Let's make happy
Not-So-Cute Things
Pretty Odd
Sep 17th
I was summoned for jury duty recently (it involved waiting for a few hours and not getting my name called), so I had occasion to walk around the vicinity of New York’s City Hall. There are a surprising number of odd lots stores in the area. Why, I don’t know, but I stepped into one out of curiosity.
(I apologize for the bad photo quality; my camera phone was scratched a while back when it fell out of my purse during an airline check-in and skidded across the floor.)
This particular store had a generous supply of the usual: candles, small gadgets, Panasonic batteries, and a random assortment of packaged foods.
I thought these Spider Man piggy banks were interesting. Or rather, the sheer number of them was interesting. Are there that many people in this world who desire a Spider Man piggy bank?
Then, toward the back of this brightly-lit store was a section of… Adult DVD Movies?
I partly convinced myself that the “Adult” in “Adult DVD Movies” means “not G or PG-rated DVD movies,” but I still wasn’t going to get close enough to the giant pile to read the titles.
Beep Boop Crash
Aug 27th
My hard drive crashed last week. The techy people I took it to told me it would be a week to fix, but it’s now been well over a week, and their new estimate is “we have no idea how long it’s going to take.”
I was hoping to keep this mundane and somewhat embarrassing news (no, I hadn’t backed it up in a loong time) out of the blog, but the situation has disrupted my work and brought a few of my projects to a halt, and I’ve also lost some photos I had been planning on sharing on my blog. It’s taking long enough now that it seems like time to whine publicly.
In the meantime, I’ve started scrambling to replace stuff I’ve lost (only temporarily, hopefully). Among these things is a new top-secret pattern coming very very soon.
Creepy Polyfil
Jul 10th
A while back, I picked up an extra bag of polyester fiberfill while staying with my parents in Oklahoma. It’s got to be the creepiest polyfil packaging on the market.
Has anybody else seen this? I think I got it at a Hobby Lobby. What I find especially unsettling is the way that the sewing grandmother almost looks like she could be a real person (perhaps the user of said polyfil?), but then if you look at her hands, she’s pretty clearly a very realistic-looking doll. And then we’ve got what look like three little gypsies, something colorful that doesn’t really look like anything, something faceless on the left that might be an art piece (?), and a scary giant Santa.
I just wish I had taken a better photo of the bag—I left it at my parents again for use next time I’m in town (if they don’t throw it away first). The polyfil itself is pretty good though.
Delightful Faerie Water from Taco Bell
Jun 17th
Oh what a magical place those KFC/Taco Bell/Pizza Hut combo restaurants are. Yesterday I stopped in one in Massachusetts (it was the middle of a long drive), and along with my delicious seven-layer burritos, I was served water with the most charming pink hue.
It came from an ordinary soda machine, one of the kinds that doesn’t have a designated “water” tap, but instead has a tiny “water” button that shares a nozzle with fruit punch. The the punch dye must have seeped in just enough to tint the water, resulting in the glorious beverage you see above.
The water tasted basically normal, until I had been out of the restaurant for an hour or so, when its greasy KFC/Taco Bell/Pizza Hut aftertaste seemed to become more pronounced.
Good Stuff!
May 7th
I got an exciting newspaper clipping from my mom in the mail yesterday: recent police calls from my hometown newspaper! Mom had written “Good Stuff!” at the top, and had marked a full 17 of the calls in yellow highlighter to convey her enthusiasm for her fellow citizens’ less-than-shining moments.
My favorites:
10:55 a.m. — Reporting party advised that a subject was posing as a magazine salesman. Reporting party advised that the subject was asking questions such as do you have dogs in the house.
7:08 p.m. — Reparting party advised that two people came to his home looking for his son and said they were going to ‘take care of this’ at Red Robin
8:36 p.m. — Reporting party wants an officer to look at the bone that dog dug up.
12:52 a.m. — Police Department and Air Marshalls are training and air marshalls locked themselves out of their vehicle.
9:31 p.m. — Subject dressed as the Grim Reeper [sic] is chasing people around the parking lot.
Thanks for the laugh, Mom!
