your hot wife

i have a friend whose wife i call "your hot wife".

it's sort of a joke, because i have never met his wife but i was telling him that i find professional competence to be very attractive.

and his wife had some kinda high powered job, until she took a new job that has some title like "judge" in front of it.

but she's spending a month in a major north american city for some training, and even though i've never met her, she's been very kind to me.

plus my friend loves her.

so i sent her a box of butterscotch cookies.

because when you're far from home, someone should send you cookies.

slightly disturbing

this winter i was in a park near my house and i saw a jar full of some cloudy thing balanced on a branch. it had a note under it, written on birch bark.

i'm just telling you what i saw, without providing any commentary.

here's the jar:

it was very cold out, so the contents had frozen and cracked the glass.

very gingerly, i unfolded and read the note. none of my business of course, but -hello!- in a public park.

my hand obscures the last names of the (presumably) children.

1. thank you for what you've done with the dark omen. I am thankful and will return favors (mostly) as you please.

mostly. you make deals with the devil and you don't get to decide how far you will go. this applies to all kinds of devils, real and metaphorical.

still, i wonder what my neighborhood children have got themselves up into.

easter at mom's

we're all expected to show up at mom's for easter ham, nevermind that mom is both and atheist and a vegetarian.

i was going to hold this until i had the unabridged video version ass well, but here you go.

whatsis

here's a blast from the past; i found this in my boxes of stuff that got packed up from my classroom. it's one of the cooler bits and pieces i own.

you know what it is, this?

it's a salesman's' case. for brass instrument mouthpieces. there's one missing from the case because it's in my trumpet case.

i bought it from a guy i know a long time ago for about twenty dollars. i only needed one mouthpiece, but he had this cool case.

he also had a problem with accumulating too much musical stuff and his wife rather insisted he periodically sell things to make room.

so this happened

it was a long time ago.

and if you want to have direct communication with people, it's really hard to have it with the night staff.

attendance haiku

back in the day i used to leave little poems for val when she came to pick up the afternoon attendance.

because attendance taking is more fun if you compose a little poem about it on the spot each day.

here's one:

at attendance time

all the students are present

although two were late.

so i went for a haircut..

worksheet

here's another thing from the laughing academy.

they were hard, those days in the fishbowl.

copywriting

a long time ago while i was enrolled at the laughing academy, we were all given a big piece of paper and asked to make advertisements for ourselves.

i think it was intended to be some kind of affirmation thingy, like recognizing your positive qualities so you can sell yourself to the world. and maybe yourself.

i'll just tell you that while many scholars at the laughing academy have self-esteem problems, i am not one of them.

bob and edna streamside

because you all need a guided meditation.

ride in my pocket - bolton notch

last monday when i said i was going for a bike ride, my little friends the exiles told me to take them with me in my pocket.

it's a thing we say kind of often, because of the nature of or friendships, which mostly occur in a format you can take with you on your phone.

going somewhere cool? take us in your pocket! going to do something hard? take us in your pocket!

it's nice to have pocket friends.

so when i said i was going to ride up the notch, my friends said to take them in my pocket so they could stick their heads out on the fast parts.

that kind of begged for me to take video.

braided cord

i told you guys i was going to get to posting about that cord.

it was quite a project and my little friends the exiles had to hear about it for a LOOOOONG time while i worked on it and wouldn't tell anybody what it was.

ok, so it went in the famous box for MB.

it's a thirteen strand braided cord, and i said i'd post something about how it was made.

there's a video of me working the disc loom for a while, and there's a video of me finishing the project.

what's in the box???

ok, ok. i'm catching up.

a while ago some of the other exiles were asking "what's in the box?" you know, like they do.

i was making a box to send to MB, and of course the first person who gets to see what's in the box is MB, whether the exiles want to know about it or not.

so here's the photo of the contents. and of course, you want to know what's in all those little packages. so. starting bottom left and moving clockwise:

a bag of cute little whole wheat cheese crackers.
a bag of hand pies, in both grape and apple flavors.
a bag of precious little handmade cream caramels, assorted flavors
a mix cd, because of course.
a copt of my cd, mixed nuts and other true stories
a bag of vegan thumbnail cookies (delicious and nutritious!!)
beneath that is a letter. (black ink on sensible grey paper, of course)
next to the cookies is a black thing i'm not explaining. (ok, it's a hat. wrapped up tight.)
below that, wrapped, up, is a cute little zipper pull made with UV beads
two little knicknacks wrapped in bright paper
an 802 sticker, because we have only one area code here in vermont. it's a point of pride.
a woven cord. i'll tell you more about that in another post.
to the left of that, at bottom, some amber colored candies that glow under blacklight
center: a field guide to the flavors of the caramels, because MB said "i want to learn them by feel the way you know them."

and you know. MB.