New car

I fell in love with a new car the other day. Check it out:



It's actually way cuter in person than in pictures. "Adorable" is the word I kept repeating. At about $8500 used, with 60,000 miles on it, I'm sure not going to buy it, but wow. It gets 50 miles to the gallon. Hybrid gas-electric.

Truly adorable. Luther said, "but it has no back seat!" and I said, "That's how I like 'em!" (Okay, I didn't, but it was something to that effect.)

Anybody want? Come on down and visit. I'll take you over there.

Ragin' Cajun

Does James Carville have a fan club? Paraphrased: "I am not going to ask for lower taxes when there are American children out there without healthcare. I am not going to ask for lower taxes when U.S. troops don't have the equipment they need to survive in Iraq."

I don't want you to miss my stirring story about the arrowhead I found, so don't be thinking this is my only recent post. But I had to rant. I just had to.

He rocks.

Cupid was a litterer

I found this in the backyard yesterday (June 3rd, 2007).


What you can't really see in the scan is that there is a ridge down the center, and another two fainter ridges at the top. Though clearly well-worn and not conclusively (to my eye) man-made, it appears to be an arrowhead.

For those of you who haven't been here (insert guilt trip for almost everybody), we have a fairly large yard for a city property, the largest in our neighborhood. The house was built in the 1960s, and before that, these would have been woods with trails and not much else. We're "downtown" by virtue of the city having grown so very fast.

The yard is notorious (among the small sample of Wil, Luther, and myself) for the number of bricks, marbles, and army men that we manage to pull up from the soil. We have also found cinder blocks, railroad ties, oyster shells (that shine startlingly in moonlight when they are first exposed by the rain), and the occasional piece of concrete yard art in the form of frogs and rabbits, their shapes marred and chipped over years of tumbling in the dirt. A rock that looks -and moreso, feels- like it could well have been bound to a stick as a primitive weapon actually seems quite a reasonable find.

But is it really an arrowhead? Couldn't it just be a rock? I've no way of knowing, but I lean toward the arrowhead, as does Luther. Recently, it finally rained after several months of dry spell. After the rain, the night was loud with frogs. I had forgotten the frogs. They've been quiet since last year. They had no voices until the rain. And their sound all through the night... speaks of wilderness and history.

###.....@.....K...............$....##

**disclaimer (and warning): the version I've found does crash pretty readily. I am pouting as I type. You should be able to save your games, but damn... if it's this unstable, I don't know...**

I found Larn to play on Windows. I used to play this as a teenager at Softquad, on a UNIX mainframe. If the past hour is any judge, it still has the power to hook me. COOL! It's text-only. I mean, not some kind of story game. No, I mean... text characters define the visual landscape.

If you must, look it up on Wikipedia. If you just want to play, go here to download the game. Save it to your computer. Unzip it. In the Win32 folder, double-click on the *.exe file. (It might not work if you already have Vista, but it does work on XP.)

I am totally happy. This is just the treat I needed!

p.s. Type ? to get the commands.

Moving day

I never expected to be in Georgia for this long.

I wasn't against the idea. I didn't think staying was really a possibility, so I didn't think much about it. My boyfriend was in the military. We'd have to move.

I think that's part of why it feels so odd to watch others leave, while we stay. I want to feel sad, because they won't be my neighbors anymore, and I like having them as my neighbors. But I don't feel sad, because I never thought we'd be neighbors for long in the first place.

Anita and Anita's husband were from Texas. Mr. Anita got a job here, with the base. Then Anita got sick with cancer and went back to Texas. After she died, Mr. Anita gave me all their frozen food. Luther was deployed, and I lived on this huge stash of frozen, homemade tamales. They were and always will be the best tamales ever.

I think the man that moved into their apartment still lives there. But we bought this house, and got new neighbors.

Steve and Stella live across the road from us. They are Greek Americans, but they're Greek like I'm Welsh. We went over there for ice cream, once, and they showed us pictures of their kids and grandkids and great grandkids, and they talked about who in the pictures had passed away, and who had what disease or condition. We pick up their paper whenever they go away to visit their kids.

Stella doesn't walk much anymore. Steve works on his lawn, slowly but thoroughly. Only lately, the lawn's been getting a bit overgrown. Today, there was a moving truck on the driveway.

And me? I feel like a little kid with my chin on the window sill, watching people leave but not really understanding they can just be gone from my life, and no longer be my neighbors.

Like I said, it's odd.

That's SUPERstar, thank you!

You are The Star

Hope, expectation, Bright promises.

The Star is one of the great cards of faith, dreams realised

The Star is a card that looks to the future. It does not predict any immediate or powerful change, but it does predict hope and healing. This card suggests clarity of vision, spiritual insight. And, most importantly, that unexpected help will be coming, with water to quench your thirst, with a guiding light to the future. They might say you're a dreamer, but you're not the only one.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.