I am so blessed
I just discovered that this adorable beaver-like mammal (BLM) lives right behind my building. I can see the door to his/her house from my balcony. We are neighbors! Here is a photo – he/she is right there in the middle. I always thought that big pile of crap that the beaver is emerging from was just…well…a big pile of crap that my neighbors for some reason kept in their yard. But now, I am thinking maybe it is a specially-constructed beaver house. I know they have a chicken in their yard, because it squawks and wakes me up every morning, so maybe they are animal lovers and thus are prone to doing things such as building beaver abodes.
Trivia
For the past three weeks we have been playing Tuesday night trivia and we have won two times. I sure have a smart bunch of friends. Tonight, not only did we win the game, but we won the 25 cent shots round. None of us wanted shots, so we had 25 cent decaf coffees instead. Here is a cool picture that John drew of South America to help us answer a question about the Andes, as well as some computations I performed to figure out the square root of 2.
Small things
I have a state quarter collection. Almost every single person I know criticizes me for this, I don’t know why. There are two versions of each state coin – one from the Denver mint and one from the Philadelphia mint. Since I live on the east coast, it is fairly easy to find the Philadelphia versions of the coins. It is harder to find the Denver versions. When I was out west this summer, I gathered a bunch of Denver versions, and I just today got around to putting them in my state quarter book. Here are the Denver versions that I was able to add:
- Oregon
- Minnesota
- Michigan
- Louisiana
Yay.
Here are the Denver editions that I still need to find:
- Delaware
- Vermont
- Illinois
- Alabama
- Maine
- Missouri
- Iowa
- Wisconsin
- Kansas
- West Virginia
- All of 2006, 2007, 2008
Honey bear
Elizabeth told me something interesting today. She said that if you have allergies, you should eat locally produced honey. It helps to immunize you against the pollen of local flowers. I don’t know if this is true or not, but it’s a cool idea. They have self-serve local organic honey at Integral Yoga – we made a mess filling up one of those plastic honey bears.
To commemorate this day, I have drawn this picture of a bee.
Stupid b*tches
This weekend the stupid b*tch who lives above me was being so noisy, and so was her dog (another stupid bitch, HA). Then on Saturday morning she went out and the dog was home alone, and it was running back and forth and barking and howling and I really wanted to get a gun and shoot right through the ceiling. Instead, I banged on the ceiling with my umbrella. The umbrella broke, and then a sharp piece of it went through my hand. And then like 10 gallons of blood came out of my hand and onto the floor. Ow.
Then, I was so mad I decided to call the police to see if I could file some sort of noise complaint. So I called 911, but then I hung up right away cuz I felt bad about tying up the 911 line with an obvious non-emergency.
As I was looking through the phone book for the non-emergency police number (with blood still pouring out of my hand) 911 called me BACK, but when I tried to answer the phone it was broken and wouldn’t pick up. So 911 left me a message saying they were sending emergency personel out to my apartment. And I’m thinking great, when they get here and find me covered in my own blood, clutching a broken umbrella, and hysterical over a barking dog they are going to lock me up.
But I called 911 back and straightened it all out.
I hate stupid b*tches.
My Daisy And My Marigold
i love to watch my fishies
swimming in their tank
first one floats by and then the other
following at her flank
they like to play among the currents
that their whisper filter makes
they love to eat red gold and green
freshwater fish food flakes
i try to keep the fishies happy
prevent them from getting cold
cuz the fishies aren’t warm-blooded mammals
just my daisy and my marigold
Customer service you can be proud of: A commentary in one part
I just wanted to share with the world this little fact: Dollywood customer service totally kicks ass. This afternoon Tanya and I were planning our annual trip to the grand opening of Dollywood, and I wanted to make sure that Dolly was, as usual, scheduled to appear in the “Festival of Nations” parade. I checked out the Dollywood website and though the parade was mentioned, it didn’t say whether Dolly would be present. So I sent off an email to guest services. Says I:
hello.
i am trying to get some information about the opening weekend of dollywood this year. what i want to know is, will dolly be appearing in the parade on friday the 6th of april? also, are there any special events i should know about that are occurring on saturday the 7th or sunday the 8th?
thanks very much for your help.
And guess what – I got a response back in about 5 minutes. 5 minutes! Says they:
Dear Phoebe,
Thank you for your interest in Dollywood. Grand Opening 2001 is scheduled for April 7th and 8th. The Dolly Parade is scheduled for Friday, April 6th. Dolly is slated to be Grand Marshall. All available information is on our website at: http://www.dollywood.com/Highlights_GOpen.htm?Please let us know if we can help you with anything else. Our information phone number is 1(800)DOLLYWOOD or 1(800)365-5996 or you can access our web site at www.dollywood.com. We hope you can visit us in the Smoky Mountains and at Dollywood this season.
Sincerely,
Guest Services
The Dollywood Company
Sincerely! It was so amazing. Where else are you gonna find that kind of customer service in this day and age?
Tanya, in response to my happy astonishment, emailed:
well if you ran the dollywood web site, wouldn’t you be prompt? i mean, how many emails do you think they get? i bet the general dollywood attendee isn’t too web-savvy.”
But then Tanya is a jaded, cynical biotch, so whatever.
