I had a marvelous dream last night that I was with my dad (or Kim's dad--the identities were dream-shifty) in a painter's studio on Baxter Avenue. The studio belonged to this man I'd never met, but whoever I was with had business or social connections with him. We were picking up some kind of artwork that was to go in Jill's room. I was walking around the studio, and there were wonderful paintings. I was most struck by a few very large ones. They were painterly, full of rich and subtle hues, and elegant. It was exactly how I wanted to paint.

Eleven Jones Cave

My dream about the cave reminded me of my explorations of Eleven Jones Cave during my early teen years. This cave is next to Beargrass Creek between Newburg Road and Poplar Level Road, in the vicinity of the St. X campus and the Louisville Cemetery. To explore it, one had to crawl on hands and knees through mud and a very shallow stream. Even so doing, it was a tight squeeze for skinny 13-year-olds. I didn’t go back as far into it as did Mekimeki and one of our other friends.

There is little about Eleven Jones Cave on the Internet. According to local legend, it was the hiding spot for loot stolen by eleven Jones brothers, who were into banditry or some other form of nefarious activity. One thing that I did find on the Internet, though, was mention of the Louisville Cave Beetle (in the link, look about half way down for Pseudanophthalmus troglodytes. The pages are unnumbered.) I was surprised to find that Eleven Jones Cave is home to a cave beetle that is listed as "Imperiled." It has only been found in that cave and at Oxmoor farm in another cave that has since been covered over for subdivision development.

Here is another link through which it is easier to read than the first:Center for Biological Diversity

I also learned that the primary means for diffentiating between various local cave beetle species is by examining their penis size. Say it with me now: Cool.

2 dreams

Last night’s dream #1: I met Chris and Pat in a bar, where Pat was celebrating something. He had been there for a while already. We talked and I had a beer and a sandwich. After a while, the tab came. We had agreed to split it up evenly, but when I saw that it came to $315.00, I was shocked. Pat had been hanging out there drinking for hours, imbibing all manner of weird and expensive drinks of which I’d never before heard. I told him I was willing to pay $25.00

Dream #2: I drove my festiva into the wilderness in search of a cave I’d heard about. I drove up a long hill, actually using an active streambed as a road (very Jeep commercial), and finally made it to the top. There was a huge, dark cave in a cliff face. I got out and entered, but came out again into a narrow, sunlit ravine. I followed this ravine, and came to a place where, up above, I could see houses. I climbed up and realized I was in my parents’ back yard. This ravine passed underground and opened up at my parents’ house. It had been there all my life and I didn’t know it. I recalled that I had argued with a frequent poster on the James Randi website, Kookbreaker, about this: He had told me this cave and ravine were there, but I told him he was nuts. Now I’d have to tell him he was right.

I've left out plenty of details for the sake of brevity and sparing myself embarrasment.

Dressing etc.

2 day I am Slee-P fter staying up 2 late n gttn up 2 rly. Had outstnag Turkeeday n luvvd the dressing and also somewhat the undressing. Dressing tops, also was the iced brownie I et. Njoyed looksing at Uncle Mark's pics f trip 2 Ireland last month. Erin n Jill largely napless and getting out f hand, but in gud mud even late at Kim's dad's where they luvd looksing t da dogs cexpt barking made Jill cry. Fun visits ull around

staid up making bread in machine, and watched "Inside Man" finally. Sharp flick!! About a sharp crime!! My man Denzel watchable as always, and Jodie Foster oddly chilling but still hot. Dafoe, as always, good. He has a face from a totem pole, that guy. 4/5 stars.

Up 2 rly 2day with Jill. Kim n various family chix shopping v. early,then came back for Erin and Jill after both awake n dresst. Then I came to work fter shower and lunch (leftovers from y2day!! Dressing!!) My eyes feel tired. Jst got here and want leave. hoo hoo hooo.

2 morroo Km's da n sis over for breakfast. French toast! That's why I ws makn bread. thnxgvng pt. 2.

Luv you
Mark

Turtle update

Brother Brian's Daily Meltdown recently discussed crunchy mice, which reminded me that Mom had a turtle update. She worked the polls on election day, and one of the people who showed up to vote was her neighbor who was passing out fliers for the missing turtle back in August or September. Mom inquired, and the lady said that she found the turtle in her yard. He'd apparently been hiding. As a lover of turtles, I say, "Whew!"

