Ivan pacicevic, who are you????

Sorry about that last post, but we cannot be funny all the time.  “We” as in us, you and me, and not as in “We, the Queen” or anything.   But, I am all done doing my own yelling bad behavior now and I have a question.

Just who or what is ivan pacicevic and how did that ever bring anyone to my site?

It is rather fun to say, or try to say: Ivan (with a Natasha accent) Pac-ice-vic, Pa-cic-evic.  I think I shall take it written down to daughter’s house and we can drink Bailey’s and try to pronounce it.

Searches today that led to my site:

food joy	2
my keys are stuck on numeric	1
“ivan pavićević”	1
chemistry of photography	1
bronchitis and inhaler	1
painting with developer	1

Someone needs to hurry today, because no one has searched Viggo for the whole day to get here. 

Yesterday

Search	Views
pinhole camera film canister	2
viggo mortensen girlfriend	2
how do you teach someone to think	1
bronchitis inhaler doesn’t work	1
swollen finger	1

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People Behaving Badly

It seems to me that we have become a society that values people behaving badly. What else accounts for: Bridezillas, Bad Girls, Bad Party Girls, John & Kate, the children the nanny tries to rehabilitate, Housewives of the Amazon (or wherever they happen to be living and fighting now), and all the reality shows where people yell at each, while the camera watches.

It used to be that behavior like that was a reason to be ashamed.  Now, it seems encouraged.

We have become a nation that loves to watch brats; brats of all ages.  Hence, recently the big news was the soccer player who was repeatedly filmed abusing other players.  Her excuse, “That’s not me.  I’m not like that.”  Okay, who was in your body?  Because, people who know you certainly think it is you.

I am so totally sick of people yelling and screaming at each other because they just “know” what is right and you do not.  What happened with negotiation and meeting in the middle and listening?  I have to wonder what is going to force us to realize that this is a very slippery slope to head down.

I love Project Runway and have really enjoyed the last couple of seasons where they did NOT have the one or two people who like to make life miserable for everyone else.  The only liar was out as soon as he opened up with that big lie.  There was only one who liked to put the others down, in a big way, but all-in-all it was a pleasant season.  And, what is wrong with that?

What is wrong with being civilized?

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The Flea Freezer of Doom and Flea Wii

This is Irritating little Chihuahua at six weeks, January of 1999.  She is eleven years old this month, and she has her daily exercise routine.

It consists of sleeping, and

going outside and surveying her driveway, from the great sniffing of automobile tires down to the Yucca plant.  I have yet to figure out what is so intriguing about the Yucca, as it does not seem a normal “pee” spot to me, but it is on her daily route. 

It is also on her daily route to debate whether to go on down the driveway to the road.  She will look back, to see if we are watching, go a few trots, stop and look back.  This continues until I rap on the window or yell at her.  Then, she ambles off into the yard as if, “No, I never intended on going down the driveway.  I know my boundry.” 

The rest of the day is taken up with sleeping with nose buried,

and begging for food, and sleeping.  Mostly sleeping. 

Oh, and there is the occasional — jump up and give me a dirty look because she swears I touched her haunches, when she actually has a flea. 

Before I am yelled at, she has a frontline flea application monthly, as well as her heart worm pill.  She has had neurological problems with other flea applications, so Frontline it is.  This was working well for her until the St. Bernard family decided to eat our garbage and deposit their “city of fleas” in our yard.  They DO NOT get flea applications.  Chihuahua  added the garbage cans to her morning run as those St. Bernard’s leave behind all kinds of things, including their fleas. 

The St. Bernard’s eating the lid of the garbage can, to circumvent the ties and boards and anything else we could find to keep them out, finally resulted in putting the garbage cans in my studio (which I rarely use in winter).  The city of fleas resides on the ground yet, as well as the smells do.

Twice a day I comb her with a frozen flea comb, catch the fleas that freeze on it, and put them in the freezer of doom; a disposable container in the freezer.   I know this is wierd, but, yes, I have a container of frozen fleas in my freezer (Try saying that three times fast.).  On top of which, sits her flea comb.  Someday the City of fleas will all die —– I hope.

So, back on topic, the Chihuahua sleeps, eats, poops, and sleeps all day.  For ten minutes, at night, she also plays with her Taco Belle Chihuahua.   Taco Belle Chihuahua has more sewn body parts than you can imagine.  Irritating Chihuahua loves to grab it by the neck and try to knock herself sensless with it.

