Category Archives: Non Sequitur Thursday

Steven and Me and Bobby McGee

I’ve been sitting here staring at the blank screen and half watching a re-run of Reba, and I feel completely unable to write a blog post.  Now Reba is over and Steven has found an episode of Snapped on Reelz.  I have to leave for rehearsal for Steel Magnolias (at Ilion Little Theatre, remember?)  in about an hour.  Oh, crap, and I have to curl my hair.  They’re taking head shots again.  I hate having my picture taken!

So I’m having a kind of a mental meltdown.  How embarrassing.  I am such a huge baby! In my defense… OK, I have no defense.  I had a migraine today, but it wasn’t all that bad of a migraine.  I made it through work.  It kind of went away when I drove to New Hartford for a doctor’s appointment.  Now it’s back.  So what?  Many people have headaches.  They take an aspirin and drive on.

Speaking of driving on, the Mohawk Valley weather has been living up to its “wait five minutes” reputation today.  When I drove to and from my appointment, the snow came down like it meant business.  The roads weren’t too bad, but they were wet and no doubt would get worse.  Yikes!  I got back to work and the sun came out.  A beautiful afternoon!  Swell!  The snow dumped down again as I drove home. OK, whatever.  The sun has come and gone twice since I’ve been home.  Go home, February, you’re drunk!

AAAAAAaaaand I just remembered: it is Non-Sequitur Thursday.  All I have to do is think of a catchy headline that doesn’t have anything to do with this foolish post and I’m done.  And, yes, I did feel I needed all those a’s in the first word of this paragraph.

 

Non-Sequitur Spunky

For this week’s Non-Sequitur Thursday post, I am going to talk about Spunky, our little dog.   Here is a picture of him:

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Isn’t he cute?

I think that one was taken at The Velvet Dog Grooming Salon, where he gets groomed regularly.  Regular readers may remember that the Velvet Dog was fostering Spunky after his owner died. We saw adopted him after they posted his picture on Facebook.   I wrote a blog post about it last June.  Spunky is an old guy.  He mostly likes to lay around and sleep.

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It is a pretty comfy chair.

Right now he is curled up right next to me on the couch.  He doesn’t always do that.  He has his own end, with an afghan that he sometimes burrow under.  Spunky is fond of my yarn.  I had a basket which my sister Cheryl had given me specifically for me to put yarn in, while I was working on my projects.  Spunky spotted it and climbed right in:

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I like a dog to make himself at home.

I have since taken out the unfinished projects and put in an afghan made specifically for Spunky.  After all, I can find another place to put my yarn.

I sometimes wonder about Spunky.  He was ten years old when we got him and had only had one owner.  I hope he is settling in with us.  I worry that he might not love us.  It’s not that I mind having a dog that’s not crazy about me, my low self-esteem notwithstanding.  I just want him to be happy.  How happy can you be living with people you don’t love?  So I like it when he snuggles up next to me on the couch.  And I like it when he wags his tail when he sees me.

Well, this has not been a particularly inspired blog post.  Still, with pictures of a cute little dog, what’s not to like?  If only I can think of an unrelated but catchy headline, so this is a true Non-Sequitur Thursday, I can hit Publish with a clear conscience.  Hope to see you again on Lame Post Friday.

 

And Don’t Call Me Buttercup!

I’m taking a Blogger’s Sick Day.  Anybody who doesn’t care to here anybody else complain, STOP READING NOW!!!  Don’t tell me to suck it up, buttercup.  I sucked it up all day at work.  I am THROUGH sucking it up and I am going to whine if I feel like it!

Well, that made me feel a little better.  Now I’ll try to write some semblance of a blog post.

I have had a migraine for two days now.  It was worse today, especially the nausea.  But I tried to keep working. I succeeded somewhat.  I was kind of hoping it would magically vanish when my workday was done.  Sometimes headaches do. That is a phenomenon many people have noticed.  This one did not.  However, I managed to drive home without mishap, and now I am writing a boring blog post before taking a very hot shower and lying down.