Tumping towards Bethlehem

Sunday morning at church, during the Godly Play time, the teacher was telling the kids in my room about the Holy Family and their trip to Bethlehem. She told them that since there was no room at the inn, they had to stay out in the manger with the cows.

I smirked, as it seemed yet another example of a teacher just not knowing the material. A manger, I thought smugly, was the trough in which to cattle feed was placed. Then I became doubtful. Had I been wrong all my life? Was a manger actually a stable, hut, or rickety lean-to for livestock?

I looked it up a while ago, and I was right, even though I long ago lost my copy of Hamilton’s Christian Mythology. All those years of Catholic education occasionally pay off in brief moments of smugness.

I also noted with approval that the teacher told the kids to back away from the lit candle, “…or it might tump over.”

Tump is a fine word. Perfectly cromulent, though underutilized.

I tried to watch the Spike Lee joint “Inside Man”, but it kept freezing/sticking in our DVD player. So I ate a snack and watched a little of “Fellowship of the Ring” instead. I just tried “Inside Man” on the computer DVD player here at my desk, and it stuck there, too. I eagerly await a replacement from NetFlix.

OK, again. Kim taught on Saturday, and my parents came over to help with the girls. While they were here, I reattached the downspout that fell off the house two years ago--a feat of which I am very proud, as I feel I pondered the job quite a while and then actually did the work correctly. I examined the neighbor's downspout and noted disapprovingly that someone, in the ancient (probably early Nineties) past, had simply driven a long nail right through the aluminum downspout and into her house.
"Well," I said, "I guess that's one way to do it."
Our house's previous owner had merely used the pop rivets sticking out of the gutter to precariously hang the downspout from small holes in the siding, which is a way of doing it that would make even a Melillo ashamed.
I, however, borrowed my dad's pop rivet gun. I drilled out the old rivets, positioned the gutter, and drilled new holes for new rivets. I felt very manly, bending this metal to my will. Even though it was thin aluminum that a kitten could crumple in a fit of playfulness. I nailed the old brackets back to the house, lined things up for some good manly late-Autumn cold-fingered standing-up-high-on-a-ladder drilling, and put in shiny new pop rivets. Hooray!
Now the hole that the dripping rainwater was excavating in my front yard will stop just a little short of becoming a new Sino-American trade route, and the daylilies that have been shrivelling therein can resume their mission of conquering the grassy swath between driveways.
While I was at it, I cleaned out the gutters. Then I mowed for the last time until Spring, and thereby also shredded the remaining brown leaves that were drifting about the yard. I had to rake up some grass and leaves, though, because I set the mower way shorter than usual, just to give the place a neatly trimmed look for the winter and--this sounds kinda prissy--to make it easier to roll up snowballs for snowmen. That might not ever happen. But I hate it when I try to make a snowman and get hunks of dead leaves and grass caught up in it. I'm thinking ahead, and remembering annoyances from years past.
I would have trimmed the hedges, but I need an adaptor for the electric clippers, or I need to find the non-electric choppy scissors-type ones, which must be lost in the garage somewhere.

I missed a coin club meeting today. Erin and Kim stayed home from church because Erin was running a fever. Jill and I went, although Jill is still on antibiotics for an ear infection. Kim's been down with a week-long sinus headache and general ickiness. And my Crohn's has been a little annoying for the past couple of days. So I guess it was a good month to miss the coin club meeting. Anyway, I currently have about $0.00 to spend on the monthly auction or the raffle, and I don't know if they had any kind of presentation lined up. In addition, my personal coin mania is at a momentary ebb.

Oh! And about knitting: None this weekend, not for me.

Last night David & Brooke and their progeny came 'round and we at pizza and played a card game called Kuuduk. I'm not sure anyone else really liked the game. They didn't seem to actually dislike it, either. I started out annoyed with it, but everything was annoying me (note to Brooke and David: If I seemed annoyed, it wasn't because you are annoying. It's because after mowing and raking, I was very sneezy, and had to take allergy medicine, which would make me annoyed even by a playful kitten, even if they kitten were of the rare cute variety.) But I kind of liked the game.
I also baked a loaf of bread and some rolls. It was a basic white bread recipe, but it was only the second time that I made it from scratch without the aid of a bread machine. This was a more complicated recipe than the first time, but I was less happy with the results. It came out the way it was supposed to, I think, but it was pretty plain-Jane vanilla blah. I stick with the very simple "peasant bread" recipe from the bread machine book, I suppose. It yeilded a moister, richer-tasting loaf.
Now I will go butter up some bread and watch "Inside Man," which I've heard is a good movie. Oh heck. I didn't realize how late it was. I still need to clean Jill's bottles and load the dishwasher. Why do I waste time blogging?