My fear, the year we had floods, was that our home would be flooded, fall into the pond and the Taco Belle Chihuahua would be history.  I have searched ebay, Good Will and yard sales for a back-up Christmas Taco Belle dog.  Chihuahua has a basket of stuffed toys and will occasionally play with the Turkey Buzzard and rarely with the cat mouse toy.  Taco Belle Chihuahua is her love.

Now, we have found another exercise outlet for Chihuahua: The Wii.

Yes, Gaffer brought a Wii home.  One of the games sounds rather like a bark, so she stands on the couch and barks back at the Wii.  But, bowling drives her nuts.  It took her three hours to figure out they were not throwing food for her.  She loves her Wii.  She does not understand it, but she loves it.

This is Skeeter, trying to communicate with the blue jean leg of the Wii player.  She is either saying, “Okay, where is the treat you have been throwing for three hours?” or “GO TO BED!”

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Fa, la, la, la, la — La, la, la, la

‘Tis the season for holiday shopping, and just what do you give those who have “it” all and also money?  Check out, Wacky Gifts for the Holidays for some great ideas, including a personal hovercraft.  I WANT ONE!

But, what if you have to give to one of those irritating people who pick up the wrapped Christmas gift and tell you what it is before they open it?

Yes, folks, these are Decoy Gift Boxes for products no one probably makes, but I bet you will see for sale, next year.

OR, you could do what my mother did every year for most of our lives!!!!

She gave gifts in Kotex boxes.  Yup!  Those highly decorated boxes held everything from toys to underwear.  If it did not come in a box, and she could cram it in a Kotex box, that’s what you unwrapped. 

We started taking bets as to who would get the Kotex box this year.  On good years, she could fool you and you would see that your brother got it and think you were safe, but noooooo!  Unwrap your next gift and there is the Kotex box.

The very best year was the year that JCountry got it.  He was all of two or three years old and I really would not have thought that he knew what a Kotex box was, but I have a movie of him unwrapping his gift, taking one look at the box and staring up open mouthed in wonder at just what was his Great-Grandmother was giving him.

Hmmm! Good idea, as soon as those old movies are transfered to CD’s, I shall post it on U-Tube and he shall become a U-Tube sensation and be properly embarrassed, AGAIN!

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To all you stalkers out there

There are two people in our family who are just so funny that you love to be around them and often the comment is heard, “if we could get Sharon and Carol together one day, we would die from laughter.” 

Sharon lives in Indiana and Carol in Wisconsin, so it has not happened yet, but Sharon has begun blogging.  She was shamed into it really by a couple of bloggers, okay, me  and her friend.  She tried her hand, Just who are you people? « Braindebris’s Weblog, and was (as we suspected) hysterical.  She is one of ‘those’ people, who if she wrote regularly enough would be publishing a book.  She is that funny, just check out the The Immortal Rabbit « Braindebris’s Weblog if you want to split a gut.

She took a long break from blogging, much to our disgust, and is back now on a weekly blog schedule.  You would think she has a life or something!  She also mentioned it takes a good hour to put a blog post together.  Who knew!   

So, this morning, I checked how her weekend was and she brought up the often mysterious workings of the blogosphere and the people who take the time to read your blog but rarely write comments. 

My readership is not huge, it has dropped since I have gotten less regular in posting. However, in the beginning, when my readership would hit 1,000 for the month, I never had commenters, other than one.  There were 999 people out there lurking.   XUP always comments, all the way from Canada.  Aren’t you ashamed fellow Americans?  I have to get comments from Canada.  Pollyanna Rainbow Sunshine and the Needles of Doom often commented, but I have been really remiss commenting on their blog lately.  Don’t you love that name though!

 I have also been blogging a bit less lately myself, as I work on my eternal update to my website.  I feel like one of those people on the commercial, staring wide eyes, pupils dilated from staring at the screen, mind numb … anyway, you get the not pretty picture.  I only have one section left to go on the website and am soooo look forward to it being done.

This morning, here is a copy my monthly stats.  Notice the slow decline.

So, I checked Search terms. 

“no blood for oil Viggo” – as in Viggo Mortensen, no surprise there. Half of my readership is searching for “Viggo” -  Talk about stalkers! 

