Why I Love My Car

Friends!

Last September Hubby decided I needed a new car.  We had planned to wait another year, but sometimes you have to go with the flow and DO stuff.  I got a 2010 Ford Escape, and it came loaded with everything except the heated leather seats.  It gets great milage, is fun to drive, and has nice get-up-n-go when I need it.  It has a decent sound system...

...and it came with a six month trial subscription to Sirius Radio.

OMG.

My morning commute isn't long, only fifteen minutes, so I don't have much time to get in a couple of good tunes to start my day.  I NEED my morning music as much as coffee.  Maybe even more.  Coming home, I want something instrumental to unwind to, a nice long jam band is perfect.

Allow me to digress.  I grew up in the Chicago area, with a vibrant music scene.  Chi-town blues & jazz clubs, the Opera House,and 492 different ethnic neighborhoods meant lots of good listening on the radio.  Free radio.  Radio stations that specialized in nothing BUT arcane one-hit wonders.  Stations devoted solely to soul.  And never less than four major stations playing current rock and alternative music.  Chicago shaped me into a picky listener, and I thought the whole world was like this, full of wonderful stimulating tunes.  

Then I moved to the cultural wasteland otherwise known as Las Vegas.  

Don't get me started on the lack of decent coffee shops, museums, and crappy overpriced restaurants.  Let's talk about the pathetic selection of free radio stations.  They suck, big time.  Nothing but angst-filled teenagers, i.e. Justin Bieber and his ilk, angry rap, and ho-ridden hip hop.  Oh, and country, which is a dirty word where I come from. (sorry!) There's one "oldies" station, featuring the top 40 from the past 50 years. Like Ive never heard "Hey Jude" before, or even worse, EVERY song ever sung by Journey.  I started listening to National Public Radio to save my sanity.  Which, by the way, is pretty interesting, but definitely not melodious.

Then along comes my new Ford, with satellite radio.

OMG.

It's Nevada living with Chicago choice!  There's stations playing stuff by bands I've never heard of--and I know my bands; Hubby has a music-related business, and we listen to everything we find that's new to us.  There's opera, alternative, blues, rock (new and classic), disco, & soul.  There's CELTIC music for crying out loud!  And three NPR stations, heh heh.

My commutes are complete.

You might ask why I don't just pop in a CD or plug in my MP3 player, and the short answer is that I want something NEW.  Like Reggae played on a pipe organ accompanied by pygmies playing oboes in 5/4 time.  You know, something interesting.

My six months are up on my free Sirius subscription, and you'de be correct if you guessed I subscribed. 

 Twelve bucks a month.

One Satisfied Listener.

Priceless.

And that's what I like best about my new car.

xx

trish

EnRaptured

No words needed.

xx

trish

Dinner

Friends!

We had a few odds-n-ends in the refrigerator, and what better way to use them than an omelette?

Sauteed onion, mushroom and ham, garnished with feta, tomatoes and fresh cilantro.

Heavenly!

xx

trish

SEX!!

Friends!

The answer to the gender of the co-worker I was talking to in my previous post was--

A man!

I am blessed to work in a great place.  We are indoctrinated endlessly with political correctness classes, which we all (mostly) attend and choose to ignore.  There's a general consensus that we're all adults here, and we'll say what we want, including telling somebody off if they make us mad.  So I wasn't threatened or demeaned or anything by a compliment, I took it at face value; this particular person thought I'd look good in a bikini.  Period.

I'm 48, and I grew up on the cusp of women's lib.  My Mom refused to quit her job at a department store when she started "showing" during her pregnancy with me, and after I was born, she worked evenings and my Dad did the parenting.  I'll never forget our fish stick TV dinners with French dressing on the fish, and Dad trying to coax me to eat the peas.  I watched my Mom go to college and have a career, and later earn her Master's degree.  So I had good role-sharing models growing up, at our house there weren't any gender based work assignments. Although  my Mom was (and is) the cleaning fiend of the two. 

We watched a lot of public television at my house, and back in the 70's that meant NOVA and other science-based shows.  In school, I gravitated towards geeky classes like chemistry and Latin.  It's funny now, the dichotomy of me--I was a good student and loved learning, yet I was, *ahem* a wild child.  Which meant I spent a lot of time with the male sex.  Actually, I've always had more male friends than female; in fact, blogging is the first time I've ever connected with so many women!  In person I gravitate to men, and it's not a sexual thing.  I simply find them interesting, perhaps since they're fairly transparent.  WYSIWYG's.  I feel more comfortable in a room full of men versus a room full of women.

Which is not a bad thing when you major in biochemistry in college, because often I was the lone female in ANY of my classes.  I had a professor tell me that women didn't belong in science.  Jerk.  I got an "A" in his class.

But back to my work environment.  It's mostly guys.  The first couple of months were spent establishing personal boundaries, which was refreshingly addressed by outright asking me would I be insulted by thus and such.  Of course not, but it was polite to ask, and if I had girl things to talk about I did the same.  It's that way for everybody here.  Some of us have encountered discrimination; me in school, or racial bias, or age.  It makes for interesting discussions--two days a week I work with a guy who remembers having to drink out of "Colored" water fountains in California and going to segregated schools.  Mainly we talk about sports, he knows every player on every team (ever!) and we have a great time on shift.  And it's the same with the rest of the crew.  Sometimes, a girl in a bikini is just a girl in a bikini.

By the way, if you know a really good dirty joke, I'd love to hear it.

xx 

trish

 

What do you think?

Friends!

I have a question.

I had an interesting conversation with a co-worker a while back, it started when they asked me how I was recovering from my surgery. We got to talking about getting older, our bodies going to pot, food, diets et cetera.  At one point I said something about the bruises and scars on my stomach and that they really didn't matter to me, it wasn't like I was going to be wearing a bikini any time soon anyway.  To which my co-worker replied that no way would I look bad in a bikini, and I should wear one if I want to.  Then we sequed onto another topic.

Pretty nice compliment, I thought later.

Now, my question: 

 Would you feel any different receiving a compliment from a male or female co-worker? 

Leave me a comment and I'll reveal if my co-worker was a guy or gal in my next post!

xx

trish

How Long Will it Grow?

Friends!

In keeping with my fashion-rebellious lifestyle, last fall when it got cold (that's below 80 F for me) I decided, just for kicks, to quit shaving my legs to see what would happen, hair-wise.

Let me qualify this by saying that except for my head, I'm not terribly hirsute.  I don't have to shave the 12 lone stragglers under my arms, and the backs of my calves are bare naturally.  But the scientist in me was interested (in a sick and twisted sort of way) in  just how long leg hair would grow.  

So I hung my razor out to dry early last November.  No problem.  I'm a shaving sloth anyway.  The first couple of weeks was fine, and then it was Long Sock Season.  Hubby was vaguely aware of my "project" as I called it, but really didn't pay attention until one day in early February  when we were cruising down the highway and I said "Check out my hairy legs!  It's really getting LONG!" and pulled up my pants leg.

Scott almost drove off the road.

I ended up deforesting my legs the week before my surgery.  In four months the hair grew an inch and a half...and I think it was still getting longer.  My question is, would it have grown forever?  Or is there some predetermined terminal length?  Inquiring Scientific minds want to know.


xx

Trish