Felyne: just a glitch in your matrix

Bright Eyes

Is it a kind of dream,
Floating out on the tide,
Following the river of death downstream?
Oh, is it a dream?

There's a fog along the horizon,
A strange glow in the sky,
And nobody seems to know where you go,
And what does it mean?
Oh, is it a dream?

Bright eyes,
Burning like fire.
Bright eyes,
How can you close and fail?
How can the light that burned so brightly
Suddenly burn so pale?
Bright eyes.

Is it a kind of shadow,
Reaching into the night,
Wandering over the hills unseen,
Or is it a dream?

There's a high wind in the trees,
A cold sound in the air,
And nobody ever knows when you go,
And where do you start,
Oh, oh, into the dark.

Bright eyes,
burning like fire.
Bright eyes,
how can you close and fail?
How can the light that burned so brightly
Suddenly burn so pale?
bright eyes.

Bright eyes,
burning like fire.
Bright eyes,
how can you close and fail?
How can the light that burned so brightly
Suddenly burn so pale?
Bright eyes.

Lyrics by Mike Batt

Posted by Me, for Taubin

My 401K is a bucket of Feijoas

(and for the nonAmerican readers, a 401K is a retirement plan - I'm not exactly sure why, maybe $401,000 is the magic number you need to have before you can click through the turnstyle of the magical roundabout that is retirement).

Remember the Three US Dollars Each Feijoa Incident?   Well the last trip back to New Zealand was during feijoa season (yes, it has it's own season) and there were more feijoas than you could shake a stick at (and not just any small twig either, I'm talking a decent spur-away-a-bear size stick).    Don't believe me?  I knew you wouldn't, so I prepared some supporting photographic evidence.  May it please the court, I present.... Exhibit A: 

An orchestrated feast of tender green tastiness.   And much like the Tui bird, I gorged myself on feijoa until I couldn't physically walk, my mind bouncing off the walls of my skull in a vain effort to escape, not so much enjoying as enduring the fruit sugar rush.

So anyway, after the sugar rush died down and the feijoas were digested to a point where I could walk again, it struck me that I was staring down the barrel of a lot of Three US Dollars.  Or, down the barrels of a lot of three dollars.   Whichever makes the most sense in your mind.   At any rate it's irrelevant as to whether it's one barrel or a lot of barrels, that's not the point.   No my point is, somehow, I need to get those feijoas from there to here at no expense so I have a zero cost and 100% profit, so I can retire when I hit 401 Thousand (hopefully that's not an age level).

So my question to you is, would you like to buy some organically grown 100% natural feijoas?  They're only $3.25* each (come on, a girl's gotta count inflation, what, you want me to go backwards???).

Felyne's Feijoa Farm.  100% Grown.

*Feijoas will be mailed in a standard envelope from New Zealand at some point in the future which has not as yet been determined.  Please add $4.95 per feijoa for postage.

Visiting the Mouse

Little Pierre has been badgering me for quite a while about Disneyland.   "We're only an hour's drive away, why haven't we been yet" and "I want to go to Disneyland, take me to Disneyland" and "everyone else gets to go to Disneyland but me, why don't you love me enough to take me to Disneyland" and then it turned to threats;  "Take me to Disneyland or I'm going to mix your coloured laundry in with your whites and turn your shirts pink".     Knowing my extreme dislike for pink (the colour, not the singer) I succumbed and last weekend we went.

Remember this gal?  Well ExMarineBadassCopGuy isn't out handcuffing the masses at the moment, so she and he tagged along.   Actually they were our bodyguard protection;  Pierre is quite the little celebrity (in his own mind) so he talked them into being our armoured escort for the weekend.  We got to stay at March Airforce Base overnight which was pretty cool, until the 7:30am reveille a-la PA system.  And on a Sunday morning too, don't these people have any damn decency?  The fact that we didn't get to our rooms until 2:30am and had only a few hours sleep by then is beside the point.

And Disneyland was awesome.   Man, do they know how to move some people.   And I have never seen that much merchandise in my whole entire life.   But, the rides were awesome.   Haunted House was a scream, and so very me, I felt right at home.   