“Worms …” – EUWWW! especially when in the house. 

“actor with low ears” -  Okay, is this person casting a movie?  I have written about actors, and I have written a post due to the lovely commercial based on the old song “do your ears hang low. ” But, I have NEVER written about an actor with low ears.  I am not even sure why you would want to find an actor with low ears.

 

In an effort to raise my stats, I realize that I have three sure winners:

• Viggo Mortensen
• photography
• Movie reviews

Okay, Viggo Mortensen is hot and I do understand the fascination.  He keeps his private life mysterious and he’s hot and he likes dark chocolate and he’s hot.  What more could you want?  The only thing is, I do not actually know Mr. Mortensen (I love his name by the way— Viggo Mortensen—-it’s lyrical.  This is coming from someone named VanVleck.  Not so lyrical.

So, I shall now vow to make more of an effort to review movies about Viggo Mortensen and you, my kind readers (numbers 13 to 30 and occasionally 1,000) shall occasionally drop me a line to let me know what you like, or do not like, on my blog.

Oh, and I will try not to be a stalker myself.

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We have gone from global war to recreations!

This picture is “Waiting for Grandad.”  Left to right we have, EMT, JCountry and Gaffer.  Pardon my over-crowded house.

Four men in the house and anytime that we can get all four in one room, a game happens.  The latest “greatest” game is 1942, Axis and Allies.  The challenge is getting them all in one room.

The first thing that happened was EMT disappeared.  Literally, disappeared.  He left, on Friday night, to go help with Bingo at the fire department and never returned.  He told me he might just sleep at the department, but would be home in the morning. 

EMT has a bad habit of not letting us know what he is doing.  He is twenty, so it is hard to complain; however, I have repeatedly explained to him that it is a matter of courtesy to let the people you live with know when to expect you back.  Heck, it is even a matter of your own safety, as we have a relative who died when his car flipped over and he wasn’t found for three days.  The first two days he lived. 

So, the first day EMT was missing, I grumbled about him all day.  I left the outside light on until 3am and then swore and went to sleep.  The second day, I began to worry a bit.  Late that day we called his friends.  Why is it no one is ever home when you call them for something really important?  Late that day we drove around.  No one was at the fire department.  No one was at his friend’s house. 

At seventy-two hours, we went to the police and filed a report on him, missing, in our car.   He has had a problem with a couple of guys and we were concerned they had cornered him and beaten him to a pulp and left him in the woods.  We drove around staring between trees for our red van.   Our County is wooded.

Two hours later, when we arrived home from the police station and driving around, for the second time, Gaffer decided to make a library run for books, movies and high speed.  Twenty minutes later, Gaffer calls and lets us know that he is parked next to our Red Van at the library, and will call if his brother is in the library.

YUP!  That’s where we found EMT, after seventy-two hours.  During the time he was missing, he had gone camping, torn apart a car with a friend, and made money scrapping the parts, done Christmas shopping, and gone to the library.  He really does not understand why we were so upset.  In the meantime, my hair is grey!!!

EMT, anticipating leaving for the Army in January, where he will be the problem of the U.S. Government and they can figure out where he is, brought home the Harry Potter Clue game.  He gave it to the family for Christmas and wanted to get a lot of gaming in before he left.  He also figured it was maybe a game I would play.  He was right.

Playing games is akin to having a kidney infection, for me.  I am more a knit and giggle with daughter, while games are going on, preferably with a glass of Bailey’s in hand, kind of gal.  There are now three games I will willingly play: Cribbage, Dominoes and Harry Potter Clue. 

I should be cleaning my piles of projects out of the front room and baking pies or cookies for our Thanksgiving dinner, instead I am blogging and listening to Gaffer speak with a Russian accent as he rolls his dice to defend Russia from Germany.  The are figuratively spitting at each other, I am told.  JCountry is Germany.  Gaffer is Russia.  Granddad is back in from his disappearance to my studio and all is well with our world.

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The Incredible Shrinking Product

Grocery prices are going up, do not even try to tell me there is no cost-of-living increase.  Look at two bottles of Ivory Dish soap. 

Doesn’t that bottle on the right look impressive?  I thought they had just redesigned the bottle until I got home.  Granted I had thrown out the cap of the bottle on the left already.  I wish I had not as I would use it to refill from the one on the right, BECAUSE: 1. The plastic, of the new bottle, is so weak it smooshes in your hand.  2. When you pick that rounded side bottle up, with wet hands, it just slips right out of your hand.  That stupid indented swirl is a grip but it is in the wrong area for the shape.

