In Honor Of Today

Being, as it is, the 12th of December, and being, as it is, the season of the 12 days of Christmas, and being, as I am, lazy and poor, here is the new holiday plan.

Over the next 12 days, I will attempt to write the Thorne Year In Review, in which I cover highlights from each of the last 12 months. (This might be fun, if I don't fail miserably and write 9 blogs on the 22nd. Tee hee hee!)

So, without further ado, I give you...

Month The First, January 2006: In which our heroes discover a misconception

At the beginning of January, Adam and I were recovering from having my entire family here for Christmas. It was our first Chrismas and New Years at Thorne House, and my parents, Alex and Amanda were all up to visit. We had a lovely time watching movies and playing games and doing a few house projects.

January was also the first whole month that Arrow lived with us. He was an adorable fuzzy little baby dog, who spent most of his time sleeping or running around like a mad thing. We had a few accidents, but we all got housebroken pretty painlessly, thank goodness. His favorite toy was Squeaky Monkey (RIP).

And then we started the Great Dining Room Redecoration! With our area rug in place, we finally got to choose our paint colors. We began the process of stripping the paint off of all of the wood trim, and discovered what an incredible pain in the ass that was. As the end of the month drew nigh, we realized that our original estimate of getting the room done before February was WAY WAY OFF. And the work went on...

The New Shape of Awsomeness

Do you know what isn't awsome? Having a broken car. Even if your car is awsome, if it is broken that awsomeness is completely negated.

Having three broken cars, then, is three times as not-awsome. And that lack of awsomeness had come to my house, was sleeping on the sofa, and didn't look like it was trying very hard to get it's own apartment.

THE SENTRA. Now anything that sees 194,000 miles on the clock is pretty awsome. But something with 194,000 miles on the clock that is broken no longer manages to impress. I got the '93 sentra with 72,000 miles back in probably '98 or '99. It's been a good car, but I always said 'When the clutch finally goes, I will stop putting money in it.' Now the throw-out bearing is busted, which causes the clutch cable to snap. Should the throw out bearing be fixed it might see a quarter million miles... care to gamble on it? Start the bidding at $50 in the comments!

THE MALIBU. In an effort to assist us, Mel's parents gave us custody of this ... car. It's only got something like 115,000 on it. But in it's relatively short time I was proud to replace the alternator on it with my own two hands (and Chris Smith's hands as well). After that it began leaking coolant much more seriously than at the rather modest rate it had been. That was a fried lower intake gasket. Fixing that involves removing an engine mount, and had to be done professionally. At least when the electrical system ate itself it had the good graces to do so at home in the garage. Now it doesn't turn itself on, so how many actual miles are on the thing is sort of a guess since the odo is digital.

THE BLAZER. Long ago the Blazer suffered a catastrophic oil leak. Mel's Blazer has the towing package, and that includes an oil cooler. In the times before we knew each other one line (feed or return? I dunno) broke, and all the oil went on the road. Now it was time for the other line to break. This caused Mel to dispair, and after having it fixed we sent it to her parents, who gave us the Malibu in stead. But Mel's parents are good sports, and when we began to suffer more automotive misfortune they returned the Blazer to us. It (and they) showed up just as the Malibu entered it's current state of brokenness. What a lovely time for the exhaust line behind the muffler to fall off! 'No problem,' I thought. The muffler was still in place, and after a bit of wrestling I got the dragging section of pipe removed from the truck. The next day, however, the Blazer began idling roughly, smelling like gas, and wanting to stall.

Now the stage was set. Three broken cars. (The Blazer has since been fixed, professionally.) Mel and I began to dispair. It was at this time that Mel concluded: We have to buy a car.

And now we have a 2003 Nissan Sentra SE-R spec-V, with 44,000 miles. It is so far the newest car I have owned. It is way way the coolest. It's got 175 horsepower and a 6-speed manual transmission. It is 'Sunburst' (yellow). The picture above is not the exact car I own, but it's the same year, trim level, and color. And the totally best part is that my insurance company doesn't differentiate between the seat of awsomness SE-R spec-V and the base trim level. That's right. My car insures at the same rate as the the ubiquitous Sentra XE.

Read about my car here. And here. Find out about the whole Sentra line here.

My new car is totally the coolest thing in the world. I wake up and go to sleep smiling. I love everyone. Rainbows and butterflies follow me everywhere.

I have to figure out what to do with the broken '93 Sentra and the broken Malibu.

Long ago, there was a party.

