THE SEVENS GAME

Krissy tagged Valerie and six more folks. Valerie tagged me and six more folks. I am supposed to tag seven of my friends. Each person tagged, tags seven. Wow, growing at the power of seven rate, within a month we will have tagged everyone on AOL. This game will spread faster than a computer virus.

Soon we will have tagged everyone who speaks English and have to translate it into all the languages of the globe. Then it will really take off. A month later we will run out of people on earth and have to tag Martians, Uranians, Plutonians. Thank goodness, there are billions of stars in our galaxy, and billions of galaxies with billions of stars in each. This is bigger than the big bang.

The games is simple by Earth standards. (Who knows what Aliens like to play.) You give seven answers to seven questions, and post them in your journal so other folks can learn about your likes, dislikes, and quirky whims. Sound like fun? Here are the questions:

Name seven things I plan to do before I die

Name seven things I can do

Name seven things I can’t do

Name seven things that attract me to the opposite sex

Name seven things I say most

Name seven celebrity crushes

Name seven people I want to do this

Here are some attempts at answers, and I don’t know yet whether they are going to be serious or whimsical, along with the answer that Valerie gave that I consider the most intriguing.

7 Things I plan to do before I die:
Valerie: Make my own drum

Me: Now what do you suppose is stopping Valerie from making her own drum? Why does she include it in the fanciful future? Hell, Valerie, make your drum and stop dreaming about it.

As for me, I have no long lost dreams. Give me a million dollars today to make some dream come true and I wouldn’t know what to do with it.

7 Things I can do:

Valerie: Take a good photograph
Me, I used to take good photographs, but what I do best now is write whimsical items for my journal. I can see the funny side of just about anything.

7 Things I can't do:
Valerie: Have too much energy

Me: Valerie is limited by her physical condition but she doesn’t dwell on it. Good for you, Val. I can’t see out of a plastic eye, nor walk more than fifteen feet. I guess that best expresses what I can’t do.

7 Things that attract me to the opposite sex:
Valerie: (among others…) Hands.

Me: She put personality traits above hands, however. I just have never known anyone who rated hands as erotic elements. Hands are just tools appended to our arms. But everyone to his own taste. I go with her on the personality issue though. A happy, optimistic person is certainly more attractive than a gloomy gus that has forgotten how to smile. Since we are allowed seven, a nice figure would certainly make the list.


7 Things I say most often:
Valerie I can't remember.

Me: What did I come in here after?

7 Celebrity Crushes:
Valerie: Johnny Depp

Me: Most of hers I don’t even know. That’s all right she won’t know mine: Barbara Stanwyck, Ginger Rogers, Diana Lynn.

7 People I want to do this:

Valerie put me and some others, but I am not sending this to anyone else… for the reasons I stated at the top of this entry. It is too much like the Big Bang

Early Morning Email

Eighty-one year old bachelor complains to his online girl friend by email >>

Sweet 'mater,  

   Here am I, at 5:30 Saturday morning.  Went to bed at 11. Slept the night through, I felt, and woke at 2:20, ready to get up. Persuaded myself to go back to bed.   

   Up again at 5:00, and turned on computer. I have been messing with monitor controls, trying to figure them out, and then messing with tool bar, finally getting it back in place. I like it at bottom of the screen.   

   It is dark outside.  The Autumnal equinox is near, so nights are lasting longer, nearly as long as days.   

   I went out for supper yesterday, so was spared the indignity of Old folks home Saturday Supper. Saturday supper, Sunday breakfast, and Sunday supper at the old folks home are "throw away" meals.  That's my term. They seem to be planned to be unappealing for some reason. Breakfast is sweet roll, shipped in and reheated, period. Supper is something like quiche, macaroni and cheese, ersatz sea food salad, in other words faux foods, things you are not expected to eat, only pick at.   

   Aha, I have in my refrigerator left over burrito, and two slices of apple pie.  I have a microwave. I will have a real supper tonight, probably after cards.  I have skipped cards two nights in a row. Hoo ray.   

   And cards!  Dumbed down rummy, night after night.  We tried alternating UNO with rummy, but it didn't go well.  We could probably manage it if we could dumb itdown a little, but there is a purist among the players who insists on a rule that the rest of us hate, so we just don't play that game. Well, he may have a point, the game is named uno, because when your hand reaches one card, you proclaim "uno", and if you don't you are penalized four cards. It is not the penalty, or the rule, it's the attitude of Mr. Purist, who points his finger and says, "You didn't say Uno, so take four cards." At this juncture I'd rather be watching television, or even listening to the activity director read to us out of a book.  That's the alternative to cards. We haven't played Uno in months.   

This email has grown to the proportions of a journal entry.  I may just save it and paste it in my journal.

Love,

Toodle-um

PS  **Sweet 'Mater = Dear Hot Tomato

          Toodle-ump = Sugar lump

More Consumer News

Beer per twelve ounce can including tax and can deposit:  87 cents

Gasolene per twelve ounce can highway tax but no deposit  30 cents.

Wheat crackers. 8 cents each

Avocados   $1.69 each. 

Today's Main Sin

Today it was SLOTH.

I couldn't get myself in gear, even low. When I was a kid the family had an old Packard, 1930 model, that had a low-low gear. We called it "granny low", and the old straight-eight cylinders in granny low could have pulled a box car up Tehachapi Pass. But it was s-l-o-w.

Today I couldn't even get myself in slow, old, granny low. I went back to bed and ignored breakfast.  Well, it is lunch time, and maybe the afternoon will be better. 

After my nap, that is.

Assignment #76 -- That's what I like about the South

Grits.  Pronounced "gree-uts", two syllables. For breakfast, with butter. We Yankees have our cream of wheat, all right, but Dixiecrats eat grits.  Johnny Reb faced the northern army with only a pocket full of parched corn for rations. That is true grit.

And a girl friend in Alabama to email every day.

And Phil Harris to sing "That's what I like about the South" and a place called "Doo Wah Diddy, ain't no town and it aint no city."

Post Script: According to comments posted thus far, 9/11, the score is GRITS YAY 2, GRITS NAY 3

Mystery solved

My friend Anita asked, "Did you hear that plane that almost took the roof off last night."

"I sure did.  I wrote about it in my journal."

"It was spraying for mosquitos in this neighborhood. There has been an outbreak of West Nile Virus."

I am glad they are spraying, and glad to know what that plane was doing last night.

Buzzed

Earlier this evening, while I sat reading blogs, a single engine plane roared over the old folks home. I ducked.  It sounded like he was going to take the roof off.

A few minutes later he was back, but not quite so close. I jumped on my scooter and went out to find a spot with a clear view of the sky. No plane was visible, but the Moon and Venus shone placidly down. No sign of Jupiter which was supposed to be nearby. It was still twilight and Venus was the only star in the sky.

Later online IM with daughter I reported my negative findings, and she responded with, "You're one of those weird people who run toward the sound of gun fire."

Well not ordinarily, but I have to admit that low flying airplanes make me curious.  I recalled once years ago near San Fernando Airport I saw a light plane making unusual approaches. I left the airport building and walked out to the flight line.

A friend hailed me, "What are you doing out here at this time?"

I replied, "I came to see the crash."

"What crash?"

"The one that is about to happen."

"Oh, that is just Willis.  He just bought that plane and he is checking it out."

At that moment, here came Willis in his newly purchased old plane, about twenty feet too high, stalled, dived nose first into the runway. CRUNCH. He crashed right in front of us.

An old adage is "Any landing is a good landing if you can walk away from it."  Willis walked away from that landing, but his plane had to be hauled home.