Ashyknees' Time Killer

The author is willing, but her punctuation is weak.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

To the People Who Were in Line with Me at Lunchtime

Baby do you understand me now
If sometimes you see that I'm mad
Doncha know that no one alive can always be an angel?
When everything goes wrong you see some bad
Well I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

Ya know sometimes baby I'm so carefree
with a joy that's hard to hide
Then sometimes again it seems that all I have is worry
And then you're bound to see my other side
But I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

If I seem edgy
I want you to know
I never meant to take it out on you
Life has its problems
and I get more than my share
but that's me one thing I never mean to do
Cause I love you

Oh baby
I'm just human
Don't you know I have faults like anyone?
Sometimes I find myself alone regretting
some little foolish thing
some simple thing that I've done
I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood
I try so hard
So don't let me be misunderstood

<< Home

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Putting the Ass in Assessment

During lunch hour, I went to the gym for my free goal fitness assessment.

First the gym guy took my pulse and weighed me. Next he made me do girl push-ups (can't do the guy ones yet), gut crunches, some kind of ham flexibility test, and 3 minutes of rhythmic stair stepping. Then he took my pulse again.

The astonishing thing about my assessment was finding out that I my physical condition measurements were mostly average compared to other women my age. I'm about as flexible as a ritz cracker in a drought, but my ability to do ab crunches was rated "excellent."

If my abs are excellent compared to other Americans, we are a flabby nation indeed. After the assessment, I went straight to Qdoba to use my coupon for a free quesadilla.

Today was day one of a ten-week goal fitness program. I wonder what they'll make me do next week.

Put the Cheadle on the Record

Last night I watched Talk to Me on DVD. It was another fine personal movie from Kasi Lemmons. I wish I could have seen it in the theater.

Monday, January 21, 2008

One More Political Post

From Slate.

The Other Food Chain

In third grade, my teach gave me a little diagram illustrating the food chain model of critter interaction. On the bottom was a row of grass. Above the grass, a fluffy bunny. The bunnies eat the grass and help it to grow by leaving the occasional poop. Higher still, if I remember correctly, there was an eagle. Even though nobody got to eat the eagle, it would feed the grass when it died. Worms and fungus and stuff broken them down so that the grass could use the ingredients. Above it all, the sun dropped little arrows of light on the whole buffet, providing the energy that kept the whole thing running. The little ditto gave me a very clear, if oversimplified, understanding of who was eating who. It seemed like a pretty good system.

Since completing third grade, I've learned that not everyone received the same elementary school hand-out. It seems that some kids got a food chain lesson that goes a little something like this.

The grass should feed everyone else with lots of green, even if its soil is eroding, because it can't do anything else. It doesn't even have legs, the bum. When the grass wilts, eagles are forced to fly to other places where the grass is more productive and less expensive. Some of the more warm-hearted eagles dump manure on the grass, but not too much so it doesn't get even more lazy.

In spite of these eagles' generous efforts to spread manure, the shiftless grass stilll isn't making much green. This has caused some of the rabbits, who were coddled for far too long, to grow scrawny and constipated. Some of them don't appreciate imported grass. They've disappeared all together from some meadows. But the eagles keep eating them. Lately, some eagles have learned to enjoy the taste of foreign rabbits. When the local bunnies start to whine, the eagles inspire them to hang on by providing an abundance of low priced electronics and tax rebates.

When the rabbits are watching videos on their new ipods, purchased with the tax rebates, the eagles eat them. Then the eagles eat the grass, too, even though it's not what it used to be.

When the eagles die, other eagles eat them. And they deserve to, because it was eagles, after all, who make the whole thing run. (The sun--that slacker bastard--and icky worms have nothing to do with it.) And the eagles also deserve their tax rebates.

And this will go on forever and ever.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

What Will Not Influence Me

I still don't know which of the Democratic presidential candidates I will support if I bother to get involved in the primary process.

But I know this:

My decisions will not be influenced by fear of what bigots might do, nor will it be influenced by fear of people who wouldn't vote for a Democrat to save their souls crawling out of the woodwork in greater numbers to vote against someone.

Hatemongers and right wingnuts are not welcome to participate in my personal caucus.

Blliinnng!!!

I was going back and forth about who to support for president until one of the commenters at Passion of the Lips blog hipped me to the magical powers of Obama as evidenced in this unretouched photo from Salon.com.

Either he's magic, or he's been eating too many Skittles.

Monday, January 07, 2008

Another Year Older, Still in Debt

On this birthday, my thoughts swirl around the toilet bowl that is my financial situation. Okay, maybe it's not as bad as all that. I am crawling out of more holes than I am digging. Still, I've got to return to the vigilance I had before the holidays hit (Presents for everyone! One cake for pride, the other for shame! Shopping at Whole Paycheck for New Years meat!). Weekly financial goals, monthly financial goals, that sort of thing. I was doing well for a while, but I got comfortable and smug. Soon I was coasting, and now it's like I'm back to my goofus twenty something habits. At least I had the foresight to tuck away some moneys for the Christmas carnage. So, more ant, less grasshopper!

I must plot out concrete steps toward increasing my income. All my efforts at cutting expenses do nothing to erase the fact that the cost of living rises faster than my modest wages. The rent is going up soon (not enough to make it worthwhile to move this year). I'd like to have the internet at home so I can write this crap at my leisure instead of on breaks.

Wasn't that a fun post?

Friday, January 04, 2008

Back to the Gym

Yesterday I actually went back into the gym--the gym that's been deducting fees from my paycheck even though I hadn't set foot in it since, oh, August.

It was really boring. Sure, I feel better now than I would if I'd skipped the 25 minutes of elliptical machine drudgery, but just to be on the safe side, I'm going to research some mental tricks to keep me exercising for the long haul.

I'll add weight lifting to my next gym visit.

The best fitness news is that I found the perfect yoga video for me. It's called Yoga for the Rest of Us, and it features a community center full of geriatric practitioners who occasionally steady themselves with chairs. Some people might be inspired by standard yoga videos in which perfect specimens contort themselves on sunset-lit Hawaiian beaches. I'm the kind of person who's more heartened by a gaggle of determined yet wobbly geezers and a forty-year old dude in tights.

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

My Beef and Cheese Holidays

Beef and Cheese
Once again, beef and cheese went hand in hand with Christmastime. Over the winter break, a series of relatives and friends served me many fine meats and cheeses, as well as cookies, cakes and pies.

The day after Christmas, I was fortunate enough to visit Thing 1 and Thing 2, my beloved nephews, in their natural MA habitat. This time around, it was Thing 2's turn to quote the line from Elf about smelling like beef and cheese. "You are not a great man!" declared Thing 2.

The aromatic cheese theme wafted though Thing 1 and Thing 2 speech for days, finding it's way into improvised lyrics for Maroon 5 songs and the nine-year-old Thing 2's nascent attempts at ribaldry.

Even though everyone else had to watch some so-called historic football game broke on the final evening, it was the most savory holiday visit I've had in years.

Dessert
On the morning I was scheduled to leave for the first leg of my family Christmas travels, I baked an angel food cake and found the texture unsatisfactory (not cooled upside down, chocolate not grated finely enough). Pride compelled me to bake another even though it wouldn't be long before Mom, Dad and some aunts would be stopping by to pick me up. With all of the scrambling to bake and pack and clean my apartment in case relatives wanted to look at it, I forgot to put the first draft cake in the fridge and tucked it out of site somewhere else. When I finally returned to my apartment after several days the visiting, I found the cake in the chair beneath my desk. The texture had not improved.