Long ago, in the time of October, there was a party.


Many other parties would follow it, for Halloween was coming, and that is a time of great festivity.


But this party came first, because it's celebration was more than just Halloween.


First among these things was the Birth-Day of Adam Thorne. As had happened every year, for 31 years previous, the anniversary of his birth, October 25th, brought cheers from good and righteous people everywhere, and snarls and gnashing of teeth from those unfortunate enough to face him over a video game controller. May this thirty second year see his video prowess undiminished!



Second among these was the first anniversary of the birth of Arrow, Adam's faithful companion, and bane of backyard landscaping. One year previously, on October the 20th Arrow entered the world among a litter of 6 pups out of "Tiny". We have the tin-foil evidence that Arrow has found some hershey's kisses since the night of the party, so if any of you hid any around the house know that your face may get chewed off.


Finally among these things is the completion of the Dining Room. The south wall is "Sizzling Haute" - that is to say red. The other walls are "Kansas Grain." The picture rails are installed. The wood work is stripped and washed and stripped and washed and stripped again and washed again and sanded and washed and pre-stained and sanded and washed and stained (maybe twice) and sealed 3 times with a little more sanding and washing in between.


AND LO! On October 21st there was a party, and ever after all those who were not present were known as SQUARES.

The Shape Of Awsomeness

I am here to tell you, people, what the most awsome thing in the universe is. And that is:

THA CAST IRON SKILLET, YO! Now some people might not be down with da SEA-EYE-ESS. They might say "I put my bacon in it and turn it on, and the center cooks but the outside stays raw!"

To these people I say: The Skillzet is from another time, G. You gotta know how it works. It takes time to make a thing go right, and it takes time to heat up the IRON. Turn on your burner. Put the skillet in place. Then go thaw your bacon, or get those cherry turnovers started, or go smooch on your wife since she's prolly still layin around in bed anyway. When you come back, throw that bacon in the C.I.S. and WHAA-CHOW that biz is cooked, yo. Once the skillet is hot there is NO STOPPING IT. Bacon. Eggs. A turkey. Your dog. Jackie Chan. The cast iron will FRY THAT **** UP and you can't even slow it down. Your bacon will be perfectly cooked, end to freakin end.

FURTHERMORE when you are sitting at the table and you gotta lean way back because you are full of the breakfasty goodness and your wife is like "You gonna do the dishes?" You can be like "Aw, shuga, we gotta let the skillet cool off before we can clean it." She won't believe you. But the skillet will be uncomfortably warm to the touch for a good half hour. Even after you dump a couple cups of cold water in it (water that is now hot, greasy, and splashing on you). Add to that the fact that it weighs like 30 pounds and the idea of maneuvering it around in the sink will be right out. This leaves you time to socialize with your breakfast guests, if you have any, or make out with your wife if there are no guests. Either way, perfect morning - courtesy of the CAST IRON SKILLET!

Time to Out the Lurker

My darling husband said to me on Saturday that I should stop posting boring posts about dreams, and start posting interesting posts about his birthday party and his new car.

To which I say (most lovingly): nobody's stopping you, sweetheart.

So if anyone else has ideas about what Adam should blog about, now's your chance to tell him (most lovingly).

Because it's only interesting in my head

Last night I dreamed that my brother and my cousin Warren (the two Annapolis grads in the family) were battling demons, or maybe they were just incompetent kings, at the Cottage in Upper MI.

Then my alarm went off, and when I hit snooze I dreamed that I was at the Student Union of UW-Madison. I was assisting Neil Gaiman as he judged a contest for Best Cake Made in the Shape of a Comic or Graphic Novel Character. This mostly meant that I had to find him a cup of tea, and he got to eat yummy cake.

Highways of Communication

Last night I dreamed that Adam was a bridge engineer. Will someone please analyze this stuff? Seriously.

Life has gotten crazy. For those who didn't know, I picked up a part time job at the downtown Barnes & Noble (hello, discount!), and I've been rehearsing a show with a youth group in St Louis Park. Adam has been valiantly picking up the household pieces and keeping the dog appeased. His life just got much happier, though, and we'll get pix up as soon as we can.

The upshot is, there's not a lot of blogging going on, and not even a lot of emailing, so if you're feeling neglected, you should call me and put yourself on our calendar for some time in mid-November or early December. We love you, we really do.

smochs

I had a dream about you, too! I dreamed that you came back from Korea for a visit, and you surprised me at a restaurant or a bar or someplace. I was all excited and I asked you how long you were going to stay and you said, "Adriano wants to leave tomorrow night to go back to Korea." I said, "So, can I hang out with you tomorrow morning?" You said, "No, I'm acting for the performing arts section of the SAT."

