The Telescope...

Star gazing from where I live is just wonderful! We're far enough out of town so that there's comparitively little light polution and the night sky is great.

I'd bought Grace a telescope for Christmas, but it was a piece of cheap junk that we could never get focused, so I recently got another one on Ebay and gave it to her on Thursday.

The only place where it could be positioned in a stable enough spot was on the wall surrounding the hot tub. Not surprisingly, we came back later and either the wind or a passing dog had knocked it in. Great. Full of water. Not really good for viewing stars with.

So, begin the quest: how the heck do you dry one of those things out?

Long story short, it took me 2 days, much creativity, and lot of fiddling with intricate bits n'bobs to *finally* get the whole thing dry and useable. Trust me, it was a royal pita to get done.

Various ideas included leaving it carefully positioned with sunlight streaming through, adjusted regularly, so that the rays would have a drying effect. This was somewhat effective but some obvious moisture remained on the inside of the lends. Ultimately, though, laboriously dismantling the whole thing, using various items to hand (tissues, a straightened coat hanger, hair dryer etc.) and finally putting the main tube in the microwave for 20s did the trick.

So, I come out this morning to find the &*$(#*&^ thing floating in the hot tub again......

Warning! It's contagious!

Being around me, that is.

This one's from around 2003. Grace was wee and back in the Tammy Days .

After much discussion, debating and soul-searching, we finally went ahead and got Grace her MMR shots. With the bad press it's received of late we'd both been reluctant, but took a lot of advice, did a lot of research and finally decided that it was the right thing to do.

This was a couple of weeks ago. Have been watching her closely ever since, JIC.

Today Tammy had just changed her diaper and was horrified to see that she'd suddenly lost her ability to walk. She'd stand up fine, step forward and then keel over. Tammy was beginning to freak out, convinced that the worst we'd heard about the MMR reactions had been realized in our little.

Then she noticed she'd put both legs in the same leg of her pants! :-)

The one that started it all

(From memory – which, will come as no surprise once you get to the end, remains remarkably fresh. You’ll see….)

This took place a good 13 years ago, possibly longer. Bob (Brydia) and I had been batting something back and forth all evening, it was late, and I needed to get some chores done, do dishes and take the trash out with a view to calling him back later.

This was about 1am. At the time I lived in an apartment complex in Tallahassee and the trash dumpster was located at the entrance to the complex, some 200 yards from my apartment. It was a Wednesday night and trash pickup was Thursday so it was as good a time as any to take mine out.

So, typically content and completely oblivious to the ungodly hell that was my fate, I grabbed the trash bag, closed the door securely behind me and sauntered off into the darkness, still pondering whatever the heck it was Bob and I had been going on about for hours.

Get to the dumpster, hurl the bag (should that be ‘heft’?) in the general direction of the center of the dumpster and turn around to return to my apartment.

That was the first time I swore. My keys were in my hand before but now were no longer. The stream of invective is best left to your imagination.

It didn’t take me long to double check pockets. Triple check. Quadruple check. Scour the path. Everything. You have no idea how badly I wanted to avoid the inevitable, but unfortunately inevitable it was not so I had to brace myself, gird my loins, do all those good things in preparation for what I can only describe as a ghastly experience and one best left to your own vivid imagination.

I was screwed. Having been locked out before I knew that calling the after hours number was a waste of time. There was one option (to my mind, anyway) and it wasn’t a good one.

I was in there for HOURS. It was incredibly disgusting. I have no idea what I was covered in, what I’d stepped in, what I’d been putting my hands in, and quite honestly have no desire whatsoever to know.

The stream of invective was continuous. The more I rummaged through that, well, crap, the more pissed off I got.

No keys. Dammit.

It was well after 3am when I finally gave up.

Having nowhere else to go and I certainly wasn’t going to wake a friend at that hour, this disgusting, sweaty, disheveled and just plain ghastly figure assumed a sitting position outside my apartment, waiting for time to pass and the complex employees showed up for work.

After a while, and just for the heck of it – even though I knew how prudent I’d been on leaving – I figured it was at least worth trying the door. You never know, right?

I turned the handle and would you believe that it opened immediately? Hugely relieved and looking forward to nothing more than burning my clothes and hitting the shower, I glanced to the table nearest the door and you really don’t want to know what was said when I saw my keys sitting there…..

Welcome!

Affectionately known as "A Pat Story", anything that begins with "you're not going to believe what just happened!" has been greeted for a number of years by my friends on the WOB discussion list as their cue to fire up the popcorn, pull up a comfy seat and get ready to laugh. Really hard. Wisdom and harsh experience has taught that a bathroom break beforehand is also a very good idea!

It's my equivalent of the Southern "Hey, ya'll! Lookee here!" where you know the gene pool is going to be mercifully decreased by at least one. In my case, "You're not going to believe what just happened!" is my sharing the sometimes outrageously silly things that seem to follow me around.

This has been going on privately for about 15 years now. At the urging of some of my many friends out there I'm going to post occasionally with the incredibly funny and deliriously silly things that really do happen to me. Trust me, my life really can be much stranger than fiction and, to steal shamelessly from the wonderful Dave Barry, I am not making this up!

Some have been honored to be present at these hilarious debacles of mine, the most famous of which would have to be The Bullwhip episode, the mere mention of which will reduce those lucky few who were present to tears of laugher at the recollection of just how insanely funny it was. Painful as heck for me, as I'll recount in due course, but so very typically ME!

It's not my intent to make a rod for my own back by posting a lot or very regularly - in fact I'm really leery of robbing myself (and others) of the joy of this silliness by trying to make it something that it isn't. What it is, and shall be going forward, is the you're-not-going-to-believe-how-silly-this-is of my life which cannot be scripted nor forced to obey any regular schedule. It'll happen. I'll laugh. I'll write about it and hopefully you'll laugh too. Rinse and repeat.

Pat.