What alien snatched my brain?

So, a very weird thing happened a little while ago.

I was walking down a long empty hall with a slight ramp.  Suddenly, I had this giddy urge to run as hard as I could.

I NEVER have the urge to run.

An alien body snatcher must have stolen the real me.

Double Take

I opened up Amazon’s website to do some shopping and the banner headline, I swear to the sun and the moon and the stars, said “Sneaky Pee.”  For a split second I thought it was going to be advertising come bladder control problem.  Then I noticed the photo along with the heading and it was of a roll of bills.  Save money on your depends?

Oh, on a double take it said “Sneaky Pete, Amazon Prime original, stream the new season.”

Thanks to my vision problems, this sort of thing happens more and more often.  Although it’s usually not so funny….

Random and Weird

My left shoulder has been exceptionally itchy for the last several days.  I’ve tried craning my neck and peering at my shoulder through the mirror, but I can’t notice so much as a pimple.

But.  It.  Is. Driving.  Me.  Insane.

I just might have to drive down to the local dollar store and buy one of those long handled back scratchers.  You know, the ones you make fun of thinking, “Who would spend their money on something so dumb.”

On account of the lack of a real back scratching device, last Sunday while building my china cabinets (which turned out pretty well for cheap, laminated build it yourself crap), I used the claw on the back of my hammer.  Which actually worked pretty well.  So, thinking back on that, I am now seriously contemplating going in search of my toolbox.

Anyway, it’s probably just the dry winter air making it so itchy.  I would prefer to hope that it is not something so mundane but instead, like they say about itchy palms, that I am due to come suddenly into a large sum of money.

I suppose if I won the lottery I could hire someone to come in just to scratch my shoulder for me.  Or apply lotion.

Crap.  Now I’ve got Silence of the Lambs on my mind.

Ottoman Upholstery

I actually enjoy giving old stuff a face lift and making it beautiful again.  While I don’t like being called a dumpster diver, some of my favorite furniture pieces were things people were going to throw away just because they had a rip in the fabric or were outdated.

About eight years ago I inherited an ottoman that some people were going to throw away.  It was covered in a beige vinyl faux-leather and had been in a flood so it was discolored and moldy.  But it was sturdy so I peeled off the vinyl and underneath it looked like brand new wood with nary a hint of decay or warping.  I put on new batting, a pillow top and some new beige fabric with a pretty burgundy and gold braided trim.  I even hammered in some decorative upholstery tacks.  It was lovely.  For about two days.  Then the spud, aged 3 and a half, scribbled on it in black magic marker.  I got some of it out.  Then she pulled off the braided trim.  Then I cried, put it in the basement and figured some day I would try again.

When I moved to the Big City in the fall of 2014, I brought it with me to use in my room in town.  But it was ugly.  Last year after Christmas I splurged and bought some new blue velvet foot stools and the ugly ottoman was relegated to the living room with all the ugly, beat up, old furniture left by the owners for common use.  However, I have been meaning ever since I moved to town to fix it up.  First I thought I’d just buy a slip cover.  But they seemed ridiculously expensive, and none were appealing.  So this winter break I determined to reupholster it.  Yesterday, armed with a 40% off coupon I went to the fabric store and found a lovely caramel-color wide wale chenille corduroy fabric.  I got enough to cover the whole ottoman for less than $6 (slip covers tend to run for at least $30, by the way), paid about $3 for a box of staples, and reused the batting, pillow topper, and some of the decorative upholstery tacks from before.  In about an hour the ottoman was transformed.  A decorative throw from Ecuador (a gift from a friend) on top makes it look amazing.

The sad, pathetic ottoman destroyed by the Spud.

Pay no attention to the ugly sofas in the back ground. …

 

Ooohh. Aahhhh. What a lovely ottoman you have, Janie.

And, to think:  Someone was going to throw this ottoman away, when all it took was a little thrifty shopping, an hour or so of time and less than $10 total for supplies to make it beautiful.  Some people….

Because I like to keep all ya’all in the loop…

…and because I can think of nothing else to blog today, I figured I’d inform you that I survived the 10 day old meatloaf consumption with nary a hitch.

Do you ever wonder?

So I have a class this spring where I have to read some historical fiction novels about epidemics. To hopefully ease into the spring semester, I read one of the books already. It is “Nemesis” by Philip Roth.

As literature goes, it was okay. Not great, but okay. I liked the first half pretty well, but then the author does something with the main character I did not particularly like. Whatever. It was a short book and read quickly.

What did stand out though was that throughout the novel, which is set in during WWII, the characters refer to Frigidaires. Not refrigerators, but Frigidaires. Now, where I come from we pronounce Frigidaire as fridge-id-air. However, though I am familiar with the brand, I don’t recall ever actually seeing a Frigidaire brand refrigerator in anyone’s home before. Weird? Yeah, probably.

I have often wondered why where I grew up people called refrigerators “fridges” despite the fact that it’s not really short for refrigerator. For as long as I can remember I would try to phonetically spell refrigerator as refridgerator even though there’s no “d” in refrigerator. Although I know this now, I still sometimes try to spell it that way. But, since reading this book I wonder if the slang “fridge” didn’t come from a bastardization of Frigidaire instead of refrigerator.

So, are you all wondering why the H-E double hockey sticks I am babbling on about this?

Good question.

I have no good answer. I’ve just been thinking about it.

A little biochemistry on the brain

You know you’ve been studying a little too much when you start seeing obscure science-y stuff in every day life.

Take this advertisement for boots I got in my email:

 

I don’t know why the company calls itself UGG Australia.  But after 16 weeks of biochemistry, genetics and virology, when I see UGG my mind immediately goes to the DNA sequence abbreviation for Uracil, Guanine, Guanine which is the codon for the amino acid tryptophan.  But that’s just me.

16 weeks earlier, my mind would just have gone from UGG to ugg-ly.  And that context is perhaps more fitting.