Archive for the 'karen' Category

old dry crumbly toast

Thursday, May 25th, 2006

As my life continues to have the consistency of an old, dry, crumbly piece of toast, it is fortunate that there are other blahggers out there. Karen locates a missing person (May 23) and discovers that the way to get to Brimley actually does not involve turning left at the Brimily light (May 24). Sam is either talking about mushrooms or my [step-]grandmother. And Mouse, well, it appears that Mouse’s blahg is going to be a lot more interesting than this bunch of drivel. grok grok Whadidya expect, ya oogly old bag! grokGROK! Just a minute. (Shut up Froggy.) Sorry about that. And yes, Mouse *did* start calling herself Mouse at the age of 1-1/2. Mouse could talk as well as any adult at that age and was perfectly capable of clearly (and loudly) expressing her many opinions, including what she thought of the name I gave her at birth. No, I am not at liberty to tell anyone that name. And neither are you, Frooooogggy! grok grok I’m gonna go get some frog juice. grok grok. Hmmm, he’s off to an early start today.

Karen & Jim were married 25 years ago

Monday, May 22nd, 2006

Tonight we helped Karen, Valdemort and Pengo Janetto celebrate Jim and Karen’s 25th wedding anniversary at Dave’s Ribs with The Commander making a telephonic appearance as we were driving there. Bro’, we missed you but I bet you were watching us through one of the windows. Were we obnoxiously raucous enough? Actually, I guess we didn’t start singing until we got back in the car. Anyway, thanks for bringing Karen into the family. I needed a sister.

SQUEEgrok SQUEEgrok! Sproinnnng! Sproooinnng! I got a present! A beeyootiful loverly present! SQUEEgrok SQUEEgrok! A cute little froglet that says, “You make my heart leap!” Sproinnnng! SQUEEgrok! Thank you Ernie and Alfred! SQUEEgrok! Sproiinnnng!

Vmom’s Itips: feedback

Friday, May 19th, 2006

Yay for feedback! There are people who read this stoopid blahg grok grok who are pretty fluent when it comes to technology and they had comments to make about Volcano Mama and her Internet Tips. grok grok Excuse me a minute. (Froggy, I wasn’t talking about you and no, you can’t use Garage Band right now. Go play on the highway.) Sorry about that rude interruption.

Karen wrote, “um, aren’t ‘application’ and ‘program’ synonymous?” Dum de dum de dum. Hmmm. Good question. Didya do any research before writing that, Volcano Mama? Well, Vmom was thinking along the lines that a “program” is a generic term for a set of instructions for a computer to follow. “Application program” aka “application” is a set of instructions designed for a more specific use. Whatis.com says it pretty well. Vmom thought her intended audience might get confused by “application” alone. Say what? Application? For what? A spot in the assisted living facility? Get the drift?

Then the Marquis (or maybe it was the Grand Poohbah, I wasn’t sure) wrote, “If you subscribe to either MSN or Yahoo as an ISP they provide their own proprietary browser.” “I stand corrected,” says Vmom. “MSN and Yahoo *can* be browsers and are obviously useful to some people as such.” But again, Volcano Mama’s intended audience might get confused by that. They don’t have time for anything more than about one or two mouse clicks. In general, Vmom is not a terrific fan of proprietary software on the web, but that’s just her not-so-humble opinion, inspired in part by what the gang over at WCC has beaten into her rather one-dimensional brain.

Volcano Mama’s intended audience is people who want to use the Internet for very specific purposes. Like emailing their grandchildren or reading someone’s stoopid blahg. They want to get on there, do their business and get off quick. No news sites or flash videos, thank you very much. They do not have time to fiddly-diddle around learning all of the various complexities of using computers and browsers and surfing the Internet. They are too busy going to water-ex and taiko drumming performances and foreign films and classes at the college and visiting their friends at Tendercare and eating corn chowder at Penny’s and reading the newspaper down by the waterfront and cogitating about improvements to their properties. So Vmom is trying to keep it pretty basic.

