Five Random Questions

to get me back into blogging. I've be bbbbbaaaaaaaaaaddddddddd! I feel unimaginative, lazy, and kind of a dumbo. So maybe asking and answering inane questions will help get me back on track.
1) What is your hometown best known for Pat?
Gee, it's actually best known for a group suicide committed about 25 years ago by four high school students. Google Bergenfield NJ suicides to find out more. Sociologists still study the case.
2) What other interesting event happened in your home town Pat?
Well, after an old family friend sold her house, a man took a woman (let's say a prostitute kinda woman) to that same house a (a mere three blocks away from where my Aunt Grace lives) and murdered her with a knife -- WITH A KNIFE! Google all you want. I couldn't find it. This incident occurred in the same house in which our friend Marge once came home to find out that her dog HAD EATEN ITSELF TO DEATH AND EXPIRED INSIDE A BAG OF DOGFOOD!!!!!! Google Bergenfield NJ Beagle death by dogfood and see what you come up with.
3) Tell us a little bit about some of your hometown's attractions Pat.
Have you been reading or what people? Suicide, murder, death by gluttony: what more can you ask? Okay, there's Cooper's Pond and the Cooper Chair Factory and the Old South Church (second oldest church in NJ).
4) What does your hometown smell like Pat?
It smells like New Jersey, just like New Jersey.
5) Do you hope that anybody reading this post will come up with other, more interesting and less offensive things to blog about?
Yes, but I'd be just as happy if they answered the same questions about their hometowns.

Do me a favor -- if I keep up crap like this, just shoot me.

When Jess and I have that coffee

you can join us if you can name the song from which I got the title for the last post.

and if I look like death today,

well please let her know
I'm climbing out of strep throat after three days in bed, so I'll keep this short. Warning: it won't be sweet
Five reasons not to like strep throat:
1) It makes the dog nervous, really nervous
2) It makes the house smell, or
3) It makes my head smell
4) It makes devoted college teachers miss their first day of classes
5) It made me miss my first day of classes
Cheers
I hope you're well

Songs About Trains

I'm going on a train ride today and I'm so excited. I suspect I love trains because I grew up with a mother who used to work for the New York Central railroad and a father who was/is a train enthusiast, to say the least.
If I was patient enough to burn, download, whatever, I'd have to include the following songs in my train mix:
Off the Rails by the Notwist
Pilot by the Notwist
Yeah, Neon Golden is actually the only cd I own
Midnight Train to Georgia Gladys Knight and the Pips
Downtown Train by Tom Waits
Take the A Train Duke Ellington or any version
The first four are some of my all time favorite songs. The fifth is included cause it's a cool and obvious choice.

How 'bout you? Any train, car, plane or maybe hot air balloon songs?
Peace Out

Things I have learned today because I have insomnia

That's right, it's another pathetic attempt to look on the bright side of being up since 4:30. I have watched a dvd of last night's season premiere of Antiques Roadshow, scrubbed my kitchen sink, and learned (from that vast and sometimes disturbing repository of knowledge the worldwide you-know-what):

My ruby glass isn't worth anything.

This one's for Josh. I can reduce this crazy static thing that makes me freakishly charged all the time by doing all kinds of stuff, like carrying around dryer sheets and making a spray of ten parts fabric softener to one part water and spraying it around my house. I'm drawing the line at the suggestion of rubbing fabric softener sheets on my skin, but I can totally see me at committee meetings whipping out the fabric softener sheets and rubbing one all over my clothes. I'm desperate enough to do it, even though fabric softener sheets are so enviro-nasty. I also learned that for people who have problems with static more body hair means more static. No comment.

Aunt Grace's Nippon vases might be worth a lot of money.

You can determine what shape your face is by looking in a mirror and outlining your face in lipstick on the mirror. I kid you not. I just did it -- oval.

You can find videos that help you figure out what shape glasses you should be wearing based on face shape, skin, and hair color.

If you have an oval face, perky women with perky hair will tell you (in videos again) that you can wear any hairstyle, get any haircut, which is not helpful if you happen to know that the haircut you have isn't working any better than the previous two haircuts you got.

All that and it's not even 7:00. Got anything you've learned from the Internet that you want to share? This blog prompt is NR, so have at it folks.

Top Five, Not In Any Apparent Order

Ruby (as in don't take your love to town, and I'd even get a cd of that song and play it while I drive)

Red Bull (cause it has so much energy)

Pauline (I have no idea why)

Specter (cause it's a Spectra, yo)

Murfmobile (not really, but it would be fun to say "To the Murfmobile, Missy!"

Whaddya think?

What was I thinking?

Well, I was thinking that Blue Boy had to go, for one, and it was the car I wanted (even the color I've always wanted) only a year newer at a better price and with a lot of features. So, my 1997 Corolla went to a wholesale party yesterday. I went back to New Jersey with a 2007 Kia Spectra with 16,000 miles on it. It's beautiful, dark red with a tan interior. Thirty nine mpg highway, mid thirties around town. The question, of course, is what to name it. Do I go with color, play off the Kia or Spectra names? What? I got it at Rockland Nissan, so I could call it Rocky, but that hardly seems inspired. Anybody?