Month: December 2008

What’s in a name?

The Good Man, being the very good man that he is, agreed to run my car into the shop today. So as such, he drove me to work this morning.

As we careened down the Bay Area highways, we were cut off by a Mercury Mountaineer.

I said to TGM, “The Mountaineer…that was never really a big hit, was it?”

TGM said, “No, it’s essentially a Ford Explorer anyway.”

Then I replied, “I always thought Mountaineer was a stupid car name anyway.”

Which tipped off a whole conversation about absurd car names…TGM was on a ROLL. I laughed my head off and in the middle of his rant, I said, “I foresee a blog entry.”

So here it is. The content below is mostly stolen from the brilliant mind of TGM.

Without further ado, my top five most absurd names of cars you’ll see rolling on the roads today:

5. Nissan Armada. “What, is the main feature that it sinks off the coast of England?” said TGM (A comment that had me laughing so hard I got a stitch in my side.)

4. Dodge Durango. What a wimpy SUV name. Have these people ever actually BEEN to Durango. I have. And what is it about the sleepy Colorado town that the car should evoke? Am I supposed to think snow? And mountains? No, I think tourist trap. Look at me in my rolling tourist trap.

3. Chevy Avalanche. “Now that name is appropriate, it is a disaster rolling down a hill.” (TGM was on fire this morning.)

2. Toyota Echo. “It’s bears a faint resemblance to a car, but isn’t actually a car.”

1. The winner and still the King: Ford Probe. “I sure as hell don’t want something made by Ford up in space,” said TGM. To which I replied “or up my butt”.

Yes, childish as I am…the Ford Probe makes me think of something more…medical. I don’t want to think of uncomfortable medical situations while driving to work every morning.

Or maybe that’s just me.

Anyhow…there were plenty more, but I was laughing so hard, I couldn’t make notes.

Special thanks to TGM for both his brilliance and for making the ride to work more fun.

If you drive any of the above automobiles, I’m sure it’s a *fine* car…just has a dorkish name! :)

*Poing*Plonk*Sprang*Plink*

Oh yes, ’tis that time of year again.

When holiday cards fill my mailbox at home.

And most of those shiny envelopes contain family cards where my fabulous friends enclose a photo card…a photo of their children and occasionally the children and the pet.

As I open all of these cards and see the children of my dear friends and how they’ve grown over another year, the gray hairs begin popping out all over.

Yesterday I opened a card from a really great friend from college. She is about ninety pounds soaking wet, full of energy, and full of fight.

Back in school, I had a devastating breakup with a boyfriend just before starting graduate school. I considered giving up, I was lost and just couldn’t care anymore…but she refused to let some guy screw up my whole life and career. She grabbed my hand and pulled me through.

She made me go to class. She made me study. She partnered with me on presentations and her charm, poise and fire were like a salve to a wounded soul. I owe her and the other two in our gang of four because without them, I’d never have completed my MBA. Truly.

Later, when she had an even more horrific breakup, and was on the verge, I turned around and took her hand and helped pulled her through, too.

This girl was a crazy person, and that’s what I loved most about her. One time in a near empty bar on a Wednesday night (pitchers of beer were buy one get one for goodness sakes!) she demonstrated, on the dance floor of the club, the appropriate form for sliding into second base. She rubbed a layer of skin off her legs, but damnit, we all learned something that night!

There was also the occasion where we had to pull her out of a fight with a group of drunk guys who wanted to use the pool table that she was unwilling to give up. Who cares if she was drunk and only chasing balls around the felt, hardly sinking a one. The girl was there first! Principles, people!

Anyhow, that amazing fighter of a crazy lady sent me her card this year. And her beautifully tiny blond porcelain doll of a daughter is now…uh…thirteen.

*ploing*sproing*bawannggggg*

I almost passed out. Really, I got woozy and had to sit.

How can it be that the distance between today and those college years that are so crisp and clear like they were yesterday are a whole human teenager away? (plus a few years, actually)

How can that be?

No really! How *can that be*???

Baby, it’s cold outside

Winter has hit the Bay Area.

How do I know this for sure?

The dark skies?

The near constant drenching rain?

The hailstorm we had yesterday?

No.

By this conversation.

Casual question: “Where is the cat?”

Reply: “On the heater vent.”

The roots of my raising run deep…

Ok, well, maybe a taste of the holiday spirit came and got me this weekend.

The tree went up.

And the kitchen got cookin’.

It ain’t Christmas without a batch of biscochitos. (Recipe here from the PNM cookbook.) It’s a family tradition.

Here are the little beauties, just before going in the oven….deelish already:

And then, fully cooked, fulfilling their destiny. So lightly baked, so flaky, so anise-y. Oh yeah. New Mexico comes to visit.

Many of these bad boys will be going with me to work. These Californians need a taste of where I come from!

Time Marches On

I noted with some sadness today the passing of Bettie Page. She was 85 and passed after suffering a heart attack.

I’ve always been rather fascinated by her, first, of course, for her vibrant beauty and unabashed nature. But there is something else there for me…this might sound horribly vain, but I loved that, like me, she was a brunette.

I grew up in New Mexico where almost all the girls are brunette, and a blond girl was always the “ooh and aaahs” of the school ground. The boys didn’t care about another brunette girl. We were a dime a dozen. But a blond, aaaaooooohhhhga!

So I’ve always loved seeing a hot brunette make it work. After the Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield media barrage, I *loved* seeing Bettie’s dark locks…and that she took her overt sensuality to new levels. She made people uncomfortable.

And she was just…stunning.

Like the many girls who burst on the scene the way she did, she had a troubled life both before and after her explosive fame. But I don’t want to remember her for the hard times, the mental frailty, the reclusiveness and regret.

I want to remember her as a plain, open, fun kinda gal.

From today’s SFGate article: “…she told Playboy in 1998: ‘I never thought it was shameful. I felt normal. It’s just that it was much better than pounding a typewriter eight hours a day, which gets monotonous.'”

Right!

I know the “behind the scenes” wasn’t always pretty, and the uptight folks hounded her. But to me she is truly an icon. And supportive evidence that brunettes can be just as va-va-voom as our fair-haired counterparts!

I’m posting a fairly well known photo, fully clothed, but brimming with HOOOOOT.

Go easy, now, Bettie. Have fun shaking your money-maker on the other side!