haiku wednesday - August 27, 2008

This week's words are
desperate
lapse
traveled

Barely time to think today, let alone play along.

---

hot, desperate gasps
her hands traveled my body
short lapse; kiss once more

---

"a lapse in judgment"
desperate to regain trust
she traveled by train

---

cold, desperate gasps
her spirit traveled away
love's lapse made him snap

FOUR MORE YEARS! FOUR MORE YEARS!

Ha, you thought this was about politics.

Yesterday was the first day of my next four years. It was the four-year anniversary of my very first blog post. 573 posts later... oh. Writer's block. I know, I'll do the round-up of recent search strings!

• The number one search string recently is... Hayden Christensen! Thanks, Blogless Troll, for the hint. In fact, among my top ten recent search strings are
  #1: hayden christensen porn
  #3: hayden christensen
  #6: hayden christensen hair
  #40: hayden christensen beard
  #41: hayden christensen's hair
  #42: hayden christenson
  #43: hayden christiansen porn
  #44: haydyn christenson
  #70: porn christenson
• A few search strings have the distinction of bringing visitors that stick around to view other pages. The searches with the highest page views per visit (three!) are
  "picking cherries" blog
  hayden christensen beard
  oregon camp meery weather boy scout camp
  writers conference linda lee
  
• Slightly behind the 3 pages per visit with 2 pages per visit were these searches:
  inquisited dave the game
  sanjaya
  shme dave
  tiffany roberts fan club

And finally, the ones that I just enjoy that brought someone (I wonder who) to this blog:

• "wait 30 minutes" + "bathroom line"
• aging sucks
• belly button stabbing
• chisenbop commercial
• how to offend a corner kick
• i have been forwarded
• medieval porn cleavage
• q38 space modulator
• order ice cream to your door dudley
• verizon pay as you sucks

And now to return some of the recent love sent my way... the top referring sites in recent days:

• Ten on Tuesday
• Three Word Wednesday
  
• Merry's Mom and More blog
• Sarah's Short Stuff blog
• The indispensable Robin
• The one true Paca
• Freddie's Cafe
• lissa's Just Writing Words blog
• (Note to Blogless: you fell off the list, buddy. You're going to have to score really well on the parallel bars or the individual medley or whatever to get back into contention.)
  

I've been remiss in visiting my friends on line recently. Life gets in the way. Even worse, I've not revised a word of my WIP in nearly a month. Work is that busy. In a good way, though. It's hard to complain when you love your job and the net result is going to be tens of millions of dollars flowing into nonprofit organizations all over the world.

And last, but certainly not least especially for all of you who made it this far:
Thank you for your support!

haiku wednesday - August 20, 2008

This week's words are
bored
habit
settle

Happy #100, 3WW! I hope these words don't reflect how bone feels about 3WW. These seem like the foundation for a depressing Arthur Miller play. But it seems I can have fun with almost any set of three words.

---

nun's eyes settle cold
tilted habit towering
hole bored through my soul

---

bored, chubby bus girl
contents settle in shipping
donut habit weighs

---

settle in the burbs
bored wife picks up bad habit
caught with neighbor, nude

Ten on Tuesday: Olympians!

This week's Ten on Tuesday theme is favorite Olympians of all time. Let me first say that this list has my favorite Olympic athletes of all time. Gotta root for the Old Blues! Athletes like Michele Granger (softball), Joy Fawcett (soccer), Chris Huffins (decathlon), and Mary T. Meagher (swimming) reached the very top level but won't ever make the "world's best" lists. Beyond that, here are the ten Olympians that struck me as I was thinking about this question. In no particular order:

1. Jesse Owens
   With four gold medals in 1936, Owens showed the world that Hitler's idea of a "master race" was truly full of shit.
   
   
2. Bruce Jenner
   The definitive Wheaties box icon, Jenner was magic in 1976. What bigger accomplishment than gold in the decathlon, in our bicentennial year? Wikipedia credits him with starting the "victory lap with flag" trend. And who could forget the hair? I was nine that year, and the Olympics were everything magical about sports.
   
