Good morning… yes, I know it’s Monday, but it’s still at least polite to wish y’all a good morning. Besides, at the end of today, your workweek will already be 20% completed.
Roads and weather are of little note: No rain, no fog, no cold. We do, however, have clouds of pollen—for the SECOND time this year!—blowing around and making things rough for some. It seems as though we’re having a second round of the “beginning of spring,” and the pollen producing plants are confused enough to give us a second round of yellow dust. (Try NOT to think of it as airborne sperm that you are inhaling… but, yeah, that’s basically what it is.) For those of us who have allergies to pollen, or allergies to having our cars covered in yellow filth, it’s a bummer to deal with it, yet again.
Hopefully, the weeds won’t go for a second round: over the past few weeks, I have been a weed murdering fool. I’ve been chopping and hacking and yanking and ripping the things out of the arms of their mothers, just to be spiteful. My property has been looking good… and the weeds even seemed to have backed off their assault. But, if it’s just a regrouping they plan and prepare a SERIOUS assault, well, bummer.
I lived in Texas for a few years. There were weeds in my yard that grew at 1/4″ per hour… no joke. They would grow six inches every 24-hours… if I went a full-on four crazy days without mowing my lawn, there would be TWO FOOT TALL weeds on my lawn. Of course, my lawn also had “crawdad chimneys,” too. Even though I had no standing water, the soil in Houston is always wet enough for those creatures to burrow into the dirt and live. Around their burrows, they’d build little mud “chimneys” up to 6″ tall. I tell you what, boy: keeping a lawn looking decent in Texas was only possible for about the first ten minutes after mowing it.
Hmmm… Now you’ve got me reminiscing on Texas life: My lawnmower frequently revealed venomous snakes upon rollaway for the day’s mowing. Copperheads especially liked to hang out there. We had coral snakes, too… actual members of the cobra family. Fire ants, including baseball-sized clumps of them bobbing in the water, were always around. Giant spiders would suspend themselves on webs across trails, gateways, doorways, or any freakin’ place that had air… so you could have the fun of walking right into one, with the immediate result being a spider the size of a canary ON your face. Snapping turtles were ready to snap in any waterway, and even soft shelled turtles were not fun playthings: those things are basically snakes in a pancake-sandwich… NOT friendly.
One day, my kid and I discovered a pond in the scrubby forest behind our house… a big pond, perhaps a quarter of the size of Lake Gregory. We took a canoe out there and discovered that this pond was chock-freakin’-full of alligators… including plenty of big’ns. The water was thick with those dinosaurish carnivores. At one point, as we bobbed along in our canoe, we felt a serious bump, followed by a grind… Nope, it wasn’t Miley Cyrus. This bump ‘n’ grind was courtesy of a giant alligator passing under our canoe, and not yielding us the right of way. Now, I have no idea if the ‘gator was TRYING to tip the snack dish over but we took it that way. And you can bet that these skittish Skittles skedaddled and paddled the hell out of the crocodilian commissary.
Every day on the radio, I hear the English language get mangled. Some gaffes are forgivable… but one I hear every single day is an advertisement from a financial institution that claims to help you with wise investing. The disclaimer at the end of the pitch says, “Past performances is not indicative of future performance.” It just hurts to hear that every day… and I’d never put my money in the hands of a place that can’t do a radio ad that’s not even goodish languaging.
Of course, I still hear offers for “zero money down,” entirely too often. We hear it so often that it sounds “normal,” but it isn’t. “Zero” is a number… try replacing that number with any other number… would, “Five money down” work in a sentence? Or “a hundred money down?” No, it wouldn’t… just as “zero money down” doesn’t work.
Today is National Egg Roll day. Geez… the things we celebrate, huh? I’m pretty sure that nobody gets the day off of wok, but we’re apparently going to rice to the occasion anyhow as we panda to the foodie crowd. Celebrating this event is supposed to bring good fortune, Cookie!
I understand that the Nazis always took National Egg Roll day off, though… it was written into their handbook titled, “Chow Mein Kampf.” They would feast, starting with bread: “Gluten tag!” Then, they’d have some Harvey Great Wallbangers, and some pork swa stickers, and some Asian Orange chicken. Often, Weinerszechwanzel was on the menu, with Genghis condiments on the side. Nazis on a budget, however, had to settle for a bowl of Top Rommel noodles.
So, aim for that 20% milestone, avoid clouds of pollen, don’t go boating in water-infested alligators, even if past performances does not indicative how talk goodisher. Have some egg rolls… may I suggest the sweet and sauerkraut ones?