The Special People Club

I am getting very excited for my trip home. Not only do I have fun and frolic planned with my Minneapolis friends, but I have guests traveling from out of town to visit me! Most exciting. I have many things to do before I leave on Saturday. (Actually Friday, as I have to stay at an airport hotel if I want to make my flight since I leave at sunrise.) I am in a cleaning frenzy. Okay, that's actually quite an over-statement. I am working my way through a longer than usual list of housekeeping tasks because my home must be in relative order when I leave. I have a guest arriving on Sunday who will be staying with me for the month (or at least a few days of each week for a month,) and I don't want him to flee in shock and horror at my untidiness. I have managed to move the living room furniture and dust and vacuum this weekend, and have done laundry last night and tonight. I still need to give the kitchen a what for and move the crap that's accumulated in the dining room. Oh. And...

It's been incredibly hot here this weekend (like 90), and so I got up this morning to do some yard work, moved my furniture around in the living room, and then spent the heat of the day watching movies in the cross breeze from the front to the back of the house. Did a Rushmore/Napoleon Dynamite double feature. Rushmore is a brilliant film, which is really saying something from me what since that Wes Anderson's world view depresses me so. (I defy you to find redeeming value in The Royal Tenenbaums... go on...I DARE you.) I've had a school-girl crush on Bill Murray for years, but he's getting much better with age. (swoon) Faithful readers of this blog will know how I feel about Napoleon. (Newbies with curiosity can refer to my December entries.) If you haven't seen it lately, it's worth another viewing. With a little Napoleon and some ukulele strumming, even a hot sweaty day in England when I'm anxious to get on a plane for home turns into the best day EVE...

I just watched the most amazing tv show. It was called The F***ing Fulfords. Here's what the Observer had to say: "Strangely compelling documentary about a frankly hopeless aristocratic family, who when not spending their days searching for increasingly inept ways to save their crumbling pile, appear to do little but bet on the horses and swear at each other." How can that not be great? Yes, I had high hopes for this one, and the show fulfilled my every dream. People who know me well know that I can be a bit obsessive in my fascination with the truly awkward, freakish, or merely odd. (Perhaps this explains why the odd and somewhat freakish seem drawn to me...like seeks like and all.) I tell you, this film captured the brazen absurdity of humanity better than anything I've seen in ages. Guffaws of shocked glee were bellering within the first two minutes and didn't stop until the credits rolled. I hate that these things fascinate me, but there you have it. Basical...

Two news items have caught my eye: 1) Turns out Terri Schiavo's autopsy shows her brain was half the size of a normal human brain and that she was probably blind, thus proving her husband's contention about her inability to recover. Perhaps we should send Sen. Frist a video tape so he can make a diagnosis just to be sure? 2) I love this story . Those depraved Democrats get all their funding from HOLLYWOOD. (Code for commies, homos, and drug-taking practicers of free love.) They're out of touch with middle America. Republicans, on the other hand, share YOUR values and morality. I mean, why make Saving Private Ryan when you can make Double D Dolls ? I wonder if Bill O'Reilly got her phone number.

For about two years now, I've been a subscriber to the Merriam-Webster "Word of the Day." It's a great service...each day I get an email with a new word and its definition. Sometimes it's a totally unknown word, sometimes it's an antiquated expression that really needs to be used more often, sometimes it's just a classic word I've forgotten about that makes me smile...kind of like finding a photo of a family vacation from 1979 or reminiscing about the night Sue Neill's dress matched the pool table at Zahasky's. And occasionally, Merriam Webster sends me a word that eerily reflects my life. Today I received this: The Word of the Day for June 9 is: emigrate • \EM-uh-grayt\ • verb : to leave one's place of residence or country to live elsewhere Example sentence: O.E. Rolvaag emigrated from Norway to the U.S. in 1896 and subsequently wrote Giants in the Earth and other books about Norwegians who settled in the American prairies. Di...

I still have a cough from back when I had my cold...it's just a voice boxy thing, but when I cough the top of my head hurts. I want this to stop. It was lovely and sunny today. Had a nice evening stroll by the canal. Discovered that the One Stop is open again after the fire damage. This is very good. It's hard to drink the requisite amount of water each day. Looking forward to pickles and mexican food on my trip home, not to mention a pizza at Red's Savoy Inn. Yum. Now that I'm coming home for a visit in two weeks, I'm really home sick. You'd think I was away at summer camp. Watching a show about a woman with five personalities. It's weird how her face and mannerisms change with each character. Her mom addresses her by different names, because she can tell who each person is by the way Pamela looks. How odd. My hair is too long. In case your "media" isn't telling you, turns out the Bush team to address environmental policy has been doctoring sc...

I went to bed at 11 last night. The sky was still kind of blue with twilight. If I were 7 years old and Mom had told me to be home before dark, technically I would not have been late if I'd come home then. It makes it hard to get enough sleep, but I can't wait for the 20th when we have our longest day.

For many of you, this article is in your local paper today (or you may have seen it in the NY Times.) It's a great op-ed by Tom Friedman about the way we've changed since 9/11, and I'll tell you, it's pretty accurate in summarizing the sentiments I get from people when they hear me speak and figure out where I'm from. Many of my Red State loved ones will be quick to tell me that this is wrong...people love America. That the US has done lots of great stuff in the world and that we've been a beacon of hope for years. And they're right...historically, that IS true. People do want to like us, they do like our movies, they have dreamed of the freedom we offer. We're great, we are. But these days, we're a government that uses Orange and Yellow alerts to solve PR problems. (FYI, Tom Ridge has admitted these alerts changes were driven by the White House, and yet no one seems to care. In my opinion, this sort of lying and manipulation deserves at LEAST...

Hi all. It's been a breakneck two weeks. My friend Timmy arrived on the 27th, and I just dropped him off at a lovely Gatwick Hotel tonight. Between then and now, we did the following: Drove around the English countryside saying "BAAAA RAM U" to every sheep we saw. Ate bangers and mash, butterbean cassoulet, chicken balti, lamb madras, a couple of specialty currys, lots of garlic naan (and 2 chipatis each), steak and guiness pie, luxury fish pie, salad, pizza, pasta, some gelato, and fish and chips from a chippie that fried it FRESH when we walked in. Oh, and we drank rose wine and bourbon cocktails and I think we even fit in a bottle of red and a bottle of white, too. We went to Woburn Abbey (an historic manor just about 15 minutes south of here), and toured the house. The Marquis(es) of Bedford tend to breed a prominent foreheads and uni-brows into their lineage, and things aren't looking up for them since the current lord seems to have married a sister/firs...