The Pirates of the Caribbean was also fun but the best ride would have to be Peter Pan.   Even though it's a kids ride, and only 30 seconds long, it is worth the half hour wait.  You fly high up in the sky looking down through the stars onto Never Neverland, complete with pirates ship in the bay.   Total.Awesomeness.

The Alice in Wonderland ride, well I don't know what severely mentally unstable person decided that ride needed to be created but I feel for every small child that has been put through that catatonic-inducing worst minute and thirty seconds of their small yet hugely impressionable lives.   Grotesquely vibrant over-sized and over-volumised singing flowers.  I still shudder at the recollection.

Still, Pierre had fun.   And I may or may not have an addiction to Disney Pin Trading now (and if I do, and I'm not admitting that I do, then I blame the Alice in Wonderland ride in it's entirety).  That is all, go about your business.  Nothing to see here.

Me and Him

I expect you will now berate me as a hypocrite and shout the name Turncoat with harsh callousness in my direction, and I put my hand up and plead guilty as charged.   

For more then four years I've written this blog with complete cynicism of love, the hurt it creates and the immense futility of it all.  But then I met Taubin and everything changed.

Taubin is everything.  He is the complete spectrum starting at sweet and caring, passing through respectful and intelligent, then detouring through funny before vectoring off into extremely hot, and then coming full circle with incredible, amazing and wonderful.   And he's my guy.   How the hell did that happen?  I am the luckiest girl alive.   Down in Love City Hall, some little cherub has made a huge clerical error because they hadn't had enough coffee that morning.   Please, nobody tell them there's been a mistake, I don't want this to ever be corrected.  *sigh*   Yes, get your sharp pointy sticks out ready to thrash me, because here it comes.... I love him.  And now my blog should implode into itself, creating a black hole into which nothing shall ever return.  Or something.

So I guess you're wanting a picture - in my little world you all know each other, but incase my little world hasn't yet escaped and infected your little world yet, there is a gallery of us, aptly named Me and Him.   And for those too mentally stable to actually click that link, here's a sample.

Oh and if you even dare mock us I will rip your tonsils out with a rusty blunt axe, show a little respect for love for gods sake.

Me and Love.   Who could have dreamt it.

"You're a wreck"

And if I had misspelt icing I'd be a CakeWreck, sadly I'm not that decorative.

So I went to Hollistic Hottie today.   I've been looking forward to it since about Tuesday, my back hasn't been the most happiest part of my anatomy since the flights on the weekend, and has progressively seized during the week.     

As I signed in at the clinic I told him this wasn't one of the better states I've been in and was counting on him to restore my comfort levels, not to put him under any pressure or anything.  I think he was pretty self assured he was going to have me skipping with glee out of there after he'd done his magic.  But sadly, his magic wasn't enough and he had to admit defeat.  Well, not really defeat.  "Normally I can dig around pretty hard, but you're too bound up so it's counter productive".  He didn't even get to dig his knees or elbows in.

"You're a wreck, to put it in the nicest possible way".   And there were so many sensitive spots on my back he had me dancing, the deep breaths in and out weren't really helping either and the muscles didn't want to relax or loosen up much at all.  And my neck is very swollen, it needs an ice pack every few hours.

So I have to go back next week for round two (ding ding).  Yay for poor biomechanics.  Not.

Anyway, here is a picture of a sweet little fluffy Lansing squirrel, the cute flicking of his tail makes it all better (even if Taubin says they only do that when you've pissed them off and they want to gouge your throat out with their sharp little teeth).  

"We've captured an impostor, ma'am"

Although it's not quite an impostor, and for my own sanity, I'm going to call this 'Art'.   It's just a good thing Lego's Stealth Hunter runs security here.

When I was in Lansing, I met one of Taubin's friends (let's call him a random name like, ohhh I dunno, "Jeff").  So I met Jeff.  And he had his very own welcoming gift piece of art for me.

