Happy Saint Paddy's Day

An American lawyer asked, "Paddy, why is it that whenever you ask an Irishman a question, he answers with another question? "Who told you that?" asked Paddy.

Scissors often accuses me of answering a question with a question which is also a Jewish trait. This furthers my assertion that the Irish are one of the Lost Tribes of Israel.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day! May the luck of the Irish be with us all.

SATURDAY SPIN

I am putting this post together quickly as I have one little boy camper with a fever, so here's hoping he's feeling good as new tomorrow.

Today's singer is Keren Ann who is a French born Israeli singer or was it an Israeli born French singer? Well, she's based in both countries as well as New York. Read up on that in the Wiki link. As my old contractors were fond of saying, "this is small matter." What matters is that she sings beautiully and her songs have such a lovely soft quality that I think I would need an afternoon to lounge about with a gentle breeze blowing the curtains as her music played...(sound of dream sequence screeching to a halt). Well, you get the picture.

So now have a look:



and a listen: MySpace.

and a good weekend!

Enjoy.

Time for an Upgrade

I was leafing through Blueprint magazine* recently and came upon the Stylish Sleepwear article. Article, pictorial - whatever. A lovely little number caught my eye. The description labels it a chemise. Has it been so long since I've updated my boudoir wear that I don't even know that word? Oh sure, I hear the tusk, tusking of the wordsmiths now. The word is certainly not new, but it is to me in terms of sleepwear. The picture to the left is an image from Wikipedia which goes on to describe a chemise as follows: "In modern usage the term chemise generally refers to women's fashions that vaguely resemble the older shifts but are typically more delicate, and usually provocative." Does it come with the heaving bosom I wonder.

I convince myself that my sleepwear isn't so terrible. What's that? What color are my sweats? These? These are not sweats. They are a soft gray-ish pair of the finest cotton lounging pants.


*I see that reading this, one might get the idea that all I do is lounge about leafing through magazines, eating bonbons. I can assure you that I am not - eating bonbons, that is. But now a small sliver of honey cake never hurt a soul.

REALITY AVOIDANCE THERAPY

Do people want to read that you have nothing to say? Has it really come to this? Why yes, yes it has. I just needed a post to differentiate from my Saturday Spin which is supposed to be my lighthearted weekend background music.

I was looking at a home design mag - Elle Decor or some such fluff, and was reading an article about molding and how your home should dictate what type of molding to choose. Crown molding in a modern? Nooooooo. It said, "the molding should want to be there."

This got me to thinking of how I would determine that in Home Depot. Shall I ask the molding "would you like to come to my home?" It would probably reply "Well I guess I'm stuck now aren't I? This is sort of awkward - I'm next and you're purchasing; all my dreams of The Hamptons dashed. Go on, just take me. Get it over with."

I'll quickly whip out family photos and even show the other molding in the room which will be its company. "Of course, you'll be behind Louie's dog dishes so you can expect a fair amount of water being splashed on you. Well, a little bit anyway." I'd offer helpfully.

Then I wondered why I waste any time on thinking these things which naturally lead to thoughts of my aggravating day. I picked up Elle Decor again. It's part of my reality avoidance therapy which I ensure a bit of each day.

Of course, blogging is reality so it doesn't count.

SATURDAY SPIN

I'm feeling rather relaxed about these spins because I don't feel the need to stretch them into a post proper. I never intended them to be reviews, per se, just a spotlight on someone who has either caught my ear casually or that I'm loving so much, I'm burning out the cd. Yes, I still buy cd's. What can I say, I love liner notes.

This week is someone from the former category, with a little more investigation, she might make it into the latter. Her name is Nicole Atkins and she hails from my home state of New Jersey - nothing stinky* about her (you couldn't write that in a professional review I hasten to add). She will naturally call up some reference to Amy Winehouse as she has a little bit of a nostalgic sound going. I also hear Mama Cass in there.

See what you think : MY SPACE HERE. I think the girl can sing.

Performance of The Way It Is from her current album Neptune City, live on Letterman (Dave is loving her):



Have a great weekend. Enjoy whatever you have planned (especially if it's not planned).


* For any of my foreign correspondents, the stinky reference is to the purported smell that emanated from chemical plants dotting the upper NJ Turnpike. We always just blamed it on Staten Island.

The Bargain of the Century!

For me, anyway!

Where last we left off in this tale of intrigue, I was girding our strength to prepare for pickup of our auction winnings.

Due to some email snafus in which I did not hear from the seller at close of auction or into the next morning, I sent one last terse email basically saying, "I want my chair (even if you are a sex offender)!"

I then requested a communication through eBay which essentially provides the buyer/seller with each other's phone numbers. That got Robert hot under the collar and he called and caught Scissors coming through the door. Ring ring.:

Scissors: "Hello."
Robert, the seller: "May I speak to Ms. G!? This is Robert Soandso and I just sold her a Room & Board chair through eBay."
Scissors: "Well she's not here right now.."
Robert: "Well she sent me an email that I did not like the tone of...
Scissors: "Excuse me, my wife would not send a nasty email unless of course there was a reason...
Robert: (Insert Charlie Brown teacher voice here): "blah blah blah"
Scissors "I'll have her call you."

