Love the Louvre

For a first attempt at a photo on my blog, I would have pictured something a little more cerebral, perhaps something sophisticated, a splash of culture. But no........

it's sis' and I's vision of things to come, come to life as a doodle! A two-dimensional rendition of what promises to be a three dimensional weekend!!! Laughlin awaits! Look out world, here we come!

o cabana boy....

testing, one two ..five. three, sir!... three

For the Record

I would like to make public my announcement that my sister has won, yet again.

I have agreed to a date to play. And play hard! And extend the time and play to follow us back to her house for MORE!

This occasion will begin Wed. Sept. 1. And who knows when it will be over. Stay tuned for updates and/or pictures to follow.

Taking an old familiar road

I just bought Seals and Crofts greatest hits CD, and have been taking a nostalgic trip back in time. And found that I am also firmly entrenched in this one. As you may or may not remember, Seals and Crofts was circa 1975 or some such, I'm sure some of their stuff dates way before that, but it was one of the first cassette tapes I bought for myself at 16 years old. I remember the boss at my very first job (Poor Ed's Deli, remember it Magz?) he let me play it in the shop. It went on to live in the glove compartment of my first car, an Opel Manta, I remember playing it on my way to school, and I remember playing it on my way to extra-curricular school events, one such was a biology club camp-out at Joshua Tree National Monument. Listening to these old words and tunes that I knew so well back then takes me back so thoroughly, I can see faces, I can recall conversations, I can feel the same excitement, anxiety, and anticipations that used to fill so much of my thoughts. O! The rawness of youth, when everything seemed fresh and new because it WAS! When we went places and met people and tried things, we were doing it for the first time! It WAS an adventure, everything we did!

So I'm sitting in a one of those white plastic lawn chairs in front of my house last nite, watching the last of the evening light turn into a sunset and then dusk. I've just finished a barbeque'd dinner, I have the new CD playing inside, the music and a stream of yellow light coming through an open window behind me. It's a quintessential Southern Cal nite, warm and still. And on comes "Summer Breeze". As I listen and smile at the memories, I begin to hear some of the words and I'm taken aback. I feel like I'm living within the song. What I've always pictured when hear that song is what I'm feeling and seeing now. "See the curtains hanging in the window, in the evening on a Friday nite. Little light is shining thru the window, lets me know everything's alright." "see the paper laying on the sidewalk, a little music from the house next door"…Summer Breeze… blowin' thru the jasmine in my mind….I feel like I have truly come home. I have achieved something that I created in my mind a long long time ago. It one more time validates a tenet that I've always held: that you formulate your own path and future through mental visualizations, be it conscious or unconscious.

So let me leave you with this thought: the next song after Summer Breeze is: We May Never Pass this Way Again. While one part of me just wants to listen to it over and over again for the harmonies (I'm a sucker for multi-voiced harmonies! Don't ever get me started on the Eagles' Seven Bridges Road! Or Loggins and Messina!) I am stricken with the thought that we WILL never pass this way again. What we have is fleeting and dynamic, so we'd best enjoy every moment while we can, while it's happening, live in the now. Believe it or not, my blog friends, I thought of you! I thought of this neat time for all of us to have found each other, found solace in our similarities and friendships, found interest and challenge in our differing experiences. We are in our time right now. And it will never be like this again. We are kids again, on a biology club expedition, comforted with our togetherness but uncertain in the future. There is excitement, anxiety and anticipation! Anything could happen or nothing could, I hope whatever you have in mind does! I know it does for me!

Piecing it all back together again

As I lean forward toward my monitor to read (damn the nearsightedness, but I'll rant about that another time), resting chin on fist while poring through morning blogs, I catch the light fragrance of onions. So I change hands. It's there, too. The memory of last nite's dinner, with its degree of success and failure, returns. As I have regaled before, some evenings I come home very tired, last nite was no exception, in fact it was exceptional how tired I really was. Absolutely paralyzed with fatigue, so after having sat down for a few minutes, I went and took a nap for half an hour or so. I forced myself awake because I knew it was either that or wake up at 1 or 2am all disoriented and disheveled. So I forced myself awake and up, determined to make a sensible meal. I have the makings for a nice Caesar salad with chicken, so I begin to put it together, but remember, I am rather discombobulated with fatigue, so my coordination is a little off, and I wish I could have had a video tape of how pathetic I must have looked doing all this. I remember musing over thoughts of the lettuce, taking hearts of Romaine, perfectly trimmed and beautifully packaged whole and cutting them up into small pieces. I remember painfully grating the parmesan cheese. And the onions. O! The onions. When I didn't have a sweet red onion to add, I took the next best thing: a large yellow onion and sliced up few pieces. Evidently there's a big difference to the end result of a salad when one uses what they have versus what it calls for. And I most certainly don't remember having that day-after onion smell on my hands after having used a red onion. Anyway, truth be told, it made for a quite nice presentation and a pretty tasty salad, and that allayed my guilt far enough to warrant having what I really wanted, dessert afterwards!

