The Bed List/The Dinner List

The thinking woman's Bed/Dinner List:

BED LIST: JEREMY NORTHAM



The best thing about the movie adaptation of Emma (although I have to admit Gwenyth Paltrow did a great job as our erstwhile matchmaking heroine) was Jeremy Northam as Mr. Knightley. Jeremy Northam in anything is wonderful. He tends to choose roles in movies that require a brain, like Gosford Park, Amistad, Carrington and An Ideal Husband. But for full-on heavy breathing, put Possession at the top of your Netflix queue. It's not a great adaptation of A.S. Byatt's book, but those scenes between Northam's Randolph Ash and Jennifer Ehle's Christabel LaMotte could set their poems on fire. Love the eyes, love the smile, love the look, but especially love the brain. Isn't sex more about the organ between your ears than the one between your legs anyway?

DINNER LIST: AUGUST WILSON



The sad news that August Wilson, probably the most influential African-American dramatist ever, has terminal liver cancer, hit me hard. I've been reading and enjoying Wilson's plays for years now. Wilson is renowned for his Twentieth-Century cycle, a series of ten plays that chronicle the African-American experience in each decade of the century. The best-known of these, The Piano Lesson and Fences, won the Pulitzer Prize (Fences also took the Tony for Best Drama). About half of them won New York Drama Critics Circle awards. Here's the spooky thing: Wilson is putting the finishing touches on the final play of the cycle, Radio Golf. Most likely, he will not live to see it produced on Broadway, nor will he ever write anything else. It's almost as if we were allowed to enjoy his gift in this particular way, and then it'll be gone.

I'd love to have dinner with August Wilson. I'd thank him profusely for helping me better understand a culture that's so closely entwined with my own (I did, after all, grow up in the South). Any white person who actually thinks that racism in this country is something of the past ought to be required to read August Wilson.

Namaste!

Did yoga this morning for the first time in ages. Can you say, "Stiff and unresponsive?"

It is weird to do yoga with a Brittany sniffing in your ear the whole time.

Feel better, though. Gotta try that again soon.

This is NOT Happening...

Get home from church, lunch, and errands to find water all over the laundry room floor. Apparently, leak coming from A/C unit. Something's blocked (that's what happens when you have children and dogs and run the A/C all the time). DH now trying to blow out system block with hose.

If we spent $300 on a new water heater for no reason, I may implode.

Self-consolation: Old water heater was 12 years old, which is far beyond normal life for a water heater in mineral-rich Central Florida. Old water heater was making strange dripping noises with the valve shut all the way off. Much of water was pooled around heater.

Still, if we spent $300 on a new water heater for no reason...

Maitland Rocks!

The Maitland boys cruised past Newton, PA last night in the Little League World Series--barring a series of spectacular occurrences, they'll make it into the semis. Woo hoo!

The cool thing is that the city is going baseball crazy--watch parties that even teenagers attend, signs and balloons everywhere, and people being nice (imagine that). Too bad every town can't get a dose of Little League fever!

My Husband is a STUD

DH has fulfilled my dearest wish. I will be taking a hot shower very, very soon.

The Movies in 15 Minutes version of the remainder of our Home Depot installation saga:

ACT I

I don't feel like synopsizing our earlier trauma again. Read this instead.

ACT II

Friday evening. Chez mimi is on Day Three of the Hot Water Watch.
HD Installer: I'm not touching that thing; it has an energy management box.
DH: But you can't just leave without...
(HD Installer leaves skid marks backing out of our driveway)
DH: (on phone with sap from HD Installation Services) Do I get a water heater tonight or not?
Sap from HD Installation Services: No. We're still getting out of the clown car.
DH: Refund all the money. Fix your screwed up system so some poor 80-year-old grandmother with a busted water heater doesn't have the same problems we have. (righteous phone receiver slamming)
mimi: (impressed by DH's care for helpless old ladies, but still miffed at the water situation) Crap. This means no hot shower tomorrow morning.

ACT III

Saturday dawns.
DH: Off to Lowe's to buy a water heater.
Lowe's Salesman: Don't spend that much money. I'm an ex-plumber. Buy this one and all this junk to put it in with.
(DH refrains from kissing salesman on mouth; saves $200 and brings home water heater in a box and junk to put it in with, like valves, hoses, and Teflon tape.)
mimi: How long till hot water?
DH: Hold your tongue, woman. (goes to driving range)
mimi: Argh!! (goes to paint hallway)
DH: (back from driving range) Screw, screw, tape, tape, fix, fix, open valve.
Angels: (singing) Hallelujah!!
DH: I am man. I have pipe wrench. I fix water heater. Feed me!
mimi: Hey, for hot water, you'll get a lot more than a steak.

THE END

Okay, off to live up to my innuendo...

