humor

DISCLAIMER: I swear I am NOT making this up. Swear. "Did you know," said Tami, "That your bird just set off the burglar alarm?" Tami is a friend who also happens to clean my house every couple of weeks. We've known each other for years, we trade arttalk (she's a skilled painter and concrete sculptor), and occasionally we grab lunch or share farmer's market stuff or something. I think she believes that I come from another planet, but in her view that just makes things more interesting.

"Would you please put a sock in it?" I called wearily, "It's 4:00 in the morning, Nate!" Whatever Nate the Mouse was doing in the living room obviously took precedence over my good night's rest, because he'd been doing it for hours. At last, I stomped downstairs and turned on the lights, to scare him off. Didn't even slow him [...]

Jane Goodall and I have a lot in common. I'd have made a pretty good wildlife scientist, living alongside my furry, tick-ridden subjects, eating the food they eat, sharing their miseries--drenching rain, biting gnats and hungry tigers. In fact, I'd probably be doing that right now if room service wasn't so sketchy in the jungle. Despite my great love of wildlife, however, I never invite it into the house. And so the mouse in my living room is a bit of a problem.

324 assorted flower bulbs are giving me dirty looks. This happens every bloody year. These bulbs--and their forefathers--have been reminding me for maybe fifteen years that BUYING bulbs is only the first half of the battle. The other half is PLANTING them, which I regard with only slightly more enthusiasm than a good dose of Ebola. Bulb buying has become a traditional kick-off for my holiday season. Every year about this time I push the cart past a bulb display in the hardware store* and...stop. Wow. 100 bulbs for just $12.99. That's only...lemme see...THIRTEEN CENTS A BULB!!

How do you distinguish tourists from glasslanders? The tourists are the ones carrying the umbrellas. Glasslanders, i.e., people who've been assimilated into the Portland mindset, think of umbrellas in much the same way that vampires think of garlic. They do NOT carry rainboots or slickers or umbrellas. (Or, as my little sister used to say as a toddler, "ungerbers.")

"Cookies up front," said Monica, as she breezed past my office, "Go see! I made them for Halloween!" Obligingly, I got up and wandered down the hall, rounded the corner to Monica's domain...and stopped, dumbfounded. Spread out on two rolling carts was the most gorgeous array of decorated Halloween cookies I think I've ever seen. There were at least a thousand cookies on those carts, and all I could think was, "wow."

My name is NOT Carol Hamilton. Really. It's not. Carol Hamilton is having a problem with her bills right now, and the collection agencies are calling. Since they're on the east coast, they're calling pretty daggone early, too. Problem is, they're not calling Carol. They're calling me. Verizon has given Derrick-the-Droidphone a temporary number while I compare iPhone and DroidX [...]