Tag Archives: Life

Dangerous Words

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The four most dangerous words in the English language:  I can do that.  They are especially dangerous when I hear them come out of my mouth.

It’s that type of thinking that led me to sign up for  StoryTime at the Cactus Cafe at the Texas Union on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin.  StoryTime at the Cactus Cafe is an event sponsored by KUT, the local NPR radio station. The event opens with two featured story tellers followed by those who signed up to tell a story.

That was me.  In front of a microphone, in front of an audience.  An audience that was not an at-the-office meeting, not a captive audience where they had to be there.  No, these people were there voluntarily.  And so was I.

I heard the announcement for the event on a Saturday while driving.  At the next red light, I wrote myself a cryptic note (Cactus Cafe), put it in my purse and forgot about it.  I found the note Monday morning and looked it up online.  The next event was that upcoming Wednesday.  Each story teller gets a maximum of five minutes, they said.

That’s when I heard myself say:  I can do that. Had I ever done anything like that?  No.  Had I even thought about doing something like that?  No.  But as soon as I heard about it, I wanted to do it.

I chose one of my blog posts for my story, the one about a bad first date. I practiced with one of my friends at work and he timed me:  4 minutes, 10 seconds.  I was ready.  Hubby and two friends went with me for my story telling debut.  I signed up to be first.  Yes, first.  If I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it right.

I saw that both of the featured story tellers adjusted the height of the microphone.  I don’t know how to do that.  Yes, yes, I’d seen it done a million times on TV, but I never had to do it myself.  I didn’t want to waste any of my precious five minutes on trying to adjust it and then have it fall apart or something.  However the microphone was positioned when I walked up to it, that’s how I was going to use it.  I was ready to bend down and lean over sideways, had it been too short. I was ready to stand on my tippy-toes, if it was too tall.  Fortunately, the featured story teller just before me left it at a usable height.

I took a water bottle with me, in case my voice vanished.  This happened in one of my college literature classes.  The professor called on me to read a passage from a book.  I started out fine, but I was so nervous that my voice started squeaking around the third sentence.  By the end of the paragraph, it was a minuscule croak.

I got up on stage, put my water bottle on the stool and looked out over the audience.  I could not see a thing.   The stage lights were so bright, my vision stopped a few inches past the microphone.  That didn’t matter. I told my story.

I’m happy to report I did not not lose my voice.  I did not forget my story.  I did not mumble.  When they flicked the lights at the 4-minute mark, I had about two more sentences and I was finished.  I’m very happy with my story telling debut.  We stayed for the whole show and enjoyed all the stories.  Well, most of them.

Maybe this is the beginning of a new career, I thought.  Delusions of grandeur danced in my head.  If Ellen DeGeneres goes on vacation and needs a guest host, I would be available.  The next time Carol Burnett came to town, I could open for her. Alas, no talent scout chased after me as I left when the show was over.  I went to work the next morning, as usual.

Shortest. Career. Change. In. History.

Hubby recorded my story telling debut on his smart phone.  You can’t see me so well — I’m the glob of light at the microphone — but the sound is pretty good.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26LZAU5ceBI

Ellen, Carol!  Call me!

Dust in the Wind

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Living out in the boonies as we do, there are a lot things I take outside for disposal. Banana peels, orange peels, refrigerator science experiments, they all get recycled in the great outdoors.

Another item I take outside is the dustpan contents. I sweep fairly often due to the dog hair. (Not often enough, from the looks of the dog hair I can see right now; thus no photo with this blog entry.) There’s always a noticeable amount of dust and dog hair that I sweep up.

One of these days, I might even learn to check the wind direction before I take the dustpan outside. That would definitely be helpful information. Because as often as not, I open the door, step out on the front porch and the wind blows the dustpan contents right into my face and back into the house.

Pa-toui!

Fortunately, summer is about to arrive, with the wind out of the south. It should be safe for me to go out the front door and have that wind at my back. In the winter, I should go out the back door, to avoid the north wind.

Figuring it out is only part of it. I can’t seem to remember actually to account for the wind when I sweep. Maybe I’m trainable and maybe I’m not.

Pa-toui!

Refrigerator Woes

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The refrigerator woes continued. I related Part 1 to you in Law of Nature, when the refrigerator first started breaking down.