The Bed List/The Dinner List

It's a science fiction double feature!

BED LIST: MICHAEL BIEHN



Recognize this look? Maybe this will jog your memory: "I came through time for you, Sarah." My BF Kelly and I have been lusting after Michael Biehn since The Terminator. Aliens only added to our case. He's even hot as the psycho Special Forces guy in The Abyss. Plus, he's from Alabama. Sexy and Southern. Downright deadly!!

DINNER LIST: TIM CURRY



Versatile, funny, and charming; that's Tim Curry. I love him in everything he does, from The Hunt for Red October to Charlie's Angels to Spamalot, but the ultimate Tim Curry role is, of course, Dr. Frank N. Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Remember this look?



Any guy who'll dress like this is aces in my book. Let's have dinner and do the Time Warp!!

Go Maitland!!

The Little League team from Maitland, FL just won its first game in the Little League World Series. They beat the Midwest Regional Champions from Davenport, Iowa 7-3. Woo hoo!!

It's fun to watch this batch of kids, especially since I know some of them. We go to church with Tanner Stanley and his family, and I went to high school with Trent Richardi's dad.

The whole town will probably be at the Mickey D's tomorrow for more "Maitland McFlurries" (vanilla ice cream with a pulverized hot apple pie--apple pie, baseball, get it?) to keep the boys in Williamsport.

This is so cool!!

Author's Nightmare

I wake up from a dream about holding my first published book and breathe a huge sigh of relief. Thank goodness it was just a dream! My subconscious is completely weird. For one thing, I'm holding the book and making all kinds of edits to it--needed edits--then realize I'm screwed because this is the real thing, the published book. The cover gives me a co-author. Now, I co-authored a book with my critique partner years ago, but my CP has a normal, English-sounding name, not a name out of the Prague telephone book, all consonants and diacritical marks. To top it all off, my author bio was for someone else. So not only is the story bad and the book's parentage in question, no reader who likes it will have any idea what I'm actually like.

Please tell me real publishing is not at all like this...

What Bug Did I Kill in a Previous Life? or, Why I Still Don't Have Hot Water

Today, DH and I get cranky with the Home Depot install crew that was supposed to install our new hot water heater "same day" yesterday. They claim they called yesterday before lunch to apprise us of some City code-upgrade requirements, blah blah blah. Whatever, doofuses. Explain to me how calling the manager of our local Home Depot store qualifies as contacting us?

So this morning I call and chew out the installers. They promise to call DH and have it in this evening. That is, they'll have it in this evening as long as we rip the utility sink or the storage cabinet off the wall, otherwise it'll cost us $70 more than the estimate (and that's on top of the surprise $70 it'll take to bring the sucker up to City code). Fine, I say, deal with the husband. Just don't act surprised when he excavates a new orifice in your body.

Call DH after my workshop ends, he says installers will be here this evening between 5 and 9. Hot water is apparently in my future! Huzzah!

Oh, how easily led I am. This evening shows up. So does an installer. Installer claims we have a bad valve letting water into the water heater. Won't go near it with the torch unless we can cut the water off to the house entirely. DH and installer go outside. Cannot cut off water. Cannot locate valve to cut off water, despite several whacks at various water-looking pieces of equipment. Installer says, "Sorry, Charlie, call the installers again. See ya!" Packs new water heater back onto truck, heads into sunset.

I now have the following:

1. Busted water heater that's still leaking all over the floor
2. Washing machine in the middle of my laundry room
3. Utility sink in the middle of my garage
4. No hot water
5. A serious case of the red ass, as I must wash my hair tomorrow morning and despise cold showers
   

I take kids to have dinner with a friend of mine. When I get back, DH informs me that valve to turn off water to house is right where Installer Man was fiddling, claiming he couldn't find valve to turn off water to house. I would find this funny, except that I'm looking down the barrel of a freezing cold shower in the morning and no guarantee that the installer men will finally finish climbing out of their clown car and install the damned thing tomorrow.

I am repaying some bizarro karmic debt, I just know. I'd better get my behind to yoga class on Sunday, or something in my house might explode. Please, God, don't let it be the A/C...

Insult Added to Injury

Day 2 of workshop. Same as Day 1, different presenter. I have now heard the same information FOUR TIMES. I think I get it. I do have a college degree. Two, in fact.

Grr.

Our hot water heater is peeing all over our laundry room floor. It's been like this for a while, and we can't do much about it, since teachers have NO money at the end of the summer. So we slog through wet, do lots of mopping, and forget to turn the hot water back on so we can shower with some temperature. It will cost in excess of $500 to put a new water heater in, what with installation and permitting. Permitting?! Yes. Apparently, a water heater requires a permit. Installation and permitting cost more than the freakin' heater itself.

Double grr.

I am so going to need Happy Hour on Friday.