What?

So, I got really angry and I went over to Marc and Becky's house (which was not their actual house, of course, it was some huge rambling one level house with a big greenhouse/sauna combination) and I was telling Marc how awful it was that you were leaving again, but he had some kind of weird facial muscle disease and all he wanted me to do was make coffee for him. But this is Marc, right, so he had this crazy technological coffee maker and I couldn't figure out how to make it work, and I got more and more angry, so I left without making him coffee. (Sorry, dude!)

Then I woke up. Seriously, what?

Minus 50 thousand words.

Don't worry, the pictures will be back.

Eventually.

I deleted some off of Flickr to make room for others, completely forgetting that it would delete the links here. Argh.

House Update!

Do you know, once this dining room adventure is done, I don't know what I'm going to blog about anymore. Hrm.

Well, no worries about that yet, because projects just keep rolling right along! Adam has sanded, conditioned, sanded, and stained the wood trim. He doing a little bit of repair in one corner, and then he'll be on to the polyurethane sealant. As you can see below, the stain made a huge difference in how the wood looks. Instead of looking obviously old and mistreated by whatever fool painted it the first time, it looks obviously old but still lovely and warm.

I finished painting the dining room picture rails and have started painting the upstairs hallway picture rails. I actually got to hang the first picture up today. Yay, art!

And, just in case you were worried about "all work and no play," here's a picture of Sherwing singing karaoke last Wednesday!

Fetterman Schmalkaldic

Joshua, I had a dream about you! You were the youngest of five kids, four boys with a girl in the middle, but you'd only been raised with three of them because your twin brother was abducted in infancy. Thirty years later, he's finally found your family, and you're all set to meet for the first time.

So, I'm sitting there with you and your family around a display of patio furniture at Home Depot, and your twin walks in with a couple of other guys, and I turn to you and say (about your twin):

He's here! Look, he's the shorter one.

Because maybe you wouldn't recognize him? Yeah, in case you were wondering, I'm still a dork.

Morning view of downtown

This is a view of the Wells Fargo Center (where I work) reflected in the IDS Center across the street. I was standing in the skyway between Gaviidae Common and the City Center.

Yeah, not so much anymore.

Hey, Smochs, remember how you bought that dog toy for Arrow and it was really squeaky?

Hey, Marc, remember when I said this place was for sale and you should buy it and open Coffee and Bacon?

Already?

It seems like yesterday that I told Adam we were getting married. But here we are at our second wedding anniversary already. Two years ago today, my dad was eating four pieces of our wedding cake and my in-laws and cousins were making friends with Japanese dairy businessmen.

I feel blessed to have had two wonderful years of marriage, and I hope we have many more to come!

Of Man and Dog

It's that time again, time for

Adam's Birthday Masquerade!

When: Saturday October 21st at 8pm

Costume Judging and Prizes at 10pm

Where: Thorne House

(PS: This link works now!)

Adam is turning 32 this year, on October 25th.

Arrow is turning 1 year old on October 20th.

Our dining room will be redecorated (or by God, someone will pay).

Come celebrate with us!

As usual, BYOB. Snacks provided.

Presents are not required, but if anyone is so moved, Adam would appreciate gift certificates to either Barnes & Noble or Home Depot.

Hope to see you all here!

I don't work for them anymore

The Ameriprise Financial Ivey's Awards were Monday night. They're local live theatre awards that are completely based on audience feedback. You can volunteer to be an evaluator, or you can give feedback through the Ivey website. I think that it's really nice to see a community that wants to tell it's theatre artists that they are appreciated. Sometimes it's easy to feel that theatre in America is on the endangered species list, along with dance, music, the visual arts, libraries, and anything else that isn't highschool football. Some of the theatre folks in the Twin Cities were a little leary of an award sponsored by a financial services firm, but when I think of all of the other worthy causes toward which they could have put their money, I think it's the height of unprofessionalism not to be appreciative. My mama always said, "If someone gives you a compliment, smile and say thank you."

Here are pictures from Adia Morris, because I was too much a space case to bring my camera. That's what happens when I remember the cute little dressy handbag--I forget what I want to take with me.

