Jennifer's Joyous Journal

Safe Word

At bookgroup last night, we were talking about all the danger one faces in the world and how much more vulnerable women and children are. We were all taught to never, never, never get in the car with a stranger. In my family, we also had a safe word. If someone we weren't expecting told us they had come to take us to our parents, we were not to go with them unless they knew the safe word...

When my brother, sister, and I were young, we would have wrestling matches with our Dad. It would usually be Dad and Danny against Meredith and me. At the start of these matches, Meredith and I would be massacring the boys. Danny was an easy target being 4-5 years younger and Dad was like all dads - letting us get away with winning. The one thing sis and I had to do was make sure Dad and Danny never touched their knuckles together and say, "Ring thing do your thing" (see The Thing). Inevitably, we would eventual fail in keeping them apart. Then Dad would all of a sudden possess Super Human Strength and quickly vanquish us all into huge, wiggling mass of giggles.

Alegria

One of our many engagements on Saturday night, included tickets to the Cirque du Soliel show. As expected, the show was phenomenal. Amazing feats of dexterity…synchronized acrobatics…unparalleled showmanship. I was awe-struck...still am actually. If you have even the tiniest opportunity to see this show (or any of the Cirque shows), you should definitely check it out. It was absolutely worth the $75 price of admission...though I'm not sure I could say the same for the $8 margaritas.

Possessed

I think my garage door is possessed. Last night, after parking my car, I was walking into the house when the garage door started closing on it's own. It got about 1/3 of the way down, then reversed direction and headed back up again. When I hit the button to close it, the door didn't budge, but the light blinked on and off a couple of times...if that happens again tonight, I'll have to pay special attention - maybe it's morse code!?!

Anyway, the door did start opening and closing on it's own again this morning. Only instead of doing it just once, it did it three or four times spaced at irregular intervals. Ordinarily, I would think this kind of thing was kinda funny in a spooky kinda way, but the last time the door started to close, I was standing beneath it with the hatchback of my car opened. I was able to slam the hatch shut and get out of the way, but now I'm all worried about having the door come down on Barney (my car) the next time I need to back out (I'm on my bike today).

Obviously this problem is getting put at the top of Stepan's "Honey Do" list.

Buzz

Whew! I've got a nice little buzz going. My office has started to celebrate our start date anniversaries. One of the new guys in the office has his one year anniversary today. We just met in the kitchen for a nice lemon cake and a bottle of champagne. You wouldn't think an eighth of a bottle would effect you very much, but sitting here trying to get some work done, I can attest to the fact that it does...A LOT!

Vroom Vroom

The Republic of Texas has their annual motorcycle rally/event/whatever going on at the Travis County Expo this weekend. I got a first hand view of the thousands of bikes and bikers here when I rode the Danskin bike route this morning around Decker Lake. On the one hand, it was kinda scary...I mean, bikers as a group are generally characterized as mean SOBs. On the other hand, all of the bikers I had any kind of contact with were really very nice...and that despite the bemused looks I got from most of them as I rode my hybrid past the queau to the Expo hollering, "Pedal Power!!!!!". Here are a couple of additional observations from my untrained eyes and ears:

1) Bikes and bikers come in all shapes and sizes...from small, single seater Harleys to montrous 3-wheeled, 2-seaters pulling a matching "trunk" trailer (the one I saw was fire engine red with chrome studs...what a beaut!).

2) Some of those dang bikes are LOUD! And I don't mean call-the-cops-the-neighbors-are-having-a-party loud...I mean HOLY-CRAP-WHAT--THE-HEY-WAS-THAT-AND-ARE-THEY-SHOOTING-AT-ME loud. It did make an impression...nearly blew me off the road!