Tag: Humor

Working vacation

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Well, once again, my post for this challenge is late. We have an open house coming up on Sunday and I spent yesterday painting our bedroom in preparation for it. Two coats of bright white on the ceiling, one coat of some sort of beigey color on the walls. I’ve never used Ralph Lauren paint before, but man, that stuff goes on nice.

I somehow managed ti sand, spot prime, and paint the whole room – including the radiator – in just over nine hours, making going back to work today feel like a vacation. Tadpole and Bubbles got out of school early yesterday and they were huge helps once they got home. Miss Tadpole even begged me to let her paint. I couldn’t argue with that, so I set her to work. 🙂

Once I’d finished painting, I got cleaned up and we went out for supper. When we got home, the plan was to put the bedroom back together and relax (I received a package of custard creams and Tetley tea from a friend in the mail yesterday, so I had every intention of indulging myself). But alas, the best-laid plans of mice and men are often laid to waste…

Bubbles was helping us clean up, and I’d asked him to take the paint pans, brushes, and roller down to the basement and clean them out while I helped Seymour move furniture. Before supper, I’d slid the paint pans into plastic sacks so the paint wouldn’t dry out as fast. One of the pans had more paint in it than the other, and he must have carried the emptier of the two down first and gotten lucky, because all of a sudden I heard…

¡Hace calor!

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Well, it’s late and I’m exhausted after a long day.  I hope you’ve all been enjoying the poetry!  Most of them were written on our last camping trip.  We spent two hours waiting for our boat to get fixed and, after my phone battery died, I whipped out my handy little purse notebook and started writing.  (If I’d have had The Lokana Chronicles with me, I’d have started revising, but that didn’t work out.)

Anyway, I’ve got loads to tell when I’m less tired and more coherent, so for tonight, I’ll just leave you with this.  It hit 105° today at work, and in Des Moines, apparently it hit 108°.  I heard that was a record, but I don’t know for sure.

What I do know for sure is that when it’s this flippin’ hot out,  there’s only one thought that runs through my mind, and it goes like this:

Ich bin ein liebster!

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Hiya!  I know it’s been a few days, but after all those haiku I posted last month, I needed a bit of a break.  Also, I’ve been fighting off a migraine for the last few days, so my time doing much of anything productive has been pretty limited.  But now I’m back, more exhausted than ever, and ready to…uh…well, maybe not wow you, exactly, but hopefully keep you entertained with my stunning ability to trip over flat surfaces.

That should do nicely, yes?

No?  What do you mean, no?

What do you mean, you want substance?  Why on Earth are you here, then?  Wait!  Don’t leave me!

Okay, that was a little pathetic.  Well, if it’s substance you want instead of slapstick, how about this?  I was nominated for the Liebster Award earlier today by the lovely G. Edward Smith.  He’s got a very nice blog and it’s well worth checking out.

As usual, we’ve got some rules for this puppy. They be as follows (and you know you want to follow, right? Right!):

The Banned Underground: Bass Instinct

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biToday, a little later than my last several posts but better late than never, I have the honor of reviewing the latest release in The Banned Underground series, Bass Instinct.  The boys are back in town with a new friend in this book, and – hell’s bells! – it’s a g-g-g-girl!

Dai the drinking dragon has been kidnapped by the Dark Lord for nefarious purposes, and by his receptionist for even less reputable reasons.  Without their bass player, The Banned Underground are in deep trouble with their record label.  They have to produce the recordings for an album, and someone has stolen the tapes from the last gig.  Can they make some more recordings, or will Freya, the renegade dwarf bass player, distract the boys while the Dark Lord’s evil schemes come to fruition?

The Dark Lord has found some thugs to help him in his latest plan to invade the Dwarf Mansion, but they have other things on their minds – like looting and pillaging – and it’s all going wrong again.

