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Going to see the Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil Girl in Savannah

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We dropped by Savannah when we were down south attending my nephew's Marine boot camp graduation ceremony. Savannah is surprisingly close to Parris Island so it made sense to make it a long weekend. We got upgraded to a suite at the hotel.  the suite! bless my heart! Savannah is on the tiny side... I guess I say that as a New Yorker so keep this perspective in mind. It's a very walkable place and they have this amazing free bus that goes around in a big circle. You can hop on/hop off and manage to get yourself in places that you probably shouldn't have bothered with.  We successfully located this Alley Cat Lounge  fancy cocktail establishment which Scott had highly recommended. We went by at like the crack of 4pm or something on a Thursday -- which turned out to be maybe the only time we would have ever gotten in without a reservation. We sat at the bar and had an lovely time chatting up the bartender, who turned out to be the bar master and an expert in Japanese Whiskey an

Flaco the Owl died. Also congestion cats. I mean taxes.

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Have you seen this thing with Flaco the Owl who escaped from the Central Park zoo going on a year ago? If you haven't you obviously don't live in New York City. At least in Manhattan, this owl has become our crowdsourced pet.  When I just wrote "crowdsourced pet" it reminded me of an embarrassing error I made once while reading a Swedish article. The article, written in Swedish, talked about a guy who crammed, what I read to be "the crowd's cat" in his pocket. I thought it was an article about animal cruelty or something. I mean, he jammed a cat in his pocket?  But when I mentioned this whole cat shenanigan to a Swedish friend of mine, I found out the hard way (ie when she laughed uproariously at me) that it was an article about a guy embezzling tax dollars. IN MY DEFENSE, the Swedish word for tax is "skatt" and the word for cat is "katt" so if you put the word for "crowd" in front, you can very easily see how you'd go f

Smelling the drill sergeants in the Marines

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  my nephew graduated from the Marines 80% of the fambo flew down to Parris Island to see the nephew graduate from Marines boot camp. It was touching really to see my nephew leave as very much a kid and come back a soldier. He got whipped into shape physically but also very much mentally.  But that's not what this post is about. This post is about Family Day. The very very first thing my nephew wanted to do was go to the fancy commissary and buy... cologne. He wanted the brand of cologne that his drill sergeant recommended because his drill sergeant knows a lot about cologne. The drill sergeant is 26 years old and an expert in the olfactory arts. Believe me, we heard a lot about it. Let me tell you, these boys smelled good. Even from a distance. Moderation of smell is clearly not part of their training. It took me a while maybe to figure out that everything about their whole life is regimented and very very impersonal. You look at these guys and they all look the same. But they do

January in NYC and I went outside

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  So true! Look, in the dead of winter such as we are, I need to get myself all psyched up to go outside. That's the bottomline. I'm not out for a stroll any day of the week. (I'm also not writing in this blog apparently. But in my defense, I had a rotten case of Covid AND it was the holidays and the end of the year AND I wore myself out with the NaBloPoMo.) Back on track now. January. Going outside. The problem is, my step count plummets and my watch beeps at me alerting me about this travesty. YOUR STEP TREND is WAY OFF, SISTER. Then there's also the problem of me wishing to become a Flaneur when I grow up. To really qualify as a Flaneur, I feel one must have a lifetime of practice. So my personal strategy to get my ass up and out for a wintertime walk is to engineer a series of destinations forming roughly a circle and then set off with this checklist, an adequate scarf and a lot of fortitude. My first stop this past Saturday was at the NY Showplace Antiques on 25t

That would be "Will" Actually - NaBloPoMo 30 - The finale

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  I took this picture a couple weeks ago at the Ed Ruscha exhibit at MoMA. Tom and I went to the opening mid-day on a random Tuesday.  I liked this painting and it seemed like a good way to say sayonara to this year's NaBloPoMo. This, right now, is the moment when "won't" turns into "will." As in, I will finish this thing with a flourish. Thanks to all approximately 10 of you who have been with me on this journey (according to the blogger stats page).  Whew. It's a thing to write a post a day for 30 days.  But yeah, will do. And now we're at... Done!  

My Plants... Except here's some knife wielding photos NaBloPoMo 29

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 On this penultimate NaBloPoMo - I have nearly succeeded in posting a post a day for one full month on this National Blog Post Month, yeah, my inspiration is waning. So I was planning on just posting this picture of some of my money plants:  Some of my money plants At one point I had probably 20 gorgeous money plants. The deal is that the money plants have baby money plants and then I feel bad about squashing them so I wind up with a Dugger family of money plants.  It was just too damn many money plants so I gave a bunch away. I felt very charitable when I did so since my mother saw money plants not half this nice for sale at Giant for $9 each.  Right?! Just another reason why my house is actually a farm. Anyway, this was going to be the entire post, but then, when I was looking for a great picture of the money plants, I ran across this photo in the photo library: Tom with a knife and his brother. It is a photo of Tom wielding a knife. Shirtless. With his brother in a bed also wielding

What's up with people & what they post in the college alumni news section - NaBloPoMo 28

Here's the entry in my alumni newsletter in the "alumni news" section: "I am thrilled to report that we have published a special edition of my very successful journal. Our contributors include top thought leaders from around the nation. Here's the link.... " Yes, this cat is actually using the alumni news section of a college newsletter to: 1. Shamelessly promote his shit 2. Not be humble, even in a coy way Ok let me just add some context: One time I met this guy in his office. This was years and years after college. I walked in all friendly like with a colleague of his and I said to him, "Oh, you have the same last name as my husband does! It's such a small world, maybe you are related!" And this guy goes, "No. We are not related." Anyway, this was the most noteworthy thing that happened today -- the spark of pure WTF that is reminiscent of my last interaction with this asshat.