   
3. Carl Lewis
   What an athlete. Had a reputation for being self centered and egotistical, but nine gold medals is an incredible achievement. (Maybe not for you kids whose only Olympic memory is watching Michael Phelps' mom in the Water Cube. She's probably the only woman to get more TV time from NBC than Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor.)
   
   
4. Dorothy Hamill
   Another 1976 Olympian, Hamill is the icon for me from the winter Olympics that year. I don't remember much about her or the competition, to be honest.
   
   
5. Mia Hamm
   Gorgeous and unstoppable, a remarkable soccer player who owned the world of women's soccer for years. She deserves to be named among the sport's greatest of all time.
   
   
6. Matt Biondi
   A Cal grad who lived just up the street from me in Berkeley while I was in school there, Biondi had this amazing wingspan and was genuinely liked across campus. I didn't know him, but his reputation was as a good guy. He has eight gold medals from 1984 to 1992.
   
   
7. Natalie Coughlin
   Another Cal swimmer, we all know Natalie from this year's relentless swimming TV coverage. A charmer who seems genuinely thrilled with any medal she achieves, she's also a local girl who went to high school a mile away from here.
   
   
8. Nadia Comaneci
   Three years before Bo Derek's famous movie, Nadia was the first ever perfect 10. She is now a huge philanthropist and volunteer advocate.
   
   
9. The 1984 US hockey team
   We all know the story. Coached by Kurt Russell, this team achieved a "miracle" by winning gold at the Lake Placid Olympics in 1984. UPDATE: Uh, duh. Make that "we all know the story except me, because the real year was 1980. Doofus."
   
   
10. Artemis
    One of the original Olympians, Artemis was not allowed to compete in the original all-male competitions. She would surely have won gold in all the archery events if she had, however.
    
    

Who have been your favorite Olympians?

More fishing

Cub scout fishing

Peter needs...

Got this from someone's blog, but I forget where, someone on 10 on Tuesday perhaps. Looked fun, so I figured I'd try. The idea is to google your name with "needs" appended. So I googled "Peter needs." Apparently I need

• Peter needs to save Dumbledore. Albus needs my help?
  
• Peter needs more steps in recovery. Hmm. What does google know that I don't?
  
• Peter needs a band! Now you're talking!
  
• Peter needs help sorting contract nuances. Don't we all?
  
• Peter needs some dong. Uh... oh dear. No.
  
• Peter needs service. OK, that's closer to the mark.
  
• Peter needs a man to repair the car. Is my car broken?
  
• Peter needs you. Now that's deep. And truer than you'll ever know.
  
• Peter needs Facebook. Google said that. Go figure. Plus, Peter has facebook
  
• Peter needs help.
  
• Peter needs a vasectomy. Or so say the teachers of my kids.
  
• Peter needs to learn. I'm trying, really I am.
  
• Peter needs a place to go. I know, you can tell me where to go. ha ha ha. Smartass.
  
• Peter needs to be given a little more slack. Word.
  
• Peter needs to get a haircut. OK, now that's just mean.

This is actually way more fun than you'd think it would be.

haiku wednesday - August 13, 2008

This week's words are
intimate
river
waiting

Since I enjoy wordplay, I'm disappointed in myself that I did not use intimate as a verb or waiting as a noun. I'm guessing very few people will. Anyway, I am so fried from too much work and too little sleep that I took a fairly straightforward, brute force approach this week. Happy hump day!

---

waiting for spring's warmth
snow sleeps, intimate with cold
a river one day

---

intimate whispers
rumors--a river of lies
waiting for your truth

---

remote river bridge
soldiers share intimate thoughts
waiting for doom's fire

Ten on Tuesday: Villains!

This week's Ten on Tuesday theme is favorite movie villains! When I think of my favorite movies, it's rarely for the villains. I mean, really, how are you going to pick a "villain" for a list like this from Mary Poppins, or The Sound of Music, or The Sting (OK, I really liked Robert Shaw as Doyle Lonogan in this, but mostly because of the entire movie, not because he was a particularly outstanding villain). I almost picked Sid, the neighbor kid in Toy Story, but again he didn't rise to the level that I wanted. So here are a few that leapt to mind this morning. I have a feeling my list would be different later in the day after my brain warms up, but... there you go.

