.

Next: I try and make a drinking glass and burn the bejeesus out of myself!

"So It Goes"

Well darn, Kurt Vonnegut has passed away. I can trace my love of science fiction directly to being forced to read Slaughterhouse-Five as a young girl. Although Kurt was never really a "sci-fi" writer as such, that book opened my eyes to another world.

Plus, he was a cantankerous old man. I have a huge soft spot for crabby old people, as I hope to be one, one day.

RIP.

What Were You Thinking, Luv?

The SO and I witnessed a robbery at an ATM last week. It wasn't like in the movies; there was no big guy waving a gun, no threatening people, no shouting; it was much more subtle.

We went to the cash machine about 9.30pm. This was in a crowded mall parking lot, with lots of lighting and lots of people around. There was a little old lady standing there, having just finished up her business. In her car was a girl who looked about ten years old. As we pulled up, we noticed a young guy, holding a t-shirt, approach the little old lady and start to talk to her. The SO commented to me, "I hope that guy doesn't think he's washing windows at THIS time of night."

I parked and got out to get cash. As I'm doing that, I can faintly hear the guy urging the little old lady, "c'mon, c'mon let's GO!". Something about his tone of voice gave me the bad vibe heebie-jeebies and I turned around to see what was going on. He opened her car door, shoved the little girl over to the middle, got in, and slammed the door. The little girl looked absolutely terrified and the little old lady was looking very grim. I became extremely alarmed and glance over to see that the SO had been watching them and waved for me to hurry up.

The young guy could obviously see that we were suspicious, because he rolled the window down and yelled, "It's okay, she knows me, she's just giving me a ride, it's okay". The little girl was staring at me through the windshield, as if to say "HELP!", as they peeled out of the parking lot. I managed to get most of the license plate as the SO shouted, "He's hiding something in that shirt!" As he called 911, we tried to follow them, but lost them in traffic. The SO gave the police all the information we could remember and they promised to put out an APB.

I tell you, I was worried sick; the look in that little girls eyes was haunting; the SO assured me that we had done all we could have at the time, but I still felt awful. We started for home and not five minutes down the road, the SO shouts, "It's her car! Pull over!". The man has the eyes of an eagle. Sure enough, there's the car, sitting in the parking lot of a gas station. We pulled up next to it and were overjoyed to see the little old lady and little girl sitting there looking shell-shocked, but unharmed.

Now here's the startling, yet cautionary, part of the tale; it turns out that the young guy had spun a sob-story to the little old lady. He told her that his car had run out of gas, with his young 3 month old baby in it, and he needed her to drive him back to it; and, oh yeah, he was going to need money to buy gas with when he got there.

She willingly let him get into her car, with her 10 year old granddaughter along for the ride. She finally got suspicious when he told her to drive down a dirt road; she questioned him again on his story, and lo and behold, he revealed that he was holding a can of "Raid" in the t-shirt!

Thankfully, there was a gas station next to the road he wanted to go down; there she stopped and refused to go any further. At that point, he menaced her with his can of Raid, relieved her of all her cash, and legged it.

She said to us, "I just didn't want a little baby to be all alone in a car, I KNOW I shouldn't have let him into the car, his story just didn't sound right. My daughter works for the Police Department, she's going to kill me". Yes, I think you're right on that point, Grandma; you put her child in serious danger, she's gonna be really pissed when she finds out.

While we were immensely relieved that all she lost was cash, I did want to shake that old lady quite hard for being so gullible. Who knows what that guy had originally planned?

LISTEN to your gut instinct; if a situation doesn't seem right, it's because IT'S NOT.

Don't be afraid to take action or call for help. You can always apologize if you were wrong; I once whacked a guy upside the head with a Tesco bag of baked beans at a deserted Stockport bus station because he ran up right behind me from a distance. He was extremely surprised and blurted, "I'm just running to catch my bus!" As we watched his bus drive away, I told him I was sincerely sorry and gave him a blistering lecture on getting too close behind a lone woman . I will bet good money he never did that again.

It's always better to be safe than sorry. Take care of yourselves out there!

Keeping Up With The Joneses

Today, The SO and I were outside admiring the work that has been done on the house when our next door neighbor came out and SPOKE TO US. He hasn't done that since we accidentally blew insulation out of our attic into his yard last year.

Things are definitely looking up.

It's Raining Multi-National Roof Men, Halliluja!

A little over two years ago, we started to notice that every time it rained, a small leak would appear in the upstairs hallway ceiling. For a while, we would just put a bucket under it and forget about it until it rained again.

Unfortunately, as the leak didn't go away, and in fact kept getting worse, The SO decided he needed to take a look at what exactly was going on in the attic. As I stood underneath the access door waiting for the verdict, his foot came crashing through the hall ceiling.

