too much?

I was sick for much of the holiday weekend. By Saturday I was feeling well enough to go to Summerfest to see American Standard (see Cindy's post). I was pretty tired, but I made it through okay. On sunday, I was feeling much better. I had just a little residual tiredness so I went back to Summerfest to see the Violent Femmes. We got there a little before eight and found a picnic table near the back to sit. The Femmes went on at ten o'clock, and I danced and sang on top of the table for their hour-and-a-half-plus show. Given that this illness started with a scratchy throat, making myself hoarse was likely a bad thing. The show was over at 11:45. We got back to Cindy's around 12:30. I got home at 1:15. This morning I slept late and was half an hour late for work.

I'm moving very slowly today. My throat isn't quite right. The air conditioner is blowing cold air down the back of my neck, and my hair was still damp until just a few minutes ago.

Wish me luck.

blonde joke

A blonde walks into a bank in New York City and asks for the loan officer. She says she's going to Europe on business for two weeks and needs to borrow $5,000. The bank officer says the bank will need some kind of security for the loan, so the blonde hands over the keys to a new Rolls Royce. The car is parked on the street in front of the bank, she has the title and everything checks out. The bank agrees to accept the car as collateral for the loan. The bank's president and its officers all enjoy a good laugh at the blonde for using a $125,000 Rolls as collateral against a $5,000 loan. An employee of the bank then proceeds to drive the Rolls into the bank's underground garage and parks it there.

Two weeks later, the blonde returns, repays the $5,000 and the interest, which comes to $15.41. The loan officer says, "Miss, we are very happy to have had your business, and this transaction has worked out very nicely, but we are a little puzzled. While you were away, we checked you out and found that you are a multimillionaire. What puzzles us is why you would bother to borrow $5,000?"

The woman replies, "where else in New York City can I park my car for two weeks, for under twenty dollars, and expect it to be there when I return?"

it's the real thing

The Korean Association of Dog Meat Restaurants sampled "canned dog meat tonic juice" outside Seoul's World Cup stadium during the World Cup Soccer Tournament in June. Association leader Choi Han Gwon said fans enjoyed it "instead of Coke."

it never rains, it pours.

It'd been a couple of weeks since it rained, so I was pretty happy to see the storm move in. First the wind picked up, and it had a bit of coolness. Then the rain started. I closed my one north-facing window, and went about my business. It was really coming down hard. At one point, I went out on the front porch to watch the storm. I noticed huge clouds of rain blowing from the west, around from the back of the house, so I decided I'd better shut the kitchen window. I don't usually shut it when it rains, because I don't mind if the sink or the dirty dishes get wet, but this time it was raining on the floor. Then I decided to look out of the sun porch. As I opened the door, I realized the west window in there was open - one I'm always conscious of when it rains. I ran over to close it, then I had to go get some rags to wipe up the water. They were near my bedroom, so I remembered that my bedroom window was open. The windowsill and my blankets got wet - no big deal. After wiping off the sill, I went back out to the sun porch to clean up. That time I realized the ceiling was leaking over the basement stairs - like it ALWAYS does when the rain comes from the west - so I ran to get a bucket. It wasn't big enough to cover all the leaks. I ran past the waterfall, into the basement to get a big Rubbermaid tub. I still needed the bucket too.

So I got that taken care of, and came back up to watch the rain. It was still pouring and blowing. There was a lot of lightning very close by. I heard one so close there was just one loud pop, like those "dud" fireworks. The radio announcer said there were thunderstorm warnings in my county for another 40 minutes.

Pretty soon the rain swung around to the south. I had to close one more window. I went back to the basements stairs to check on the leaks, and make sure it hadn't spread. I was adjusting one of the buckets, when I realized there was the sound of water running coming from the basement. I ran down and found that water was pouring in under my basement window and running across the floor. That was a lot of water. It was the entire width of the window, and making little ripples down the wall. My basement floor is very old and very uneven concrete. By some strange chance, the path between the window and the floor drain is the lowest part, so most of the water went that way. Unfortunately, by the time I got down there, there was so much water, that it was heading elsewhere. Fortunately, (I think) there was a large sheet of plastic lying on the floor around there. I was able to put some heavy things on it and use it like sand bags to keep the river in its channel. It didn't contain all the water, though. Water got to some areas of my basement that I never expected to get wet. I was running around down there, trying to pick things up and get them out of the water (mostly cardboard boxes). It was really a pain since my basement ceiling is too low to stand up in. It took me a good ten minutes to get everything off the floor that was in danger of getting damaged. By that time, the water had diminished a bit.

The worst part of it was that I wouldn't have had to scramble if I had been able to clean the basement, like I intended until I got sick last week.

Another storm came though while I was writing this. It didn't last as long, but there was a lot of really close lighting. More than usual in this neighborhood. And some really big bolts - the kind where you can hear the thunder rolling across the sky towards you.

tired

I'm going to bed. I wanted to write a review of the Violent Femmes concert, but I stayed up too late last night to see it.