Yesterday Kim taught a class...

I have to stop right there for a digression. "taught" looks weird to me, and I'm not sure I spelled it right. I know its right. I wonder why that happens. Sometimes a word will just look or sound weird, and I'll have to really think about it for a little bit to make sure I didn't just make it up.
s
-end transmission-

The Self-Defenestration of Mark

I'll tape and staple papery
to make canary-yellow drapery
Federal foolscap wings
and paperclipped aileron-things
my face blue- & pink- highlit
as between cubicles I flit
squawking Cock-a-Doo!
Co-workers, jaws askew,
leap hurriedly outta my way
Charge for the light of day
(although I know that it's cloudy
and cold--screw it, I'm roudy)
Hurl myself through the glass
and swoop over cement and grass
Fly off to Kim and our chicks
in our nest made of plywood and bricks.

Watching you watching me, watching me watching you.

I hear second-hand accounts of other bloggers reading my blog. And I know who you few are. I want to read your blogs; Kim said she'd let me know, but to date she has not. To make it easy for her, and to sort of give me permission to read your not-easily-accessible-to-the-public blogs, would you mind emailing Kim with the web address so she can forward it to me? Or I could try to cleverly disguise my email address herein to evade detection by spambots and whatnot. Let's see: all one word, with no spaces really, it is: e a g

le rock 82072 (--that's all one word, along with the zip code I had when I started the account)
AT yahu-dot-com, which I've intentionally mispelled.

There. Now maybe I'll get emails from friends and a few Web weirdos who Googled "haunted by jawas." I can find my blog if I Google that now. The road to fame!

I have Brian's and Beth's blog addresses. And Jenny's. And Mekimeki's defunct one (live fast, die young!). I've heard about Candy's, Will's, and Brooke's, and I've heard that David has started one.

A neuron at the bottom of the drawer got stuck and fell into the cabinet below. It clattered, and there I found it.

A little while ago I was editing some rather dry correspondence when, out of nowhere, I got a picture in my head of little path that ran through the narrow side yard on the far side of my parent's neighbor's house. When I was little, we used to play all over this neighbor's yard with the little boy who lived there, Jason. We walked through that side yard many times, but there's not much to it. Barely wide enough to be called a side yard, it was just stepping stones on a dirt path that ran right against the house. If you strayed from it, you'd be in English ivy that grew on the short, steep slope to the fence.

Anyway, this struck me as weird, because that neighbor moved when I was nine years old, and I haven't been there since. I really don't know the last time I thought about that piece of yard. I can't think of any time I've thought about it since I was nine, but it's certainly possible I thought of it sometime later.

So there was this little part of my brain that had that memory, lying dormant for a quarter-century or more. Then, for no reason I can discern, it pokes its head out right when I'm reading, "The aircraft remained in CAT 3 status after the 35-day Auto Land requirement had expired."

I guess that part of my brain was going to be over-written, and this was a pop-up asking, "Are you sure you want to delete this memory?"

No, I'm not.

The glassblower’s cat is bompstable

On Saturday I attempted to get E. to take a nap by having her lie in our bed, covered up, while I told her stories. She really likes hearing stories now. Her mom and I tell her stories about E. going out for a walk and having all sorts of little adventures with kitty cats, doggies, and bunny rabbits.

I started telling her stories, but I started to fall asleep before she did. I dozed off numerous times in the middle of a story. If I fell asleep between thoughts, I’d remain silent for a moment, then be awakened by E., who would tap on my face. I’d open my eyes, and her face would be six inches from mine.

Sometimes I fell asleep mid-sentence, and I’d wake up when I realized I was expressing random thoughts. The fictional in-story E. would be at Nana’s house with her new friend, the bunny rabbit, and they would go outside to color with chalk… “then they thought paper would be fun, too, for coloring, and bunny took some crayons and broke them in half so they’d fit in the grass, but with the green wet…” then I’d open my eyes again, and see Erin watching me intently.

“Uh, what was the last thing I said?” I’d ask.

“Know?” Erin would reply, meaning “I don’t know.”

So I’d have to start over from the last time I’d hit the “save” button on my mental toolbar.

