I Ain't Afraid of No Daleks

Becky sent me another two-parter to share with you. Part I is a foodie meme.

1. Deviled eggs or egg salad?

Deviled eggs...mum used to make them special only on easter, thanksgiving and Forth of July, so I tend to view them as a special treat. (but I like egg salad sandwiches, as well)

2. Fries: BK or McDonalds?

Since American McDonald's switched fry oils in 1988, I have to go with BK, but before '88, McDonald's really did have THE BEST fries...sadly the new "healthy" fry oils turn anything fried into TASTELESS RUBBISH, but people today seem to like tasteless rubbish.

3. Gravies: homemade or from a packet/tin?

Mostly from a tin, except with stew, then I'll make my own.

4. Tomatoes: fresh or tinned?

Tinned. Fresh tomatoes make me gag--no really, they do!

5. Potatoes: Mashed or jacketed?

I assume "jacketed" means what we call a "baked" potato, anyway, I prefer mashed, generally.

6. soda or beer?

soda, don't drink, and never cared that much for beer the few times I did drink.

7. Apple or crisps?

Crisps.

8. Pork or fish?

Pork

9. KFC or Subway?

Bleh...can't stand Subway. KFC I suppose.

10. Chocolate candy or boiled sweets?

What's a boiled sweet--hard candy? I have no real preference. As a diabetic, I can't really eat sweets much any more, just once every week or two.

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1. Where do you call home?

Northeastern NY less than 200 miles from New York city.

2. What's your favourite board game(s)?

Monopoly, Sequence Dice, Trouble, Sorry!

3. Have you ever fired a handgun or rifle?

Yes.

4. When driving somewhere new, do you get lost without directions?

Only in a city, in the country, very rarely.

5. When did you last get lost?

Can't remember, last time was probably at least five or six years ago.

6. What is on your feet right now?

Light blue socks.

7. Where do you like to travel on a day trip?

Saratoga Springs or Lake George.

8. What's in your pockets right now?

My moblie, my wallet, loose change, a bill receipt, a tissue, a store receipt.

9. What device do you use to listen to music most often?

Used to be internet, but with no sound, my portable DVD/CD player.

10. Who do you hang around most with (don't need to name names)?

Just my cats.

Going home, I had to share a cab with this little old lady...well, I say "lady," but that really can be a subjective term, in America, these days...and perhaps in many western nations.

She stood there expectantly, waiting for the cabbie--who himself was a borderline senior, got out of the cab and loaded her shopping into the back of the passenger van. Meanwhile, I was busy loading my things into the rear seat of the van, as I reached for my last shopping bag, little old lady, virtually knocks me down, bustling to get into the front seat of the cab--the driver wasn't even back in the cab yet, so what the hell was her hurry? I said, "sorry," like i meant it, but really inside, I was seething, 'cos when she knocked me back, my sore part of my back hit the door handle of the van.

Then, on the way home, all she did was complain about her street and all the new homes they had built there, all up and down the road (when we got to the old gal's house, I counted a sum total of two new double wide trailers and a new house) with their "noisy brats and their barbeque parties and cars coming and going and...." at that point, I stopped listening.

The woman gets out, then opens her front door and just stands there expectantly, while the man duitfully--and very politely, carries her shopping bags---about 9 of them, inside her house. Then comes the clincher..."That'll be $3.25."

Well, you'd have thought the poor chap was asking her for fifty dollars! "It should be THREE dollars," she sniffs, "I'M a senior citizen!" (I know for a fact, this cab company doesn't give discounts to seniors and the disabled) The poor fellow just gives her a look, decides not to quibble over a twenty-five cents (damn, I was hoping to see them fight over a quarter), and leaves--naturally, the woman neither thanked the man, nor gave him a tip.

How cheap is that??? This is a strong republican city, and this woman was ALL republican, let me tell you!

These poor cabbies work on commission--AND, have to pay for their own petrol! I bet if the government cheated this...woman out of 25 cents of HER income, she'd kick up a right old fuss, wouldn't she?

Sometimes people really DO suck.

I'm tired. I just lost a day's pay, 'cos my supervisor said "never mind, don't come in, we can't use you today." Damn.

I did my shopping, paid the second half of the electric/gas bill, so at least that's behind me for another month. Got a 40+ dollar invoice I have to pony up for by next week, but then it's clear sailing....until next Friday, that is.

I think I'm going to buy another phone. This one's fine, but it's costing me a small fortune! It's very expensive, even if I use it sparingly, it still runs me at least $40 a month in phone cards, if not $60. I saw a phone for sale at Family Dollar for $15, and their phone cards start at just $10, for almost the same amount of minutes as the Virgin card--only about a 7 minute difference between the two, and $10 a week is easier on my chav paycheck-to-paycheck budget.

