The Frank Funny Farm

what do you mean this blog isn't my essay? you say i'm procrastinating? always complaining about how i have too much to do and not enough time to do it in and yet, here i am, blogging. well, i am in fact blogging, but at this very moment my brain is processing what exactly that paper shall be about. they always have to have a purpose, blast them. so, you see, negative nelly, i am, in fact being productive. narrowing ideas as we, um, speak. and besides, it's halloween, you leave me alone. i gots wings to wear around later and knock into things and only go through doorways sideway with. i'm going to be some sort of black fairy thing. or something. i dunno, i got awesome wings. and fishnets. and i have fishnet arm sleeve things, but since A) it's gonna be freakin' cold and B) my brief trying in them on resulted in red itchy hands and three benadryls, i don't think i'll be wearing them. i got crazy eyelashes too. whatever i am, i'm gonna look cool, even if i do have to wear a long sleeve shirt and chuck taylors cuz we'll be running around downtown hunting zombies. some sort of scavenger hunt thingy with a party or something at the end. sounds fun, and a good way to continue to pretend that i'm not all congested and sore-throated and feeling like poo. i let it win yesterday and (accidentally) slept until noon. but now i must return to my patented i'm-not-getting-sick-i'm-perfectly-fine-coughcoughcough method of healing. it always works out well.

anyway, i suppose i shall progress to transcribing some of my head babble to see if any of can be formed into an intelligent essay. or even reasonably intelligent. the bar gets lower as the semester progresses. until the end of course when the things that count the most appear and it's all AAAARGH i have to do fantastically on the finals! why do i have to be such a perfectionist nerd?

ps rant: why is it that commercials must be at least twice as loud as the shows? or in the case of amc, my dearest amc with its all horror all the time during this season, three, maybe four times as loud. yes, you've gotten my attention, but guess what? instead of making me sit there, rapt, realizing my deep need for whatever you're selling, you make me grumble, hit mute and thereby completely ignore you. and yesterday in fact, you made me change the channel. today, you sneaky bastards, not only are you the only people with horror movies on at 9 in the morning, but you have rob zombie hosting, welcoming me back from commercial breaks in all his rob zombie hotness. check and mate.

Tags: halloween, procrastination, rob zombie's hot

so i haven't blogged in a while. that's the problem with me having a blog, i don't even have time to procrastinate any more and on the rare occasions that i do, my brain mostly makes the 'technical difficulties' beeping sound. but, here we are on a monday morning (a bloody FREEZING one at that. it should not be 40 degrees when i get in my car in the morning. NO.), the kiddo's still sleeping and i haven't had enough coffee to read Rousseau and so, i shall write something of our weekend adventures. ben will add photographic evidence later, 'cause it's on his phone, which i don't have, 'cause it's his. i have my phone. so yeah. friday we finally went to see emilie, josh, ella and itty bitty baby sophie. very very cute, very tiny. she's apparently just too big for preemie clothes, but newborn ones swamp her, so she looks like somebody shrunk her. or like she's wearing football pads. the rest of friday wasn't too exciting, ben had a wedding to shoot and i had a mound of school work to attack. i did spend more time that i should have making this awesome curry pumpkin soup though. time well wasted. saturday we attempted productivity until it was time to head to keith and laurie's for the annual punkin carving par-tay. once i had reached a stopping point in my readings, i went back to ben's office where he was supposedly working on pictures to see where he was at work-wise. i get to the doorway and on his computer screen i see not a wedding party but his giant face in black and white. he made a stencil of his face to carve on his pumpkin. it looks awesome, and creepy. what a weirdo.

we had some tasty tasty shrimp boil that chuck and keith produced. although there was sausage and chicken in there too, so can it really be a 'shrimp' boil? i dont care, it was yummy in my mouth. we all carved punkins and they all turned out pretty badass, i must say. (you can see for yourself once ben uploads the pictures). i used a stencil from one of the books, it was a pirate skull and crossbones, which laurie did a loverly job with. so i used that, but i didn't do the eye patch and i gave it fangs, which are hard to see from far away. sigh. anyway, it was almost a very sad tragedy and i almost got the 'nip/tuck' o'lantern award for the year. i was all done and had scraped the stringiness that you could see through the holes and i just turned the whole thing upside down over the trash can and shook it out. when i returned to my chair and looked down at the punkin in my lap, he had but one eye. the piece that was his other eye and nose apparently went trash can diving. but i was able to stick it back on with toothpicks, so all is well. though i guess i do still get the nip/tuck award technically. anyway, we sat around the fire, beering and toasting, roasting and burning marshmallows. and laurie made this amazing-looking chocolate cake that i never had room to try. rumor has it i should've just eaten some anyway. oh well.