Scissors calls me at work, "There's some guy calling mentioning eBay, a chair..."

Poor Scissors always the last to know. In all the excitement I wanted to wait until I had a confirmation to tell him of the great deal! I tell him that I'll call Robert who in the meantime has had time to cool his jets. We get on fabulously or at least he still is letting me come pick up the chair which is all that I care about. With address secured, the next leg of our adventure begins...

Heading to points west (West Harlem) to be exact to claim my winnings from an eBay auction. I'm sitting on my chair right now typing. It is the Grace Chair from Room & Board pictured above, only in a sort of charcoal grey color. Love, love, love it! The price is $899.00 (+$65 shipping). My winning bid was $103.50 and we picked it up! Well there's the $9.00 round trip toll over the Triborough Bridge, so that's the delivery charge I guess. The owner described it as "like new" which is more than accurate. It shows no signs of any sort of wear and actually he said that it didn't get much use. I recognized the other chair keeping Grace company in his living room from eBay as well. I asked how he did with that auction and he smiled and said, "great, I got 10 for it."

I guess my expression showed I needed to be clubbed over the head with the details so he helpfully added "thousand." Somehow he made up for the loss on the Grace chair with the sale of the Finn Juhl. $10,000 smackers! He told me to have a seat and I cozied right in. It was divine, but for $10K I'd have to be able to drive it to work.

Of course getting our win down the three narrow flights of stairs was a little adventure with me offering little in the way of actual help but plenty in the way of guidance. And Robert, nice as he was, feigned some sort of wrist injury. All that brawn wasted. We tied her into the trunk like the Beverly Hillbillies that we are and waved goodbye!

For the record, I noticed nothing untoward about Robert, and then I realized what must have triggered the sex offender link!! Bill Clinton's offices are two blocks away!

G-Bay

As I mentioned, I come from a large family. In sorting through my Mom's things, I only half jokingly suggested that perhaps I should catalog things digitally and let people decide what they would like as a keepsake from her jewelry. My brother raised his eyebrows suspiciously, "gBay!" I swore that I would not make a profit, at least not a despicable amount, then grudgingly offered him a small commission.

On a separate note, I won an item on eBay tonight! I have never purchased a big ticket item from eBay (that I can recall). Although the amount was actually a bargain, it is a piece of furniture which makes it big ticket. I had in my favor that the auction was for pickup only in NYC. After winning, I just googled the zip code which I surmised to be on the westside of Manhattan. The search returns jolted me a bit and my heartbeat quickened as I read "Sex Offenders in Zip Code 1****!" The room was spinning out of focus as I read on "Hotels in Zip Code 1****" and immediately thereafter "Bars in 1****." Oh my gosh, I'm being lured in by a pervert!!! At a hotel!!! Who'll try to liquor me up! That's it, I'm reporting this creep to eBay.

I went back and looked at the chair and all my fears have been allayed. After all, a bargain's a bargain. Anyway, Scissors will be picking it up with me. Would it be odd for me to send the seller a question as to his height and weight? I just want to make sure Scissors and I can take him. Otherwise we may have to call in the big guns:

 

I'll let you know how it all works out. I hope.

Take Me Home

It's been almost four months since my Mom passed away. I went home to her house today with one of my sisters and one of my brothers to begin the process of sorting through my Mom's things. We got a lot done. We cried. We sorted. We cried. We laughed. We sorted. We ate. We cried. And so it went. It seems that my Mom literally saved every card that people gave her. Ten kids - that's a lot of cards. We toyed with the idea of taking them and making a little bonfire on the beach down in NJ where she spent countless summers shielding her children's skin from sunburn (not always so successfully). What do you want for a bunch of Irish kids?

The truth is I haven't cried much of late. It's not that I'm not acutely aware of the fact that my Mom is gone, it's just I haven't had anything really spark the tears. Until I got off the highway and headed up to the traffic light to turn towards her home and the following played from the radio:

"I hear her voice in the morning
How she calls me
The radio reminds me of my home far away
And driving down the road
I get a feeling that I should have been home
Yesterday Yesterday"

I cried like I haven't since the day my Mom died. One of the birthday cards I had given her said "If love looked in the mirror, it would see my mother's face."

And she'd be smiling.

SATURDAY SPIN

Rabbit rabbit and good luck in March! You can read a bit more about the folklore behind wishing people Rabbit Rabbit on the first of each month for good luck HERE. All I know is that the Pez folks do it and that's good enough for me.

The print is via Isabella's Art in ETSY.

On to the music - today I'm featuring a band who happens to have a sound reminiscent of a few other bands. I swore it was The Shins when I first heard the song featured in the video. They're called Band of Horses and they hail from South Carolina so I naturally have to give a shout out to my good friend Pia and wish her well in her travels to make a home there.

Here's the video for Is There a Ghost from their latest album, Cease to Begin, a title that I somehow relate to:



If you like what you see, go check out their MySpace for some more tunes and links.

Have a great weekend and good things to you in March.