When we were in Orleans, I finished Life of Pi which is a fantastic book by Yann Martel. I liked it so much while I was reading it I said, "You can't even believe this is a book." There is a lot of heavy stuff going on that I didn't get and I'm going to have to read it again. I looked online to see if there was anything like this extensive analysis of Mulholland Drive (movie) but no luck.

The bummer about this bug I have is its endless lingering. I'm coughing and blowing my nose and not feeling all that much better than when I got home on Tuesday afternoon. I'm not hungry -- all I've eaten is fruit and chicken broth with vegetables. And I'm having a terrible time sleeping. I'm tired but I don't fall asleep. Fistfuls of homeopathic sleep-aids don't help. Last night I kept getting up to read but as soon as I read a page or two my eyes would begin to slide shut so I'd put the light out and then lay there. Same thing happens when I try to nap. I'm feeling pretty run down. So much for a weekend of yardwork and errands.

Tonight we're going to see Nickelcreek. I'm going to guzzle a power drink and hope for the best. I figure since it's them -- at least it won't go on until some unspeakable hour.

I was going to try to do a "detailed" blog entry with links but right now my connection is unbearably glacial and the first couple of sites I tried had endless popup ads so forget it.

We got back from Orleans, CA on Tuesday and I returned with a lovely flu type thing. I heard it's going around the whole crew down there. At least I got to suffer at home with my own TV and great big bed.

Actually, we went to Eureka on Monday and visted Grandma which ended up being totally depressing. She was just lucid enough to be stuck in the loop about how she wanted to go home, she wanted to go home, she wanted to go home. When we got ready to leave I leaned down to give her a hug and she totally stiffened up and gave me the most heart-breaking look and told me she was coming home with me. (a) we weren't taking her but also (b) we weren't going to Orleans, we were going to Gold Beach. And when I told her that she slumped back into her wheelchair and mumbled good-bye. I cried in the parking lot.

Bob and I had planned to take Grandma to lunch but we got there late and she'd already had lunch so instead of taking her anyways so we could eat which would have been the smart thing to do, we visited with her for a couple of hours and thought we'd eat after. But then we didn't want to eat too much because we were going out to a nice dinner for our anniversary (7 years) so we ate granola bars and peanuts in the car. The drive from Eureka to Gold Beach was beautiful but took a bit longer than I expected. We checked into our hotel and dashed to the restaurant we'd picked: The Nor'Wester and there was a wait. Then our appetizer fell through the cracks so by the time we got something to eat we were not the friendliest of people.

The food was fantastic -- I can't more strongly recommend the Dungeness and Brie appetizer. The next day was Tuesday, going back home day, and I woke up with a sore throat and by the time we hit Eugene my head hurt and my eyes hurt and I ached and moaned and groaned all the way home. And I have been feeling poorly since then. I stayed home from work Weds and today -- and I'm feeling a little better except I cough a lot and I have little appetite and I can't sleep so I'm very tired.

Is there an easy way to remove ivy? We have ivy on one half of the yard and every summer at some point I decide to tear it out and I do about an hour of work and choke on dirt and scratch my arms up and then poop out. There is still one patch that I cleared out last year (and never planted anything there) and now there's another patch I worked on yesterday. But it was totally exhausting. I want to get all the ivy out and bring in some better dirt and bark dust and put some pretty but easy to deal with plants in there. At this point the ivy has no trouble growing faster than I can clear.

Yesterday a couple of big orange trucks came and hacked at the trees on the street behind us. They did a crappy job. When we look out the kitchen window we can see this row of beautiful trees except the one on the end has been brutally hacked so that it looks like a mistake. Poor tree. At first I thought they were doing it because of the power lines. But there are no power lines. It looks like they were doing it to be mean.

I'm still addicted to Big Brother. I keep saying I'm not going to watch again but then I can't wait for it to air again. There are still at least 4 more weeks.

We have new neighbors and other than one of the cars out front occaisionally moving, I have seen zero sign of them. They keep the windows closed and the shades drawn and I've seen the woman out watering once but otherwise they are like the mystery people. The only reason I know there are two people is because there are two cars and once before they got the shades, I saw them take turns working on the computer in what used to be Trevor's room. They took down the sun/moon curtains, too.

Some dog has been using our front lawn as a regular turd drop. What are people thinking? Bob says sometimes dogs are just running around and it's not the owner's fault where it turds. Yeah right.

Where are the grammar police when you need them? I'm talking about the endless incorrect use of the reflexive. I don't want to be one of those people with bizarre grammar fetishes but now it's too late and this one is bugging me. For example: memos from clients that say: Bob and myself attended a meeting last week. Or on Big Brother where every week in the diary room every houseguest says something like: Robert, Justin and myself did blah blah blah. Here is a very nice grammar guide to help you out. It says, "whenever there is a reflexive pronoun in a sentence there must be a person to whom that pronoun can 'reflect.'" So you could say "Robert, Justin and I won the HOH." Or you could say, "The POV was given to Robert, Justin and me." Or you could say "I hurt myself during the competition." The houseguests have nothing else to do in there -- a grammar lesson could be quite informative.

Insomnia again. Three nights in a row but it's been coming and going for several weeks now. On Saturday I could not sleep to save my life. I did a lot of reading -- there are few unread periodicals in this house. Time for the books now.

I saw today I finally have a dahlia from the new batch I bought. It's a generic pink but a nice treat from the zillions of red and yellow ones.

Here's an article about trolling on the web. I'm the only person I know of who is a regular usenet reader although I never post. The 2 or 3 times I've posted on a public bulletin board I've gotten bales of weird email so I don't think it's worth it. But back to the trolls I can't understand why people continue to argue with them. It's so stupid. Is it that important to be right? Is it that important to defend your opinion? It's just an opinion. Think about it -- it doesn't really mean anything?

I'm completely in love with Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Here's a good, um, guide to the Fab 5.

So this morning on the way to work, when I was stopped at the light at Fourth Plain, I noticed the car in front of me making a hand signal (?) out the window and then again at the rear view mirror. I had no idea what he was up to (broken down white acura something, disheveled, unshaven 40-ish guy) and figured it had nothing to do with me. When the light changed he crossed the intersection and then pulled into the 5th rate tire store so I assumed he was gesturing to someone there. Moments later I was stopped at a light on Mill Plain and a car pulls up next to me and honks and I look over and there is acura guy and he says something that I can't hear and sort of shakes his head and then drives on. What was that all about?