Thanks For The Memories

This will be my last post. I am not sure why? I am not sure why there was a first post. I will leave it up for a  day or so and then erase the whole thing. It has been a good run. I have enjoyed the feedback above all and learned a lot as a corollary. I want to thank those that did the teaching. Those are namely the eight blogs that I have been following. Of those eight, five have reciprocated. Thanks for the boost.

Special thanks to Barb and Susan and Marvin and Kate.

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The Best Way…

Bed (Photo credit: antifuse)

…to own fitted bottom sheets for your bed is to own only one. If you find a really good price at a white sale save your money. Allternately buy an extra pillow sham. I don’t recommend it as I hate them. I hate bed-skirts even more. This of course is just personal taste. Some of my best friends love them. Even so they will remain best friends. Friends that own more than one fitted bottom sheet however are doing themselves a large disservice. This is not a matter of taste. It is not even a matter of bad taste over good. It is poor judgement.

Owning more that one of these, the fitted bottom sheet, means that you have to find a way of storing it while not using it. You cannot possibly fold it in the manner in which you bought it or in any other way that won’t disrupt everything in its vicinity. It will poison the rest of the linen closet the same way an ash tree poisons the ground around it to keep other species at bay. It is as evil as AOL once was.

When it comes to laundry day simply wash and replace the bottom sheet on the bed. Throw the rest of the bedding into your hamper and ignore it until you run out of top sheets and then wash them all at once or simply neatly fold and store them until needed again. Any other technique has flaws. You could try throwing your bottom sheet into the laundry basket and leave it there under other linens or maybe a checkered table cloth I suppose as a storage technique but it won’t be ready to use when you need it. You could go back to unfitted sheets, top and bottom. Wait. No you can’t. That is just too dumb an idea to be considered. Fitted is good. That benefit far outweighs the storage flaw. That flaw however is huge and can only be addressed in one sensible way.

Friends don’t let friends own more than one fitted bottom sheet. White becomes the sole default colour option then if you have more than one set of top sheets. One fitted bottom sheet per bed. Period.

signed,

your friend

A Fourth For Bridge.Three Reasons I Miss My Ex

Firstly there are easily way more than just three reasons. Just one would be a fluke. It could instead be a flounder. Who would know the difference any way? Still, “fluke or flounder”, one is an aberration and easily dismissed. Heck there is even more than one way to skin a cat should you ever need to? Were it two reasons it might be dismissed as coincidence. You need more than that many hands just to do up your three-year old’s coat.  Three is the magic number for me for most things. It is third time lucky. Third degree gives you the best sun burn. It is the number you get ready with. After three you don’t think on it any more you just abandon the prep and go for it. When you have reached critical mass in any relationship you continually get the third degree for your efforts. Three it has to be. Yes three it is.

One: She was my first. Nothing that comes after will be unique. Period. There is only one dot on the letter I. No other punctuation mark proclaims that simplicity. Can I make this point any more clear? Certainly not with a question mark! And the exclamation is too far over the top. One first. Period.

Two: It concerned only the two of us. Everyone else and anything else was outside. It was the perfect grouping. It was two functioning as one. Sure one of us was “yang” but I couldn’t tell you which.

Three: Three is the passage of time. The passing has healed all the wounding we inflicted on each other in order to stave off being just “one” again after losing out on being the perfect ”two in one”. That feeling of completeness though has avoided me since and it has been a very long time since. 

We are both in good places now and it has been a valuable lesson learned. If you are a young couple and wish to play Bridge find a third and a fourth

Flatfish are asymmetrical, with both eyes lying on the same side of the head (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

simultaneously. With only a Third and no Fourth for balance simply bidding.. 2 hearts.. will kill you.

I Know Exactly What I Said!

Image via Wikipedia

Why don’t you? Oh? You do know what I said. You just don’t know what I meant.

Where the “angle of incidence” does not mirror the “angle of reflection“, word wise, it all comes apart. Physics be damned.

What I said was, “I Love You”.

It’s 11 O’Clock.

 

Image via Wikipedia

 

 Excluding the sword and the one gauntlet all was as it should have been. The sword and gauntlet though were not and no one had yet seen this. A trained eye should have spotted their incongruity with the rest of the regalia a long time ago. No one had provided that eye yet. In any good story there is only one trained eye. It would prove to be Helena’s this time.