Needless to say, with a full tummy and an ice cream sandwich, I had a really nice, deep sleep, and today I will do as I please! First thing, clean up the kitchen, I left it a mess last nite!

5150 - Danger to self and others

ooooh no. NOW what have I done? I decided that this template format was too hard to read, so I picked a new layout and made the changes, against the warning that I'd lose any customization. No problem, I thought. Bought off-the-rack, I maintained. Stock product, I surmised. And after I pushed the republish button and saw what discord I created, I decided that I had made a rather rash decision. (Truth be told, I just didn't like change. As much as I'm not crazy about my too-close-together-font, at least it was MY font, the one I expect to see when I open my DawgHouse door). So I put everything back, or so I thought. Till I scrolled to the bottom and AAAAUUUGGHHH! No counter! No Guest book!!! No bravenet advertisement! Why didn't anybody warn me?!!

So, before I put another counter back, does anyone have any other good ideas? I was up to 212 or some such number (wow! people reading little ole me!) and my apologies to any people who signed in and now they've been erased. Expunged but not forgotten. So much for my prediction of a new and improved site! sheesh! Modern technology indeed.

The Title Bar of another endeavor

Welcome to my AOL version of an already existing, multi-interest, non-essential, hedonistic, rapidly growing fun thing to do.

I discovered that there are more than just Blogger blogs. AOL offers space for blogging, too, and when I discovered it, I found it had many nifty extras that I haven't found (so far) on this one, so I created a secret second identity (that's where and when I did the "DawgHouse" for the first time) and proceeded to snitch these neat things and try to paste them onto this one. Well! I can be much more sympathetic to my poor sister now, with all of her trials and tribulations on MaggiezFarm because I have seen firsthand the danger of putting something that doesn't belong into somewhere that does. You should have seen the mess I made of my space! Sweeping changes to the title don't hold a candle to cutting and pasting something above the "wrap-around" instructions! So I was able to 'undo' most of it, and will hold off on wowing you with all I've discovered until I find out how to do it right. So watch this space for new and improved stuff soon!

In the Dawg House

I wonder what mess I've just created? Allys Place was a dumb name, I used it as a place holder till I figured out what I was doing. I've now gone and changed it, very unceremoniously, i just went to my dashboard and with a few key strokes, WHAM, now I'm in the Dawg House. It seemed easy enough from this end... now let's see what the repercussions are.

But I DO like my new name! Do you?

Perhaps it would behoove my listening audience to know more about the Sid name to properly appreciate the cleverness that it has promoted for itself.

Sid, as you may or may not know, was my dog. My pal, my friend, my constant companion by my side for 15 years. When I got my first home computer in 1998, I signed up for America Online, and then (as I've done again) used a place holder for the screen name while I thought of something better. Sid, being ever present, gave me the idea , but even way back then all the combinations of Sid and Dog were already taken. Even SidDawg was unavailable, so AOL suggested SidDawg17234, and I marveled at how many other SidDawgs there must be out there. I countered with a bid for SidDawg1 and was granted permission (I still wonder why I wasn't offered this as a more legitimate second choice by AOL, but they weren't talking) so b'ding! SidDawg1 was born! Off I go to explore this strange new world of the internet, and before I know it, I've joined chat rooms, received emails and generally begin to establish my identity with my new phantom friends as 'Sid', or 'Dawg'. It's cute, it's clever, so I keep it. It's not long before BOTH of us have acquired the new moniker for a nickname. Then, as is to be expected, life happens. The years between 1998 and 2004 fly by with lots of experiences and lots of living, but evidently they go by much faster for Sid than for me as he is aging at 7 times the speed than I am. The last year of his life I swear he aged at a hundred times the speed, and near the end I could see the difference from day to day, and I couldn't do anything to slow the inevitable down, so I just tried to help make life simpler, slower, softer for him. He was healthy till the end, and always active, but progressively weaker, and when the time came that he had more bad days than good was when I had to say goodbye.