I'm in a very, very bad mood today. I woke up an hour early..which is fine, but it's made me very sleepy. I woke an hour early 'cos I THOUGHT I was going to be working this morning. My back hurts and my foot hurts, and I'm cranky. I hate being cranky, but not a lot I can do about it. I'm looking forward to the play...I'll very much be heartbroken if it's sold out. I'm not really looking forward to walking down there---thinking I may take a book with me, and spend the dollar for a bus down there...I know it's only a 15 minute walk, but I'm tired now..and now, 'cos I didn't work to day, I have to work the whole shift tomorrow...that sucks. Six hours of telemarketing hell.

Flame is not helping my mood. She's in heat again--forth time in two months! What the heck is with that? So, I've got a cateurwaling cat baying at the moon like a banshee every few minutes. Damn.

Then, I come home from shopping, and find some stinking DT fan girl has left a very ill-mannered comment on my blog--for a post that was SUPPOSED to be merely in jest. I was going to delete it, but, you know what? I HAVE to take ill-mannered crap from people on my job, all week long, but I don't have to take it on my blog. So, I told her off...not proud of that, but I figured I've earned it. Or, maybe not "earned," so much as paid my goshdarn dues to this madhouse called life.
I hope the play is funny, 'cos I need something to lighten my mood.

Worried about my bad eye, really getting difficult to see out of it....the edges of my vision are darkening and blurring slightly.

I'd turned my heat on very briefly this morning--only for 30 minutes, just to warm the bathroom as it's the coldest room in the apartment, and while my bedroom was 70 F, the bathroom was around 64 F. A half-hour later, I dutifully turned off the heat, also switching the thermostat back down to 60 F. It is now 1pm, and the heat is STILL ON!!!

I CANNOT turn off my heat! Damiit, this building is a pile of poo! The ceilings are coming down, the walls are leaning, the floors are bad (I have a floorboard under my living room carpet, that if you step there, it sinks down into the ceiling below me), the plumbing is constantly dribbling,....damn.

I've tried EVERYTHING. I have NO IDEA why the hell my heat is still on!!! The thermostat says 71 F, and the thing is set to turn on only when it gets down to 60 F, so...WTF??? Stinking programmable electronic piece of poo...

Video--some of it taken at one event just up the street from me in Crandall Park--of the four-day Adirondack Hot Air Balloon Festival, last year. Most of the video was shot at the Floyd Bennett (Warren County) airport, in nearby Queensbury, NY.

Local tip: If you're going SATURDAY MORNING, and don't need to see the launch up close--stop by the McDonald's on Route 9 in Queensbury (or the Starbuck's or BK on Aviation Road) for coffee and/or breakfast, then drive up the road--route 9 northbound, to the Wal-Mart parking lot---unparalleled views, and no crowds--bring binoculars (or buy them at Walmart in sporting goods), for closer views...get there around 6am for the first launches. You WILL have a horizon to horizon panoramic view..and you can`enjoy the view of the nearby Green Mountains of Vermont in the background.

Traffic is moving faster, so they must have re-opened at least some of the lanes of the three-lane southbound motorway, following this morning's tragedy.

Turning to a nice, day, people with their car radios blasting, including some guy in a souped up big ol' off-road pick up truck, blasting the the Smokey and the Bandit theme song out his windows, drowning out the rap music, country music and hard rock pouring out of other people's cars and trucks.

There's a big gathering of a Model T Ford club this weekend, and these pristine antique roadsters are chuging and put-putting up and down the streets...love that. Lovely old cars, they are.

I could tell that something had happened on the southbound side of the nearby I-87 (aka "Northway") motorway, as there are southbound tailbacks on my street, with vehicles one doesn't normally see--New York bound Greyhound coaches (whom seldom stop here any longer), a prison transport bus, cars with out of state plates--more than there should be, even with the balloon festival on...anyway, went online to see what the Post-Star had to say...awww-wish I hadn't.

Some poor woman jumped from an overpass bridge, onto the southbound lane of the motorway and died. She wasn't struck by a car, but aparently died from the fall. It happened around 10am this morning.

Suicide hits home for me, on both ends--I have in fact lost someone I've known that way, the boy that grew up next door to us, and was practically part of the family. On the flip side, I also know the intense emotional feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness, aloneness and emptiness, that can drive someone to take their own life...for no other reason sometimes, than to just stop the horrid pain, that continually slices and dices your soul, a pain...usually, because, unlike a wound or a physical illness, an emotional illness is generally invisible. It is not something that the average person can readily grasp, who hasn't "been there." And, anyone who takes umbrige with that statement, is being naive.