The armour was most recently discovered in the burned out attic of a small clapboard bungalow in the west end of Buffalo, New York. It had been discovered many times before in many other places and then always lost again. Had anyone cared to keep a log the trail would hardly have been a mystery. The locations included two others in Western New York State as well as Cairo and of course Arles. It happened every time the find was made. Interest was stirred and then scuttled as questions that should have been asked were not and then were not answered. Fanned vigorously like a nascent flame was probably a better description of the process. When the tinder is wet or as in the case of the armour origin misunderstood, the fanning becomes pointless and is abandoned. As fascinating as a question can be an answer every now and again isn’t such a bad thing either. With each answer comes a new question and eventually someone like Helena asks the right question. In all the years that had passed since the armour was found the first time the right question was about to be asked for the first time.

Helena asked why the blade’s quillian, annulet and ricasso clearly pointed to a right-handed master while the left gauntlet showed the signs of having wielded the instrument. Further the creases on the right gauntlet were those expected with respect to the ricasso’s extended length and the sword’s over-all weight but showed signs of being worn by a smaller hand. It was Helena that first dared to ask, how could Joan Of Arc’s weapon turn up in Buffalo in 1966 in a chest rescued from one of the early arson cases reported by Irv Weinstein. The rest of the armour was clearly of German and Italian design and thus not relevent. A leap of faith such as Helena’s was the equivalent of an eleven on the Richter Scale. Helena did not backtrack. She had paid her dues.

Come what may. This would be the last time the trove disappeared.   ……….

If I wrote fiction I hope it would start like this.

Three Piece-Barry

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I remember as a child being able to buy a seven ounce green tinted bottle of Coke. It cost less than the big bottle and it was way cute. I enjoyed snapping off the cap and very quickly putting the bottle under my nose to get the sensation from the exploding bubbles of carbon dioxide mixed with the sweet scent of the caramel. I conjure up that memory from time to time for the sheer fun it still brings. There is a world of wonder always on tap in a childhood memory. When you get older things change. They just seem to get more complicated.

In 1981 I was between job assignments for a short while and took a sales job. It didn’t last long either but there I met a man who made a big impression on me. I still call him “Three-Piece Barry”. He always wore a three-piece suit to the office. He probably wore one to play baseball too. He also had another unique behavioral trait.

He was a very warm and sociable man with a winning smile and for a short period was my immediate boss. After the first week on the job he asked if I would join him for a drink after work. I did and there it was. His other unique trait. I ordered a beer. He ordered two double rums and Coke on the side. That was four drinks to my one.The server had waited on him before. Without further instruction she brought my beer to the table along with two doubles in old fashion glasses and one magic seven ounce bottle of Coke. I had to ask him. Apparently experience had taught him that a double rum mixed with three and one half ounces of Coke was the perfect mate for his palate. So as not to waste the bottom half of the bottle he started ordering the second drink in anticipation. He always wore a three-piece suit and he would not waste Coca Cola. Admirable twice over.

I lost touch with him sometime later but it always pleases me to remember him and his odd-ball connection to one of my best childhood memories.

Pass the Dijon

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Refrigerator (Photo credit: mhaithaca)

Happy New Year 2013. Why put off for tomorrow what you can do today? This can include New Year’s resolutions. Today belatedly I found some Oktoberfest sausage in the freezer. I bought it the first week of January. The Januaryfest sausage won’t be out till likely never. I cooked it with sauerkraut and served it to myself on a fresh crusty bun. All this on a plate at the dining room table by myself as it was only 2:00 in the afternoon. No one else was home due to commitments with school and work. I haven’t been an official student for many years and I haven’t had a real job to go to since retiring a few years back. The cloth napkin was a nice touch. When you want to be nice to yourself you go beyond.

It’s true that aging does not affect your taste in food. True also is that your taste buds might let you down and that more and more foods will taste like chicken. It remains however that what your favourites were they still are. Bacon is sacred. Your personal choices in food just stay the same. Chicken-Bacon? Why not? Anyway I skipped the beer this time only because I was indoors cooking on the stove and not outdoors with the “Bar-B”. It was every bit the treat that it always is. This time perhaps it was the Dijon that made it special. Maybe. Usually whatever is in the fridge will do. It is just mustard right? Right but there is no such thing as just mustard when the mustard is just right. I am sure this jar had a vintage date on it. Too many times have I ignored adding mustard to a sandwich out of laziness. No longer!

The New Year starts now. This year I promise to accompany all fare that works better with mustard,with mustard. Happy pre 201 three. Snappy little rhyme too.