One thing I am happy about is that I do not have  rehearsal tonight for Steel Magnolias (remember? the play I’m in at Ilion Little Theatre).  It is instead the night for the theatre group’s monthly dinner meeting.  I am sorry to miss the meeting, but I must confess, not too sorry. For one reason, everybody brings really good food and I always eat too much.  That is not good for my weight loss goals.

Oh dear, I feel I should make a concluding paragraph and I am quite blank.  And I really want to get to that hot shower.  Damn!  But anybody who wants to whine about it, please feel free.  I won’t tell you to suck it up.

 

Is It Worth 3,000 Words?

I think I may have run out of things to say about not having anything to say.

I am forcing myself not to backspace and erase that, as I did to at least three other possible leads.  I’m thinking at least one of those leads was better than what I went with, but of course now I can’t remember any of them.

Using a few random pictures seemed to work yesterday.  I wonder if I could get away with it two days in a row.

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He’s telling me what to say, and I’m thinking he’s full of beans.

 

This picture is from the Ilion Little Theatre production of Harvey in 2012.  Steven played Dr. Chumley.  I was Veda.  Perhaps longtime readers remember when this blog was All Harvey All The Time.

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My character is drinking wine, but it is not real wine in the glass, a source of much disappointment to me.

This is a more recent stage appearance: Splitting Issues last October.  I believe I also wrote a couple of blog posts about that.

 

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In jail, where some believe we belong (you know who you are).

 

I don’t have another theatre picture of Steven and me together, so I will show a picture of me in costume with Steven.  This was a Haunted Tour of Herkimer’s Historic Four Corners.  I reprised my role (wait a minute; my computer thinks “reprised” is not a word, but apparently “reprise” is. Oh, I can’t worry about that now) of Roxalana Druse, who was hanged behind the 1834 Jail.  I don’t think I did a blog post about that event (the haunted tour, not the hanging, although I never wrote about the hanging either).  How remiss of me.

So this is my Non-Sequitur Thursday post for the week.  I think I’ve jumped around enough to qualify.  If only I could think of a catchy headline, I could head to my Steel Magnolias rehearsal content.

 

No Wine, No Words

Oh, could I use a couple of pictures today!  Because the words that are currently swirling around in my head are just not  coalescing into a blog post.  And I must make a post soon, because the read-through for Steel Magnolias (you know, the play I’m in a Ilion Little Theatre) is tonight.  Yes, we are heading into another few months of hurried posts before I hurry off to rehearsal or performance.  Yes!  I AM a drama queen!

I am not, unfortunately, a blogger queen.  I typed in the first paragraph and have been sitting here staring at the computer since.

Then I paused to eat supper, bacon and scrambled eggs, made by my husband, Steve.  Yum!  And I keep getting distracted by the Reba re-run on the TV.  That is a largely ignored but very fun little show.  I love Reba McEntire.  I like the rest of the cast as well.  Phew, it’s over now.  Now it’s a show I don’t like.  Watch me get interested in it in spite of myself.  I do that sometimes.  Steven just changed the channel to 20/20 on OWN.  I love true crime shows.

So I guess this is truly a Non-Sequitur Thursday post.  All I have to do now is think of a catchy headline that may or may not have anything to do with this nonsense.

Is It Multi-Tasking to Vacation and Blog?

I have previously bemoaned the absence of Blogger Sick Days.  How about the absence of Blogger Vacation?  I am on vacation from my real job this week (also known as “shut down” in the factory world).  Why do I have to keep worrying about this silly blog?

Of course the short answer is that I don’t. For heavens’ sake, this is not a paid writing gig.  I don’t have a contract with anybody.  I daresay not a lot of people would even notice if I did not post every day (I like to think that some would).  The long answer is… perhaps not worthy of a blog post.  In fact, I’m not even sure if I know the long answer.  I only know another short answer:  I decided in my head that I would post every day, and that is what I do.