pic stolen from laurie's blog - thanks larry!

yesterday was more reading for me, and my delightful husband made some tastyyummy pumpkin scones with cranberries and dark chocolate. i have one with me for the breakfasting.

then we went to carey's for the rest of the steelers game and to begin the "Week of Horror! (Horror, horror, horror)." every night this week we're going to a different person's house for to watch a horror movie of the host's choosing. so we started last night with jared's selection of hellraiser: bloodline, which he remembered to be awesome. turns out, vodka doesn't make for an accurate memory. though i had seen it at some point, all i really remembered was pinhead and spaceship. and it wasn't bad really, it was just 80s horror bad - even though it was made in the 90s. but still, the creatures in those movies always look awesome, and not too many 'big bads' look cooler than pinhead. tonight we're on hiatus because the titans have the monday night football game, but tomorrow it's off to dan's for.... he hasn't decided yet. but a horror movie. definitely a horror movie.

ok. i may have to go poke the baby here in a minute. the teething and probably growing are making her quite the late sleeper lately, which apparently makes her the late-stay upper or the not-sleep-through-the nighter. daddy's not such a fan of that. i'll give her a little bit though i suppose. maybe start to find out if all of Rousseau's walks in Reveries of the Solitary Walker are going to be as 'everybody hates me but i don't care, but i must care, because i'm writing this down, but no, no, i don't care, they're imbeciles. definitely don't care. nope. why don't they like meeeee?" as his introductory one. granted, i like what i've read of him in the past and i fully understand why everyone hated him and why to some degree they shouldn't have, but yeesh, man. anyhoo, i have tom waits and coffee, two things that make a frigid, tired, stupid-traffic filled monday morning not so terrible. peace. oh, and don't forget to harrass ben in the comments if he doesn't post pictures in a timely manner.

Tags: boo monday, pumpkin, weekend

so, today is our 4th anniversary. it's kind of amazing that it's been 4 years both because it feels like it's been shorter and longer. 4 years ago right now i was at hermitage café with most of my groom's men eating pancakes. mmm...pancakes...

our wedding day was the only day for 2 weeks on either side that it was not sunny and beautiful. in fact, it was a torrential down-pour. but that made it better. instead of being married on the lake we were all under a pavilion and everyone huddled in to stay dry. we could all hear the rain falling on the pavilion's roof all night and megan and i both love the sound of rain. it was intimate and beautiful. here's my favourite photo from the day:

anyway, i love you megan. thanks for putting up with me for these few years and i look forward to many more.

Tags: anniversary, marriage, rain, wedding

I spent a Sunday afternoon in a dress, in a tree. If you don’t like to have your picture taken, a photographer is perhaps not the best husband. Alas. It was cool, the setting sun casting its perfect quiet glow, a calm, knowing warmth against the brisk blue air. Brown and orange are sneaking into green, a chill creeps into the breezes, and the sun hides its face from mine much earlier now. I can feel, hear, see, smell and taste it: gin giving way to whiskey; martinis and sometimes even beer concede to red wine; summer squash become pumpkins, butternuts, acorns. Everything smells like apple pie. Or wood burning in the distance or the back yard. The squirrels on the tree are always running down, nut in mouth as the time to gather them runs out. My skin cool and pale, the wind lifting the hair on the back of my neck as the sun sinks just below the tree line. The tall green bits of grass towering above the brown are swaying and fluttering, dancing with the playful autumn wind.

orange beams bear warmth
while green still dominates brown
death looms; autumn lawn

Tags: basho, fall, haibun, haiku, pictures, tree

mini chocolate ones. they were sugar free though, so i kinda had a weird aftertaste in my mouth. not bad, just weird. not as good as last week's cookies, but i can't really complain about free baked goods.

and no, i have no idea why there's a nun at my recently-but-no-longer baptist school on a regular basis. i do know she probably wouldn't have been a couple of years ago.

nor do i know why she has baked goods and brings us what i assume to be the leftovers. the theory was floated that since we're in there always talking about modernist, bleak, 'God is dead' stuff that she's trying to save us. i'm okay with that.

Tags: baked goods, nun, school