. Spinning .

So nobody brought a girlfriend or a wife and it was me and five guys.  Fine by me, I get along fine with men and men-talk, and it’s easier for me to slip away for computer or reading time with a bunch of men who’d never notice I was gone.

Got to see the iPhone for the first time and I’m very impressed.  The pixel count makes the image so crystal clear and sharp.  The glass screen and the scrolling and enlarging ease of use more than calmed my doubts about the teeny-tiny useless graphics, especially for web use.  Simple to get online, awfully neat to flip the phone and change the view, good e-mail program, automatic You-Tube, great system for arranging and playing tunes, decent size (8 gig) hard drive and memory, neat mapping and some other fun features.  I was anxious to see how hard it’d be to type on it, and it is, but not anywhere as bad as I thought.  It seems to have an automatic "you meant this, right?" spell-check and the keyboard does enlarge for some apps.  You also learn to type differently–back to the two-finger method, but with your thumbs!  My nephew was already quite adept at this. 

For my purposes, I wouldn’t have the use of one to justify the price.  The majority of what I do on computer is writing or reading and those (even with the cute little magnifying circle) aren’t the iPhone’s best features.  For commuters though, this is ideal.  I see it as a necessity for yuppies and likely teens who need to have the latest tech toy.  But there is a future in this and Mac has already brought this product to a high level at its debut and I can see this well becoming tweaked enough to be as normal a thing to own as a home telephone or a tv.  Both of which are facing obsolescence.

I’ve done most of my part in preparation for some friends coming over tomorrow.  It’s usually an Only The Lonely kind of thing–folks who’ve lost their mates or never found one.  Me and the guys.  This time one of them is bringing a lady he’s dating, meaning I likely have to sit and socialize more than I’m up to lately.

The cooking though is fun.  Red cabbage in caraway seeds, artichoke parmesan hot dip, potato salad, cucumbers in vinegar and dill, chick pea salad, chocolate cheese cupcakes (my perennial favorite when I need some pampering and I gave away the last batch so I wouldn’t eat them all), and the rest is easy stuff for the grill.  And watermelon.  And ice cream. And whatever else I feel like scrambling up last minute.

And all this with three blistered fingers from picking up a heat dispenser off a turned-on burner on the stove.

Great.  I get to spend the next few days going over an inch of paperwork loaded with bogus figures.  All different from the last two sets of bogus figures for the same estate project.

Beyond middle age, reading literature, trying to write, to change careers, directions, finding life past shaking fingers in your face.

Clay class.  Giving up on bowls while they’re still three-quarters inch thick and squat.  And safe.  Disregarding directions and making plaques and sitting nudes instead.  Going beyond the rules when rules are there, yet stopping and turning around instead of taking it even further.

This was done maybe thirty years ago.  It is my stuffed shrimp recipe.

…at the feeder right outside my kitchen window, but of course, he wouldn’t come back to have his picture taken and my arms got tired.  The second I closed the screen he returned.

However, it’s also a photo of my new kitchen faucet since the hot/cold mixer wasn’t working right and the plumber put in a new setup since he was working on the pipes yesterday.  Didn’t want an expensive faucet since we’re still hoping to do an addition and kitchen renovation some time soon, so when mi esposo took off to Home Depot I warned him not to get anything expensive.  Luckily the plumber went with him and suggested this high faucet style since hubby wouldn’t likely know how important that is to washing dishes.

My husband is quick-witted and has a very dry sense of humor.  Sometimes he just makes me laugh out loud.

Lazy Sunday, me writing on the laptop, him settled in his leather chair, remote in hand.  "Any races on?" he asks me. 

I check the laptop tv listings.  "Channel 6, Formula One," I answer.  "Just started at 1:00…but it’s over at 3:00.  How could that be?" I wonder aloud.

"They’re fast," he says.

Never ‘fore I’ve wished so much to be a man.
As now, as gleaming copper pipes are severed.
Levers pulled to halt the flow of sparkling water
from the well in the good earth.
And coffee perks invitingly,
aromas wafting Temptress of the taste.
No sip shall I, for not a lever
nor a penis do I own.

Life makes room for dreams though difficult it makes its path for dreams are precious and must prove themselves to be well worth the passage.

And sometimes dreams are touched by the little gracelessness of reality prowling around perimeters of less contained arenas.

I dreamt of a tree so tall I couldn’t see its crown but at its weighted trunk a gash flowed tears of sap. It asked my help and told me of the man who hurt him, swirling blades and shouting roars whizzing by unmindful of any in his way.  I look again and teeth have bit into its bark.  I wake just as it falls.  Silently, it falls.  And I remember.