In no particular order:

1. Tim Curry as Cardinal Richelieu in The Three Musketeers. "You first."
   
   
2. John Malkovich as Cyrus Grissom in Con Air.
   
   
3. Dennis Hopper as Howard Payne in Speed.
   
   
4. Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor in Superman.
   
   
5. Anthony Hopkins as William Bligh in The Bounty.
   
   
6. Bruce Glover at Mr. Wint and Putter Smith as Mr. Kidd in Diamonds Are Forever.
   
   
7. Richard Kiel as Jaws in various Bond movies.
   
   
8. Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook in Hook.
   
   
9. The Predator.
   
   
10. David Bowie as Jareth the Goblin King in The Labyrinth.
    

What villains have inspired you or terrified you? Obviously the Wicked Witch of the West and Darth Vader deserve to be on a list like this, but I chose as always to go more obscure for my own (and I hope your) entertainment.

I can haz vakashun now?

haiku wednesday - August 6, 2008

This week's words are
million
time
unnoticed

I love love love these words. They are short (only six syllables, yay!) and flexible. Can't wait to see what the rest of you do with them. I keep thinking I should write more "serious" haiku... you know, work in the nature metaphors and high falootin' literary shme. But then I can't help myself and fall back on simple story and cheap humor because it amuses me so.

---

unnoticed, I slept
seven thousand million years
time again to rise

---

no more unnoticed
ten million meek rise in rage
inheriting time!

---

one million dollars
I thought would go unnoticed
time in prison sucks

Ten on Tuesday: Olympics!

This week's Ten on Tuesday theme is events that should be in the Olympics!

1. Doubles Parenting Decathlon
   Couples must coordinate activities for three children aged nine years, five years, and six months. Individual events include homework marathon, supermarket sprint medley, sports practice relay, and babysitter hunting. (Future Olympic games may include same-sex doubles parenting, but at this time all couples must be of mixed gender.)
   
2. Singles Parenting Heptathlon
   Similar to Doubles Parenting, but the competitors must accomplish the tasks alone while pestered by creditors and ex-spouse's lawyers. There is no distinction between men's and women's competition--both sexes compete in the same events.
   
3. Poetry Slam
   Even the East German judges couldn't make this any more subjective than figure skating is now. Alternate version: Full-contact poetry slam without pads.
   
4. Financial Obstacle Course
   Competitors, given massive debt, skyrocketing fuel and food prices, and a set of job skills determined by random draw, must navigate a different country's economic and social services system in order to achieve financial stability.
5. Voting
   Competitors are subjected to 48 hours straight of propaganda, split up into 10-minute chunks for each of two political candidates. At the end of the 48 hours, competitors are judged on impartiality and ability to sift fact from the morass of misinformation. Additional points awarded for sticking to a set of previously articulate principles, particularly if that means voting against party lines.
6. Wife Carrying
   WTF?
7. Husband Carrying
   Just because. I mean, really. Though things could get dicey when same-sex marriage is recognized by the IOC, though.
   
8. Scavenger Hunt
   Countries supply teams of four people who start out with only the list of items they need to find, a specified amount of local currency, and their clothing. The teams all set out from the stadium during a specified moment in the opening ceremony, and they must return two hours prior to the closing ceremony, during which the medals will be awarded. As long as no illegal means are used, how the teams acquire the objects is up to them. Certain objects may be designated more or fewer points.
   
9. DDR
   I have seen some teenagers do this successfully at such a high rate of speed that my eyes could not keep up with their feet. Me, I do OK on the basic level for the Wii.
10. Pole Dancing
    I am astonished that this has not been added to the Games. Talk about television ratings.
11. And a special bonus item that should be added to the Olympics:
    Ten on Tuesday blogging!
    

If you played this week, let me know. If not, drop your ideas for additional events in the comments.

Deschutes River with Mt. Bachelor

Tumalo Falls

Motel breakfast

A bit of American tradition.

Wells Fargo free hot dogs!

Imagine the pleasant surprise when I went to Wells Fargo in Bend, OR to get cash at the ATM. The evening was gorgeous--75 degrees, beautiful sky, just amazing. And there were my team mates from my company giving away free hot dogs, soda, and beer! I was so thrilled that I forgot to get cash out of the ATM.

Bend Oregon