Will record-producing Adam set his Ants on the Banned?  Or will it all come good in the end?  Time is Tight on this one for The Banned Underground…

With a blurb that focuses on Dai, I expected the story to focus a bit more on him.  To the extent that he had a larger role than in previous books, I guess you could say that it did, but it really did focus on him as much as I had expected.  That said, I loved the bits between Dai and Gloria, the Dark Lord’s receptionist, and I do hope that what started in this book will be continued in future installments.

The Banned are back in town and between the lack of tapes (from their last gig), the lack of gigs, and the lack of funds, trouble is the only thing they don’t lack.

The Banned Underground: The Vampire Mechanic

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vmToday I’m having a look at the third book in The Banned Underground series, cleverly titled The Vampire Mechanic.  In book three, the guys help out new friends Santa’s Little Helpers, who have wrecked the sleigh…

Oh, dear.  Santa’s not-so-little helpers have “borrowed” his sleigh on their way to a Banned Underground concert – and crashed it on the way.  Can the Banned help them before Santa finds out?  But the mechanic who services the sleigh is a vampire, and getting the job done could be a challenge.  If that’s not enough, the Dark Lord’s Mercedes is getting a bit long in the tooth, too, and he fancies the sleigh as a replacement.  And will Grizelda, the off-white witch give back the reindeer after using one to win the local show-jumping competition?

With the vampire mechanic in the clutches of the apprentice Dark Lord and Grizelda’s dreams of blue ribbons, the Banned will have to go like a Bat Out of Hell this time. . .

The vampires in this story definitely don’t sparkle; they’re too depressed.  And at over six feet tall, Santa’s Little Helpers are anything but little.  The satnav makes a hilarious return, with the help of its Prescient Predictive Progression function, or PPP, and naturally Grizelda makes frequent use of her people to frog spell.  The Watches mix it up with some local Druids on their way to stealing Santa’s sleigh, and end up with Notsanta’s Notsleigh instead.  I definitely wouldn’t want to end up on his naughty list. . .

This series gets better with each book I read.  I feel like I’m a broken record saying that I laughed my head off and that I couldn’t put it down, but I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true.  This book is a must-read.  So go on, already!  Read it!  Then we can discuss our favorite parts at length over a nice cup of tea and maybe a nice slice of cake or ten. 😀

(c) 2013.  All rights reserved.

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The Banned Underground: The Mystic Accountants

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MAAnd now, Day Two!  Next up on the hit list, we’ve got The Mystic Accountants, the second book in The Banned Underground series.  The Banned’s hilarious adventures continue in this book as they set out to obtain a new throne for Lakin, Archlord of the Helvyndelve:

In the mist-haunted Dwarf Mansion, the Banned Underground has played another gig.  But this time the feedback has blown the Throne of the Mountain King apart, and the Banned must find a replacement on pain of, well, pain.  The junior dark lord is out for revenge, if his satnav doesn’t keep him from following the band.  Grizelda, the off-white witch and occasional aunt to the teenagers, is busy with some mad monks who want to conquer the world, starting with Wales.

Maybe Dai, the drunken dragon, can help?  Will the Tuatha stay out of the pub long enough to render assistance?  If not, Jailhouse Rock looms for the Banned Underground…

Once again, the jokes fly fast and furious.  There’s a lot going on in this book, between the Ben Buddhists who are trying to take over the world, Grizelda and the teenagers who are trying to stop them, the dwarves in search of a throne, and the Watches out to stop them.  But it never feels bogged down in details.  The pace is lively and keeps right on moving.  As with the first book, I couldn’t put it down.

But wait, there’s more!

Winter in Iowa

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Snow Cat

Snow Cat (Photo credit: clickclique)

I’ve had it with winter.  Specifically, I’ve had it with all the white crap Mother Nature keeps dumping on us.  I nearly got stuck at work yesterday because the city does such a lousy job clearing the streets, and the same thing happened again today.  After narrowly avoiding the embarrassment of having to ask my boss to give me a push, what happened?  I came home and promptly got stuck in the mouth of my driveway, with the back end of my van sticking out into our very narrow street.