"Yeah, it's what I was afraid of" he stated calmly, sticking his head through the gaping hole to peer down at me. "Oh my god, what the hell was THAT?" I shrieked. "It's bad. Very bad. You need to come up here and see for yourself." he replied. "It's worse than you deliberately kicking a hole in the ceiling?!" I shouted nicely. "Yep" he answered. "Much, much worse".

And so the saga of our roof began. It seems that previous owners had taken short cuts when it came to home repair, and had just layered shingle-upon-shingle on the roof. It's a 100yr old house, and they were seven layers deep in some places. This, I have learned, is wrong roof maintenance in a very wrong way.

When it rained, water poured through all those old decayed shingles straight onto the main support beam for the entire roof....which was rotting. Rotting so bad you could actually flick pieces off of it with your fingernail. Which I did out of curiosity, until I thought about what I was doing, got scared, and quit.

Lucky for us The SO is an old-school Southern boy who can fix or build just about anything. He decided that since the roof had to be repaired anyway, he would make the attic into another room, re-frame the roof himself, and then hire someone to shingle it. The way he explained it, it sounded easy-peasy and not so expensive!

Mom and I agreed that we KNEW there was a reason we loved him and said, "let's do it"!

He tackled it immediately, beavering away every weekend. Over the course of a year, he singlehandedly replaced the massive rotting support beam and re-framed almost the entire roof. He built a staircase up to the next floor, re-routed electrical wires and heating ducts, blew insulation out and in, and was just generally everything a girl wants in a man; handsome, sweaty and working hard for her.

Okay, so the roof had a blue tarp on it for eight months and we became a kind of land-mark in the area. I once heard someone in the local quickie mart say, when giving directions to a lost soul, "You'll want to take a left at the corner of Sunset - you can't miss it, it's the big house with the blue tarp on the roof". I was proud.

By the end of last summer, it was *this* close to being complete. He had gotten to the point where he needed at least one other person (who was not me) to help him get the last bit done. His brother kept promising to show up but could never find the time. Then The SO had his accident. We pretty much knew, after that, he wasn't getting back on the roof for any reason and we reluctantly began to look for someone who could.

Gone are the days of Billy-Bob's Roof Repair in these parts; it seems the good old boys have moved on to other professions that pay less but aren't nearly as hard work. In the end we hired a Mexican crew to come and finish it up, which they did very fast and very well. I thoroughly enjoyed watching them squabble over who had to take the old shingles down 3 flights to the skip and I distinctly heard the loser mention to the winner that the winner's "madre" was a "puta". Quality entertainment.

Now we have a Franco crew re-siding the house, replacing windows and screens and generally making it look like we aren't poor white trash. I believe they are Quebecois and am burning to know how the HELL they ended up down here but, quelle domage, only one speaks English. He has rebuffed all my attempts at conversation with that irritating Gallic habit of staring at you until you finish talking and then shrugging his shoulders and wandering away mumbling.

My school-girl French is spoken with such a distinct redneck accent - "quelle heure est-il" comes out sounding like "killeraay tee y'all" - that I am loath to attempt it again with real Frogs (I tried to speak French in Paris, once, which is a butt-clenching story for another time) and so I remain in the dark. Tomorrow I am going to shout "Freedom Fries" at him and see what happens.

Times in a small Southern town, they are a-changing....

But the fantastic news is; the roof is fixed, the house is re-sided, new windows are to be installed, and my children will be able to swear in Spanish AND French!

Now that's value for money.

In Roy We Trust

In a very exciting game against NCSU (or "Moo-U" as we like to call them), Carolina won the ACC Tourney today.

All is right with the world. Normal blogging services resume tomorrow.

It's Tourny Time!

Okay, it's like this; I don't mean to have neglected you, but the ACC Tourney has been on going on since Thursday. Four games scheduled Thursday, four games Friday, two games today to watch, plus I had to work, so no time for blogging.

Carolina won their games and are in the tourney finals tomorrow at 1.00pm. The kids will be wearing their Tarheel gear, The Boy will be saying "go go go" and shaking his fist at the TV screen, and we will all be singing our fight songs.

My mood tomorrow will be high if we win, low if we lose. Just so you know.

Go to hell State!

He's Free

I am sad to see that the actor John Inman has passed away. For those of you that don't know who he is, he was the very camp Mr. Humphries in 'Are You Being Served', an iconic BBC comedy that is STILL on the schedules of PBS here in America as we speak. This program, along with Benny Hill, Dr. Who, Keeping Up Appearances, and Monty Python, has been the basis of what every Yank thinks they know about the UK for the last thirty years.