Here’s the difference of 30 oz on the left and the new, same price, 24 oz on the right.  I hate that bottle.  It proves that they do not do market research because no one should be able to hold onto that bottle with wet, soapy hands.  And, that black line is not slanted it is horizontal.

Then there is the matter of shampoo.  By the way, I am limited in purchases as we have to live in a scent free house.  So, here is a comparison of my new purchase of our standard shampoo.

In the left corner, we have 23.7 oz of shampoo, on the right is 14.2 oz.  Almost half the shampoo for nearly the same price.

See why I hate shopping!

Unfortunately, no one donated this product to me.  I paid my own hard-earned money to buy it and write this review.

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My mother is a poet! I am not!

Mom loves the sound of words and putting words together to rhyme. Me, I love the flow of words and how they can touch your soul.  Mom never forces her words to rhyme.  She is a very good rhyming poet,Padairvanvleck’s Weblog in my humble and unbiased opinion.  But, frankly,  I think that words rhyming is a bit unnatural.

So, this morning I go online and check my Master Daughter’s blog, Braindebris’s Weblog as I do each morning dear, “Where are you?”, and through my head runs, repeatedly:

Well, it was three really good rhyming lines about checking your blog in the morning.  You know, blog-log-sog, I know they were probably award-winning, since I cannot remember a word of them.  But, like a broken record, they were in my brain for way too long.

 Then, I’m looking for my password book (yes, I know, you are not supposed to write them down) and I’m going—

My password book is always lost

 One day it’s here
 The next it’s there
 And some days it’s not anywhere?

And, now I say–

Dr. Seuss, I am not.
If this keeps up
My brain will rot.

P.S.  Maybe it is too late and my brain rotted during the night and all day everything I say will rhyme that way.    HELPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Are we connected yet?

It may seem as though, with cell phones, CNN, FaceBook, MySpace and Twitter that we are more connected than we ever were.  But, we are really just more connected with a small group of people and less connected with our own world.

It always makes me feel sad to be in a restaurant and see a parent spending quality time with their child by spending the whole meal, talking on the cell phone while their child sits there alone, eating their own lunch with no one to talk to. 

People, if you are going to take your child to lunch, I do not care if they are five or twenty-five, turn the phone off and get to know them.  You can return the call when the meal is over, but you only have a short time to connect with your child.  You cannot go home and yell at them for something you feel they should not have done, if you cannot take time to get to know who they are.

I shall step down off my soapbox now and get back to updating my website. 

Thank you!

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Simple vs complicated people

I know you are not going to believe this, but HONEST, I am not writing this blog to get my stats up.  I rarely even check on them anymore.  In fact, I was shocked to realize today, since I rarely get comments, that I have a following.  “You do love me.”  Well, like at any rate.

So, when I mention Viggo Mortensen, please believe me, that I am not mentioning Viggo Mortensen to ratchet up ratings. 

Viggo Mortensen is again in the news with his role in The Road (2009) and was referred to as being “complicated” in an article I read recently, and I apologize that I cannot find it to link here.  It seemed to me that the author had no understanding of the person he is.  Not that I would know what kind of person he is, having only read about a gazillion interviews of his, but never having met him.

But, I am thinking that he is actually a very simple person and not complicated at all.

Perhaps I can relate, as I have multiple artistic interests also  and feel as though we have a lot in common.  We both love the outdoors.  He speaks approximately five languages fluently and I can speak, let’s see, exactly one.  I was learning Amslan at one time and I have taken a Spanish class four times (obviously, not successfully).  But, I think our joint passion for Dark Chocolate counts.

It seems that he is an honorable, honest person.  I feel it is more complicated to be dishonorable and a liar as you have to keep all those lies straight.  Although, the liars I know are not very good at it.  And, you know who you are!!!

I think, as an artistic person, he is also simply entertained.  Getting in his truck and taking off on a discovery road trip, spending hours sketching, photographing, spending your time as someone else, being honest are all, in my mind, simple enjoyable things.

Now, the guys who have to have their heads full of ringing cell phones, and Wall Street numbers, and never sitting still for one minute to be in their own head—those are the guys who are complicated.

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