El Caporal and the Two-Year-Old Constituents

I got to have lunch with my sweetheart today! We went to El Caporal. Kim had some kind of chicken burrito thing, and I had a taco, a cheese enchilada, and rice. Muy delicioso. I quite enjoy the tacos at the more authentic Mexican restaurants; the shells are fresher and crisper than the store-bought ones, and there's all that nice fresh-grated cheese.
____

A few nights ago I was sitting on the futon with Erin. We were by ourselves, the TV was off, and Erin was having a snack before bedtime. I was making small-talk, which usually isn't hard with a two-year-old, because you can repeat yourself or ask silly, obvious questions. Well, I started a somewhat lengthy monologue about how Kim and I would vote the next day. I kept it simple, just explaining that we'd go to a building and there would be lots of other people. We'd sign on a list, and then we'd get pieces of paper and pencil. We'd have to read the paper, and make marks on it... Well, I never got to finish my monologue, because she cut me off. She raised her hand, extending her index finger commandingly, and said, "Stop. Stop." Then she resumed eating her graham crackers.

She did it again last night when I was offering her my fond reminiscences of my voting experience. "Stop," she said, glaring at me, then went back to her dinner. "You want me to stop?" I asked. She nodded. "Okey dokey," I said.

I suspect that it's not just voting she doesn't want to hear about, but rather any long dad-originated discourse.

Co-worker 1: "I wonder if spiders have more than one brain. Like worms."
Co-worker 2: "Yeah, worms. That's why if you cut them in half, you just end up with two worms."
Co-worker 1: "If you put them in the blender, do you end up with a million worms?"
Co-worker 3: "I think you end up with a protein drink."

Helga: "Don't forget to donate blood!" (Long pause) "...I mean vote."

That post below ended up not being a micropost.

Candy bar sizes

Candy bars come in four sizes which are, in descending order: King Size, Regular Size, Fun Size, and Barely Worth Unwrapping.

I am only managing microposts, because I've been so busy.

Also, I have frequent urges to let this blog veer off into less family-friendly territory. I know there are people who read this who would appreciate that. I also suspect that there are people who are read this who would stop reading this, and maybe re-evaluate our friendship. You would hide your children from me, refer to me as "He Who Must Not Be Named," and solemnly vow that however I voted in a general election, you'd vote the opposite (that probably already happens anyway.) I'd be hounded from my job and neighborhood. Kim would find me even harder to cope with, though she might really be turned on if I had a solidly black-sheepish status in the community and stopped shaving. She's kinda crazy like that. God I love that woman. It's a good thing she doesn't ask me to prove my love by charging naked with a bullhorn into an Ann Northup campaign rally, because I'd do that in a heartbeat. Really I would. I don't really even need the bullhorn. Or the rally. Just Kim and Ann Northup. Or just Kim. Shoot, any wide open space would do. I do that while clothed, why not naked? People are such prudes. But I digress. All I'm trying to say is, if you watch this space wondering when I'm going to cross the line, don't hold your breath, because it might not ever happen. Not unless those damn Republicans push me a little farther.

On a slightly related note, I think I caught a glimpse of Ann Northup riding in a campaign-poster-bedecked trolley car down Bardstown Road today. Whe was smiling and waving from the back--at least, I think that was her. Before my middle finger had a chance to react, she was out of sight.

A quote from a co-worker, uttered 1 minute ago: "I'm all right with my cheese being moved. But every freakin' day?!?"

Halloween pictures: Pumpkin wrangling at the Tabler Ranch

Today we are twice as far into November as we were yesterday. At the present rate, it will be Xmas sometime on Monday afternoon.

I suppose that was the rainiest Halloween I can remember. It wasn't pouring rain, but it was a fairly continuous sprinkle that sometimes turned to drizzle. Kim's mom showed up, and we took Erin and Jill up and down the street. We ended up traveling with a group of neighbors, as well as Brooke, Nathan, and Kimberly.

Seven trick-or-treaters had been to our door by the time I went to pick up a pizza. When I got back, Kim told me that we'd had lots more, maybe 25-35. After my return, we had four more, so I guess I missed the rush.

Kim and Erin had made dark chocolate cupcakes with orange frosting earlier. They were decorated with M&Ms, candy corn, and sprinkles.

After the girls went to bed and Kim fell asleep on the couch, I watched some more of "The Haunting," then about half an episode of Futurama. Then bed.

When I left for work at 6:30 this morning, two of my three jack-o'-lanterns were still lit. I blew them out, thanked them for their kind service, rolled the garbage cans to the street, and drove off. It is still raining.

All in all, it was a very nice Halloween evening. I tried to post some pics last night, but Blogspot was being disagreeable.