Hi and Goodbye

Just a flying little update post to say that we are back from vacation in the UP, and that I'm going to the Ivey's tonight, and I'll tell you more about both of those things later, and fill you in on all of the new kitchen furniture goodness, and brag about myself, and there will be pictures and links and more run-on sentence and dangling participle fun than you can shake a mixed metaphor at.

I love the Internet

I found this hilarious post on Craigslist:

"To the person who put half a piece of toast on my car this morning:
Why?
Now what would possess a person to discard a perfectly good piece of toast?
I agree with your choice of morning nourishment, but why not finish it?
Were you trying to share the deliciousness of the freshly baked bread?
Or were you merely showing off your excellent bread toasting skills?
I'm sure you noticed the garbage can that was a mere 20 ft from my parked car, but no- your toast had a purpose.
I thank you for the kind gesture, but as it was half-eaten I did not partake in the digesting of it.
Now I know you didn't carelessly toss the toast aside and it just happened to fall on my car, because it was so carefully (dare I say lovingly?) placed under my wiper blade. Butter side up.
Maybe I am missing something. Is there some sort of age-old tradition of distributing buttered toast as a symbol of affection, courtship, impending doom? If so I hope it's not the latter.
As I was unsure of who you might be generous-toast-weilding-man, I didn't want to physically come in contact with your little gift you left me. It took me almost 5 minutes to find a stick and poke it out from under my wiper and push it too the ground- my squirrel friends that live around the building thank you I'm sure. My boss does not , as I was late for work.
Thank you for the kind start to my morning, however tomorrow I would rather like a cup of coffee and a 3-egg omelette (extra cheese mind you) to go with it."

Which supports my theory that we are much funnier in print than we are live.

So that's why I don't like Tom Jones!

Here's my new favorite example of free speech. This made me laugh way too hard. In other news, happy 2nd Anniversary to Marc and Becky Chapman!!

Intergalactic academic says Martians and aboriginal earthlings mated to create Asian race
By Maggie Grainger
September 4, 2006

San Diego--Pluto may have been officially demoted as a planet, but that doesn’t seem to have the rest of the galaxy in a tizzy.

Yep, that’s right, we’re not alone in the universe – or at least that’s what the students and teachers at the Unarius Academy of Science in El Cajon want the world to know.

Professor and web master David Reynolds says Pluto was never recognized as a planet in the intergalactic council anyways and that we should be focusing our energy on the aliens closer to home.

Aliens are among us – Martians to be exact – and they are roaming the earth right now -- although you wouldn’t necessarily be able to spot one because, well, because they’re Asian.

Yep, you read right. Asians are Martians or vice versa.

According to Reynolds, the Asian race is a result of Martian and aboriginal Earthlings interbreeding more than half a million years ago.

Reynolds says the Martians came to Earth long ago with the intent to colonize and relocate from their home on Mars, but were confronted by the angry aboriginal earthlings in the Gobi desert before they could stake their claim.

The earthlings were too much for the Martians to handle and, although they had more advanced ray guns, the Martians ended up surrendering because they don’t believe in war.

“They knew if they (the Martians) shot, it would set back their own spiritual plan,” Reynolds explained.

Eventually the Martians and Aboriginals started getting busy together and over the years the offspring turned into today’s vast Asian population.

Reynolds says pure blood Martians are still on Mars waiting for the right time to make themselves known to the human race.

“They don’t want us snooping around,” he said. “They’ve camouflaged the openings on the surface because they don’t want to be bothered.”

Instead, they are hard at work advancing their own race and have tried to make contact with Earthlings for centuries now but are afraid of getting shot once they enter the Earth’s atmosphere.

Reynolds says the government knows that the Martians have been trying to make contact but want to keep it a secret because it would “cause people to not have a spiritual foundation” and throw everything into chaos.

Martians aren’t the only ones trying to make contact, there are more than 30 other planets composed of “aliens that look like you and me” in the “Confederation” that want to make contact but are too advanced for the human race to understand.

Instead, they are waiting for us to catch up both technologically and spiritually before they make their presence known to everyone.

“Right now we are too hostile a race,” Reynolds points out. “We need to be open to our ‘space brothers’ who know we are going through a painful transition right now.”
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Maggie Grainger is a Vyuz staff writer.

Happy Labor Day

It was a beautiful day in the labor-hood. We spent the weekend shopping at Home Depot, putting up picture rails, and hanging out with friends. It was rainy Saturday and Sunday, but lovely on Monday, as you can see above. Pictures of hanging picture rails are here on Flickr. Thorne Gallery, coming soon!