This is quite the little sculpture:  anatomically correct, it even has it's tiny nonfunctional wings, big bird feet and overly protruding beak.  I'm very impressed and think we could all learn something from this.    And like all fine masterpieces of art, this piece has a title.   And it's a doosey.  This most wonderful little creation, born of Jeff's own hand I might add, and I commend him on his most exceptional artistical skills, is titled...  *while waiting for the drumroll gives it it's very own line with bold font*...

" A kiwi made from a kiwi for a kiwi "

That's a lot of kiwis.   

Now you are all faithful readers of my blog, so I know I don't have to point out to you the glaringly obvious error of omission of 'fruit' on the second kiwi, because by now you are more than highly aware the correct name for this furry brown tasty and nutritious gem of nature is in fact 'kiwifruit'.  

A kiwi is of course either a small flightless bird, as depicted in this modern age pseudo art sculpture, or it is a person born in New Zealander and fondly naming themselves after the aforementioned small flightless bird.    At any rate, neither of these should be sliced up and consumed, regardless of how hysterical you find the cartoon pictures of the preparation to be.  

As for the impostor, I'm going to send it on a nationwide educational tour, enlightening the masses on the dangers of omitting the fruit from the kiwi.

Jeff?  He was suddenly called out of town on business, he said he'll be gone quite a long time so don't bother looking for him.  

That axe?  Oh it was like that when I got here.  

The big mound of dirt out back?   Why, that's just the dogs digging up the yard again, pay no attention to it.

Renault and Ford to Merge

Renault and Ford are working together to build an affordable small car.

They are using the Renault Clio and the Ford Taurus as a basis for the new zippy little car, the Clitaurus.

The car comes in pink, with fur on the dash.  Models assembled in Brazil will not offer the fur option.

*snort*   *snicker*   Thank you to Mongoose's "News From Around the Globe" for that one.

I think I forgot to tell you....

I've gone to Michigan for the weekend to see Taubin At the moment I'm sitting in O'Hare. The flight was an hour early, and nothing was open. I never thought I would see the day when we were the only active plane on the flightline at ORD. Weirdness. Pierre is the sweetest little bear, he found me coffee and so now we are enjoying that together (my addiction has finally rubbed off onto him). So an hour and a half until the connecting... And Taubin won't be awake yet... What to do while we wait... Nothing is open yet (except the starbucks - yay for Starbucks). And it's Chicago, everyone but me ordered a bagel with their coffee.

A Lucky Three Legged Cheetah

So you're probably thinking to yourself... cheetahs are one of the fastest running animals on earth, but it takes four legs to run....so what happens when they only have three legs?Cherry

Why, they drive VW Golfs of course.  Now before you go thinking that it's a computer animated ad, unlike a Geico, excuse me, Gecko, this gal is very real.    She was caught in a gin trap when she was nine months old and her leg had to be amputated, but as Marlice says, she may not be able to run but she's still a cheetah.  And it might make you a little teary.

So thanks to the wonderful people at Volkswagen the Naankuse Wildlife Sanctuary is getting some rather well deserved attention.  Well, they're getting some of mine at least anyway.

Hat tip to CherryFlava for bringing it to my attention, and now also your attention.   Horrah!   And lashings of bacon for Lucky the Cheetah!  (which is fine because Timmy needs to cut back on his consumption).

Skip the six months, let's go straight to seven

Apparently at the six month mark the burd has scarred as much as it is going to, which means now we are in total and complete heal mode.  I suppose we should do a little Horrah about that, or something.

I promise I had a photo and a post all ready to go, and party favours and candybars for everyone at the six month point but well, it came and went.   And now it's seven months.   So, I vote we skip that whole six month celebration and go straight to the vodka jello shots... I mean, seven month anniversary.  Yeah. 

I feel like I've kinda cheated you out of the big six month mark, seeing as it's all half a year and everything like that, so I'm going to kill two birds with one stone and post a pic from the six month mark and one from the seventh.   And now I'm rambling.

Six months:

Now that might look a little ghastly to the more squeamish members of our audience tonight, and I will tell you that you aren't alone, for when I was in Christchurch I hooked up with Custard and his girlie, and she screamed and said "Don't show me that again!".  