So, to this woman, my heart goes out her, both in sorrow, and understanding. Sadly, mental health is a low-priority in the health care system, and this is just one more victim who has fallen through life's cracks.

And, let me just make this perfectly clear: suicides ARE victims. Just like people are victims of cancer, and victims of rape, and victims of physical abuse. Mental illness is not "all in someone's head," it is not imaginary. It is REAL. The suicide is NOT in control of his or her life or emotions. In fact, the person suffering from emotional illness, is being controlled by things out of their power to do much about. Help is not always forthcoming, treatments are often inadequate, support often dodgy or non-existent...compassion and understanding frequently not even on the radar. In fact, in the USA, mental illness is MORE taboo, than AID's/Hiv was in the late 1980's.

There was a "born-again" Christan in the shop I was in, yesterday. She was a very happy lady, I'll give her that. But, I could help but snort--well out of earshot, of course, I'm not THAT ill-mannered, when she said to some guy, "Oh, I'm sorry things are so bad for you. Well," she said primly and with utter conviction, "you just ask God to help you get some money, and He will. God will listen if you pray, and you will have all the money you need."

So, like, God is a magical genie now, and all you have to do is Pray/wish real hard, and *POOF!* magically you will be the next Donald Trump?

Riiiight. No.

When did American Christians begin turning the Almighty into a biblical fruit machine?

When did Americans decide that faith and prayer would be the ticket to some ecclesiastical lottery, that leads to homes, cars, jobs and cash?

Well, I guess for the same reason people who know nothing about horses bet on the races, and people who know the odds are 10,000,000,000 to 1, play the Irish Sweepstakes.

"'Defender of the Earth' my arse--they really bought that line? Hmmm--wonder if I could sell them tickets to an immaginary U-2 concert?"

I'm going to begin working on the Dr Who fan fic story I started, back in late June/early July, but couldn't finish cos of the crap that happened with the series that upset my emotional applecart (not that anyone at DW Wales would care--as someone actually suggested to me, recently...ha, yeah right...I'm bi-polar not delusional...yet, anyway.) Anyway, I still have my few notes regarding the story, so what the heck, need something to do, now that weather's turning cooler, and I can once again sit comfortably in here, without sweating buckets.

I miss my caravan. I had heavy curtains up to the bedroom windows, and also, where my bedroom was situated, was smack in the middle of some pine trees on our lot, so no one could have seen it from the road, anyway--so I could sit in my erm--skivvies at 3am on a hot July night in my 90 degree F room, with the fan blowing on me, and type away to my heart's content. Since mum slept at the opposite end of our 70 foot long home, there was no worries of waking her. Plus, through the French doors, just 1 foot away from my computer desk, was the master bathroom, so it's not like I'd have to run 60 feet through the house...erm--au natural, to use the loo (the smaller bathroom--which was handicapped equipped, was off a hallway outside mum's door).

Back then, I was either writing stuff for school, or writing bad plays, poetry or essays, pretty much. I didn't even know about the "new" Dr Who until months after mum passed on, not until the Spring of 2006 did I get the joyous news of my beloved Who's return. I didn't even know about blogs, until summer of 2006.

I still don't know a thing about I-pods, texting, blackberrys, laptops, I-phone's, etc.

But, yeah, I need to get back into writing. I started a short play based very loosely on a Shakespearean play, but it was so...bleh, I scrapped it--tho' it's still bopping around on the internet on one of my misc. blogs, what little I wrote. I probably should delete it, but, meh--I'm a bit lazy about it, I'm afraid. Nobody likes my plays for a reason, and well I know it. Why is it, the things I want most to be good at, are the things that I'm worst at, and the things I really don't think much about, are the things that I do better? 'Cos life sucks, that's why.

Well, we're in store for a stretch of utterly fantastic weather all weekend...no rain, temps in the mid 60's to 70 F, and hot air balloons floating across our skies...just saw one drift past high up in the skies a while ago. Pretty!

I have to work today and tomorrow, but hope to have a quiet, relaxing Sunday off. I haven't had two days off in a row--barring illness---since the last weekend of August, and it doesn't look like I'm going to have two days off in a row, anytime again soon. How I sometimes envy people who get the entire weekend off. I don't think I've had that luxury in four, maybe five months.

Ah well, such is the life of the working-poor. Theater tonight--have to get there early to buy my ticket. Meant to do it this week, but the thing with my eye, having to go to the doctor's a few times, sort of tapped out the fund's I'd put aside for a ticket--so, I have to wait till I can cash my pay check today, to get one. If it's sold out I'll be right well upset.