And so, here I am, learning to live without him. He's still all around my computer, on the wallpaper, on his own website, on Dogster. And, of course, ever present, as SidDawg1!

So, and here's the neat part: when my sis convinces me to brush off my keyboard and rejoin the crazies on the 'net, I have to think of a new screen name for Yahoo. Of course I try SidDawg1, and of course it's unavailable (they did suggest SidDawg44879 tho!), and so I try spelling out the 1 and what came out of my keyboard was breathtaking…..Sid Dawg Gone. I love it! It's perfect, and I wear it not with sadness, but with pride!

So from now on, when you want to come by to visit my blog, you'll be coming to SidDawg's House! And THAT… dear readers, is why I use SidDawgone!

Humming a little tune

Favorite Music. Don't you just hate when you're filling out a checklist and one of the questions is something like: what's your favorite music? I will usually put in something trite, an answer to fill in the blank, and then it falls pitifully short of what you really think about when you're thinking about music. I'm also finding that in my advancing years, I'm not as readily available to just spout out a quick answer like that. Like just recently, one of the answers to one of those checklists was : What's your favorite Disney movie? And being a dyed-in-the-wool Southern Californian born and raised, I adore Disney, Disneyland, and everything Walt. Yet, for the life of me, I couldn't even quote a single Disney film, much less remember one that I would call my favorite. When you're a kid and someone asks about a favorite, such as ice cream flavor, it's easy to blurt out one. Chocolate. I'm thinking it's easier for those simpler folk with less experience to recall things because there are less items being filed in the grey matter. Their dewey-decimal system only goes up to 3. As you age, more experiences equate to a bigger, more advanced filing center, and now you're having to cross reference and microfische just to sort through the myriad of data. And flavors. So in answer to a seemingly innocent question, please give us mature folk a little while to answer, we may just be pondering the many worthy possible explanations. Or, we might not have heard you. Oh, and guys? If we're on a first date, please don't ask an interview question like that. Unless of course, you're trying to let me know the level of date you're used to. I'll make sure your question is dismissed as quickly as you are.

Oh, and for those of you wondering? My favorite music is Country.

See? See what I live with? A sister, fueled by love, powered by guilt. And not the more subtle version of New-York-Jewish-momma-figure-it-out-if–you-dare-deep-sigh-psychological kind. My sis goes for the I'm–gonna-post–it –for-the-world–to-see kind. The ignore-it-if-you-can, but-I'll-get-other-people-to-do-it-for-me kind.

Hahahah, Sis! Bravo! My agent, my nemesis, my worthy opponent, my greatest advocate, my beloved sister.


To hear us recall our childhoods, you would think we were raised in different families, but for all of our many differences, there are still so many things I patterned myself after because she was my big sis, my model, my mentor. She worked on Grandma Gaganon's farm, I worked on Grandma Gagnon's farm. She preferred jeans over dresses, I preferred jeans over dresses. We had treks to the beach to bake in the sun with Baby Oil, even over our soft Irish skin (oof, that's gonna leave a mark). She listened to and therefore I learned an appreciation for music, both classic and obscure. My Christmas' must now include a drive to see the lights on houses, as I remember she and I doing so while singing Christmas carols. And mostly, the absolute love and connection of a sister. To know in the world there is someone who will pick up the phone before it rings, who knows you so well, that she can finish your thoughts. She embodies a love so real it is palpable, a kind most people can only imagine and the rest of us to strive towards. And if you are one of the fortunate people to have crossed her path favorably, consider yourself truly blessed, you've been given a gift like none other.

And then she will nail you down with a request for a date to go play, and if you waffle, she will badger and needle you until you give in! Hahaha! She wins. She always did.

Who's holding the wheel here?