It has been quite a dreadful weather day in the Mohawk Valley today.  It snowed like the proverbial son of a bitch most of the day (a friend said on Facebook that it was “snowing like a bitch,” and I corrected her) (thus being both didactic and silly; who says I can’t multitask?).  I went out in it for stops at the library and grocery store, necessitating three times of brushing off my vehicle.  That’s a lot of snow. When I got home I shoveled the top layer of snow in my driveway.  Throughout the afternoon, I checked out the window occasionally as the sonofabitchy snow rendered my labor useless.

I did not get a whole lot else done.  I washed the dishes.  I cooked a pretty good dinner.  I encouraged local entrepreneurship by paying two young men to shovel my driveway after the snow had pretty much obliterated my earlier efforts.  They did a marvelous job.  Score!

And now I am going to think of a silly headline and call this a Non-Sequitur Thursday post.  I hope you’re all having a lovely week after Christmas.  Stay safe, if you are also getting hit with a lot of snow.

 

Large Weather We’re Having Lately

So winter came back to the Mohawk Valley and it came with a vengeance!  I have never been so glad that I work a mere eight minute drive from home.  Oh who am I kidding?   love working so close to home each and every day, I’ll never get over it.  Be that as it may, I am home.  If only my dear husband was also home, my life would be perfect.

In the meantime, I need to make a blog post.  I hate having a Non-Sequitur Thursday after I just had a Wuss-out Wednesday and there is every chance that tomorrow will indeed be Lame Post Friday.  But here you have it.  I am tired.

When I got home, I first took my dog, Spunky, for a short business meeting.  I can’t say it was a walk, because he does not go far in this weather.  In his defense, he is a very small dog with a very short haircut.  I put his coat on him, but a coat can only help so much.  After he had done his business and I got him back inside and dried off (as best as I could get him with a towel), I went back outside and shoveled the driveway.

I felt somewhat ineffective, with the snow still pouring down on me, trying to move what had fallen so far.  There was not a whole lot to move, but I thought if I took out what was there, it might at least help.  And it gave me some exercise.  Back and forth, up and down the driveway I walked, pushing show.  Every so often I stopped and tossed a shovelful to one side or the other.   I also cleared the sidewalk in front of the house, although not quite as widely as the village sidewalk plow had done it earlier.  I’ll just take another opportunity to deplore the pedestrians I often see walking down the road when there is a perfectly good sidewalk (please don’t justify yourself if this is you; you will not convince me).

So here is my blog post for the day.  If only I could think of a punchy headline, all might not be lost.  Then again, if the headline is as dull as the blog post, at least it is truth in advertising.  I will try to come up with something better tomorrow.  As always, I hope you’ll stay tuned.

 

Hey, It’s a Blog Post

How about a cooking post, to make a change from my moaning and groaning about my health woes (yes, it gets a little old, even for me).  For one reason, I’m back on solid food.  Yay! My doctor specifically recommended macaroni and cheese.  I had some cheese in the refrigerator, so I decided to make some. I wondered when I started out if this would really be worth a blog post.  I mean, it is not the most imaginative recipe.  Then again, it is Non-Sequitur Thursday, and, hey, it’s a blog post.

I peeled and crushed some garlic, setting the timer for 15 minutes so it could “breathe”  (that is a correct use of quotation marks;  garlic cannot literally breathe, since it has no lungs) (that is a correct use of “literally” as well, so yay me).  I put on some water to boil and looked in the fridge for the aforementioned cheese.  I had mozzarella and colby-jack.  This would be great.  I grated the cheese while the macaroni cooked.

When the shells had cooked, I put it in a casserole dish and stirred in the garlic, then added butter and milk (which I did not measure), then the cheese.  It looked like a lot of cheese for the amount of macaroni.  Yum.  I covered it and put it in the oven, which I had pre-heated to 350 (forgot to mention that, but I don’t think anybody was cooking along with me as they read, were they?) and set the timer for 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes, things got a little different.  When I took the stuff out to stir it, it seemed the cheese had melted into a big glooby glob in the middle of the dish.  What was that all about?  Is that what mozzarella is supposed to do? I added more butter and milk, stirred some more, and put it back in for another 10 minutes.  I wasn’t too worried.  After all, it would still taste good, even if it was a pile of macaroni next to a lump of cheese.  I might just have to eat it with a fork and knife.