I'd forgotten this was the stinking hot air balloon festival weekend, and all the rich trendy people will be in town--and around these parts, America's highly insecure nouveau-riche love showing off by a making trip to the theater, sitting outside outdoor cafe's showing the world how cultured and educated and oh-so-well-to-do they are-. No, not being churlish towards them. I had my "first contact" with the oddities of the "new rich" back in the mid-1970's, when I was about 14 years old...I had a friend whose mum and dad where nouveau-riche, and neighbours who moved into the "mansion" behind our house, were very much some new-rich snobs...what a trip and a half, these people were! OMG!

Sometimes it was hard for me to fathom that these bonkers people were considered "upper class." I tended to think of them more as "sectioned class" citizens.

I had one couple, whom moved into our neighbourhood from Philadelphia, refuse to allow their daughter to play with me, because they thought I looked "too rough." Erm...I was wearing a flannel shirt hiking boots and cowboy hat 'cos I'd spent the day hiking the wood BIRDWATCHING, and was carrying a wildlife guide and a book of poetry in my backpack...I didn't drink or do drugs, and often volunteered at the library. Also, my mum was the village's librarian/library director, my dad was president of the Veteran's of Foreign Wars post, and my cousin was the village's chief of police...but I was "too rough" to talk to these people's daughter??? (who was a lovely girl, as I recall). Riiight.

Anyway, the nouveau-riche of America, didn't fool me nor impress me at 14, and they certainly don't now. I actually find them quite droll, don't ya' know.

CAB DRIVER!!!!

I was tired. I had just down half my laundry--it once again got so backed up, and I've been so under the weather, that I've had to go to the laundromat in stages, 'cos there's no way I've the energy right at the moment, to lug six loads of washing up and down the staircase.

So, cab gets there, a passenger van cab, and I load my stuff into the seats in the back, and open the front door to get in--and the driver says, "I gotta' pick up someone else." Oh, and you only just thought to tell me AFTER I just piled my HEAVY bag and hamper into the back--the bag and hamper I now have to move...gee, thanks for that.

So, we get to the place where the person is supposed to be, the driver sees no one, rather than RADIO the DISPATCHER first, the berk turns off the engine, gets out, and walks into the cocktail lounge. 10 minutes later, he saunters back out, gets in the cab, turns on the engine, THEN calls in to the dispatcther..."your fare is in the back of the building, like I told you." "Oh yeahhh..." So, he pulls up about two feet--doesn't go near the rear of the place, taps his hooter, and the girl comes walking out, looking none too pleased. Cabbie eyes her, and says, "Aren't you a bar-maid?" Oh, that's smooth. do you use that line on all the girls?

So, we FINALLY cross the bridge and head into the downtown area--which is closed off for the street festival and fireworks. Does he--unlike most cabbie, try to detour around it...no. Stupid cabbie gets behind a Jeep Cherokee, and loses his way---I'm like, open-mouthed, when I see us crossing Route 9--my street, and heading WEST out to the suburbs. I'm like, "WHERE are you going?" CABBIE: "To G_____, like you said." No, not quite, sugarlips.

My street that I live on, has four letters, one syllable. The street he was taking me to had EIGHT letters and TWO syllables! K-reist!

What should have been less than a ten minute cab ride, became more than DOUBLE that...and the traffic wasn't even all that bad, cos, tho' the fireworks were done, the party was still going strong. I just got stuck with a putz for a cabbie.

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On the other hand, I got 2 complements today.

One was this morning. A comment on one of my Dr Who fan fiction blogs, called "Who's Stories," some lady in, I think, Australia, was incredibly kind, and wrote: Hey. These stories are GREAT! You have a gift, mate!

Wow, that left me a bit gobsmacked. In 47 years, NO ONE has ever told me that I had a "gift," before...not even my own mum! Wow...not letting it go to my head of course, I've read gifted writers, many a time, and I stand firm by my solid belief that I am average. But, yeah, it was nice to hear, sure, and a really, really lovely compliment, one I never expected to hear, certainly.

Then, if that wasn't enough to raise an eyebrow, I had the other eyebrow raised tonight, when another person e-mailed me to tell me how much he or she enjoyed one of my David Tennant captions on here, and suggested I re-post it on my Roasting DT blog, as she thought other readers would "get a good laugh" out of it. This person also went on to tell me you have a sharp wit, you should be writing for television or radio. Wow, again. I must say, I think that one left me a bit speechless.

Of course, any English major/professor reading my blog regularly, will know this is balderdash, but...gee, I am still rather pleased and amazed, I must admit.

(acutally, in a tiny, tiny way, I have written for radio, as an in-class project for my broadcast writing class, I regularly had to pen news scripts, PSA's and adverts. And, as part of my finals exam, I had to write, direct and co-produce a 20 minute radio play)