I have never had a green thumb. In fact, I come from a lineage of plant killers. I learned at my mother's knee how to overwater, underwater, kill with kindness AND kill by neglect. I can prune down too far, thereby killing by exposure, I can fail to prune and kill by suffocation. I never learned what grows where, which plants like light and which partial shade, and which acidity is bad for which base, thereby making bad plant neighbors. When I do grow a house plant, it is purely by dumb luck. I have one such plant which has been with me for years (YEARS!) and I feel very very fondly for him. He and I get along well, he tells me he needs water by going limp and splaying himself over the pot sides (which I think is very melodramatic, but it's a little game we play) and I usually give in and encourage his performance by giving him what he wants. Spoiled. Very spoiled. This all explains why I have been so comfortable in my new home in Norco. You see, it is a very dry place. Very dusty. Very ... difficult. The lawn I keep is really just volunteer weeds, but when you mow them regularly actually look like grass. The rest of the property is undeveloped. That is my nice way of saying it's just dirt and dry, crispy weeds. I am right at home. At least I WAS, until my fateful trip to Hawaii when I came back inspired to turn my yard into a Tropical Paradise!! I have bought and am tending 4 plumarias, 3 hibiscuses, 2 banana planty looking things and a jasmine. What was I thinking? Very pretty, for sure, but... NEEDY. Sheesh! I feel like I have just been to the pound and came back with a litter of pets. In pots. As you know, I've just come back from a four day weekend away, and came back to find that the house plant evidently threw a party for everybody, and filled the hibiscus with all sorts of crazy ideas about coercion by guilt. I came home to find the orange hibiscus practicing the limbo. So now I have to pay off the plants in miracle gro in small unmarked cups, at a feeding schedule of their choosing. To appease the lot of them, I spent the afternoon mowing the faux lawn, trimming the trees, and sprinklering to make everything look nice and cool and tended. They let me know they prefer it that way, and so it shall be. I must now hasten after them, for I am their leader.

Gearing up for the weekend

Good morning world! I have not been as remiss at writing as it may appear, I have just been thwarted by the Manahoonies again. I sat down and wrote a long piece, then when I sent it to publish I was given a "Web site not responding" message, and the previous efforts of a half hour or so were GONE. Thin air. Not a trace. Nuthin'. Scott Peterson could have taken notes to how clean a get away it was. I on the other hand was pretty disheartened so I gave up and found something else to do. For a couple of days.

I am happy to report that the golf tourney last Monday was a success! My swing was more-or-less in the swing so I wasn't completely embarrassed, and our foursome came in 3rd overall. Of course, there were only three groups, so I guess you could say we didn't win. Oh, ok, we lost. But it was fun! Helped raise some money for the Palmdale High School Football program, won some neat things in the raffle, and had lots of food and met lots of nice folks.

I am now getting ready to leave for the weekend, up to Ventura to house sit for some friends, and work their motorcycle training site for them while they're out of town on a vacation to Canada. I'm still trying to figure out how it can be ME that's vacationing, and someone else stays behind and does my work for me. Time to buy another Lotto I guess.

Oh, I don't want to end this on a bad note, but I have a sad story: Some friends of mine came by last nite to report that their young, strong, range-raised BLM-rescue Mustang died yesterday of West Nile virus. It's out there, so beware. The sad thing is that they think it was complicated by the innoculation they gave it, that somehow Nugget already had the virus and was fighting it off naturally, and the shot elevated the exposure to a level he couldn't handle. So use lots of Off when you're out in the evenings, clear out your standing water, and ... I don't know what else. Hope for the best, I guess. Send your good thoughts to Larry and Jeri, they're feeling pretty low.

you know what's funny... after spending another 1/2 hour or so on that last post, I just hit the "publish" button without thinking. Fortunately it went through this time! Got one past the 'hoonies! Hahahahahah! NO I DIDN'T!! This p.s. was kicked back off!! hahahah! the Manihoonies are alive and well...!! (or maybe it was Nugget?!!)

Beating the clock

I have set my alarm and gotten up at 5 something most of this week. Now I am looking forward to Monday, which I have off, and guess what time I will set my alarm?! O-Dark-Thirty again. Cruel. But this time it is for personal reasons, a golf tourney! When I get up early because I have to, I often muse how nice it would be to reap the benefit of the cool, the prospect and potential of a full day available if I was to be up this early on a day I DIDN't have to. So I have that to look forward to, to see if my musings are warranted. While I am a little disappointed that I am giving up my leisurely morning tomorrow, the true decadence of sleeping until I can't sleep anymore, I will trade that tonite for an equally fulfilling thing: to go to bed really really early. In fact, it's not even dark out yet. Now THAT feels like a really guilty pleasure! As you may surmise, one of my most favorite things to do is sleep. I loves me my sleep. It's one of the things I do best, and one of the things that puts me at odds if I miss it, even if it's just a couple of hours short of my requisit 9 or 10. So with that, I bid thee adieu, I have a pillow with my name ALL over it! Sweet dreams to all, I will write again with news of the tourney! G'nite!