shots rang out...

apparently capitol hill is under lockdown at the moment- gunfire may have been heard a little while ago...


anyone know where our sharpshootin' vice pres is? that would be the first office i'd be checking...

it's ok though- Sergeant Pickle is on it:
'Senate Sergeant at Arms Bill Pickle told Reuters there were no reports of any arrests or injuries. '

Now we're just awaiting the all clear from General Gherkin.

thirsty

it's too early to be fucking with my day, people...



the friggin' cleaning people threw out my water bottle. don't they know our mortgage only allows for two new water bottles a month? june is still a week away.

i'm either gonna have to rob my office's uglyass yoda-soda fund:



or i'm going to have to settle for dixiecup H2O shooters all day.

maybe i'll just skip the usual 3 litres of water a day routine and replace every single drop of it with coffee. j.mo- prepare the sedetives for my arrival this evening :)

un mot/a word

later this summer i have to take a language proficiency test so that grad school knows for sure i possess the necessary language skills to order up a plate of soy'cargot should i find myself peckish and stranded à paris anytime soon.

i have my BA in french but since graduating more than 6 years ago it's been about as useful as that foot long shoe horn they sell at ikea (i know you've seen it too). so since i have to prove my linguistic worthiness i'm trying to surround myself with as much francophilia as i can stomach- music, books, newspapers, movies etc. once upon a time there was a practical purpose behind learning french. i was sure that at some point i was headed to west africa with the peace corps- i figured knowing french would be handy just in case i was abducted by rebels and felt it advantageous to barter for my life... or on the off chance i needed to explain the size and color of the rabid monkey that had just mauled me.

despite going through the rather tedious application process (complete with fingerprinting) and being assigned to the ivory coast, i didn't go in the end thanks to a promotion and some family stuff.

so my french has been gathering dust ever since.

over the weekend i was reading le monde and came across a word that made me giggle. i don't know why, it just sounded funny. and ever since, at random moments it's been popping into my head. superpuissance.

superpuissance- (noun) literally translated as 'superpower'...
pronounced su-PAIR-pweeee-saunce.

when said out loud it sounds like a million things other than the word for 'superpower.' it conveys more of a 'i'm a weathered old french madame, smoking my ubertoxic gaulois cigarette and walking my obnoxious foiegrasfedsweaterwearingminidog on the left bank, waiting for him to take his daily superpuissance right in the middle of the sidewalk.' the whole concept of post-pet cleanups hasn't exactly caught on, so sidewalksuperpuissances are a daily hazard.

while i'm killing the last hour of the work day babbling about french... i also love that the french had to come up with a new word for supermarket. supermarché just didn't cut it anymore. we need something bigger- something better... something with that certain je ne sais quoi...

and thus was born l'hypermarché.

i'll be right back, j.mo- just got to run down to the neighborhood hypermarket for some stankcheese and stale bread...


eeeeeehhhhhh mon dieu, la lune.... she is zee finest superpuissance in zeee galaxie...

rested

ahhhh.... this was my first weekend since january without having to work on saturday, no paper (or papers) due, no 200 pages to read, and no trip to connecticut to apply larger than life bandaids at the very source of my doomsdaygenepool. on the *really fun* weekends the past few months i would have had all 4 to deal with in the span of 48hrs. i have no idea how j.mo managed to refrain from chopping me to bite-sized morsels and sending me down the supahsonicgahbagedisposal4000 one soybean at a time....

toward the end of the semester i felt like i was starting to unravel a bit- not sleeping too well, constantly exhausted and completely uninterested in anyone/anything other than bed. but things have slowed down considerably at work, school is done for a while and the parental units are in the process of getting themselves sorted.

this weekend was awesome- not because of some groundbreaking new experience or weekend getaway to somewhere distant... we got to spend the whole weekend together at home and slept late both mornings. i feel like i just got back from a two week vacation :) some of the highlights included buying a nice new 30 gallon fish tank, this film (which has now led me to believe we not only need asian babies, but they also need to be french-speaking asian babies... oh yeah- and we need them real soon). otherwise it was a lot of cooking and cleaning and laundry and just lounging.

the weather this weekend was absolutely crazy- friday j.mo and i got soaked during the 10 minute walk to the supermarket. the sky just opened up and it was all thunder and lightning and pouring rain, which naturally was all done as we got home. saturday was gorgeous and we went to castle island for a lovely bit-o-exercise along the ocean:



and then all that sunny nice-ness turned into a black sky on sunday:

complete with another thunderstorm, 20 degree drop in temperature and a whole lotta hail.

this spring can be officially diagnosed as having multiple personality disorder. it's hot, it's cold, it's hailing, it's raining for 10 days... i was so not made for new england ;)

man the pumps

if god told pat robertson...

and then pat proclaimed it on the 700 club...

and then MSNBC decided to inflate it to newsworthiness...

it has be the real deal:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12851397/?GT1=8199

remember playing telephone when you were a little kid? and someone would start by whispering something silly to the first person and then they would turn to the person next to them and 'pass it on'? and fifteen 6 year olds later, by the time it got to the end dolly parton was the first president of brazil to have a peanut allergy.

pollen, oh my pollen

so after our recent 10 day monsoon season finished all of the flowers, trees and grass are going crazy and pumping pollen out into the air like there’s no tomorrow. even with an allergy pill yesterday i still felt like i had sandpaper eyes all day. funtimes.

i more than understanding when we’re all packed onto the T in the morning and people need to sneeze and/or blow their nose. not the most pleasant of experiences when you’re wedged between a copy of the metro and your neighbor’s dandruff-flecked shoulder, but hey- at that point, what’s a little spritzing of airbornemucasbits?

but why? Why why why? why must people insist on blowing their nose and then opening up the kleenex to gaze at it? i don’t get it- are they malnourished and considering their masstransitsnackingoptions? it happened twice this morning and I’m only on the T for 15 minutes. it’s snot people, get over it. there’s plenty more where that came from. what is there to see in there?

little dancing penguins?


Re-runs of the view?

!ai chalupa!

sorry for my absence the past three weeks. but duty calls and i've had my hands full patrolling the US-Mexico border. i can't wait for my 6,000 reinforcements to arrive- that big river, the fence, miles of barbed wire, all those dogs... it just wasn't cutting it any more.

in the meantime, here's a little something worthy of bloggin :)(:

click here for a date with el taco rosado