I was stuck so tight that after the kids and I tried to get out for about ten minutes, I went across the street and asked the neighbor for help (Seymour wasn’t home yet).  It took the two of us a good half hour and maybe a little more to get my van free.  The city I live in (yes, I know, it’s a small town, but that’s how we refer to our municipal government) doesn’t do any better when it comes to cleaning streets than the city I work in.  So in short, I’ve had it with winter.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  When the sun shines on newly fallen snow and it sparkles like a thousand diamonds, I love it as much as the next person.  I appreciate the beauty of snow.  However, I hate dealing with it.  I hate driving in it.  I hate shoveling it.  I hate cleaning it off of my car.

But at times like these, I often think of a joke my dad shared with me once.  It’s about winter in Iowa and, given the trials I’ve had with the snow today and the fact that it was three years ago today that I lost him, this seems like a good time to share it again.  I’ve posted it before, but here it is again in all its snowy glory:

Dear Diary. . .

Top 10 Reasons You Should Be at Home Instead of on the Road

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Well, the Class 3 Kill Storm arrived in the night and is even now shrieking outside my window with a passion even a banshee would envy (or possibly admire).  Since I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hades of getting to work today, I am snuggled up under my favorite down blanket while the boys play games and Seymour bakes Christmas cookies (I’m still sick – I have no business baking).

I’ve seen worse winter storms, but this one is truly nothing to sniff at.  I braved the weather to make a quick trip to the grocery store for chili supplies and go juice with a side trip to the gas station to procure some go juice for the snow blower as well, and it’s fierce out there.  I’m glad I decided to stay home today and not brave the weather all the way to work and back.  I’m even more glad that Seymour was able to turn around safely and make it back home after the snow plow he was following got stuck.  For the record, that was the third one this morning – two others went in the ditch just outside of town early this morning and the accident shut down the highway for a while.

But enough doom and gloom.

Seriously, you can’t promenade alone

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For my seventeen post, I’ve got another prom story to tell.  This one is about my junior prom, which was by far the most memorable prom of them all.

Despite this being a more enlightened age, I am somewhat stuck in the past when it comes to who should ask out whom.  Probably this is because I fear rejection and failure and also because I’m a big chicken.  As a result, I waited until the last possible moment to ask someone to prom.  Of course, everyone already had dates by then, so the three people I thought to ask were taken.  Out of desperation, I asked Mr. Junior.  You may or may not remember him from such other prom-related posts as “You can’t promenade alone, can you?”

But first, some back story.

Old friends are the best!

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Growing up, I was the oldest kid in my neighborhood by a couple of years.  There were only a few other families with kids around as we lived in an older neighborhood.  A couple of kids were three years younger than me, a couple were five or six years younger than me, one was nine years younger than me.  The closest kid my age – my best and oldest friend, and my maid of honor both times I was married, she is awesome – lived three and a half blocks down the street.  While that wasn’t exactly far away, the situation didn’t exactly lend itself to easy visitation, either.

After my mom passed away, my dad used some of the life insurance money to replace our sidewalk (which really wasn’t sidewalk so much anymore as it was part of the yard) and to build a garage.  One day when I was eleven, my sister and I and the aforementioned best friend were riding our bikes around the newly-poured driveway and garage foundation (the garage had not yet been built).  One of the neighbor kids wandered over and wanted to play with us.  She and my sister were pretty good friends, even though my sister is four years older.  My sister has a talent for making friends – I think she was good friends with every kid in our neighborhood at one point or another.

Anyway, we decided that we didn’t want to play with her that day.  As a rule, I never wanted to play with this particular girl as she always kind of got on my nerves.  But how many people always love all their siblings’ friends?  Anyway, since we didn’t want to play with her, we told her to go home.

This didn’t go over very well. At all.