So Custard and I compared scars - he has a pacemaker now, which when he first told me freaked me out but as he's getting better it's turned into quite the benefit for him - he's a surfer and the joke is that he won't ever drown, all you'd have to do is drain the water out because his heart will keep beating.

So anyway, as some of you maybe a little squeamish, here is the seventh month picture, showing that it's not as hysterically gory as the close-ups lead you to believe.   It's also in black and white, to soften the blow.

See, you can hardly even tell it's there.

And I've unintentionally collected the body mod set:  a tattoo, a piercing and a scar, all on the same canvas.  Bonus points for me.  What do I win?

Happy Little Person

Isn't that one happy little person?

What is truly remarkable about this photo is that the little person is that happy and yet they're sitting right next to me.  In the back of a car.  For hours.  It's unbelievable.   No really, I understand you don't believe me. 

So I spent a weekend with this little creature, and after hours of alternating between crying and screaming, and then being comforted with a pacifier, I conceded and agreed to hold him (but only for five minutes at a time and I had a stopwatch).

Surprisingly, I didn't break out in a rash or develop that twitch I get when I haven't had coffee for three hours.  I contribute this entirely to Instant Quiet (more commonly known as the bottle - and I don't mean vodka, although I was close on more than one occasion... alright, alright, several).  I'm not sure if you realise this but you can make one of these little people go from ear-drum-shattering-no-hope-of-stopping-unless-there-is-a-nuclear-war screaming to absolute librarian quiet in less than a nanosecond.  It's remarkable, and in all seriousness I think it is our missing link to World Peace.  Someone just needs to give someone a bottle.

And now, seeing his smiling little happy little face right there, I don't have the heart to tell you all about the ikky green babypoo he got on me.

On the count of three, ready?  One - Two - Three:   "Awwwwwwwwww". 

This Is To The Person...

... and that person shall remain nameless (but you know who you are, "Jeff"), who feels they can mock my beloved with treacherous replication of my sincere abbreviation of Taubin.

May the record show I've been calling Taubs "Taubs" for over a year now (and the huge metal fan still cracks me up).

Don't be jealous because he likes being called Taubs instead of Dickhead.   Perhaps if you were a little nicer with the tone in which you used Dickhead he would be more inclined to let you snuggle at Nascar.  Speaking of Nascar, don't forget I am up there the weekend before you go.  

And on a completely unrelated matter, it would be such a shame if you couldn't make it there this year because... oh, I don't know... you had an axe sticking out of your forehead.  Just saying.

Now, who would like a candy bar?  *passes out candy bars*

The Lost Conversation

Alternative title:   Why it's not good to be up 43 hours in a row.

It was a long flight down to New Zealand the couple weeks ago.  Usually you can do the southbound route in 12 hours, or 12 and a half hours if you're unlucky, but this time it took 13 and a quarter.   Talk about the game going into overtime.   By the end of it I was totally over movie watching... let's see... Valkyrie, Taken, Defiance, Bolt and Confessions of a Shopaholic.  My main conclusion, which is really more an affirmation, is that Tom Cruise simply cannot act.  

This is how a typical travel day goes:

Work in the morning and then drive from San Diego to LAX about 4pm.  The flight leaves LAX about 10pm, arriving into Auckland around 6am (loosing a day), my brother meets me at the airport (he is the bestest brother ever) and we head back to his house.  I have coffee and a catchup with him, then shower and head to work by 9am.   Work until 6pm, then wait for my brother to get home around 10pm, we chat until about 11pm when I crash really hard, not waking up until around 7am the next morning, completely settled into the new timezone.  By the end of it I've been up about 40 hours.

That's how it normally works.  This time it was a little different, everything went pretty much according to the plan except for the last couple hours...

It gets to 9pm at night, it's winter in Auckland so I'm absolutely freezing.   I jump into bed to keep warm (it has an electric blanket, woot) and work away on my laptop while waiting for my brother to get home... about 9:30 I'm really struggling to keep my eyes open, so I start to write a quick email to Taubs ... and I'm out cold.