I have a special place in my heart for John Inman. When I was a celebrity booker for BBC shows (back in my previous non-Southern Comfort life), he was a great 'go-to' guy. He would sometimes be available to appear if someone dropped out of a show, and he always delivered the goods; he was a booker's best friend. He was also a genuinely funny and nice person, which is quite rare in the world of the business they call show.

One of my absolute favorite television memories is all John Inman. He had filled in a spot for me at the last minute on a panel show, whose host had a reputation as a bit of a pompous ass. After we had finished the taping, I herded my celebs back to the Green Room for drinks and snacks. Once there, we were to wait for The Host to arrive so he could join in the fun and bask in their reflected glory. Well, the guy took his own sweet time about it, resulting in a few snarky comments being made about his tardiness (don't ever piss off a bunch of luvvies). Even later still, after a few more glasses of cheap BBC plonk were consumed, things got a little bit merry.

John decided that we (me and the other five stars of stage and screen who were present) would turn off all the lights and hide in the coat closet, while he would leave a note that said, "Dear ___. The show was dreadful. Oh dear, nevermind. We're off!". I have an extremely fond recollection of being smushed up against Neil Morrissey (mmmm, he is yummy) while we all tried to stifle our giggles as the Host blundered into the darkened room, read the note, furiously muttered "bloody hell", and turned heel to leave looking absolutely thunderous.

At that point, John leapt out of the closet, shouting "I'm Free!" (his catch-phrase from his show) and we all tumbled out after him, shrieking with laughter. People actually fell down on the floor from laughing so hard, although the copious amounts of Pinot Grigio consumed probably helped in that respect. The Host had to take it like a good sport, which really pissed him off, and totally made my night. He was always prompt about getting to the Green Room after that though.

My condolences to his partner of thirty years, Ron Lynch. He will be missed.

An Update On The Boy

I am pleased to announce that after much intensive family coaching, The Boy has started to talk in sentences. They are two or three word sentences, mind you, but we are happy and relieved nonetheless.

However, he still has a problem with some consonant combinations. For example, anything that starts with an 's' seems to stump him. His solution is to drop off the offending 's' and pronounce the rest of the word. So shoe becomes 'hoo', sleep becomes 'eep' and so forth. This was not a problem for us until the Maytag repairman came to visit.

On that fateful night, our refrigerator was the repairman's last call of the day. The Princess and Grandma were at church doing some kind of grandparent/grandkid thing, so it was just me, the SO and The Boy in the house. We had tried to wait on dinner until after the guy was finished, but he was having a tricky time getting the requisite part installed, and was still beavering away at the fridge a good hour after he arrived. We decided that we couldn't hold up The Boy's feeding time any longer and apologetically sat down to eat.

As we sat in awkward silence, the boy decided he wanted a spoon.

"Poon!" he shouted. "Poon poon poon!" The SO and I grimaced at each other. Around these parts the word 'poon' has a rather raunchy meaning.

I quickly handed him a spoon, which he received with delight, and began to sing, "Poon, poon, poon, poon, poon, poon, poon, ....."

I glanced at the repairman, who was very manfully trying not to laugh out loud. His shoulders were shaking but he made not a sound.

"Dude!" interrupted the SO. "Ssssspoon. It has an 's' in it. Poon is something else."

The repairman snorted.

"Say it. Ssssspooon. Ssssssspoon. Say 'ssssss' like Daddy", encouraged the SO.

"Sssssss" said the boy.

"Good! Now say sssssspoooon."

"Poooooon!" repeated the Boy.

The repairman stopped working for a second and made a noise that sounded like an agitated seal's bark crossed with a stifled snicker.

The SO sat back in his chair and shrugged his shoulders in a "oh well, what can you do?" fashion. He and the repairman shared a meaningful look that spoke volumes about the way the male mind works. He smiled proudly at him and said, "That's my boy!"

Speak the Hungarian Rapper

Dubya is in trouble, even the Hungarians are turning on the War. If you can make it to the end of this video you really ARE committed to peace. "Bidness!"

Bless Her Heart

Oh dear Lord, someone help this girl.

In Pain!

No bloggery tonight, I am in mucho pain from last night's visit to the gym and have decided to just go to bed in a huff. The Fabulous Miss Vee was most unsympathetic today when I called her to complain. "You'll be thanking me in April, biotch." I'm sure I will, Vee, I'm sure I will.

I leave you with a spoof of Barbra Striesand I came across on You Tube. I'm not entirely sure why I think this is funny or what it says about me that I do, but I giggled my head off when I watched it. Maybe I should lay off the muscle relaxers.....



Enjoy!