We bought a new refrigerator and it was delivered two days later. The delivery people called to tell us they were on their way and they arrived earlier than scheduled. They removed the old refrigerator and installed the new one. They said to wait 12 hours before putting anything inside.

We waited. We waited six hours and the refrigerator hadn’t started cooling down yet. Went to bed, got up the next morning and it was just as warm in the refrigerator as out. Five hours later, still hadn’t started to cool down. Hubby called Lowe’s and they sent out another new refrigerator that same day, in the afternoon.

Tupperware canister on top of a refrigerator

Old Yeller

It was installed by the time I got home from work and had already cooling. That’s more like it!

Even though we waited to put anything inside, we put some things on it: the requisite yellow Tupperware canister, with cookies for hubby.

Life is good.

Law of Nature

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It’s a law of nature at our house that any appliance breakdown will happen on a holiday weekend. Fortunately, we’re not under the black cloud that ensures that this happens every holiday weekend, but still . . . .

Thursday it seemed that maybe our refrigerator was not feeling so well. By Friday, that was a confirmed diagnosis and its condition steadily worsened. And, of course, it was a holiday weekend.

Also, anytime one of our dogs gets bitten by a rattlesnake, it will be on a weekend when just walking into the emergency vet clinic costs enough to . . . well, buy a new refrigerator! Sometimes two or three refrigerators, even. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad the emergency vet clinic is there. None of our dogs died from the rattlesnake bites. But couldn’t that happen during the week, early in the morning so we could go to our regular vet? Or even better, is there a way to prevent rattlesnake bites altogether, other than moving into a downtown condo, that is? But I digress; back to my refrigerator woes.

Over three days, I spent a noticeable amount of time on the Internet, shopping for a refrigerator much like the one we have: white, top freezer, with a freezer light, no automatic ice maker, no water dispenser, 21-22 cubic feet. How hard can it be? (That’s the clue that it’s always harder than I thought it should be.)

It was hard. As it turns out, those types of refrigerators are still made. The problem is navigating retailers’ web sites to figure out which models have which features. Some web sites have photos of the interior of the refrigerator and the freezer. Nice. Some have photos of just the refrigerator part. Some have photos of only the outside and an abbreviated list of features! Really? They want me to decide on a refrigerator just based on the outside of the doors and a brief summary? I don’t think so.

The sticking point turned out to be the freezer light. Our current freezer has one. Therefore, I think our next one should have one. This is not a default feature. Some freezers have them; some don’t. Then there was the automatic ice maker or water dispenser. I could easily find a top freezer model with a freezer light as long as I paid for the other features that I don’t want.

This wore me out. Besides my online research, I made some phone calls (a hearkening back to the olden days) and I even drove to three — count them three — retailers to look at floor models.

I’m looping back now to the point about it being a holiday weekend. This is a special holiday weekend when it comes to appliances. In Texas, if you buy an Energy Star appliance during the Memorial Day weekend, the purchase is tax-free. That means that everyone who is affected by the holiday-weekend-appliance-breakdown curse is out and about.

Finally I decided on a refrigerator. I took a friend’s advice and bought a bottom-freezer model. With a freezer light. And an automatic ice maker, which we will ignore. (Can’t have everything. Or in this case, can’t have only what I want.) I got lucky about the delivery schedule, considering that I bought the refrigerator on the last day of the three-day holiday weekend and everyone else got on the delivery schedule before me. I didn’t get the “next day” delivery time slot, but one day after that.

That will give me time to discard the science experiments growing in my refrigerator, which this time around aren’t my fault. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

School’s Out

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Every year I get the same idea at this time of year. Here’s my post from May 27, 2011 on my old blog.

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It’s the end of May. School is out and summer is here. That’s what makes me feel like a kid again. Even though I haven’t been in school for decades, I still get that giddy school’s out feeling. Summer!

Time! Time to read books, visit friends, watch movies, write letters, write short stories, sleep in, cook new dishes, go to the swimming pool.

I have as much time now as I did then — the hours in the day are the same — but I don’t have the same schedule. It’s a slight shock to look around me each end of May, after I have that giddy feeling and think about running out of the building, throwing my hands up in the air and kicking up my heels. The shock is the realization that the building I would run out of is not a school, it’s a business. Instead of textbooks to toss in the air, I have reams and reams of system documentation.

I don’t get the summer off anymore, I have to go to work each weekday. Still, I wonder how it would feel to run out the doors, leaping in joy again. I would probably scare the squirrels.