Overheard:

Blondie(on telephone): I'd like the number for John Jackson in Cincinnati, please.

Directory Assistance: We have multiple listings. Do you have a street name?

Blondie: Well, my husband calls me "Hot Stuff."

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
411 - directory assistance

Diabetics are told to be especially careful of their feet. They should never go barefoot, they should wear thick socks but not tight ones, they should inspect their feet daily.

I can't do that. My right hip has limited range of motion, and I can touch my right foot with either hand but not both hands at once. That doesn't make it impossible to put on socks, but I have to be lying in bed to do it, and it takes about an hour of extreme frustration to get my right sock on. The tax on my time is bad, but the tax on my tolerance is, well, intolerable. Diabetics tend to be fractious anyway, and by the time I get my socks on, I'm ready to head for a gun shop and buy a Sig Sauer to blow away anyone who looks at me cross-eyed.

Last week, I developed a disturbing sore on the thumb of my left foot. I confess to being a little paranoid about my feet. Is this it? Is amputation next? But the doc said it was just a blood blister, caused by not wearing socks under my leather shoes.

Socks Are A Bane

I don't know why Blondie, my wife, makes such good salads. I've tried to learn from her, but my salads neither look as good as she makes them, nor are they as tasty.

That's not to say my salads aren't edible. In fact, they're fairly good. It's just that Blondie's salads seem to be "magically delicious", (and no, they don't include breakfast cereal in them.) My late first wife, Em, was a master at most cookery, and an absolute genius at soup. I've learned to make very good soup, almost as good as Em did, but not quite. I, on the other hand, am better at baking bread than either one of them, and while I've tried to pass along that artistry to each of them, it hasn't worked.

The Weather Channel says we can expect 8 to 12 inches of snow, and that means everyone is legally compelled to rush out to the supermarket and buy every loaf of bread and gallon of milk in the place.

If you have a cow, you probably know more about milking it than I do. I suppose I could tell you how to bake bread, but I'd like to point out that there's a third food in the Blizzard Food Pyramid. That's homemade popcorn. It's nice to have bread and milk in the house in case you get snowbound, but this is really a good time for getting out the coal-oil lanterns in case the electricity goes out, playing old songs on the phonograph until it does go out, and setting up the card table to put together a jigsaw puzzle, while munching on freshly-popped corn.

A Pox On Microwave Popcorn!

Little Brudder writes:

I have been riding my motorcycle to work, and it has worked pretty well.  I am used to wind and even got moderately used to rain.  After all, it is only about 20 minutes each way, depending on traffic.  But I knew snow and ice were coming.  i can dress for cold, but when it is slick underfoot, two wheels is not a practical approach.

So last week, I bought a cheap POS*.  OK, it's actually not bad, but it is cheap enough I did not get stuck with car payments and it seems to be reliable.  So Tuesday night, I paid the money and picked up the car with a temporary license tag.  Wednesday, we had an odd wind.  It ran 40+ mph with gusts of 55-60 mph.  When I got home that evening, my wife noticed that the license tag was missing.  The screws were still there, but apparently the wind ripped it off the car.