I wake up with the alarm at 6am, wondering where I am, then remembering I'm in Auckland, then remembering I was writing to Taubin and had fallen asleep, so panicked that I'd kicked the laptop off the bed.  It had been placed on the ground so was completely safe.   And there were blankets on the bed.  My sweet brother had come home, seen me fast asleep at the laptop, so he put the laptop away, put extra blankets on the bed for me, and turned the lights out.   He is the bestest brother ever.  If I had a pen and paper I would have left him a note to thank him for tucking me in.   What a wonderful brother.

I get to work, open the laptop, there is my unfinished email to Taubs.   Damn, I fell asleep while typing.  What a dork.  So I retype and send him an email, telling him about how wonderful my brother is for tucking me in after finding me snoring and drooling over my laptop.

So I catch up with my brother that night, and thank him very much for tucking me in and apologise for not being awake when he got home.   "Um, yeah you were".   Confused, I say "no I wasn't, I feel asleep typing an email to Taubin".   "No, you were awake, we had a conversation... " and he proceeded to tell me all the intricate details of the aftermentioned conversation.   Apparently I asked for the blankets, and even joked about wanting more.

.. and that's the stuff he's told me about.

Pierre the busy little bear

April must have been the record month for fewest posts in the history of the blog (which has just renewed for yet another year, I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not).

An astounding three posts.   But it was a busy month, with visitors and then being a visitor, the burd turning six months... April came and went, and now we're almost past May... I don't even think I told you that I went to Phoenix, Arizona (where I got stopped by Border Patrol and asked to prove that I'm allowed to be here, but more traumatically than that it's where I got the baby poo on me)... or that I've been down to New Zealand and back again, which is where I got the chest infection from and how I lost my voice.  

Pierre has of course been escorting me through all of these events (it's one of the conditions of my parole) although he didn't get either the baby poo on him or the chest infection.  Instead he stood back staring at me and then rolling his eyes.  He better watch his little attitude or he's gonna wake up one day and find himself alone in an airline terminal with no connecting flight.

So seeing as I'm not organised enough yet to have some actual footage of any of the aforementioned events available for your own personal viewing, here is one from sometime in the past of Pierre at the end of the road my Mum and Dad live on.  Imagine this picture was taken only a couple weeks ago, make sure you add nigh-freezing temperatures and rain to it first though:

Can you believe I made a whole post without mentioning Taubin?   Whoops.  Damn.  Almost.

Would you trust...

... this guy to take your guy to Nascar?  Yeah, me either.

Now Taubin *thinks* he's heading to Nascar with this guy... let's call him a good random name like, I dunno, "Jeff"... at the end of July.  But yeah, I'm not sure about this guy.  Last year at Nascar he made Taubs do some weird stuff, like kiss bricks and then in an act of total and complete irresponsibility encouraged drinking and driving without even wearing a seatbelt.   I know, I know, I am as shocked and appalled as you.  

So I say to Taubin, "Baby, Honey, you know I love you, but you can't go."  

When he politely asked why he wasn't allowed to go to the one weekend he looks forward to the most each year, the only real reason he lives through the other 51 weekends, the one weekend a year that makes life worth living, I told him straight up, "it's not you I don't trust Baby, it's that "Jeff" guy, he looks so damn dodgey and I just can't be sure he won't bring you back barefoot and pregnant".   He says "wait, what does dodgey mean?"  So I try to explain.

"Hmmm" I say.   "It's like.. trouble.  Shadier than Slim" (who isn't actually that shady anymore now that he's all famous and doing the whole responsible adult gig).   He looks at me blankly, so I pull out the thesaurus (da-da-tsssh!) and give him a few more descriptive words to help paint a clearer picture:  disreputable, suspicious, crooked, dishonorable, dubious, fishy, questionable, scandalous, shifty, shady, slippery or tricky.  Basically, he should be wearing this shirt, which I would have got for him last week from Illicit when I was back in Kiwiland and made him wear it, you know, as a public service, had I been notified of the situation.

So, after a lot of hair pulling, scratching, biting and then harsh name calling, I'd made up with Taubin and he was no longer mad at me for not letting him go.  Okay, okay, that's a lie, he is still going, but "Jeff" - if he comes home pregnant you're gonna be the one going to lamaze classes with him.