Triptych

I've been slowly attempting to decorate the side door of the garage. I've painted two panels in the past three years. Here's the one I finished today:

Here's the whole door. Two more to go, but I'll have to sit on the ground to reach them.

Five Things I Did To Avoid Answering Reference Questions On My Last Day Of Work Before Taking A Week Off

1. Made pretend phone calls
2. Sneaked away for 45 minute nap in my car
3. Used two computers at once to look extraordinarily busy
4. Took eight extended trips to the restroom
5. Avoided eye contact

Faux Fungus

Today I planted the ceramic mushroom from the Essex Junction craft show. I like how it offsets the actual fungus on the trunk of the crabapple tree. The mushroom was made by Ripple Pottery of Rumney, NH.

The Else

It's actually kind of spooky. I was reading This Might Be A Wiki this afternoon and I realized that certain lyrics in every song on TMBG's upcoming album The Else could have been written about my life -- specifically, about this year of my life. (Okay, except maybe "The Mesopotamians".)

I hope I'm not suffering from "Famous Polka" syndrome:

"A famous person wears the same size waterskis as me.
She's got three cars, as many years I've lived in this city.
Her hair is blonde and mine is brown. They both start with a B.
But when the phone inside her ribcage rings, it's not for me.
But when the phone inside her ribcage rings, it's not for me. "

Wild Wild Life

I sure wish I could find the charger to my camera so I could capture some of the suburban wildlife I've been seeing this week. This morning alone in the back yard, to complement the daffodils and violets and pretty plantlife springing up all over, I saw the following fauna:

- A pair of purple finches perched on the power cord that runs from the house to the garage
- A brilliant, loud male cardinal, which landed on the same wire and scared off the finches
- Two gray catbirds in the flowering crabapple
- Several sparrows
- Several gray squirrels
- A chittery chipmunk
- Chickadees in great quantity
and the most special spotting:
- a large bright-eyed brown bunny, which slowly hopped across the driveway, under the Adirondack chair and across to the neighbors' back yard

I'll have to look up rabbits in my Celtic Animal Oracle. But no matter what sort of omen the Druids may have thought it, seeing a soft, sweet wild thing this morning just felt a little bit magical.

Checking Out John Flansburgh

Cinco de Mayo weekend marked another Vermont visit for me, this time to beautiful Burlington on a springy, sunny weekend. The Best Friend had booked a hotel for us and whisked me away a day early; we checked in late Friday afternoon. As we walked from our room to a nearby restaurant (and a "surprise" for me, I was informed) on Friday evening, we passed by the Higher Ground Ballroom. "THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS - MAY 4", annnounced the marquee. It took me a while (nearly halfway through our meal, really) to assimilate the info, but when I did, I was ecstatic -- the BF had gotten tickets just the day before, and... we were going to our third TMBG concert together, that very night! Wahoo!

The show was to start at 8:00, so after dinner we went back to the room for a while to play Word Sweep and check out the Red Sox pre-game stuff on TV. Later, as we prepared to head over to the concert, I glanced out our fourth floor window to the walkway below. A dark haired dude with glasses was passing below. He was sipping a coffee and munching a muffin or donut as he walked. "Cute guy," I thought. I had just been thinking about Burlington and how a lot of interesting people around my age (but with perhaps a younger mindset) tended to live there, and here was a perfect example bobbing along the sidewalk 40 feet away. Then a flash of recognition: his slightly gray, slightly spiky hair, his build, his features... "Flans! It's Flans!" I shouted to the BF in the bathroom. John Flansburgh was staying at our hotel. "It was Flans! I just saw him!" I repeated.

"Cool. What channel?" came the voice from the bathroom.

"No, no... he's HERE. I just saw him out the window! I think he was walking into the lobby!"

We grabbed our room keys and took the stairs down to the lobby, but I guess we were a bit too slow: there was no sign of Flans. We paced around outside and even camped out on a bench for a while, but as 8:00 approached and Mr. Flansburgh continued not to appear, we decided to stop our spontaneous stalking.

I told the BF as we walked to Higher Ground: "I can't believe I was checking John Flansburgh out".

The show? Yes, of COURSE it rocked. There are some very good accounts of it here.

Personally, it just may have been my favorite concert ever.