After 10 minutes, the glob seemed a little less globby (or I guess, glooby, as I described it before), but the milk was making kind of a soupy puddle.  Oh well, I like soup.  I stirred, then put it back in for five minutes uncovered, in hopes some of the liquid would boil off or get absorbed.  Not much did.  Oh well.

Steven was home by this time, delighted by the smell of me cooking dinner for the first time in over a week.  Um, the smell came more from dinner than from me.  We ate it from bowls, because it was still pretty soupy.  It was pretty tasty.  I could feel my body melting in gratitude for the first carbohydrates in days.  I wanted seconds but refrained.  For one reason, I didn’t want to make myself sick.  For another, I did lose five pounds since last Wednesday.  I’d like to keep some of it off.

 

In My Defense, I’m Still on Pain Meds

While scrolling around Facebook earlier and wondering in a vague sort of way what I could come up with for a blog post (it is too tiresome to explain why I cannot be out having Mohawk Valley adventures), I happened to mention in a comment that I wrote poetry about my co-workers in a past work situation.  Someone asked if they were available online.  I said no, but perhaps they would make a good blog post for a Non-Sequitur Thursday.  My readers will be the judge of that.

I began with an attempt at a Haiku.  Now, I have read that one does not have to be married to the five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables rule, on account of English being quite a different language from Japanese.  Still, I got dinged on it by other co-workers.  Everybody’s a critic!  And now I realize I cannot remember that poem in its entirety.   Come on, Cindy, it’s three lousy lines!  I think I will have better luck with the rhyming ones.

 

There was a frame stylist named Ro

Who didn’t have very much dough.

She went back to college

to get some more knowledge.

And then she would not be so po.

 

My husband helped me on that one.  The next one, which I like a little better, I came up with on my own, based on actual events.

 

There once was a lab tech named Wayne

Who liked to drink too much champagne.

He said, “I feel fine!

I would like some more wine!”

But it drove his fiance insane.

 

I was going to change the names, and put them in quotes, like the writers-in to Dear Abby do, but I needed to rhyme.  I hope I am not putting myself at risk for a libel suit.  Then again, what’s wrong with being broke and occasionally drinking too much wine?  And I only used first names.  Every Wayne and Ro on the internet could sue!  Ah, they wouldn’t get much anyways.  I’m so po, I buy cheap champagne!

 

Shall We Split the Difference?

I am missing the monthly dinner meeting of Ilion Little Theatre Club.

OK, I just sat here with my laptop for what seemed like a long time before I typed in the above sentence.  Then I backspaced it out.  Then I hit “undo” and put it back.  Then I sat here and tried to think of another sentence.  As you can see, it is not going well.

In my defense, I have not had a post that was purely about How I Can’t Write a Decent Post Today (I just added the word “decent” to that phrase, do you like it?) in a long time.  I’m not saying all my posts were decent, and I certainly added in enough whiny excuses for why they weren’t as good as I wished they were.  Still, how long has it been since I posted pure foolishness?  I’m too lazy to click back to my dashboard and check.

Tomorrow night is opening for Splitting Issues by Sam Bobrick.  We had our dress rehearsal last night.  It went pretty well.  I was glad.  I don’t like to invoke that old saw that the worse a dress rehearsal the better the opening night.  I don’t want an opening night miracle, meaning I don’t want to NEED an opening night miracle!  Well, we don’t in this case.  The show is good.  I think the audience will get a lot of laughs.

Well, there you go.  This post was not pure foolishness; I gave another plug to Splitting Issues at Ilion Little Theatre.  That’s Friday and Saturday, Oct. 21 and 22 at 8 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 23 at 2 p.m., at The Stables, 13 Remington Ave., Ilion, NY.   Tickets available at eventbrite.com or at the door.

As for this post, I think I’ll slap on a silly headline and call it a Non-Sequitur Thursday.