Stand By Your Man

My Dad had to practically walk through a picket line to meet me for lunch. Something his own father told him never to do. Stand up for what's right. Join together with your fellow man and seek justice in the world. But these days, even on this Tax Day, the government is coming apart at the seams. People are picketing. Protesting all over the place. Landlord's are getting rich while drywallers pound the pavement. The ever-growing Phoenix concrete jungle and one man and me. 

Still standing.

Busy Brewer

No circumcision receipts necessary. 

No guns at school. 

Turns out Jan can be downright reasonable.

Thought for the day

Bruges - a fairy tale

Last year at this time, wandering around with Louise, I discovered Bruges, Belgium. A couple of years ago there was this guy

in the movie In Bruges that gave me a little taste of what a stunning place it is. A fairy tale. A walk around with your mouth hanging open it's so beautiful kind of place. Shana's there today and I bet she's climbing the Bell Tower right now.

Movie Madness - NIGHTS!!

I forgot what a great movie Chocolat is. Maybe because last time I saw it I wasn't sitting in the courtyard at the Montelucia on a gorgeous night under a full moon with friends (one even dressed in a glittery chocolatey shirt), my own cute sans the pony-tail pirate and some little chocolate cakes.

Seems to make for a better ending.

Next up...a little Shakespeare

Much Ado About Nothing on May 29th.

Brats, Beer, Boys and a Birthday

Sunday afternoon birthday bash for Mike. Neverending cranberry-grapefruit martinis, delectable food spread, big birthday cake, growing too fast kids, new adopted dogs, cracking up with the girls on the patio, finally catching up with the other halves, cramp the style, cheers.

Ou est Shana?

Paris! Now she wants to move there. Who could blame her? One of her new friends at school in Alcala, Gwenyth (who also goes to U of A, but they never really knew each other), somehow talked a French exchange student that had stayed with her family years ago to let her and Shana and Shannon stay in her Paris flat. She's been cooking for them and giving them tours and I even got a phone call this morning from her place. Picnic lunch at the Eiffel Tower and a last night in Paris take the hostess out for crepes dinner.

Weight, Weight, Don't Tell Me

I dropped out of Weight Watchers. Uh oh. Back in January I decided I can do this on my own. This isn't rocket science, right? I'd maintained at twenty pounds gone for awhile. Still far away from a fifteen more to go goal weight, but willing to tackle that at a later date. Put it off. Live it up for now. Then I gained four pounds. Then four more. Then I lost four. So the scale sits at four up from January. Digging out the WW book again...

UUUGGGGHHH!

Insecure

It started with Home Depot. I got an email last week. You are a valued customer. You can trust us, but, we regret to inform you that some yahoo hacked into our system and stole lots of information. Probably just your email, maybe more. But remember, you are a valued customer. I remember the day I got that credit card, standing staring at a hot water heater while the guy in the orange apron (such a bad color on everybody, really) told me that if I signed up today I would get 30% off, zero interest for a year, free delivery and installation and a big party with cake and balloons and a marching band. My driver's license and every other card in my wallet wasn't enough for them to identify me, I needed to play 20 questions with some lady on the phone. She said, "Out of all of these streets, which one have you lived on?" Main, Portland, Belleview, 45th? Belleview! How about the following phone numbers? Which one have you used? Out of these restaurants, where have you worked? Denny's, Applebees, Chili's or TGI Fridays? She went on and on. She knew every place I have lived, where I have banked, all of my account numbers for the past 30 years. It was so creepy. Later last week I got another email. This one was from Victoria's Secret. You are a valued customer. You can trust us, but, we regret to inform you that some yahoo hacked into our system and stole lots of information. Probably just your email, maybe more. But remember, you are a valued customer. I got this card, as I recall, because Shana had just moved to Tucson and, you know, Mom, it would be so much easier for you, really, you know, if I had a card. Somehow undergarments didn't fit in the "use your own allowance" category. So now we've both got enough bras to last awhile, I get at least one big catalog a week and now my secret isn't safe anymore (36 long). Last bad news of the week (so far) was from Healthnet. Same thing, but worse. They hacked in and got it all and we are giving you a two year free subscription to some kind of personal information protection service. We're sorry. You are a valued customer.

If I'm so valuable, why doesn't anybody buy a better lock?

Into The Woods

Once upon a time there was a clumsy Cinderella. Everywhere she went she tripped, spinning around and around, arms flailing, making a big kerplunk as she fell, gold shoes popping off, ball gown dress flying up, showing everyone her billowy white bloomers underneath. Seventh grade Shana. She sang, she danced, she acted, she got all bruised up. Cracks me up still when I think about her Into The Woods performance at the amazing Tesseract (I just "contributed" part of my taxes to them today, hoping that they will spend it better than our scary, Big Bad Wolf, governor). Yesterday Cinderella Shana left Madrid for Paris, hopefully not falling down on her four days there, then Brussels, Bruges, Amsterdam and wrapping up her Into The Spring Break performance in London. I wish I was in the West End audience to watch that one, too. So it's not just the awesomeness of friend, Maggie, who built the set for the current production of Into The Woods that's making me drive all the way to Gilbert this weekend. It's that I miss Shana.