Anyway, yay for feedback! Keep it coming. One of these days, I’m gonna get off my you-know-what and install WordPress on this here blahg so I can turn on some comments and y’all can comment to your heart’s delight and get into flame wars with each other and the whole works.

And finally, Sam and I were certainly on the same wavelength yesterday as she also mentioned the sound of wind in pine trees in her blahg. Except she didn’t call it a swhooooshing noise, she called it susurration. Her vocabulary wins!

One More Week

Thursday, April 20th, 2006

One more week of this crazy class. Business on the Internet. I like the teacher and my classmates a lot. I won’t say exactly what I think about the class. My own personal little blahgger’s statute of limitations on what to post about school won’t run out for quite a while. Uh, actually, I guess I already said it was “crazy.” Take that however you want. That’s all you’re gonna get for now. Just count your blessings that I didn’t blahg about some of the other stuff that was on my mind today. None of it would gel into a coherent entry and that is definitely to your benefit. You did not want to know and, anyway, other people are much more interesting than me. If you want cutosity, Sam has duckies on her blahg and, in news of the weird, Alfred has risen to new heights over on the dawg blawg (April 17 entry). Or perhaps he has fallen to new depths. It can be difficult to tell with Alfred.

My Brother Married a Flutist

Sunday, March 12th, 2006

My brother did a lot of good things in his life but one of the best had to be to marry a flutist! One who sometimes drags me out of my musical stupor to do something flutey. Yesterday, our plan was to participate in a Native American flute workshop at the Flint Institute of Music. Not only was I overdue for some kind of musical experience, this was a week that I desperately needed the companionship of a female friend. All of the usual Ann Arbor suspects were out of town or couldn’t be scared up for whatever reason. Sigh 😉

I drove up to Grand Blanc and we caught lunch at a nearby restaurant and then had some good dog time. Along the way, we caught up on all the bits and pieces of our so-called lives, kids and octogenarians and work or lack thereof in my case :-/ and bombed-out houses and aminals grok grok and you name it.

We got to the workshop only to find out that the presenter was stuck in an airport in Oklahoma or somewhere. But there were still flute choirs to listen to and a chance to participate in one and we were certainly up for that. I have been on plenty of stages in the last ten years or so but usually it has been to deliver food to the stage manager of one play or another. Definitely not to perform. Yesterday, Karen and I were two of about twelve flutists of all ages and abilities and we read through five or six pieces, ending with an arrangement of The Pink Panther scored for 100 flutes! It was a total riot! Non-competitive, unlike Interlochen or college. No big egos involved.

We finished off the day with a cappuccino at the Indian Hills neighborhood Starbucks and then I said goodbye to the dogz and Karen and Pengo Janetto and jumped onto southbound US23. Perfect day. Until I got about two miles north of the M14 interchange. I was passing someone at about 75 mph when I realized that there was a po-lice car with its lights on *directly* behind me and my cute little Honda Civic. YIKES!!! I completed my pass and prepared to pull off, thinking something like, “shit, this is my first speeding ticket ever!” Wonder of wonders, HE KEPT RIGHT ON GOING! WHEW! A moment later, another po-lice car passed me. I got onto M14 and prepared to make my ascent up to the Planet Ann Arbor when I saw both of those po-lice cars pulling somebody else off. They were obviously after someone for something but it was not me. This time. grok grok You should’ve asked me for (grok grok) a ride on buoy 22. grook grook Froogy, you and buoy 22 are grounded, remember?

The day didn’t turn out exactly as planned but it just didn’t matter because Karen and I actually got to spend some time hanging out together somewhere besides a goddamn horspittle. We have spent too darn much time hanging around horspittles in the last couple years. THANK YOU BRO’, wherever you are, for marrying a flutist. THANK YOU KAREN, for dragging me out of the walking train wreck I seemed to be stuck in.